Rant mode=on I do like the emphasis on story telling in the Fallen Empire chapters. The problem is, the story itself is nowhere near as original or interesting as KOTOR or especially the restored KOTOR2. BTW yes I realize I am resurrecting a two year old thread here, but I have been subscribed but not playing for a good while and just finished the KOTFE content this week. There's a great deal I dislike about the Fallen Empire quests and characters. Continuity problems. Such as, why do I as the Jedi Barsenthor, not still have my armies of Esh-Ka, Voss, etc. with which to fight the Eternal Empire? Previously, the companion characters had the ability for meaningful changes in equipment, and they all had their own special skills and tactical abilities. They had some unique dialog for just about everywhere you went. That's all gone. Now they are all essentially the exact same character, just reskinned, with the exact same abilities and no effect from different equipment aside from purely cosmetic with no influence on gameplay or dialog choices. And they seem brain-dead, having forgotten almost everything about your past relationship and adventures, and even don't have the area-specific dialogues and knowledge they used to have. Why? Why don't companions have any common sense, like wear a respirator so you don't drown on Manaan, a spacesuit in space in case the ship loses atmosphere, or have to put on sensible winter clothing instead of wearing a skimpy bikini and loincloth on Hoth or Ilum or else freeze to death? If that's for "play balance" making all the companions the exact same except for reskinned even for PVE, that is the worst possible and just a plain lazy way to achieve play balance. What's up with completely disregarding both old and new Star Wars canon, as well as previous content in KOTOR, KOTOR2 and even SWTOR itself. Satele Shan abandons the Jedi Order? Sith can become force ghosts? And Satele, who was so into non-attachment and the Jedi code that she abandoned her lover and her infant son, is now apparently permanently attached to the force ghost of an evil Sith Lord? um what were you thinking there? I never felt like I was on rails in KOTOR or KOTOR2. You at least had options of which part of the story to do next, and where to go, what to do. And those were single user games more than a decade ago. The KOTET/KOTFE content is so easy tactically to solo that its basically just a series of mediocre cutscenes spliced together with completely trivial gameplay. And no options about what part of the story to do in what order or many meaningful open world play options. It is far far far too easy to level now. Leveling is not how to prepare to play the game, it is the game. There's no effective death penalty, no loss of experience or levels, no loss of equipment. You don't get a bad reputation or criminal record, open warrants even for blatantly murdering people in plain view of law enforcement officers. There's no challenge to leveling and therefore no sense of accomplishment. With the content scaling now, and the tremendous nerfing of difficulty of both puzzles and combat, you might as well be playing some other game I won't mention and just start at max level. One of the good things about SWTOR compared to KOTOR/KOTOR2 is multiplayer gives great opportunities for role-play. But that's ruined 1) by the fact that the higher level story progression is exactly the same with only cosmetic differences which quickly merge back to the same story line, and 2) by the fact that everyone's story is, "I am the greatest hero ever, savior of the Universe and Emperor of the Eternal Empire." There was no reason at all to suddenly drop the Rakata as ancient evils and introduce the Eternal Empire located in the same area in space, with the same force-based technology and historic role. Why, just on the assumption that we would only "relate" to villains who just happen to look exactly like northern european humans? Similarly, why re-introduce Revan and the Jedi Exile only to kill them off? Why why why? The Mandaloreans have been Flanderized into generic bounty-hunter type characters too obviously based on the Fetts in the SW movies. We see nothing of their unique culture and technology such as their cool basilisk war droids which made them such a threat to the Republic, nor their secret attempts to develop their own force-enhanced warriors and technologies, not to mention where are the actual original Mandalorean race, the Taung, originally from Notron/Corescant. According to Bioware and Obsidian's previous lore, Canderous Ordo was the first non-Taung to hold the title of Mandalore, so where are the Taung? Sith Purebloods were partially displaced/hybridized by humans a long time earlier than the time of Revan and the Exile, and yet Sith Purebloods are an integral character option for the game. Why do such a vast majority the Fallen Empire characters look and dress like modern northern European humans? There are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. The original movie Star Wars universe was notably diverse, at least in the background characters, even in the first three movies where they were physical props, puppets, or makeup. There's no such constraint on animation so why give us such a predominance of characters that look like people from Northern Europe on modern 20th/21st century Earth? The neutral force user philosophy in KOTFE/KOTET seems like the Sith code with a velvet glove. It is all about do whatever is necessary to gain and hold power. But wear nice clothes and have great parties. Why not give us multiple choice force alignments, not only light and dark, but also the Living Force, Cosmic Force, Unifying Force, and Physical Force, with appropriate cults, appearance changes, and social and combat abilities for each? I enjoyed the clever snarky writing for the Fallen Empire scripted character interactions, and that's about it. I do not care about the soap opera of the dysfunctional family of mass murdering psychopaths which form the Eternal Empire dynasty. At all. A great opportunity was missed here. Please stop trying to make a one-size-fits-all story of "you are the greatest hero ever" and force us all to conform to it. Give us an open world and let us make our own stories. Fine, have a Jedi Order, and let it have ten thousand knights, fine. But only a few hundred Masters, a couple dozen on the Council, and one Grand Master. Likewise for the Sith. Really tremendous would be give us the tools to make our own areas and quests, and after some look-and-feel polish, approval and balancing, make them generally available. That would multiply the content available tremendously with little cost to Bioware/EA/Lucasfilm/Disney. Games with active modding communities last a lot longer in the market, that's a fact. I am a founder, and that's my opinion. What do you think?

Here are my top 5 desired features which might persuade me to un-cancel my subscription: 1) Multiple paths through the game--an element some have called sandbox but which I will call adding replay value. 2) Better space combat and movement. 3) Revised crafting system with crafted items being better than dropped ones. 4) Continued new interactions and quests with companions following end of the mainline story. 5) Player housing, shops, and space fleets.

I love the character main quest line. That is a "theme-park" like feature. Having said that, I think the main issue with my continuing this game is lack of solo end game content. Adding more sandbox-like features will increase end-game content and enhance replay and RP viability. Features like: Player housing. Improved crafting. Dropping the strange and unworkable "you can't craft but your minions can, but they all have the same skill as you". World PVP that actually changes control of areas and means something. A player crafting-based economy. Player-initiated quests. Tamable pets. Stronger guild support with guild ships, housing and alliances/wars. Space fleet actions. Integration of space and land game with landing, blockade and evacuation actions. Piracy. Convoys. Critical wounds which require either like a day or a week in the bacta tank or cybernetic replacement (like Luke and Anakin). Support for player-made cinematics and machinima. GM ingame events, something more thoughtful than now you have a disease, and will explode. If you could actually play a rakghoul till killed that would be cool. Other forms of player associations in addition to guilds, such as cults, criminal syndicates, neutral organizations. Rewards for grey Jedi/Sith. Stronger RP support with weddings, funerals, wars, treaties and the like. Space exploration. Planets with semi-randomly generated terrain and settlements and monsters. Space trade routes, a big feature of the lore. Just some ideas. I don't think its so much a matter of theme park versus sandbox as incorporating the best elements of both. And no, I never played SWG, though I'm really sorry I didn't play pre- Combat Upgrade and pre-NGE. It sounds like it had many of the features I feel like this game could benefit from. This game IMO borrows a lot from DCUO (strangely enough), so why not borrow from a game which was so beloved and had such high replay value and solid community?

I'd like to offer some suggestions to help increase player retention. 1) More different paths to the endgame. More "sandbox" and less "theme park". 2) Better space combat. Scrap the "rail-shooter". 3) More story-oriented end-game content. Right now the game plays as a very solo-friendly game similar to KOTOR to 50 then... nothing for the solo- or story-oriented player. Its the usual raid raid raid endgame grind familiar from other MMORPGs then. 4) Add world PVP which is easy to get to and which has sufficient rewards to make it worthwhile while discouraging xteaming or objective trading. 5) Eliminate the level cap. 6) Add player housing, guild halls/ships and vendors. 7) A better and more self-sustaining crafting economy.

It is too bad the game was released with major plot elements unfinished. Why are we paying for a game which was released with such gaping holes in the plot? When will this be done? And how will it be made available to those who already maxed their level and alignment?