How do you even go about fixing such a fragmented story with so little momentum?

[sharpenedstick]

You can't keep a good IMMORTAL GALAXY EATING FORCE GHOST down!

[LanceDefender]

If 7.4 won't be big, with big story push that will explain few things, do few things like Malgus escape or finally his vision of flames starting, or another Mando battle then it will never push forward. 7.4 probably will be last "real" update as they moving to maintence mode company after that, so if we'll get another talk to malgus, sweep floor somwhere else and story for 15minutes then as said, it will be like that forever. I enjoyed talk with Malgus in 7.3, but really... do something suprsing/new that will push the story forward...

 

 

[jedimasterjac]

I think you should fully expect 7.4 to be yet another update primarily comprised of “we have to figure out Malgus’s plan! It’s evil and very bad!”

Or more Mandalorian fan fiction. 

[LanceDefender]

Hopefully not. Give a push to Malgus story.
As for Mando. Let me kill Heta, Shae and remove all enemy mandos.Give Jekiah a Mandalore's role, give me Dar'manda as official allies, Bask as companion and move on from boring and annoying mando arc.
Focus on Rep vs Imp, Malgus arc and finally something about Vaylin?

[OlBuzzard]

7 hours ago, Whykara said:

Somehow Valkorion returned... Again! For the fourth time! 

Yeah .. I know .. tell me about it!!

[/FACEPALM] ... MAJOR ... [/CRINGE]  

( That's one idea that I probably should have just kept to myself)

Edited June 17, 2023 by OlBuzzard

[OlBuzzard]

16 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

If you gotta give Bioware credit for something, it's really gotta be the vanilla story lines. They did an outstanding job with them.

The only downside to them is that they just didn't last long enough. But, even if they lasted 6 months, it still wouldn't be long enough.  That's what alot of players are craving. That kind of story content. But, that's just not possible in the long term.

The vanilla story lines spoiled us.

Let's face ... even today when you read stuff on the net about SWTOR .. the individual class stories are still to this day considered to be some of the games finest points.  And as you pointed out earlier .. heck there should at least be some considerations to "generalities"  (if I understood your point correctly).  

** No two people are going to look a situation over and think exactly the same way let alone people from totally different backgrounds:  Troopers / JK / Smugglers ... etc.  Then throw in LS / DS background thinking in the process.

** Funneling ALL of that into a one size fits all dialogue ...  that's just too much of a stretch!

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

7 hours ago, TziganeNZ said:

Omg please no.....let the dead STAY dead!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Edited June 17, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[OlBuzzard]

Just now, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^

You beat me to it !!! 

LOL !!!!!!

(We definitely need an increase of those reaction thingies) !!

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 minute ago, OlBuzzard said:

You beat me to it !!! 

LOL !!!!!!

^^^^^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^  x2

2 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

(We definitely need an increase of those reaction thingies) !!

Totally. It's annoying as hell heh.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

8 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

Let's face ... even today when you read stuff on the net about SWTOR .. the individual class stories are still to this day considered to be some of the games finest points.  And as you pointed out earlier .. heck there should at least be some considerations to "generalities"  (if I understood your point correctly).  

You had me perfectly.

Adding a class specific sentence here and there would make such a big difference. I think we all know the futility in thinking they could make class specific story lines in updates and I don't think anyone has any illusions about that, but just a sentence or two here and there would go a long way.

I'm also not sure why no one has considered the option of just getting someone who works there, or even players who would jump at that chance to do a line for the game totally for free. Even if it were just from new NPCS so they didn't have to worry about different sounding voices from already established characters with preexisting voice actors.

13 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

** No two people are going to look a situation over and think exactly the same way let alone people from totally different backgrounds:  Troopers / JK / Smugglers ... etc.  Then throw in LS / DS background thinking in the process.

I'd say that a Sithlord as opposed to a Jedi Knight are as polar opposite in views as it gets!

The diverse backgrounds of Troopers, Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, Operatives, etc are also going to have very different views on things in many instances.

16 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

** Funneling ALL of that into a one size fits all dialogue ...  that's just too much of a stretch!

Agreed in spades.

[jedimasterjac]

I think throwing in a personal phase every now and then, a few throwaway comments… that would be enough to make classes feel somewhat relevant. 
 

Why couldn’t, say, 7.5 have a short quest where the Jedi knight checks in with the settlers on Tython? 7.6 a quest where the warrior visits some old stronghold of Baras’ that might have valuable information or armor or whatever?
 

I don’t get why we can’t get flavor. And it’s not like people aren’t okay with waiting for small pieces of character specific story - we’ve already got the companion stuff with alliance alerts. 

[OlBuzzard]

11 hours ago, sharpenedstick said:

You can't keep a good IMMORTAL GALAXY EATING FORCE GHOST down!

Maybe we're looking for the wrong answers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMcbhn6Np0

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by OlBuzzard
Found the video I really wanted earlier!!!

[OlBuzzard]

8 minutes ago, jedimasterjac said:

I think throwing in a personal phase every now and then, a few throwaway comments… that would be enough to make classes feel somewhat relevant. 
 

Why couldn’t, say, 7.5 have a short quest where the Jedi knight checks in with the settlers on Tython? 7.6 a quest where the warrior visits some old stronghold of Baras’ that might have valuable information or armor or whatever?
 

I don’t get why we can’t get flavor. And it’s not like people aren’t okay with waiting for small pieces of character specific story - we’ve already got the companion stuff with alliance alerts. 

I really honestly think it comes down to streamlining the process as much as possible.  That has to hamper even a GOOD writer!  In other words it comes down to $$$$  ... AGAIN !!!

[KyraMalakai]

42 minutes ago, jedimasterjac said:

Why couldn’t, say, 7.5 have a short quest where the Jedi knight checks in with the settlers on Tython? 7.6 a quest where the warrior visits some old stronghold of Baras’ that might have valuable information or armor or whatever?

This would already make a huge difference or something like what we had back on Rishi, very small quest but unique to each class.

[Ardrossan]

2 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I'm also not sure why no one has considered the option of just getting someone who works there, or even players who would jump at that chance to do a line for the game totally for free. Even if it were just from new NPCS so they didn't have to worry about different sounding voices from already established characters with preexisting voice actors.

Because bad voice acting is worse than no voice acting at all. 

imo this is similar to "why don't we just use AI?" The question belies the actual hard work that goes into voice acting as if anyone can do it and not make a cringey awful job that players love to mock for years afterwards. There is thankfully not that much of it in this game, but there is one that comes to mind, and all I had to do was google "bad voice acting swtor" and this was the first result. "Try not to make this too easy will you." 

If paying people the value of their labor is too expensive  then just go back to text-based dialogue for everything, plenty of older games did that. 

Edited June 17, 2023 by Ardrossan

[commanderwar]

 

I don't have a problem with going to places with doing very little, like if the story was just helping the voss and defeating czerk, that would be completely fine for me. The problem is the mystery of Malgus's  mega, super secret, grand plan and darth nul they keeping dragging on, the mystery for me was one of the reasons it brought the story down a lot. Should of just focus on the Voss and Gormak, and just helping them out imo, and fully voice acted. It would of been a lot better imo. If the story does lead to restart of the game, ( I am not expecting it at all) then I would look at the story at a better light, but right now I am expecting nothing huge to come out of Malgus's storyline, so I am more negative towards it.

That being said but I don't think the story is bad, in fact some of the writing in the beginning of old wounds, for Torian, Arcann, and malgus was probably one of the best writing in the game. In my honest opinion, one of the reasons I don't really like a lot of the stories in vanilla there very basic and lacks any meaningful character progression for most companions imo.

Now for me to talk about my unpopular opinions.

On class dialogue and content, for me personally I don't really care about class specific lines,  it never encourage me to play any expansion or updates on alts because of it. On class missions, the problem is that swtor has 16 voice actors (48 in total for all languages) just for the player character, I think none of the studios whether it's BW or anyone else, would continue doing class story with so many VA, for a 11 year old game imo, even one off class missions like SOR.  The class stories took so much budget that there was no endgame at launch and the game lost most of their subs and went F2P.  I do think they should of just done 4 class stories, it would of been better long term imo. I don't think it would be a good idea to do class content, because of the cost but also I think there are better ways to increase replay value.

I prefer something that old wounds did at the beginning of the story, where picking different dialogue option leads to different dialogue choices that you didn't get the first time. As an example in Old Wounds telling Malgus that "attachment is a good thing" leads to other dialogue options I didn't get in my first play through where I ask about Heta. It leads to different options, where one of them you can threaten to kill him. Then he talks about the sith emperor, which didn't happen when I first played it. That was cool, and I did the story again because of that. I also like that Arcann greets you coldly in Old wounds if you were mean to him in a past update.

I take more of that over class dialogue, just my opinion.

At this point I would like a restart where they get less voice actors maybe 6 (3 male, 3 female) for player (18 in total for all languages), instead of 16/48. I know this is probably unpopular I just think it would be better long term.

Edited June 17, 2023 by commanderwar

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

Because bad voice acting is worse than no voice acting at all. 

imo this is similar to "why don't we just use AI?" The question belies the actual hard work that goes into voice acting as if anyone can do it and not make a cringey awful job that players love to mock for years afterwards. There is thankfully not that much of it in this game, but there is one that comes to mind, and all I had to do was google "bad voice acting swtor" and this was the first result. "Try not to make this too easy will you." 

If paying people the value of their labor is too expensive  then just go back to text-based dialogue for everything, plenty of older games did that. 

Well, yeah, ideally I would certainly prefer it be the real McCoy and done the right way, but I definitely don't want text based dialogue either.

I'm not necessarily of the opinion that unless it's professional voice actors it can't be done so it's not awful. And I'm not knocking the professionalism of professional voice actors, but with technology as it is today, I have a hard time believing they can't use AI that can't sound good.

But, even with that idea, it really comes down to this, and its the systemic problem with the game. It just doesn't have the resources to do the job right.

[Ardrossan]

17 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Well, yeah, ideally I would certainly prefer it be the real McCoy and done the right way, but I definitely don't want text based dialogue either.

I'm not necessarily of the opinion that unless it's professional voice actors it can't be done so it's not awful. And I'm not knocking the professionalism of professional voice actors, but with technology as it is today, I have a hard time believing they can't use AI that can't sound good.

But, even with that idea, it really comes down to this, and its the systemic problem with the game. It just doesn't have the resources to do the job right.

Maybe they could make AI sound good, but it would be an abomination. YMMV but for me, hiring scabs / automation is particularly egregious when it's done to cut costs for something as trite as a videogame, especially when there are other solutions available.

I agree with you that the problem is systemic: it's not that hiring VAs are so obscenely expensive, they relied on VA so much for the vanilla game, maybe more than any other game in history! The systemic problem of not having enough resources is because of corporate greed siphoning away profits, and developer mismanagement misusing what resources are left. If those things were less of a factor, I bet they'd be able to find the money for VAs pretty easily.

[OlBuzzard]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

Because bad voice acting is worse than no voice acting at all. 

imo this is similar to "why don't we just use AI?" The question belies the actual hard work that goes into voice acting as if anyone can do it and not make a cringey awful job that players love to mock for years afterwards. There is thankfully not that much of it in this game, but there is one that comes to mind, and all I had to do was google "bad voice acting swtor" and this was the first result. "Try not to make this too easy will you." 

If paying people the value of their labor is too expensive  then just go back to text-based dialogue for everything, plenty of older games did that. 

I can think of a couple Vendors and Mission / Quest givers (Pub side)  that must have had the same VA training!!

[/facepalm]

Yeah .. REALLY awful !

Senior QC editor anyone???

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

The systemic problem of not having enough resources is because of corporate greed siphoning away profits, and developer mismanagement misusing what resources are left. If those things were less of a factor, I bet they'd be able to find the money for VAs pretty easily.

Yeah, I totally agree with you on this. You nailed it. 🫵

[Jdast]

I have to admit I'm getting a bit tired of chasing and tasting the tiniest of breadcrumbs around the galaxy which is about to be set on fire.

I'm starting to get really strong Game of Thrones 'Winter is Coming' (for 8 years) vibes. 

Dasty

[Whykara]

51 minutes ago, Jdast said:

I have to admit I'm getting a bit tired of chasing and tasting the tiniest of breadcrumbs around the galaxy which is about to be set on fire.

I'm starting to get really strong Game of Thrones 'Winter is Coming' (for 8 years) vibes. 

The more they build up to it, the bigger the pay off has to be. I'm expecting nothing short of a cataclysmic event at this point and I'll be disappointed if they can't deliver.

[recalcitrantIre]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:19 PM, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

What I can say for sure, and unfortunately I can't provide the source, as it's admittedly from a very long time ago, from very early on in the game, the Devs did say that they would never introduce a faction switch option.

and then Iokath happened

even if its basically a locationally-locked tech demo, a functional faction switch in an MMO is a functional faction switch

they've already done the technically tricky part, now all that's left is the annoying logistical parts

[Ardrossan]

7 hours ago, Jdast said:

I have to admit I'm getting a bit tired of chasing and tasting the tiniest of breadcrumbs around the galaxy which is about to be set on fire.

I'm starting to get really strong Game of Thrones 'Winter is Coming' (for 8 years) vibes. 

Dasty

um...

6 hours ago, Whykara said:

The more they build up to it, the bigger the pay off has to be. I'm expecting nothing short of a cataclysmic event at this point and I'll be disappointed if they can't deliver.

Given the way the ten year anniversary went down and other overhyped ideas from bioware, I expect it to be very much closer to the way Game of Thrones ended--expect cataclysmic disappointment.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

7 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

and then Iokath happened

even if its basically a locationally-locked tech demo, a functional faction switch in an MMO is a functional faction switch

they've already done the technically tricky part, now all that's left is the annoying logistical parts

Like I said, they could change their minds and make a full faction switch, but I don't think they will.

Quite honestly, in my opinion, I don't think it's worth the time and the resources necessary to do so given how limited resources are.

We already know what the factions are about (It's basically good guys vs, bad guys)  there's no surprises there, so, if you don't like one, play a character on the other faction.

But, it doesn't matter what any one of us think, ultimately it's up to Bioware or Broadsword.

Edited June 18, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx