What I will say is this: while the pace of everything has been far from satisfactory, record game itself hasn't seen this much positive improvement ever since Keith Kannig took over.

 

Why Onslaught was entirely too brief, the quality was through the roof in terms of the story. In fact going back to Ossus, you saw internally a rejection of the way KOTFE crapped all over the original story lines leading up to it, and now is respecting the vanilla game's stories, while still maintaining the production value that was significantly improved within Kotfe.

[...]

While nothing was ever mentioned publicly, it does feel like the backlash had a significant impact as Keith was in charge at that time, and since then, the creative lead, Charles Boyd, despite having tried to publicly justify his screwing with vanilla storyline in kotfe on the forums and catching massive hell for it, has since being extremely deferential to it and seems to have learned that players who were attached to the stories want to continue to feel that connective tissue, and that you can't simply jettison old stories because you think a new idea is cool. If I am being honest, it's forced Charles to elevate his writing game and the story has been better as a result.

Just responding to sections about Onslaught writing to provide different take.

Writing in Onslaught is not through the roof, on the contrary. Its the worst written and most underwritten at the same time expansion yet. While Ossus/Onslaught did slightly improve on ackowledging class-stories in comparsion to KOTFEET and Saboteour path is nice addition, everything else has been absymal. It's the shortest, most bland, banal, unambitious and low effort expansion/update story in the game yet. It basically has no plot, little-to-none interesting new characters, it fails to utilize prime returning character (Malgus) in any fresh and interesting way, it brings no change to the state-of-the-galaxy despite an illusion of a choice that should actually acomplish that (Corelia). Ossus/Onslaught lacks any mystery, intrigue, fresh ideas, thought-provoking concepts, unexpected twists and/or turn of events, surprises etc. It rehashes Imp vs Rep war from vanilla Corellia/Ilum in the most unimaginative way possible. It seems that KOTFEET criticism has tought Charles Boyd one thing - as long as some class-flavoured dialogue is in many players will be plactated no matter how bad the rest of the story & writing is and that people enjoy boring remakes of same old same old (until it actually turns out they don't anymore and never did as it happened with Sequel Trilogy).

So yeah. In the next expansion I would prefer KOTFEET level of grand storytelling with many fresh ideas & concepts with added greater respect to class-story-origins from Onslaught.

I left (as did my guild) after the Battle of Ilum debacle. We were on Jung Ma (an RP-PvP server) and it was simply unplayable. Apparently this was due to the engine so I guess it didn't help.

More importantly...

I read a quote from one of the original developers a couple years ago saying that they grossly underestimated how quickly people would chew through content. Simply put, people ran out of things to do. Naturally, they left. Frankly, it's not that different now hence the cyclical nature of number of players.

As for the identity crisis, I thought the original was great but it was naive to think that model was sustainable from a financial standpoint.

Final point, somewhat related. I have always found it specious that some of the sour grapes original devs say they were pressured to make the game too much like WoW. If they wanted to turn the game into a bunch of solo class stories and have a central social hub where players congregated to debate whether Han or Greedo shot first - so be it. But to think that would have sustained subscriptions is absurd.

Bottom line: There really is no mystery here. They didn't produce enough content that encouraged long-term subscriptions. Other games struggle with putting out content fast enough too (nature of the beast) but it is clear the original team had nothing (or very little) in the pipeline after initial launch.

Dasty

There is a lot of truth in what you have stated here ... "history 101" though there are tons of things that could be added (both VERY bad ... and VERY good).

There have been significant changes for the better throughout the history of the game.

That is without question.

There is a lot of truth to this.

 

The long and short of it is that BioWare, if you believe the initial reports that came out last year, never really wanted to make an MMO in the first place. What they did with Kotfe and Kotet was what they always wanted to do, which is why it feels so cinematic and single player. then they wanted multiplayer hubs for people to congregate and talk but the story itself would have been single player.

 

EA had insisted on them turning it into an MMO, can because bioware's heart was never truly in it, they have themselves never wanted to dedicate the resources required to supporting a true MMO and instead internally, and now publicly adopted a platform of them not caring if people stopped subscribing and leave, and then come back when they have content.

 

whether you believe any of the other reports, that last line is something that is finally been publicly stated and is on the record for BioWare. You'll have to go digging through articles last year because I'm not about to dig it up for you given that I have a life myself but I do remember reading it last year when stuff started coming out about the state of the MMO.

 

If you want the full history, the initial group wanted to continue things the way vanilla was going but had a lot of headwinds because of the prejudices and biases within BioWare. He eventually stepped in and cleaned house. What followed was executive producers who are more bean-counters than actual creative directors and that caused the product to suffer. You also saw the complete abandonment of class story. turns out that for the longest time we all blamed EA but this was in fact an internal BioWare move because they never wanted to make MMOs in the first place.

 

What I will say is this: while the pace of everything has been far from satisfactory, record game itself hasn't seen this much positive improvement ever since Keith Kannig took over.

 

Why Onslaught was entirely too brief, the quality was through the roof in terms of the story. In fact going back to Ossus, you saw internally a rejection of the way KOTFE crapped all over the original story lines leading up to it, and now is respecting the vanilla game's stories, while still maintaining the production value that was significantly improved within Kotfe.

 

On top of that, the game is now on steam which is bringing in a lot more players. These are moves that previous BioWare administration's would never have done. In fact, they have publicly "doubled down on stupid" in the past when dealing with screwing with the storylines.

 

While nothing was ever mentioned publicly, it does feel like the backlash had a significant impact as Keith was in charge at that time, and since then, the creative lead, Charles Boyd, despite having tried to publicly justify his screwing with vanilla storyline in kotfe on the forums and catching massive hell for it, has since being extremely deferential to it and seems to have learned that players who were attached to the stories want to continue to feel that connective tissue, and that you can't simply jettison old stories because you think a new idea is cool. If I am being honest, it's forced Charles to elevate his writing game and the story has been better as a result.

 

The point I'm trying to make is that if I take a step back, it does look like BioWare is trying to position itself in a spot to bring in enough of revenue or whatever it is they need to grow the game.

 

The argument could be made that prior to Keith, there just was a lot wrong with BioWare, functionally, philosophically, and historically.

 

Under Keith, things seem to be getting sorted out finally. However the pace is glacially slow. That though could also deed because as I said, historically there has been so much wrong. And a lot of bad philosophy driving it. It's like trying to turn around a massive cruise ship 180 degrees. It's just going to take time and you can't stop delivering content in order to do it. I do think this steam thing is major. I do think it's important that EA has recently and multiple times talked about renewing its commitments not just to Star Wars but to this game.

 

I think a lot will depend on what does steam numbers look like.

 

But at the core it will always be one thing and one thing only that keeps this from being a AAA MMO.

 

That is BioWare's own philosophy that they do not care if people leave and come back later when there is content.

 

that has been a consistent BioWare philosophy from the very beginning and as I said, I heard it publicly reiterated last year, not from Keith, but I think it was James Olson? Not 100% sure so don't quote me on that. But whoever said it was high enough to set policy. and unfortunately that policy is absolutely horrible for MMO player retention.

 

Until BioWare focuses on player retention, the cinema will never be what it was meant to be. otherwise they would have gone forward with continuing class stories and there would be a huttball league as early on in the game these were the top two demands from the player base and both got soundly ignored.

 

Anyway history lesson is over.

And yet this is pretty much what has contributed to the "confidence" level right now.

To OP ... both yes ... and no !

 

*** Yes the engine needs updated

*** Yes the original concept of stories for each class was a fantastic idea .. and it worked.

*** Yes .. so much of we have has been well done.

 

BUT ... of late what has happened has also severely impeded that growth.

 

*** the "bricking" or turning companions effectively into a block of wood ( AKA reducing interactions with said companions to a virtual state of non existence). Like it or not ... the companions in this game has been a foundational part of the game. The current state of the use of and interaction with (or total lack thereof ) has began to take it's toll. Consumer confidence in this area is at a significant low right now.

 

*** extremely short stories in recent updates. Regardless of why ... the simple fact is that when we DO get updates they are not "true" expansions. Again .. this is gradually undermining the really truly great work being done. Like it or not the game is needing some serious infusion of extended content in this area. The lack of it is casting doubt as to the commitment of those who ARE in control to the future of the game.

 

*** BUGS !!! YIKES !!! this is really hurting things right now.

 

I'm quite certain that many will think at this time the old man is just in a bad mood. I beg to differ.

 

I am still committed to continuing to play this game. But it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that my demeanor right now should be misread and thereby ignored.

 

Many of us are watching. Perhaps more carefully than most might give us credit for.

 

Conclusion:

This game still has the potential of being one of the best out there for years to come. How that is handled or utilized... that's not up to me or the players who post on this forum. That is out of my hands.

 

EDIT: Please note... these comments are not to be interpreted as to suggest that the game is dead or dying. But as stated ... these items as listed have drawn a lot of negative feed back and has definitely had a negative impact on the future / confidence of the game and it's future.

*** There is no question of the capabilities of those working on the game.

*** There is no question that there are endless possibilities for this game in the future.

*** There are several things that many of us are eagerly awaiting to see how things unfold in the next few months.

I know that EA specializes in the "ONE AND DONE" format for most of its games that are developed / sold ... and that are scheduled.

MMO's do take a huge amount of commitment in time , money and support AFTER the game is released.

It is this obvious conflict in philosophical approach to a business model that also seems to affect the resources that BW has to complete each section of the game.

Me ... personally .. I'm hoping that those who are at the top of the food chain in both organizations can come to an appropriate decision which will recognize the excellent potential of the game and it's future in a positive fashion thereby making the most of the opportunity for everyone. It's a win-win for all of us.

The game's about as successful as most other still-operating MMOs that came out around the same time.

GW2 came out around the same time and is still a top mmo, estimated to have 600k active players, at least double that of swtor.

Note that Swtor have once had 1.7mil subscriptions (not active players) a few months after launch.

So Star Wars + Bioware + EA Marketing had no problem capturing enough players to be the #2 mmo. Retention in the problem.

It was officially the fastest growing mmo, and unofficially the fastest shrinking mmo not long after.

ESO is built on the hero engine and the performance / graphics is night and day. No, the game engine would be quite capable of handling a massive multiplayer game(as we see in ESO), the issues we see in swtor was imo because the incompetence of developers who was working on it.

No, ESO is not built on Hero Engine. They used it for prototyping, but ends up deciding to built an in-house engine:

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

Hero Engine is pretty unusual, to say the least. It is quite a feat to make nameplates that kills performance and leave it that way for nine years. Its limitations has been beaten to death on this forum so I won't repeat them.

I left (as did my guild) after the Battle of Ilum debacle. We were on Jung Ma (an RP-PvP server) and it was simply unplayable. Apparently this was due to the engine so I guess it didn't help.

 

More importantly...

 

I read a quote from one of the original developers a couple years ago saying that they grossly underestimated how quickly people would chew through content. Simply put, people ran out of things to do. Naturally, they left. Frankly, it's not that different now hence the cyclical nature of number of players.

 

As for the identity crisis, I thought the original was great but it was naive to think that model was sustainable from a financial standpoint.

 

Final point, somewhat related. I have always found it specious that some of the sour grapes original devs say they were pressured to make the game too much like WoW. If they wanted to turn the game into a bunch of solo class stories and have a central social hub where players congregated to debate whether Han or Greedo shot first - so be it. But to think that would have sustained subscriptions is absurd.

 

Bottom line: There really is no mystery here. They didn't produce enough content that encouraged long-term subscriptions. Other games struggle with putting out content fast enough too (nature of the beast) but it is clear the original team had nothing (or very little) in the pipeline after initial launch.

 

Dasty

I went back this AM and re-read your posts.

There is a great deal of truth to all of this. Additionally I also agree that the original writing styles and intent of the game is different than where it is now.

Many hate KotFE / ET simply because it was something other than "kill the Jedi". And many still to this day have not forgiven the development team for those expansions. Yet the simple fact is that the main characters were better developed with better stories than JUS or Onslaught either one. Perhaps the on going debate over KotFE / ET is a debate better suited for another time in a separate thread.

The quality of the art work and other related aspects of the game have improved tremendously.

To review and comment to the "bottom line" you mentioned ... IMO this is a reflection of EA's overall business model in game development .. "One and done". Meaning .. the sort of games (such as the assortment of sports games that they have released) where little (if any) additional support and updates are necessary AFTER the game has been released. Let's face it ... they are VERY GOOD and making those kinds of games. Their portfolio backs this up. AND there is nothing wrong with being able to do this.

MMO's are totally different both in development and long term commitment. The fact that the game has lasted nearly 10 years should reflect a different image than what most of us see right now. Hence my own perspective in what I've posted in this thread. Right now there is a dark shadow that is being cast over the game affecting how many perceive what has been done. That darkness has not overtaken the game ... but has cast a series of questions in the back of the minds of many as to what level of both loyalty and resolve to provide a quality game for a continued future.

All of which now resides squarely in the hands of the current team.

I think Bioware themselves are one of the reasons why this game has limited success. Their decision making process has been staggering over the years, changing things that didn't need changing, ignoring things that did and that is essentially the history of this game.

Yeah this too. I agree with DarthMaulUK, again.

The quality of the art work and other related aspects of the game have improved tremendously.

In the expansions and new (read: difficult) flashpoints, yes. Great improvements.

The starter planets and the starting NPCs for the 30k concurrent Steam players who check out this game?

Not so much.

The game's about as successful as most other still-operating MMOs that came out around the same time.

Probably more so, so many are no longer going that started around that time.

To the OP, well everyone will have a different definition of success. A new engine won't suit everyone. I very much doubt my desktop with its outdated graphics card would be able to play.

The funny thing is, with all the bashing the consular storyline gets, you now go into it expecting it to be terrible and will probably be genuinely surprised by its quality. It was the last storyline I started (I think trooper was the last one I finished) and I really enjoyed it. I usually put it in the middle of the pack with my personal picks, which start with inquisitor followed by agent.

Consular is my favorite class out of all, closely followed by Inquisitor. Yes, there are a few things I would have changed in the consular story but that's a different topic. However, I have to admit I am not keen on many of the companions and really only care for just one. I like the trooper's abilities but the story not so much. I know many love the agent storyline but that was my least faverate out of all.

Peoples notion of success is odd... SWTOR is still a money maker for EA as was revealed in the last BOD meeting.

I do think they could update the graphics with the engine they have...because you can do some amazing things with SWTOR just by using reshade. My pet peeves have always been the terrible space game the odd graphic bugs and the hateful community that every Star Wars game is plagued with. Not to mention the even more odd music choices (play SWTOR with TPM sound track in the back ground it's night and day,) and the needlessly convoluted mechanics of damn near everything.

The game will keep on chugging along though

In the expansions and new (read: difficult) flashpoints, yes. Great improvements.

 

The starter planets and the starting NPCs for the 30k concurrent Steam players who check out this game?

Not so much.

Agreed:

IMO ... that is the original content / 3-D modeling / art / graphics which is still in it's original released form.

Compare that to ... oh ... say Onderon .. the entire planet / buildings / jungles and (or) the newer armor and (or) the lighting affects that have been updated.

IMO .. this is a clear cut indication that at least certain aspects of the game can be and HAVE BEEN improved a great deal.

Remembering the rest of the game: stories ( including additional character development that "flesh out" a good story) / companion options (including more frequent bit parts and customization options) / revamping PvP / additional strong holds / two new classes (one each side ) . These are just a few things that really need serious consideration.

IMO ... too much emphasis has been placed on who did what ... and when. The current team is a s capable as any group out there.

I've often try to imagine of the internal politics of the matter were laid aside and a directive given to:

*** clean up the bugs as many as possible. A genuine had core effort in this area.

*** revisit the positive things that grew the game the most (all of them) and flesh out the top 10 BEST. This covers a LOT of material here ... including companions / strong holds / class stories / art work ... and tons of stuff. I just tried to simplify this category. (sorry)

*** add two new classes ( one each side) with a fun and exciting story to introduce and bring them into the current story of the game.

*** Updated game engine

Some see this as pipe dream... I see it as the next serious step to not only growing the game ... but a genuine attempt to let this game utilize it fullest potential.

There are always possibilities.

Some .. just dreams and that's all they will amount to!

Others ... use their imaginations ... then act and do something about it !!

Partially. Coming from WoW I am shocked how clunky combat is - not the style, or abilities, but just actual animation timings, responsiveness of user input. It is beyond horrible. Just barely playable. Just 10 minutes ago on my sorc hit overload and it took extra second or two to activate, enough time that npc who was supposed to fly off the platform got too close to me and I had to fight it. Not to mention when more players are around. Or when UI animations get completely out of sync with the combat ...

Next are the numerous bugs in the game. Bugs that have been around since the beginning, for YEARS. Why just today I was giving out guild ship keys (whole guild keys is a mess), but if you close a window on page X, and then open again, it will show Page X, but content is actually page X-1, and only way around is go to page X-1, close window and open it again. ARGH. Or how about whispering someone with weird characters in their name, or forming ops group while someone is on guild ship.

Then for me personally - the direction game has taken. All these dumb downs, simplifications, shared companions (alliance). I liked old style levelling - yes it was hard and time consuming, but at the end it was rewarding, an achievement. Now it is just "Meh". Or how about companion gearing, unique stats for each class, having to go hunt down datacrons and matrix shards - which actually mattered.

Personally I think I would resub in a heart beat to classic swtor - maybe 2.10, just before they got rid of talent trees and started pruning the game of various niches.

To be honest, the game technically is not build on a stable or good foundation. We all enjoy SWTOR in spite of its flaws and a lot of us take regular breaks because content has been lacking from the start.

I think people need to understand that whatever the state of the game is, it's essentially as good as it's going to get. If you can deal with it then you stay, if you can't you're probably better off leaving.

All in all the game has done better than expected. From the financial reports of NcSoft at the time that EA mentioned that SWTOR pulled in over 1 billion dollars over its lifetime, the comparison was easily made and I could see that SWTOR is doing quite a bit better than GW2 financially. So there's that.

At the same time the core set up of the game is really good but they couldn't maintain it nor properly implement it the first time around. So we stay for the love of what's good about it and Star Wars but we do need to forgive a lot. The willingness of many of us to do so, is saying something, but BioWare have been spending that goodwill at an increased rate. In the end BioWare took their fans for granted and has been doing so for years. That really needs to stop.

Just responding to sections about Onslaught writing to provide different take.

 

Writing in Onslaught is not through the roof, on the contrary. Its the worst written and most underwritten at the same time expansion yet. While Ossus/Onslaught did slightly improve on ackowledging class-stories in comparsion to KOTFEET and Saboteour path is nice addition, everything else has been absymal. It's the shortest, most bland, banal, unambitious and low effort expansion/update story in the game yet. It basically has no plot, little-to-none interesting new characters, it fails to utilize prime returning character (Malgus) in any fresh and interesting way, it brings no change to the state-of-the-galaxy despite an illusion of a choice that should actually acomplish that (Corelia). Ossus/Onslaught lacks any mystery, intrigue, fresh ideas, thought-provoking concepts, unexpected twists and/or turn of events, surprises etc. It rehashes Imp vs Rep war from vanilla Corellia/Ilum in the most unimaginative way possible. It seems that KOTFEET criticism has tought Charles Boyd one thing - as long as some class-flavoured dialogue is in many players will be plactated no matter how bad the rest of the story & writing is and that people enjoy boring remakes of same old same old (until it actually turns out they don't anymore and never did as it happened with Sequel Trilogy).

 

So yeah. In the next expansion I would prefer KOTFEET level of grand storytelling with many fresh ideas & concepts with added greater respect to class-story-origins from Onslaught.

I would be curious to know if you were one of the people who really enjoyed the story in KotFE, despite the fact it crapped all over the vanilla story lines leading up to it.

That's not a criticism of you. But what I have found is that people who enjoyed that storyline tend to have a lower bar in terms of story continuity and cohesion. And the people who really enjoyed it ended up being some of the more vocal critics of Ossus and onslaught.

Conversely many of us who praise those expansions have major bones to pick with KotFE, particularly because it seems to be written only for force sensitive characters and ignores and retcons much of what happened in the previous vanilla storyline. Although I will tell you that you would be hard-pressed to find any of us who would tell you they weren't a fan of the upped production quality.

My point is, story like comedy is subjective. two people can go see the same movie and one will hate it in the other will love it.

I'm curious why you hate the post kotfe stories, and if you were a major fan of kotfe.

After my last post I got to thinking about what all has transpired in the last couple years and I looked back into the old Treasure chest of development updates and just last year they announced a update to the placeable objects or DYN's as well as the Preview windows....this would be a logical first step to upgrade of the engine, also Idea Fabrik is in the middle of the 7th engine update which started last year, it seems as if the developer is moving the engine into a 64 bit platform, but it will probably happen with the 8th or 9th update.

Also remember the Hero Engine is written in c# the same platform as the new Unreal engine, that means that the devs can tear it down and rebuild it. And for those who are saying that a engine rebuild would be too costly and complicated...

EvE Online

Ultima Online

DC Universe Online

FFXIV

Would like to have a word with you.

Don't give up hope folks...the entire IP as well as Bioware is going through major growing pains.

After my last post I got to thinking about what all has transpired in the last couple years and I looked back into the old Treasure chest of development updates and just last year they announced a update to the placeable objects or DYN's as well as the Preview windows....this would be a logical first step to upgrade of the engine, also Idea Fabrik is in the middle of the 7th engine update which started last year, it seems as if the developer is moving the engine into a 64 bit platform, but it will probably happen with the 8th or 9th update.

 

Also remember the Hero Engine is written in c# the same platform as the new Unreal engine, that means that the devs can tear it down and rebuild it. And for those who are saying that a engine rebuild would be too costly and complicated...

 

EvE Online

Ultima Online

DC Universe Online

FFXIV

 

Would like to have a word with you.

 

Don't give up hope folks...the entire IP as well as Bioware is going through major growing pains.

Well aside from the obvious that most of those games (except Utlma Online) do not belong to EA and to companies that tend to be dedicated to their titles and actually giving a crap about them....BioWare didn't use the Hero engine but "completed" an unfinished version of the Hero engine. I'm betting that just because of that it's going to take more than normal to overhaul the engine. And I'm not sure I want BioWare to do an overhaul with this engine because of BioWare and coding.

Well aside from the obvious that most of those games (except Utlma Online) do not belong to EA and to companies that tend to be dedicated to their titles and actually giving a crap about them....BioWare didn't use the Hero engine but "completed" an unfinished version of the Hero engine. I'm betting that just because of that it's going to take more than normal to overhaul the engine. And I'm not sure I want BioWare to do an overhaul with this engine because of BioWare and coding.

Your'e right they did used a Beta version of the engine, but they also adopted all the updates that Hero has had so far, and honestly it wouldn't take a overhaul, texture improvements, animation and effects refinements would go a long way, as for performance, quite a bit can be done with C# scripting using super and socket awaitable scripting on the backend.

This is basically what ESO is currently doing and it's much more improved than before.

[quote=Jett-Rinn;9871269}, but they also adopted all the updates that Hero has had so far,

.

Not sure I've ever seen this, but do you have proof?

I would be curious to know if you were one of the people who really enjoyed the story in KotFE, despite the fact it crapped all over the vanilla story lines leading up to it.

 

That's not a criticism of you. But what I have found is that people who enjoyed that storyline tend to have a lower bar in terms of story continuity and cohesion. And the people who really enjoyed it ended up being some of the more vocal critics of Ossus and onslaught.

 

Conversely many of us who praise those expansions have major bones to pick with KotFE, particularly because it seems to be written only for force sensitive characters and ignores and retcons much of what happened in the previous vanilla storyline. Although I will tell you that you would be hard-pressed to find any of us who would tell you they weren't a fan of the upped production quality.

 

My point is, story like comedy is subjective. two people can go see the same movie and one will hate it in the other will love it.

 

I'm curious why you hate the post kotfe stories, and if you were a major fan of kotfe.

Well i did enjoy a lot both expansions made ...

The Third Party was an refreshing wellcome (not only the empire and the republic), and it was a interesting story arc (drama/tragedy).

I only play with force characters, so i believe the story was tailored to that particular class (jedi and sith).

It was a much cinematic experience and to me was trully engaging.

I would pay for another big expansion like that... A good story (even with chapters)...

Best Regards,

Well i did enjoy a lot both expansions made ...

The Third Party was an refreshing wellcome (not only the empire and the republic), and it was a interesting story arc (drama/tragedy).

 

I only play with force characters, so i believe the story was tailored to that particular class (jedi and sith).

 

It was a much cinematic experience and to me was trully engaging.

I would pay for another big expansion like that... A good story (even with chapters)...

 

Best Regards,

I too agree that KotFE / ET were refreshing breaks from the same old story (so to speak) ... That said IMO perhaps it was carried out a bit TOO long. This was amplified with the longer droughts of fresh material. From a "story stand point" the chapters were better developed than JUS or Onslaught either one. It seems as though the content pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. In BOTH cases the over all conclusion for some of us is that what is really needed is somewhere between the two styles of presentation.

*** Better developed stories with MORE content ... on a more frequent basis. Copy and paste of the same old line of the Sith and the Jedi repeatedly gets old after a while. (Disney found this out with the first two instalments of their series. And there is yet some debate of the last one: although I do admit that the first one was just so-so and I did like the last one. ( Frankly the second story of their 3 some was a total disaster .. the worst of just about ANY SW movie ever released.)

*** Back on topic ... KotFE / ET seriously hurt the game ... but not due to the stories themselves: Eliminating all of the class stories, ALL of the companions at once (without any warning) .. Along with what can only be seen as one of the longest content droughts in the history of the game (IMO) did seriously hurt matters.

*** Overall I do believe that examples such as the planet Onderon (from an artistic stand point) along with an improvement in SOME of the stories has been a step in the right direction.

As I've said before: It's not impossible for the team to take what they have now and make this game something really spectacular.

A lot of work: without question.

There are always possibilities.

KotFE / ET seriously hurt the game ... but not due to the stories themselves: Eliminating all of the class stories, ALL of the companions at once (without any warning) .. Along with what can only be seen as one of the longest content droughts in the history of the game (IMO) did seriously hurt matters.

1) KOTFEET was hardly the first expansion(s) which eliminated class stories.

2) There are actually at least two messages warning you that your crew of companions is going to radically change, messages that you have to click on to confirm. So, its patently false what you are claiming about comps. In fact, considering that "I want a kill option for so-and-so" is a thread topic at least as popular as "I want to marry so-and-so," I'd say abrupt changes to the companion roster are actually much better appreciated than you think.

3) "Content drought" is of course a matter of opinion. For a story player, there was plenty to do. For a casual ops player like I was, with my guild, it represented the first time I could actually get close to BiS, and on multiple characters to boot. PvPers had to wait a while before OPG came out and NiM raiders didn't have a lot for years ... they definitely suffered, if they didn't want to use the economic opportunity of sales runs.

It also represented a refresh of the planetary heroics ... Conquest might have taken you there, occasionally, but it was only for the one or two planets that were the focus of conquest, and there was nothing useful from them except datacron decorations and the conquest points. The majority of players seemed to be very excited when the bug came out during 5.x boosting the command xp from the daily areas ... and some people seem excited even now when Chris Schmidt talked on the dev stream about a refresh of older content. I'm not saying everyone loves going back to find the droid motivator or data spike on Balmorra. I just find it amusing to see people praise the notion of "refreshing world missions" in the dev stream but bash the refresh of planetary heroics in KOTFE.

Bottom line, if you:

(*) were a NiM raider

(*) exclusive PvPer

(*) just plain disliked the KOTFE story

then you probably hated KOTFEET and maybe it hurt the game irrevocably for you. Otherwise I'm not too sure. Sure, people like Dulfy and Hayete and other people who championed guides are gone, but others have stepped up and filled the void. Vulkk and XamXam have as many guides as Dulfy ever did. I haven't seen anyone produce HM ops guides as detailed as Hayete and Phalanx Squadron's were, but hopefully they will come some day, given that they never finished the previous ones and there are two new ops (from when Hayete left) to catalogue. The last time I saw Hayete stream he was working on a perfect run of Fallen Order, so I wouldn't say raiding is a prime concern for him at the moment. Admittedly I was worried for the future of the game when Dulfy left, but that seems to be a non-issue at this point. It concerned me that Chuck and Brian never returned with the Bad Feeling Podcast, but there are other content creators who have continued on. I should note that Hayete, Dulfy, and BadFeeling podcast all left long after KOTET was released, so I imagine there are lots of factors other than KOTFEET that "seriously hurt the game" for those individuals.

I'm old enough to remember when Makeb was "destroying the game." Even as much as I dislike, for example, what was done to crafting in 6.0, I'm hard pressed to say it "seriously hurt the game" for me. It hurt crafting, for sure, but that's only one aspect of the game. I certainly have more fun running my DvL sniper through KOTFEET than I do running Onderon and Mek Sha dailies for the umpteenth time hoping to get another piece of Descent of the Fearless.

KOTFEET was a helluva lot better than Rise of Skywalker.

Your'e right they did used a Beta version of the engine, but they also adopted all the updates that Hero has had so far, and honestly it wouldn't take a overhaul, texture improvements, animation and effects refinements would go a long way, as for performance, quite a bit can be done with C# scripting using super and socket awaitable scripting on the backend.

 

This is basically what ESO is currently doing and it's much more improved than before.

Well, if it can be done, let it be done I guess...I just expect BioWare to somehow screw it up but hey, let's give em a second, well third, erm fourth, or fifth chance? Well you get my point.

Well, if it can be done, let it be done I guess...I just expect BioWare to somehow screw it up but hey, let's give em a second, well third, erm fourth, or fifth chance? Well you get my point.

Welll we have no choice... EA have the rights for the SW games... So what can we do...

In theory this game would be in great hands... Bioware should be a master in RPG Story Telling...

But what we see its diferent from what we expect...

Anyway... i dind´t like the Rise of the Hutt Cartel Expansion... And it was the first taste of the "one story fits all" style moving forward...

but in a way i did like the Shadow of Revan Expansion... That leads us to the best narrative stories to me at this moment The Valkorion Familly story (Drama/Tragedy).

It was actually clever what it was done to us as a character (losing and being locked away for 5 years in carbonite).

It explained the moving forward on the happenings of the galaxy, the runaway of our companions, and the sacrifice of other companions to save us from the Carbonite (yes im talking to you Lana).

To me Lana has become the most important Companion of all... It has been with us for many years now... and for the better or worse, she earned a place at our side and in our heart if you are up to the romance.

Nothing better then, that the future expansions, do some tragedy to our character, to drive his motivations for revenge...

Some sacrifice or death in his life... Maybe Lana dies or Theron Shan dies to save his mother... Who knows... There is so many alleys that can be done ... My imagination runs wild with the possibilites...

But moving back to the topic... The engine is a great part of the game... And its getting so old by now...

It really needs a good workout, and many features must be updated.... Multicore is one of them, better rendering pipeline, more advanced features, higher resolution textures for both models and world.

And if possible higher poligon count for both the models and the world.

Animations also need improvement, and that must be top priority for ingame cutscenes where the player is "Head On" with the Models...

And If possible upgrade the skymaps too...

The Rest to me is okey... Music is fine, background is ok too, sound effects also okey.

UI is okey also, its the way the game is and i don´t want it to change... i like this kind of button pressing actions...

So yeah... Points to improve the game:

IMPROVE ASAP:

- Update the Game Engine

- Optimize it for Multi-Core Systems

- Update Models, World Poligon Count (with the improved engine)

- Update World and Model Textures

- Update and improve Game Animations

- After Onlsaught, Update World Maps to reflect the happenings in the Galaxy

- Correct the Visual Bugs, and maps bugs (This should be also Top Priority)

Optional:

- Cut the Losses are remove Starfighter part from the game (make the game smaller)

- Remove Zones and Optional parts that are dead or deserted

- Remove or Add Option to remove the Annoying Alliance Alerts from the companions.

Next TO DO:

- Improve Game StoryTelling with Better Expansions (even if they are paid)

- Improve the Cadence of Content (even if they are paid)

- Mantain the Focus on a more tight story for the characters (classes), stories that mean something to the game world

- Improve the interaction with the Companions, give them story arcs, more ingame cutscenes, more romance

Make all of this top priority Developers...

The future can be amazing for this Game... The Story elements can make this a great and epic game...

With My Very Best Regards,

LPC

1) KOTFEET was hardly the first expansion(s) which eliminated class stories.

 

2) There are actually at least two messages warning you that your crew of companions is going to radically change, messages that you have to click on to confirm. So, its patently false what you are claiming about comps. In fact, considering that "I want a kill option for so-and-so" is a thread topic at least as popular as "I want to marry so-and-so," I'd say abrupt changes to the companion roster are actually much better appreciated than you think.

 

3) "Content drought" is of course a matter of opinion. For a story player, there was plenty to do. For a casual ops player like I was, with my guild, it represented the first time I could actually get close to BiS, and on multiple characters to boot. PvPers had to wait a while before OPG came out and NiM raiders didn't have a lot for years ... they definitely suffered, if they didn't want to use the economic opportunity of sales runs.

It also represented a refresh of the planetary heroics ... Conquest might have taken you there, occasionally, but it was only for the one or two planets that were the focus of conquest, and there was nothing useful from them except datacron decorations and the conquest points. The majority of players seemed to be very excited when the bug came out during 5.x boosting the command xp from the daily areas ... and some people seem excited even now when Chris Schmidt talked on the dev stream about a refresh of older content. I'm not saying everyone loves going back to find the droid motivator or data spike on Balmorra. I just find it amusing to see people praise the notion of "refreshing world missions" in the dev stream but bash the refresh of planetary heroics in KOTFE.

 

Bottom line, if you:

(*) were a NiM raider

(*) exclusive PvPer

(*) just plain disliked the KOTFE story

then you probably hated KOTFEET and maybe it hurt the game irrevocably for you. Otherwise I'm not too sure. Sure, people like Dulfy and Hayete and other people who championed guides are gone, but others have stepped up and filled the void. Vulkk and XamXam have as many guides as Dulfy ever did. I haven't seen anyone produce HM ops guides as detailed as Hayete and Phalanx Squadron's were, but hopefully they will come some day, given that they never finished the previous ones and there are two new ops (from when Hayete left) to catalogue. The last time I saw Hayete stream he was working on a perfect run of Fallen Order, so I wouldn't say raiding is a prime concern for him at the moment. Admittedly I was worried for the future of the game when Dulfy left, but that seems to be a non-issue at this point. It concerned me that Chuck and Brian never returned with the Bad Feeling Podcast, but there are other content creators who have continued on. I should note that Hayete, Dulfy, and BadFeeling podcast all left long after KOTET was released, so I imagine there are lots of factors other than KOTFEET that "seriously hurt the game" for those individuals.

 

I'm old enough to remember when Makeb was "destroying the game." Even as much as I dislike, for example, what was done to crafting in 6.0, I'm hard pressed to say it "seriously hurt the game" for me. It hurt crafting, for sure, but that's only one aspect of the game. I certainly have more fun running my DvL sniper through KOTFEET than I do running Onderon and Mek Sha dailies for the umpteenth time hoping to get another piece of Descent of the Fearless.

 

KOTFEET was a helluva lot better than Rise of Skywalker.

You might be surprised how much we agree that KotFE / ET were good stories ... and especially the last comment you made. The Rise of Skywalker was (at best) the better of the 3 released attempts from Disney.

However .. again please re-read all of my posts in this thread. I'm not against KotFE / ET at all. I liked them (as far as the story development is concerned) ... Yet the simple fact is that there are MANY who were out raged at several things that took place in the release of those two major XP's. That's not my opinion .. but that of others.

At any rate ... We can debate that for weeks to come and not accomplish anything !!

"X is better than Rise of Skywalker" is such a low bar, even Twilight can roll over it. Things should be good on their own first and foremost, not just in relation to a highly controversial cousin from the same universe. While the lack of relation to pre-KOTFEET content is one of the major and more obvious arguments that people use, that's hardly the only issue KOTFEET had. Focus on solo content only, no replay value, cliche story with not enough flavour content to offset this, almost utter lack of side content, basically no worldbuilding, disregard of "show, don't tell" principle, lame enemy design, poor location design, no open world areas to explore, restricted area layouts, hell, even poor enemy placement.

Yes, beautiful camera work. Amazing. My compliments to the cameraman.

Despite this KOTFEET wasn't even the thing that made me quit three years ago. I started Traitor storyline, saw the writing on the wall, said "screw this" and quit. My feelings were on point; having done all post-KOTFEET content now, I found everything during Iokath, Nathema, etc., business even worse. But it was KOTFEET that eroded my confidence in the quality of the story and desire to see the rest of it, even out of curiosity. Though neither can I say the I have huge hopes for the rest of Onslaught. I enjoyed it a great deal, but have huge reservations about the rest of the story, and frankly, prefer to keep my expectations as low as possible. I know that Bioware will manage to disappoint me anyway.

Welll we have no choice... EA have the rights for the SW games... So what can we do...

In theory this game would be in great hands... Bioware should be a master in RPG Story Telling...

 

But what we see its diferent from what we expect...

 

Anyway... i dind´t like the Rise of the Hutt Cartel Expansion... And it was the first taste of the "one story fits all" style moving forward...

 

but in a way i did like the Shadow of Revan Expansion... That leads us to the best narrative stories to me at this moment The Valkorion Familly story (Drama/Tragedy).

It was actually clever what it was done to us as a character (losing and being locked away for 5 years in carbonite).

 

It explained the moving forward on the happenings of the galaxy, the runaway of our companions, and the sacrifice of other companions to save us from the Carbonite (yes im talking to you Lana).

 

To me Lana has become the most important Companion of all... It has been with us for many years now... and for the better or worse, she earned a place at our side and in our heart if you are up to the romance.

 

Nothing better then, that the future expansions, do some tragedy to our character, to drive his motivations for revenge...

Some sacrifice or death in his life... Maybe Lana dies or Theron Shan dies to save his mother... Who knows... There is so many alleys that can be done ... My imagination runs wild with the possibilites...

 

But moving back to the topic... The engine is a great part of the game... And its getting so old by now...

It really needs a good workout, and many features must be updated.... Multicore is one of them, better rendering pipeline, more advanced features, higher resolution textures for both models and world.

And if possible higher poligon count for both the models and the world.

Animations also need improvement, and that must be top priority for ingame cutscenes where the player is "Head On" with the Models...

 

And If possible upgrade the skymaps too...

The Rest to me is okey... Music is fine, background is ok too, sound effects also okey.

UI is okey also, its the way the game is and i don´t want it to change... i like this kind of button pressing actions...

 

So yeah... Points to improve the game:

 

IMPROVE ASAP:

- Update the Game Engine

- Optimize it for Multi-Core Systems

- Update Models, World Poligon Count (with the improved engine)

- Update World and Model Textures

- Update and improve Game Animations

- After Onlsaught, Update World Maps to reflect the happenings in the Galaxy

- Correct the Visual Bugs, and maps bugs (This should be also Top Priority)

 

Optional:

- Cut the Losses are remove Starfighter part from the game (make the game smaller)

- Remove Zones and Optional parts that are dead or deserted

- Remove or Add Option to remove the Annoying Alliance Alerts from the companions.

 

Next TO DO:

- Improve Game StoryTelling with Better Expansions (even if they are paid)

- Improve the Cadence of Content (even if they are paid)

- Mantain the Focus on a more tight story for the characters (classes), stories that mean something to the game world

- Improve the interaction with the Companions, give them story arcs, more ingame cutscenes, more romance

 

Make all of this top priority Developers...

The future can be amazing for this Game... The Story elements can make this a great and epic game...

 

With My Very Best Regards,

 

LPC

I do like some of the conclusions and suggestions ...

Might not be exactly the way I would do it ... but well thought out and presented very well too !