You seem to "see a lot" into what was mere moments of cutscene, OP. Senya and Arcann barely had any screen time or lines, but you're granting them so much emotion and depth. Seems more headcannon to me than anything done on Bioware's side. Having other characters as the "star" is also a problem already pointed out. I get characters should have their own personality, but how many have acted out of character all throughout KotFE to suit whatever scatterbrained narrative they wanted us on. Lana suggesting we talk to Valkorion? Scorpio suddenly becoming Motherly? Senya hating Koth for the same thing she's doing? Theron suggesting discipline for not following rules? Come on. You also fall into the whole "choices mattered because Koth" camp. The Gravestone was sooo useful in KotFE. I mean, it sat docked and didn't get repaired for some reason, and....got disabled, sat docked and...uh may have got stolen despite all your ****** alliance folks. Did it blow up some stuff at the end? Sure, but why not before? Why didn't we get to explore it? Why didn't we just pulverize Arcann's fleet and then his ship with it? Gravestone was just another plot device wrangled by the writers to contrive whatever situation they wanted the player to be in. Regardless of what you did with Koth earlier, he still shows up and performs the SAME actions he would if he hadn't left. Having it or not will not be a game changer anymore than having or not having Koth was a game changer. Folks straining to point out one choice that mattered should really tell you everything about the quality of KotFE.

I dunno, they could, you know, give more details...actual information other than "we're working on stuff, but we can't tell you what it is". I would also expect them to be honest about the reaction to chapter 16 instead of a casual mention. Why are they moving all the negative threads about the story to a sub forum, but leaving the pro-Bioware ones? That's not being honest. Oh, and don't worry, I already pulled the plug on my sub the other day. I'm not a die hard MMO gamer. I'm a Star Wars fan and hate seeing what should have been a home run grand slam of a game turned into the mess that it is. Additionally, there aren't any other remotely current Star Wars rpgs to turn to. I'm stuck waiting for the Visceral made game...whenever that is, but I'm done paying for Bioware to wreck the stories, characters, and lore that I've loved for a long time.

Careful, don't let them know you want her back, or they'll keep her hidden behind the big plot wall of nothingness for season 3.

Hey Eric, if this thread catches your eye, can you pass along a big *** to the team for me? I found KotFE thoroughly unsatisfactory and ridiculous to the point of pulling the plug on my sub even though I'm a founder. If we wanted prolonged conflicts with no resolutions, filled with repeated confrontations, undeveloped characters, plot holes everywhere, forgotten romances and LI's, fake choices, and lore twisting nonsense, then I suppose your "expansion" if you wanna call it that, is a success. Shame.

Depending on what bottle you're talking about, you can run the price way up on that. If people stayed subbed to play the chapters continuously, like BW wanted, then the cost would be many months' sub.

Lol, keep it simple by adding 20%? Don't you mean keep it exaggerated? Also, take out all the fighting and running around (what youtube videos do) and you have maybe half that.

There's not 20 hours of anything in KotFE. But if you were a big fan of the game before and left for whatever reason and were going to/thinking of coming back, watching the new expansion on youtube isn't unreasonable.

Reading the OP and some other comments on here makes me think some folks want cartel coins reeeaallllyy bad.

Having or not having the Gravestone won't matter much like having or not having Koth around before ch 16 didn't matter since he shows up and does the EXACT SAME THING. For all it was billed to be in the story, the Gravestone had about as much importance as a giant loaf of bread. It was hardly used and even then never for the purpose it was intended. We never even got to explore the damn thing. KotFE wasn't marketed as "Choices will matter next year" it was and still is being billed as "choices that matter". First nine chapters come out and ppl complained that choices didn't matter. What did the BW defenders say then? "Don't worry, later on in the season all those things will come into play". Full season is done and ppl still see that choices haven't mattered. What do BW defenders say? "Don't worry, next year...bla bla bla bla" Meanwhile EAware is laughing all the way to the bank.

I was going to write up a similar thread pointing out why it was a ridiculous story, but I think this sums things up pretty well. Kudos for the post OP.

You really should stop drooling over KotFE. I'll not pretend that RotHC or SoR were anything special. RotHC was meh. SoR was just bad. I will say that RotHC had two different storylines going for it and if you were an Imperial, you could choose to kill an awful lot of people at the end. Having said that, KotFE isn't the spectacular expac you're billing it as either. It rehashed a TON of stuff we were already familiar with and left us with a linear storyline that's not great and has no replay value. None of your companions mattered. None of your choices mattered. Romances get forgotten. Sound familiar? The saving graces for the other two expacs were that they had other areas of the game they catered to instead of just "story" and neither of them presented you with "fake choices" in the way KotFE repeatedly does.

KNIGHTS OF THE FAILED EFFORT! A Brand New Swtor Movie coming Fall 2015! Step into an epic, money driven adventure as your beloved character becomes Blandy McBlandman, a Veteran of some past stuff in Knights of the Failed Effort! Now Live (Unless bugged or patching endlessly)! Travel to the Outer Rim to face the same old threat in Emperor P'lot Devi'ce and his never ending horde of SKYTROOPERS! Prepare for an innovative storytelling experience that makes you think you're making choices that might decide someone's fate eventually! Watch your path! Recruit clones into your alliance! and Become the best Confronter in all the Galaxy as you repeatedly confront Arcann, some guy who doesn't like his dad or anyone for some unknown reason! Prepare to meet one dimensional characters, forget your spouses and love interests, and completely ignore important plot points! Can you avoid getting betrayed repeatedly or the internet dialog references? Find out today! Dive into a new epic star wars story that drives you to the ultimate realization: All you need is more power levels! Best of all, you get to pay us money to play it! In fact, if you keep your subscription up, it will be the most expensive movie you will purchase all year! CONTINUOUS MOVIE TIME. METRICS THAT MATTER. STORYTELLING FOR FIVE YEAR OLDS. AND MORE!

While it's true no one knows the operational budget for the company (and they certainly would never want players to know), there are ways to get an idea of how much money they rake in from the CM. Just get to know a few of the CM "whales", followed by a good guess as to how many whales are in the game. That's not counting the money from subs throughout the year or direct CM CC purchases. If you refuse to consider anything to be a valid critique without a figure from Bioware, then I guess none of us will know anything for sure, and you'll be stuck with only Bioware's version of any narrative. If that's the way you wanna roll, fine, but your assertion that they're setting operational goals based on a reasonable budget/profit margin is no less an assumption the other way.

It does drop, though it took me close to 60 run throughs across my various toons, uncluding trying A LOT with one in particular that I wanted it on before it did drop. Ironically, then it almost immediately dropped again for the next toon I brought through.

It's not the presence of the Cartel Market killing the game, it's the fact that most of the money it makes never gets reinvested in the game that is the problem. They rake in tons of $ every time they drop a new pack, and yet they are running the game on a skeleton dev crew, can't seem to do anything for more than "one area of the game/play style" at a time, and bugs go unfixed for months or even years at a time. No one's gonna want to invest a whole lot of time or money in a game that isn't even getting invested in for the future by the makers themselves.

What is wrong with these people? I could never NOT romance Risha on any of my smuggs, even though once I was determined to wait for akaavi spar.

Imperial Agent I think has the best story. A lot of ways things can go and a lot of interesting characters. Only downside is lot of unlikable comps. After that, I'd say it's a toss up between the Smuggler and Sith Warrior. Both have good plot, great one liners, and great comps/romances. Jedi Knight used to be a lot more epic until SoR. It's felt neutered ever since. Though it's cliched and some of the lines are terrible, I still enjoyed the basic premise. Bounty Hunter I would rank higher except it gets boring for the last half of Act 2 and all the way to the end of Act 3. First Act and a half is great. Wish they would've kept that up. Sith Inquisitor should have been a lot better. There's a ton of SW lore and backstory, cool locales, and intrigue. The problem is that they basically walk you right into so much obvious stuff. And if it weren't for Nadia, Ashara would take the cake for worst romance option in the game. That just leaves the Trooper and Jedi Consular. Both have good first Acts, but then things just grow boring and predictable. The trooper in particular loses any sort of personal stake in anything and the ending only makes it worse.

As a counterpoint: I was going to hug a dev, but then I remembered that at previous times devs didn't react well to personal interaction with players. So I decided against interaction. It's better this way. I might hug a dev down the road, but if they get mad about how imperfect my hug is, I may withhold it until a time it is without flaws and can be appreciated, but I am afraid to tell them this, lest they mock my imperfect hugging skills. So I will just say nothing and duck away when they come at me for that hug. Desperate to make up for this, I promised them a big hug at the Star Wars celebration, but instead decided to show them a picture of someone else hugging....that they had already seen. Upset, they asked me repeatedly when and if I would ever give them a hug. I told them that I was working on a plan to hug them, but didn't want to say if and when it would happen. Hugs are tricky things. p.s. 1. They aren't all the constant target of ridicule and abuse. Some never post/read the forums or interact with the community at all. In fact, relatively few people could name you more than one or two actual devs by name. 2. An actual Customer Service department, Better communication, fewer screw ups, and some integrity could fix a good chunk of the reasons behind the "abuse and hatred". For the rest, it's the same as any other business dealing with annoying customers. 3. Concerning "winning them with honey for once", what did you try to win them with before? What do you get if you do "win them"? Is there a secret Eric Musco stronghold deco known only to the most elite super secret sects of Bioware's white knights?

1. How is this thread any less petulant than the "haters" you're trying to debunk? Because you feel sorry for Bioware? 2. There are lots of reasons why people play the game besides whatever one you wish to substitute in your straw man argument. 3. A number of people, myself included, have given Bioware the benefit of the doubt throughout the shift in game design direction, but after a lackluster season of episodic blandness and hole filled storytelling, the patience is running out. 4. People "terminating service" is the universal way in which customers show their displeasure with a business. Since there's no Customer Service to speak of and the Devs are rather tight lipped, I'm not sure why anyone is surprised ppl would get on the forums and leave an angry post stating their displeasure. 5. You're gauging the problems of the game and the community based on Bioware's responses in a vague cantina "talk".......not exactly an accurate assessment. I have a hard time believing what comes out of corporate mouths, and ever since the founders left, Bioware has become less and less transparent about what they're doing and why, preferring instead to string people along with gimmicks, broken promises, and over hyped tripe. 6. EA is the parent company and is certainly capable of funding/allocating enough resources to develop all the content needed in an expansion to keep the major parts of the player base interested. It has become apparent that they're not interested in doing this, preferring instead to strip Bioware Austin down to the point that they have to "pick one thing" to work on. Players can see this and the disinterest in investing in the game only gives rise to disillusioned players and all the "game is dying/is in maintenance mode" threads that won't go away.

Meant the Visceral Game. The one with Amy Hennig as the Lead. Battlefront looks like it has great visuals, but I've not heard anything good about the gameplay, not to mention the genre is one that lacks story. The old Battlefront games made me feel like I was one of those guys that gets blown away in the backgrounds of movies. It was fun to do with friends for awhile, but got old.

So much fail. Did anyone get the feeling Ohlen was trying real hard not to say he doesn't have much to do with Swtor anymore? Made me want to go preorder the Dyce studios game...really bad.

Lol Ok, so let me get this straight. If someone "calls a dev out" on the forums, they HAVE to answer it? Does the hand of God appear in Bioware's offices and begin writing on the particular dev's wall every time some ragey post gets put in the forum? lol It didn't occur to you there might be other explanations to the delay besides adding/reworking new material? Maybe: 1. There's nothing development related going on. Just hoping to squeeze another month out of the subs before the mass exodus begins. 2. They're adding parts of next season's start to the chapter to hook people's interest in the next season. 3. An elephant got loose and rampaged through the offices, destroying valuable data. 4. Because Metrics said so. 5. They have alternate endings and test audiences hated one of them. 6. Valkorion broke the fourth wall and told them what to do since he's too powerful for them.

So you're saying it HAS to be a bug problem? The Guss announcement didn't resemble this at all and was followed within the day by a further explanation that was pretty straightforward. My point was that there was no reason to ASSUME it was a bug since nothing in the post indicated as much. Not really sure what you're getting at unless you think the whole post is BS.

I already consider it a failure, regardless of the ending, but I'm probably in the minority about how terrible I think it is as a story. I would say they used to be. Not so sure of that anymore.

Since it was a targeted promotion, there's no way to tell exactly how many people are included. Is it the majority of the player base? half? some other percentage? And of those, how many would come on to the forum to post not getting theirs? As it is, there's still a lot of people that apparently didn't get theirs, myself included.