My point is that other uber-costly AAA MMOs releasing around the same time as SWTOR made exactly the same, if not worse, mistakes. Yet they IMPROVED and rectified those mistakes far better than TOR. People left in droves both FFXIV and ESO too short after each respective launch

That's the thing though, and the question of "how did we get here" - FFXIV and ESO launched around the same time as TOR having the same problems. FFXIV in particular being in worse state than TOR and ESO combined. Yet a decade later, the other 2 games are significantly more popular and turned around their reputations far greater than SWTOR ever did. And both have a far better outlook on the future than TOR

Which is the key point with this update actually. Don't worry, I understand exactly what you were talking about and YES, I do represent the section of the players that still hops in the treadmill endlessly and does all the stupid grind. I do it while complaining about it because I still care about the product and its quality. Now, we also have the section of resident haters who don't even play anymore or never played to begin with but will hate & comlain to no end (i.e. the basis of existance of Saint Kodexia for one), but let's say it's also just a loud minority. The main issue here is IMO the silent majority that leaves without much fanfare, doesn't want to buy a sequel anymore, loses interest in general and as the history shows, does NOT stay in the treadmill forever unlike the publisher/devs counted at. We've seen sales crashing down and reputations getting shattered into pieces for all the players involved - Bioware, Bethesda, CDP, Blizzard etc when things go south. While it may be relatively easy to get a large gaming population excited and willing to jump at the treadmill initially, the evidence IMO shows that the majority of it won't happily keep spinning the wheel endlessly if the quality is not there nor it doesn't seem to be improving. A small section will keep doing it no matter what and it may just be enough to keep a game alive, but it doesn't really work on a larger scale. And that's where the experience from the past years should be coming in

This is hardly a matter of subjective opinions that we can "agree to disagree on" tho, but facts. Look no further than direct comparsion of equally extensive voiced games. KOTOR 1, 2, Witcher 1 or Fallout New Vegas contain just as much voice acting if not more than Mass Effect series or Witcher 3, Fallout 4. Yet the latter ones were multiple times more expensive to develop and had multiple times larger teams. The huge differene you find hard to believe lays precisely in complexity of cinematic presentation, graphics, animation, 3d detail, special effects etc etc. Not saying you're wrong, I share alot of the same opinions on the current arc, but my point was that EVEN IF you still hated all of the previous stories for whatever reasons,we're talking subjective feelings in big part afterall, you were never stuck with them forever and the next arc that could suit you more was already lurking right around the corner. Even the biggest Malgus & Mando fans been ready to move on from the current arc years ago.

The bloated stretching and comical padding is the main issue here. We all have our story preferences but before the whole Malgus/Mando era started, even if you didn't like a particular story being told you were never stuck with it for too long in SWTOR. Didn't like the Hutts? That story was one and done within the same expansion. Hated Dread Masters? Over after 2 years post-launch. Didn't like Revan? His entire saga was done within 1 year. Hated KOTFEET? Done after 2,5 years. But the Malgus & Mando stuff been going on since fall 2018 with NO end even on the horizon..........

Im just gonna say this - haven't Bioware* and the entire game industry at large had enough of endless discussions about rewards in games, especially when it comes to grindy quests and/or choices&consequences? Like seriously, thousands of articles, twitter fights and forum post written in the past 20 years or so. Points being made that it's not the grind in itself that is inherently bad, but the payoff that matters the most in the end. Endless examples of different kinds of possible "rewards" that would satisfy the audience - an exclusive story cutscene, a unique shiny horse armor, a significant plot developement/reveal, a new companion, a big stat boost etc etc. Anything really Yet here have the devs coming up the entire Voss detour and grind that ends up on a literal "wow this is effing nothing" meme-incarnated from The Three and not even reputation grind tokens for some silly cosmetic items lol. C'mon. How many times the devs can repeat the exact same mistakes every few years. What's next, Mass Effect 5 once again attemptimg procedural planets in developement just to come to the same conclusion for the 3rd time that it will never work? *I'm aware that this is technically Broadsword now but we're still talking the same devs mostly and the same circle of RPG studios in general

Next season won't have a companion? Meh it better have a stronghold then. They said the big S6 reward will be in a location we "haven't been too in a while with nice view"... Zakuul? Hoth? Can't think of any other potential planet that would fit the description

It's the bigger team size(s) working much longer = tenfold more salaries to pay for many more years. C'mon, ain't that obvious? WOW is 7 years older than TOR, even more than ESO and FFXIV. That's an entire generation in game dev. RPGs and MMOs used be done in the late 90s/early 00s on a 20 mill budget with 20 devs comleting the entire game, but things changed and games evolved heavily. Not necessarily in quest complexity but enormously in fidelty and presentation. And the expected array of features, along with quantity of content. Yes VA is part of that but it's just that, a small part of a much bigger picture. Older RPGs and MMORPGs did not have any cinematics, cuscenes nor cinematic conversations. Or they featured extremly limited number of it. They did not feature complex 3D graphics, shaders, multilayered textures, 10 hour scores, special effects etc. All that requires more and more complex assets to be created and manual sequencing that take longer and longer to do. That only added the workload to complete each quest. We went from RPG having text-only quests using exclusively a top-down view to full cinematic presentation in a span of just a few years in the 00s. Same goes for EVERY other genre. Audience expectations grew in time and so did the dev teams to accustom for all the expected features and the level of presentation. At the end of PS360 era every AAA release was already easily 100+ million production cost on average and 200 people working in it, far cry from the 90s/early 00s. Nowadays it's even more so, with every AAA game crossing 200-400mill budget or more and 300-500 devs working fulltime during the main production process. Do you know what GTA6's estimated budget is? 2 BILLION dollars. That's 10 times more than TOR which used to be called the most expensive game ever just 12 years ago.

TBH, I'm surprised that as coder you don't realize what happens after "your work". You coded a dialogue editor system. Great! That will save time in future and no RPG can be made without your initial part in the first place. But all the new dialogue for a sequel/expansion/patch still got to be written from scratch, quests have to be designed with their internal logic and sequencing. Story conditionals and flags have to be placed. Yes, you're usually calling out existing functions and scripts but you STILL have to call it out in the first place in every instance, and value it appropirately within the internal progression flags database. You have to realize that all of this is done manually and simply takes freaking time and sheer number of people doing it to accumulate multiple quests. Along with arranging assets, placing events/characters/enounters etc. Cinematic triggers, leveling gains etc etc. Coding an engine is great, but you still have to actually place a tree on the ground next to a building mesh tho, it's not done automatically unless you've specifically coded a procedural engine and even those often end up with custom changes. Again, this is why even direct sequels that reuse assests will STILL takes 2-3 years to develop. Or more like 3-4 years nowadays 2-3 was back in the PS360 era. Well that is a subjective preference tho and why I would more likely agree with your take that voiceless PCs work better in RPGs, its kinda besides the point in a game that already decided to voice its PCs. Some may be skipped, but from a design POV it would be jarring and compleltly unacceptable to me to suddenly never hear the PC voice again after so much voiced content. They didn't get rid of it completly, but all the side quests are now non-PC-voiced. Been that way since 2015's KOTFE expansion.

But they already cut on that heavily by having non-PC-voiced quests. And much more alien jibberish. So where are all these new quests that were previously roadblocked by excessive Player Character VA? Oh yes it absolutely is true. Developing the tech and systems helps a ton but even the most straightforward sequels don't get developed and released in 6 months, it STILL takes years becuase most of the stuff still has to be implemented MANUALLY. You still have to write and design it. Cutscenes still have to be manually set up, along with alot of lighting. Combat encounters may reuse all the old models in the world but it still has to be placed and conditioned within the map and new quest chain logics. Thers's no going around it. Even maps with reused assets still have to be put together manually, thers's just less new textures and objects being created by the art team. Not to even mention the bug-testing phase... Sorry but you've set your sights on VA as the main culprit and refuse to admit the much more important and time/budget consuming aspects of developement. Literally any developer or modder in the world will tell you the same thing.

People begged for server mergers long before KOTFE so just because it happened AFTER means nothing, the issue was already there and Bioware was just stubborn for years. The threads are still there and can be easily dugged up from the 2014-2015 era

No. FFXIV has less VA but ESO voices all NPCs despite having lesser budget than FFXIV. Voice Acting ain't free and too much of it WILL start to add up to the overall budget with time but it is simply a false notion that it is the main content roadblock in game dev. It's not and after 30 years or so of VA being big part of games I'm surprised people still blindy repeat this falsehood. Voice Acting is the easiest, fastest and most predictable part of game developement. It usually ammounts to single-day recording sessions for most characters and most of them even done remotely these days (many VAs simply set up home studios for convenieance and work oppurtunities). The actual big issue and time-consuming developement happens in writing, designing and implementing the quests, adding conditionals and flags, combat encounters, puzzles, MAPS/levels these quests place on, cinematics with cameras and lighting, special effects, character models etc etc. This is where you need tons of developers with salaries = where the lion share of the budget goes. That's also the reason why VA is done fast at the very end/final months of game dev while all the design and creation of content can take up years and years prior to VA recording sessions. Again, I'm not saying excessive VA won't impact the finances, but SWTOR already cut back heavily on that by adding non-PC-voiced quests and increasinced the reliance on alien jibberish prerecorded VA. Especially the latter part is telling - we don't see tons of new quests with alien VA that eliminate the issue of a budget for Voice Actors altogether becuase they simply STILL do not have the manpower to develop large quantities of new quests, regardless of VA

Perhaps the game is NOT making as much as it used to and EA was going to PapEA it, but the Austin team or Lucasfilm took action and managed to get Broadsword involved to strike a buyout deal. It may even have cost BS nothing to "buy" it, all depends on the specifics of the publishing contract with EA. Or EA was done with Edmonton offsetting their poor performance in the past decade with SWTOR's profits and decided to cut them off from life support, making Dragon Age 4 their sole 'to be or not to be' test soon. It's also possile that BroadSword has no interest in growth and only plans to maintain the game just enough to keep the company aflot. Not every business is growth-oriented. Some CEOs are just happy getting by. I mean this IS exactly what they're doing with Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. Sure seems to be good enough to keep them alive, but nothing else. We'll just have ti wait and see 😕

True, I myself was unhappy about it and pointed many times how easily they could've mitigated it by having say, Satele/Marr teach non-Force Users how to resist the Force for example. But My point was that the exact same issue was already present long before with SOR, Oricon/Dread Masters saga and Ziost. All of these are clearly written for Jedi & Sith. So to put this big sin squarely on KOTFEET's list od flaws is just disingenious & biased. And for what it's worth it was KOTFEET that Iokath, Scorpio, Eternal Fleet, Gemini and the Machine Gods as the big fat overpowered non-force villains and significant non-force plot elements/faction, something we have't had since the Huttsc back then. SOR had... pirate games so boring even my Smuggler was like "who tje hell could ever care about anything on Rishi". Not disagreeing entirely, I've been criticising Bioware's choices&consequences for years both in SWTOR and in Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. But my point was, again, about singling out KOTFEET on that because by doing so it implies that what came before was much better in this particular aspect. Yet it wasn't. ROTHC, Oricon and SOR had basically no choices so they didn't do it better than KOTFEET and objectively were NOT better expansions in this area, they couldn't have been.

Yeah, we had half-voiced side quests since 2015 already and people accepted it long time ago. For SIDE quests. But then, suddenly in 7.3 and 7.4 they started mixing it within the same main quest chain. Just no. That is simply too much and they got the deserved flack. It's bad enough that the game already scaled back on the original design of voicing EVERY line. It's bad enough that the same game now has essentially 2 different dialogue interfaces & styles. But now extending that onto the absolute MAIN quests that get released so rarely these days? And mixing it incoherently with fully voiced scenes without any logic? NOPE Line gotta be drawn somewhere and players shouldn't be asked for endless compromising and understanding, this is not a freaking indie game

Game industry is the worst offender here by a mile tho. Not saying other entertainment/arts fields are perfect, but here we have literally top talent notoriously getting fired in-between major releases, even if they were succesful, just to cut costs. Like WTF. The movie or music industries try at least to keep the top talent attatched - directors, screenwriters, photographyy directors, music producers, songwriters, singers etc. Meanwhile the game industry doesn't seem to care for ANYONE. I just don't get it, it is counter-intuitive from a business POV too. Top talent = much higher chance for a better final product = much higher chance for a commercial success for the whole company and investors. Why would they ever let people go is beyond me I do have to admit that BroadSword's silence and lack of any 'fanfare' does indicate limited plans more likely rather than any grand relaunch possibilites. Sure, things may still change or simply haven't been announed yet but chances are deffo small. In particular the extremly banal, vague and almost detached statement from the BroadSword President, who's suppousedly passionate about SWTOR, RPGs and Mythic's legacy, was concerning. Heck even Bioware GMs had better written PR releases to reassure the fans...

Hmmm. Personally I share the idea/sentiment, but unfortunately I think it's just unrealistic in this day and age, esp will espensive-to-develop games. I mean, we've already had multiple periods of different identity/content focus in SWTOR with Ops-heavy post-launch era and story-heavy KOTFEET. And neither proved itself to be sustainable enough on its own, nor garnered enough audience to make up for the loss of either story or raid section of the playerbase. The most succesful direct competition - FFXiV, ESO and WOW pamper heavily both of the main groups and most likely that's just yet another proof of the only viable path for this kind of MMOs

That's very hypothetical tho and a just as/more likely excuse is that there simply wasn't enough budget for 8 diverging stories anymore after 1.0 failed to grab millions od subs and we would've ended up with SOR/KOTFEET type of storytelling anyway. Not like post-Ossus content is much different either. Sure, they try to throw in more class mentions here and there but it's just that really, mentions. We're still playing the same story since Oricon basically. And whatever KOTFEET failed to achieve in this aspect it made up with much higher volume of content. People already forget how much the story took a backseat during ROTHC/Oricon/SOR eras compared to high stream of new Ops (9 Ops in 3 years + 4 lair bosses) and the acrual stoey getting GATED inside the Operations. Particularly prior to ROTHC it was a story content wasteland, with Dread Master 'saga' being the most barren and underwritten arc SWTOR ever delivered, again gated in half behind Operations at that. ROTHC itself was actually just a content patch with side-planetary arc renamed into an expansion and with a price tag added. And we're talking a game that released as a STORY-driven game. Back in that era, story players were quiting en masse. So yeah, actual quality aside, KOTFEET for one served the story players heavily and consistiently unlike the previous post-launch periods. Of course the big mistake was to COMPLETLY ignore Ops players at the same time, but that's a different matter. As always it ends up being the same issue - a themepark MMO should keep all its story, raid and pvp players happy at the same time to retain them all

How do extrenal factors matter in this discussion at all tho? It's simple and boils down to the basic questions: - did choices matter in ROTHC, Oricon and SOR? No - did the companions shine in ROTHC, Oricon and SOR? No, they were completly absent - did Player Character matter? Somehow in case of ROTHC (different Imp and Rep stories), no for Oricon and SOR. Same stories with slighty different lines. To act like KOTFEET was the beginning and sole culprit of all of the above is simply rewriting history just because someone didn't like the particular story.

Agree on many points but where exactly was this role-playing you're talking abour in SOR (I assume by SoH you mean Shadow of Revan), or Oricon, or ROTHC? The latter had 2 actual separate stories (Oricon/SOR is the same story with slighty different lines) but what choices did ever matter there? What does "you characters matter" even mean? Companions? They got more shine in KOTFEET than ever before sans 1.0. Player Characters? Where does your Player Character matter at all in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR? You do the same missions under the same excuse there as Emperor's Wrath and as a lowly Bounty Hunter. How is this different to KOTFEET? And when it comes to ACTUAL Choices & Consequences, there were none present whatsoever in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR. KOTFEET is actually the sole case of true C&Cs in the post-launch expansions/updates. Senya, Arcann, Scorpio, Vette, Torian etc. Nothing like that happened anywhere in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR.

Long story short, it's the same lesson as literally always turns out to be the case for themepark AAA MMOs - all content must be served well keeping all groups of players happy. Casual/story folks, PVEers/raiders, PVPers, cosmetics whales etc. Unless they increase content production for the entire target audience, nothing will change and the game will just keep slowly dwindling down. If we look at SteamStats, SWTOR is less stable post-pandemic than FFXIV or ESO are. No wonder tho, both keep their players much happeir with far more content of all kind served frequently enough.

True. But no amount of talent will make up for a limited budget in a themepark, content-focused MMO unfortunately. Adequate budget is simply needed. This is not a sandbox game where 1 stroke-of-genius idea can make the entire game. TOR needs budget = tons of employees with salaries in order to produce alot of new content and execute extensive systems&features changes and additions. Allegedly, based on what was said by former devs and in Anthem/Andromeda investigations, they SHOULD have higher budget now simply thanks to extensive profits no longer fueling Edmonton instead of Austin. But we're yet to witness and verify what will BroadSword do with this presumably increased budget. Maybe alot and THEN the talent will show its value, along with sheer manpower. Or maybe they will squander it and nothing will change.

I'll just add stuff to @Kryptonomic amazing summaries, no point repeating the same points he already covered so well: Another thing that unfortunately didn't help, especially post-launch, was Austin vs Edmonton relations within Bioware and the latter's treatement of SWTOR as a lesser title & team, despite the consistient revenue stream Edmonton hasn't seen since... 2014 Inquisition release. From what we know not only they actively overused the Austin team to help with developement of Anthem, Andromeda and 300 internal iterations of DA4 instead of focusing on SWTOR, but also siphoned SWTOR's constant revenue stream to fund the neverending developement cycles at Edmonton itself. Now, I ain't saying "poor Austin always had it bad and did nothing wrong". They sure made a TON of bad design decisions themselves. But on top of design issues they also had budget and manpower issues rather uncommon for the genre. Usually, MMOs like this are either shut down OR become a matter of principle to turn things around for the mother company - FFXIV, ESO, Fallout 76 etc. SWTOR was in this bizarre spot of being kept alive seemingly for no reason, especially given EA's cut-throat history of deleting unprofitable games and studios. Bringing in good profit yet seeing little of it reflected in content updates. The move to Broadsword is potentially beneficial in that the SWTOR substantial profits (& manpower) will not longer funnel into Edmonton and their projects anymore and perhaps get actually put back into SWTOR itself. In that sense, we COULD even see an increase in content updates. I say all of this hypothetically because at this stage we have no clue what are BroadSword's plans towards the game, and won't know probably till the end of the year when 7.5/7.6, which already entered developement prior to the studio-swap, actually release. BroadSword is a tiny studio made of ex-Mythic emplyees. So far they only delt with basic maintaining of ancient MMOs (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot). We know that about half of SWTOR team moved to BS, basically making them the majority of BS employees, but we do not know whether BS hired/plans to hire additional local devs to bring the SWTOR team size back to the previous number. We also have no idea and no gurarantee whether BS management actually DOES put the profits back into the game fully or uses it on some other, new project instead just like Edmonton did. If they're smart they will sieze this oppurtunity and basically use SWTOR as their big break. An extensive, good """relaunch""" expansion could absolutely work out in their and the game's favour in a big way. Comeback stories are nothing new in the video game industry anymore, gamers loves them, even years later. Significant SWTOR profits, no longer burdened by funding Edmonton projects should more than allow a big expansion with good quality and quantity of content, significant systems&features upgrades or a consoles port. But that is assuming of course that BroadSword is actually interested in DEVELOPING and EXPANDING the game rather than just maintaining it, or keeping it alive Bioware-style by having minimum new content out while claiming majority of the profits for other new pet-projects. Time will tell but if there was ever a chance for a "big relaunch", even as late as it is, it is now - free of Edmonton management. The last chance. If nothing happens within the next 2 years then it means we're heading into maintenance mode and that's all there is to it

We've been asking for this for 12 years, it never happened and obviously never will if it didn't already. They've said 7.5 and 7.6 are for this year so basically that's it and the recent updates show clearly how much we can expect. If there ever is any 8.0 """expansion""" it won't be till 2025 if we're lucky

We've been asking for that for 12 years. Good luck