What would need to happen for a paid expansion

[Aeneas_Falco]

If there is an expansion that is locked behind a paywall it should be accessible to subscribers either without any extra fee, or at a greatly reduced rate. A monthly subscription should count for something.

 

It's fair however for F2P and Preferred to be asked to pay full price for the expansion, or be locked out.

[Suzsi]

I reckon most people would pay for a makeb/rishi type expansion with a planet, a couple different faction storylines, a little class story and some group content.

 

It isn't an issue of what they'd have to do to get me to pay them more money. I'm more interested in what is stopping bioware from developing something I could give them money for.

 

Only if companions are involved, otherwise i would just ignore it as I did Makeb and SoR. No companion involvement in stories is a deal breaker for me. Came back for Kotfe/Kotet which includes interactions with companions again ( some new, some old).

 

Im fine paying full expansion cost, no reason it should be reduced for sub. A subs to pay for existing content not new content.

Edited September 30, 2017 by Suzsi

[olagatonjedi]

Sorry, this title doesn't quiet represent what I wanted to ask because I couldn't fit it all in and not make it look cumbersome.

 

What it should say it -

 

What would Bioware need to do to get you to pay real money for a proper expansion like games used to have and some still do?

A couple ops, clicky items (like Everquest used to have - various collectable, farmable, rare clickable buff items), and remove publically visible/linkable achievements.

[Signalights]

Sadly, changing the engine would be a major overhaul. As you and others may know, SWTOR uses a heavily customized alpha version of hero engine.

The reality is "fixing" or "upgrading" the engine would mean to basically recode the entire game to use the latest stable release of hero engine or another gaming engine. That's a ton of work. It's basically asking them to pull a Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn on SWTOR.

 

Would it be cool? Of course!!! Is it in the realm of possibility? It doesn't look like it. It would take a major investment on BW/EA's part, and it looks like they're not willing to invest that much money into a game that failed to accomplish its mission back in late 2011/early 2012, which was "Be a WoW killer", which to be honest was a very, very difficult, ambitious if not impossible goal.

 

I actually think that is what they should be aiming for at this point. The old portions of the game are too buggy and inconsistent in how they work, and in a major need of a major overhaul. There is no such thing as old content to new players, and we want to encourage new players to keep coming, and saying with us, and stop quitting the game after they see how shoddy so much of it is, and has been for years.

 

For example, having the main loading screens still stuck on Makeb and FE/ET cards, as the Bad Feeling guys have pointed out, just for starters is a problem. There is no excuse for that except sheer laziness, and updating this and other things like long-standing bugs that even still exist in the class story quests, that make it so you can't complete the quests without looking up work-arounds online is long, long overdue.

 

How about let's get Valyn's ugly face off the launcher while we're at it, too? She's long dead now, so let's move on, already. It should be Theron's face up there now, not hers. How hard can that be to change? But instead of making changes that matter to the players, even little stuff like that, they waste their time updating shadows that don't make any noticeable difference except maybe by giving you more lag.

 

Plenty of other games that are even older than this one still put forth the effort to keep that kind of stuff updated with every new expansion they put out, so their game doesn't look like a bag of ***. Of course if you're not charging for your expansions, then what incentive do you have to advertise them by updating your launcher and loading screens with the relevant content artwork?

 

Musco said in his most recent interview that updating stuff in the old sections of the game will be hard, because he basically admitted the current dev team doesn't know what the hell they are doing with the code for the older content. Hence why somehow installing a new flashpoint broke the CXP values of old daily quests on unrelated planets. Well, better get to learning it then, guys. It's your job. And if that means we have to start paying more to get the job done right, then so be it. You get what you pay for, and I'm tired of getting literal crap for free.

Edited September 30, 2017 by Signalights

[Totemdancer]

If there is an expansion that is locked behind a paywall it should be accessible to subscribers either without any extra fee, or at a greatly reduced rate. A monthly subscription should count for something.

 

It's fair however for F2P and Preferred to be asked to pay full price for the expansion, or be locked out.

 

I disagree. You get what you pay for and you can see what we've been getting with that sort of system.

The most successful MMO is Warcraft and they use a sub + paid expansion model. You cannot access any of the expansion if you do not pay for it.

[Totemdancer]

A couple ops, clicky items (like Everquest used to have - various collectable, farmable, rare clickable buff items), and remove publically visible/linkable achievements.

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by this - "remove publically visible/linkable achievements"

[GalacticKegger]

A return to the game's state and condition when we paid for expansions and felt we got our Star Wars MMORPG money's worth. As unfortunate as it may be, the wonderful ideas this thread produces (other than ideas that align with the game's current direction) will fall on deaf ears because whoever has the chokehold on this game lacks the stones to go back to what made this game great and retained the most subscribers.

 

KotFE killed SWTOR's brand & identity, and KotET buried it. If SWTOR survives it will be as a RPG/co-op console port imo ... because a return to its true roots simply won't happen.

Edited September 30, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[lironBD]

I want the alliance removed completely and renamed as "Power Base", then back to imps vs pubs and replace both faction leaders with some more capable people like Jadus as new Emperor of the sith.

[docbenwayddo]

Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by this - "remove publically visible/linkable achievements"

 

My guess is he doesn't like genchat jokes with the punny achievement name linking and doesn't like people being able to check what he has done in game via target and right-click menu on the target orb.

[Leadplayer]

Why not we paid for expansions in the past. Revan Xpac being one that most of us pre-ordered. If they released content atleast as good as 3.0 yea I would pay, did in the past. But again atleast what 3.0 gave in content.

[MingusPho]

I'd pay for any of the following:

 

1) real space combat, off the rails, custom ships, with group pve content

 

2) A complete planet that includes continuation of the class stories, an operation, a flashpoint, heroics, and daily areas.

 

3) real speeder racing with customizable speeders and dedicated tracks complete with some kind of mechanic like jumps and temporary speed boosts.

 

4) a revamp of in game drops. Better loot rewarded for playing the game.

 

5) a revamp of the stronghold feature to include click to sit furniture, replacement of the current hook system with something that makes sense. Plus the addition of smaller apartment style strongholds on all the planets.

 

6) evolving dungeons for flashpoints and heroics so the content doesnt get so stale so quickly.

 

ANY of those things.

[Totemdancer]

My guess is he doesn't like genchat jokes with the punny achievement name linking and doesn't like people being able to check what he has done in game via target and right-click menu on the target orb.

 

People still check that ?

More importantly, why care if they do ?

[docbenwayddo]

People still check that ?

More importantly, why care if they do ?

I dunno.

I always forget it exists until I go to check a friends crafting recipes from the same right click context menu.

I can only guess they care because people have used it to exclude them from some activity or call them out on less than accurate claims about content they haven't touched.

[olagatonjedi]

Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by this - "remove publically visible/linkable achievements"

Achievement linking, and more importantly achievement requirements, have segregated the population so that players are not willing to run certain ops unless you have it. This creates a circular problem whereas players complain that nobody is available to run HM and NIM ops, but when players are available, they choose not to invite them because they dont hold a specific achievement. The players have devolved the game to a point where learning curves are no longer acceptable, and imo, that is bad for the game. Even those players had to learn the fights at some point.

 

That said, I understand some people dont want to have the chance at wiping over and over and want to hand pick people who they can verify have beaten certain fights, but at what cost? Again, there is a benefit and consequence for every decision/change to the game.

[Totemdancer]

Achievement linking, and more importantly achievement requirements, have segregated the population so that players are not willing to run certain ops unless you have it. This creates a circular problem whereas players complain that nobody is available to run HM and NIM ops, but when players are available, they choose not to invite them because they dont hold a specific achievement. The players have devolved the game to a point where learning curves are no longer acceptable, and imo, that is bad for the game. Even those players had to learn the fights at some point.

 

That said, I understand some people dont want to have the chance at wiping over and over and want to hand pick people who they can verify have beaten certain fights, but at what cost? Again, there is a benefit and consequence for every decision/change to the game.

 

Ok, fair enough.

I've been on the receiving end of that bias on my second account. Even though I had cleared everything they were asking, they still wouldn't let me join.

Plus if you do happen to be new, how are you going to learn if no one will let you join? It becomes the cat chasing its tail.

I remember my partner wanting to join a raid we were going to do and the raid leader wouldn't let her because she hadn't done it before and she only had Ranked pvp gear at the time. It was only SM too and they were being all elitist. I eventually talked them into letting her join because one of our healers had to go. She then went on to out heal the other healers in top gear and no one died for the rest raid.

I was very proud of her because she didn't say anything to them when they were being *****, she just let her ability talk for her. After woulds they said she could join anytime because she was such a good healer, which made me laugh because she hates healing and rarely played it in pvp or pve.

I know it was on a SM raid and it wasn't hard at all. But that attitude permeates from the top to the bottom with in the elitist circles. It's not much different to some of the the toxic Ranked pvp players.

On the flip side, it can get very annoying trying to take people through raids who haven't done them and won't listen. It's one of the reason groups ask people to know the ops beforehand and have the right gear. So it works both ways.

[LordFell]

For me... I'd like to see them take a bunch of the stuff they have evolved the game into... pick the good stuff, revamp the trash... and start over again with SWTOR II.

 

...The game needs a new engine. There are a lot of visual bugs that really show the games age. There's also a lot of really minor, but persistent, and consequently aggravating bugs in game that they just can't seem to quash.

 

I think that the idea of setting a companion to different roles kind of works, but maybe not entirely. It might be good to give companions two possible roles each (like most classes have two roles) and make them a bit more unique. Even if you make your Sith an Assassin-Tank does it really make sense for Khem Val to be a Healer? Maybe give him a DPS with a "force feast" power that heals him and you.

 

One of the things that I feel they failed at was Level Scaling. Lower level planets are too easy, and comparatively, the higher level planets are "too" hard (I mean, not really, but in comparison to a level 20 planet, a level 50 planet is a lot harder).

...companion scaling, also, is screwed up. If I'm running in a Tank role, my DPS or Healing role companion has more health than I do. That makes no sense.

 

If Macrobinocular Quests are going to be a thing... and continue to be a thing, then the macrobinoculars we have should always be the ones we use... we regularly stumble on new quests where we use a similar device that comes from a quest giver... but we can't just use the ones we're assigned when we first pick up the Macrobinocular quest line.

...with level scaling, it would make sense to give these to players early, and use them throughout the planets.

 

Bioware/EA got yelled at hard and often until they introduced same-sex romance options for players. My fem Sniper would totally have romanced Kaliyo, and will when I bring her into KotFE... but it just won't be the same.

 

Lastly... and this is the big thing. Both for players going "YES!!!!" and for Bioware/EA looking at budgets and going "oh, er, no...." initially, we had 4 story lines Impside and Pubside. This was the glory days, the golden era. Then, they went from one story per class, to one story per faction. Now there's only one faction, and one story. The more stories, the better. Of course, the more stories, the more quests need to be made, the more writing needs to be done, the more money needs to go into the development. But... we all know this is what made the game great.

[orangenee]

Ok, fair enough.

I've been on the receiving end of that bias on my second account. Even though I had cleared everything they were asking, they still wouldn't let me join.

Plus if you do happen to be new, how are you going to learn if no one will let you join? It becomes the cat chasing its tail.

I remember my partner wanting to join a raid we were going to do and the raid leader wouldn't let her because she hadn't done it before and she only had Ranked pvp gear at the time. It was only SM too and they were being all elitist. I eventually talked them into letting her join because one of our healers had to go. She then went on to out heal the other healers in top gear and no one died for the rest raid.

I was very proud of her because she didn't say anything to them when they were being *****, she just let her ability talk for her. After woulds they said she could join anytime because she was such a good healer, which made me laugh because she hates healing and rarely played it in pvp or pve.

I know it was on a SM raid and it wasn't hard at all. But that attitude permeates from the top to the bottom with in the elitist circles. It's not much different to some of the the toxic Ranked pvp players.

On the flip side, it can get very annoying trying to take people through raids who haven't done them and won't listen. It's one of the reason groups ask people to know the ops beforehand and have the right gear. So it works both ways.

 

I don't even try PUGs with ops, my GM runs ops with another guild as most of our guildies are keyboard mutes. So I tag along with them. Especially as I'm learning to tank as there's not many ways to lrn2tank in solo stuff.

 

I'd never try pugging them, FPs are bad enough.

[LunaticFringer]

I'd say the biggy for me is...

 

They have to confirm they're getting more staff to develop the game or outsourcing to a known studio that has prior experience with mmorpgs that knows how to work with the game engine.

 

I guess that's really an either or thing... but it'd take that. I have to see that money is going into game development here and not more crap for the Cartel Market that isn't even new... but mostly reskins of old armor.

 

I'd like to see it happen though. That'd mean they really want the game to last for as long as the remaining EA contract.