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Ollmich

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  1. It's a minor thing but... It is mentioned in the description for "Freedom from FR3-DOM" objective that it requires active subscription and/or access to Legends of the Sith. Pretty sure the expansion is called "Legacy of the Sith" šŸ˜„
  2. We all know that voice acting and, specifically, voiced protagonist is a signature feature of SWTOR. We also know that it costs and also takes time to plan, organize and deliver. Need to record 1 line said by player character? Contact 48 actors. And donā€™t forget about NPCs. Letā€™s go down the memory lane a bit. 4.0: KOTOR style cutscenes come into play for side missions such as Alliance alerts and Star Fortresses. Protagonist isnā€™t voiced but has more dialogue options as well as different ways to interact with the environment (remember Sith relic puzzle on Yavin IV?) 6.x: during the pandemic side missions were released with close to none voice acting ā€“ PC is silent, NPCs use recycled alien lines. This approach is still utilized in story bits associated with Galactic seasons. 7.3: KOTOR style cutscenes made its way into the main story, but it felt more or less appropriate. Missions in Interpreterā€™s retreat are similar to half-voiced New Manaan or Ruhnuk planetary arcs, you just have to complete them in order to progress through the main story, not after it. And finally, in 7.4 main storyline we jump from normal cutscenes to ā€œblack boxā€ ones seemingly at random. That lack of pattern is what bothers me. Sure, important parts are fully voiced, like the final encounter, but I can't wrap my head around everything else. Thereā€™s also (pretty nice) banter between cutscenes with PC having things to say. But if the amount of PCā€™s lines has to be reduced for one reason or another, cutscenes should have priority over banter, no?.. If we look at FFXIV, for example, they have 3 types of interactions during MSQ: short conversations with one NPC outside of cutscenes; non-voiced cutscenes with multiple characters discussing things or with some action; voiced cutscenes (important stuff, pay attention!) It's logical, and you get used to the scheme. It doesnā€™t mean I only want important stuff being voiced in SWTOR too. I also understand that itā€™s unrealistic to expect everything being voiced like in the old days. But if fully voiced scenes are going to be mixed with half-voiced ones from now on, Iā€™d like to have some pattern here. I donā€™t see any at the moment. Do you?
  3. What about twitch drops? Would it be hard to implement?
  4. Iā€™m about to go through somewhat similar changes at my own work, which Iā€™m not exactly thrilled about, and now I read that news about my favorite-comfort-zone game. Life is ironic. Best of luck to devs and all the staff in their careers. At the very least I expect SWTOR losing in the future updates (beyond 7.4) its identity and uniqueness which, ironically, set it apart from the other MMO titles - voiced story with roleplaying options. All these seasons, conquests, events and other systems have always been fluff aimed at keeping us busy between meaningful story updates, regardless of the size and quality of these updates. All this stuff is undoubtedly cheaper to produce/maintain, and the game will probably still rely on it instead of full maintenance mode, it just wonā€™t be the same game. Still, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. Our main source material is called A new hope after allā€¦
  5. 1. How are you enjoying the Galactic Season system overall? Quite a lot. I donā€™t have any major grievances. 2. Do you like the Companions offered through a Galactic Season? Is there any way you think the Companions can be improved? What companion has been your favorite so far? Itā€™s hard to care much about new companions since we have a threatening amount of them already. I rarely use these new ones outside of active season. That said, I liked the story bits around them, and having actual little missions in addition to conversations in Season 3 was nice too. What can be improved? Iā€™d prefer them speaking basic. We all understand why they donā€™t but listening to alien gibberish, especially battle cries, gets tiresome very quickly. And as others mentioned, itā€™s probably time to move away from the underworld theme (black archaeologist? or itā€™s not that differentā€¦ deep space explorer? freedom fighter? adept of a less common Force cult like Kel Dorsā€™ Baran Do?) 3. Do you like the rewards offered from Galactic Seasons? Are there rewards you wish were included in the reward track? Rewards are fine. I especially welcome stronghold titles. It would be nice if dyes could stack, or at least went into inventory within a crate. Rewards I donā€™t care much about are comp customizations and comp weapons. Itā€™s slightly annoying when you see, letā€™s say, a cool blaster in the track, then tooltip says itā€™s for companion, not youā€¦ Other possible options are emotes and HP regenerating toys ā€“ tied to the season theme, of course. 4. Do you enjoy the content used in Season Objectives? Are there parts of the game you wish you saw more, or less? Itā€™s a good mix of common and uncommon (for me) activities. Iā€™d like to see full operation (= defeating all bosses, not only the last one) as an objective, not just single bosses. 5. Have you been able to complete Galactic Seasons? Do you feel the season requires too much effort, or is too easy to complete? Yes, Iā€™ve completed all three. Seasons 2 and 3 were not too hard and not too easy, just about right. 6. How does completing a Galactic Season fit into your desired play session? Are you able to progress the Season while doing your normal activities, or do you feel Galactic Seasons prevent you from completing the content you enjoy? I donā€™t really have a set of normal activities. When Season is active its objectives are usually my main focus. 7. Do you have any other feedback or suggestions for Galactic Seasons? Reputation tracks seem mostly pointless, easy but long grind for the sake of grind (and a few titles). Other rep tracks in the game usually unlock cosmetic items on vendors but we have a lot of season related cosmetics within a season trackā€¦ Thereā€™s not much to spend season tokens on after buying fleet strongholds and sub rewards youā€™ve missed in the past. Not sure if adding more cosmetic stuff is worth it but what about an option to exchange token for in-game currencies like tech frags? I donā€™t mind having a Ā«complete 100 weekliesĀ» achievement as an entirely optional goal within the season but title and comp customization as a reward for it donā€™t feel worth the effort. Iā€™d like to see something more unique, maybe an item similar to Yarvokā€™s gratitude?
  6. Iā€™m surprised at my emotional reaction to this news. As Shintar said in her blog, Charles is one of the faces strongly associated with SWTOR. Iā€™ve always tried to be optimistic about the gameā€™s future but itā€™s a huge blow to my (decaying) optimism. Best of luck to Charles and to all newly appointed people.
  7. You... play whatever you like in the game? Complete story on another alt, work on tricky achievement, get creative with your stronghold? *** Frankly, I've never could understand that drama around gear that starts and goes on every time yet another gearing system or some silly items (golden augments... cough) are introduced. Except for maybe 5.0 gearing. As a person who isn't really into MMOs (but can probably be considered as part of that elitist ********** of narcisstic endgamers as my main day-to-day activity in SWTOR is raiding) I find it weird that raiders want some fancy stats as a reward for completing the hardest content (what's the point if you have already completed it? showing off? carrying a buddy?). I find it equally weird that players doing simple PvE content are so obsessed with it as well (as long as you can easily slice through opponents the game throws at you... why bother with item levels). I do understand PvPers whose main need is being equal in terms of gear so skill was a deciding factor. But others? Gear is nothing but a tool. Not a reward, not a goal. It's certainly not content. If nothing else keeps you in the game, you'd better find something else to do. It won't benefit BW but it will benefit you. (Yeah, I'm ready to get yelled at, how I dare to tell people what to do with their time!). This post will be buried and forgotten but damn, I needed to vent a bit.
  8. From sage's point of view: 1-2. As others said, there're very few items, and half of them aren't working at the moment. It doesn't look like a good mix of options, just "default" bonuses we use now and some others we mostly ignored in 6.n and will ignore in 7.0. E.g., as a TK sage I don't see any reason to use anything but Gathering storm and Haste package - same as now since this combo is universally effective. 3. I'd like to see some of the bonuses of the old Force Mystic set, specifically reduced CD on Healing trance. It made seer's "rotation" more fluid, the spec was so much more fun to play. I'd even settle with Healing trance being less effective in terms of healing output, just... bring that -1,5 sec back please.
  9. Have you tried commanding your comp to attack the adds? I mean, manually. There's a bug when Rass just stays around doing nothing during the adds phases. I'm not sure if BW has acknowledged this bug. Anyway, every class has plenty of tools to deal with enemies without comp's help - defensive cooldowns, stuns, mezzes, abilities allowing you to move faster (these are very helpful in SM/VM FPs since you can get to the healing stations in 2-3 secs). You haven't mentioned what advanced classes you're playing; is it guardian, sent, sage, shadow? The advice would vary depending on that. I've also seen a post on reddit about a workaround that allows you to use Jesus Droid. You need to start one of the older SM FPs, leave it, enter SoV and hit the button to summon the droid. I'm not sure if it actually works though.
  10. Again, my point was LoS'ing adds in that fight is not exactly an optimal approach. LoS is used to make ranged mobs come to you and stay on top of each other so they could be AoE'ed quickly. Melees come to you and stack on their own, there's no need to LoS them. It's waste of time, especially if they appear simultaneously and run together to the person with aggro (like in Rakata FP). If I had to come up with the most optimal approach I'd say it's stacking up in the middle (already mentioned that). Sadly, LoS fans won that round.
  11. LoS works nicely when you have a bunch of ranged mobs but these guys in Rakata FP are melees. It doesn't matter if you stay behind the pillar or in the middle of the platform, they'll come to you anyway. People just need to stack up and wait for a few seconds. Of course it's hard to expect from pugs, there always will be a mara jumping to adds as soon as they appear or a sorc staying miles away from others and pulling aggro. Similarly, there'll always be a dude who doesn't know about the pillar, doesn't read chat or doesn't bother so adds end up being everywhere. Not a big deal anyway. It's not like you can't finish the fight or it takes much longer if adds aren't stacked up for AoE burn. That tank's reaction was a bit too emotional though.
  12. What triggered me most as a Consular in the recent update wasn't even "I sense this, I sense that" thing (even though it was weird too), but Arn and Aryn lecturing my character on the history of the enclave. Ancient things and Jedi lore is Consular's specialty! Our very first mission in the game is archaeological quest. If anything, we should lecture everyone about such matters. I understand the reason behind it - tech classes needed to know what's so special about that particular Jedi enclave, as well as people who haven't played KotORs. But it could be done in more elegant way - just replace one of the generic lines for the Jedi with something like "Ah, yeah, I remember that". Heck, I'd even settle for a neutral reaction like "Okay, let's move on and focus on our task". But no, it appears our Jedi scholars don't know a thing about not-so-distant Jedi history and can only say "Omg, it's horrible!", "Nah, the Jedi would never do this" and "Nice idea, actually". (Not to mention an attempt to recontextualize what's been done to Revan's identity/ memory here and present it as a common thing. But that's for another discussion). The meeting in the end also wasn't the strongest part of the story, to put it mildly. Nautolan Jedi's reaction to Aryn was forced, cringey and only needed, apparently, to show us the changes in Arn. Since my character didn't rejoin the Jedi Order in the end of Onslaught, in my version of story Nautolan dude turned out to be an exemplary hypocrite who's upset with one former Jedi being there but doesn't mind another. I don't think that was the intention. I didn't hate the story, some bits were nice, but there were too many weird things spoiling the fun. I haven't played the imp part yet, maybe I'll have better experience.
  13. There's a reason why logic as a discipline thinks of analogy as a source of fallacy. The situation you described doesn't represent accurately neither recent changes to crafting nor that whole discord controversy. In the first case (crafting), people didnā€™t order the same steak. It was a bunch of guests who ordered a steak, and it was brought to everyone regardless if they wanted it or not. Thatā€™s not how a real restaurant runs things but itā€™s exactly how a video game functions. When changes are made, they affect everyone, and there will always be someone who wonā€™t like it. Obviously, the studio has to do its best to satisfy as many people as possible, etc, etc. Still, this example shows why ā€œYou must do this because Iā€™m paying youā€ mindset is ridiculous and counterproductive if demanded changes are going to affect other people; it shouldnā€™t be abused or used over rational arguments. Itā€™s also egoistic, self-righteous, rude, and wonā€™t get you anywhere since you're telling the sudio what it already knows. In the second case (communication), all the guests actually get their steak, and every one of them can also use a promo code and get some dill on top of it. Important info that affects all the players is provided via official channels, e.g. detailed posts about upcoming changes, patch notes, maintenance schedule, known issues, PTS announcements. What is posted elsewhere is an unnecessary but nice bonus. Missing it won't hurt you in any way. *** Mind you, I'm not against players raising their concerns about it. I simply state that I personally do like that devs don't confine themselves to offcial channels, show interest in other platforms their players gather at and talk to them there from time to time, be it Chris on TC discord, or Charles on reddit, or someone else on another platform or discord server I don't use and not aware of. I like the concept, I want that kind of communication to continue, I don't want it being shut down. After all, I'm a paying customer too and I can demand things... oh, wait.
  14. @Nee-Elder Chill. Iā€™m not an owner, ownerā€™s friend, mod, etc; I donā€™t even post on TC server, only read stuff Iā€™m interested in, same as on these forums. Iā€™m just a random user who stumbled across this thread and stated their opinion on the matter. I do understand that players are upset about lack of communication from devs, and itā€™s enhanced with ā€œI pay so I demandā€ mindset you often see here. Thereā€™s certainly space for improvement. That said, I personally donā€™t have a problem with this communication occurring not only on the forums but also on the platform many players use in addition to forums or instead of them. Heck, I like it since it's less formal and uptight, and also differs from livestreams with its pre-determined points of discussion.
  15. I just want to say that I appreciate greatly that Chris engages with the community the way he does, and Iā€™d like it to continue. Discord is a great platform for less formal and stretched communication compared to what the official forums are supposed to provide. I realize itā€™s speculation but it feels like the amount of active players who frequently visit forums and donā€™t use discord is fairly low; it means very few people are ā€œgatedā€, and itā€™s entirely their choice. Besides they arenā€™t really missing much, nothing super important and crucial is discussed there; itā€™s more like getting a little bit of insight into some aspects of the game and seeing a dev as a living person, not a faceless individual behind the wall of yellow text.
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