I can think of a number of reasons to flirt without changing teams. Maybe not as a dark lord of the Sith but being a Smuggler, Agent or Bounty Hunter? I mean, listen, if it's going to get me some extra credits, info or credits (respectively), you better believe I'm turning on the charm.

Ok, I'll reiterate my counter points to you since you have presented the only voice that wasn't just "I don't want to have to look at the gay": A) I agree it is not malleable and I agree with A-1, but A-2 I think is a point of contention. You can add flirt options without making them the only way to interact with a character. DA2 sucked for this. ME2 was much better. B) Agreed C) Yes, but just because they are offended does not mean they need to be catered to. Like it or not there are those offended by the racism of the empire. It should be no more subject to removal than this. D) I group up for planetary quests. Darth Lachis is a good example of someone you can end up flirting with during group play. I am not saying that I am insulted by the fact that some people only want to play hetero characters. However you can easily do this by just NOT flirting with the same gender. It takes no more effort than NOT picking the flirt option. Ideally Bioware has enough sense to not make flirt the only amicable option in a conversation. The problem I have is that by playing a character I discover their sexuality in the same what that I discover their personality. I thought I was going to play a dark side bounty hunter but I found that Mako's opinion really mattered to me. Hello light side points. I thought I would play a balanced Sorc but people just constantly were begging to get shocked. Hello dark side points. I also thought the Sorc was a lesbian, but damn it Andronikus and her just had so much chemistry. Maybe I'm a little too into the game in that way. But for me picking the sexuality of the character breaks the immersion, and I imagine it is the same for other people. I'm also worried about the implementation. These kinds of changes are inevitably fraught with bugs. Instead of just turning it all on you are adding numerous checks elsewhere in the code for the gay/notgay track. Also, you'll eventually need a 3rd track for the undecided/bi folks. It just becomes increasingly complex as you try to please more people when the most simple solution is the most obvious. Give people the option to flirt. Let them skip it if they want.

Well, let's see. Knock backs have always been considered a form of CC, because if you have a CROWD it lets you CONTROL them (namely their placement). In a game where you can literally kill someone with placement I'd say it's a pretty powerful attack. In fact I get more use out of it in Huttball than Electrocute and definitely more than Whirlwind. Overload is specifically useful for either getting people off of you or even better for putting other people out of position. Reviv heals a lot more because even on 4 targets it heals for a lot more. Per-target it heals more in 1/2 its duration than the other AoEs do in their full duration. And finally, unless your "many years of MMOs" started with WoW you should know what a mez is. It is "mesmerizing" the target. There are 2 axis of CC. On one you have hard/soft CC. Hard CC makes it impossible for you to control your character. Soft CC makes it more difficult. Also there are breakable CCs and unbreakable CCs. Breakables will release you from CC if you take damage (or healing in some games). Unbreakables last their full duration even through damage. Mez was a type of hard-breakable CC from early games. EQ had it on enchanters, but I've played MUDDs that used the term, so who knows how old it is. Whirlwind is a "mez". Electrocute is a stun (hard/unbreakable). Force slow is a slow (soft/unbreakable). Overload is a knockback (soft/unbreakable). I wouldn't really expect the newer gen of MMO players to know the term, though. I haven't heard it myself in about 8 or 9 years.

Wait... did someone get redacted while I was in the middle of replying to them?

Because the NPCs should not be taking my character's sexual identity into consideration when they decide to flirt or not flirt. If I walk up to them on the street they shouldn't have any assumption of my sexuality. The game should mirror reality in that regard. If your character is not comfortable flirting with someone of the same gender, that's cool. There are other conversation options. Expunging those options is ridiculous, though. Nearly as ridiculous as asking why there isn't a button to remove all of the alien race models and references from the game and make everyone human. The entire idea of a toggle is redundant and pretty dumb. If you don't want to flirt no one is forcing you to. If you do want to flirt, those options will be open to you. But a toggle gives your character no more freedom or choices. Instead it just eliminates these things. And for what reason again? I have yet to hear one articulated that is not based upon real world politics and prejudices.

I once was running behind someone in Void Star when we went to cross the bridges. I'm a Sorc healer so I had him targeted. Enemy sage runs up and does their version of overload to knock him off the bridge. As he's flying I hit Extricate and pull him back to safety. I have wanted to do it every game since I first saw what that WZ looked like, that was the only time I did it successfully.

I have a few issues with it. First and foremost, the when playing a character their sexuality isn't something that I pick when I pick their class. It is something that I get a sense of as I play through on the character. If I just picked it in the beginning, yeah, my SI would be all over Ashara like it was their last night alive. She's hot and I like women. But given how I played my Sorc it just made more sense for her to gravitate toward Andronikus. Something that can't be predicted at character creation and shouldn't be precluded then either. Second, it brings the issue of the character's sexuality to the forefront in a way that I think is just inappropriate. I don't mean inappropriate in a "crap, now I have to talk to my hypothetical kids about fantasy gender interactions and inter-species sex". I mean that it is asking a question that is best discovered and explored within the context of the game itself. I guess it refers back to my first point a bit, but when you roll a character you are not asked about their feelings on things because you are supposed to PLAY their feelings on things. You don't check a box that says "Sith who hates the Empire" or "Jedi Sith Apologist" at the beginning of your story. You are presented with conversation options and you choose the one that best fits your mood at that time. It is, within the obvious limitations of a game world, like being alive. You are who you are because of what you say, do and think. Not because you decided to be who you are 6 months ago. This relates to your point about "constantly choosing" an orientation. People already do this. Every time you talk to someone you have the option to flirt. You choose not to for a variety of reasons. Obviously there cannot be a constant "flirt entirely inappropriately" button in the game because then they would have to code the reactions to the constant flirtation. But when a flirt option appears and you decide not to take it you are not "constantly choosing" anything. You have already chosen. All that remains is to act. Finally, I prefer not to kowtow to the lowest common denominator. I want the game to be immersive and "realistic" in its representation of people. I want there to be gays and the homophobes to go with them. I want there to be racial slurs to go with the different races. I like the Darth Fatty model and I want there to be one for females and with that I want there to be NPCs who comment negatively on your size because they're jerks. It is this underutilized essense of the real world that never makes it to games and really should. But that is a musing/suggestion for a different thread.

That is not what a toggle does. I'm straight. I walk into a bar I have the option to flirt with whomever I want. My sexuality is preselected, my actions are still unlimited. Likewise, in the game, you select your sexuality when you decide you want the character to be gay/straight/bi. You walk over to your companion and you have the option to flirt. Whether or not you choose to exercise that option is entirely up to you. Asking for a toggle is not the same as asking for the option to make your character gay/straight/bi/asexual. Asking for a toggle is asking for the ability to remove the appearance of homosexuality from the game. At least be honest enough to admit that that is what you are asking for.

Now, to the topic at hand, SGR toggle and what it means for the game: What the community asked for was the option of SGR because it allowed those players to more closely fit the way their character acted in game to the way they imagined them in their own mind. A toggle is NOT equivalent. A toggle allows the player to change the world around them to better fit their ideal. If you want to play a straight character you are free to do so. If you want to live in a world where everyone is straight you are looking at a completely different request. Likewise, if SGR is enabled for every companion/NPC I will have a problem with that. Yes, I know it will suck that you want your Female Jedi Knight to make sweet sweet love to Kira, but the previous paragraph goes both ways. You cannot just whitewash all of the STRAIGHT characters out of the game because you enjoy playing a bisexual nympho. The game world should strive for immersion and with that comes a minority of LGBT characters mixed in with the plethora of straight ones, just like it is a majority of humans.

My computer was 900, the video card was 150. I get 65+ FPS. I don't know what to tell you, man. My last card did have problems, I replaced it because particle effects were kicking its ***. 550ti and everything is better.

First off... you haven't done "the job". You've passed the interview. The job is completely nightmare mode content. You, as of your original posting, are 0/10 nightmare mode. You have no experience from which to draw upon. You think hardmodes are hard? That's a joke. We take our fresh 50s into hardmode ops to show them the mechanics and gear them up. It takes 2 of our core DPS and 1 core healer to carry an 8 man raid through Hardmode content. On top of that, yes, someone getting the job done with half effort IS something to complain about. You shouldn't need to work 2x as hard for the same rewards. There is a margin of error for class balance. Bioware is well outside of it. There is literally nothing an Operative healer is better for. That is a failure of the class design team that needs to be addressed. I get that it's the "cool" thing to do to be all stiff upper lip about the imbalance, but it is a legitimate and serious problem with the game, as significant as any boss or terrain bug and it should be addressed as such.

You are level 40 according to your signature. Get to 50, you will understand. The current scaling of level 1-49 players gives them much higher healing and damage numbers. On top of that the true force of Sorc healers is in the diversity of their abilities, which are unavailable largely until the mid 30s - early 40s. The scaling factor of the 1-49 brackets wildly skews your results. If you don't believe me, check the numbers. Keep track of how much HP/Damage/Healing you have right now and compare it to what you get at 50, even with decent gear

Nightmre mode Soa, definitely. Everything else is easy as hell compared to that mess. There is simply so much damage going out and currently on hard/nightmare modes he will bug out from time to time and attack random people. It isn't too bad except that it lets him mind-trap/toss our tank. Nothing else is even remotely as difficult.

Except these threads are met with overwhelming disapproval, constant down votes and consistent mockery. You aren't "enlightening" anyone. You have an opinion based upon your desire to play the FotM class more readily than is currently available. Others are concerned with things like game balance and the sustainability of the system. You've taken the idea that what you want is what is best as a foregone conclusion. It isn't. It's a stupid idea, the majority of people weighing in on the issue have said as much since the first time it was brought up, and your crappy reasoning isn't winning anyone else over. I don't understand where the disconnect is. Sometimes you have an idea that sounds great to you but is actually a turd. No matter how much you polish that turd it doesn't turn into a diamond. We aren't talking about something revolutionary, either. It's a very simple concept that you are suggesting. It just happens to be a very unpopular one as well. Everyone understands what you want. They understand your reasoning. They understand the benefits as you have laid them out. And they have weighed them against the dozens of counter arguments they have presented you with and decided that your idea sucks, the same way they did the first 20 times it was suggested. We get it. You don't want to do the class missions over again. If you frame the ACs in a kind of "Ship of Theseus" manner they aren't really so different after all. Play style doesn't denote class. Sometimes people just want a taste of a different flavor. It's the same as respeccing from Holy to Prot in WoW! Blah, blah, blah. It's the same crap spit out over and over again. And you always get the same responses: 1) ACs are unique enough to constitute different classes. There is ability overlap, for sure, but no more than would be in any other MMO between two otherwise entirely different classes. 2) Allowing swaps between ACs would lead to a sharp decline in the player population of the "lesser" class, no matter how negligible the difference between the two was, because people will always min-max toward FotM. 3) The play styles are vastly different between ACs with the arguable exception of Mar/Jug/Sent/Guard. 4) Considering Ops is more like Sin than it is Sniper you could just as easily slide down the slope and allow full class respecs, which is obviously ludicrous on its face but actually makes more sense than most AC respecs. etc., etc., etc.

Yes... the people who have specifically given up their ability to directly eliminate other players in favor of the ability to allow their teammates to engage in longer battles and recover more quickly also directly benefit from that choice.