Will Fallen Empire Employ Individual Instances Heavily, like SoR?

You are sidestepping the problem. That you and your boyfriend make almost the same decisions doesn't matter, as the game's programmers have to think of every possible situation, including the one I outlined in my examples.

As I said, it is not some kind of malevolence from BioWare against your gameplay style, it is how programming works. Having a story where you want the decisions to matter is often very incompatible with having that story be played in group.

For example, I would fully expect having to kill Valkorian (if it comes to that) twice (in case you are duoing), because the fight is probably going to be an epic showdown between whatever alliance you gathered and forces of the Eternal Throne. And as I stated, it might be impossible to have that done in group, as one member could always get the short end of the stick and have their choices not matter.

Again, note, I am NOT against people running content in groups, I think that is fantastic, and I would love to see it happen more, all I am saying is that it might be impossible in some cases.

Hypothetical example: Getting Mandalorians for your alliance. They want you to prove you are a honorable warrior deserving their respect. So you need to go out and kill some epic monster or whatever. Now, you could group for the monster hunt, but afterwards, you would need to go and talk to Mandalorians separately, as everybody will need to have the option to make their own choice.

No, it's not a matter of how programming works, it's a matter of how quest design works, and we're asking for some clarification on it. I am hoping, as ScarletBlaze has described, that they have tried to make it as group friendly as possible where only the most critical decisions that impact the future of your personal story are forced to individual conversation choices when in a group. SoR imposed individual instances where it simply wasn't necessary and I hope we have more freedom to choose this time. After all, for some of my characters, I would like to shape my story around what happened with my leveling partner as we chose together.

I have been agreeing from start that FA/SoR overused the Personal Phase system a bit too much, because BioWare wanted to give people the romance options. Pretty complicated, if not impossible, to do that in a group phase. And I also said it could have been done better by having the romance choices take place in separate instance or by clicking on something, like it is done with the table at Fleet after first two FA flashpoints.

As I have stated in my example, I am all for allowing people to group up on quests that require you to kill something that doesn't have any decision making or doesn't reflect any previous choices you made in a major way (like the Pirate base on Rishi). BUT, as I also stated, I would fully expect the final battle in the final chapter to be a personal phase, as I would expect it to reflect all choices *I* have made during previous chapters.

I seems to me that you and Scarlet both refuse to acknowledge the fact that when the system is programmed, it has to account or people who can make diametrically different choices (my Mass Effect example), even if it is something that most people do not do.

--- To keep everything together I'll starte with copy-pasting what I wrote about this in a different thread. ---

I just hope with the focus on story it'll be treated like planet stories rather than class stories.

What I mean is how instances are handled. for the original content you had the class stories and the planet stories... and just other missions. Class stories were understandably for the single characters, it was about them and just them (separately for each of the same class). Planet stories were able to be shared, which gave the whole multiplayer storytelling options.

Then there was Makeb, not sure if that was treated as a class story or planet story. It was the same for all the classes per faction, so it should have been planet stories in my opinion, I have my doubts. Not a Makeb fan really, so I'll leave it at that.

Then the Rishi/Yavin story came, was planning to do that together with a friend, didn't happen cause of some reasons. Final instanced boss even on the weekly couldn't use a shared instance. So guessing it's all treated as class story even though it's the same for everyone.

Then came Ziost, and I was helping a few friends when they did it for the first time, yup, all three of us had to go into our own versions of the instances.

So I really hope it'll be "planet stories" so we can share the story. Doubt it though. If they even see this, I hope they can add an option to do it coop, making people have to accept that consequences may happen because of other people winning a roll when they toggle that option. - But that's what can make it fun ESPECIALLY when choices mean something, those that disagree would still just be able not to opt in for that. But I know people that would love this, me being one of them on at least some characters.

--- [end copy-paste] ---

So to add on that since then. It can all be flagged as class stories as they probably did, but I think the best solution would then be to add a toggle in the options to allow shared personal phases in coop mode. This would also affect outcomes of the 1-50 story choices when shared, so should definitely be a toggle people have to actively mark to avoid whining.

--- I'll add an example group scenario here to clarify what it could look like ---

Three players are just starting and group up, two of those have enabled sharing the phase in coop, the third one didn't.

So they start to play and they get to a phased instance. The first player enters and opens it, then the second one enters and automatically joins in it. The third who didn't enable it enters and makes his own instance.

This means the two will have the same story progress flags marked, the third has his own and his progress isn't affected by the choices of the others.

Now they meet a forth person that joins their group, this person already did a few phases ahead of them. When the others enter a phase the fourth already did he has the option to join as spectator according to the "allow same class story phases" settings, which would still be it's own toggle in the options.

--- [end example] ---

So yeah, I hope the devs get to see this in time before there's no time to add it. Would be great to see us allowed to share the story to make it a real optional multiplayer experience. Otherwise I fear it may just become a chapter DLC single player game.

Would even be nice if they added that as an option later, though still very much preferably with launch. A little response in this thread by them could show they are aware, and inspire people to add more detailed ideas.

Hopefully as much as possible, I hate when there's like 60 people in one instance and that doesn't even incited the other faction all going after the same objectives in a small area like Ziost. Or Yavin when you had to kill those commanders.

While i respect that you have your other half to play the game with and you both likely listen to every conversation together cause you both find it awesome or he is just that nice guy that waits while you listen to it all or visa versa, but sadly, i don't have that other half to play the game with and any grouping i do tends to be with players that treat it like a basic non-story related mmo and demand i skip all the story stuff.

While i think it should provide the option of playing together and having a solo mode, which i hope they eventually do for all flashpoints, when it comes to storylines, grouping can be hazardous to storyline choices because, 1: you tend to not always win the roll and 2: you are always pressured and cyber-bullied into skipping the best parts of this game just so they can finish the content as fast as possible.

It is a pity that there isn't any cool players that just don't care if you skip it or not.......the price of this game being a mmo i guess.

Or Tython or Korriban or even the factions' capital worlds, the planets are just too small for 100-150 players....i tend to play this game in the AM timeline........as in 01:00AM - 07:00AM after which point, players come online in droves.

This is where having your own instance would be so much cooler, if you want to group, advertise and group up and they join your instance, but ofcourse, that would destroy the image of an MMO, but i giess they like fighting over quest objectives or just sitting around like twits while you wait for your targets to spawn back.

I agree. I'm in a similar spot as you though (thankfully) where I play on and EU server (The Red Eclipse) but live in Canada, I'm on that server cause of friends and have been for the last two years but when it's evening/ night here hardly anybody is on so I can complete my objectives in peace without being ninja'd or having some annoying people around and no over crowed instances.

I was on Ziost the other day and there was 56 people on the Republic side alone, yet the second instance had to be "depopulating", there should always be two instances open at least IMO.

I don't find the starting planets to be that bad, things seem to spawn faster but the capital planets especially Coruscant seems to be loaded with noobs who steal all your objectives

Good to see someone else notices how bad it can be.

We are asking for clarificiation from the devs on how this will work because like I said my boyfriend and I will do it twice if we have to. We already decided that but an option to allow groups to do it once would be nice and if they give us the option then the choice on how we decide to do the mission is the group and if you don't want to do that way, you can do it yours but an option would be nice to give people like that group together.

A response to the question would be nice from devs instead of them ignoring the question.