Introducing the Alliance System

[SidehVelsan]

The story for Knights of the fallen empire is great, and I like that you can customize roles for your companions (though that being the only customization sucks).

 

That said, I loathe everything about the Alliance system.

 

Classic Conversations don't seem like a cool KotOR throwback, they just seem cheap. Especially when one of this game's original claims to fame was being a fully voiced MMO.

 

And some of the objectives for alliance alerts are plain ridiculous. 20 Warzone matches of M1-4x? And either hours of grinding or a string of world bosses for Quyzen? And you have to do heroic flashpoints for the star fortress missions? I chose to be on an RP server for a reason, I hate PVP. And I loved this game because it's the only MMO I've had fun as a solo player, but with the alliance system that's gone completely down the drain.

 

What's more, devs keep telling us that our companions are a meaningful part of our story but with only being able to have one alert per alliance specialist what happens if I've chosen to not grind my way to getting Quyzen, or don't get to Lokin before the Rhakghoul event closes? I have that alert blocking me from getting access to any other companions from that specialist. Including the companions I romanced or otherwise made an important part of my story.

 

Not only does it seem like a grind that I don't want to put any of my alts through, it leaves such a sour taste in my mouth that the hours and hours of story prior to Fallen Empire don't matter, I don't see much of a point in playing chapter 10 or getting my alts to level 60.

[Nippon]

Alliance system is pure and utter lazy development, this system was put in by turbine 3 years ago with an area called Hytbold in LOTRO....It failed there and will fail here, its the worst form of grind imaginable and nothing but repeated content that is at best good for 1 - 2 weeks. It will be forgotten in 2 months and completely avoided in 3, so something about it now.

 

Do this on 4-5-6-7-8 charcter's and it gets old very very quickly......

 

Also *** are all the tacticals not available on the weekly, you up it to 5 then make 7 of them obsolete, again lazy development.

 

Also 1 click 60 was the worst idea in SWTOR history and then to allow 50+ in HM FP.....Come on, who is making these decisions.

Edited December 7, 2015 by Nippon

[aztecknight]

One more thing, we will see the focus on story telling real soon. See in the vanilla storyline certain companions know about other companions that belong to other classes, Quyzen and Mako for instance. Once if got a set of companions that know each other will they interact in any way? Or will they just stare at me, lifeless and thoughtless until summoned?

[TheSeventhJedi]

Every time I log into the game, there's so much alliance grind (and not much else) that I log right back out.

I really hope they don't continue to shove the KotOR copout, er throwback, on us for convos, but if they don't make this grind more alt friendly (like making influence legacy wide), I'll just include a link to my posting history about the alliance system as my reason for unsubbing.

[Degan]

I have ran two character through KotFE. One (My Main) I have done alliance up to 10, the other I haven't even bothered.

I got tired of doing heroics to build it up, so went to start unlocking the SF stuff. Once I saw what a grind that was also, and that I had to sit around spamming LFG for heroic SF, I just said the hell with it.

 

I have gone back to playing lowbie alts and will run them up to 60ish or until I need equipment over 190 rating and then play another one. I'll do this until they either fix the state of things or I get fed up with that and move on to another game.

[CorvusHD]

I recently became sub again after not playing a year but am struggling with fact that those chars not leveled more then 50 seem to have problems with the companions.

for instance,

- my counsular lost Nadia so can't even finish the classquest anymore.

- other disturbing thing (I didn't notice right away) None of my companions were wearing 'pants' and those they did wear are just gone. SWtor gave me the starting gear of each companion +5 mastery at level 50 looked rather laughwearthy...

- weapons were mostly gone...

Those tasks took up to an hour for each char (knowing I had 12 :s:s)

 

Now if anyone can give me the right tip how to get the companion back so I can finish my classquests that would be superb. Otherwise I'll probably have to start all over on another server loosing everything I worked so hard for in the past.

Thanks

[Nagamakii]

I despise (in all the deplorable and derogatory ways and terms possible) the new companions and my constant need to put up with "meatbag whining". I don't come to play diplomat between my companions. I come to play content storyarc and class missions. And whose Bright Idea was it to "lose" all of the old companions? I want Ashara back or Khem Val, preferably Both, for my Sith and my Padawan for my Jedi. Don't fix what isn't broke especially for the sake of a new story.

[Icestar]

I want Ashara back or Khem Val, preferably Both

 

Perhaps one day we will and I would absolutely want to get them back through the story in some future chapter.

[Daxer]

I have completed KOTFE on 4 characters (warrior, inquisitor, agent and bounty hunter) and gotten my main characters alliance to rank 20. I like a lot of stuff that you introduced in KOTFE but the alliance system is only so well, you don't really have anything interesting to do, all it is, is to do weekly heroics, hand in boxes, get rewards and repeat.

 

Maybe if it was voiced or maybe if with each rank you got a quest that gives you a good conversation with the specialist in question (kind of like you did with the voss girl) but more, like i would love to learn more about Hylo Viz, and I liked my BH's reference with Gault to Hylo and how she responded, more of that please!

 

I do realize all mmorpg's at their core are focused on grinding repetitive content. But I believe the trick is to make the grind not feel like a grind, like give it enough diversity to make it feel like you are not doing the exact same thing over and over again.

To do that maybe add another way to grind alliance influence, like KEEP the weekly heroics the way they are but also add another option something along the lines of (just spitballing here) spacecombat // exploration // flashpoints - ops // crafting // treasure hunting (maybe something along the lines of a couple of treasure maps on different planets that change every week OR just seeker droid // GSI (this could be an opportunity to incorperate the old GSI quests into the new expansion // incorperate old dailies ie. illum / black hole / section x dailies with alliance crates.

 

This was just a few ideas to make the repetitiveness of the current gameplay more diverse.

[TheSeventhJedi]

I have completed KOTFE on 4 characters (warrior, inquisitor, agent and bounty hunter) and gotten my main characters alliance to rank 20. I like a lot of stuff that you introduced in KOTFE but the alliance system is only so well, you don't really have anything interesting to do, all it is, is to do weekly heroics, hand in boxes, get rewards and repeat.

 

Maybe if it was voiced or maybe if with each rank you got a quest that gives you a good conversation with the specialist in question (kind of like you did with the voss girl) but more, like i would love to learn more about Hylo Viz, and I liked my BH's reference with Gault to Hylo and how she responded, more of that please!

 

I do realize all mmorpg's at their core are focused on grinding repetitive content. But I believe the trick is to make the grind not feel like a grind, like give it enough diversity to make it feel like you are not doing the exact same thing over and over again.

To do that maybe add another way to grind alliance influence, like KEEP the weekly heroics the way they are but also add another option something along the lines of (just spitballing here) spacecombat // exploration // flashpoints - ops // crafting // treasure hunting (maybe something along the lines of a couple of treasure maps on different planets that change every week OR just seeker droid // GSI (this could be an opportunity to incorperate the old GSI quests into the new expansion // incorperate old dailies ie. illum / black hole / section x dailies with alliance crates.

 

This was just a few ideas to make the repetitiveness of the current gameplay more diverse.

 

Well said.

[masterbushmaster]

yay, can't wait

[Blackwall]

So, let me get this straight. KotFE content consists mainly of grinding dailies to recover or unlock companions? Which you then have to grind content you don't want to do in order to level them up to where they were before you lost them all by accepting the Chapter 9 opening quest? And I'm guessing you do all this grinding you don't want to do without a companion because you have to grind to unlock a companion.

 

Someone explain to me why I would want to do this and what is fun about it.

[TheSeventhJedi]

So, let me get this straight. KotFE content consists mainly of grinding dailies to recover or unlock companions? Which you then have to grind content you don't want to do in order to level them up to where they were before you lost them all by accepting the Chapter 9 opening quest? And I'm guessing you do all this grinding you don't want to do without a companion because you have to grind to unlock a companion.

 

Someone explain to me why I would want to do this and what is fun about it.

 

I haven't figured it out yet - but if I stop scratching my head before I unsub, I'll let you know.

[Daxer]

So, let me get this straight. KotFE content consists mainly of grinding dailies to recover or unlock companions? Which you then have to grind content you don't want to do in order to level them up to where they were before you lost them all by accepting the Chapter 9 opening quest? And I'm guessing you do all this grinding you don't want to do without a companion because you have to grind to unlock a companion.

 

Someone explain to me why I would want to do this and what is fun about it.

 

No. Your old companions stay at the amount of affection you had with them before. HOWEVER. Before Kotfe max affection level was 10, it has now been raised to 50, which means you have 40 more levels of affection to go through with each companion.

[Icestar]

I would like to know if they intend to raise the alliance levels from 20 during the upcomming chapters.

 

The best would have been if they made the alliance legacy instead of character based, grinding the alliance with alts is actually not that fun.

[Rasinator]

I have completed KOTFE on 4 characters (warrior, inquisitor, agent and bounty hunter) and gotten my main characters alliance to rank 20. I like a lot of stuff that you introduced in KOTFE but the alliance system is only so well, you don't really have anything interesting to do, all it is, is to do weekly heroics, hand in boxes, get rewards and repeat.

 

Maybe if it was voiced or maybe if with each rank you got a quest that gives you a good conversation with the specialist in question (kind of like you did with the voss girl) but more, like i would love to learn more about Hylo Viz, and I liked my BH's reference with Gault to Hylo and how she responded, more of that please!

 

I do realize all mmorpg's at their core are focused on grinding repetitive content. But I believe the trick is to make the grind not feel like a grind, like give it enough diversity to make it feel like you are not doing the exact same thing over and over again.

To do that maybe add another way to grind alliance influence, like KEEP the weekly heroics the way they are but also add another option something along the lines of (just spitballing here) spacecombat // exploration // flashpoints - ops // crafting // treasure hunting (maybe something along the lines of a couple of treasure maps on different planets that change every week OR just seeker droid // GSI (this could be an opportunity to incorperate the old GSI quests into the new expansion // incorperate old dailies ie. illum / black hole / section x dailies with alliance crates.

 

This was just a few ideas to make the repetitiveness of the current game play more diverse.

 

I whole heartedly agree. After 3.0 I decided I'm NOT going to grind all my alts into one new expansion. I will only do this on one or 2 toons. I am not going to grind profusely into crates etc. only 1 toon will do that. But I think Bioware should incorporate the old dailies, weekly's, ops and FP's into KoTFE.

[TheSeventhJedi]

I whole heartedly agree. After 3.0 I decided I'm NOT going to grind all my alts into one new expansion. I will only do this on one or 2 toons. I am not going to grind profusely into crates etc. only 1 toon will do that. But I think Bioware should incorporate the old dailies, weekly's, ops and FP's into KoTFE.

 

I'm not even doing it on one toon - because what's the point?

Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that for a lot of things with 4.0.

[Dan_LT]

So, today I finished the first 9 chapters of KotFE.

 

First of all, I really loved the story, it's Bioware storytelling at its best. I like the new companions too, however I'm looking forward to get my old team back.

 

So everything was alright, and then BANG! Say hello to the "new" conversation system... I'm a huge KotOR fan, but come on! It was 10+ years ago and after 65 levels nobody wants to use that outdated silent-hero system with a boring camera angle. Huge step back especially after the great cutscenes that KotFE had :/

 

TLDR: Great story so far, but please keep using the fully voiced dialog wheel!

[Corszai]

I just want to throw my hat in with all the people voicing their disappointment about the lack of voice acting for Alliance content.

 

I understand that voice talent probably gets expensive with the volume of content this game offers, and that the amount of it that was done for the base game caused some financial difficulty in the early years. I understand that problem has probably only gotten worse since you started offering free-to-play options. But once voice is out, I'm left with content I could easily get from a number of other MMOs. For that reason, given the choice between having it unvoiced and not having it at all, I'd gladly choose the latter. Voice is far and away the biggest reason this is my favorite MMO. The genre is all about you identifying with this person you've created, and yet SWTOR is the only one that's ever made good on that promise—until now. I pre-ordered; I played in the beta. Not once did I wish I could have twice as many dialogue options at the expense of seeing my character as a living, breathing person.

 

If you have to cut that feature, at least don't try to spin it like you're doing us a favor. It isn't "classic", and even if it were, nobody was asking for "classic." We know it was a cost-cutting measure. At least be honest with us about that.

[Oteree]

removed post...there was just no point. Edited January 8, 2016 by Oteree

[Degan]

It never ceases to amaze me how many folks just like to ***** and moan. In reality, the solution is quite simple. If you don't like the FRELLING game, don't play it...! PLEASE...do everyone a HUGE favor and leave the game and find one you can like each and every detail of. And...Good luck with that.

 

My sincere heart felt thanks in advance.

 

I love the game....even though there are things that I might not be thrilled about. It is still a lot of fun overall. I plan on staying and enjoying the game, in spite of the whiners.

 

Really? Anyone who doesn't like every single thing in the game and share your thoughts on the game, they should leave? No one should express when they are not satisfied with a service they pay for?

[Oteree]

Classic Conversation Presentation: Terrible. Beyond terrible. Goes against what the User has been experiencing through hundreds of hours of gameplay. Adds literally nothing, as other BioWare games make it obvious you can fit more than three voice choices into a voiced conversation system. It is not true that the system allows you to give a much wider array of choices and potential outcomes, there is nothing about the old system that would not allow that, given a slight UI tweak. This is a massive, jarring step backwards, goes against immersion, goes against the flow of the regular game, and would be dealbreaking if it was not such a tiny part of the overall experience. "We want you to really feel immersed in this story, to feel like you are living in Star Wars...so we will take your voice away from time to time..." No, that does not follow, it does not support your premise. You are going to get a lot of negative backlash over this one, I think. It is going to really be jarring to Users, and going to really feel like it does not belong in a current gen game.

 

 

I absolutely agree with this. I love the game, but this one thing really needs to be changed. It does take away the immersion factor and that is a huge disappointment for those of us who love this VERY important part of the game. I am not complaining because I LOVE the game, just voicing an opinion for major improvement in the enjoyment factor. PLEASE BW, rethink this and give us back our voice!

[Oteree]

Really? Anyone who doesn't like every single thing in the game and share your thoughts on the game, they should leave? No one should express when they are not satisfied with a service they pay for?

 

Everyone has a right to suggest improvements. My point was the whiners who ***** about every thing in every expansion. You do know the type. That does not help anything and gets VERY annoying to read through each time you want to check the forums for some actual USEFUL information.

 

I don't like everything about the latest expansion, and have voiced it here on this forum. The voiceless Classic quest conversations are a total bummer. But to moan just for the sake of it...yeah. I stand firm on my opinion of that. And, I also understand that Opinions are like Arse-holes. Everyone has one but no two are exactly alike. I apologize if I came off as too harsh, but my eyes were beginning to burn from reading all the QQ'ing.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Oteree

[TX_Angel]

I whole heartedly agree. After 3.0 I decided I'm NOT going to grind all my alts into one new expansion. I will only do this on one or 2 toons. I am not going to grind profusely into crates etc. only 1 toon will do that. But I think Bioware should incorporate the old dailies, weekly's, ops and FP's into KoTFE.

 

It is much worse than that...

 

Level sync also removes almost all the reason to do any type of gearing beyond what 3.0 gave us, other than for 1 or 2 toons used for ops or HM content, and even then, meh...

 

What is the point of moving my gear past the 186/192 stuff from 3.0 when level sync makes it all pointless?

 

Doing ANYTHING other than end game stuff, your gear doesn't matter beyond that level.

[Holocron]

It is much worse than that...

 

Level sync also removes almost all the reason to do any type of gearing beyond what 3.0 gave us, other than for 1 or 2 toons used for ops or HM content, and even then, meh...

 

What is the point of moving my gear past the 186/192 stuff from 3.0 when level sync makes it all pointless?

 

Doing ANYTHING other than end game stuff, your gear doesn't matter beyond that level.

 

 

 

TX ╬ Angel

 

 

 

 

I wish you had something like that in your sig, so I could recognize your post more easily. I remember you being really active in the forums in the past, and just I thought you might have fallen off, but after checking your posting, it just seems I've been missing them. So yeah.....bigger brighter sig.......youz need it.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Holocron