Where are we going, and how did we get here?

[Pietrastor]

8 hours ago, eabevella said:

As a RPG, you lost all role-playing fun after SoH because the story has become one dimensional, none of your choices matter, none of your characters matter. They even cut more corners by not voice acting all the scenes.

Agree on many points but where exactly was this role-playing you're talking abour in SOR (I assume by SoH you mean Shadow of Revan), or Oricon, or ROTHC? The latter had 2 actual separate stories (Oricon/SOR is the same story with slighty different lines) but what choices did ever matter there?

What does "you characters matter" even mean? Companions? They got more shine in KOTFEET than ever before sans 1.0. Player Characters? Where does your Player Character matter at all in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR? You do the same missions under the same excuse there as Emperor's Wrath and as a lowly Bounty Hunter. How is this different to KOTFEET?

And when it comes to ACTUAL Choices & Consequences, there were none present whatsoever in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR. KOTFEET is actually the sole case of true C&Cs in the post-launch expansions/updates. Senya, Arcann, Scorpio, Vette, Torian etc. Nothing like that happened anywhere in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR. 

Edited January 30 by Pietrastor

[Kryptonomic]

14 minutes ago, Pietrastor said:

but what choices did ever matter there?

Indeed, you raise a good point. The notion of "choices matter" is a fraught one in the industry and is subject to a lot of aspects that focus on narratology combined with ludology. As someone who has done a lot of story and narrative experience testing for games, I can say this is probably one of the more contentious aspects. (I say that not to suggest my opinion matters more or for some misplaced hubris; it's just context.)

Whether or not a choice "matters" is really up to the player. I can make a choice in a game and regardless of whether that choice somehow comes up again, it may have mattered to me in the act of making it. It allowed me to define my character in some way. The question is often around whether choices have persistent implications and thus consequences that, crucially, are reflected in story, which you are indicating.

When defined by that latter criterion, whether "choices matter" is a bit more objective even thought it does nothing to detract from the previous more subjective element. The real question then is how much and to what extent that matters for players. Which is, of course, an individual thing.

Here's how I frame it for SWTOR: the whole KOTFE / KOTET thing was kind of like this singularity. Imagine that prior to the singularity (in a black hole sense!) you had all these possibilities and differences and circumstantial and situational stuff, all of which was reflective of the narrative as experienced -- and controlled -- by the player. Then KOTFE / KOTET came along and crushed everything into one stream. The other end of the singularity was rising from that crushing event and seeing what could be disentangled.

Now, I take your point: you're saying that was potentially more the issue prior to KOTFE / KOTET. And I would agree. But at the point those other elements were coming up, the path to KOTFE / KOTET was already set.  Consider: Rise of the Hutt Cartel was in April of 2013. Shadow of Revan was in December 2014. KOTFE came out in October of 2015. But KOTFE had a whole lot to do with a particular bit of history: in November 2013 (so after RoTHC but before SoR), Lucasfilm/Disney announced that the next film (The Force Awakens) would be released in December 2015. Keep in mind when KOTFE came out then consider the fact that it had to be written and planned well before October of 2015.

That leaves a small window (between November 2013 and October 2015) where you can see how the direction radically shifted.

Edited January 30 by Kryptonomic

[Whykara]

Choices never mattered in SWTOR, how could they in an MMO. But the story was engaging, cohesive and well-written (most of the times), the characters interesting and Rep vs. Imp was a blast. Nowadays the story is more often then not boring, one-dimensional and narrative direction is seemingly nonexistent.

[Pietrastor]

18 minutes ago, Kryptonomic said:

Now, I take your point: you're saying that was potentially more the issue prior to KOTFE / KOTET. And I would agree. But at the point those other elements were coming up, the path to KOTFE / KOTET was already set.  Consider: Rise of the Hutt Cartel was in April of 2013. Shadow of Revan was in December 2014. KOTFE came out in October of 2015. But KOTFE had a whole lot to do with a particular bit of history: in November 2013 (so after RoTHC but before SoR), Lucasfilm/Disney announced that the next film (The Force Awakens) would be released in December 2015. Keep in mind when KOTFE came out then consider the fact that it had to be written and planned well before October of 2015.

That leaves a small window (between November 2013 and October 2015) where you can see how the direction radically shifted.

How do extrenal factors matter in this discussion at all tho? It's simple and boils down to the basic questions:

- did choices matter in ROTHC, Oricon and SOR? No

- did the companions shine in ROTHC, Oricon and SOR? No, they were completly absent

- did Player Character matter? Somehow in case of ROTHC (different Imp and Rep stories), no for Oricon and SOR. Same stories with slighty different lines.

To act like KOTFEET was the beginning and sole culprit of all of the above is simply rewriting history just because someone didn't like the particular story.

[Kryptonomic]

14 minutes ago, Pietrastor said:

To act like KOTFEET was the beginning and sole culprit of all of the above is simply rewriting history just because someone didn't like the particular story.

Agreed. But I didn't say it was the sole culprit. I'm saying consider when planning and development for it must have started given the timeline. Then consider what content they had to release prior to that but not conflict with it, in terms of future direction.

[Pietrastor]

22 minutes ago, Kryptonomic said:

Agreed. But I didn't say it was the sole culprit. I'm saying consider when planning and development for it must have started given the timeline. Then consider what content they had to release prior to that but not conflict with it, in terms of future direction.

That's very hypothetical tho and a just as/more likely excuse is that there simply wasn't enough budget for 8 diverging stories anymore after 1.0 failed to grab millions od subs and we would've ended up with SOR/KOTFEET type of storytelling anyway. Not like post-Ossus content is much different either. Sure, they try to throw in more class mentions here and there but it's just that really, mentions. We're still playing the same story since Oricon basically.

And whatever KOTFEET failed to achieve in this aspect it made up with much higher volume of content. People already forget how much the story took a backseat during ROTHC/Oricon/SOR eras compared to high stream of new Ops (9 Ops in 3 years + 4 lair bosses) and the acrual stoey getting GATED inside the Operations. Particularly prior to ROTHC it was a story content wasteland, with Dread Master 'saga' being the most barren and underwritten arc SWTOR ever delivered, again gated in half behind Operations at that. ROTHC itself was actually just a content patch with side-planetary arc renamed into an expansion and with a price tag added. And we're talking a game that released as a STORY-driven game. Back in that era, story players were quiting en masse. So yeah, actual quality aside, KOTFEET for one served the story players heavily and consistiently unlike the previous post-launch periods.

Of course the big mistake was to COMPLETLY ignore Ops players at the same time, but that's a different matter. As always it ends up being the same issue - a themepark MMO should keep all its story, raid and pvp players happy at the same time to retain them all

Edited January 30 by Pietrastor

[Kryptonomic]

1 minute ago, Pietrastor said:

So yeah, actual quality aside, KOTFEET for one served the story players heavily and consistiently unlike the previous post-launch periods.

Very much agreed. But remember: KOTFEET was parceled out to pad the overall content with time. It was entirely written well before all the chapters were released. So when you consider temporality, BioWare was riding on content it had already had baked and ready to go. People mono-focus on the "budget" a lot and that's not the issue. The issue is whether the projections were able to match the budget. So there wasn't so much a higher volume of content as it was just distributed over time.

And that's getting to what you're pointing to: story content was not enough to monetize the game based on the projections.

5 minutes ago, Pietrastor said:

Of course the big mistake was to COMPLETLY ignore Ops players at the same time, but that's a different matter. As always it ends up being the same issue - a themepark MMO should keep all its story, raid and pvp players happy at the same time to retain them all

Indeed so. Or ... settle on an identity so you don't try to satisfy very disparate audiences with one game that, by necessity, will have to make decisions that disadvantage one or the other style of player at different times and for different reasons. Imagine if, say, Jedi: Fallen Order shifted to become an MMO-like experience after it was developed as a single-player story-driven, narrative-heavy game. Further, it was an experience that had to be continually monetized. Imagining that gives you some idea of the SWTOR development path.

[Pietrastor]

3 hours ago, Kryptonomic said:

Indeed so. Or ... settle on an identity so you don't try to satisfy very disparate audiences with one game that, by necessity, will have to make decisions that disadvantage one or the other style of player at different times and for different reasons. Imagine if, say, Jedi: Fallen Order shifted to become an MMO-like experience after it was developed as a single-player story-driven, narrative-heavy game. Further, it was an experience that had to be continually monetized. Imagining that gives you some idea of the SWTOR development path.

Hmmm. Personally I share the idea/sentiment, but unfortunately I think it's just unrealistic in this day and age, esp will espensive-to-develop games. I mean, we've already had multiple periods of different identity/content focus in SWTOR with Ops-heavy post-launch era and story-heavy KOTFEET. And neither proved itself to be sustainable enough on its own, nor garnered enough audience to make up for the loss of either story or raid section of the playerbase.

The most succesful direct competition - FFXiV, ESO and WOW pamper heavily both of the main groups and most likely that's just yet another proof of the only viable path for this kind of MMOs

[DarthNillard]

On 1/26/2024 at 11:31 AM, Pietrastor said:

Sure, when it comes to quantity of content updates..

But what kind of a story they decide to tell is entirely up to them and obviously no EA suit forced them to drag this Malgus/Mando nonsense for years and year without going absolutely anywhere to the point even story players abandoned the game. Within the same budget they could've switched up the main storyline 3 times already but no, it's gonna be another year of the exact same thing since 2018

We've had Malgus -

Spoiler

the original end game protagonist mind you after you finished Chapter 3 and did the Ilum storyline, who we "killed" but then came back later and then we thought we killed him again (the Corellia FP if you play from the Republic side)

- in a cage under the Fleet for like 2 years real earth time (probably longer), and had to go poke him for mostly useless information like 3 or 4 times.  Absolute and complete nonsense....

Edited January 31 by DarthNillard

[DarthNillard]

Must say, this has been the best thread on this forum I've read in several years.  A lot of quality information and discussion going on.  If only the SWTOR story post 6.0 was this engaging....

[Przemo_No]

I cannot find now who stated that (someho the original post disappeared?): 

Remember that the managers answer to other managers, who eventually answer to the Board of Directors, who in turn answer to the investors, who demand that EA keeps its share price up, which generally requires EA to not make 'poor' investments (or at least,not too many 'poor' investments)...

which is the sad truth about every aspect of our lives, gaming included.  It is the sheer GREED of the "investors" that prevents developers from unleashing their creativity, because "shareholders want return" 

Question is WHY those investors want those returns? Don't they have ENOUGH already? Otherwise HOW would they even try to pay for the development of such trivial thing as pixels on computer screen?

if I was so obscenely rich that I could afford funding game development, I would primarily expect it to be FUN game, A fun for everyone who decides to play it and immerse themselves in it. My personal financial gains would be tertiary (or even smaller concern) because I would like to see people enjoying the game! That would be the desired RETURN, Not some coins flowing into my account! Some things cannot ever be paid by money,

But the world is constructed differently, and THIS is the problem of our game. And our planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by Przemo_No

[Whykara]

4 minutes ago, Przemo_No said:

It is the sheer GREED of the "investors" that prevents developers from unleashing their creativity, because "shareholders want return" 

No investor is forcing the devs to write sub par stories. It's not like bad writing is less expensive than good writing. Financial calculations are definitely to blame for the quantity of updates we get, but to blame them for the quality is a stretch. 

[DarthNillard]

23 minutes ago, Przemo_No said:

I cannot find now who stated that (someho the original post disappeared?): 

Remember that the managers answer to other managers, who eventually answer to the Board of Directors, who in turn answer to the investors, who demand that EA keeps its share price up, which generally requires EA to not make 'poor' investments (or at least,not too many 'poor' investments)...

which is the sad truth about every aspect of our lives, gaming included.  It is the sheer GREED of the "investors" that prevents developers from unleashing their creativity, because "shareholders want return" 

Question is WHY those investors want those returns? Don't they have ENOUGH already? Otherwise HOW would they even try to pay for the development of such trivial thing as pixels on computer screen?

if I was so obscenely rich that I could afford funding game development, I would primarily expect it to be FUN game, A fun for everyone who decides to play it and immerse themselves in it. My personal financial gains would be tertiary (or even smaller concern) because I would like to see people enjoying the game! That would be the desired RETURN, Not some coins flowing into my account! Some things cannot ever be paid by money,

But the world is constructed differently, and THIS is the problem of our game. And our planet.

Capitalism is an absolute scam.  The people who actually "do" the work in almost every industry are expendable, and will be fired and have their lives ruined in a snap so that already filthy rich stakeholders (who don't actually do anything mind you) can get an extra 3 cents return on investment.  It's disgusting tbh....

Edited January 31 by DarthNillard

[arunav]

Keith already told us 'where we are going.' 

Last year, he said, as players, we should not to expect anything to change. 

We can also infer Broadsword not making any announcement or even acknowledging acquiring SWTOR for months as significant, if the company intended to do something remarkably different with the game.

Everyone here would like otherwise, but SWTOR is going to most likely see less and less in its updates, until it's just left online and maintained for however long it's profitable to do so. 

The best you can hope for is a fully-voiced ending to the current story, in my opinion. What counts as a 'fully-voiced ending' is already in question, though, given how 7.4 was handled. 

I'd also argue quality matters, and that, aside from CM items, it's already started to deteriorate. Compare 7.4's story content and execution with the Ruhnuk update a year before. The latter had a newly-designed zone (instead of reusing/revisiting an older planet), more ambitiously realized cutscenes, no alternating between a voiced player character and KOTOR-style dialogue while the main story was ongoing, and, in my opinion, better quests in the daily area afterwards. Comparing 7.4 with any of 6.x, the expansion or the major story updates, or the Ossus update, which started it, also highlights the difference. 

Is it possible things change for the better, for playable updates in SWTOR? Sure. But there's also unfortunately no reason to think they will. 

[Pietrastor]

3 hours ago, DarthNillard said:

Capitalism is an absolute scam.  The people who actually "do" the work in almost every industry are expendable, and will be fired and have their lives ruined in a snap so that already filthy rich stakeholders (who don't actually do anything mind you) can get an extra 3 cents return on investment.  It's disgusting tbh....

Game industry is the worst offender here by a mile tho. Not saying other entertainment/arts fields are perfect, but here we have literally top talent notoriously getting fired in-between major releases, even if they were succesful, just to cut costs. Like WTF. The movie or music industries try at least to keep the top talent attatched - directors, screenwriters, photographyy directors, music producers, songwriters, singers etc. Meanwhile the game industry doesn't seem to care for ANYONE. I just don't get it, it is counter-intuitive from a business POV too. Top talent = much higher chance for a better final product = much higher chance for a commercial success for the whole company and investors. Why would they ever let people go is beyond me

 

2 hours ago, arunav said:

Keith already told us 'where we are going.' 

Last year, he said, as players, we should not to expect anything to change. 

We can also infer Broadsword not making any announcement or even acknowledging acquiring SWTOR for months as significant, if the company intended to do something remarkably different with the game.

I do have to admit that BroadSword's silence and lack of any 'fanfare' does indicate limited plans more likely rather than any grand relaunch possibilites. Sure, things may still change or simply haven't been announed yet but chances are deffo small. In particular the extremly banal, vague and almost detached statement from the BroadSword President, who's suppousedly passionate about SWTOR, RPGs and Mythic's legacy, was concerning. Heck even Bioware GMs had better written PR releases to reassure the fans...

Edited January 31 by Pietrastor

[afwhoefuwov]

The "year long anniversary celebration" in 7.0 is the April's fool joke that has gone far too long.  

 

[eabevella]

15 hours ago, Pietrastor said:

Agree on many points but where exactly was this role-playing you're talking abour in SOR (I assume by SoH you mean Shadow of Revan), or Oricon, or ROTHC? The latter had 2 actual separate stories (Oricon/SOR is the same story with slighty different lines) but what choices did ever matter there?

What does "you characters matter" even mean? Companions? They got more shine in KOTFEET than ever before sans 1.0. Player Characters? Where does your Player Character matter at all in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR? You do the same missions under the same excuse there as Emperor's Wrath and as a lowly Bounty Hunter. How is this different to KOTFEET?

And when it comes to ACTUAL Choices & Consequences, there were none present whatsoever in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR. KOTFEET is actually the sole case of true C&Cs in the post-launch expansions/updates. Senya, Arcann, Scorpio, Vette, Torian etc. Nothing like that happened anywhere in ROTHC, Oricon or SOR. 

To be fair I was being overly generous.

You're right, no choices, no classes, no anything matters post vanilla story, but the stable decline of the small efforts of adding flavors is still appalling.

But at least RotHC has two complementary stories on Imp and Pub sides, and the intro section is different for each class.

There are subtle narrative difference between Imp and Pub sides for SoR. For example, Darth Marr only b**** slap the honor guard on Pub side, but on the Imp side, he simply takes the guard away. The small flavors are interesting and you feel the effort the writers tried to make despite the limitation.

KOTxx is just single story that the writers don't even bother to hide the fact that it's written for a Force User LS Jedi Knight. The "choices" are lame, edgy, brain-flatlined "who you wanna kill" options, it's insulting to consider them choices at all instead of "if we put a kill option for this NPC, we don't have to pay the voice actor in the future because they are dead in some players playthrough".

It's bad decision after bad decision, and unless someone on top is willing to get out of the vicious cycle, there is nothing to expect.

PS: on a personal note, at least they gave Theron Shan a little bit of screen time despite him being in the fridge due to that kill option, so maybe someone realized "choices" doesn't mean "end of story potential" because Force forbid we players pick different options in a mmoRPG game.

 

[SentinalMasterWW]

Lots of good discussions going! 

On 1/29/2024 at 8:41 PM, eabevella said:

Well, they aimed for a MMO+RPG game, but you need a lot of money and talents to maintain both ends.

As a RPG, you lost all role-playing fun after SoH because the story has become one dimensional, none of your choices matter, none of your characters matter. They even cut more corners by not voice acting all the scenes.

As a MMO, there's little to no contents after SoH. Just the fact that there only 3 operations: Gods, Dxun, and R4 in the past 5 years is enough said. They don't even make NiM and 16men for R4.

Right now SWTOR is a bad RPG and a bad MMO, and nothing will change unless they start to make meaningful contents with whatever little fund they have. But nope, we're making UI changes no one asks, cutting more contents that attract people in the first place (fully voice acted, well animated cut scenes; challenging group contents), and every other choices that make the game boring and empty.

This right here, 

What is SWTOR supposed to be? 

is it some amalgamation of a single player MMO RPG? 

It's not an MMO Really anymore, as there is no good group content anymore besides replaying 10 year old content we've already played thousands of times. 

The last paragraph speaks basically the current state of SWTOR. It's not a great RPG and its a mediocre MMO. The core gameplay loops are dumbed down to try and draw in a single player crowd to say "guys there is less abilities its like KOTOR, Please play our game!" Except KOTOR knew what it was, a single player RPG and it did that very well. SWTOR currently is trying to be this hybrid of an MMO while trying to make it more like a single player game.

SWTOR is designed as an MMO, if they started making more choices that brought the MMO strengths back, SWTOR will start improving. 

Regarding KOTFE/KOTET, they were decent stories. The problem is the same problem the current mando storyline has, it feels catered to one class story. KOTFE/KOTET was definatly more for the JK story than other specs. Playing KOTFE/KOTET as a non force user is just very weird and awkward. I have an entire thought process in my head on how they could have done KOTFE/KOTET properly with keeping the Class identities intact. 

Regarding the Mando storyline we have currently, again its more biased towards BH's. Why does my Sith Warrior care about Shae vizsla and their squabbles, their too busy fighting the republic to care. Watching showdown on Ruhnuk, its like bruh just stab these mandos with a lightsaber already, we already killed Valkorion/vitiate the most powerful dude in the galaxy, why are random mandalorians impossible to kill now? 

Regarding investors and where money goes, I imagine obviously that Disney/EA put more into the Cartel Market for those instant sales, but I imagine the core game itself is up to Broadsword. I doubt Disney or EA is telling the Dev's what the game should be, they just want the kickback from it. So in reality and poor design choices fall on the leads of the game. 

For some comparison, there is some really good stuff that was released about the development of Fallout 76 and why that game was as bad as it was, and in short the Leads put the game astray much to the majority arguing against it (like no NPC's.) I imagine there are some on the SWTOR team who disagree with the direction the game is going but have to comply with what the leads want. 

6 hours ago, arunav said:

Keith already told us 'where we are going.' 

Last year, he said, as players, we should not to expect anything to change. 

We can also infer Broadsword not making any announcement or even acknowledging acquiring SWTOR for months as significant, if the company intended to do something remarkably different with the game.

Everyone here would like otherwise, but SWTOR is going to most likely see less and less in its updates, until it's just left online and maintained for however long it's profitable to do so. 

The best you can hope for is a fully-voiced ending to the current story, in my opinion. What counts as a 'fully-voiced ending' is already in question, though, given how 7.4 was handled. 

I'd also argue quality matters, and that, aside from CM items, it's already started to deteriorate. Compare 7.4's story content and execution with the Ruhnuk update a year before. The latter had a newly-designed zone (instead of reusing/revisiting an older planet), more ambitiously realized cutscenes, no alternating between a voiced player character and KOTOR-style dialogue while the main story was ongoing, and, in my opinion, better quests in the daily area afterwards. Comparing 7.4 with any of 6.x, the expansion or the major story updates, or the Ossus update, which started it, also highlights the difference. 

Is it possible things change for the better, for playable updates in SWTOR? Sure. But there's also unfortunately no reason to think they will. 

Precisely, Which is why i'm not optimistic, Keith and Broadsword want to maintain the status quo. They don't want to revamp the game, they don't want to fix the issues, because to the top leads, there is no issues, the game is where it should be despite the plummeting steam numbers. 

Honestly for me and perhaps others, if we knew 7.0 was going to be this bad, I think the game should've just ended at the 6.0 era and maintained the game from there. 

 

[ExarSun]

For me Echoes of Oblivion ends the story of the game. Done! Everything after that is a big pile of ...., the weakest storytelling i have ever seen. And no...no sane person would compare the KOTFE/KOTET story with that of 7.0....roflmao.... I quote enjoyed the Chapters, at least the story was decently executed and well voiced, long and with cinematics. This Mando stuff is incredibly boring, plain and of low importance. Why would a godlike power-level person like the Commander go and deal with random Mandos and their squabbles...why... Why would a Sith go and sneak like a coward on random planets instead of attacking them with a whole army/fleet and stomping everything....Suddenly the stupid Sith in Manaan 7.0 Darth Norok has more power/influence that the Commander?? What?? Darth Nobody...i mean Norok can suddenly order a whole army and a full scale invasion on a fkn big planet, but the Leader of the Hand/Alliance Commander has to sneak and 1v1 average soldiers and Mandos...what?....oh and the Republic part is even worse...i mean i have totally no clue or idea why we went to Manaan and what we acomplished there...

Who exactly is the main antagonist in the game....Oh no...not Heta Col...she could be roflstomped by most of the PC's companions...i mean just send some of...Arcann, Senya, Scourge and Lana and the whole lot of Mandos are fkn done. Acina/Vowrann....please...there is no character development, no power ups, nothing belivable about their abilities to lead the Empire...they just suddenly became the leader...They are not shown to actively participate in the leading or war part.  Why would the PC take orders from them???????? Who TF leads the Republic...some development on the political and power games there....No...instead go clean this cantina with a mob and take out the trash...better story for sure. Malgus, however formidable he is is defeated by the PC for the 10010000th time...and he sits and gives the same useless information for 2 years.... no developing whats left of the Jedi Order...instead we go spend some time with Arn and Tau...who are as interesting as the new disney movies... This is the worst world and character building after what happened in 6.0....the worst....but hey...there is ANOTHER superweapon and another betrayal....how very interesting...

After KOTET when they said the focus would be on mmo stuff and multiplayer content focus...what happened...everyone left and we are left with this sad state...Nobody like grinding pixels without good world and story to immerse in to...but i guess this it too difficult to realise...

I am tired of hearing people excuse the writers/devs with EA or managers....or executives....bad decision are bad decision and facts are facts. I suppose the big bad EA or some exec or some investors wanted them to specifically prune abilities (seriously tho...the characters feels so weak its unreal), make the game totally grindy and slow and deliver the worst story and updates with 7.0 and on the games anniversary year...oh, sure, sure...

 

Edited January 31 by ExarSun

[Pietrastor]

8 hours ago, eabevella said:

KOTxx is just single story that the writers don't even bother to hide the fact that it's written for a Force User LS Jedi Knight

True, I myself was unhappy about it and pointed many times how easily they could've mitigated it by having say, Satele/Marr teach non-Force Users how to resist the Force for example. But My point was that the exact same issue was already present long before with SOR, Oricon/Dread Masters saga and Ziost. All of these are clearly written for Jedi & Sith. So to put this big sin squarely on KOTFEET's list od flaws is just disingenious & biased.

And for what it's worth it was KOTFEET that Iokath, Scorpio, Eternal Fleet, Gemini and the Machine Gods as the big fat overpowered non-force villains and significant non-force plot elements/faction, something we have't had since the Huttsc back then. SOR had... pirate games so boring even my Smuggler was like "who tje hell could ever care about anything on Rishi".

 

9 hours ago, eabevella said:

The "choices" are lame, edgy, brain-flatlined "who you wanna kill" options, it's insulting to consider them choices at all instead of "if we put a kill option for this NPC, we don't have to pay the voice actor in the future because they are dead in some players playthrough".

Not disagreeing entirely, I've been criticising Bioware's choices&consequences for years both in SWTOR and in Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. But my point was, again, about singling out KOTFEET on that because by doing so it implies that what came before was much better in this particular aspect. Yet it wasn't. ROTHC, Oricon and SOR had basically no choices so they didn't do it better than KOTFEET and objectively were NOT better expansions in this area, they couldn't have been.

[DarthNillard]

13 hours ago, Pietrastor said:

Game industry is the worst offender here by a mile tho. Not saying other entertainment/arts fields are perfect, but here we have literally top talent notoriously getting fired in-between major releases, even if they were succesful, just to cut costs. Like WTF. The movie or music industries try at least to keep the top talent attatched - directors, screenwriters, photographyy directors, music producers, songwriters, singers etc. Meanwhile the game industry doesn't seem to care for ANYONE. I just don't get it, it is counter-intuitive from a business POV too. Top talent = much higher chance for a better final product = much higher chance for a commercial success for the whole company and investors. Why would they ever let people go is beyond me

This is another part of the Capitalism scam.  Unless you work in a direct profit section of a company (like Sales), in almost every company there is no real way to just do an amazing job year over year and be properly compensated for it.  Most companies have a cap on how much of a raise employees can get (usually 3-7%) no matter how great they are from yearly performance/merit cycles.  And there are usually even caps on in-line promotions (from a level 2 to a level 3 for instance), where they also typically fold in the merit increase you would have gotten anyway into the promotion raise to in effect limit the raise.  You literally have to job hop from company to company in the US to see your income go up quickly, and the extra BS rub is that for the better part of the last 20 years employers tried to kibash that by using the faux stigma that anybody who switches jobs in under 2 years is unreliable (note: fortunately this is so common with the current younger generation, this stigma is dying off).

At a prior software company I worked for (non-gaming), I reported indirectly to the CEO.  He trusted me with a lot of very important things.  I got the highest review score ("Game Changer") every year and would always get side perks like being part of the top contributors lunches and such.  One day off the cuff I told him that I was going to start looking for another job and he encouraged it.  I was so confused, but I'm also ballsy, so I straight up asked.  If I'm one of the top contributors in this company, and someone you as the CEO trusts and relies on, why on earth would you say this?  And he was very honest in his response: that's just how it works in America. I cannot give you the raise you deserve to make the money you deserve because then I'd have to do that for everyone in the company who makes less than they should, and our payroll will go off the chains.  But if you go take a job somewhere else, get a nice raise to leave, hit me up in 6-8 months and I'll bring you back for a higher position and even more money.  I'm like how is that in any way logical or reasonable when you already have me here and know what I'm capable of?  What if I leave and never come back? And he said that's just a risk they have to take.

TLDR: Capitalism is a scam double down....

P.S. - I did take his advice and leave for the same job at another company for more money, and then I did come back to that software company a year later for a higher position and even more money, only to then leave that place AGAIN for another company 8 months after that for even more money.  My income nearly tripled in 5 years simply by changing companies multiple times, whereas if I had stayed at the original company - a job I loved btw with bosses (including the CEO I mentioned) who were all fantastic - I would probably have had the same job title 3 yrs later and be making maybe 10k more then I was when I had that convo.  

14 hours ago, arunav said:

Keith already told us 'where we are going.' 

Last year, he said, as players, we should not to expect anything to change. 

We can also infer Broadsword not making any announcement or even acknowledging acquiring SWTOR for months as significant, if the company intended to do something remarkably different with the game.

Everyone here would like otherwise, but SWTOR is going to most likely see less and less in its updates, until it's just left online and maintained for however long it's profitable to do so. 

The best you can hope for is a fully-voiced ending to the current story, in my opinion. What counts as a 'fully-voiced ending' is already in question, though, given how 7.4 was handled. 

I'd also argue quality matters, and that, aside from CM items, it's already started to deteriorate. Compare 7.4's story content and execution with the Ruhnuk update a year before. The latter had a newly-designed zone (instead of reusing/revisiting an older planet), more ambitiously realized cutscenes, no alternating between a voiced player character and KOTOR-style dialogue while the main story was ongoing, and, in my opinion, better quests in the daily area afterwards. Comparing 7.4 with any of 6.x, the expansion or the major story updates, or the Ossus update, which started it, also highlights the difference. 

Is it possible things change for the better, for playable updates in SWTOR? Sure. But there's also unfortunately no reason to think they will. 

I am just very confused on why another studio would buy the rights to this game without a plan to do anything other than do nothing or slowly maintain it until it finally ends.  If that was the plan, why wouldn't Bioware have kept it and just kept cashing the checks until the end?  How much money can this game be making where Broadsword would spend whatever they spent to buy it, and for them to earn more money owning it until it ends without doing something to get new cash (like an expansion or changes that bring paying subscribers back)?

Edited January 31 by DarthNillard

[DarthNillard]

2 hours ago, ExarSun said:

For me Echoes of Oblivion ends the story of the game. Done! Everything after that is a big pile of ...., the weakest storytelling i have ever seen. And no...no sane person would compare the KOTFE/KOTET story with that of 7.0....roflmao.... I quote enjoyed the Chapters, at least the story was decently executed and well voiced, long and with cinematics. This Mando stuff is incredibly boring, plain and of low importance. Why would a godlike power-level person like the Commander go and deal with random Mandos and their squabbles...why... Why would a Sith go and sneak like a coward on random planets instead of attacking them with a whole army/fleet and stomping everything....Suddenly the stupid Sith in Manaan 7.0 Darth Norok has more power/influence that the Commander?? What?? Darth Nobody...i mean Norok can suddenly order a whole army and a full scale invasion on a fkn big planet, but the Leader of the Hand/Alliance Commander has to sneak and 1v1 average soldiers and Mandos...what?....oh and the Republic part is even worse...i mean i have totally no clue or idea why we went to Manaan and what we acomplished there...

Who exactly is the main antagonist in the game....Oh no...not Heta Col...she could be roflstomped by most of the PC's companions...i mean just send some of...Arcann, Senya, Scourge and Lana and the whole lot of Mandos are fkn done. Acina/Vowrann....please...there is no character development, no power ups, nothing belivable about their abilities to lead the Empire...they just suddenly became the leader...They are not shown to actively participate in the leading or war part.  Why would the PC take orders from them???????? Who TF leads the Republic...some development on the political and power games there....No...instead go clean this cantina with a mob and take out the trash...better story for sure. Malgus, however formidable he is is defeated by the PC for the 10010000th time...and he sits and gives the same useless information for 2 years.... no developing whats left of the Jedi Order...instead we go spend some time with Arn and Tau...who are as interesting as the new disney movies... This is the worst world and character building after what happened in 6.0....the worst....but hey...there is ANOTHER superweapon and another betrayal....how very interesting...

After KOTET when they said the focus would be on mmo stuff and multiplayer content focus...what happened...everyone left and we are left with this sad state...Nobody like grinding pixels without good world and story to immerse in to...but i guess this it too difficult to realise...

I am tired of hearing people excuse the writers/devs with EA or managers....or executives....bad decision are bad decision and facts are facts. I suppose the big bad EA or some exec or some investors wanted them to specifically prune abilities (seriously tho...the characters feels so weak its unreal), make the game totally grindy and slow and deliver the worst story and updates with 7.0 and on the games anniversary year...oh, sure, sure...

 

Man....this post is the best summary of the last few years of the game I"ve seen.  NGL, seeing misstep after misstep listed out like this bummed me out 😢

[Pietrastor]

19 minutes ago, DarthNillard said:

I am just very confused on why another studio would buy the rights to this game without a plan to do anything other than do nothing or slowly maintain it until it finally ends.  If that was the plan, why wouldn't Bioware have kept it and just kept cashing the checks until the end?  How much money can this game be making where Broadsword would spend whatever they spent to buy it, and for them to earn more money owning it until it ends without doing something to get new cash (like an expansion or changes that bring paying subscribers back)?

Perhaps the game is NOT making as much as it used to and EA was going to PapEA it, but the Austin team or Lucasfilm took action and managed to get Broadsword involved to strike a buyout deal. It may even have cost BS nothing to "buy" it, all depends on the specifics of the publishing contract with EA.

Or EA was done with Edmonton offsetting their poor performance in the past decade with SWTOR's profits and decided to cut them off from life support, making Dragon Age 4 their sole 'to be or not to be' test soon.

It's also possile that BroadSword has no interest in growth and only plans to maintain the game just enough to keep the company aflot. Not every business is growth-oriented. Some CEOs are just happy getting by. I mean this IS exactly what they're doing with Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. Sure seems to be good enough to keep them alive, but nothing else.

We'll just have ti wait and see 😕

[xxSHOONYxx]

21 hours ago, Pietrastor said:

The most succesful direct competition - FFXiV, WOW pamper heavily both of the main groups and most likely that's just yet another proof of the only viable path for this kind of MMOs

Yet again, swtor main issue is and was VA, they dig a hole on it and were unable to dig out of it. I counted the number of main story missions ff14 had but i forgot, think it was something on the 600-800 missions from lvl 1 to 80. Yet like 50-60% have no voice whatsoever, 10-20% with some npcs voiced, the rest with 1 npc voiced, player character has no voice. Here you have NPCs + 16 main character voices for each language and different options on the wheel to reply. If they did the same model ff14 did, swtor could have had way more story and way more difference between each origin story, and maybe even able to continue with the different class stories.
So the writers must be very restricted on what they have to do on a "write a good story in 100 words or less" so the VA then doesn't get way out of hand and the budget goes out of the window.

Thats why i think they keep bringing malgus back, his backstory is part of the old game so no introduction of a new main bad guy that will need even more story and introduction and break their budget on VA.
If this VA continues in end of 7.0 you kill malgus... again... for the third time? i lost count, and on the first ten seconds of 8.0 if it comes out "SoMeHOw MalGUs ReTuRnED", or maybe is just plain bad writing taking a page out of disney star wars movies. 
 

[xxSHOONYxx]

3 hours ago, ExarSun said:

After KOTET when they said the focus would be on mmo stuff and multiplayer content focus...what happened...everyone left and we are left with this sad state

???
When did they ever say it would take a mmo focus and multiplayer content when the game is as solo friendly as it has ever been and ranked and nim r4 was cancelled?
Did you play before kotfe, because the heavy decline on population happened there. I remember on shadowlands imp side 2-4 fleet instances regulary on 3.0 to 1 instance on 4.0 with 80 people if lucky when i took a break from the game. Pub side would have probably been even worse

Edited January 31 by xxSHOONYxx