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I’ve finally figured out what frustrates me about SWTOR. (It isn't that story driven)


dalekjs

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I assume you didn't read anything I wrote in this thread. Revan was ruined because he went from one of the most strongly written characters in SW to a whiny genocidal proto-Anakin. I'm well aware of the novel, and I count it as the start of ruining his character, not to mention, as a previous poster said, that it went ahead and destroyed the Exile as well.

 

Eh no. Revan is awesome because he is you in Kotor. But he is not well written because you fill in his personality.

 

On the side note most people in this forum do not seem to realize what a colossal task it is write 8 different stories and overall plot. BW did a good job at it. For example take WoW. It has no story boring and repetitive quests (level 1 quest : kill boars level 60 quest : kill fell boars)

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Even if you didn't like him, I think Revan has earned the status of a legendary character of his era, and they did him an injustice with how they showed him in SWTOR. It seems like a desperate attempt to fit their privious game's hero, but they just went too far. It's like trying to bring Darth Maul back in the TV show. HE IS DEAD! New eras call for new heroes, and like the OP said, we'd like to see what happened with his fall (Btw the book was bullcrap as well) but they need to let him go.

 

This was the perfect oppertunity to tell a unique new story like they did with Kotor, but this is too much "Go here, do this" instead of good storytelling. Im playing as a jedi knight, and some of the flashpoints and class missions are okay (not as good as kotor though) but 80% of the game is made up of meaningless chores of cleaning up imps for an incompetent republic military. My friends who have not played kotor think this is story driven, but as a person who has beaten Kotor 1 and 2 10+ times, I think Swtor has too shallow of a plot line. I wish they would erase this from star wars canon and continue with Kotor games.

 

In short you should not have bought this game. Your own fault for not doing your research. Being a mmo and rpg gamer for quite well it still manages to amaze how much story BW managed to put in a MMO. If you think swtor sucks at the story then don't bother trying another mmo

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Revan should not appear in SWOTR. They should just left his fate and motives after KOTOR a mystery. KOTOR2 in fact treated the character of Reven with extreme respect and kept a certain "distance" to the things previously established in KOTOR1.

 

By having Revan in SWTOR and clumsily revealing that mystery, BW/LA just added some cheap weight and sensation to this game at expense of degrading and completely ruining his character established in K1 and K2.

 

Another thing that a lot of story writers fail to understand is that if there is some mystery established around certain character, the reader/player will interpret that mystery with his own imagination. When the story writer then attempts to to revel that mystery he is competing against imagination. Well not only against single imagination but against imagination of each individual reader/player. This is a competition that simply can not be won.

Edited by Path-x
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Great read and completley agree! This was my first mmo experience and at first i loved it, i played throught the story got to the end and was like ok sweet lets do a second play through. I got to level 40 of my second play through and just got freaking bored of the game. Not because i don't love star wars but becuase none of my choices made any difference on what happend. My personal opinion and not to take away from the game but i wish that would make a true KOTOR 3 and forget that this game ever happened. Which if it does end up failing and going Free to play maybe that will happen.
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Personally I have no issues at all with the story, or how it's presented in SW:TOR. I find them all to be engaging, emotional, and often full of real laugh out loud moments.

 

Sure I'm well aware that not all of my decisions will make a difference, but MMOs need a certain level of consistency in order to keep the leveling, and flow of the game moving along. besides in every other MMO you have zero controll over how you respond to quests, or even their outcomes, you are simply told what to do, in exactly the same way every time you play.

 

I'm just happy that for once, in a MMO I'm actually very attached to the story as a whole, and to my player character. I'm not just reading a bland text box and killing 10 rats, now the quest is more involved, and full of voice and actions, and kill the 10 whatever has more meaning overall.

 

My imagination fills in the gaps that I need to fill in, (and for once it is very inspired to do so), and as for Revan.....Well the Revan that I played may have been my own, but I understand what they had to do to bring Revan into this game. He's not 'my' Revan but he's an interesting character in his own right (to me anyways), and I have to say, I was giddy when I saw that mask for the first time.

 

However this is all just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

 

....I eagerly await Chapter 4.

Edited by JediElf
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I personally enjoyed the storyline of the JK. JC is horrible I will admit. Trooper to me is good and smuggler.. well I haven't played it yet. IA is alright but i've only played until the fleet, sw is good, si is good and the BH is great to me. But that's just me. World's do feel a bit static tho, I will say that.
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Came to argue with you, OP. Stayed to read, consider, and concede that you're right on most counts.

 

First, thanks for not putting DA2 or ME3 on your "good" list. I can't speak for ME3, but DA2 is in the wretched storytelling school that has, in combination with SWTOR, turned me off buying BioWare RPGs until they can convince me I'm not reading the same book in one of three funny voices.

 

But, to get to SWTOR itself, and your first point: I think it would have been good to have more unified faction-wide stories - the planets definitely feel like isolated short stories that will never matter again after you leave. The few flashpoints I did after BT/Esseles were a huge letdown from a story perspective (Taral "We have one conversation that I can remember in the entire instance" V and so on).

 

That said, I do not know what a game that more tightly drove everything into a large and progressing plot would be, and I do not know what a game that successfully does this in a multiplayer environment would be. I think that it's such a different animal that it's hard to compare and kind of scary to contemplate implementing. I would be overjoyed to try any attempt a company turned out.

 

Point 2: SWTOR Revan is an abomination and is the reason my husband left the game. KOTOR was great, KOTOR 2 is one of his favorite games of all time, and the dumbhammer they dropped on Revan just wrecked the story enjoyment. I'm still playing, but game-Revan is dead to me. What a completely unnecessary - and actively destructive! - element.

 

As for point 3: I loved the Agent, I loved the choices, I am both curious and apprehensive for Chapter 4, and I do feel that the Agent line is actually better than anything I could have imagined within the three-button conversation system.

The way they used that discrepancy between preview and spoken text to such powerful advantage while the Agent is under the keyword's compulsion was brilliant.

Did the characters grip quite like Dragon Age: Origins? I wouldn't say so. Did the plot develop quite so powerfully as KOTOR? I wouldn't say so. But those are legitimately debatable points, and I think that's reason for hope.

 

Thinking about it, yes, the Sith Warrior is definitely the second most promising, in part because the LS/DS duality is so vividly explored in ways that actually matter. The plot notices. The plot cares.

 

But everyone suffers from a long-term problem: Between a tightly plotted Act 1 and endgame, every class plot has to get into a big, galactic-scale adventure, no matter how forced (hi, Smuggler); and every galactic-scale adventure must have no overlap or interference with anybody else's. If there's an answer to the bizarre disjointedness here, it lies back in point 1. And until that's resolved, only the most skilful of writers will be able to take that restrained storytelling space (must escalate to here, must not pass through there) and write satisfying class stories.

 

Will they do that? No. But again, the point of my thread was to air grievances, not tell them to fix it :p

 

I admire your honesty. ^.^

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I kinda feel 1 and 3, though I do enjoy it even so. I've played smuggler and knight to the end of Act 3 and I felt like knight was much more cohesive since it at least tended to tie in with the war effort. Revan I'm kinda apathetic to.

 

And it made me realize that what I think might actually be good for this game, would be to remove class-centric stories in favor of faction-centric stories that include the planetary arcs. The trouble I have with having class arcs separate from planetary arcs is the complete lack of narrative cohesion. If they flat out just built the story arcs into one cohesive plot linking all the planets together, regardless of whatever your class was, it'd have been 10x better. I'd say in most cases the thing that drives you onward to the next world ends up being something totally irrelevant compared with what the world is about, and there's no attempt whatsoever to link world arcs together in some sort of big picture, which creates a bit of dissonance.

 

If they simply focused on having one really good, compelling overall story that linked everything and threw in some flavor class quests along the way, I think it'd be much more powerful (maybe even go so far as the ME2 route and make class quests all about your companions and some important world/self-saving/destroying side-mission kinda thing that you have). The class arcs tend to be reasonably cohesive, and if you could skip all the world arcs, they may even be fine.

 

This may seem to diminish replay value a bit, but the writing cut from having totally independent stories could instead be focussed on giving different characters/classes radically different ways to respond to the same story that everyone else is experience (or different solutions to scenarios that pop up); you could keep the same amount of writing even, but shuffle it into the same story to put the replay value into how widely differing a scenario can play out with a different character.

 

TLDR: Non-class quest cohesion is weak. Everything you do on planetary arcs feels like you accidentally stumbled on something at best, and at its worst it feels downright inappropriate (which describes what doing about 80% of the quests is like after Tatooine on the Smuggler... and I imagine the Bounty Hunter too).

 

 

I got to thinking of all this when wondering how they'd handle an expansion, and more so how I would want them to handle an expansions. I think I would honestly prefer it if expansion content had all characters share a unified arc (which would also make it much easier to group with friends to progress through the main story) and the concept of planetary story arcs was dropped in favor of an overall narrative arc that just happened to incorporate planets as parts (which would also make it easier to get away from "Now we're on planet X, then Planet X, etc." and have quests fly you back and forth between planets and revisiting old ones in different regions, etc. as new plot elements unfold that get you to do so).

 

Also, optional space battles at various story moments would be nice (especially if they provided epic scenarios... like say there's SUPER MEGA BATTLE STATION... let me do opt for a mini game attack run to travel there rather than just traveling there!)

 

Anywho, again to re-iterate, if anyone from Bioware reads this, my chief grievance with this game at this point is one thing: Story Cohesiveness. Or lack thereof.

Edited by Halkyon
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IA is alright but i've only played until the fleet.

 

I implore you to keep going with the Imperial Agent story line. The end of chapter one is, amazing, and the beginning to chapter two, will leave you stunned.

 

Well it did to me, I'm up to Taris right now, and I'm still reeling from what's going on, and the decisions that I've had to make.

 

Really keep going, it's a great plot, and a white knuckle ride. ^_^

Edited by JediElf
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I'm not saying they don't appeal to me. I'm saying that they are, in general, very poorly written and not up to standard to BioWare's writing in past games. Take, for example, the Inquisitor story. Without going into spoilers, I loved the premise, but I found the delivery sloppy and poorly paced.

 

Pretty much all of these stories are appealing to me (I am a SW fan after all), but most of them just aren't up to par is the point I was trying to make in my third point.

 

 

 

trussasp :

 

My point isn't that they're grindy. It's that the game isn't really story driven. Adding voices over cookie cutter quests and calling it story driven isn't really true. If that's the case, WoW is also story driven.

 

Story driven does not necessarily mean CHOICE. Choice = Bioware, Choice does not equal story. Story is just writing that is presented, that is what SWTOR does, WoW does not present it's writing. Of all the things to criticize in this game, you criticize the personal stories? It's not a 'newbie jedi,' look into the story and you find this particular jedi is one of the most powerful of his time, and despite Revan being ******, this particular jedi is objectively more powerful. The Foundry did not conclude Revan's story, he did not die, a merely disappeared. This is a SPIRIT sequel, not a direct one.

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Not too sure what is meant by "cheesy 80s stories" :( But i do love how the trooper story feels like you're having an effect on the galaxy. The REASON you Jedi and Smugglers are able to use your hyperdrives is because of me!

 

 

Trooper chapter two was about an imperial ship that could shoot ships out of hyperspace

 

 

I know we have no effect on the overall MMO world, but i disagree with the Op. It does feel like we have an effect on the Galaxy.

The first chapter of the trooper story plays like an Arnie movie. Very clichéd story from the get go. The one liners for the dark side choices are truly painful!

 

I'm almost surprised there is no "If it bleeds we can kill it" or "GET TO THE CHOPPER!" dialog.

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Came to argue with you, OP. Stayed to read, consider, and concede that you're right on most counts.

 

First, thanks for not putting DA2 or ME3 on your "good" list. I can't speak for ME3, but DA2 is in the wretched storytelling school that has, in combination with SWTOR, turned me off buying BioWare RPGs until they can convince me I'm not reading the same book in one of three funny voices.

 

But, to get to SWTOR itself, and your first point: I think it would have been good to have more unified faction-wide stories - the planets definitely feel like isolated short stories that will never matter again after you leave. The few flashpoints I did after BT/Esseles were a huge letdown from a story perspective (Taral "We have one conversation that I can remember in the entire instance" V and so on).

 

That said, I do not know what a game that more tightly drove everything into a large and progressing plot would be, and I do not know what a game that successfully does this in a multiplayer environment would be. I think that it's such a different animal that it's hard to compare and kind of scary to contemplate implementing. I would be overjoyed to try any attempt a company turned out.

 

Point 2: SWTOR Revan is an abomination and is the reason my husband left the game. KOTOR was great, KOTOR 2 is one of his favorite games of all time, and the dumbhammer they dropped on Revan just wrecked the story enjoyment. I'm still playing, but game-Revan is dead to me. What a completely unnecessary - and actively destructive! - element.

 

As for point 3: I loved the Agent, I loved the choices, I am both curious and apprehensive for Chapter 4, and I do feel that the Agent line is actually better than anything I could have imagined within the three-button conversation system.

The way they used that discrepancy between preview and spoken text to such powerful advantage while the Agent is under the keyword's compulsion was brilliant.

Did the characters grip quite like Dragon Age: Origins? I wouldn't say so. Did the plot develop quite so powerfully as KOTOR? I wouldn't say so. But those are legitimately debatable points, and I think that's reason for hope.

 

Thinking about it, yes, the Sith Warrior is definitely the second most promising, in part because the LS/DS duality is so vividly explored in ways that actually matter. The plot notices. The plot cares.

 

But everyone suffers from a long-term problem: Between a tightly plotted Act 1 and endgame, every class plot has to get into a big, galactic-scale adventure, no matter how forced (hi, Smuggler); and every galactic-scale adventure must have no overlap or interference with anybody else's. If there's an answer to the bizarre disjointedness here, it lies back in point 1. And until that's resolved, only the most skilful of writers will be able to take that restrained storytelling space (must escalate to here, must not pass through there) and write satisfying class stories.

 

 

 

I admire your honesty. ^.^

 

Thank you for the well written post! DA2 was indeed horrible, and sadly the ending to ME3 is as bad as people say. SWTOR should have had this overaching plot, and it's why I'm really disappointed. This is the definition of story driven. What we have is not a story driven mmo, it's eight completely different stories that have little to do with the world at large.

 

The only hint we get of the main plot of what's going on in terms of the Republic vs Empire is in the form of the flashpoints, and after the first two the story parts are all but completely abandoned!

 

 

I kinda feel 1 and 3, though I do enjoy it even so. I've played smuggler and knight to the end of Act 3 and I felt like knight was much more cohesive since it at least tended to tie in with the war effort. Revan I'm kinda apathetic to.

 

And it made me realize that what I think might actually be good for this game, would be to remove class-centric stories in favor of faction-centric stories that include the planetary arcs. The trouble I have with having class arcs separate from planetary arcs is the complete lack of narrative cohesion. If they flat out just built the story arcs into one cohesive plot linking all the planets together, regardless of whatever your class was, it'd have been 10x better. I'd say in most cases the thing that drives you onward to the next world ends up being something totally irrelevant compared with what the world is about, and there's no attempt whatsoever to link world arcs together in some sort of big picture, which creates a bit of dissonance.

 

If they simply focused on having one really good, compelling overall story that linked everything and threw in some flavor class quests along the way, I think it'd be much more powerful (maybe even go so far as the ME2 route and make class quests all about your companions and some important world/self-saving/destroying side-mission kinda thing that you have). The class arcs tend to be reasonably cohesive, and if you could skip all the world arcs, they may even be fine.

 

This may seem to diminish replay value a bit, but the writing cut from having totally independent stories could instead be focussed on giving different characters/classes radically different ways to respond to the same story that everyone else is experience (or different solutions to scenarios that pop up); you could keep the same amount of writing even, but shuffle it into the same story to put the replay value into how widely differing a scenario can play out with a different character.

 

TLDR: Non-class quest cohesion is weak. Everything you do on planetary arcs feels like you accidentally stumbled on something at best, and at its worst it feels downright inappropriate (which describes what doing about 80% of the quests is like after Tatooine on the Smuggler... and I imagine the Bounty Hunter too).

 

 

I got to thinking of all this when wondering how they'd handle an expansion, and more so how I would want them to handle an expansions. I think I would honestly prefer it if expansion content had all characters share a unified arc (which would also make it much easier to group with friends to progress through the main story) and the concept of planetary story arcs was dropped in favor of an overall narrative arc that just happened to incorporate planets as parts (which would also make it easier to get away from "Now we're on planet X, then Planet X, etc." and have quests fly you back and forth between planets and revisiting old ones in different regions, etc. as new plot elements unfold that get you to do so).

 

Also, optional space battles at various story moments would be nice (especially if they provided epic scenarios... like say there's SUPER MEGA BATTLE STATION... let me do opt for a mini game attack run to travel there rather than just traveling there!)

 

Anywho, again to re-iterate, if anyone from Bioware reads this, my chief grievance with this game at this point is one thing: Story Cohesiveness. Or lack thereof.

 

Great post! You basically described what I wanted! I would still keep the class quests though, as a sort of 'coming of age' type side plot, but the focus should have been on what you've described!

 

Story driven does not necessarily mean CHOICE. Choice = Bioware, Choice does not equal story. Story is just writing that is presented, that is what SWTOR does, WoW does not present it's writing. Of all the things to criticize in this game, you criticize the personal stories? It's not a 'newbie jedi,' look into the story and you find this particular jedi is one of the most powerful of his time, and despite Revan being ******, this particular jedi is objectively more powerful. The Foundry did not conclude Revan's story, he did not die, a merely disappeared. This is a SPIRIT sequel, not a direct one.

 

Um, nowhere in the post you quoted did I say anything about choice? Story doesn't necessarily equal choice, but the plots are still incredibly linear.

 

That's silly. Of course WoW presents its writing. Every single quest you have is tied down to an overaching plot, just like in SWTOR. The only difference is that it isn't voice acted.

 

As I said in my first post, I know of all the other problems the game has, and this thread isn't about them. I can indeed criticize the personal stories because most of them are badly written. And yes, I know that people have said previously that writing 8 really good stories is a lot of work, and I reiterate: That's their job. If you're going to make a plot driven mmo and the plot is meh at best, then why bother?

 

I played the JK story, and the problem is that he's a completely random character picking up what Revan failed to do 300 years later. She/He has nothing to do with any of the original characters involved, so he's tacked on. He should have had his own story. As stated before, it's like Commander Shepard randomly dying in Mass Effect and some random guy pick up his gun and continue like nothing happened.

 

If it was a sequel in spirit it shouldn't include Revan, or have what is probably the closest in terms to a kotor 3 so far tacked onto a random character. It's sloppy writing.

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Hey op just wondering but have u read the new Revan novel because that explains 1. why he is here and the way he is and 2. the ending is pretty much the premise of the JK story and why it plays out like that. so if you haven't read it plz go pick up a copy Thank You. :cool:
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Hey op just wondering but have u read the new Revan novel because that explains 1. why he is here and the way he is and 2. the ending is pretty much the premise of the JK story and why it plays out like that. so if you haven't read it plz go pick up a copy Thank You. :cool:

 

Actually OP hates the novel and the way they put Revan's story in TOR. He wants to keep Revan to himself. he would never make the choices what Drew's Revan did. Probably he is the kind of person who might hate Peter Jackson's middle earth movies claiming they are nothing about the books as his imagination builds sth. else.

 

No offense about what he says tho, i personally am can be very conservative about specific issues. :)

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Actually OP hates the novel and the way they put Revan's story in TOR. He wants to keep Revan to himself. he would never make the choices what Drew's Revan did. Probably he is the kind of person who might hate Peter Jackson's middle earth movies claiming they are nothing about the books as his imagination builds sth. else.

 

No offense about what he says tho, i personally am can be very conservative about specific issues. :)

 

Doesn't read that way to me. Reads more like he's noticed the fact that they've copied Anakin's story in parts, stolen from other areas of the already expansive EU and basically destroyed what the character stood for in the original games.

 

The writing for Revan in this game was quite painful. The very idea that they kept him around for this game does more to destroy his backstory than anything else could. They could of quite easily of left him out of this game and made it apparent that he failed in his mission. They could of put heavy references to him and explained how he fell. The book itself is an awful way to elaborate his character.

 

Much like the ending to ME3 and the way that Shep basically becomes a drone through not questioning anything the same is repeated here.

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Hi, I disagree respectfully.

 

The Sith Warrior, Jedi Knight, and Smuggler storylines are the only ones I've completed so far and I've enjoyed them a lot because of their different perspectives. First of all I'd like to say that I'd rather not have a personal story "on the side" because if it is "on the side" away from your supposed "main plot" story, you and your character will not be able to interconnect and the game won't be as fun until you can relate to the character you are manipulating. I grew very fond of my Sith Warrior because of the story, in my opinion it's the best so far, and I can agree that it might have not directly tied in with the war plot but in a way,

if Baras had assumed the Voice of the Emperor position, then there would have been MORE infighting within the Empire until it eventually crumbled quicker and the game would be a tad bit pointless. However, thanks to the Sith Warrior, the Empire lives a few more days.

 

The Jedi Knight storyline, I think so far, has the most connection to your "main plot." Think about it, throughout act I you are trying to disable war machines/weapons that might destroy a planet like Tatooine, which is the one I remember more clearly, the weapon is designed to destroy Tatooine. Now, have you asked yourself, what would have happened if the Jedi Knight hadn't disabled it and the rest? The Empire would be at a great advantage and the Republic would be lost. In the end of act III the Jedi Knight faces off with the Voice of the Emperor, who was planning to destroy the galaxy. This is a very simple and obvious thing: If the Jedi Knight hadn't killed the Voice and incapacitated the Emperor, then the galaxy would have been destroyed and there would have been absolutely nothing to conquer or liberate. Nothing to corrupt or redeem. So, the Jedi Knight basically saved the galaxy so that there would be life and, in an involuntary way, saved the Empire along with the Republic. Without him/her there wouldn't be a story, see?

 

The Smuggler killed the Void Wolf, an IMPERIAL moff and admiral :D

 

 

My opinion is this, I think that you might feel unconnected to actual main plot story because sometimes there is no connection. But what can we expect, Bioware can't always be giving multiple crazy go murder an underground Republic base type missions because it would be pointless and stupid because it wouldn't go with your main plot or theirs. What I believe is that Bioware wants to start off all classes with their own deal so that they as people can be prepared for something bigger and more meaningful to the entire galaxy. Let's be honest, Luke Skywalker wasn't ready to fight Vader in episode 4, was he? But he was in episode 6. Same here, it's all about preparation.

 

Thanks for reading my ramble :D

Edited by Joluka
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Hi, I disagree respectfully.

 

I have no rebuttal for the moment, but, please: Spoiler tags. Highlight the text and use the weird blobby icon at the far right of the lower formatting bar, or type (without the periods) [.SPOILER] before and [./SPOILER] after your spoiler text.

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