This game is not dying

[aerockyul]

If we look at film sales by inflation of the release year however, the original Star Wars was the second most highest grossing film ever made, while Force Awakens was 11th. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

 

I honestly thought about including that, and looked into it myself, but the point doesn't change. Disney isn't worried that their movies are not surpassing Gone with the Wind in inflation dollars. They are trying to make as much as they can in TODAY'S dollars and the numbers don't bear out that they are failing. I'll bet that Gone with the Wind has nothing on licensing and downstream income. How many theme parks have a Gone with the Wind district dedicated to them?

 

EVEN SO, hell, three of the four Disney movies are in the top 61 of all time. ALL TIME. Adjusted for inflation. A simple easy search on google says there are probably no less than 500,000 movies in existence. TLJ is in the top 50. It is in no way a "bomb"

 

I don't mind people having their own stubborn opinions about things, but throwing around this asinine idea that Disney is failing or bombing or any other similar negative adjective just doesn't add up.

[Andryah]

When I say lore, I mean the Jedi elements and the classic Heroes Journey storytelling.

 

Makes complete sense in the context you presented. There is some confusion in my view about the opposing side in how they rolled out new villains that really do not appear all that Sith-oriented... but I see that as an expansion of the dark side in the universe in general with the new trilogy .... and there have always been plenty of potential evils to fill that void against the Jedi that I am sure are well documented in Lucas' notes and screen play drafts that the public has never yet seen. People seem to forget that the final Trilogy was actually drafted by Lucas more than 40 years ago (he actually wrote one large and expansive screenplay draft and then had to break it up in pieces to fit it within normal movie play times and audience expectations). So again... holding Disney to some different standard.... when it is actually Lucas' core work decades ago that drives the final trilogy narrative is kind of silly in my view.

 

Hero's Journey story telling IS a classic approach to screenplay design.. and actually derives from millennia old methods of story telling and mythology. MMO players (not just SW MMOs) would benefit from taking time to understand the mechanics and approach of The Hero's Journey approach to story telling as it is literally as old as human civilization. A Cliff Notes version can be found here: http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/the-hero-journey-mythic-structure-of-joseph-campbell-monomyth.html, or players can actually read the book about THJ. Virtually every book, story, screenplay, etc... follows the approach.. because it actually resonates well with human expectations in story telling. I have no idea which came first.. the approach or the human expectations.... but it really does not matter in this day and age.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Andryah

[Decxswx]

It will be dead if Bioware and EA keeps neglecting the game

[Andryah]

It will be dead if Bioware and EA keeps neglecting the game

 

Even if they feed it endless resources as if it were the mother of all MMOs to ever be had by players... it would still die at some point in time. No MMO lasts forever.

 

So you really are not expressing anything here other then your general distaste for the state of the game from your point of view.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Andryah

[Kiesu]

Not to go too deep into the military aspects because I don't study them, I do have a point here:

 

The reason it goes like this over and over is because this is a classic underdog story. The evil Empire/FO has to have small weaknesses for our plucky heroes to overcome: Death Star exhaust vent, Death Star 2 shield being somewhat under protected, Super Star Destroyer bridge being vulnerable to a kamikaze, Starkiller Base having a weakness to a handful of bombs on the inside.

 

If it wasn't this way, we'd be watching an entirely different story. I just don't think anyone would care to see the good guys have an technology and manpower advantage over the Empire/FO and then underperform in combat so that there would be a suspenseful ending.

 

It's just basic human nature to pull for the underdog to find that one weakness.

But it doesn't work when the same star destroyers from same movie series 40 something years before never had this flaw, yet somehow they built the new star destroyers worse than the old ones? How does that make any sense? What is the logic behind making your surface turrets not serve their point anymore 40 years after they were doing their job just fine, and why got the shields removed? Is the First Order gimping themselves on purpose? Even way smaller vessels have shields on them, not to talk about the 60km mega drednought that was Snoke's ship, that thing definitely should have come with at least all the normal equipment you've had for ages if you spend that much money on that big ship.

 

If the point of that scene was to make Po seem like the amazing underdog pilot, they could have simply have him have a dog-fight with all the tie-fighters and disrupt their attack that way. But removing all equipment we used to have in the past universe not so long ago with no explanation is nonsensical convenience decision.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Kiesu

[aerockyul]

Really? Okay.

 

Fan reviews of TLJ have it somewhere along 0 to 2 out of 10. And note that's most of them. Some of the true die hards try to hold onto it claiming it was good however you can tell they know people like myself who know Star Wars after Episode 8 is lost are right.

 

Add in just about every time I go to Reddit one of the biggest social media sites online? I never hear one good thing about Episode 8. Really I've seen very few people defend the film. The only group I have are the kids over on r/gaming********** and they are a bunch of idiots who think we should love everything that's force fed to us.

 

Again, the only point in my posts about the rankings was that they are not failures, and Disney isn't going to be displeased with the top grossing films of all time.

 

I certainly don't expect someone to look at box office rankings and change their mind about how they feel about something. But it does need to put a stop to this nonsense that Disney should be displeased with their directors, writers, production people, etc. If anything, they should all be given massive raises if the factual results are anything to go by. Considering how well TFA did from a business perspective, they'd actually be STUPID to NOT give the reigns over to JJ

[aerockyul]

But it doesn't work when the same star destroyers from same movie series 40 something years before never had this flaw, yet somehow they built the new star destroyers worse than the old ones? How does that make any sense? What is the logic behind making your surface turrets not serve their point anymore 40 years after they were doing their job just fine, and why got the shields removed? Is the First Order gimping themselves on purpose? Even way smaller vessels have shields on them, not to talk about the 60km mega drednought that was Snoke's ship, that thing definitely should have come with at least all the normal equipment you've had for ages if you spend that much money on that big ship.

 

If the point of that scene was to make Po seem like the amazing underdog pilot, they could have simply have him have a dog-fight with all the tie-fighters and disrupt their attack that way. But removing all equipment we used to have in the past universe not so long ago with no explanation is nonsensical convenience decision.

 

I think the Empire has a problem learning from their mistakes. "Hey guys, you know that tiny hole we left open in the first one? Let's make that hole so big in the next one that entire ships can just fly right in. Oh come on, we'll add a shield that's controlled by a bunker so heavily fortified that not even the planet's native fuzzy wildlife will be able to overrun it"

[Andryah]

I think the Empire has a problem learning from their mistakes. "Hey guys, you know that tiny hole we left open in the first one? Let's make that hole so big in the next one that entire ships can just fly right in. Oh come on, we'll add a shield that's controlled by a bunker so heavily fortified that not even the planet's native fuzzy wildlife will be able to overrun it"

 

LOL... indeed.

[Kiesu]

I think the Empire has a problem learning from their mistakes. "Hey guys, you know that tiny hole we left open in the first one? Let's make that hole so big in the next one that entire ships can just fly right in. Oh come on, we'll add a shield that's controlled by a bunker so heavily fortified that not even the planet's native fuzzy wildlife will be able to overrun it"

Yes well, the Empire certainly wont become any smarter than their writer, heh

 

...which is propably why the First Order didnt feel intimidating at all since they were mostly bumbling fools with no knowledge of their past or even their ships.

I'm not kidding, Hux literally had NO IDEA the surface cannons in his own ship couldn't shoot small fighters either, the other commander in the starting scene ship had to tell him this mid battle via holo! LOL what incompetence, how is anyone supposed to be intimidated by that gang.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Kiesu

[TrixxieTriss]

Yes well, the Empire certainly wont become any smarter than their writer, heh

 

...which is propably why the First Order didnt feel intimidating at all since they were mostly bumbling fools with no knowledge of their past or even their ships.

I'm not kidding, Hux literally had NO IDEA the surface cannons in his own ship couldn't shoot small fighters either, the other commander in the starting scene ship had to tell him this mid battle via holo! LOL what incompetence, how is anyone supposed to be intimidated by that gang.

 

Hux didn’t rise through the ranks like a normal officer would.. If you read the books that go along or around the movies, you get a better picture of the situation and you get to see that Hux is basically a political animal who rode daddy’s tail coat to the top till he killed him.

Hux is an opportunist and nothing more. He’s actually worse than a politician because a politician knows the people under him will always know more about procedures and tech. Hux thinks he’s all knowing and powerful.

[aerockyul]

Yes well, the Empire certainly wont become any smarter than their writer, heh

 

...which is propably why the First Order didnt feel intimidating at all since they were mostly bumbling fools with no knowledge of their past or even their ships.

I'm not kidding, Hux literally had NO IDEA the surface cannons in his own ship couldn't shoot small fighters either, the other commander in the starting scene ship had to tell him this mid battle via holo! LOL what incompetence, how is anyone supposed to be intimidated by that gang.

 

I think that's an intentional part of it. If the Empire wasn't incompetent in some parts of its ranks, the movies would all be 2 minutes long.

 

And it's just like any other giant organizational entity. How many companies of all sizes out there have incompetence in their ranks? Governments? Because no person is perfect, no entity run by people can ever be perfect, either.

[Kiesu]

I think that's an intentional part of it. If the Empire wasn't incompetent in some parts of its ranks, the movies would all be 2 minutes long.

 

And it's just like any other giant organizational entity. How many companies of all sizes out there have incompetence in their ranks? Governments? Because no person is perfect, no entity run by people can ever be perfect, either.

Nooo they wouldn't. Republic isn't incompetent either (even tho TLJ sure made it seem like it). The Resistance and the First Order are not strictly empire/republic either, just funded/supported by them. Frankly Rian wrote himself in a corner by making the Resistance as small as it was (there was no mention of it ever being just one cruiserfull of people before) and after writing that I guess he panicked and decided to take the easiest way out of the situation he created for himself and slapped Convenience on it with a big C. He could have avoided this onesided setup easily with more republic/resistance support (also I don't know why they keep calling themselves rebels in LJ, that war was a different one).

 

Hux didn’t rise through the ranks like a normal officer would.. If you read the books that go along or around the movies, you get a better picture of the situation and you get to see that Hux is basically a political animal who rode daddy’s tail coat to the top till he killed him.

Hux is an opportunist and nothing more. He’s actually worse than a politician because a politician knows the people under him will always know more about procedures and tech. Hux thinks he’s all knowing and powerful.

Yeah, and he has no advisors on his ship, engineers, gunners, nobody who could have told him was was bad for his ship and not? No matter how much of a piggybacker he is I'd imagine he has a professional crew at least to get that beast flying and not get immediately half destroyed by random spacer, resistance or not

 

Getting carried only gets you so far. No matter how well your per carries your golf bat you cant appoint them to represent you on the worlf championship tourney if they dont know how to play (unless you're ok with not getting on any place).

Edited July 29, 2018 by Kiesu

[psandak]

Hux didn’t rise through the ranks like a normal officer would.. If you read the books that go along or around the movies, you get a better picture of the situation and you get to see that Hux is basically a political animal who rode daddy’s tail coat to the top till he killed him.

Hux is an opportunist and nothing more. He’s actually worse than a politician because a politician knows the people under him will always know more about procedures and tech. Hux thinks he’s all knowing and powerful.

 

The problem is that one should not HAVE to read the books to get that better understanding. And this coming from someone that has read the books.

 

How would the MCU have gone over if viewers HAD to read the comics to better understand the situations they were put into?

 

Just my opinion, but I think Rian Johnson saw all the "fan theories" spring up from TFA and basically said to the audience what Luke said to Rey and Kylo: "Everything you said...is wrong."

 

I think we can all agree that TFA was greatly influence by homage to ANH. Obviously, Rian Johnson and Disney did not want TLJ to be an homage to ESB, and IMO if all the fan theories had been proven correct, it would have been. So they went a different way.

 

But TLJ did need to be ESB-esque in that the Resistance had to fall down. Like all good "hero's journey" stories, the hero at some point...loses. So much so that an average person would simply give up. But the hero and those around them push through those failures to eventual success.

 

Getting back on topic...

 

Like all MMOs that are not WoW (WoW is the exception), SWTOR is dying. However, the IP alone will keep it on life support for a very long time. It may very well go into true "maintenance mode" (lights are still on but no new content at all), or (IMO more likely) the content stream will hit a plateau, much slower than what most players can accept, but fast enough to get regular bumps in revenue so that the lights stay on AND the dev team continues to exist.

 

That said, it may not be BW Austin as the dev team. If Anthem fails, BW Austin is shutting down. If Anthem succeeds then more resources will go to Anthem.

[annabethchase]

.... But removing all equipment we used to have in the past universe not so long ago with no explanation is nonsensical convenience decision.

 

They showed in this film that old school Empire guys who know better (Captain Kannady I believe was his name) are ignored by the only 2 leaders who hold real power (Hux/Ren). Ren and Snoke both seem to simply trust that the military will get the job done, so yes it does seem realistic to have weaknesses find their way into a system. Hux appears to just not be very good at his job.

 

In the case of the Dreadnought, I don't think the cannons were intended to be completely ineffective, it's just that the 1 pilot who could outfly basically anything outflew them.

 

But Poe couldn't outfly say 24 Ties forever. Which would have been launched if Kannady had any real power.

 

Basically, the FO is flawed because it has to be. Otherwise they'd crush the Resistance.

[Karameck]

All this hate for the new movies. I don't mind other people having their own opinion but I'm getting really sick of "no true Star Wars fan liked them".

 

Frankly I'm surprised more people on here specifically didn't enjoy them considering many elements felt far more reminiscent of The Old Republic than the classic films.

[DanNV]

TLJ wasn't a bad movie, it was just in the wrong franchise. It would have made a great made for TV movie or two part Battle Star Galactica episode. I have no idea how JJ is going to save the disaster Johnson made of things.

[Karameck]

TLJ wasn't a bad movie, it was just in the wrong franchise. It would have made a great made for TV movie or two part Battle Star Galactica episode. I have no idea how JJ is going to save the disaster Johnson made of things.

I love it as part of Star Wars. It's a new trilogy with it's own story, and I like the story.

[Kiesu]

They showed in this film that old school Empire guys who know better (Captain Kannady I believe was his name) are ignored by the only 2 leaders who hold real power (Hux/Ren). Ren and Snoke both seem to simply trust that the military will get the job done, so yes it does seem realistic to have weaknesses find their way into a system. Hux appears to just not be very good at his job.

 

In the case of the Dreadnought, I don't think the cannons were intended to be completely ineffective, it's just that the 1 pilot who could outfly basically anything outflew them.

 

But Poe couldn't outfly say 24 Ties forever. Which would have been launched if Kannady had any real power.

 

Basically, the FO is flawed because it has to be. Otherwise they'd crush the Resistance.

It makes no sense to keep their ships from having generations old tech on them because "it'd be too easy for them".

That's lazy writing.

Rian wrote this overwhelming power against his small resistance cruiser all by himself. It was his own fault it looks like gimping the FO is the only way for the resistance to win at this point, he wrote it like that! Why are we relying on bad convenience gimmicks to keep his resistance alive when we could have just wrote a much more sensible scene to begin with? One where the old lore and tech is respected and in place and where we don't need to break all of space combat just to make the good guys not get immediately obliterated. There is no excuse for one person to write a scene like this and bail out of it by making FO completely incompetent for convenience's sake.

 

Ofc Po couldn't save the say by himself. Nobody is expecting him to. But when you advertise Po as this grand pilot in FA, and then have him fly and destroy dreadnought cannons with ZERO resistance becase apparently the cannons suddenly can't do their job (he was just flying a shooting uncontested, this was no display of skill), and then when the Tie fighters finally do come out, the very first fighter shooting him takes him down. Wow, what an amazing pilot, that scene sure made him seem like the best pilot in the resistance heck even Rey with no experience on gunship seems to be better at aerial combat in TLJ. Atleast in FA Po actually had a proper piloting scene with actual combat where he was constantly under fire and still flew perfectly fine! Po's skills as the resistance's best pilot went down the drain in TLJ.

[Lhancelot]

It makes no sense to keep their ships from having generations old tech on them because "it'd be too easy for them".

That's lazy writing.

Rian wrote this overwhelming power against his small resistance cruiser all by himself. It was his own fault it looks like gimping the FO is the only way for the resistance to win at this point, he wrote it like that! Why are we relying on bad convenience gimmicks to keep his resistance alive when we could have just wrote a much more sensible scene to begin with? One where the old lore and tech is respected and in place and where we don't need to break all of space combat just to make the good guys not get immediately obliterated. There is no excuse for one person to write a scene like this and bail out of it by making FO completely incompetent for convenience's sake.

 

Ofc Po couldn't save the say by himself. Nobody is expecting him to. But when you advertise Po as this grand pilot in FA, and then have him fly and destroy dreadnought cannons with ZERO resistance becase apparently the cannons suddenly can't do their job (he was just flying a shooting uncontested, this was no display of skill), and then when the Tie fighters finally do come out, the very first fighter shooting him takes him down. Wow, what an amazing pilot, that scene sure made him seem like the best pilot in the resistance heck even Rey with no experience on gunship seems to be better at aerial combat in TLJ. Atleast in FA Po actually had a proper piloting scene with actual combat where he was constantly under fire and still flew perfectly fine! Po's skills as the resistance's best pilot went down the drain in TLJ.

 

You shouldn't be so hard on Poe, everyone has an off day. Even Michael Jordan wasn't perfect every game.

[Kiesu]

You shouldn't be so hard on Poe, everyone has an off day. Even Michael Jordan wasn't perfect every game.

Naturally. That's obvious. Nobody is expecting him to be a magical super hero.

Magical superhero like Rey who conveniently got a triple tie fighter kill with one shot on her very first shot on her very first time manning spaceship guns? Convenient...

Po's epic success rate is currently 50/50 (over two scenes) and Michael Jordan's is like... 85/15 over how many games? just "ok" would have been good enough, no need to be perfect, that's a bit much to expect. TLJ was just epic failure

Edited July 29, 2018 by Kiesu

[annabethchase]

Again, this all comes down to a fantasy vs. sci-fi argument. As far back as the original trilogy, the same complaints you're making now happened over and over. That's because the writing always was fantasy first, sci-fi second.

[Karameck]

Not to mention it's pretty heavily implied Rey's strength is coming from the force trying to balance out Kylo.

[Kiesu]

Not to mention it's pretty heavily implied Rey's strength is coming from the force trying to balance out Kylo.

Aah yes but this is fan theory. The writers themselves haven't actually given an concrete evidence for any of these theories fans are having (there are many). I'm talking about what has been given to us concretely in the past vs now.

 

Btw, you can be a fantasy and/or scifi world and it can still be completely logical within the boundaries it has created for itself. Just because it's fantasy doesn't mean everything needs to be explained with magic and convenience. It's just easier to not follow logic of past rules of the galaxy rather than think what and why in the said fictional universe would work in its continuity.

I feel like so many people who just say "it's fantasy it doesn't have to make sense" don't realize that would mean we could throw mickey mouse and superman in EP9 and by their logic it would make perfect sense because it's fantasy and fictional and "everything is possible". Extreme example but serves the same logic.

Which is why we set certain rules even in fictional worlds that might not make sense in the real world, but still make sense in the fictional world, so that we wouldn't get these giant miss-connections in fiction just because "everything is possible is fantasy" is an argument.

^ this is my argument. Even fantasy land needs a set of rules and continuity so everything doesn't go cray cray.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Kiesu

[annabethchase]

Not to mention it's pretty heavily implied Rey's strength is coming from the force trying to balance out Kylo.

 

That's not implied, it's stated as fact in the movie by Snoke. It could be a lie or misinterpretation by Snoke, but it's stated as fact. He appears to strongly believe that the force itself is making Rey strong enough to balance Kylo. I personally believe it's true.

 

My overall interpretation is Anakin "brought balance to the force" not by wiping out the sith, but by leveling the playing field so that the light side and the dark side both had an equal strength and number of players for awhile. As of the end of TLJ, that number is 1 on each side. However, there's clearly always going to be more force users. Rey came out of nowhere, and the Canto Bight kid appears as well.

 

Will the dark side always exist, or will it be wiped out at some point? I have no idea, and that's ok. I want to have a reason to keep watching and speculating. The Anakin prophecy has been fulfilled and they can setup the universe after episode 9 anyway they want to.

[annabethchase]

^ this is my argument. Even fantasy land needs a set of rules and continuity so everything doesn't go cray cray.

 

Disney is following the established rules and continuity: the Empire/FO side always looks unbeatable but leaves small flaws.