Hello! Welcome to another edition of "What Would The Lunatic In Me Do?" I'm your host, Walkiry.

 

Title of the thread may be a bit cryptic, but it sums up perfectly how I feel about "my" characters once I hit 50, finish the questlines, and get to The End™.

 

Only it's not supposed to be the end, right?

 

Let's back up a bit. To the very start:

 

Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ and be the hero of your own Star Wars™ saga.

 

(Emphasis mine).

 

Now, despite appearances, this is not going to be about not having enough choices (which, as I've admitted before, would be night impossible to do, too many of us playing). Or about the abject stupidity some of these choices force on the characters. No, it's a lot more basic than that.

 

When I play this game, by the time I'm done, and often way before that, none of "my" characters feel mine.

 

It's pretty simple really. We run the quests and do the things that Bioware has prepared for us in-game, but everything about the story and the characters (including the one I'm playing) is so thoroughly laid out for me to follow that there's nothing left for me to add.

 

Nothing what-so-***********-ever.

 

It's not just the story (singular), but even worse is the backstory.

 

Take, for example, the Bounty Hunter.

 

 

 

 

There is simply NOTHING for me to add there. There's the Bounty Hunter story, I can play through it, learn about how the Bounty Hunter came to be in the Great Hunt and have a few options to see how his story unfolds, and that's about it. Everything, from the character's background to his motivations, has already been boiled, chewed, and pre-digested for me by Bioware.

 

Feed meh! Because chewing is so much effort. The only thing that's missing here is forcing a name on him so that everyone stops referring to him as "Hunter".

 

…

 

****, I just gave them an idea, didn't I?

 

It gets worse with the Jedi Knight:

 

 

 

 

Now, eat your broccoli.

 

But what about the Inquisitor?

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know what the problem is? The problem is that "Being Revan" was pretty cool, and that playing Shepard makes the character great. You get to see how the Dark/Light sides play out, or the Paragon/Renegade in ME's case, but you're playing Revan's and Shepard's stories.

 

But that's never MY character. It's YOUR character, Bioware; and the games were enjoyable, including the character, but that's a single player game where I'm not invited to "create my own saga".

 

You've hammered so much detail into the player's characters and their stories and backstories that you have left sweet **** all for me to add to it. Even the Dark/Light side choices aren't that meaningful, because all they do is, like in KOTOR, let me see how the Light and Dark side stories of your characters unfold, and on top of that one has to RELENTLESSLY chase Light/Dark choices to be at the Light/Dark level necessary to use the Light/Dark side restricted items at the appropriate character level. But that's YOUR story, they do not define MY character. My character would be defined by a myriad of things you have already decided for me, and I'd have felt a lot more involved if you had at the very least stopped answering questions nobody asked in the first gosh darn place.

 

You could have spent some effort finding ways to get ME involved. Instead, you spent a lot of effort finding every possible way to hammer YOUR "story" into what was supposed to be MY character even when it was completely bloody irrelevant. Well, fine, but now that I'm done with your character you can have it back.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Walkiry

I disagree

Saved this to read the lulz before thread delete blows this thread into oblivion.

 

I expect lulz.

Can we get a TLDR version?

Can we get a TLDR version?

 

BioWare dictated all of the class stories so thoroughly before you ever got your hands on the character that characters don't feel like they belong to you.

u mad?

UPDATE: Many lulz have been found, as expected.

 

Thank you, continue on.

Edited February 18, 2012 by StrikeOfLight

5/5 stars for you!

This strikes me as a lack of imagination on your part.

Can we get a TLDR version?

 

No. Read it. It's good for you.

TL;DR : The op expected more backstory and thinks he can armchair quarterback his way to that end on the forums. Op also expects to be able to give further input to a character's development above what the ls/ds options allow.

 

Uh... No, I wanted LESS backstory. In fact, ideally Bioware'd have said nothing at all about my character's backstory.

This strikes me as a lack of imagination on your part.

 

While I don't disagree with the OP at all, I do also agree with the above. A little imagination can go a long way in solving this issue

He's a serial ranter. Seriously.

That's what always amuses me when people try to tie "RPG" to "story". They are not the same.

 

The more fleshed out a story is, the less RP value it has... here in TOR, we have our character's voice and story pre-defined, and there is no real choice we can make. It simply has far less freedom, and provides spoon-fed storytelling by digital actors.

 

I've always felt that way about games that ram story down your throat... they seem to be mostly for people without an imagination.

They aren't pushing the buttons for you, feel free to forget everything in the quests and make up your own story

He actually has a point. The choices in the game are so meaningless they may not even exist, but more than that, you get to dictate nothing about the backstory of your character.

He actually has a point. The choices in the game are so meaningless they may not even exist, but more than that, you get to dictate nothing about the backstory of your character.

That's not entirely true, I made up a backstory for my bounty hunter's origins. The game did not slap me in the face for doing that.

That's not entirely true, I made up a backstory for my bounty hunter's origins. The game did not slap me in the face for doing that.

 

It's true that the Bounty Hunter is less thorough about it, as long as you don't mind being bestest buddies with Bredan and not being involved with Mandalorians until the story lets you, so to speak. The Knight and the Inquisitor are a lot more hamfisted.

 

It won't so much slap you in the face as clash pretty badly with anything you've thought for your character before.

<--- that way to chicago, or is it...----> < -----that way? errmm --->?

I enjoyed the story line for my Sentinel and I agree you follow a very strict story path but in was still enjoyable. I think of it as watching a movie and I'm the actor. The story is already written and I'm just acting through it. I don't mind that at all. I'm the one performing the actions. That's what this is.

 

You are looking for something else. You don't want to be an actor in a movie. You are looking for something different and I can understand that but unfortunately for you this is not that game. I'm not sure what game actually offers you that freedom you are looking for but it's interesting.

The problem OP is that there is no good way to allow everyone to have a story within the set game mechanics. You can't account for every possible background and minute detail that a player will want. This is why i enjoy table tops still over mmos. With pen and paper, your story is your own, you come up with it, you explore it and play it out. It's still possible in an mmo setting, but you can't really rely on the system itself to do that. You can simply roleplay your own story. I play the character arcs for entertainment, but as far as my roleplay goes, that isn't my character. I gave him his own story and when I interact with people, I play out that story. Admittedly, swg being more of a sandbox game, encouraged this dynamic. It's doubtful though that games like that will surface again in the near future though given the raid raid raid, loot loot mentality these days. You have to sort of take it upon yourself as a player to fashion your own tale.

OP, I agree wholeartedly with you. At least, well, in spirit.

 

Earlier today I came across this thread, which contains a link to a video of producer Dave Jaffe giving a presentation at the DICE conference. In it, he talks a lot about the effect of heavy story lines and cinematics in games. It's worth watching:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=309189

 

The obvious counter argument to your post is --- well, this is also a Bioware game. Bioware games have gotten progressively narrower, more focused, and more restrictive over the last decade or so. What began in Baldur's Gate as open maps, sandboxy questing and humorously chatty party members has become linear, rails driven gameplay and hardcoded romances.

 

If you had no idea who they were & came to SWTOR completely clueless as to their background & the kind of titles they developed, well, fair enough.

 

But if not ... I'm not sure what you're complaining about. As a Bioware title, SWTOR has exactly the kind of elements and gameplay I'd expect from them.

 

Whether those elements will make a good, long lasting MMO is another topic, but if you knew anything about Bioware, I'm not sure how you can complain.

 

Sure, you can complain that this isn't the Star Wars MMO you were looking for -- I think that is perfectly valid. But to complain that Bioware delivered a very "Bioware-ish" title makes less sense to me.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Dayfax

OP is totally baffling. What did the author expect from a BW game whose emphasis was on story and VO-ed content?

 

BW games are always more like a cross between a movie and a game than a freeform game like Oblivion or Skyrim.

 

But I don't think "being a former X" is really all that much of a restriction. With most of my characters, main and alts, I've already carved out a rough bio in my own mind, and I make my choices according to the character I've envisioned, and that pans out in surprising ways sometimes, relative to the story.

 

Plus also, the MMO side of it comes out very strongly in the grouped dialogues. When someone else wins the dialogue roll, that's another thing that affects your character (although not of course build).

 

e.g. you would have made a Dark decision, the others in the team made Light - and guess what? It comes from other players. That is rp, or at least rp lite. How does your character feel inside - is s/he seething at the ninny decision his party made?

 

RP isn't just making up your story and sticking to it, it's rolling with the punches - seeing how your character reacts to things, how things change him or her. That's what the story does. The story presents you with a bunch of "stuff happening". Within the confines of practicality, there's some leeway in how you can react, it's your choice.

 

And don't worry about accumulating consistently Dark/Light points - who decides that it matters? You.

Edited February 18, 2012 by gurugeorge

Can we get a TLDR version?

 

 

tldr: I apparently hate this game so much that I play it for hours a day and spend another hour or so posting about how much i hate it on the game forums.

 

Despite that a normal, rational personal would just quit playing a game they don't like, I force myself to log on day after day, hour after hour, and in fact to write down dialogue from the game in order to repost- on the forums about how stupid and dumb it is and how much I hate it.

 

please kill me

Let's all use our imaginations and pretend to be fighting ghosts on Ilum.

 

Problem solved.