Whatever

[LinkinPein]

Whatever

Edited April 10, 2023 by LinkinPein

[xordevoreaux]

I'm curious, if there was a token on the CM that let you roll back to the galaxy status before 3.0, how many people would buy it? Do it, charge 12,000 CC if you want; I'd still buy it. I'd really pay whatever to go back to 5, unique, meaningful companions and a cohesive character status in a cohesive world.

 

Not I. For all the above ranting, I actually liked KOTFE and KOTET. Zakul is an amazing city, the dreamscape sequences were cinematically top-notch, and if we never had Shadow of Revan, I would never have gotten to know Theron and his (cough) fine geometry.

 

So... nay. I disagree.

Edited January 27, 2019 by xordevoreaux

[Celise]

All depends on Anthem from here on out and if EA will allocate any resources back to SWTOR after launch of Anthem. that is just for starters.

 

4.0 was a golden age for this game, it worked well and everyone got something from it. FE came and then 5.0 came out and it was like a hammer to the ribs, in literally broke a few and the ribs haven't recovered since. Ben Irving's GC was one of those changes that had a greatest impact than FE or ET could of ever had on population numbers and unpopularity.

 

If SWTOR is to ever recover? Bioware needs the full resources of the studio.. whats left of it, to rebuild SWTOR and that isn't going to happen if Anthem flops because EA will probably bury Bioware in a deep grave at that point. But if Anthem succeeds then SWTOR will never get the resource back (as it's from a legacy of EA selling off several Bioware studios a few years ago. EA literally shot itself in the foot that day.)

Edited January 27, 2019 by Celise

[KendraP]

Not I. For all the above ranting, I actually liked KOTFE and KOTET. Zakul is an amazing city, the dreamscape sequences were cinematically top-notch, and if we never had Shadow of Revan, I would never have gotten to know Theron and his (cough) fine geometry.

 

So... nay. I disagree.

 

To each his own i suppose. My favorite expansion was SoR, but kotfe/kotet can burn. The dream sequence and darth marrs death scene were the only decent things in either expansion for me. My character never acted like himself, the other jedi are still acting like my LS5 guardian isnt one of them, I'd pay real money to go back to the state of affairs ala 3.0 (not before, for me 3.0 was the golden age of swtor.

 

But like i said, to each his own

[JattaGin]

It is not Star Wars anymore.

 

I'm not up to date anymore. Could you please provide the link to the definition of Star Wars? Thanks.

[Goreshaga]

Not I. For all the above ranting, I actually liked KOTFE and KOTET. Zakul is an amazing city, the dreamscape sequences were cinematically top-notch, and if we never had Shadow of Revan, I would never have gotten to know Theron and his (cough) fine geometry.

 

So... nay. I disagree.

Same here.

I actually liked KOFTEET, especially for my former JK who has absolutely no desire now to go back to being a Jedi and is pretty happy in her relationship with Theron, so going back to the Jedi Orer should technically mean that she'd have to abandon him, which is not an option for her now, not after everything they went through.

She has build an Alliance that achieved more in a few years than the Jedi and wants to continue with her Alliance.

 

I also like the KOTFEET companions more than most of the vanilla ones and was quite happy to have companions like Jorgan and Torian on all my characters while getting rid of companions like Skadge, Rusk, Broonmark or Ashara that i don't like.

 

I'd admit though that i find it a bit sad that the 7 classes you're not playing just vanish into thin air without real mention of what happened to them in the 5 years your PC was frozen, and have seemingly nothing to do with the story anymore except in your own HC.

 

I'm serious on this: give us an option to abandon the alliance and go back to our former state of the galaxy. You don't have to force it on everyone, it can be an option. It doesn't even have to be ''canon''.

Well i'd be fine with an option to go back for people who want that as long as there's also an option to keep the Alliance and stay on Odessen for people who want to.

Because going back to what our characters were pre-KOTFE should not be forced on everyone either.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Goreshaga

[tahol]

4.0 was a golden age for this game, it worked well and everyone got something from it

 

 

That's your opinion. Many people left because they didn't get anything from it. I took my first long break, which wasn't that bad because after Command Crate fiasco I rage quitted and was sure I won't spit into general direction of this game anymore. Luckily we got rid of Irving and I could play again. Though I learned my lesson and only buy 60 days sub now and then take a break and play other games.

 

There was nothing in 4.0 I liked, nothing. Well, I do somewhat like Kofte/Kotet as a story content, I must because I still can play through them. I hated what they did to companions, I hated level scaling, I hated stat changes. I hate casualised story content and btw, I don't do base stories anymore. Tells something that I can tolerate Kofte and Kotet for leveling, but class stories I just can't. I can even do Makeb and Rishi+Yavin, but not base stories. 4.0 was also as buggy as anything after that. For some time even base class stories were broken on some classes.

 

My hate for 4.0 is not rare in any way, but people who hated it as much as I do have mostly stopped playing for good. I adapted and found a way to still do my own thing. We had a massive exodus of progression raiders. We had a massive exodus of people who couldn't take the casualised direction of the game. I almost couldn't take it.

Edited January 27, 2019 by tahol

[Paulsutherland]

Personally I want to keep the Alliance and ignore the Republic and Empire. The idea of going into another war in a galaxy that is starved of resources isn't that appealing to me.

[JuventusAndFCK]

My problems with the expansions had more to do with the specific characters and story elements that take up focus rather than the alliance as a central plot tool.

 

The only characters I kinda liked were Senya and Arcan and Arcan is only a tiny bit interesting because he gets magicked into goodness. (It would have been better if it was a change he wasn't literally healed into).

 

I don't really mind the idea of the alliance to consolidate the different character classes into a more overarching story direction, I just wish we were given more choice within the narrative to decide what "the alliance" is precisely, and still had some specific quests to each class to keep them interesting.

Edited January 27, 2019 by JuventusAndFCK

[AlrikFassbauer]

Personally, I just miss how hard the game was in 2.x ... There were so few experience points, so few money, and everything did cost a bit. I miss that challenge.

 

It to me feels as if we have NGE since ... 4.0 ?

 

I'm currently play a Jedi Knight with level 30 and armor from Tython. Okay, my mistake was that my companion has influece 10, but the point is that my JK almost never dies.

 

There currently just is no learning lesson with the character never dying. Which might / seems to be the reason why in FPs so many people just try to rush through everything.

Edited January 27, 2019 by AlrikFassbauer

[Celise]

That's your opinion. Many people left because they didn't get anything from it. I took my first long break, which wasn't that bad because after Command Crate fiasco I rage quitted and was sure I won't spit into general direction of this game anymore. Luckily we got rid of Irving and I could play again. Though I learned my lesson and only buy 60 days sub now and then take a break and play other games.

 

There was nothing in 4.0 I liked, nothing. Well, I do somewhat like Kofte/Kotet as a story content, I must because I still can play through them. I hated what they did to companions, I hated level scaling, I hated stat changes. I hate casualised story content and btw, I don't do base stories anymore. Tells something that I can tolerate Kofte and Kotet for leveling, but class stories I just can't. I can even do Makeb and Rishi+Yavin, but not base stories. 4.0 was also as buggy as anything after that. For some time even base class stories were broken on some classes.

 

My hate for 4.0 is not rare in any way, but people who hated it as much as I do have mostly stopped playing for good. I adapted and found a way to still do my own thing. We had a massive exodus of progression raiders. We had a massive exodus of people who couldn't take the casualised direction of the game. I almost couldn't take it.

 

Forget FE, 4.0 had simple gear mechanics, it didn't have RNG crates, freeium players could buy passes for WZ and OPS. Okay it was stale because it was the same content all the time, but it was at its most stable before it all hit the fan with 5.0.

 

I don't care what i or you think opinion wise, all i'm aiming to make a point of was that 4.0 was a heck of a lot better than 5.0 ever produced.

[Ylliarus]

I just hope that with 6.0 we can leave this alliance nonsense behind. If given the chance, I'd gladly roll back to the moment before I damn clicked the start button on KOTET. Please lets go back to the 2.0 mentality, before all this convoluted hybrid of catching pokémon-companions and nonsense alliances.

 

Sadly, it's too late I believe, they really have gone all in with this thing. Some people just don't want to be this stupid alliance commander, BioWare. It is not Star Wars anymore.

 

I'm curious, if there was a token on the CM that let you roll back to the galaxy status before 3.0, how many people would buy it? Do it, charge 12,000 CC if you want; I'd still buy it. I'd really pay whatever to go back to 5, unique, meaningful companions and a cohesive character status in a cohesive world.

 

I very much feel your sentiment, KotFE and KotET are not my SWTOR. My SWTOR are the class stories, the planetary missions from Coruscant/Dromund Kaas to Corellia. My SWTOR is RotHC, SoR, but KotFE and KotET? No, I do not like it at all.

 

Do I wish that KotFE and KotET turned out to be a bad dream from which our characters awake and we're back to between Ziost and the horror that was KotFE? Yes, I actually genuinely wouldn't mind it if that happened story wise. But sadly that won't happen.

 

No matter how much the players hate KotFE and KotET, it will remain a part of the narrative. I wish it were otherwise, I wish KotFE and KotET were never made, but alas. All we can do is hope that the future story content will move away from the Alliance and Commander nonsense as far as possible. Jedi Under Siege already was a good first step, now I hope the next one will be the absorption of the Alliance into either the Republic or Empire. Let's bury that horror and try to forget it.

[Paulsutherland]

Truth be told 'Jedi Under Siege' actually did more good than bad for the alliance. I managed to walk away with LS Jaesa (and her clone, DS Jaesa) and Darth Malora (maybe) joining the Alliance.

 

Then again DS Jaesa just sliced up Alliance forces on Iokath ... The feck are we doing on Iokath? Is that war still going on?

Edited January 27, 2019 by Paulsutherland

[Goreshaga]

How many of you decided to support the Republic as a native imperial?

I did on the only imp toon i played JUS with.

She was a LS IA and considering what the Empire did to her during her class story, she has no reason to support them anymore

[xordevoreaux]

I don't care what i or you think opinion wise, all i'm aiming to make a point of was that 4.0 was a heck of a lot better than 5.0 ever produced.

 

Which is also an opinion, a.k.a, what you think.

[Lhancelot]

I just hope that with 6.0 we can leave this alliance nonsense behind. If given the chance, I'd gladly roll back to the moment before I damn clicked the start button on KOTET. Please lets go back to the 2.0 mentality, before all this convoluted hybrid of catching pokémon-companions and nonsense alliances.

 

Sadly, it's too late I believe, they really have gone all in with this thing. Some people just don't want to be this stupid alliance commander, BioWare. It is not Star Wars anymore.

 

I'm curious, if there was a token on the CM that let you roll back to the galaxy status before 3.0, how many people would buy it? Do it, charge 12,000 CC if you want; I'd still buy it. I'd really pay whatever to go back to 5, unique, meaningful companions and a cohesive character status in a cohesive world.

 

As you see, what is "good" for the game is highly subjective. I agree with you. I found KOTFE and KOTET inferior to the original chapters of the game in every way. But there are reasons why they did what they did, story-wise etc.

 

It seems pretty obvious that the game spread itself thin trying to make every type of gamer happy, and in the end when insufficient resources/funding was used the game's development was compromised.

 

For a long time I felt tons of resentment over how the game was developed over time, but I feel that it's not due to apathy on the developers part why it went this route. Basically these devs were given a task and not the proper tools to do it, imo.

 

Not having resources pigeonholed them into taking shortcuts, and not having the original developers working on the game made future development difficult and problematic once they started layering new code on top of old code which inevitably left the game plagued with a plethora of bugs that only seems to grow as the game has new content added with the new coding.

 

So from what I can tell, it's not even so much as they just wanted to go this route regarding the stories, as Kryptonomic laid out so eloquently and in great detail in many of his posts they just ran with what they already had sitting on the shelves which was pieces and parts of what was once a far more detailed and expansive story.

 

They plugged in parts of stories and parts of developed content that wasn't really finished, wasn't what was supposed to have been added in the order it was added and this is what we got now.

 

 

For an even better explanation of it, here is what Kryptonomic had written awhile back for those who want a really good explanation of what happened and why:

 

I think part of it was simply that resources weren't available. Many were let go or moved onto other projects that were now in the build pipeline. There was also, I think, a certain lack of confidence about what could be done. But notice the dangerous loop you get into there? You don't put in resources but because of that it doesn't get better. And you can't get it better without more resources. So something has to be break the confidence paralysis there and make some decisions.

 

That, incidentally, falls to a product and project team, not a development team. The product team has to make a case for what can be done and the project team has to assure them that the vision can be completed with the resources on hand. This is what the lead producers tend to handle as part of their mandate. Think of them as the product managers.

 

But there are justifications required here on the part of the team.

 

It often comes down to: Do we want to maintain a status quo? Or do we want to keep pushing for the "better"? (It's a way of asking: "Is the status quo 'good enough'?" This is a way of viewing quality.) And this gets into an interesting dynamic with the typology of game players. In the game development industry as a whole, strict MMO gamers (i.e., those who play something because it's an MMO) are sometimes called "treadmill gamers." They are willing to do the same thing over and over again to get gear (or whatever) so that they can do the same thing over and over again.

 

That's great because they keep paying. The trick is that all you have to do is keep them "happy enough" to keep paying. That can require much less development resources when you boil it down.

 

But that argument doesn't work when you start talking to story-driven or environment-driven game players, who prefer the concept of voice acted stories with coherent story lines that explore and refine lore but that also mix in the expansive sandbox nature of a game that keeps them coming back. These are players, in the case of SWTOR, that are playing something in spite of the fact that it's an MMO.

 

That identity crisis has plagued SWTOR pretty much since its inception and it's a tricky balance.

 

Another identity crisis has been "How Star Wars does SWTOR actually have to be?" That may sound like an inherently silly question (assuming it makes sense the way I phrased it) but prior to the Disney/Lucasfilm deal, there was a bit more wiggle room here. That's not a knock on Disney or the tightened focus of the Story Group, but in pre-Disney, the "canon" was actually many different canons and the main Story Group at that time really only cared about the movies and, to a lesser extent, the established EU in books. (This is why The Force Unleashed could pretty much do what it wanted, including the Infinities "alternate universe" ideas.)

 

Yet another identity crisis is the idea of a persistent world with meaningful choices, and thus consequences, that are situated in a lore-heavy background. That doesn't always sit well with an MMO context. I realize that's debatable and I don't intend to imply otherwise. But as an example:

 

One of the cooler (I think) possibilities of the expansive story mode playing out for players involved the Empire side on Balmorra. Consider near the end of the quest chain for Darth Lachris. You get into a base where Republic troops are all over the place. Lachris is supposedly sending legions of troops to help you out. But you don't see that at all. Except in one tiny little instanced part. But in the original KOTOR 3-style implementation, players would have been navigating through a space that was filled with NPC Republic and Empire troops fighting it out, giving the impression of an actual battle going on. That doesn't work in an MMO where spawn points and available NPCs for quest kills are necessary and have to look roughly the same for any player at any given time.

 

I'm cherry-picking there a bit, but you can get the idea. Lots of ideas have to change when you decide on the constraints -- but also the possibilities -- of an MMO.

 

 

 

I think the development team very much believed the game was worth it.

 

I think one of the key things that people struggled with in terms of the game was identity. It started off as a game around KOTO3. It became SWTOR. That can be seen as nothing more than a name change but it led to some fundamental reshuffling of ideas. Once you added in other classes, for example, you had to fit their context into the wider story of the Cold War and the start of the new Galactic War.

 

Then there was concern about the Disney thing. On the one hand, this was great! More Star Wars! Future interest is assured because more movies, more books, etc. But, on the other hand, all of that is essentially continuing a story that is thousands of years after the events of The Old Republic. So how relevant would an Old Republic time frame be? Would it make more sense to have a game more current so there could be more tie-ins and so on?

 

This also had an impact due to the Lucasfilm Story Group's mandate that all content going forward -- games, movies, books -- would be canon. But that canon was now going to be a bit more consistent.

 

Granted, at this point we're all on the outside looking in. We can recover bits of the history that we knew at the time. Some of that can be recovered from interviews or articles written at the time. Others are from statements made at various conferences, including public and private game development conferences. And, of course, some of it is just inferred based on what we can observe happening, what people are (and aren't) talking about regarding the game, and so on.

 

Basically I feel that nothing is going to change unless the funding for the game is changed. The petition created in these forums is a noble attempt to do just that, bring attention to the game and show EA and BW that people want this game to be better, that it means something to the people. Asking them to make drastic changes to the game are like asking for ice water in hell, it's just impossible.

[Ardrossan]

I preferred 3.0. Companions worked fine, pvp was useful for gearing, XP was slow but not quite as tough as 2.0, we didn't have alignment bars...I think I made more characters during 3.0 than any other period. One major downside: iirc, we still had planetary comms by this point. Crafting was also fairly unpleasant.

 

I also liked 4.0, but not as much. Level sync was all right, and I liked the changes made to heroics and datacrons. XP was much easier to come by at this point, but we traded that for getting the skill trees squeezed into utilities.

[FlameYOL]

Not I. For all the above ranting, I actually liked KOTFE and KOTET. Zakul is an amazing city, the dreamscape sequences were cinematically top-notch, and if we never had Shadow of Revan, I would never have gotten to know Theron and his (cough) fine geometry.

 

So... nay. I disagree.

 

^This.

[aerockyul]

How many of you decided to support the Republic as a native imperial?

 

I did with my LS Sorc. I greatly regret doing it. The indifference of Jonas, the slaughter of so many Jedi and Padawans (that's working with the Republic, right? Killing most of them?), and handing Gnost over to the Imperials, and the presentation of Pyron, Anri, and Acina as counters to the bloodthirsty imperial/Sith stereotypes made me wish I had just stayed in my lane there. I would much rather work with them at this point. I hope I'll be able to "go back" in the future.

 

The story does present me with hope that it may be possible--we get the chance to "choose" Imp/Pub at the end of the Traitor Arc, and then are given the chance again at the beginning of Inflection Point, like the first choice never happened and no mention is made of it.

[IoNonSoEVero]

From a story standpoint, I've personally preferred the expacs from SoR onward. I hate the traitor arc and the current bend of the story back to Imps/Pubs, but as long as my characters can keep their Alliance in some form, I'll be happy.

 

1. I like how you can use any companion, and thus run around with the ones you want (outside of forced story pieces) instead of having them locked into rigid roles. I never would have completed the JK or SW stories if I'd been forced to use Quinn and Doc as my healers for instance. But I can put them on my ship and completely ignore them.

 

2. I like some of the KOTFE companions far more than the class story ones, especially since there's no SGR in the class stories.

 

3. I like being able to move to storylines with adversaries beyond the Imps/Pubs conflict, like Oricon, Revan, KOTFE.

 

From a gearing standpoint it sounds as though gearing was easier or more intuitive for PvPers in the past, but for me, once they tweaked Galactic Command to include UCs, I didn't mind it.

[annabethchase]

I agree with the OP

[Limariko]

I very much feel your sentiment, KotFE and KotET are not my SWTOR. My SWTOR are the class stories, the planetary missions from Coruscant/Dromund Kaas to Corellia. My SWTOR is RotHC, SoR, but KotFE and KotET? No, I do not like it at all.

 

Do I wish that KotFE and KotET turned out to be a bad dream from which our characters awake and we're back to between Ziost and the horror that was KotFE? Yes, I actually genuinely wouldn't mind it if that happened story wise. But sadly that won't happen.

 

If we had the option of having our characters wake up next to thier LI telling them of this strange dream about a place called Zakuul and what happened there and get told this is what happens when you overdo it on Devaronian Barbecue for dinner, I'd take it on a majority of my roster. Unfortunately I'm stuck having to eventually take my roster through KotFE/ET because starting the Jedi Under Siege content will lock me into certain default choices my characters wouldn't make. If it was just a matter of 'blam, now you have X amt of DS points', that'd be fine, I can work my way out of those. But since some of those choices affect companions, I'd be bound because someone decided if you're Imperial, here's X choices and if you're Republic, here's Y choices, so deal with it.

 

While I understand they were wanting to try something new with the Zakuul content, and I've long done my share of kvetching over seeing anything that isn't some sort of rehash of the same ol' same ol', KotFE/ET really felt like it would've been more suited to a different game or as it's own separate thing.

[ZeroTypeR]

How many of you decided to support the Republic as a native imperial?

 

My Sith is a Grey Sith, but even so wasn't happening. Above all, my Sith likes having the freedom to do as he pleases, he gets that in the Empire, and of course the constant back-stabs and fighting to survive comes with the territory.

 

On a different note, my Sith is slowly trying push the Empire towards rationality from within (a rational Empire is a peaceful Empire), which can't happen if he were to join the Republic, not that he wants to.

Edited January 28, 2019 by ZeroTypeR

[Ardrossan]

My IA kept flipflopping between Republic and Empire. Iokath: Republic. Nathema: Empire. Ossus: Republic. But she's crazy. Meanwhile, my LS 5 SW stuck with the Empire, but avoided doing the bonus stuff like burning farms.

 

Given how the pubs and imps were portrayed in kotfeet, it's hard to conceive why anyone would still be supporting the republic, let alone defect to them, unless they skipped kotfeet altogether [understandable].

Edited January 28, 2019 by Ardrossan

[IoNonSoEVero]

My Sith is a Grey Sith, but even so wasn't happening. Above all, my Sith likes having the freedom to do as he pleases, he gets that in the Empire, and of course the constant back-stabs and fighting to survive comes with the territory.

 

On a different note, my Sith is slowly trying push the Empire towards rationality from within (a rational Empire is a peaceful Empire), which can't happen if he were to join the Republic, not that he wants to.

 

That's more or less how I play my Sith too. They're striving for an Empire that's more Marr and less Jadus, and they're encouraged by what they have seen with Acina and the way things have changed. They would never join the Republic or be comfortable with that.

 

My other characters all have their own reasons for wanting to stay Empire. My BH hasn't forgotten the way the SIS framed her and killed her friends; my IA hasn't forgotten how the Republic used her conditioning.

 

The only characters who are changing sides are my Republic characters, who all want to defect to the Empire. They're tired of the hypocrisy they've seen with the Jedi and they haven't forgotten that the Sith Empire supported them during KOTET while the Republic was hoping they'd be wiped out.