Infernixx Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 I decided to take a few minutes and put down my thoughts regarding the new expansion. Having missed out on Early Access, the last two days has been my first real chance to get in there and try the new content. I won't be addressing any details of the story because the story deserves a post in and of itself and I don't want to spoil the story for anyone else who hasn't gone through it yet. These are a few things that consistently stick out at me. 1) Improved cut scenes. These are not the single-angle camera cut scenes that came with launch. They're dynamic, active, vibrant. The characters show all manner of emotion to go along with the voice acting. Further, the fight scenes are simply spectacular, especially one particular fight at a certain doomed spaceport. 2) Longevity. This is a 'huge' one for me. The story itself and the infrastructure of the new expansion just screams 'long term effort.' There all manner of little details in the story that make it very obvious that this story has been devised and designed as a long-term project. The fact that we have 'so' many companions now to work on Ranking up, along with the Alliance leaders themselves. The fact that certain unnamed parties are obviously being set up as future antagonists(and no, I'm not referring to Arcann or Vaylin.) The Emperor's...shift in demeanor and tone and possible intentions. All of this demonstrates a very long term plan for the story. In the SI story, I noticed that there were 'several' points where his pre-FE power base was mentioned and referred to in such a way as to hint that these elements may show themselves in the future. 3) The little details. Like hidden easter eggs in the Star Fortress and hidden lore bits within as well. 4) The quality of life improvements. One big one for me was the rewards you get from the Supply Crates. A metric 'ton' of Bind To Legacy gear that gives many options for the players in terms of looks. Plus! Unlike most BtL gear, this stuff can be 'vendored', making it easy and profitable to clean out your bags at the end of a run. Another example: the mounts. Mounts that drop from the Crates, like the Ice Cat, are common enough that BW actually made them vendorable for 25,000 credits. So you're no longer irritated by the appearance again of another mount you already own. When you're out there, working on getting local support from various worlds, you're not forced to go find a Heroic Mission terminal to get some Heroic quests. You get them straight from the Recruit NPC. No more running around. Speaking of which, I love that we can zip around the galaxy in moments thanks to the 'Transport to Contact' ability. 5) Flexibility. Say you're missing your companions and you don't like these new guys that they keep pushing at you. Great, there's a terminal that'll let you get them back immediately. Say there's a quest where you can recruit someone, but you need to hunt WBs. And for some reason, you hate WBs. Well, you can hunt champion mobs instead. Say you want to see the Star Fortress storylines all the way to the end, but you don't like grouping. Go solo it. That's an option. I could go on, but you get the gist. There's only a few things that bother me about FE content. 1) The PVP requirement on one particular Companion. I get that they want people to join Warzones, but I hate feeling like I'm being forced to PVP. I won't put any effort forth while doing so, I'll probably die a lot and cause my team to lose in many cases. If I wanted to PVP, I'd already be doing it. 2) I'd complain more about the lag on Odessan, but they're fixing that tomorrow. Moving on. All in all, I'm pleased with FE. I wish they'd talked sooner about the Alliance system, but I figure they felt like too much talk before the launch would spoil the story. As a final note, having done several H+2 Star Fortresses solo, to all the people who feel their particular Group Role is supreme and indispensable....A trained Akk Dog can do your job. I'm serious. An Akk Dog.
Jadescythe Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 1) Improved cut scenes. These are not the single-angle camera cut scenes that came with launch. They're dynamic, active, vibrant. The characters show all manner of emotion to go along with the voice acting. Further, the fight scenes are simply spectacular, especially one particular fight at a certain doomed spaceport. I'm not going to respond to your every point, but I largely agree with this part. The only thing I take issue with are the actual player controlled character reactions. While the NPCs have totally normal facial reactions, my character looked ridiculous anytime they tried to animate the face.
tcgtqu Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 (edited) 1) Improved cut scenes. These are not the single-angle camera cut scenes that came with launch. They're dynamic, active, vibrant. The characters show all manner of emotion to go along with the voice acting. Further, the fight scenes are simply spectacular, especially one particular fight at a certain doomed spaceport. . While it is good that the cutscenes have been greatly improved, I think that Bioware really needs to add more class flavour to the cutscenes. I mean, my toon is a Dark Lord of the Sith, so why did I get flung around like a non-force user in quite a number of cutscenes? Edited October 28, 2015 by tcgtqu
DimmuJanKaarl Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 I had been away since the beginning of last december, after having spendt a bit of time with SoR. Since SoR was largely same ol', same ol' for me (yes new story content but everything largely played through along the exact same paradigm as everything else) and I had been playing since launch other than one or two breaks, stopped playing because I simply didn't feel like I was getting the best bang for my buck. The mere thought of playing through the SoR content over and over and over again and have it all feel exactly the same as everything before it (though I still give a nod to Makeb etc. because that xpac certainly did feel unique for quite a while) was just too much to bear and as soon as I got through all of it, after spending maybe a week or so longer, I had to stop. 4.0 is quite simply a breath of fresh air. I'm thrilled about so many things in it, but most of all the changes that allow me to truly play at my own pace, and, for as much time in the game as I want, play much of it entirely on my own (though I will say "thank the maker" that I had already been sitting at valor 40 since time immemorial because I was pretty pissed when I saw a certain companion required us to have to do pvp). I actually feel like there's no need to even look at ultimate comms anymore (radiant crystals?) because I feel like not doing ops doesn't mean I'm missing out. I would much rather grind soloable heroics than bother with ops. Previously, it felt like not doing ops meant I wasn't doing anything at all. Now, I can focus my attention on leveling companions, getting each one to rank 50, and swapping them out whenever and wherever I want. In short, I can finally play the game *I* want to play it and not feel like I'm completely missing out and/or running out of things to do. Time will tell whether I continue to feel the same way, but right now I'm cautiously optimistic, and with the cadence of updates I'm hearing about (provided that they continue to roll out QoL improvements and more features along with the additional story content) I think I'll be pretty happy for a long time.
Dbohrius Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 This. So much this. I don't feel this engaged to a videogame since the Mass Effect series. Each companion story is wonderful (my favorite so far being Senya). The sheer amount of things to do after Chapter IX, and how they meshed with previous content to make it relevant is great. I feel like coming anew to the game.
TX_Angel Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 2) Longevity. This is a 'huge' one for me. The story itself and the infrastructure of the new expansion just screams 'long term effort.' There all manner of little details in the story that make it very obvious that this story has been devised and designed as a long-term project. The fact that we have 'so' many companions now to work on Ranking up, along with the Alliance leaders themselves. That was my first thought as well, but on reflection, there are two problems with it.... 1. It becomes obvious grind really, really fast, for no benefit other than a number on a window. Since every companion is exactly the same other than their appearance, you really have no need to max them all out, even for crafters. 2. Alliance isn't legacy-wide. This is the most alt-unfriendly release since the legacy system came out way back in 1.2. The game really, really wants you to play just a single toon now. They go and raise the server limit to 40, then come out with a non-legacy based Alliance system. There *appears* to be a lot to do, until you start to do it, then it is just a whole lot of fetch quests to places you've been, that don't show any reflection of 5 years of war passing. Doing the mission on Yavin was really jarring, since the Imp and Pub bases are still there, the weekly is still there. In the same place that I have to recruit a companion and doing a mission for Alliance, I can go fight Revan again. --- To be blunt, KotFE feels like a new game that was patched onto an existing game, they don't belong together. Imagine if you could take your Mass Effect 2 toon back to ME1, and move between the worlds on a whim. That would be silly of course, as is this. What WOULD have made sense would be to forever lockout the old world, to make copies of the various planets and dress them up for the "new situation", and simply move your toon forever forward in time. Of course that causes MMO problems since how do you group with friends, but the existing situation is cheap and immersion breaking.
TX_Angel Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 This. So much this. I don't feel this engaged to a videogame since the Mass Effect series. Each companion story is wonderful (my favorite so far being Senya). The sheer amount of things to do after Chapter IX, and how they meshed with previous content to make it relevant is great. I feel like coming anew to the game. It will be interesting to see if that holds a month from now. Today this is all still new. Will it still seem like there is a lot "to do" in a month? Maybe so, time will tell...
Dbohrius Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 (edited) Well, considering that (for me, at least) Flashpoints, Heroics and Conquests are a thing again, I'd say I'm pretty much busy for quite some time with this game. EDIT: 2. Alliance isn't legacy-wide. This is the most alt-unfriendly release since the legacy system came out way back in 1.2. The game really, really wants you to play just a single toon now. They go and raise the server limit to 40, then come out with a non-legacy based Alliance system. Yeah, that one I agree with. I can't say if a Legacy-wide alliance is the way to go, though, given that there's only one "canonical" Outlander, but indeed it's just too much to do on 8+ characters. My approach so far is to do 1 Pub and 1 Imp, and level other characters as time allows. Edited October 28, 2015 by Dbohrius
iacon Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 (edited) 1) The PVP requirement on one particular Companion. I get that they want people to join Warzones, but I hate feeling like I'm being forced to PVP. I won't put any effort forth while doing so, I'll probably die a lot and cause my team to lose in many cases. If I wanted to PVP, I'd already be doing it. Given that those that had the companion before (Trooper for M1-4X and Warrior for Pierce) do not have to PVP to get them, it does not really bother me that this one optional companion has a PVP requirement. The completionist in me got me to grind out a mix of wins and losses for the 20 count (wins count x2, btw) on 1 toon, but since I only PVP on that toon I will not be getting 4X on any alts. Oh well, that's the way things go. And honestly, too many people go in with the attitude that they are terrible and are going to lose. Instead, try going in with the attitude of doing their best and maybe getting a win out of it. It is the same as doing Ops and Flashpoints. Everyone starts not knowing anything, but that does not mean lay down and not give it your best shot. So, play 20 or win 10 or any combination in between. Warzone comms are actually worth something, too. Get some pretty nice SH deco from the vendor in the SH section of the station. Edited October 28, 2015 by iacon
therandyman Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 I pretty much agree with the entire OP. I've run the nine chapters on one character, and I'm about halfway through them on a second. Neither PvP nor endgame PvE nor Events are my thing, so anything requiring participation in those is off my radar. (Yes, I know that World Bosses are not strictly endgame PvE. I also killed trophies on Hoth instead.) "Incentivizing" participation in those activities will be, I suspect, generally* unpopular and generally* ineffective at increasing participation in those activities. *For values of "generally" that include both "exceptions exist" and "the plural of anecdote is not data".
Recommended Posts