The big surprise in the upcoming roadmap?

[Totemdancer]

Can't wait for the mount of those boss with the NiM version

 

All I can picture is the end of Dead Pool and the Unicorn horn.. damn I just added a Mr Potato head to that image

🥔 + 🦄 = a funny looking mount 😉

[psandak]

I am not usually one to speculate because speculation leads to expectations and exceptions invariably lead to disappointment. Do I have a wish list of what I want to see? absolutely. But I do not expect those wishes to ever come true. Therefore when they do I am happier than most.

 

That said, it could be:

• server merges (to those who fear being merged into high pop when you do not want it, maybe they have figured out how to include previously non-transferable assets into a transfer, so server mergers are not forced but those who have been holding out because they want their guild assets to transfer might have a way to do it)
  
• or companions we do not expect to return (like Jaesa or Kira)
  
• or a "full"/"proper" expansion (several planets of story, many small group [AKA FP/Uprising] encounters, new PvP (WZ, arena and maybe even GSF, and a new op [yes in addition to the current trickle of machine gods])
  

 

Do I expect all or any of this? No. But here's to speculation...let the expectations grow

[Sarova]

a Code that you have to grind a flashpoint 50 times for which then unlocks the Ability to purchase it from your Legacy using Cartel Coins

Fixed that for you

[Jagaimee]

They are going to unveil two new bosses:

 

Darth Spuds, the eternal pessimist, will represent the dark side of the force and we will fight a giant Mr. Potatohead.

 

Yiliarus, the eternal optimist, will represent the light side of the force and we will fight a giant smiling unicorn.

 

Duh,

 

Dasty

 

Don't forget the Knights of Eternal Quinnmancing: a legion of Sith warriors all decked out in purple Imperial uniforms. Their special ability is Overwhelming Squee, which fashions Malavai Quinn's name into a projectile and hurls it at players to stun them for 10 seconds with the sheer force of fangirling.

 

[points at signature] Yes I am a proud Quinnmancer.

 

A'righty, joking aside... I do hope the surprise is along the lines of class stories, however short they may be, preferably with individual companions returning. I adored the class stories in Shadow of Revan; they added wonderful different perspectives to the same story, and tied off a lot of loose ends from the original class stories (whatever happened to General Garza? Was the Wrath ever going to know what the Emperor's up to? We never got to see the Inquisitor doing Dark Council-y things.... and now with these short class stories, we do).

[orangenee]

Malgus is free and Marr is reborn and you play as them conducting a genocide on Zakuul and Iokath erasing the planets from existence forever.

[Paulsutherland]

Malgus is free and Marr is reborn and you play as them conducting a genocide on Zakuul and Iokath erasing the planets from existence forever.

 

You fool - we can force the Zakuulians into the Sith Empire's army as Cannon Fodder, we can scrap Iokath to rebuild the fleet ... then invade Coruscant!

[Lunafox]

Don't forget the Knights of Eternal Quinnmancing: a legion of Sith warriors all decked out in purple Imperial uniforms. Their special ability is Overwhelming Squee, which fashions Malavai Quinn's name into a projectile and hurls it at players to stun them for 10 seconds with the sheer force of fangirling.

 

[points at signature] Yes I am a proud Quinnmancer.

 

A'righty, joking aside... I do hope the surprise is along the lines of class stories, however short they may be, preferably with individual companions returning. I adored the class stories in Shadow of Revan; they added wonderful different perspectives to the same story, and tied off a lot of loose ends from the original class stories (whatever happened to General Garza? Was the Wrath ever going to know what the Emperor's up to? We never got to see the Inquisitor doing Dark Council-y things.... and now with these short class stories, we do).

 

New class stories/continuations are always welcome I'm not holding my breath, but just in case...the overwhelming SQUEE is powering up! *points at siggy*

[orangenee]

You fool - we can force the Zakuulians into the Sith Empire's army as Cannon Fodder, we can scrap Iokath to rebuild the fleet ... then invade Coruscant!

 

Cannon fodder will be covered by Alderaan. You may have a point about Iokath though.

[DenariusJay]

They are going to unveil two new bosses:

 

Darth Spuds, the eternal pessimist, will represent the dark side of the force and we will fight a giant Mr. Potatohead.

 

Yiliarus, the eternal optimist, will represent the light side of the force and we will fight a giant smiling unicorn.

 

Duh,

 

Dasty

 

Darth spuds boss will feature two drops: an unlock for a companion called "Grumpy Pants" who makes sneering remarks during combat like "My sub expires in a month if we don't kill something" or "Time to kill some enemies before my sub expires!" or upon death "Unsubbed."

 

His mount drop will be giant version of Grumpy Cat.

[Gelious]

Guys. you HAVE to remember: it's bioware we talking about. Their take on surprises is vastly different then that of usual players. I bet its something like:

 

- another CM companion

 

- DvL DS Companion on CM

 

- Shroud of Memory on CM

[Paulsutherland]

another 100 levels to the CXP grinder?

[Lunafox]

Guys. you HAVE to remember: it's bioware we talking about. Their take on surprises is vastly different then that of usual players. I bet its something like:

 

- another CM companion

 

- DvL DS Companion on CM

 

- Shroud of Memory on CM

 

Yes...most likely. You're right. Or this:

another 100 levels to the CXP grinder?

[orangenee]

Guys. you HAVE to remember: it's bioware we talking about. Their take on surprises is vastly different then that of usual players. I bet its something like:

 

- another CM companion

 

- DvL DS Companion on CM

 

- Shroud of Memory on CM

 

I'll adjust one of those.

 

Shroud of Memory FREELY AVAILABLE FREE for all people who weren't here that one day, for 5 minutes.

 

That should get the sodium flowing nicely.The tears will sustain me for the next year.

 

With regards to the Darth Spuds boss, he gets a Referral Link revive when he dies. This also increases his enrage status by 100%.

Edited September 30, 2017 by orangenee

[SourOrange]

I've learned to be a pessimist as far as the Dev/BW "big" announcements are as their idea of big and exciting is completely different to mine.

Unless they are doing all of the following:

• bringing back class based stories
  
• giving us a side story each for Malavai Quinn & Elara Dorne (to make up for the shower of ***** that was their lacklustre and nonsensical Iokath return)
  
• bringing an end to the constant betrayal storylines (they are hurtful and disappointing at best when not immediately resolved)
  
• removing Lana as the centre of the story and putting the player character back in that role
  
• bringing back a crystal type system of gearing
  
• removing all remaining alliance alerts for people who have completed KotFE/KotET (or at least giving us the option to remove them)
  
• allowing us to abandon all ops quests (I'm pointing at you Iokath) if we don't run ops OR allowing some kind of alternate if you're a solo player like they did for Yavin
  
• Fixing Malavai Quinn's stronghold decoration pose to his original model
  

then I'm not interested or holding my breath for anything "big" that will make me throw money at the game for another two months when my current sub is up.

 

I agree with all of this but I bolded one part in particular that I wish they would do (or rather, stop doing). Not only are those stories hurtful, but we're down to precious few "main" companion characters as it is- and when they add some kind of "betrayal" in a story you can bet that there'll be a throng of people clamouring to have that character dead.

 

When that happens, the character becomes something akin to a living ghost- they're present, for those that chose not to kill them, but story-wise, they may as well not exist anymore. That's not fun for anyone. The people who killed them will complain that developer time is being wasted on a "dead" character, and the people who chose for them to live will get nothing but table scraps from there on.

 

I don't think allowing players to make a choice on companions' lives was ever a good idea in the first place, specifically because of this limbo. If they wanted to excommunicate that companion from their operations, fine. If they wanted to have an option to flat out ignore the character for the rest of the story, fine. If they wanted to send the character to work somewhere else so they never had to see them, fine. But death is a very permanent story choice, and it doesn't only affect the person who made that decision. The decision even existing is the problem.

 

Normally I am all for more options, I want everyone to be able to play the game how they want- but Bioware does not have the developer power to support those sorts of forks in the story right now. And to me, people being unable to satiate a desire to erase a character is less important than more content with a character for those who like them. You can ignore or roll your eyes at a character you don't like- but it's supremely unfair to take that character away from others who like them, forever, just because you don't.

Edited September 30, 2017 by SourOrange

[NomadFifteen]

I have it.

 

Valkorion's long lost twin brother and his family return to Zakuul with the Infinite + 1 fleet. They find this upstart Outlander, capture you, and imprison you in carbonite.

 

After 10 years you are freed by one of your former followers (you can't remember their name, after all you had 30+ of them running around) and you start the new chapter in freeing the universe from the Return of the Valkorion.

 

You now lose all 30+ companions, and get to start all over gathering your new 60+ copy & paste companions. But the carbonite has affected your memory, and you have to redo Vanilla thru KotET to relearn who you are.

 

They are calling this new chapter KotIROoI - Knights of the I Ran Out of Ideas.

[orangenee]

I have it.

 

Valkorion's long lost twin brother and his family return to Zakuul with the Infinite + 1 fleet. They find this upstart Outlander, capture you, and imprison you in carbonite.

 

After 10 years you are freed by one of your former followers (you can't remember their name, after all you had 30+ of them running around) and you start the new chapter in freeing the universe from the Return of the Valkorion.

 

You now lose all 30+ companions, and get to start all over gathering your new 60+ copy & paste companions. But the carbonite has affected your memory, and you have to redo Vanilla thru KotET to relearn who you are.

 

They are calling this new chapter KotIROoI - Knights of the I Ran Out of Ideas.

 

Also it plays out exactly the same as it did before but you don't remember as BW put a subliminal suggestion in the dialogue making you think it's all brand new content and makes you love CXP as the greatest thing ever put into a videogame.

[Sarova]

I agree with all of this but I bolded one part in particular that I wish they would do (or rather, stop doing). Not only are those stories hurtful, but we're down to precious few "main" companion characters as it is- and when they add some kind of "betrayal" in a story you can bet that there'll be a throng of people clamouring to have that character dead.

 

When that happens, the character becomes something akin to a living ghost- they're present, for those that chose not to kill them, but story-wise, they may as well not exist anymore. That's not fun for anyone. The people who killed them will complain that developer time is being wasted on a "dead" character, and the people who chose for them to live will get nothing but table scraps from there on.

 

I don't think allowing players to make a choice on companions' lives was ever a good idea in the first place, specifically because of this limbo. If they wanted to excommunicate that companion from their operations, fine. If they wanted to have an option to flat out ignore the character for the rest of the story, fine. If they wanted to send the character to work somewhere else so they never had to see them, fine. But death is a very permanent story choice, and it doesn't only affect the person who made that decision. The decision even existing is the problem.

 

Normally I am all for more options, I want everyone to be able to play the game how they want- but Bioware does not have the developer power to support those sorts of forks in the story right now. And to me, people being unable to satiate a desire to erase a character is less important than more content with a character for those who like them. You can ignore or roll your eyes at a character you don't like- but it's supremely unfair to take that character away from others who like them, forever, just because you don't.

Indeed. Back pre vanilla was when they should have stood up for their proposed content and left the ability to kill off badly behaved companions such as Vette, Kaliyo and even Malavai (not that I ever would have) during the class stories, providing they allowed (at that time) one of the ship droids to take over the dead companion's role. Allowing the killing off of class companions to happen years after the fact was just poor story-telling, no matter who wanted it. Making us take on new main companions when the originals weren't broken was a poor choice.

This is why I really hope they've put some thought into what they are giving us and have learned from the dozens of threads since KOTFE that show so many of us want our original companions to mean something again and want to go back to class style stories & game play.

 

The reality however, is most likely both of these :

another 100 levels to the CXP grinder?

Guys. you HAVE to remember: it's bioware we talking about. Their take on surprises is vastly different then that of usual players. I bet its something like:

 

- another CM companion

 

- DvL DS Companion on CM

 

- Shroud of Memory on CM

Plus the return of the Dark vs Light event.

[dscount]

I can think of only a couple Things that would in my mind be "BIG" Worthy to keep people around and coming back.

 

1. Removal of GC and CXP completely (Back to crystals and Tokens only).

2. Whole new expansion equal to that of Revan coming in summer 2018.

3. They go all FFXIV on us and rebuild the game taking all our suggestions.

 

What I don't consider "BIG" they will likely spit out instead:

1. Legacy Currency

2. New GSF Features

3. New MAP for PVP

4. Server Mergers

5. Fixing Legacy CXP Buff to be something more like 100% or 250%

[Gearmasterblitz]

Guys. you HAVE to remember: it's bioware we talking about. Their take on surprises is vastly different then that of usual players. I bet its something like:

 

- another CM companion

 

- DvL DS Companion on CM

 

- Shroud of Memory on CM

 

I fully believe that the DS companion coming to the CM might be the "big announcement." And thus, the real winners of the DvL event will be the dark side, as they will easily be able to get that companion whenever they want, and nobody can get the LS companion anymore and those that did get her had to do a stupid amount of work they've already done tons of times to get her.

[Severith]

Two guys were in their car on a road trip. One named Ben, the other Keith. Ben was pretty drunk, and decided his car could fly, so he started driving towards a cliff. At the last moment, Ben fell out of the car, and Keith took the wheel, and tried as hard as he could to slam on the breaks.

 

What good is a roadmap in that situation?

[Severith]

Seriously though, this is Eric Musco.

 

We know the big "surprise" is more HK themed subscriber gear.

[Quraswren]

Tier 5 (and it might not even be attached to GC given how months ago they mentioned how they might do it a different way. Hate I can't remember the exact wording. (sadly that doesn't rule out it being attached to the suckage that is GC either)

 

Grind "X" just to get close to where you were before the nerfs to classes (and utilities which is coming next month).

 

There will be mention of group content and how they are getting back to MMO content (what ever that could mean) and some dates. However, just like now and OPS bosses, they are not likely to meet those targets either.

 

I have no doubt there will be some smoke and mirror work to play up doing 2-5 year old stale content once again.

 

The only positive I really expect to see are some QOL features but I can bet you will still not see the ability to save quick bars when switching between specs.

[IoNonSoEVero]

I'm trying to be positive in waiting for Monday (I doubt it's going to be the Lana dream wedding chapter I want, anyway).

 

But I do kind of feel like the Sith Inquisitor when Darth Zash cheerfully tells them that she has a wonderful surprise that's going to make their life better...

[Tsillah]

I don't know what is coming but it does feel like something major is about to be revealed. I do not think it's maintenance mode, but I do share the scepticism about what they call exciting.

 

We'll know soon now. I still have hope but the truth is that the game really needs something major to revitalize the game.

[DanNV]

I don't know what is coming but it does feel like something major is about to be revealed. I do not think it's maintenance mode, but I do share the scepticism about what they call exciting.

 

We'll know soon now. I still have hope but the truth is that the game really needs something major to revitalize the game.

 

If I were BW, I'd never use the word exciting again, just saying...

 

The game needs a relaunch, basically. Rebuild it on an updated engine, go back to the class stories and redo everything after that. I really don't see it happening, though.