New Information regarding FE content.

[Eanelinea]

I've done the BH story 3 times so far.

 

I've done the Troopper story 2 times so far.

 

Smuggler once, working on 2 more.

 

Warrior once, working on 2 more.

 

Inquisitor once, working on 1 more.

 

Knight, working on 2 different characters.

 

Consular, still on my first.

 

Agent, holding that one off for a while, as I'll be wanting to play it at least three times.

 

 

But sure... "Do story once, end of story."

 

It always amazes me when people say once you do a story there's no replayability. Sure, areas like Makeb *shivers* isn't too replayable unless you liked Makeb, but class stories and other stories so far, I've enjoyed.

 

I've done trooper and bountyhunter twice. Sith warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Jedi knight, consular, smuggler and agent three times and that's JUST on my main server. I still have other servers I can do the stories again on.

[Infernixx]

This is all so confusing still.

 

It all depends how long the chapters are content wise. If they offer GOOD story and explanations, not so much auto dialouge, interesting dark/light choices, companions talking in cutscenes. It needs to have the quality of the vanilla class stories. Otherwise.....well otherwise they can have as many chapters as they want if the story isn´t engaging it won´t work.

 

We will see. Though I absolutely HATE that they are going to get rid of the dialouge wheel in group phase. That was pretty fun in world quests.

 

Well, for what it's worth, the people reviewing chapter 3 said it took them 60-90 minutes to finish and that most of the mobs had been despawned in order to get from conversation to conversation with a minimum of fuss.

 

They also said that a DS choice closed off a whole area of the game, while choosing the LS choice had that area of the game open to return to at a later date probably with dailies in mind. They also mentioned that the DS choice in that matter, while closing off one area of the game, resulted in opening other content that those who chose LS wouldn't be able to access.

[menofhorror]

Well, for what it's worth, the people reviewing chapter 3 said it took them 60-90 minutes to finish and that most of the mobs had been despawned in order to get from conversation to conversation with a minimum of fuss.

 

They also said that a DS choice closed off a whole area of the game, while choosing the LS choice had that area of the game open to return to at a later date probably with dailies in mind. They also mentioned that the DS choice in that matter, while closing off one area of the game, resulted in opening other content that those who chose LS wouldn't be able to access.

 

Ah really? Now thats pretty cool to hear, didn´t know that about chapter 3.

 

Hmm, I am still of course doubtful, Shadow of Revan was just so hectic and a "GO GO GO" feeling constantly. And the worse part is that I never felt any danger or any engagement because the Rishi plan just didn`t make much sense to me.

 

So I hope there will be a story where Bioware Austin tries their best to explain, have moments to breathe and not have it action packed the whole time. But its good to hear about the dark and light side choice. We will see how it goes.

Hopefully non human companion characters will get some lines this time

[Grayseven]

If they keep incentivizing subbing with rewards, hope it just isn't cosmetic stuff anyone can get, they they can truly 'earn' the continuing sub at least IMO.

 

That's the biggest problem IMO is that for X a month is the sub 'worth' it and sometimes based on my schedule it is and sometimes based on the expansion/current content it isn't. This is when compared to how else I can spend ~=$160 a year for gaming/entertainment.

 

I'd even be fine if they required us to sub 2 months before the chapters release to get them as part of the sub but I see how that is harder to 'sell' pr wise than 'free with sub'.

 

And that is where I think the flexibility of a system like this comes into play.

 

For me, subscription to an MMO is worth it. If you look at the "a la carte" costs of preferred simply spending the 15 a month makes more sense to me. For others, they might only play a few days a month and for them it might not make sense to pay for a sub.

 

But instead of charging a set price for the expansion they tie it in to subscribing. EA/BW doesn't really lose on this. It's almost a reverse of the way F2P is done now. One month of sub gets you content you'd otherwise have to buy. You can buy the sub every time new content is dropped or you could wait for a few content cycles and buy a bunch at one price.

 

I'm interested to see how it works. It reminds me a bit of the GW system where the game is free but you have to buy an expansion every six months or so...but it appears to allow smaller but faster development cycles.

[Infernixx]

This is absolutely a return to trying to build up sub numbers. They've already said that subscribers pump in the most money into the CM, so getting more subs on board with the new expansion being locked behind a sub wall is a great idea since they get steady income from the sub price 'and' subscribers tend to buy CCs more often than anyone else. A double dip.

 

And as long as they keep releasing content regularly, it'll work for them. But, they 'have' to release content regularly. Monthly. Otherwise, people 'will' drop their sub and wait for new content to be released.

[TUXs]

And as long as they keep releasing content regularly, it'll work for them. But, they 'have' to release content regularly. Monthly. Otherwise, people 'will' drop their sub and wait for new content to be released.

I'm not trying to argue, but I am curious...why is this time suddenly different? They've promised faster content time and time again and failed to deliver, time and again..."monthly"..."every 6 weeks"..."every 8 weeks"..."every 9 weeks"...now were up to yearly content releases...

[Altheran]

Camera will move during dialogs ? Like those effects used in SoR which made the dialogs look like they were recorded from a drone rather than recorded as a movie ? (Just remembering the Rishi cantina scene, ugh...)

 

Unless it's handled much better, no thanks.

[DaShuk]

Glad they are focusing on story and really hope they revamp the companions a bit and allow us to make permanent decisions regarding them as you could in the beta. Also going to be interesting to see the new companions and the whole alliance/betrayal thing that will be involved with it.

 

However I still am a bit worried they are too focused on story. My main gripe with SWTOR right now is just an overall lack of quality end game content. I get to level 60 with a character and just feel like, "Ok...now which class story can I play again?" End game in SWTOR just bores me to death and crafting seems about pointless since you can buy much better items and modifiable armor on the cartel market. Doesn't help that my main is artifice, which has been made utterly useless by the CM. Why would I waste time RE'ing all those purple level crystals when people can just slot one at level 10 that is better than anything I can ever craft? As of right now I just find the "end game" extremely boring and my main toon just became a money machine for my leveling alts.

[davidp_newton]

This is absolutely a return to trying to build up sub numbers. They've already said that subscribers pump in the most money into the CM, so getting more subs on board with the new expansion being locked behind a sub wall is a great idea since they get steady income from the sub price 'and' subscribers tend to buy CCs more often than anyone else. A double dip.

 

And as long as they keep releasing content regularly, it'll work for them. But, they 'have' to release content regularly. Monthly. Otherwise, people 'will' drop their sub and wait for new content to be released.

 

This monthly cadence is necessary but not sufficient for the content to succeed. I am extremely skeptical of them keeping it up given how the current content cycle has lengthened over the last couple of years. If they decrease the content frequency the game has had it as their revenue will plummet.

[Infernixx]

I'm not trying to argue, but I am curious...why is this time suddenly different? They've promised faster content time and time again and failed to deliver, time and again..."monthly"..."every 6 weeks"..."every 8 weeks"..."every 9 weeks"...now were up to yearly content releases...

 

If I had to guess, it'd be a combination of a few things.

 

1) Solid influx of new revenue and focus thanks to the new movies coming out in a few months. Disney is no fool and understands cross-marketing.

 

2) Emphasizing story and single-player content is plainly cheaper than developing raid content.

 

3) I would be solid money that they've been developing FE content for a long time behind the scenes. Giving us Strongholds and GSF and SoR gave them enough time to create a stockpile of FE content. We 'know' for a certainty that 16 chapters are done, right now. Nine to start with in Oct and 7 more to be released between now and July 2016. Now, assuming that they're dropping one of those seven per month, we'll see them dropping monthly chapters starting in...December 2015 and dropping the last one in June 2016. That gives them all the way between now and July 2016 to develop 'more' chapters to drop after July 2016.

 

And as long as they stay ahead of the pack, as long as they continue to develop at a rate of one Chapter per month, they can stay ahead of us.

 

Now, sure, people will burn through the new chapter in an hour or two. I'm not a fool. I realize that 2 hours of content isn't going to be enough to keep people happy. But, they've also said that we'll be grinding a form of 'rep' to get the companions that we want. We'll have to earn their support by doing things for them. So, I'm wagering we'll be doing dailies or weeklies for them. Probably just enough to be finished in a month. Earn the companion just in time for the next Chapter to drop.

 

Again, all of this is very dependent on them releasing the content at a monthly rate. And, again, I'm willing to bet real money that they wouldn't even attempt this if they couldn't make it happen.

[Grayseven]

What I'm really afraid of is a horrifically piecemeal release schedule, where one or two things are released every month.

 

Say, month 1 is a new chapter, month 2 is a new flashpoint, month 3 is a new operation, month 4 is a new daily area...that could get really old really quick and result in people only subbing once every 4 months instead of maintaining a monthly sub.

 

Perks for subbing each month will only go so far. Right now there isn't really a reason to sub outside of the announced perks for the FE stuff to subs through launch. No new FP's or Ops since SoR 8 months ago, a really crappy "daily area" that was such a small bit of content that it was released in two parts in order to keep the hype up (when we all know that had it been dropped all at once players would have burned through Ziost in under 2 hours)...this isn't the kind of stuff designed to keep players interested.

 

Add that onto the fact that SoR end game was basically broken for months, the Ops were tuned by "professional raiders" with EA/BW completely forgetting that the majority of players fall in the middle of the bell curve when it comes to content difficulty, and the supposedly easy to balance 3.0 class changes have seemed to be anything but and someone in power has decided to completely change the way certain classes operate...

 

I'm reserving judgement until this drops and I see how FE plays out. I'm waiting for news on operations and flashpoints because story only goes so far for players that have all 22 character slots filled up. I'm curious as to the changes being made to crafting. There is, unfortunately, a lot of information still being "left out" but I understand how the hype train works.

 

They got me to resub for 6 more months, so that's something. I was ready to chuck the game and find something else to do with my time but they managed to drag me back in with possibilities and some shinnies. Time will tell how big a sucker I end up being...

[XiamaraSimi]

But, they've also said that we'll be grinding a form of 'rep' to get the companions that we want. We'll have to earn their support by doing things for them. So, I'm wagering we'll be doing dailies or weeklies for them. Probably just enough to be finished in a month. Earn the companion just in time for the next Chapter to drop..

 

Well, everyone with one of each class is going to be -very- busy then

 

"Hmmm, what class works on companion faction this week?"

 

(Im picking one per week given hiw bioware likes to make rep grinds have caps, wouldnt suprise me if yhey did the same with a new comp system rather then "Hey bob, heres 6787 socket wrenches since i know you love wrenches so much!")

[Icestar]

Coming from a youtube E3 video with Michael Backus.

 

Nice, thankyou for the information

[Jerba]

We 'know' for a certainty that 16 chapters are done, right now.

They haven't even released the names of chapter 12-16. And from the recent BTS interview we know that episode 1 is still in development ("His team is designing episode one as a bit of a tutorial."), note the progressive tense. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that chapter 3 is the most playable of them all which is why it was shown to the media.

Of course, they will have made plans for all the chapters already and have a rough idea what will happen with the story but I don't think that they are completely done yet.

 

I'm also curious to see if they can keep up the monthly releases (with a short break in between two seasons) as that would at least give us something to do each month and would be even more updates than the 6-week cycle we had in 2013. Now they only need to add repeatable and multiplayer content along with it and I'm sold.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Jerba

[menofhorror]

This year has been so confusing. With the cancellation of Shadow Realms a lot of revamp had to happen at Bioware Austin. I mean endgame content was bugged for so long, operation tournament cancelled because they finally saw the bugs and then....a bit costy CCG trailer. Its really confusing and I can`t get a grasp on the situation there.

[Diviciacus]

a bit costy CCG trailer. Its really confusing and I can`t get a grasp on the situation there.

 

It's doubtful Bioware itself paid for that CGI trailer; most likely it was backed by EA and/or Disney as part of the new juggernaut of the Star Wars hype train. It's been a decade since we've had a Star Wars movie (and depending on who you ask, it's been thirty two years since we've had a good one). They are pulling out absolutely all the stops on this. Teasers of movie hype Star Wars, renewed interest in Star Wars fuels TOR, trailer for TOR expac hypes Star Wars, TOR expac hypes movie. Movie hypes TOR.

 

The fanbase goes full Fry-meme on Disney and EA. We get a cool new movie, games, TOR updates. Disney and EA get all of our money.

 

Win/win.

 

Unless you're a cynical ***-hat like what mostly posts on the forums these days.

[menofhorror]

It's doubtful Bioware itself paid for that CGI trailer; most likely it was backed by EA and/or Disney as part of the new juggernaut of the Star Wars hype train. It's been a decade since we've had a Star Wars movie (and depending on who you ask, it's been thirty two years since we've had a good one). They are pulling out absolutely all the stops on this. Teasers of movie hype Star Wars, renewed interest in Star Wars fuels TOR, trailer for TOR expac hypes Star Wars, TOR expac hypes movie. Movie hypes TOR.

 

The fanbase goes full Fry-meme on Disney and EA. We get a cool new movie, games, TOR updates. Disney and EA get all of our money.

 

Win/win.

 

Unless you're a cynical ***-hat like what mostly posts on the forums these days.

 

True true.

But the content of FE still seems to be large in comparison to say Shadow of Revan. (well we will see when it comes out) so I do wonder how long they have been working on FE.

 

Though most of the posts being negative is something natural given how most of us have been burned out by the big gaming publishers and companies. People are just afraid to be excited because they know that they will end up dissapointed.

[Diviciacus]

True true.

But the content of FE still seems to be large in comparison to say Shadow of Revan. (well we will see when it comes out) so I do wonder how long they have been working on FE.

 

Though most of the posts being negative is something natural given how most of us have been burned out by the big gaming publishers and companies. People are just afraid to be excited because they know that they will end up dissapointed.

 

Even if KOTFE chapters are no bigger than Yavin IIII's moon or Ziost, if they actually come out monthly that will still be a fair amount of story content. Especially considering it was what? Six months between the SOR release and Ziost?

 

Most negativity is self-inflicted. I mean, yes, especially in regards to MMO's companies have made promises they couldn't keep, because most companies really don't understand what it takes to build an MMO (and in some cases, it's just... inexcusable; I still have an old WOTLK box saying dance studios were coming to WOW ).

 

But when all we've got is super limited info like with KOTFE or the upcoming Battlefront "3" - people think what they want to think, and unrealistically hype and demand (even only in their own heads) what the game should be like. And when it's not - even if the developers/publishers never said anything of the sort - they get mad at the devs, even though all their disappointment is their own fault. But the ridiculous entitlement so common on the internet is just another facet of a personality type incapable of looking in the mirror when blame needs to be assigned.

[tmwfte]

Yavin IIII's moon

 

Yavin 4 is the moon, Yavin is the planet.

[menofhorror]

Even if KOTFE chapters are no bigger than Yavin IIII's moon or Ziost, if they actually come out monthly that will still be a fair amount of story content. Especially considering it was what? Six months between the SOR release and Ziost?

 

Most negativity is self-inflicted. I mean, yes, especially in regards to MMO's companies have made promises they couldn't keep, because most companies really don't understand what it takes to build an MMO (and in some cases, it's just... inexcusable; I still have an old WOTLK box saying dance studios were coming to WOW ).

 

But when all we've got is super limited info like with KOTFE or the upcoming Battlefront "3" - people think what they want to think, and unrealistically hype and demand (even only in their own heads) what the game should be like. And when it's not - even if the developers/publishers never said anything of the sort - they get mad at the devs, even though all their disappointment is their own fault. But the ridiculous entitlement so common on the internet is just another facet of a personality type incapable of looking in the mirror when blame needs to be assigned.

 

Well the negativitiy is the ugly side of the internet. Though trough the internet most full of hate is also often what people really thing. So in a way the internet helped (any especially in those times) helped to raise the voice of criticism (no matter if it games, movies, politics or any other serious topics) and to bring awareness.

 

Though true, people have indeed very unrealisitic expectations but I have to say that Bioware doesn`t help things at all since in the recent years they been overhyping things way too much. True the negativity is self inflicted but in a way the big companies brought it down to themselves with the buggy releases, constant broken promises.

Of course for things like that to happen is normal in big development teams, games are more costly and harder to make with the technology level constantly increasing (thats how I view those things)

 

But true its still cool to have a chapter every month. I like that. But it all depends on the quality of said chapter.

[Schiffer]

2) Emphasizing story and single-player content is plainly cheaper than developing raid content.

.

 

This is the only part I will disagree with you on, the rest of it is absolutely true. Story and single player content is NOT cheaper than raid content, in fact raid content is probably far easier to make, you really don't need that many voice actors, the cut scenes don't need nearly as much developing and there is far divergent paths to take from choices.

 

The reason they are focusing on story right now is because:

1) That's something they have been slipping on recently and is the most exciting change of pace

2) Because talking about Flashpoints right now before the story is set up is kind of spoilers, you set the story, then you start telling it, telling us of a raid on the enemies new darkside cookie factory they used to tame the rakghouls into attacking Tatooine over the years is a bit of a spoiler!

3) Because Story is the Unique selling point of this MMO compared against other MMO's, This aspect brings in players who otherwise would not be interested in MMO's or are finding other MMO's lacking. It's why they are willing to take the expense, to get into an untapped market. Every other MMO fully satisfies the need for Raiding, and not much else.

[Infernixx]

This is the only part I will disagree with you on, the rest of it is absolutely true. Story and single player content is NOT cheaper than raid content, in fact raid content is probably far easier to make, you really don't need that many voice actors, the cut scenes don't need nearly as much developing and there is far divergent paths to take from choices.

 

The reason they are focusing on story right now is because:

1) That's something they have been slipping on recently and is the most exciting change of pace

2) Because talking about Flashpoints right now before the story is set up is kind of spoilers, you set the story, then you start telling it, telling us of a raid on the enemies new darkside cookie factory they used to tame the rakghouls into attacking Tatooine over the years is a bit of a spoiler!

3) Because Story is the Unique selling point of this MMO compared against other MMO's, This aspect brings in players who otherwise would not be interested in MMO's or are finding other MMO's lacking. It's why they are willing to take the expense, to get into an untapped market. Every other MMO fully satisfies the need for Raiding, and not much else.

 

They've already said many times that VO scenes are not expensive. They said that doing it 8 TIMES for each story was expensive.

[Savej]

but my friend, they said new more pvp, flashpoints, etc. they will announce them down closer to launch

 

Did they say "pvp, fps, etc" will be part of FE's launch or did they say they will be coming at some later, unspecified date? I listened to the interview and others and am pretty sure the implication is that they will arrive later.

[Schiffer]

They've already said many times that VO scenes are not expensive. They said that doing it 8 TIMES for each story was expensive.

 

I still have trouble believing that story content is cheaper and easier than raid content by comparison, but hey I may not know anything.

[menofhorror]

Wait a moment so the story doesn´t start off with us being unfrozen but instead the first two chapters show how the Zakuul Empire manages to destroy the republic and empire right?