SW:ToR Lacks Direction?

Well, for some things at what time you do things don't really matter, I mean the Rakghoul flashpoints could happen at any time in the story, the only things that matter are those that has a chronological placement

For example the first operation, Eternity Vault, could happen at anytime, it has at this point had no later effect, Karagga's Palace on the other hand happens because the Dread Master are taking their territory, thereby it must have happened after they were freed as a Imperial character, Explosive conflict then happens as the Dread Masters expand, and Terror from Beyond is clearly happening after explosive conflict as Kephess has been reborn

The whole thing with Makeb now and the new operation is happening as a result of what happened when you killed Karagga and the Dread Masters continuing assault on Hutt territory

"Here is how game development works:

a) A bunch of developers toss out a lot of things they think might be cool.

b) Someone from marketing sticks his head in, and says, “We have to start hyping this! What’s cool about it?”

c) They toss him the list and hope he goes away. He feeds the list to the press.

d) Over the course of years, each idea on the list is evaluated for practicality, fun, and so on. One by one, they fall into “Not for release” or “Not ever”. Meanwhile, the initial PR is flying all over the net, preserved forever by rabid fanboys who have dedicated their entire existence to a game they have never seen and which might never come out.

e) Eventually, the game ships, and people start wailing about how they were “lied” to. Then they glom on to some other barely-announced game and repeat the cycle."

http://mrlizard.com/rants/why-havent...ixed-this-bug/

Not sure about direction, but it definitely lacks ambition.

At least as far as we can tell, given the lack of communication.

While there's some truth here, it doesn't really answer about whether or not BW know clearly where they want this game to go or are they just reacting to feedback or are they just giving a bit of something to a specific audience when they patch to keep them playing.

Some games focus more on solo content, on endgame PvE, on PvP, ... while most try to please more than one audience, they still have a clear direction, it's easy to know what's more important.
But with SWTOR what's the direction ? Prelaunch they hammered the story thing, yet one year later, there's no update in that direction and they could have gave us better like many more meaningful choices with consequences in our stories.
If PvP is really important for them, why wait a year to fix Ilum ? Why didn't they tried to do something about owPvP ? If it's not, why did they spent time working on ranked warzones ?
...

Again, you can look everywhere and everywhere you can see things that could be done better which means nothing is great, nothing was really well thought to try to give the best experience in that field, which means there's no real direction.

Too many posts in this thread are saying I can't follow a simple storylines, so Bioware and Star Wars has failed.

The current situation at end game storyline are as follows: The gree are in trouble and need help. The Empire is preparing for counterattack on the Republic. There is going to be showdown with the Dread Masters. There is going to be a showdown with the Hutt Cartel.

Is this lack of direction or lack of ability to understand a simple story?

I hold a Bachelor's in Literature, so my adive is put down the star wars and read a book. I recommend the story of Chicken Little. Its a story about a chicken who misinterpts a simple situation and believes the sky is falling.

My next post will cover irony in storytelling.

I actually started playing ME3 multiplayer again recently. (I haven't played since the game came out much.) I notice a lot of improvements and interesting features added to it that make it a lot more fun. I'm not sure why Bioware as a whole doesn't devote some of the people working on the Mass Effect series to work on it's MMO. These guys are talented and innovative. It feels like the SWTOR team just lacks motivation or something.

SWTOR is brilliant, the production value is outstanding - so much work put into the dialogues, the stories, the environments.

The PVE part is excellent, though what I think the game lacks in terms of direction, is more PVP rewards for world PVP, some sort of competitive system to encourage "hostile, kinetic interaction" between players in order to keep them occupied in the end-game. ^^ Not sure if the 1.7 Gree Event update for Ilum is just that, but we'll see.

I'd assume the opposite.

Why should the story in an MMO be simple? They want us hooked for years, so of course there are multiple branching threats out there. For an example of this kind of storytelling, read George R R Martin's "Song of Ice & Fire" series. There are constantly switching threats and 5 books into a 7 book series, it's still not clear who the absolute biggest threat is.

Funny you mention Martin in a thread talking about lack of direction. He was so busy being edgy and cool in books 1 through 4 that he forgot to focus on the story he was trying to tell us. I think Dance took so long because he had written himself into a corner and couldn't find a good way out. From interviews and blog posts of his its pretty clear HE doesn't even know the answers to the questions you pose, or at least not nearly as well as he should being so far in the series. It really is a great example of the same problem that swtor has.