LastBrood Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Who knows, maybe they will make a big comeback like ESO in a couple of years. Haven't played it myself but since a lot of people are posting about how good the game become, its probably good so hopefully SWTOR will get a similar chance soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aieranda Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 They launched with it, the game was popular, I yet to hear a single person who hated the class stories, because they were good quality and offered choices (let's now compare to KotFE/KotET), it was not the reason people kept leaving, but because they forgot the MMO leg of the game. Let me help you out there. You've heard of someone who hated those stories now. The class stories were exposed as terrible by double and 12x XP events and by the DvL event. It disassociated them with planetary stories if you did only class stories. The best example is probably Sith Inquisitor. In no way is it good whatsoever, and I'm sure a lot of people are shocked anyone could say Inquisitor was bad because it's often cited around here somewhere in the top half of the eight stories. SPOILERS - The biggest moment in it is the betrayal, and you can see it coming miles away because... duh, Sith betray! The rest of the story, when played straight through without masking it in the simultaneous illusion of the faction story on each planet basically boils down to this - 1. Committee meetings with your crew 2. Being completely naive in the manner you explore sith tombs to the point that THE SAME THING keeps happening to you and only Deus Ex Forch Ghost stepping in to save you is the reason you live, repeatedly. This scenario happens again with slight modification when you rush to face Thanatos and your "apprentices" save you instead. Is rushing to face things you don't understand part of Star Wars (sure - Luke), but it's just lazily executed here and is dull when playing class story back to back to back to back. SPOILERS over 3. Hero plot armor - It applies to all classes and it's not a spoiler to say so because it's obvious - this is an MMO. You respawn, you don't "die" and reload. This is ESPECIALLY the case for the idiotic decisions the Sith Inquisitor frequently is forced to make amidst 3 horribly dumb tree choices) - if you are stupid or arrogant (frequently all the class story heroes/anti-heroes are), there are zero consequences compared to if you are a saint or humble (or vice versa regarding consequences if you think the Empire would consequence the heck out of a light side user). This is BECAUSE it is an MMO. You can't die and reload from the last save. You have to respawn instead and the game world can't truly be altered by your choices, because thousands of other players picked differently than you. For this one reason alone (an MMO is multiplayer open world and single player is not), no MMO story will EVER equal the possible heights of the greatest single player game stories. The fact this is an MMO also prevents some pretty obvious choices from being put on the table at all during those stories. Nearly all choice moments in those stories come do to 1 Spare/Save, 2 Shrug, 3 Kill/Destroy. The first time through, the stories were ok (not good or even great), because they were intertwined with the faction planetary stories that you practically needed to do at launch to keep your XP and gear gains going enough to actually beat end chapter bosses. There was an illusion that the class stories fit into broader galactic events, but that's actually not the case. None of them really grabbed me (not even the "sacred around these parts" imperial agent "story"). I felt Knight was the closest to original KotOR experience, obviously. But on replays that focused solely on the class stories, I found them all to be ultimately terrible as stories go. None of them would make my top 10 of video game stories, and none of them deserve the Bioware sticker-reputation they have for just being made by Bioware. The stories did not live up to the brand reputation, which is why I now consider (among other real world reasons and these last two expansions) Bioware storytelling to be nothing more than an empty marketing tag at present. That's not to say there are not a few good moments in most of them. That's not to say that they don't deepen a lot of lore for Star Wars (new lore usually being what most Star Wars fans confuse good story to be). And really, the starter worlds are the best parts of many stories. I think Bioware really NAILED it on the starter worlds. For some reason, I still look forward to rolling through Tython or Hutta, for example. But after that, things fall apart quickly for every class and class-only focused replays expose all of them as weak, with repetitive dialogue, that rely HEAVILY on STAR WARS lore to get lots of people to think they are good. In the end, I think the hands down best stories in this game were the Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, Boarding Party, and Foundry Flashpoints, followed closely by the Ilum arc with Malgus (including the Flashpoints). And even those fall a little short because they are railroaded results in order to protect the MMO base world and future use or non-use of those characters to all players in a standard way. You can't take a second or third option with them... you MUST end up at the place the railroad demands. That's no more a "choice" than the choices in KotFE/KotET. Most people just don't notice it, however, because they think they just completed a class-based choice-fest that defines nothing in terms of long term game world results other than your personal preference for your characters personality. In the short term do some characters (NPCs) live and others die? Sure. But any that had that choice in any part of this game are effectively dead to the game world and future use because SOME players might have killed them where others spared them. That's not choice. That's an illusion, and in this day and age it is a tired one, at that. Nearly everything else has been unremarkable at best. Dread Masters had potential, but their evil was too shallow and generically psychotic to make them interesting (and screen time far too brief to be anything other than shallow). Plus for a lot of people the full arc was gated behind ops. Now I didn't find accessing that story and gating it like that to be a problem personally, but I know others did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abulica Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 It is the front runner for producing story in the MMO genre. No other MMO comes close to it. Sure you have RPGs that have more story but they don't regularly put out new content. Even in the same franchise you have to wait generally at least 4 years between games (ie The Witcher series or Dragon Age). Most of the promotional material for SWTOR has always been about the story. If people came into the game expecting something different, that's on them. We need to stop expecting every MMO to be the same as WOW. Look, I would like Bioware to provide new group content and that is what they are planning to focus on next year. I do however think that Story is the most vital component to this MMO and hope they keep up the quality on that front. Have you actually tried other mmos? Because Kotxx got nothing on FFXIV's Heavenward xpac. That is good mmo storytelling and SE still has new group content with every story patch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benets Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Do nothing do nothing get old content and post as new do nothing do nothing get old content and post as new do nothing change name of old content system to a fancy names and call it new system/expansion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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