New Game +

[SkybladeDarkstar]

One of the things I loved about Mass Effect (and, indeed, nearly every game that has a similar feature) is being able to go back and start the story over without having to lose my character progression. I could go through, enjoy the story, explore new options, without having to worry much about the combat or gathering gear all over again. It was a way to enjoy the story.

 

I'd been thinking about ways to get a similar feature for SWTOR, and I think I've finally gotten it in a way that works.

 

Let us reset our quest completion. Give us a vendor, either somewhere in the galaxy, or a section of the Cartel Market, that will let us reset our quest completions. For a cost (probably a significant cost), you would get the option to reset a category of quests.

 

I'd break it down like this:

 

Class Quests: The ability to reset just your class quest back to the very beginning and start over with it. You could go from the Prologue back to the endgame all over again. If you could work it, you could also offer reset points back to the start of each Chapter, but I think the full reset is easier to implement and more important.

 

Planetary Quests: Choose any one planet and start its quest chains over. Since each planet is independent of the rest of the galaxy except for the class quests (which are handled separately by the game's tracking system anyway), this would allow a quick reset of an entire planet's individual stories that you could play through at any time.

 

Companion Quests: Resets all your companion's conversations as though you had never talked to them.

 

 

Allowing these resets will do a number of things: They'll allow players a way out of quests that have reached unprogressable points (of which there are a couple, and Customer Service won't help with them unless they're class quests. I know because I had to reset my Agent a few days ago because of it). It will allow characters to change things they regret or explore different paths. It will allow players to go back and enjoy old boss fights or particularly fun quest sections again. It will allow players to help out others on a planet they've already completed and pick up Social Points while they're doing it.

 

There's so much story in this game, but getting through it requires a significant investment. And without the ability to make game saves, there's no way to revisit it without creating an entirely new character and spending weeks working through it. Allowing us to pay to reset our quests would allow us to enjoy the stories over again.

 

 

And I really can't see any downside. The Heroic quests, after all, are already repeatable, as are the dailies, even though their stories aren't really set up for repetition any more than the others. Heroics also give better rewards than the rest of the quests, so there's no issue of rewards unbalancing the system.

[althene]

Honestly, I like the idea, but they WANT us to have to spend weeks going through the story all over again. It provides that time investment mechanic they're looking for and, more significantly, puts the player ever more into a position of buying unlocks to make things go faster or smoother now that the game has gone f2p. So sadly, I don't think this is going to happen.

[uniz]

in the past and today such things simply don't happen in mmos. perhaps those of the future may but now such will be resisted by many.

 

im not saying your idea is good or bad. but it hasn't been done before and bioware is painfully slow coming up with features already in mmos let alone anything completely new to them.

[SkybladeDarkstar]

So make it a subscriber only perk. Like most, it's a convenience thing. It aids replayability, it doesn't hamper it.

 

Having a cost for it keeps it from being abused, or from completely overwriting rerolls (besides, frequently alts are used for different classes anyway), and if that cost is Cartel Coins, it provides an extra income for it.

[althene]

The problem here is, even if you charged cartel coins for it, you would have to charge so much in order to compensate for potential losses on a player making a new character, that no one would consider it worth while to porchase.

 

I'll demonstrate by example. I don't know exact numbers, so I'm gonna flub them a little.

 

Let's say you have a Jedi Sentinel. You've ranked him up, done all his quests and finished top of the class at Epeen University. Now you want to use the "what if" machine to see what would have happened.

 

Currently, you would have to start a new character and start the grind all over again. Only this time through, you have help. Your previous Sentinel had eleventy billion credits, but you blew it all on Twi'lek ******s and blow (you did name your character Charlie Sheen, after all). What you do have is all this cartel coins you've been collecting because you had so much hard currency. So you start unlocking things on the new character to make things go faster. 5 ranks of class quest xp here. 5 ranks of war zone xp there. A swanky new modable chest piece. Let's say they're all 150 coins each and all of a sudden, you're out of coins, but you absolutely NEED to unlock that speeder piloting. You're gonna do one of 2 things. Switch to your main (slowing progress on your replay) to farm cash, or buy cartel coins without breaking your stride in order to just snap up that perk and go. THIS is exactly the kind of situation BioWare wants the player to be in. Because, given enough of these situations, a person is eventually going to break down and drop a dime.

 

If they were to implement your idea, which is a good one, they would have to somehow extrapolate how many coins the average user would spend on perks, add a "premium" cost to it to cover variables and then throw it up there for someone to buy. Using my examples from above for costs, let's say you burned 2000 coins for all the perks you bought. Now let's say that you actually skipped on a lot of the perks because you simply didn't care. BioWare has to decide if 2000 coins is too low or if it should be around 3000 coins. If they settle on 2500, then the player has to decide if dropping that much money is worth it when they can simply restart a character and grind it out for free. On the flip side, if BioWare sets a cost of only 1000 coins, they are missing out in potential revinue by players not purchasing their coin packs beyond that initial investment of 1000 if it turns out the average player actually spends money for 3000 coins, but over an extended period of time.

[Frakkensteinse]

I like it!

1. Reset story by Cartel or vendor or similar is a great idea.

2. Do a HM version of all planets. That is, when choosing were to travel on the space chart, after getting to lvl 50 let us choose for example Dromund Kaas HM. Should be easy to develop. Just copy planets and adjust all quest levels. Like a different instance, just like FP HMs.... Would be nice to do some skipped sidequests and also heroics and so on...