The writer himself steps in to say basically..."this is why we did it this way...so drop it..." and you're arguing with him?

 

I was in the NSA and served as a civilian analyst and field officer...want to know about high ranking briefings knowledge? I am certain I have seen far more than you have...it's off a tad for streamlining purposes...BUT NOT THAT BADLY. I think you would argue with a brickwall over the color of the bricks!

 

DROP. IT. ALREADY.

 

This thread needs someone to put a bullet in it and end the misery.

So what? Worked for the NSA. SO DID I. I was a 2621 Ground Electronic Warfare Signals Intelligence Analyst for the USMC. I was at the pointy end of the stick for NSA ops. So actually no you haven't.

For missions, i NEVER spoke to a General. I got handed an op through my detachment CO. Never spoke to Generals once. Infact only time i EVER spoke to a general was when i was field testing a new piece of equipment for my battalion in 2003. That and a deputy director NSA when a piece of equipment wasn't working right.

Other than that, NEVER spoke to generals. Hell barely even saw my battalion commander, or when i was on a MEU, i think i saw my MEU CO about 4 times, and never once concerning ops. So what you saw, is not how it is done in the field. That is what i have an issue with.

Many say Garza is hands on with Spec Forc. How many teams does she run? Can she be hands on ALL the time with that many squads. I know Havoc is supposed to be the best, but if she is going hands on with only 1 squad, then she's doing a MAJOR disservice to the rest of the troops under her command.

Sorry with how many squads she has in harms way doing jobs and what she'd REALLY have to keep track of, she realistically wouldn't have TIME cept for say a meet and greet in chapter 1, and i guess chapter two cause Supreme Commander was in on it, and I could see chapter 3 on corellia. But all the planets you go to, she didn't need to personally brief the team EVERY time.

What do you think staff officers are for? Really wish people who have NO clue on how military operates would say they do like they know something.

NSA...not how a military works.

I get what your saying, that the command structure feels off because of the dramatic liberties they have to take, and that the IA story does handle it better by having keeper delegate your briefings to the watchers, but I always felt that with the trooper, your being constantly briefed by the general has two main reasons.

1- You are essentially her personal wetworks squad. She uses you to get her goals achieved directly, quickly, and efficiently, without bothering with the support staff.

2- Her personality leaves her with crippling trust issues that don't allow her to let anyone else command you, even if they are relaying her orders.

That may not help you, but that's how I've always rationalized it to myself.

While the writer offered his thoughts already I do have a theory that could work too.

The Republic armed forces aren't all as well motivated and loyal as one would wish - there's corruption, incompetence and betrayal enough that every Rep character gets to see some of it. I guess many soldiers don't serve for the glory of the Republic but because it's a steady job with perks. In order to keep these people happy the forces are full of unnecessary officer positions, basically rewards for behaving well (and better chances to abuse power ofc). Better pay for the same job you were already doing.

I have no problem with black ops cells operating outside of the normal chain of command, thats pretty much standard in everyones army.

 

However I would say the trooper storyline was pretty weak and not enjoyable when compared to every other class quest.

Got to agree with this comment.

Mr. Boyd,

Thank you for the trooper story. I very much enjoyed it. So much so I have two level 50 Commandos and two Vanguards on the way.

For those that what the 101-5 treatment, a theater level staff can do things amazingly fast in the real world, but in game terms I would never want to sit through an operations brief, let alone do course of action development.

In this game I received task, purpose, and a shiny vehicle (metaphorically) to step into the action. I especially liked the missions where we could assign tasks to subordinates (I think there is a mini game of repeatable missions like Corellia in there somewhere.)

The real world is 1% heart pounding action and 99% hard, but relatively dull prep work. Which game do I want? I want to step into the action and kill bad guys, and have fun doing it. And I got a good story too.

Thank you.

Rangers lead the way.

I get what your saying, that the command structure feels off because of the dramatic liberties they have to take, and that the IA story does handle it better by having keeper delegate your briefings to the watchers, but I always felt that with the trooper, your being constantly briefed by the general has two main reasons.

 

1- You are essentially her personal wetworks squad. She uses you to get her goals achieved directly, quickly, and efficiently, without bothering with the support staff.

 

2- Her personality leaves her with crippling trust issues that don't allow her to let anyone else command you, even if they are relaying her orders.

 

That may not help you, but that's how I've always rationalized it to myself.

Haven't played thru the entire storyline (just lvl 30 atm), but reading between the lines a bit I'd imagine Garza is on a bit of a chopping block herself. Maybe she only has the freedom to run ops with you and your rebuilt team. She wins with you or dies with you. Its possible that the senate and top brass of the military have stripped her staff and left her with just you (a recruit when you meet) as a last ditch effort to redeem her failure. Placing all the blame on her if it gets out - sounds like SOP for self serving diplomats.

@ Captain_Lurker: I'm going to have to reject pretty much everything you said, but I will try to do so nicely

 

On the issue of not injecting real life - there already is real life injected. They don't use made up ranks, they use ranks that correlate to the real world. Additionally, the order of those ranks is not made up, but rather fits a real world perspective, where officers go from Lt to Capt to Maj, etc. Otherwise, Captains would be Generals and Generals would be Sergeants. Real life is already there. What we are trying to determine is how much real life should we be concerned about, or just how analogous the Republic Army is to the real world one. It already is somewhat analogous, so saying that we should not inject real life into the fantasy setting is, sorry, dumb. It's already there.

So you're bothered by ranks and some chain of command stuff that is not important to SWTOR, but you're ok with people running around with lighsabers and using the force to kill things, and traveling throughout the whole galaxy...OK. Dude. It's a game. Get over it.

Second, how do you know that the Republic military does not have an officer school? Are you basing that on the fact that the Trooper gets promoted from an enlisted rank to an officer rank without attending an officer school? I admit that one really required me to suspend disbelief, but here's how I did: battlefield promotions have historically enabled enlisted men rise up to officer ranks. Normally a battlefield promotion requires a degree of urgency (ie. can't wait for an officer to be trained, or can't wait for an officer from somewhere else to be reassigned here), and that was distinctly missing in the Trooper's case. Maybe you're right, that there is no officer school. But I'd need to at least see some kind of wookiepedia link validating the lack of an officer school as being established somewhere in the chaos that is the EU. Otherwise, this is another assumption of yours that must be rejected.

The whole point of Havoc squad is that they're so ****** they don't need to go to officer school. Whether one exists or not is irrelevant.

Your next point seems to be that the Republic military does not have a central authority. Again, this must be rejected. Just because the entity is called a "republic" does not mean it's military is some kind of United Nations peacekeeping force. Central authority stems from the Galactic Senate and the Supreme Chancellor. I agree it's confusing when member worlds of the Republic retain individuals who look and act like soverign leaders, but it's best to think of them as analogous to American state Governors, not as soverign heads of nation-states.

Except US governors cannot choose to leave the USA if they feel like it, whereas each member world in the Republic can. The member worlds ARE sovereign, and the Galactic Republic is pretty much a UN.

Finally, I lied. There IS something about your post I do not reject. In stating that Havoc squads members' high-rank allows them to unilaterally commandeer local forces, I think you make an adequate point. In the real world, that sort of squad is a paramilitary outfit with a "do whatever you want and make the military boys do what you say" slip signed by the president. In the game, though, we see in multiple interactions with the SIS that they seem to rely on Republic military assets to do the dirty work, and I guess Garza's SpecForces division sort of fills the niche of a paramilitary squad without the ambiguities of the "para" part of the term.

Let me ask you this, is there a rule or something that says a General or anyone of an equivalent rank CANNOT personally give orders to a squad leader? I mean if there isn't any such rule, then we can simply just assume General Garza is one of those people that really just likes to do things herself, and is why she gives orders to Havoc squad personally.

hello,

 

I have a huge problem with the concept of class quests in general. That they are very linear and choices don't matter, and the player always is the big hero there, which is a contradiction to the world as a hole. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of Havoc squad leaders in the world (as many as there are SWTOR players who played the trooper class story), which makes no sense. One essential rule in role playing is not to try to play the big super-hero/defeater of the emperor or whatever, and that means for role players that they have to think of their class quest as a whole different game with a different person than anything else they do while role playing with others or doing OPs. Just to make clear where I stand on the class quest concept in swtor in general.

 

But within these given limitations, you did a great job on the trooper story. Someone who picks a trooper will certainly expect and want a little (!!!) less Star Wars than a Jedi Knight player, and a tiny little dose of Mass Effect to fill that hole. It's a wonderful story, every bit of it, and the logical problems that have been pointed out are true, but they were necessary to fit it in the general class quest line concept. Well done! And I played it twice, even though I have only 3 characters.

Star Wars is all about being a hero and saving the day, so why would you expect a game based of SW to be any different?

I literally spent 10 minutes deciding whether to save Jaxo or to sacrifice her to save the others. I ultimately choose to save the others since that was the light choice, but I came very nearly close to choosing the dark side even though I swore I was going to play full light on my trooper. That decision seriously bothered me for like a week. So yes, choices in SWTOR do matter.

Exactly what I'm talking about. I did the same thing, and later (after the 1.2-patch), I got an invitation from her to catch up. We met on Coruscant and had sex. Same with every single "decision" - it's more like a shooter, where the fights are mine, but the story is a movie.

Star Wars is all about being a hero and saving the day, so why would you expect a game based of SW to be any different?

The movies have 10, max 20 big heroes. TOR has millions. While I don't have the problems with the logic of the story itself that others have, I can't get it into my head that there are hundreds of thousands of other havoc squad leaders, or hundreds of thousands of other Jedi knights who defeated the emperor (or whoever that is; never played one). And when I meet with other players for role playing, I can't use the single player story as my background story and have to make up something entirely different (there's even a rule about that somewhere).

But at least they did it well. The scene from your spoiler is great, and all the little things. Like Elara getting grumpy when I played a female trooper and flirted with that agent. "Sir, we can discuss non mission-critical issues later."

TOR doesn't have millions of heros. It has 8.

Period. There are 8 stories. That's it. You are just one of millions who happen to be playing a particular version of that story.

Just like there is only one Revan or one Meetra and millions of people played them, there is only 1 Jedi Knight, 1 Sith Inquisitor, 1 Sith Warrior, 1 leader of Havoc Squad, etc

Things have been getting a little heated in this thread and while I don't mind critiques of my work (that's what this forum is for!), everyone should try to remain civil while discussing such critiques.

Hey! I'm so glad that you responded to this thread - sorry about how it turned out. I didn't intend for it to get so flamey, but it doesn't look like it's improved much. :-/ Still, I really appreciate your willingness to share some of the thoughts behind the creative effort.

With that being said, I'm happy to give a little insight into our thinking when we developed the Trooper story, and the interactions with General Garza in particular. As with the rest of the game, evoking the spirit of the films was the top priority; and in the films, the protagonists almost always receive their military-style briefings from generals or equivalently high-ranking individuals. In A New Hope, General Dodonna briefs Red and Gold squadrons directly; in Return of the Jedi, the squadron commanders and ground teams are briefed by General Madine, Admiral Ackbar, and Mon Mothma. Leia gives Rogue Squadron their briefing in Empire Strikes Back; I can't recall what exact rank Leia carries at that point in the story, but she and General Rieekan seem to treat each other more or less as equals, so Leia certainly carries a lot of responsibility regardless. All of the Jedi Generals in the Clone Wars regularly lead and give orders to individual clone squads.

 

I never interpreted these scenes as indicating that there are no chains of command or support staff anywhere in the galaxy far, far away; we just don't see them because they're not dramatically relevant. Watching Mon Mothma's directives filter down to Admiral Ackbar and General Madine, then down to their subordinate officers, and so on wouldn't fit the films' storytelling style.

I agree with your point about the films' storytelling style - mostly! Those iconic briefings prepare the audience along with the protagonists for the climax of the story, and having all the Important People there makes a ton of sense. It adds weight to the proceedings that wouldn't be there if the storytelling was overfocused on the minutia of command structures and having Mon Mothma's people getting with Madine's people. That might be realistic, but it would definitely not be either interesting or dramatic (unless your audience consists of military enthusiasts and/or you make the staffers meaningful characters who carry the drama themselves).

However, Garza conducts some pretty mundane briefings throughout the course of the Trooper story, even when you consider that Havoc is one of her most valued assets. I personally feel like, from a storytelling standpoint, you make Garza a much more interesting character when you make her someone the squad knows about, takes orders from by proxy of a staff, and then occasionally gets to meet when the chips are all on the table and she's taking the reigns herself. I imagine the first meeting on Coruscant after arriving from Ord Mantell being more like this:

Garza: (all gruff and matter-of-fact, a little hurried, busy talking to her staff, on the way out of the office to a briefing with other generals, admirals, and sentaors) Leiutenant. I've heard impressive things about you from people whose opinions I care about. They said to give you Havoc, and I trust them. Don't let them down, because it's them I'll blame if you fail."

Lightside Femshep: (deferentially snapped to attention, exuding pride, speaking with a professional tone) Thank you, General. I won't fail you, sir."

Darkside Femshep: (pridefully) "I hope these aren't the same advisors who told you to trust Tavus. Either way, General, there's no soldier in the galaxy better than me to run Havoc. I'll be delivering that message to Tavus personally."

Garza: Carry on Leiutenant. (And off she goes to be powerful and important, while the Trooper branches off to take orders from one of Garza's command staff.)

Then later, maybe at the culmination of each chapter, Garza makes an appearance all Dodonna/Madine/Leia style. We get a taste of that variety of story-telling at the end of the Trooper story as-is, but I feel like the reason behind the notion that it was anti-climactic is because there was too much Garza all along. It's too much of a good thing.

When you interact with Garza so much, you take her for granted, and her rank and personality become familiar and routine. Then when she steps up to be powerful and commanding, it's just a yawn and press the "1" key for a lightside choice.

So, we adjust things in order to achieve those same dramatic goals. Havoc Squad is designated as a special, elite team with a huge amount of operational freedom, reporting directly to General Garza instead of running through the normal chain of command like the rest of the Republic military. This allows the Trooper to have a single "command" character to develop their thoughts and reactions to over the whole course of the plot; it allows the Trooper to have a personal ship and take it anywhere they want; it allows the Trooper to take on any side quest at any time, rather than calling to secure approval to operate outside of given mission objectives; and basically glosses over all of the many, many other realistic aspects of military life that don't fit with the get-to-the-drama pacing of Star Wars and the gameplay requirements of our design.

 

I'm certainly not here to tell you that you're wrong for finding these things unrealistic or unenjoyable. But everything we do is done for a reason.

If you'll indulge some apples : oranges, the Agent story has a boss who has a staff, and you spend the early goings interacting mainly with the staff. The Agent storyline is widely considered superior to the Trooper story. I'm not gona say that what I'm talking about is THE reason for the prevelance of that opinion, but it's a component I think. The Trooper story should be more straighforward than the Agent one, which should rely on plot twists and does effectively. But plot twists make storytelling a lot easier. A straightfoward story has to be much more epic in fact to affect people as much. By tweaking the relative value of Garza, I think that would be easier. Even at the end, the new boss's boss is someone I've already worked with in the small time.

Maybe it's just me and I'll just get flamed more and no one will agree with me. If so, that's fine. I'll just write a full blown fanfic showing you all how wrong wrong WRONG you are. Right after I'm done with my fanfic about how Obi-Wan is Luke/Leia's real father and how Obi-Wan and Padme tried to kill Anakin so they could be together, but failed, Padme died instead, and ... well, it goes something like this:

Vader: Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father.

Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him.

Vader: No. He was your father.

Luke: No ... that's not true ... that's unpossible!

Vader: Search your feelings, you *know* it to be true.

Luke: NoooOOooOOooOoooooo.... nooo

Vader: Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as two awesome dudes!

Luke: You ... you mean you don't want to kill me?

Vader: Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You are the son I should have had. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can *end* this destructive conflict, and bring order to the galaxy.

Luke: Yeah, okay. I like the sound of that ... you know, better than dying right here like a punk.

Vader: All too easy.

Wow ... I just ... I mean ... that's brilliant!

ikr!

Sorry, this is what happens when I make forum posts at 2:40am.

Exactly what I'm talking about. I did the same thing, and later (after the 1.2-patch), I got an invitation from her to catch up. We met on Coruscant and had sex. Same with every single "decision" - it's more like a shooter, where the fights are mine, but the story is a movie.

To be fair, it's my understanding that quest is supposed to happen somewhere around act two, but was disabled. It wasn't new content they patched in.

That said, it was kind of weird to hang out with Jaxo and her friends months after finishing my class story, yes. But it wasn't the developers just ignoring your decision.

I get what you are saying. But again it just felt OFF. Yes General Dodanna briefed red and gold squadrons. But that was an extreme situation, again with Leia briefing Rogue duirng the evac. There really wasn't time for a solid briefing.

 

But on ROTJ, that was actually a good look at how a military chain of command big briefing works. You see that the General Madine and Admiral ackbar was addressing the senior commanders and squadron leaders of the fleet. But you notice something else. Other staffers and officers. Not just 1 general breifing a LT as when you first arrive on Courscant.

 

I guess what I'm driving at is that you don't see a COMMAND staff for Garza. It made it seem like she does it all alone. That just doesn't work with the kind of duties she has. I mean greeting you when you get to courscant, I can see that. But like when you arrive at a planet, does the General REALLY need to brief you on every planet.

 

Look at the IA. Keeper only briefs you on the MAJOR important stuff. Everything else, handed to a staffer IE Watcher Two.

 

Now for say the Guantlet when you first meet the supreme commander cause of the importance, yes the general would be there, that was handled to the T.

 

But say going to Hoth just to pick up a member of the team, again I don't see the relevance of Garza herself giving the briefing.

 

I hope you see what I am driving at.

This exactly. In the IA storyline, you feel you're part of an organization, with the different level of the hierarchy with watchers, minders, and Keeper at the top that you meet a few times because of extraordinary reasons, but normally watchers give you the briefing. You even get "bonus" missions to speak to fixers and other NPCs just to learn what they do.

What do you think staff officers are for? Really wish people who have NO clue on how military operates would say they do like they know something.

 

NSA...not how a military works.

The Trooper is an Officer right out of Ord Mantell. He ranks upwards to a Major.

Officers do brief with flags, especially when they're no longer JOs.

Enlisted don't know how the military works at the higher end officer ranks and their equivalent civilian counterparts.

You didn't get to go to those meetings because you didn't rank for them when you were a terminal lance.

I'm more concerned by the fact that every single Sergeant I run into seems to think they can give me orders, including my own direct subordinates. It's kind of pissing me off, and even in the few situations where the game gives you the option of smacking them down for it (the "I'll give the orders here" answer), they go right on giving you orders anyway.

Republic rank doesn't seem to matter as much as it should.

Personally I always took it as a combination of "because Special Forces" and "Because hero Protagonist"

See thing is a trooper is not a random grunt. From your very first mission you have been promoted as the most junior member of the best of the best, Havok Squad. Even at that you are a sergeant, (Who in normal military republic or Real Life would be a rank to lead a squad), Tavus was a major as the leader of the squad so it's pretty clear from day one that Spec force has higher ranks from the bottom up than normal military.

As for the RW comparison most 6-12 man spec ops teams are lead by at least a captain if not major (though this is confusing since captain means very different things dependent on branch of service.) So while in the real world there is alot more overhead and bureaucracy to the military than presented in the trooper story the ranks are not that far off for the super elite special snowflake forces of something like Havok squad (though really RW special forces are rarely that special really.)

As for Garza's hands on approach there is some suspension of disbelief that needs to go on and a general acceptance that the trooper story isn't presenting the life of a soldier (even a special forces one) so much as a cinematic story in the style of an eighties action movie about special forces. Just be glad you don't end up as a wholly inappropriate baby sitter learning the value of family on Alderan or something.

Like in every other game EA produces and publishes, they think they have knowledge about military stuff like rankings and units. But the fact is, they have no cleu what they are talking about. For example:

** The Snipers in SWTOR are not really snipers. They have to get to damn close to be even a proper sniper.

I would actually see it as someone who uses an M4 wth a simple scope to target its enemys.

** Snipers are supposed to get prone, take out their targets without being seen or heard, yet they cant in SWTOR. They cannot even lay down and SNIPE. (because that is what a sniper does mostly) They cannot use camouflage, they cannot conceal themselves,.......

** if you target an enemy in SWTOR as a sniper, they see you and start shooting at you. EA, let me teach you something about snipers: They are long distance assassins!! They use scopes to target one or multiple units, and the target(s) would NEVER know what hit them untill the bullit goes thru the head!! One Shot, One Kill!!!

Its just not right to have snipers be caught when they scope their targets!!! thats just plain ********!!!

* Commando's in SWTOR cannot even kneel down to balance their rifles and take a good shot.

wth is up wth that? They cannot go in cover, they cannot protect themselves from enemy fire.....

Some commando's eh??

EA thinks they know everything about snipers and other special forces units.

Just like in Battlefield games. (in their bootlegs they write how you can stay hidden and not be spotted and take out your enemy from a looon distance. But in fact, its all a lie to sell their product. They ALWAYS see you and your never hidden, and sometimes a good headshot does not even kill because they just dont want that.....)

If you cant make a proper Commando, or sniper.... then DONT, EA..... because your not really doing a good job!!!

But knowing EA and its way of doing business, they will never change it because they are to damn amateuristic to even research military units, operations and ranks. Blehhhhhh

Here I am quoting Star Wars The Old Republic Encyclopedia page 43 Agile Operations Paragraph 3 "SpecForce squad commanders often have much higher ranks than standard infantry team leaders. It's not unheard of for majors or even colonels to lead small units into battle. All squads report to SpecForce Command on Coruscant, and receive near-constant oversight from General Garza."

Thats just made up crap by Electronic Arts.

It is NOT how its being done in the real world. Not ever......

Lot of necromancy going on in these parts lately.

Blast from the past.

Some of this stuff is frankly hilarious.

Summary of Charles Boyd's comment: sometimes, to tell a good story in an engaging way, you need to take some dramatic licence. Or, if you like, it needs a willing suspension of disbelief by the reader/viewer.

So that's why it's the way it is. Nothing to argue about.

But while we're being picky.... here's something that really bugs my friends who were in the military: the incessant saluting of their characters by superior officers. In a real military, the subordinate salutes and the superior returns the salute. Never -- ever -- the other way around. Ever.

Now fight about that.

Summary of Charles Boyd's comment: sometimes, to tell a good story in an engaging way, you need to take some dramatic licence. Or, if you like, it needs a willing suspension of disbelief by the reader/viewer.

 

So that's why it's the way it is. Nothing to argue about.

 

But while we're being picky.... here's something that really bugs my friends who were in the military: the incessant saluting of their characters by superior officers. In a real military, the subordinate salutes and the superior returns the salute. Never -- ever -- the other way around. Ever.

 

Now fight about that.

In fairness, the real world military rarely has a soldier that has killed thousands of enemy combatants. I mean, seriously, that raid on the Separatist base at the end of the first planet alone probably has you killing over a hundred dudes.