Is it Time for a Big New Story Drop?

[TrixxieTriss]

9 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

I'm not sure why you think you can speak for all current subscribers.  I'm quite sure a lot of current subscribers would have a problem paying for an expansion too, simply because the game left the pay-for-expansion model behind after RoTHC, if I recall correctly.  A lot of subscribers complained about a credit cost being added to Quick Travel after 10 years of not having any credit cost.  It seems logical to expect a lot of subscribers would complain about having to pay real money for an expansion in addition to the cost for subscription when they haven't had to pay for expansions in years.

Not if they sold the idea of a properly funded & extensive expansion as the reason for changing it to paid. 

Because just about everyone I talk to or read comments from, complains every expansion since 5.0, that there isn’t enough content in the expansions or they didn’t get any content for their preferred play type. GSF comes to mind, so does Story, PvP & Operations. But you also have people asking for Strongholds & romance options with companions too. 

So then we have people arguing that they shouldn’t have made content for “x” group of players because it took away development of “y” group of players. All because the developers are underfunded. 

And right now we have people in this actual thread arguing to take away VA so they can have more content in their preferred part of the game at the expense of other player’s enjoyment. 

ALL of that talk & arguing of where funds should go for development can mostly be avoided if Broadsword has the funds to develop a proper expansion that covers all of the games content. But that will only happen if they change the business model & have paid expansions instead of including it free with subscription. 

Because if they don’t, they will continue to make less & less content each DLC (they can’t even be defined as real expansions anymore), which will drive more & more players from the game. Then any hope of a proper expansion will be a pipe dream. 

At the end of the day, they would of course need to sell the benefits of a paid expansion & explain the reasons & the benefits to players. If they don’t do that, I agree, there is a chance it would back fire. But I think it’s an easy sell. Especially to those of us who have seen the games content continuously being diminished & limited due to lack of developer resources. 

[TziganeNZ]

30 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

 Every single person posting  in this thread is okay with paying money for SWTOR content.  I bet literally everybody here, in truth, would be overjoyed with the notion of an actual, huge expansion for 40-60 bux. Its just that when one reads " TOR expansion" one thinks of..well, TOR expansions, which with notable exception of KOTFE era haven't been very expansive at all. People would love to see something similar in scope and scale to a typical wow expansion..which is pretty much unseen in SWTOR so far. Folks would pay for it. Some pathetic glorified daily area and 10 mins of story? Yeah, nobody will want to pay for that though.

 

 

^^^ +1000 - this exactly.

[OlBuzzard]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Not if they sold the idea of a properly funded & extensive expansion as the reason for changing it to paid. 

Because just about everyone I talk to or read comments from, complains every expansion since 5.0, that there isn’t enough content in the expansions or they didn’t get any content for their preferred play type. GSF comes to mind, so does Story, PvP & Operations. But you also have people asking for Strongholds & romance options with companions too. 

So then we have people arguing that they shouldn’t have made content for “x” group of players because it took away development of “y” group of players. All because the developers are underfunded. 

And right now we have people in this actual thread arguing to take away VA so they can have more content in their preferred part of the game at the expense of other player’s enjoyment. 

ALL of that talk & arguing of where funds should go for development can mostly be avoided if Broadsword has the funds to develop a proper expansion that covers all of the games content. But that will only happen if they change the business model & have paid expansions instead of including it free with subscription. 

Because if they don’t, they will continue to make less & less content each DLC (they can’t even be defined as real expansions anymore), which will drive more & more players from the game. Then any hope of a proper expansion will be a pipe dream. 

At the end of the day, they would of course need to sell the benefits of a paid expansion & explain the reasons & the benefits to players. If they don’t do that, I agree, there is a chance it would back fire. But I think it’s an easy sell. Especially to those of us who have seen the games content continuously being diminished & limited due to lack of developer resources. 

V2.0 of what I've been driving at.  And yes ... you are correct!

If things don't change $$$$ wise there really will be even less and less reason to add more and more! (And from a business standpoint of view I wouldn't blame them one bit if that is exactly what we continue to get).  

BTW ...  @DWho (I still think you were right in OP) ... and I totally support the idea of a new major story to unfold.  IMO it would lay the foundation for the rest of the new material added to the game!)

Edited November 18, 2023 by OlBuzzard
clarification

[Jazulfi]

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

ALL of that talk & arguing of where funds should go for development can mostly be avoided if Broadsword has the funds to develop a proper expansion that covers all of the games content. But that will only happen if they change the business model & have paid expansions instead of including it free with subscription. 

Apols @TrixxieTriss - but it's this assertion I take issue with. We just don't know what financial state the game is in. It could be some voice acting has to go AND we have to pay for future expansions for the game to start making money again.  Or as you say, the VA debate is a distraction and all could be solved by other means. Point is, we don't know.

I absolutely agree players need to pay more if they expect bigger things from the game. I also agree that every part of the game is sorely under supported at the moment and if SWTOR is to flourish, it needs to win back paying mmo customers and reassure it's current subscribers. That will only happen if players can see a game worth investing their time and money in.

The discussion about VA is also an assertion. We don't know if VA needs to go or not but people are guessing it's a big part of the budget. So with that in mind, if (particularly) PCVA is placing financial pressure on development, perhaps there are ways of scaling it back so it doesn't terminally offend people. Personally I think scrapping VA altogether would be a disaster but I don't *think* anyone is actually saying that?

 

(I failed at stepping away)
 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Jazulfi

[JakRoanin]

1 hour ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Your reading comprehension must be very bad then, or my writing. 
I'm not suggesting anything, i'm saying the game is doomed no matter what they do because their decisions led to this situation. Unless a big influx of money goes they way and can do a proper expansion. And even then, there is trust they broke they would need to rebuild, how many people would get back with an ex that has lied multiple times because they now says "i changed"?

My reading comprehension is fine, you're the one who says Story PVE isn't content. You said, that Voice Acting is throwing money away. You said that casuals and story players ruined the game! Heck you even said FP's aren't content! Well, that's what me and lots of other people are paying for.

[VanessaBlackrose]

On 11/13/2023 at 8:14 AM, DWho said:

The game has been bleeding players for years now and all the attempts at retaining players have basically failed. The only content that showed any indication of bringing in lots of players was story content like KotFE and KotET (whether you liked them or not, they brought in tons of players). Dev efforts would be better spent bringing in lots of new players and then finding a way after that to retain rather them than spending time trying to retain current players with minor tweaks to the game. Those tweaks are not going to bring back any significant number of players and what the game needs now is a big infusion of players. Perhaps the devs don't have enough resources to pull off a big story drop, but the status quo is not working.

That said, the story needs to take a new direction. Both the Sith Emperor and Darth Malgus storylines have worn out their novelty (one could even say that the Malgus storyline was nothing more than a continuation of the Sith Emperor storyline with a new antagonist). No matter how many times you kill or defeat them, they kept coming back. Conquest has just about worn out its attraction as well and with the flop that was GS5, Galactic Seasons is on the ropes too.

What kind of storylines do people think would infuse new life into the game?

I think a "new" threat from outside the galaxy, sort of like the yuuzhan vong, would be a fresh story (for the game anyway) that would appeal to both Force Users and non-Force Users. Having them invade both Republic and Imperial space at the same time would give both sides something to fight and even give light sided Imperials and dark sided Pubs a way to "fight for" their preferred faction. You could even make a new type of warzone where NPCs are continually spawning and attacking both sides. An operation could be based on establishing a beachhead against further invasion or even taking the fight to the invaders and flashpoints could be designed around turning back the invasion on different "Outer Rim" worlds.

Please keep comments constructive as "Story sucks" and "The Devs don't have the time for that" type comments don't help at all. At the same time if you have a good idea outside story that will bring in a lot of new players, feel free to lay that out along with why you think it would be a big draw for increasing the game population. The end goal is to bring in lots of players, whatever the content might be.

i think that's a great idea! anything w/out malgus, or old emp wrinkles would be great. 

[SoyElSenado]

3 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Not if they sold the idea of a properly funded & extensive expansion as the reason for changing it to paid. 

Because just about everyone I talk to or read comments from, complains every expansion since 5.0, that there isn’t enough content in the expansions or they didn’t get any content for their preferred play type. GSF comes to mind, so does Story, PvP & Operations. But you also have people asking for Strongholds & romance options with companions too. 

So then we have people arguing that they shouldn’t have made content for “x” group of players because it took away development of “y” group of players. All because the developers are underfunded. 

And right now we have people in this actual thread arguing to take away VA so they can have more content in their preferred part of the game at the expense of other player’s enjoyment. 

ALL of that talk & arguing of where funds should go for development can mostly be avoided if Broadsword has the funds to develop a proper expansion that covers all of the games content. But that will only happen if they change the business model & have paid expansions instead of including it free with subscription. 

Because if they don’t, they will continue to make less & less content each DLC (they can’t even be defined as real expansions anymore), which will drive more & more players from the game. Then any hope of a proper expansion will be a pipe dream. 

At the end of the day, they would of course need to sell the benefits of a paid expansion & explain the reasons & the benefits to players. If they don’t do that, I agree, there is a chance it would back fire. But I think it’s an easy sell. Especially to those of us who have seen the games content continuously being diminished & limited due to lack of developer resources. 

I think you're on to something, the best way to move forward is to just charge money for the expansion packs. If they come out and say, hey here's why we are going to charge, we want to build an xpac that will have new operations, new flashpoints, new warzone/arena maps, PvP revamp, GSF rejuvenation, and comparable story content to SOR including little class story continuation missions...

I'm pretty sure the amount of people who would complain about having to pay "extra" for that is minimal. Do they really want a continuation of the current iteration? If so, they are out of their mind and probably shouldn't be listened to anyway. A lot of subscribed players probably spend the equivalent cost of an xpac on the CM every few months anyway...

Edited November 18, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[xxSHOONYxx]

3 hours ago, JakRoanin said:

My reading comprehension is fine, you're the one who says Story PVE isn't content. You said, that Voice Acting is throwing money away. You said that casuals and story players ruined the game! Heck you even said FP's aren't content! Well, that's what me and lots of other people are paying for.

Because to me content in a mmo is something that has replayability, for you story may have replayability but for most it doesn't. It's just do it once and that is it. You have people asking for story skips, others using any method other than story to level up, others buying the lvl 80 tokens and others playing space bar simulator. Most of the characters probably never went into places like ruhnuk because people don't want to do ossus and everything else again.
Just because SWTOR is different than other mmos like wow it doesn't make it good or special. A spoon with holes is different compared to other spoons, does not mean that is good spoon.

And no i don't think fps are pve content as it stands now, they are a shadow of what they used to be. Before there were different tiers of fps, with fps like lost island being on a whole differet gf queue and a different gear requirement than the rest. They were used a lot to gear your companions or yourself  if you didn't do ops. Now they are boring, just some story for those that like it, there is no reason to do them at all, the gear they drop is useless, they burnt everyone in 6.0 with them and many if they have to do a fp prefer to do Hammer Station and run away from the new ones, and having VA in several of them makes people reluctant to do them if they find someone that wants to see the VA which means they will  need to see it for the 1 millionth time.

Daily areas used to have reasons to be done, you could farm credits when economy was not totally screwed, there were actually useful items in it's reputation besides cosmetics like legacy armor, daily areas like black hole had very rare drops like the cz crate (or people thought there it was the highest drop chance), oricon had a mob that spawned sometimes and if you were lucky it dropped a special head piece, cz had a special mob that sometimes spawned and it could drop a special mount.   

Events had a reason as well like dailies, like gree event was the only place you could get the offhand legacy, others had legacy weaepons, the nim cyrstal and several cool cosmetics/mounts/toys.

Companions were unique, it took a big scavenging event to get hk 51, a truly unique companion with special skills that were all deleted so they could all do the same. Now they are all the same, aiming at mediocrity.

Every player of the game regardless of what they liked had a reason to do the above. There were reasons to play the game and stay logged for hours.
Then 4.0 came. Changed their whole monetization thinking story would be enough to keep players playing, removed paid expansions and saying 1 chapter a month would come to try to keep people subbed, dumbed down the game and took the life of other aspects of the game + adding nothing new that was not story. 
Now? No reason to do any of that because they ruined it with subsequent expansion. They gutted every aspect of the game.
I cannot even imagine their faces when they saw it didn't work, halfway through the development of 5.0 chapters and having to rush some bad/repetitive/low effort content like dark vs light and uprisings.
 

- Gsf is a joke, released and never touched.
- Crafting was useful, was. It started getting gutted little by little. 4 years ago was the last crafting update, we are still rocking last patch reusables, medpacs, stims, augments. Which were the last useful part of crafting. Before you could craft gear, special cosmetic could be re engineer to be learnt and be sold, could craft max level hilts/armoring (with no set bonus)/mods/enhancements.
- PvP was abandoned and people hacked/trolled, ranked removed. Reports were sent with videos and never checked. Others more into pvp can tell further how it was ruined.
- Ops were basically cancelled after r4. We have 12 ops, 3 cancelled NiM versions, 2 ops that their nim difficulty was there and later removed. The balancing is just awful, even the hardest difficulty ops are not difficult anymore. And i'm not pretending to be good, they were balanced for 330 gear (soon we will have 344), and then nim ops got a health and damage reduction for.... reasons.

They try to make everything so easy, so inclusive that they take the life away from every aspect of the game and reduce their life span while destroying the content some people were already playing. (Plus putting everything worth it on the GTN)

Yet every one of the types of players above had to look how their favorite part of the game was left behind, forgotten, full expansions being made just for one type of players. Which was a failure, if it was successful they would have continued with the formula. And the only compromise story players had to do was just smaller and smaller story expansions because the budget just gets smaller and smaller, instead of totally shutting them down like the other aspects of the game.

I never said you ruined the game, the devs did. Unless you are a dev and use your personal account here.
Bioware does not know how to make online games. Something as big, successful, popular as Star Wars has no reason to be on this state, barely surviving. Fallen order for example sold 20 million copies, people want to play star wars games, they just don't want to play this one. Bioware failed with swtor, and it failed with Anthem.

You have every right at loving VA and wanting more, but you either accept the state the game has been in and want to give the game a chance to get better or you want your extensive VA without caring about the health of the game. Because what made swtor stand out from other mmos at launch was also it's downfall, the stone it had to carry through out it's life and what made it not succeed, the VA and how financially unsustainable it is plus their low replayability.
FF14 had no VA at the  begining, was fairly story focused too yet there was a focus on mmo aspect too especially after the re launch (FF failed as swtor did in launch). When they started growing they started adding VA, some VA for a few quest and that is it, a successful story driven mmo  (because on that one if you want to do ANYTHING mmo related you have to do the story because is story progression locked, you can be max level but cant do the new "op" because is story gated) can't get too much into VA because of the cost it has.
You asking for longer story with VA in their current situation is as unrealistic as me asking for 5 new ops the next patch. And even if you somehow get it, it will mean every aspect of the game is forgotten even more like 4.0. 
This devs could even be the best devs in the industry, but even if they were they are with their back against the wall and can't do anything/much more than keep the game from dying so they can keep their job.

Massive IP, most expensive game made when it was released (wow cost 63 million for comparison according to google vs the 200-250m swtor did depeding on the source), rapidly declining population after some months vs one that kept growing till it reached like 11m subscribers, no other mmo with this kind of VA. For as much as you love it, there has to be a point you realize how much this type of VA harmed swtor. 
 

[OlBuzzard]

19 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

The problem my friend is that some folks believe that anything more than providing a place for PvP ..(gear for said area of development) and maybe a few high-end PvE areas is nothing but a total waste of resources.  In short it's all about what THEY want.

** Never mind the heritage that SWTOR once had (and has long since been pushed aside)
** Never mind the opportunity to rebuild the game, lay the foundation for MANY areas that would benefit everyone.  
** Never mind the amount of profits that SWTOR generated and was diverted to other EA projects.  (I didn't just imagine the posts that someone made almost 2 years ago when a similar discussion about the sad state of affairs the game was (and still is) in.
** Never mind the pleas that have been made repeatedly by (what at one time) was a MUCH LARGER audience (and still went on being ignored).

IMO it is definitely OVERDUE for a large story to drop.  IMO the story of Malgus is on life support.  Time to move on.  YES, the story has been reasonably well done.  BUT it is time to move things forward.

MMO's in general ARE expensive (in more ways than one).  The good ones always have been and always will be.  It takes a genuine commitment to this line of work to make it happen.  BUT .. IT CAN happen.

The simple fact is that SWTOR has been bleeding off numbers for a long time now.  IMO you can't blame the VA or expenses.
** Failed GS series
** Little or NO work on GSF (yes... I'm being polite).
** Poor gearing system
** The 10th (what was that event called ...  I forget. [/shrugs] Must not have been that important.]
** Dead companions (might as well be dead).
** Crafting??? Why would anyone even mess with it now???

This is just a short list.

Back to OP:  Yes we need the story to at least TRY to kick start the game again.

It's quite evident that the underwhelming attitude is that VA must be reduced to dust in order that SWTOR must "survive"  (if you want to call it that) ??

RIP SWTOR!

Probably one of the saddest realities of the state of this game.  Kind of makes it difficult (at best) to be positive in just about any aspect of SWTOR.  Everybody wants their cut!  

Truely sad what this has come to!

[Stradlin]

16 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

It's quite evident that the underwhelming attitude is that VA must be reduced to dust in order that SWTOR must "survive"  (if you want to call it that) ??

RIP SWTOR!

Probably one of the saddest realities of the state of this game.  Kind of makes it difficult (at best) to be positive in just about any aspect of SWTOR.  Everybody wants their cut!  

Truely sad what this has come to!

 

Goal BW/EA set for themselves back when they began devving SWTOR was incredibly ambitious. In order for the most expensive game ever made to stay true to its og concept, it'd  need most expensive expansions ever made through the post launch live dev phase.

TOR failed to reach many of its more ambitious goals through 12-13. Expansions they had in mind would have surely required at least 1-2 million subs in order to be worth the investment. 1-2 million subs was something the game was never really able to hold. In time and with f2p, the game found its  comfortable, stable niche with great profit  marigins..but something as obscenely  expensive as huge fully voice acted story drops never really was part of that plan B.

So for 11 years, they've done the bare minimum in this regard, because everything else would be too expensive. Technically devving the mmo side of the game would surely have always been much better bang for the buck, if we just consider how much newly developed  content  a single dollar buys. But ofc, properly focusing on that was never a valid option either, since "that isn't what SWTOR is about!" SWTOR is about being able to hear Jennifer Hale&co  speak five minutes worth of dialogue released like 20 months apart.

Huge majority of people are very passionate about PCVA and pretty much demand SWTOR to always offer that. Objectively speaking it is incredibly wasteful and polar opposite of cost efficient, if we look at it from pov of devving budget of 11 year old game. 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Stradlin

[DWho]

This whole argument about the cost of voice acting is being used as a proxy for not wanting the Devs to provide substantial story content. Voice Acting isn't story content. Missions are story content. Creating single player missions is about the cheapest content you can create in the game (it uses existing mechanics, doesn't use gimmicks, doesn't need a lot of balance since you are expected to win, and doesn't require special rewards). The VA only enhances what you have in the story. For that matter, how many thousand lines of voice acting have already been recorded. There has to be a significant amount of it that could be re-used (perhaps there is an additional payment to the voice actors but it has to be a lot less expensive than recording new lines). How many times in the story have we had an NPC give the PC a mission to which the PC says "I'll get right on it" in one form or another.

You could create tens of hours of play time with missions without needing any voice acting at all. You use the voice acting to end major sections of the story and enhance the impact of important aspects. The biggest problem with the Traitor Arc was that they were all cutscenes and no missions. How much more content could there have been there by making them Mission based as opposed to Flashpoint with cutscene based.

As far as group content has gone in this game there has been an incredible resistance to re-using assets (making all new assets for every Operation is very expensive). The fights with Arcann, Valkorian and Vaylin could easily have been turned into Operations and the end of each of those storylines could have been just like the one in Shadow of Revan (do the operation or do the missions to complete the storyline). Then you have 3 more operations to repeat to your hearts content that required few new assets saving a lot of money. We talk about saving money by cutting voice acting but suggesting re-using assets is the third rail for "MMO" players.

[BulbulusTheGreat]

18 hours ago, Stradlin said:

 

Thinking this Ford  is a car rather than a vehicle with fully automatic transmission is nothing short of delusional my friend , yes it is a CAR WITH AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION but..

 

There's a huge amount of narrative content in LOTRO, for example. Actually, sum of all parts considered, there is prolly much more story to be had there than in SWTOR.  Even, say, WoW has offered so much more story over last 10 years than TOR has. Suppose WoW, too is no MMO then. oO  Getting to hear Jennifer Hale talk is what sets RPGs apart from MMOs, I guess.

In general Bioware fully intentionally, bit arrogantly &for prestige and marketing reasons has, ever since ME 1 or so, tried to redefine what "RPG" is and what it means..But thats such an eternity topic, that lets not even go there. In Bioware world, it literally takes Shepard talking for game to be counted as an RPG.

 

And you are right, It is subjective, I never quite liked most of the class stories that much and actually enjoyed KOTFE more...for 10 hours. Like 8 years back.  When we get objective and speak of general trends rather than what you or I like  though, vast majority of people who speak of their enjoyment of TOR's story bits almost  always  speak of class stories. 

People who favor post launch story stuff over class stories are truly sith  out of luck, for such folks have gotten almost nothing, almost ever.  It is borderline terrifying what sort of a sum of all  parts narrative content released in last 11 years totals. Last story expansion was what...30 minutes of story progression?

 

It kinda feels like there is such an argument happening  here but I'm not rly sure what the bottom line to be argued about even is. People want more story and been asking for more story for 11 years. People get 20 mins of story  every 18 months or something. Where is the argument again? Nobody, dev or player,  reads these posts and goes "Oh wow, ok. you convinced me. I didn't realize you guys REALLY want more story! We gonna do 20 hours every 4 months from now on!\o/"

 

There was prolly a model for future class story expansions drawn in some little napkin back in 2011 or something. and that model prolly opened with " We need at least 2 million subs for all of the following:" That never happened, most people left.  We've been at plan B or C ever since.

 

 

i stopped "at WoW offered more story" WoW story focus is almost non existant apart from few animations and its fully MMO.


SWTOR is more story than MMO, end of our discussion.

Edited November 18, 2023 by BulbulusTheGreat

[Stradlin]

18 minutes ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

i stopped "at WoW offered more story" WoW story focus is almost non existant apart from few animations and its fully MMO.


SWTOR is more story than MMO, end of our discussion.

Takes mutual desire of two to end our discussion, I'm not done yet.

It is difficult to have an argument about  stuff that is an objective truth. Since release of SWTOR, Bliz has released six expansions of immense scale in wow. Each comes with huge wealth of story progression just as well. In terms of scope, KOTFE+KOTET plus all of the related free content patches could barely be counted as to  having equal(well, comparable)  weight to a single wow expansion.  Rest of TOR expansions can't really be discussed in this sense, it just isn't a fair comparsion. There is "more" story content in SWTOR expansions only once you begin juggling with some increasingly arbitrary qualifies. "I only consider fiction I  encounter as story if I hear Jennifer Hale read all of it it to me therefore WoW story is not a story!" 

Honestly, this can't rly be argued. Each wow expansion(if we exclude Ops and all grp content) amounts to at least 30-50 hours of  progression, all of it outlined by story) Bliz began taking narrative side of it all quite seriously around the lich king expansion or thereabouts.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Stradlin

[xxSHOONYxx]

1 hour ago, DWho said:

This whole argument about the cost of voice acting is being used as a proxy for not wanting the Devs to provide substantial story content

No, in an ideal world every aspect of the game would get the same budget to work with. Not the budget going to a part of the game and the rest gets divided in what is left. Story wouldn't be as expensive if they used just NPC VA or at release didn't just waste so many VA in side quests that now no one does/knows they exist because they are hidden. 
Heroics are a prime example of that and stuff some people still do. How many go into the quest location to pick it up and see the introduction of the quest/dialog? Or majority just go to fleet to pick them and skip all that VA?

Some here seem to be under the impression just because others that like different parts of the game pointed out the budget discrepancy and wanting what they like to be developed, that they wanted to erase the story! that story had to go! When it's not, maybe some very few do, but the majority just want an equal budget for every aspect of the game. The ones that had people/some people happy were story people, when r4 nim was canceled so "they would develop content everyone does" aka what they like, or celebrating when "those damn toxic ranked players" got ranked taken out and pvp ruined. I would give gsf or crafting examples, but devs never even said anything about it.

If you put all your money in one basket it simply does not work on a mmo. If it did an mmo with an IP as massive as star wars wouldn't be with average population of 3-4k on steam.
 

Edited November 18, 2023 by xxSHOONYxx

[DWho]

31 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Story wouldn't be as expensive if they used just NPC VA or at release didn't just waist so many VA in side quests that now no one does/knows they exist because they are hidden. 

Well at least we are reaching some sort of common ground here. The idea that story in and of itself is not really expensive. While VA can be expensive it could be deployed in a manner that provides better bang for the buck. An interesting way to deploy more story could be to add more planetary stories. Those add play time but don't necessarily require PCVA.

To go back to what I suggested as a potential storyline in an earlier part of the thread, you could start the expansion with a short cut-scene with you on your ship receiving a distress call from a nearby civilian craft (say a passenger liner). This could have or not have PC lines depending on how much you wanted to budget for VA. You might even be able to reuse one of the previous ship cut-scenes but change the "voice-over".

You head to the location of the distress call and find a severely damaged ship. On boarding, you encounter a hostile ships security crew (mind controlled by the invaders) and have to free several groups of passengers holed up in secure areas of the ship or repair failing life support systems to keep them alive (which are of course guarded by more mind controlled passengers/crew - you could add a Dark/Light aspect to this by either slaughtering your opponents or finding a different way to neutralize them). You finally fight your way to the bridge and come face to face with one of the invaders (a species you have never encountered before - a good place to introduce the Tech/Force user mechanics I mentioned). Examining the ship's log you find it originated from an Outer Rim planet controlled by your faction. Following missions have you going to that planet and running missions to rescue civilians, come to the aid of a military faction trying to fight back against the invaders, several missions to weaken the invaders position, and finally taking out their "command post" on the planet. You can then wrap this section with another cut-scene, this one where the PC interacts with the military leadership to find out where these invaders came from and setting up the second phase. There isn't really a need for there to be many PC lines and you could probably have this be a dozen or more "missions"

For group content, you could have flashpoint(s) for specific "difficult" missions. Perhaps invading a military outpost that has been mind controlled and now sees the general populace as the enemy (perhaps the resistance forces need supplies and you go there to get them). It's maybe too early to add in an operation in the storyline but I suppose you could set it up so the taking out the the enemy "command post" is either mission based or an operation (like Shadow of Revan). A lot of assets could be shared between these two paths saving budget for other things

Here we have added potentially hours of play time with a minimal use of PCVA. Phases 2 and 3 would proceed similarly. Obviously anything this expansive would have to be a paid expansion, but it offers a lot more content that you would get for years with the current content strategy.

[JakRoanin]

Okay, so we all agree the game needs more players and cash. that's a start. Now, let's take inventory about what we know...

EA is still the cash source.

BroadSword now decides how the money is spent.

Story is the most Popular content so far. It's all over YouTube, and the Main Advertised element of the game, in other words, SWTOR is banking on its unique worldbuilding and immersive experience! This is what the established identity is and has always been. 

OPS and PvP need major help! Yes, even me the Avowed Story Player acknowledges and wants OPS and PvP people to enjoy themselves. Shocking I know! However, many in that Community assert that the money going into the VA and cutscenes drain too much money from that goal.

So, since nobody wants to give up what they love, the challenge remains how to get more cash.

Those are the known facts.

Now, here's the thing. Just like there are multiple issues with the game, it seems to me the logical answer is multiple solutions. One of those of solutions needs to be a massive story content drop. Everyone (me and people like me) needs to remember that it doesn't completely depend on VA and cutscenes! It must include missions, exploration, lore, and actual doing stuff, not watching a movie.

For our PvP and Ops friends I would reiterate getting a massive influx of new blood probably would also encourage them to try out the other parts of the game. I know I've done some PvP to get certain Comps. I actually can PvP and in Pug groups I'm often only one of the worst instead of the worst! PvP just bores me to tears. I just don't get any kick out seeing flashing messages. Maybe I'm defective???

As for Ops I wish I could do them truly I do! I can do basic Pug TFO's in STO, but every time I've tried a basic SM OP with my wonderful guilds, I just can't my hands freeze, cramp, my fingers don't move fast enough to 'get out of stupid' and DPS at the same time. Real Physical Pain ensues and it's just awful. I have no clue how anyone got through the Gods on NiM and hat's off to them.

Do you guys deserve more? Yes. Do you have to get so angry and SM players, I don't think so. Why not lower yourselves into easier content to teach and encourage more people to join you all instead of shouting you have nothing to do. Who knows you might have fun!

GSF it's criminal how they've just ignored it. Do not pass GO do not collect 200 credits. But I'd also argue it's awful they've ignored all the space content in the game. What they hay? How many people would join up if they could be Wes Antillies Great Great Great Great Great Great relative?

Bottom line, screaming at each other (and I include myself) hasn't helped. So time to try something different. 

[Stradlin]

32 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

 

GSF it's criminal how they've just ignored it. Do not pass GO do not collect 200 credits. But I'd also argue it's awful they've ignored all the space content in the game. What they hay? How many people would join up if they could be Wes Antillies Great Great Great Great Great Great relative?

 

It has been like seven years since the last time GSF got any attention. SEVEN. YEARS. It is little bit agonizing for everybody who happens to truly enjoy GSF. I'm afraid we'll never be seeing much of anythign GSF related added again, those days are over. At least when it comes to new maps, new game modes, etc. Chris Schmitt was the last dev involved with GSF who remained. He left at some point last year.

What is exceptionally infuriating is how they ignore even the sidelines, which current devs most certainly could build and supplement on. GSF was never added to pvp seasons for example.

Like few weeks  back, somebody made a " happy 10th birthday GSF!" type of a thread  here in general discussion .  Thread got  moved from general discussion to GSF section. Proper "sit down and shut up about GSF" message right there. Funny as it is, that was my last straw btw, that's what made me unsub:D I just hated the..implications there.  They dislike it when people don't consider GSF as abandonware left behind to such  a degree that happy birthday wishings need get  hidden away.

 

I would have forgotten all about SWTOR like..I dunno 8 years back, if GSF had never been released. I'd go as far as to claim the overall  experience of playing SWTOR as a GSF pilot is the most unique thing this game has to offer.  SWTOR has some good stories to tell..but I find good stories from many places. But there is no other MMO where I can be a starfighter  pilot like 70% of the time and have a 200  million dollar waiting lobby to enjoy between the matches. That's completely unique.  It'd take some degree of faith in there being even one dev even thinking about GSF to keep me paying for this game.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Stradlin

[OlBuzzard]

GSF is NOT the only thing that has been abandoned!  Period!!  Anyone with more than two brain cells in their head knows that.

Even VA today is only a fraction of what it once was.

The ENTIRE game is currently only a fraction of what it once was.  The ENTIRE GAME (Not just one part of it!)

The business model MUST change or this is all that will continue as it has been for months.  If we expect to get a REAL XP then it will probably cost us something  ( you know ... like just about everything else in real life).  Trying to blame the state of SWTOR (claiming that it's something else besides an MMO) is a laughable joke in order to fanaticize what needs to be done in order to prop up certain areas of the game.  The simple fact is that:
** Crafting ??  Good grief ... what a mess.  It's been so long that crafting has actually been worked on.  It almost needs to be scrapped and redone from the ground up!
** PvP is all but dead (regardless of what part of the game you're interested in
** GS is and has been for a while now a cut / paste hamster wheel going nowhere (and in a pitiful state of affairs).  Just a rehash of stuff that has been around since the beginning of the game (in some cases).  
** Some companions were sidelined (bricked... placed behind a wall) since KotFE / ET and only on RARE occasions (if at all) EVER heard from again.  That's been since Oct. 2015.  
** This list is far from complete!  I'm quite certain that there are several others that if they wanted to could amore to this list.
** GSF is only a PART of a long list of items that has been in a sad state of affairs from some time now.  It needs a LOT of work.  YES it needs work.  Take the time to read other posts I've made regarding GSF.

What was that thing we were supposed to have about a year ago?  A 10th ... what??  It wasn't important enough to even get more than a token tip of the hat in appreciation of the entire event?

Beating the rest of the game to death (with VA at the heart of it .. and ANYTHING connected to it) is just a big smoke screen for a personal agenda.  

As much as it pains me to say this ... I can't help but to wonder in the back of my mind just how accurate those have been suggesting in recent weeks that this game is done and pretty much winding down to a simple maintenance mode.  Ironically that would justify the demand to cut every expense in game except for those activities that would require ONLY the most basic maintenance.   Everything else would pretty much be swept aside due to budgetary concerns. 

Maybe that is the new thing we should be getting prepared for????

RIP SWTOR!

[JakRoanin]

@OlBuzzard Why would Broadsword fix the mess BioWare created in shutting down the APAC server, with a new one, if all hope is gone?

[OlBuzzard]

47 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

@OlBuzzard Why would Broadsword fix the mess BioWare created in shutting down the APAC server, with a new one, if all hope is gone?

My friend ... I do hope you are correct!

IMO the APAC server is without question a HUGE bright spot in the last 12 months!  It is one of the best things they could have done for that region.  IMO it should have been done a LONG time ago.  To Broadsword I say KUDOS!!  

This is a good example of doing something for a part of the community that even though I am not personally directly affected by it can still appreciate what was done and how much of a positive impact that DOES have now ... and potential positive impact for the future.

It should also be noted that cutting things down to the bare bones and gradually eliminating anything that might be deemed cost prohibitive does not mean closing the game completely.

What is left, however, may or may not, be something that's to be desired!

I really hate making these kind of posts ... but there is a really cold but truth at the center of it.  I need a good cup of BRC and a slice of double chocolate cake now!

[OlBuzzard]

4 hours ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

i stopped "at WoW offered more story" WoW story focus is almost non existant apart from few animations and its fully MMO.


SWTOR is more story than MMO, end of our discussion.

UMmmm  ...  not so with the release of Dragon Isle!  There's a lot of VA in it  Not as much as SWTOR I openly admit.  BUT it's there and more so than what it use to be.  I play it daily now!

[JakRoanin]

Yes cake is needed!

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, OlBuzzard said:

IMO the APAC server is without question a HUGE bright spot in the last 12 months!  It is one of the best things they could have done for that region.  IMO it should have been done a LONG time ago.  To Broadsword I say KUDOS!!  

After playing on it since Friday, I have a deep seated concern gnawing at the back of my mind, that it’s a red herring or false flag operation to shut up APAC players for good or an economy experiment. I really hope I’m wrong. But here’s why this thoughts developed in my mind.

They made no real lead up announcement, not even any hype in the recent live stream. All they did was tell us about it on the forums 24 hours before it was going live.

To my knowledge, they haven’t done any interviews with gaming media & are relying on a handful of Social Media influences to get the info out to all of APAC. None of these influencers are known by the old APAC players because they weren’t doing it back when we had the APAC servers. And only 1 is from APAC anyway. So these guys aren’t connecting with any of the old APAC players who left after the servers closed. 

They’ve also done no advertising at all or done any email outs to old APAC players inviting them back (something I’ve suggested they do & still might 🤷🏻‍♀️).

It’s not even being promoted on STEAM 🤦‍♀️

The handful of old APAC players I’ve reached out too have ALL said to a person, “why hasn’t BioWare reached out to us with an email inviting us back” (they didn’t know it was Broadsword now). Some of them commented that they thought swtor had been shuttered long ago 😞

Broadsword may have opened the APAC server & lm so grateful that they have. But they seem to still doing what this game’s management has always done, the absolute bare minimum to promote it.

This is really sad & it feels like they are setting it up to fail. Add that they aren’t opening up legacy/character transfers for old APAC players who’ve been stranded on US servers for 10 years & it feels more like an experiment to track the progress on economy fixes than actually accommodating APAC players. 

I really truely hope I’m just being paranoid. But I’ve this itch at the edge of my mind that’s getting stronger each day I play & see the numbers not representing what I feel they should if old players knew we had an APAC server again 

I’m imploring any Broadsword employee whose reading this please prove me wrong. Please 🙏 do some emails out to all the old accounts we used to have in APAC. Please do some media coverage in Aussie gaming mags or Aussie gaming news sites or straight up MMO gaming sites. Just reach out to them & let them know.

Like: 

https://au.pcmag.com/

https://www.kotaku.com.au/?page=1

https://www.gamesradar.com/au/

https://www.ausgamers.com/features/?p=02

https://www.mmorpg.com

https://massivelyop.com/

And Jackie, if I’m totally wrong with this paranoid perception & I’ve stepped out of line, I apologise profusely. I only want what’s best for the game.

Edited November 18, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

Even VA today is only a fraction of what it once was.……

Beating the rest of the game to death (with VA at the heart of it .. and ANYTHING connected to it) is just a big smoke screen for a personal agenda.  

As much as it pains me to say this ... I can't help but to wonder in the back of my mind just how accurate those have been suggesting in recent weeks that this game is done and pretty much winding down to a simple maintenance mode.  Ironically that would justify the demand to cut every expense in game except for those activities that would require ONLY the most basic maintenance.   Everything else would pretty much be swept aside due to budgetary concerns. 

Maybe that is the new thing we should be getting prepared for????

RIP SWTOR!

That small part of my over active brain that looks for a conspiracy when bored, sent me an alert while reading the end parts of your post. It wonders if some of the posts from other people are plants or red herrings from within Broadsword to gauge player response to cutting VA. Or preparing the ground for that to happen 🤷🏻‍♀️

[JakRoanin]

Okay I think we all need to take a cue from Ms. Monroe...

Marilyn Monroe AI 4K Enhanced⭐UHD⭐ - After You Get What You Want You Don't Want It (1954) - YouTube

Let's try to view the APAC server as a good thing.