Devs at the latest cantina: Class Story, not at the moment...

Someone's a little late to the party. This has been discussed to death for the last year. And voice acting has nothing to do with it as they do voice acting for the new stuff anyway. Class stories compared to planet stories are 4 times the development cost and time because they are designing 8 sets of quests instead of 2 sets....and they want the new content to be more group-friendly. Not sure how many times this can be repeated by BW before it sinks in. Of course, they said the same types of things about player housing, legacy banks and guild ships not being in the plans and then, presto, here they come. So who knows at this point.

Yet if I'm not wrong there was a Thor movie recently that happens AFTER the Avengers... and there's the Captain America movie too (maybe Iron Man 3 as well? can't remember). In other words, after doing group things they all go back to their own business.

We will keep insisting, whether you consider it to be denial or not. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

If they can't or more accurately won't do more class stories and intend on just doing planet story lines I'd like them to at least meet us halfway and have separate stories for force and non force user. Would triple the workload since you'd have planet quest,. jedi quest and trooper/smuggler quest instead of just planet.

Currently they only do 2 storylines instead of the 10 we want, meet us halfway and do 6.

For me Makeb was a fail I did it twice on rep side and once on imp side my remaining 10 toons have no interest going there. The planet design as too many choke points and unavoidable mobs, too many obstructions to mess with camera zoom. The only reason I did it 3 time was that 2 of the 3 classes I did it with were stealth. Think I did the dailies once.

Next planet needs to be significantly better in design and story.

actually we the players disagree with this player. Class stories are the living core of this game, and the exceptional exception no other mmorpg within this time frame can match.

i'm sorry for SwTOR not reeling in the numbers like WoW does, but i'm thoroughly convinced that it can do with what it's got, and it's becuase of the story and how you did the class story. Take 2-3 years if you have to, but do a continuation. no one expects 50 levels of class stories, so the other guy has overstated, the way i remember it going, is the bulk of the missions are planet missions, there is one mission per class region, which makes it 8 missions per region that are class story missions.

and if i recall rightly, each region has roughly that amount of missions anyway, at most it's just twice the work effor t in missions, it's not 8 new planets nor 8 new zones . Even if you have to give the new planet in two parts, because of the time, do it.

btw, if bioware are so stretched for staff, is it not time to start hiring againt?

As has been discussed they will not do it, as there is literally no benefit to Bioware to do so at the moment. They would make no money by adding more class stories, adding a new bunch of class stories is going to cost them in the region of $3-5m. ROI is zero on that expenditure, no sane company spends that kind of money for zero ROI. Even if they lost half the subscribers tomorrow as a protest this would not change their minds (all it would do would be to ensure they killed the game dead).

It doesn't matter how much they make from the CM, it is all a numbers game, if a developers is making class stories he is an expense, for which he will be sacked. If he is making money by creating items for content (such as housing customisations), or creating content that will induce purchases, then he can be justified in the company budgets. It really is that simple. The sooner you get to understand that Bioware will only care about ROI the sooner you might come up with ways to get them to develop stuff. (Thinking along the lines of monetising swoop racing/pod racing..)

Your other thread is this same rambling comversation. You are over simplifying what it takes to development, fix , and maintain content in this game.

I don't know if you need a reminder but WoW may never be seen again in the MMO world. Just because SWTOR (or any game ) doesn't have the population of wow does not mean it needs a complete overhaul to function and be very successful. I don't think you understand how the market works either.

Please speak for yourself and only yourself, not "we, the players".

What attracted THIS player to the game was more than just class stories. And more importantly than putting any sort of restriction on story - class vs. planetary vs. whatever - I would rather just ask for good story.

I refuse to get wrapped around the axle by tricking myself into thinking that only stories associated with a specific aspect of the game will appeal to me. That seems quite foolish.

BioWare, please keep the good stories coming. Best way to do that? Keep Alexander Freed gainfully employed.

Class stories died with Ilum, not Makeb.

Good thing there's more to do in the game than replay the leveling experience.

Why would they need to announce future story content? Based on the game's history, anyone who doesn't expect story content in the future simply isn't paying attention.

Could you please describe how you think they monetized the Makeb and Oricon stories via Cartel market?

Class story is the proverbial Albatross that Bioware willingly chose to hang around their own neck.

The 1-50 levelling experience within the class stories sets such a high standard that all other questing feels poorer by comparison.
The dialogue feels richer, the choices more relevant, the companion interaction better.

When I'm playing through a class quest I want to be left alone to enjoy it and soak up the atmosphere at my own pace.

And that I feel is its greatest cost, not that it is time consuming or requires a lengthier development cycle but that it locks away the player in their own bubble that they don't want other people in. Not exactly the best design outcome for an MMO

Not to mention the mechanics of class story set-pieces tends to split a group up if you have the same class type in a group and they don't want to run it multiple times. Or you don't want spoilers if you haven't yet played as the class.

I'm all for future content that effectively uses the world quest template that has always been used. All classes have the same core quest but dialogue may differ slightly.

To be honest there are no class specific Heroics, Flashpoints or Operations out there and people are able to cope fine with that.

I want to see more content that I can freely group up with other players and not feel I am either spoiling the surprises for myself or having to play through it three more times so a squad of troopers can all get the reward.

really how do you know that? you don't know that for sure at all, new player stories is the MOST sought after feature in the game by the player population, it comes up over again, so you don't think bioware would not stand to benefit from making more when most of the people that play want it?

it's one thing to udnderstand or try to explain why they are not or will not, but to shoot down the request everytime it comes up because you've lost hope or don't want to hope is just wrong.

people and companies say a lot of things and do the opposite, how many time have you heard a game company rep say no they won't do it, and then done it later, just that some in teh community take their words as if they are spoken by the Messiah and then preach it to the rest of us... you don't realize it can be deflating and discouraging to have that drummed in by other players every timnme you bring it up, it's more accurate to say it's not on the horizon or not planning too yet, rather than "never" or "there is no real benefit..."

this is entertainment, you are saying there is no benefit in making further entertaining content, because it's class stories, one of the most iconic and best features of the game stands NO BENEFIT to the developer if done.

sheesh.

no it isns't, it is the best aspect of this game, and the one that makes it highly re-playable which is a huge part of sustainability, dude to see all the content you have to go through the whole thing 8 times.. then by the time you'[ve done that, you can have fun going throught it ALL over again visitng the first story you did..

this is eactly what i'm doing, I'm now levelling my final class, the BH, but also doing a shadow & sentinel on the side, and i did that story 2 years ago, it's like reading a favourite book again years later.

no, it's no albatross, its' their best feature, and plays a heavy roll in keeping new players here, stop saying that. You don't know how involved doing them is, unless you actually worked for the department of bioware that did this or in one of the senior management position of production/accounting etc that see the real picture of what it takes.