Other than class quests, do your decisions with NPC quests actually affect anything except your light side/dark side points?

Specifically, on Balmorra, I did a quest where, instead of rigging comm units to explode and killing civilians, I chose to rig grenades to explode, so only enemy soldiers would be blown up. The quest giver, when it was done, said something like "You won't be working for me again!" Is that idle chit-chat, or did my choices mean a future quest option would not appear for this character?

I really hope that's the case... I'd love to think that my choices may have consequences I don't even know about (unless I read spoiler sites), that I may be seeing a quest at level 20 I wouldn't have if I'd done something different at level 10, and vice-versa.

At this point I am unsure. On my commando there was a corrupt officer who sent honest soldiers off to die on the frontlines when they threatened to reveal his corruption. I reported him, in a cutscene he told me the frontlines were dangerous implying that I would have an accident out there.

Then I got a mail that read he tried to get people to ambush me but instead got reported and arrested.

Its been kind of like that ever since where I make choices and unless the result is shown during the handing in of the quest the only "consequences" I get are either a happy mail with credits or an angry mail.

Sadly the choices I make don't seem to make much difference even in the main story lines, if I say, disobey an order to kill someone, the worst that has ever happened to me is the general going "I AM DISAPPOINTED, I EXPECT BETTER RESULTS! Here is your next mission."

Sadly, I doubt that will be the case. A long standing tradition with Bioware has been "The illusion of free will" ... meaning that your decisions may affect trivial things, but never anything major.

Though they are getting better at it. For instance, in the Mass Effect series, nothing you do will change the outcome of the game. However, in ME2 your decisions effect who will actually survive the final mission - which (we are told) affects who is still around once ME3 comes out. There are also a couple of "impossible" dialog options that only open up with maxed karma (either way), which can avoid some pointlessly difficult battles.

One problem I have here, though, is that if I'm in a group and lose the social roll to speak and the other player makes a light/dark choice, I still get hit with the points for their decision. While I'm sure a good philosophical debate could be made out of that, it's still poor gameplay mechanics IMHO.

 

One problem I have here, though, is that if I'm in a group and lose the social roll to speak and the other player makes a light/dark choice, I still get hit with the points for their decision. While I'm sure a good philosophical debate could be made out of that, it's still poor gameplay mechanics IMHO.

I don't think this is true. I've been in groups where I made the LS choice and the "winning" choice was DS (and we saw the DS animation as the Sith decapitated the NPC), but I got +50 LS points for my choice anyway. I'm pretty sure this is officially stated somewhere, as well. That doesn't mean it isn't bugged for some quests.

I have found that it has minor effects but nothing significant yet. In particular you are sent to kill the son of a Sith Lord for the Warrior story line. If you do kill him, his father sends an assassin to kill you when you leave the planet. You just kill him and go on your way.

In would like to see some of the choices have a significant effect though. In particular the Revanite quest line for empire. Where choosing to expose them leads to you hunting them down and choosing to hide them leads to you rising in their ranks.

In would like to see some of the choices have a significant effect though. In particular the Revanite quest line for empire. Where choosing to expose them leads to you hunting them down and choosing to hide them leads to you rising in their ranks.

Concur in full.

However, the more choices matter, the more certain self-important, over-privileged types will start to whine that it's not "fair" that someone got Quest X and they didn't, because life always allows do-overs and you're allowed to keep trying at everything until you get it right.

"Story" is one area where SWTOR can advance the state of the art. Having choices matter all through your character's "life" can do a lot to avoid the "Game starts at level cap, must rush to 50" mentality that is so pervasive. It's insane that companies like Blizzard and BioWare and Sony make 50 (60, 70, 80) levels of content, and players want to focus on less than 5% of it.

Concur in full.

 

However, the more choices matter, the more certain self-important, over-privileged types will start to whine that it's not "fair" that someone got Quest X and they didn't, because life always allows do-overs and you're allowed to keep trying at everything until you get it right.

 

"Story" is one area where SWTOR can advance the state of the art. Having choices matter all through your character's "life" can do a lot to avoid the "Game starts at level cap, must rush to 50" mentality that is so pervasive. It's insane that companies like Blizzard and BioWare and Sony make 50 (60, 70, 80) levels of content, and players want to focus on less than 5% of it.

It really shows what MMOs are these days though, competitiion. Its not adventure, like Yathzee said when he interviewed WoW raiders, people riad because they want better gear, they want better gear so they can have more numbers, they want more numbers so they can get the next better gear and have more numbers until they have more numbers until they have the most numbers and can kill everyone elses numbers.

Its not like EQ1 where only a few people make it to max level or adventureing a world. People feel they need to be on top to compete.

It really shows what MMOs are these days though, competitiion. Its not adventure, like Yathzee said when he interviewed WoW raiders, people riad because they want better gear, they want better gear so they can have more numbers, they want more numbers so they can get the next better gear and have more numbers until they have more numbers until they have the most numbers and can kill everyone elses numbers.

 

Its not like EQ1 where only a few people make it to max level or adventureing a world. People feel they need to be on top to compete.

Honestly, I think EQ is where this started, and it's sort of an inevitable feedback loop.

a)Players can consume content faster than developers can produce it, even with EQs "hell levels" and "undinging" (Gods, I hated that)

b)By the time a game is ready for an expansion, a significant percentage of the players are at the level cap and bored.

c)The expansion adds new content for the majority of players, the ones at max level -- this is just good business sense. It's impossible to argue against it, really.

d)Players NOT at the level cap see that all the "cool new stuff" is for top-level players, and they realize if they want to see most of what's in the expansion they just bought, they have to get to top level and they'll just do whatever is needed to get maximum XP with minimum effort, even if it's hideously dull.

e)Lather, rinse, repeat.

I believe "the journey is the reward"... I rarely get a character to level cap, and when I do, I'd rather roll an alt than grind an instance over and over so that I get the gear I need to grind the NEXT instance, and so on. But I'm not a typical player, and a game made to my tastes would be a financial disaster.

I'm hoping that BioWare puts a lot of effort into making the PATH to level cap sufficiently varied and interesting that expansions will get people to roll new characters and keep the 95% of the game world NOT aimed at max level players well populated.