Bioware you really missed the boat here...literally. (Spoilers)

[worsin]

First off. I love the storyline. Fabulous job.

 

But you did not follow it up with anything meaningful for us. For some only the raiding is what they want. But for many players we want the extras like New Stronghold to decorate and details that make us feel like we are the Emperor/Empress.

 

Let me explain...

 

I just saved the galaxy, defeated 3 emperors and took the throne only to be exactly where I left off. No new ship, No new stronghold, No new nothing. Its as if none of it ever even happened.

 

I get a green chest piece for my efforts, pulling out all the stops here! Pathetic.

 

I say you missed the boat because you could easily have given us a version of the Guild Ship for our own personal Command Ship giving us the respect we deserve as the Emperor/Empress and a new mobile stronghold to invite our friends over to visit. I could have been decorating it with my exploits.

 

Hell, that might have even got me to spend more on the Cartel Market for decorations...which we all know is the only thing you care about these days.

 

Instead, I'm ruling the Empire from my beat up POS ship that I've had since day 1. Seriously? Where is my upgraded ship that I can decorate and make my own? This system is ALREADY IN PLACE for the most part and you utterly failed us here. Very disappointed.

 

I'm now flying around in my empty ship that I've had since day 1, no companions in it from the new story, none of my original companions except a robot and a furry little midget that cant cook.

 

A few other things that are details that matter to some people like myself.

 

1. Cannot enter my ship from my personal landing area. So its essentially useless. Good job.

2. Cannot sit on my throne that is sadly located on Odessen and not even in the Eternal Empire

3. My Throne Room should be on Zakuul, not Odessen once I complete the quests.

4. Quest givers should be in my throne room now...IN THE ETERNAL EMPIRE not on Odessen. Me having to go down to the depths of the city to pick up some quest seems stupid to me. These people should be coming to me now. Easily done...just put them in the throne room waiting for you when you get there.

5. When I'm on Odessen I cannot even access my ship from my personal landing pad. I have to teleport to my stronghold and then go to my ship. ***? How hard would it be to give me the ability to enter ship from there?

6. Again, I SHOULD GET A COMMAND SHIP!!!!! Furthermore, I should be able to go there with my smaller ship and land in its landing bay. I should then be able to fly said command ship anywhere I please in the galaxy. YOU CAN ALREADY DO HALF OF THIS WITH GUILD SHIPS!

7. I get emails calling me Commander and all of the NPCs still call me commander. Why not Empress or Emperor?

8 Don't even get me started on the massive amount of texture glitches that were completely overlooked. Like Z-Fighting on the textures of Koth right off the bat. One of the main characters in the game with armor YOU PICK so you can't even use the excuse that its Cartel Gear and bla bla bla. No excuse.

 

Nothing I listed here is difficult. It just takes a company that cares about the game, the details and the players who are paying you.

 

You may not realize this Bioware, but some of us have paid a lot of money to this game because we do love it for its story but when you fail so bad in these areas you only show us that you really only care about 1 thing. The Cartel Market.

 

The only reason you continue the story is to continue the Cartel Market. If you really cared you would put the extra love into the game that we deserve. But you didn't...and it shows. After this and the fiasco with ME:A I'm seriously questioning if I will ever purchase another game from Bioware.

 

Personally, I'm gonna stick it where it counts. You won't be seeing any more CC purchases from this guy. I will continue to sub and play, but that's it until I see some love from Bioware.

 

Bioware, if you were one of my minions I'd force choke you for this failure.

[SteveTheCynic]

Instead, I'm ruling the Empire from my beat up POS ship that I've had since day 1. Seriously? Where is my upgraded ship that I can decorate and make my own? This system is ALREADY IN PLACE for the most part and you utterly failed us here. Very disappointed.

The class ships are, apparently not suitable for decorating. The words "tangled mess of code that nobody knows what all of it does" should scare you. They certainly scare me. (I'm a programmer by vocation, for nearly 30 years now.)

1. Cannot enter my ship from my personal landing area. So its essentially useless. Good job.

I just checked on a character that just finished KotET but hasn't begun the follow-on story (Iokath / Umbara / Copero / Nathema). I can go out of the hangar part of the War Room instance into the Personal Ship Landing Zone, and there's my ship waiting for me to board it.

3. My Throne Room should be on Zakuul, not Odessen once I complete the quests.

You didn't listen to what your own character said, did you? You take the role of Emperor / Empress of the Eternal Alliance, and it is very much appropriate that such a ruler has his/her throne on Odessen, seat of the Alliance.

5. When I'm on Odessen I cannot even access my ship from my personal landing pad. I have to teleport to my stronghold and then go to my ship. ***? How hard would it be to give me the ability to enter ship from there?

Um. They did give you that ability. The entrance is that little door under the walkway in the hangar where Aygo stands. The one you used in Chapter IX to go and talk to Senya. If that doesn't work for you, report it as a bug.

7. I get emails calling me Commander and all of the NPCs still call me commander. Why not Empress or Emperor?

Good question. Partly to reduce the number of lines they have to record for NPCs "before" and "after". Consider a Trooper who makes it to Chapter 3 of his class story (promoted to Major) and then goes back to talk to the mission giver for the Face Merchants heroic on Coruscant. He still calls you "Lieutenant". Now think about some random NPC on Zakuul. Do they have to record two versions of his greeting line, one for before and one for after? And if they don't, then you have some things calling you Emperor and some things calling you Commander, and so on. There's no cheap-and-easy answer to this one. (Having NPCs change what they call you ALSO requires code changes, and "requires code changes" is a synonym for "introduces bugs".)

Nothing I listed here is difficult. It just takes a company that cares about the game, the details and the players who are paying you.

Some of it is not difficult. Some of it is them actually managing to keep story elements consistent, whether or not you think a particular story decision is a good idea (example: where the throne room is: the throne of the "Emperor of the Eternal Alliance" *should* be on the Alliance's homeworld, not Zakuul's(1)).

 

(1) It's also good policy. One of the key things you have to do in that situation is *break* the power of Zakuul, and the only real way to do that is to make it no longer the head of the Empire.

[worsin]

1. I am also a programmer so I get how complicated these things can be, for them to not have the staff that understands their own game is just pathetic and makes me see Bioware as a joke quite honestly. Huge turn-off, it is EA now after all I guess.

 

3. Yes did listen but i wholeheartedly disagree, you are the leader of the alliance but it makes no sense to me that I would conquer Zakuul and rule the empire from a ****** base on Odessa and not from the main center of that sector of the galaxy that I just conquered so your logic here is illogical. It's like conquering the Sith Empire and then ruling it from your house on Tatooine, dumb. It also fits with an evil power driven maniac Sith that wants to rule the Galaxy, their ego would not allow them to stay in that base in Odessa.

 

5. I cannot enter my ship from the landing pad at all. There are no clicky items on the ship that allow this. My ship is sitting there but you have to enter through the map or go to a stronghold.

 

7. As a programmer, I know this is easily done. If the engine is anything like the many many engines out there it is based on flags. The character gets a flag that they finished a specific quest and all emails "should" dynamically change based on those flags. For them to NOT have a system like this already in place given the number of quests and dialog would be highly stupid from the get-go.

 

While I appreciate your response I stay convinced they simply don't care enough to do these things.

Edited May 5, 2018 by worsin

[Atalantia]

Not knowing what exactly they did (modifications to the Hero Engine during development, and none of those people still hanging around Austin that coded that mess. I would be terribly afraid to mess with it

[Ardrossan]

A boat is not a ship, therefore it is not literal, therefore the thread is invalid.

[SteveTheCynic]

A boat is not a ship, therefore it is not literal, therefore the thread is invalid.

In the UK's Royal Navy, a "boat" is any vessel that can be drawn up onto a ship.

 

Submarines are warships, and yet in the Royal Navy they are anomalously called boats.

[SteveTheCynic]

1. I am also a programmer so I get how complicated these things can be, for them to not have the staff that understands their own game is just pathetic and makes me see Bioware as a joke quite honestly. Huge turn-off, it is EA now after all I guess.

All it takes is inadequate documentation, unclear code, and a sufficient staff turnover. It isn't actually about the *number* of programmers on the team, nor about their skill level, but whether the ones you have now know about how the code works, given that that code was written six years previously by people who left the company four years previously.

3. Yes did listen but i wholeheartedly disagree, you are the leader of the alliance but it makes no sense to me that I would conquer Zakuul and rule the empire from a ****** base on Odessa and not from the main center of that sector of the galaxy that I just conquered so your logic here is illogical. It's like conquering the Sith Empire and then ruling it from your house on Tatooine, dumb. It also fits with an evil power driven maniac Sith that wants to rule the Galaxy, their ego would not allow them to stay in that base in Odessa.

Odessen. Odessa is a port on the north coast of the Black Sea.

 

It's a question of policy - the Eternal Empire was a source of major trouble for the galaxy and for your character. Does it make sense to "bless" that empire by adopting its capital, or to "break" it by adopting somewhere else (anywhere else, even that hovel on Tatooine) as your capital? For some interpretations, it is better one way, and in others it is better the other way.

 

In any event, that was what your character decided, right or wrong, so that's where the throne room is.

 

I guess that's going to be one of those "agree to disagree" things, but the location of the throne room is at least consistent with the character's scripted decision. (You didn't say, "I crown myself Emperor of the Eternal Throne" and then put the throne room on Odessen. That would be spectacularly weird.)

5. I cannot enter my ship from the landing pad at all. There are no clicky items on the ship that allow this. My ship is sitting there but you have to enter through the map or go to a stronghold.

Time for a bug report, I would say.

7. As a programmer, I know this is easily done. If the engine is anything like the many many engines out there it is based on flags. The character gets a flag that they finished a specific quest and all emails "should" dynamically change based on those flags. For them to NOT have a system like this already in place given the number of quests and dialog would be highly stupid from the get-go.

Of course it's not hard to *do*, but you missed the point where I said that "requires code changes" is a synonym for "introduces bugs". If they originally intended something different for the story (and the various indications are that they did, indeed, have a different idea in mind when they created KotFE for how KotET would go), they would not have included code that uses such flags. That in turn means they would have to change the code (to say nothing of recording new dialogue and so on), and that would break something for someone's character(s), probably many people's. (The flags clearly exist, because the Nathema FP makes use of them.)

 

All the indications are, however, that they've never thought about that particular thing, as I noted in my comment. That NPC on Coruscant will call your trooper "Lieutenant" no matter how far along you are in your story, and he shouldn't. I think he'll even do it if you haven't been promoted to Lieutenant yet because you got to a high enough level and decided to level further by doing Heroics from the Activities panel. (Or because you used a Master's Datacron when you stepped out of the walker at the beginning of Ord Mantell...)

 

So yes, they should have thought of it, and written the extra lines and recorded the extra dialogue and so on. For whatever reason, they didn't thnk of it, whether because they changed direction in the story after the fact or because they just plain overlooked it, or because like most MMORPGs, zones in SWTOR suffer from a syndrome I call "frozen-in-time" or, at least in part, because it's expensive to include all the options.

 

For sure, it would be nice for people (e.g. Lana) during post-KotET cutscenes to call us "Emperor" or "Empress" or whatever title you take if you adopt the role of Peacemaker, but that would require all those lines to be written and recorded multiple times, and for them to have code to use it. That's starting to raise the cost and bug count of the software, though. Not sure we'd be happy with that, either.

While I appreciate your response I stay convinced they simply don't care enough to do these things.

I'm not sure if it's "they don't care" or "they looked at the balance of where they could spend development time and production resources and decided to go a way which leaves ===> those holes rather than <==== those ones". And of course their assessment doesn't agree with yours, nor (to a lesser extent) mine.