I've said this elsewhere before, but I'll repeat this example to show how easily it could be done. The choice in chapter 10 should be a trade off where you're picking from two possible outcomes. A) You launch the attack: Arcann is now weaker, but you risk upsetting your allies B) You don't launch the attack: Arcann is just as strong, but your alliance is not at risk of fracturing The consequence of this is that if you choose A, Koth leaves and then returns to steal the Gravestone. If you choose B, during the final confrontation Arcann has more forces to call upon to overwhelm you, allowing Vailyn to kidnap Lana/Theron/your LI. Thus the season ends on a cliffhanger, and KOTET picks up the following season with you having to either retrieve the Gravestone or rescue your kidnapped ally. The setup is that there is a station where an important enemy ship is going to be docking. If you are on path A, Koth is on the station plotting to board that ship and acquire important tactical data, with Lana as your companion. If you are on path B, the prisoner is on that ship, with Koth as your companion. In either case, you are infiltrating and fighting your way through the map (as the point forces for the boarding party), until you get to the destination which is where A turns left to enter Koth's safe house, and B turns right to board the ship. If you are on path A, you overwhelm and defeat Koth's forces. You are given the choice of killing Koth or sparing him, but if you choose the second, Lana kills him herself for betraying the Alliance. You then recover the Gravestone. If you are on path B, you overwhelm and defeat the guards around the prisoner. You can choose to kill Baddie X (whatever name would be for the one in charge torturing your companion), throw them in their own torture field, or knock them out. If you pick kill, Koth has to try to free the companion, succeeding but fat-fingers triggers an alarm. If you pick the other 2, Baddie X first frees the companion, and then after you leave comes to/escapes and hits the alarm. Regardless, your deaths are assured, so Koth valiantly lays down his life to allow the rest of you to escape. You are now back in the same place narratively no matter which path you had originally chosen, Koth is dead and you have the Gravestone, but how you got there was by your own choosing. Were you a pragmatist who bloodied their knuckles to ensure victory, or were you intent on fighting this war on your own terms? That is what shaped how you got to where things were even if the endpoints were both the same, it satisfactorily presented the player with the illusion that they shaped the events. I say illusion because the game makers need to be magicians; like watching a magic act, it's about convincing the audience to accept what they know is a trick as the real thing. Telltale's TWD is an example of a David Copperfield in action. KOTFE is a guy on a street corner hoping you'll throw a dollar in his hat.

Quick question on this: Does anyone know which is the SF you need to go to for the hidden Macrobinoculars achievement?

I don't know, type 4 males look less like "I exude power" and more like "I'm going back to the ship for a couple bags of Oreos." But type 3 females do have a more Snu-Snu Amazon look than the linked picture of a human tank, can't capture that same force of nature look that m3 can often pull off.

I kinda hope so. As fun as this chapter was, I was a bit disappointed that the Shroud was removed as a threat. Having an X factor like that around had a lot of potential to shake things up. I still enjoyed this immensely, but the Shroud seemed like a good potential nemesis. Instead the Shroud is now making Armorings for me.

I do like it. I know some people hate being overleveled on lowbie planets, but I enjoy being able to go at my own pace, explore what I want, and still be somewhat level appropriate for the content. It's got a few bugs to sort out, but it has made the leveling experience better, at least to me.

Credit Seller is the new PVP class. Their main attacks are to CC you with emails and the moment you kill them they instantly respawn on the spot with a new name.

Well I've always viewed my sub as a vote of support for the game, to be given when I approve and taken away if I don't. But I like the thought of a few extras, like in ESO where I had the same philosophy, and they added the crafting bags, that was a sweet bonus! Adding a few more things here would sure be welcome.

Hell yes. The last time I PUGed, got a whisper after they left "LOL U suck, dont no ur class, worst Jugg ever!" I was playing a bounty hunter.

I'm anxious for Khem, because I want to see if they allow your choice in the character quest to matter.

"Players spent more than 1.5 billion hours choosing their own path" of which 1.3 billion was spent waiting for Groupfinder and PVP to pop.

It does speak to the flaw in DvL though, that you have this huge list of things to qualify for Legendary and if you miss even one all you get is a couple of pointless achievements. I'm not saying they should do these nerfs (HM exists to be a challenge and changing that would be a disservice), but I can understand the frustration of someone who has completed all this other time consuming objectives and have their progress blocked by just a few items on the list. It would have been so much better if the tier system had operated on a percentage completed system so that if you complete 95% of the events you still have something to show for it, while still leaving the best prizes for those that push over the top to get 100%.

"I'll just have to submit a ticket to ask about- uh-oh."

A jet pack. One that allows in-game flight, not hover slightly above the ground. No, I don't care about the problems, I want to frickin' fly. You're not a bounty hunter if you have to ride the bus.

That is completely ridiculous. Option 2 will be "Kill him." And then you will fail to kill him. And then Koth will steal your pants.

I'm telling you, Koth will die a hero, and we'll have to listen to everyone gush over how wonderful he is. Your one conversation option that disapproves will be greeted by a string of "XXXX Greatly Disapproves"

Yeah, that's another part of the same overall problem, marginalizing the player. If I can spontaneously spout better lines than the PC is given, that's just unimaginative and sad.

I'd also add that not only is it rare, but it's basically the only avenue open for trying to share how one feels about specific make-or-break issues of the game. If I'm concerned about a law in Congress, I write a letter to my senator and congressman. If my Internet goes down, I call up my cable company. When there's a technical issue with my hosting company, I go into chat. When there's issues with my paycheck, I send an email to the company's accounting department. In SWTOR, I go on the forum, post a message amidst countless others and can only hope that someone at BW might actually read it. That's the best that it offers - even "Contact Us" isn't "Us," it's instructions how to reach tech support. So as you say, it's no wonder people react to any chance they might actually be heard, especially when they're teetering on leaving a game they've invested so much in. If people seem frustrated, that's only because they care more about whether or not they leave than BW does.

The only good thing in it gets undone by the end of the season - you think you're finally rid of Koth, then he comes back with superpowers.

I didn't want to hijack the thread, but this remark speaks to the heart of where my concern lies with where KOTFE failed and where KOTET seems destined to stumble as well. I appreciate the responses, Eric, but I think the issue isn't quite this (which is part of what worries me about KOTET). The issue is the lack of the player having a sense of control over their own destiny. In the Koth example, for instance, that was the result of a choice that had no effect - whether you choose to launch a military attack has no bearing on the war whatsoever, so it's a bait-and-switch: you think you're weakening the enemy but you're actually determining whether or not an entitled jerk storms off. The player is presented with the option "Shoot Senya Down" but you don't shoot her down, so the result is either A) nothing will come of that, or B) it will effect future interaction, which is again a bait and switch. It's not quite about actions having consequences, it's that they're not consequences, they're side effects of what should be consequences, but aren't (because they have no effect). Think of it like this: if you have a cold you can take a cold pill or not. You know if you do, you might be tired and light-headed, but what you're balancing is that misery against the misery of having a cold. If you take a cold pill and all that happens is you're still just as sick AND light-headed and tired, that's a lousy cold pill. Likewise, if you're balancing the choice between a strategic military strike versus the possible loss of allies, and the only result is that you lose allies, that's a lousy "choice." You're just as screwed before, only things are even worse now. This lends to the sense that players are at the helpless whim of someone else, which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that being betrayed is a scripted plot point, and being manipulated is a scripted plot point. These are fine in isolation, but combine that with the lousy cold pill, combine it with the false choices of the story's conclusion, combine it with the many slights such as Senya, your supposed ally, throwing you around like a rag doll when she's supposed to be on your side and everyone is fine with it, and the player is left with the sense that they have no control, they are merely trapped in a role dictated to them. Then, having Koth teleport onto our ship and steal it, takes that even further: you're not only not in control, the game is conspiring to yank every possible sense of victory away from you. You return to Odessen a broken failure: you were deceived, manipulated, couldn't stop the villain, couldn't stop the villain's escape, lost your most important war asset and get yelled at by Theron. So the point I'm making is that it's not about choice matters, it's that this is part of a larger problem with making the player feel like their actions can, at best, do nothing, and more often, just make things worse. We're supposed to feel like a Han Solo or a Darth Vader, but we feel more like Mr. Bean In Space.

I'm hoping against hope that BW will do something, and since this forum is the only means presented to provide feedback to BW about this product, it's the only place I can put it. My sub is up in six weeks, so I post hoping that during that time someone says something to convince me to renew it. So far the only thing we've heard is a discouraging "more of the same." Will repeating the point compel them to say something? Probably not, given the lousy track record, but at least when my subscription expires I can say to everyone who asks "After all the praise you heaped upon this game, you're walking away?" that I did everything I could do before that moment.

But the highest form of intelligence. (the quote, source unknown, is erroneously credited to Oscar Wilde, but the full quote is "Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence.")

You don't want to stay around for Knights of the Endless Troopers?

That's interesting, I like that, it does give the Arma Rasa playthrough more meaning.

Except, when my HK did the aforementioned LS thing, he made mention that it was because of the instructions I had trained him to act under. So it could also be argued that it's a LS/DS action for me because I told him to do X/not do X and now he's out acting that way.

What fighting? I mentioned the fact that such people exist, what I thought of them, and why those people make people not want to group. It's no different than saying "There are people who commit murder, and as controversial a statement as this is, I think they're just terrible people. Murderers are real jerks."