Gravely disappointed.

[Drachehexe]

It was certainly one thing to read about all of the changes that were coming about for KotFE and to be hopeful all these changes were indeed for a better overall experience. It something completely different to have experienced these changes first hand and realize that all of your talk was just spin doctoring the truth of the matter: you've gone cheap. None of the major changes were to make the game better, it was to cut costs, make production as cheap as possible.

 

Taking away my characters voice and dynamic conversation screens wasn't to make conversations fuller, it was to cut the cost of voice actors out of your budget.

 

Adjusting my character's effective level based on the area/planet I am on wasn't to make it so I could join lower level friends in their level advancements or help me to keep on getting experience while revisiting past content. The level adjustment sole purpose is so you can reuse past content and not have to create new content. This is painstakingly obvious by the now insane number of missions that have us going back to just about every place we've already been to.

 

Even worse, returning to these planets consist of an unreasonable amount of traveling from one end of the planet to the other and back for arbitrary fetch quests. I find it incredibly annoying that your mission designers have come up with the only option to extend the amount of time a mission takes is making travel time as long as possible (ok it's not the ONLY option, just the CHEAPEST option and amateur game design at that) and throwing in illogical combat scenarios (4 chains lock a chest, break a chain, get in a fight, break another chain, get in a fight, etc). As if combat has any meaning now because companion healers pretty much make us undefeatable now.

 

Speaking of reusing content, I now seem to be going around and recruiting all the same companions I recruited on my other characters. Granted this is optional and it does offer some nifty little parts but ultimately is just busy work and empty busy work at that. This collecting allies feels more like just hiring new help for a restaurant sim then gathering elite forces to take on an evil empire. These recruitment missions consist of little more (there are exceptions of course) than "Hi, I need you for my alliance." - "Okay, fetch these two or three items that just happen to be crucial to your effort for me and I'll gladly die for you against this new empire." - "Okay, that was easy, thanks for trading your life to me for such a simple little task."

 

Is SWTOR in that bad of financial shape that you've had to strip the heart of the game out to save money? I haven't even mentioned taking away companion customizing and a few other things. Just my character losing her voice in conversations alone is depressing as hell.

 

R.I.P SWTOR.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Drachehexe

[Theik]

I don't agree on the voice over part.

 

All the story content has voice over, it's only the alliance part that has no voice over. And while I do agree that this is a bit of a cheap way out, and I am not a fan of the awkward conversation system they use in these alliance sections, I feel it is unfair to claim that this expansion "took away your character's voice".

 

I fully assume the story section of X will be voiced, and the alliance alerts that get added will not be.

[twpotter]

Aww....Need a hug?

[Kaedusz]

Taking away my characters voice and dynamic conversation screens wasn't to make conversations fuller, it was to cut the cost of voice actors out of your budget.

 

So what? You do realize that this is a massive Kotor nostalgiagasm?

[tmwfte]

Even worse, returning to these planets consist of an unreasonable amount of traveling from one end of the planet to the other and back for arbitrary fetch quests. I find it incredibly annoying that your mission designers have come up with the only option to extend the amount of time a mission takes is making travel time as long as possible...

 

Um...if you're talking about going back to planets, thereby talking about the Heroics, you know that there are instant travel buttons that take you directly to the area, right? Next to no travel time involved, *POOF* and you're there.

[JessieLoverRxE]

That's just the 'end game'...the voices will return once we're doing the actual chapters.

 

I'm honestly not that bugged by it, I'm more bugged about all the wonderful things they said about this silent system (the alliance). It wasn't more deep or immersive so far, it just had some nostalgia to it which isn't so bad actually, considering it doesn't take up much of KOTFE.

 

Doing heroics for the crates though? I'm not gonna lie, it's getting a bit old lol. I can (maybe) handle getting the alliance spec. to rank 20, but lets please not do this again.

 

 

*Edit* It's pretty awesome how they're giving us 20 CC's for each alliance specialist we reach rank 20 inf. with though. Or at least, I heard you get the CC's for it. Didn't come this far yet.

Edited December 1, 2015 by JessieLoverRxE

[Eksenia]

Travelling across planets is smoother and faster than ever (no CD qt, legacy travels, alliance quick travel, heroics quick travel).

 

Level sync is in place because the KotFE story is relevant for all planets - some stuff we have yet to see.

 

OP is just a bitter cynic. If you don't like it, quit. Personally, perhaps disregarding lack of new ops (which are coming anyways), I think the game has more relevant content than ever.

[Frenesi]

You are a bit late to the party. We are all out of wine at this point.

 

You also forgot "the one and only" storyline we are dealing with now. Makeb was 2 stories, and imperial line is in my personal top 5. Rishi gave us class quests, some of them very nice. This? Meh.

[StarMagus]

Um...if you're talking about going back to planets, thereby talking about the Heroics, you know that there are instant travel buttons that take you directly to the area, right? Next to no travel time involved, *POOF* and you're there.

 

Yeah, I don't get what they are even complaining about. Heroics and going to those quests is about the easiest thing in the world. In some cases you only have to take 2 steps forward and you are in the instance or can even target and instantly start blasting away at mobs in other cases.

[Damask_Rose]

So what? You do realize that this is a massive Kotor nostalgiagasm?

 

Which totally falls flat for those of us who never played Kotor. They are very unsatisfying.

[JessieLoverRxE]

Which totally falls flat for those of us who never played Kotor. They are very unsatisfying.

 

You should really play the 2 kotor games! They're still playable, and still very fun after all this time. (imo)

 

And of course they don't really cost as much as they used to.

Edited December 1, 2015 by JessieLoverRxE

[Icebergy]

So what? You do realize that this is a massive Kotor nostalgiagasm?

 

Just because something was in KOTOR does not mean that it is an improvement over what we already had, or even good.

[Icebergy]

Which totally falls flat for those of us who never played Kotor. They are very unsatisfying.

 

I love KOTOR and it still falls flat and is unsatisfying to me.

[Joesixxpack]

it was certainly one thing to read about all of the changes that were coming about for kotfe and to be hopeful all these changes were indeed for a better overall experience. It something completely different to have experienced these changes first hand and realize that all of your talk was just spin doctoring the truth of the matter: You've gone cheap. None of the major changes were to make the game better, it was to cut costs, make production as cheap as possible.

 

Taking away my characters voice and dynamic conversation screens wasn't to make conversations fuller, it was to cut the cost of voice actors out of your budget.

 

Adjusting my character's effective level based on the area/planet i am on wasn't to make it so i could join lower level friends in their level advancements or help me to keep on getting experience while revisiting past content. The level adjustment sole purpose is so you can reuse past content and not have to create new content. This is painstakingly obvious by the now insane number of missions that have us going back to just about every place we've already been to.

 

Even worse, returning to these planets consist of an unreasonable amount of traveling from one end of the planet to the other and back for arbitrary fetch quests. I find it incredibly annoying that your mission designers have come up with the only option to extend the amount of time a mission takes is making travel time as long as possible (ok it's not the only option, just the cheapest option and amateur game design at that) and throwing in illogical combat scenarios (4 chains lock a chest, break a chain, get in a fight, break another chain, get in a fight, etc). As if combat has any meaning now because companion healers pretty much make us undefeatable now.

 

Speaking of reusing content, i now seem to be going around and recruiting all the same companions i recruited on my other characters. Granted this is optional and it does offer some nifty little parts but ultimately is just busy work and empty busy work at that. This collecting allies feels more like just hiring new help for a restaurant sim then gathering elite forces to take on an evil empire. These recruitment missions consist of little more (there are exceptions of course) than "hi, i need you for my alliance." - "okay, fetch these two or three items that just happen to be crucial to your effort for me and i'll gladly die for you against this new empire." - "okay, that was easy, thanks for trading your life to me for such a simple little task."

 

is swtor in that bad of financial shape that you've had to strip the heart of the game out to save money? I haven't even mentioned taking away companion customizing and a few other things. Just my character losing her voice in conversations alone is depressing as hell.

 

R.i.p swtor.

 

.-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . - --- - .... . .--. .- .-. - -.-- .-- .... .- - . .-.. ... . .. ... -. . .--

[mrfurly]

*** is OP babbling about? You probably shouldn't start drinking this early in the morning.

 

Travel time? You can instantly travel to all the heroics now, all the speeder points are automatically unlocked, and your TP is on a 6 minute cooldown and can be lowered even further. If you are talking about going back and doing the quests you skipped my question is 'Why?' which I would follow up with 'It's no different than before.' I mean the level sync doesn't even come close to making the lower level content harder. I still one or two shot silver mobs on Tython heroic with my tank specd jedi shadow.

[Eldrenath]

Which totally falls flat for those of us who never played Kotor. They are very unsatisfying.

 

QFT. I never played KOTOR, so I find myself just annoyed by the alliance interaction system. I don't hate it and it's not a HUGE deal to me, I just find it kinda lame.

 

As for everything else the OP said, well...I still really enjoy playing SWTOR and likely will for the immediate future, but I can't say his points are invalid. The entire expansion is just a story (albeit a pretty darn good one) followed by a bunch of rehashed content. I mean its not even re-skinned content, it's literally the same content. The alliance system is a neat idea and is kinda fun. But since the entire thing revolves around grinding old content on old planets, I did the Alliance system for a few days and have already quit logging in except for ops nights twice a week. I've completely abandoned the alliance system since I don't really see any benefit to having multiple high-level companions. I have no intention of continuing with the alliance system, as I see absolutely no value in it. It is a grind for the sake of a grind. Leveling up alliance companions doesn't unlock any new story, they don't talk to you or reveal anything about themselves as you increase affection the way that the vanilla companions did. So I got one companion to mid 30s, another to mid 20s, and quit the alliance system.

 

In my opinion, there's no doubt that the entire purpose of level sync is so they could introduce the alliance system without any actual new content to go with it--just rehashed heroics.

[Audoucet]

So what? You do realize that this is a massive Kotor nostalgiagasm?

 

No, It is NOT.

[Malastare]

Ignoring --for a moment-- the laundry list of other questionable things said (Example: They've repeatedly said that voice actors aren't as expensive as people think... and not nearly as expensive as developer time is), I want to take some time to question the complaints about travel time:

 

Never in the history of SWTOR has travel been so easy.

 

From almost anywhere in the game, at almost any time during the game, I'm about 30 seconds away from being in my ship. Load Stronghold. Exit to Ship. Done.

 

I can quick travel every three to six minutes. Unless I've just used it to get somewhere to have one quick conversation, I usually have QT ready and waiting to put me somewhere convenient. Also, there are more QT points in the game, adding points for popular places that weren't near QT points before (inside the Senate Tower is a good example).

 

I can use the taxies to get to any taxi point I want without needing to unlock it. This even applies to the (formerly) quest-unlocked teleport pads on Belsavis.

 

Heroics no longer need to be turned in, saving you the travel back to the quest-giver/console to finish the quest.

 

Heroics now come with instant travel tokens, letting you travel to spots near their starts from anywhere in the game. If you just want to do Heroics, you can hop from one to the next without any need to do any open world travel.

 

You can pick up any Heroic you want at either Fleet or Odessen. This means you can stand at a console, grab all the heroics for a planet, teleport to those Heroics, get all the rewards, and teleport anywhere else, without ever having to step foot on your ship. As a bonus, if you have a need to go to some planet (and the quest doesn't require the ship travel transition), you can pick up a Heroic on that planet, teleport directly to the planet and then quick travel to the area you want to be in. Total travel time is about 10 seconds more than the time it takes your PC to load the planet.

 

All the Alliance quests have the option to "Travel to" the quest-giver location. The returns are either similarly set up, or allow you to use the collection of Alliance members on Odessen (ie: Travel to Sana Rae, Oggurobb, etc). Again, you can do a complete quest chain without ever getting on your ship.

 

So, what exactly is the complaint here?

 

Last night, I did the full set of Tatooine Heroics, along with the Tatooine Star Fortress and never once set foot on the Fleet, my ship, or any starport. I never took any taxis. I only used quick travel once. I never spent more than a minute or so on my speeder (travel time to the shield tower).

 

What part of that is excessive? That seems like almost too little travel.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Malastare

[Eldrenath]

Ignoring --for a moment-- the laundry list of other questionable things said (Example: They've repeatedly said that voice actors aren't as expensive as people think... and not nearly as expensive as developer time is), I want to take some time to question the complaints about travel time:

 

Never in the history of SWTOR has travel been so easy.

 

From almost anywhere in the game, at almost any time during the game, I'm about 30 seconds away from being in my ship. Load Stronghold. Exit to Ship. Done.

 

I can quick travel every three to six minutes. Unless I've just used it to get somewhere to have one quick conversation, I usually have QT ready and waiting to put me somewhere convenient. Also, there are more QT points in the game, adding points for popular places that weren't near QT points before (inside the Senate Tower is a good example).

 

I can use the taxies to get to any taxi point I want without needing to unlock it. This even applies to the (formerly) quest-unlocked teleport pads on Belsavis.

 

Heroics no longer need to be turned in, saving you the travel back to the quest-giver/console to finish the quest.

 

Heroics now come with instant travel tokens, letting you travel to spots near their starts from anywhere in the game. If you just want to do Heroics, you can hop from one to the next without any need to do any open world travel.

 

You can pick up any Heroic you want at either Fleet or Odessen. This means you can stand at a console, grab all the heroics for a planet, teleport to those Heroics, get all the rewards, and teleport anywhere else, without ever having to step foot on your ship. As a bonus, if you have a need to go to some planet (and the quest doesn't require the ship travel transition), you can pick up a Heroic on that planet, teleport directly to the planet and then quick travel to the area you want to be in. Total travel time is about 10 seconds more than the time it takes your PC to load the planet.

 

All the Alliance quests have the option to "Travel to" the quest-giver location. The returns are either similarly set up, or allow you to use the collection of Alliance members on Odessen (ie: Travel to Sana Rae, Oggurobb, etc). Again, you can do a complete quest chain without ever getting on your ship.

 

So, what exactly is the complaint here?

 

Last night, I did the full set of Tatooine Heroics, along with the Tatooine Star Fortress and never once set foot on the Fleet, my ship, or any starport. I never took any taxis. I only used quick travel once. I never spent more than a minute or so on my speeder (travel time to the shield tower).

 

What part of that is excessive? That seems like almost too little travel.

 

I agree with some of the OPs points, but I definitely agree with the above about travel. I've never played any MMO with faster, more convenient travel than SWTOR in its current state. There are some things I don't like about SWTOR at the moment, but travel is not one of them.

[Darklighter]

Nice book. Did anyone read it?

[Malastare]

Nice book. Did anyone read it?

 

I skimmed it for the major points.

 

Let me sum up:

 

• OP is sad that text conversations were created and supplied a wild guess as to why.
  
• OP is sad that KotFE uses existing Heroics in some quests, and supplies a wild guess as to why.
  
• OP is upset that he spends so much time traveling to missions on low level planets. Best guess here is that OP is either under the influence of alcohol, or (like the time he complained about tutorial mode) hasn't taken time to read the instructions supplied by the game about how travel can be almost entirely avoided.
  
• OP is confused about why companions are willing to join your cause. OP seems to have no such confusion about previous companions like Skadge, Talos, Broonmark, or Ashara who join you for ... er...
  
• OP is sad that there is no companion customization available.
  

 

There are a few valid points there, but on the whole, the arguments aren't well thought out.

[TUXs]

I skimmed it for the major points.

 

Let me sum up:

 

• OP is sad that text conversations were created and supplied a wild guess as to why.
  
• OP is sad that KotFE uses existing Heroics in some quests, and supplies a wild guess as to why.
  
• OP is upset that he spends so much time traveling to missions on low level planets. Best guess here is that OP is either under the influence of alcohol, or (like the time he complained about tutorial mode) hasn't taken time to read the instructions supplied by the game about how travel can be almost entirely avoided.
  
• OP is confused about why companions are willing to join your cause. OP seems to have no such confusion about previous companions like Skadge, Talos, Broonmark, or Ashara who join you for ... er...
  
• OP is sad that there is no companion customization available.
  

 

There are a few valid points there, but on the whole, the arguments aren't well thought out.

Oh wow...don't I feel stupid now...I misread the title as GRAVY and assumed it was a discussion about Thanksgiving...duh!

[JessieLoverRxE]

Oh wow...don't I feel stupid now...I misread the title as GRAVY and assumed it was a discussion about Thanksgiving...duh!

 

lmao!

Edited December 1, 2015 by JessieLoverRxE

[CrazyCT]

Would have made as much sense if he complained about his gravy.

[UTlNNl]

Oh wow...don't I feel stupid now...I misread the title as GRAVY and assumed it was a discussion about Thanksgiving...duh!

 

http://i.imgur.com/2LvxhIr.gif