Christmas Collection (of ideas)

[GrandHighAdmiral]

I've never read the suggestion forum, so some of these may be repeats of other people's ideas - but for whatever it's worth, this is my own list, not a compilation of others' ideas.

 

In no particular order:

 

1. PvE Operations via GSF; beyond the obvious capital ship "bosses", here's a rough idea: navigate an ancient Gree space station and defeat the security system (puzzles) to land inside. Even a simple PvE "endless waves" mode would be fun to see which squadrons can last the longest. (Basically, I love GSF but I hate PvP. I still like the classic Star Fox mode space quests!)

 

2. Asymetrical Warzones; Life isn't fair. Who says warzones should be? Take the top four highest-ranked players and pit them against eight random players. Give one player "boss mode" - immune to stuns and whatnot + two million HP + new abilities (I've always wanted Malgus' AoE force choke!) and pit them against an eight-person team. (Allow only highly-ranked players to queue as boss?) Kick that up a notch and have a player take control of an actual boss! Who hasn't wanted to play as a giant-mecha-spider-Hutt before? "My turn?" "Your turn!"

 

GSF matches could also be asymetrical: give one team control of a capital ship and its turrets, or even a space station. Copy "boss mode" from above but with starfighters.

 

3. Here's a relatively easy way to push out additional Operations content: Cartel Arena. Entrance in the Cartel Bazaar on fleet, spectator mode available! Only one room to create, no storyline necessary (boo! but easy). Boss spawns could be randomly selected, or even rotated on a weekly basis. Inspiration from Thrasher fight and from Geonosian arena in Attack of the Clones, obviously.

 

4. Companion gear-type customization via item or story decision. Jorgan talks about being a sniper, but carries an assault cannon; why not give us a way to give him his rifle back? I would pay good money to give Tweek (that's what I call her) an assault cannon - now there's entertainment!

 

5. A way to cheat lore and/or continuity: "Force Vision" flashpoints/operations/quests. A powerful Force-user (Spindrall?) offers to project the player into the past or future (alternate history?) to play out some event as though they were there. I never played them, but apparently this is quite similar to Assassin's Creed - and, obviously, the Holodeck. Anyway, you might even get away with tying into the original trilogy or the new movies this way. At the very least, it would allow some creative stories that might not otherwise fit into the "present" storyline.

 

6. Hard-mode class storyline. I know I'm not the first to ask for a way to re-do my class quest, but here's my idea for it, inspired by how Mass Effect allows you to start over from the beginning after completing the game (and, in my playthroughs, to bump up the difficulty at that time.) Hard-mode class quest would, after a stern warning, make your companions unavailable and transport you to your starter planet. (Companion gear could be wrapped up in boxes and placed in your inventory perhaps?) All your instanced quests could be raised to max level and greatly increased in difficulty (think Story Mode Ops vs. Hard Mode Ops.) A bonus - a title at least - could be given for completing the questline in HM without a group.

 

7. High-Res Textures: textures in SWTOR look great during regular game play, but often look pixelated and flat during cutscenes. Giving the option to run higher-resolution textures - at least during cutscenes - would be a simple way to make the game look much better. This may necessitate a huge download, but not much larger than the PTS or initial game download I imagine - so put the option in the launcher a la the PTS option. Alternatively, when you release 4.0 as the first boxed expansion full of lots of goodies for all (right?) you can just put them on the Blu-Ray or USB Collector's Edition.

 

8. Hire Jeff Kurtenacker. Seriously, he's amazing. Steal him from Carbine; be heartless. Go listen to the music from Wildstar and tell me if it isn't the best video game music you've ever heard:

Imagine having "Thieves, Bandits, and Epic Loot" as the theme for Rishi. At the very least, consider re-investing in proper orchestral music. It can't possibly cost more than it's worth!

 

9. Speaking of Rishi - I really want a Rishi stronghold. A jungle mountain palace is just my style.

 

10. Return Skill Points (but not by getting rid of Disciplines!) Give us a few branches in our Discipline tree to give some additional flexibility. For example, a choice between +3% alacrity or +3% critical chance, or perhaps even a choice between X giving a proc for Y or Z. This should allow for a little greater customization without becoming a burden on balancing. This is similar to utility points, but more integrated into each specific discipline.

 

11. Mini-games. Copy Wildstar and include some mini-games as part of quests, it adds a little flavor. if overdone it becomes stale and repetitive - but so do "Kill X mooks" quests. Likewise, consider using a % counter for kill quests, also like Wildstar, where tougher mobs count more.

 

12. Account-wide friends list. I know this has been brought up before, just like legacy-wide credits, but both are very high on my "need" list. To allay privacy concerns, just copy Wildstar (last time I'll say that, I promise!) and use an invite system for account friending.

 

13. Name-checker. A website or in-game system for checking whether a character or guild name is available before purchasing a name change.

 

14. Ilum is a really cool place, but there isn't much to do there. Pretty much any reason to go back would be great! Here's a half-baked idea for you: a Journey to the Center of the Earth-style questline or Operation where we travel ever deeper into Ilum looking for some special crystal or whatever.

 

15. Mentoring System. Many of us long-time players have also long-since maxed out all our character levels and slots, or at the very least are not anxious to start a new character at level 1. This makes it difficult for us to welcome or help out newer players when our involvement trivializes the content and eliminates XP rewards for those players. Perhaps inverting the Bolster system to lower our level and stats to a lower-level group member wouldn't be too much work? It would greatly benefit those us wanting to invite new friends to the game.

 

16. Sell Collected Items Button. Ever pull an entire set of armor out of your collections just for one piece? Manually dragging the extra items over to delete them one at a time is annoying. A button that would delete any bound item in your inventory that's also available via collections would be awesome, and may encourage use of the Collections system.

 

Sorry for the length, I hope you find something useful or at least interesting in there. If not anything new, at least you can put another check mark beside the "number of people who have begged us for this" list.

[GrandHighAdmiral]

A little additional thought on #7: Cutscenes don't need to run at 60fps; in fact, locking them to 30fps would probably give them a more "cinematic" feel, since it would better replicate the feel of film that people expect from a movie. Having the option to cut the expected FPS in half for cutscenes could allow better quality modes.