Because my client broke down(again) and I have to redownload the game from scratch(again), I'm left to forum-dwell for the next few days(crap internet). Now I'm left with more time to talk to other players, which led to the creation of this thread and question.

I think it's safe to say that the Zakuul storyline(and more) is finally over. I feel like the Nathema Conspiracy was an epilogue to the entire game story, leaving our characters in an irrelevant stance where giving them further cause would simply further butcher their story value by throwing them around like a rag-doll. It just feels awkward now, to me at least.

Though this conclusion has given me the opportunity to look back at KoTFE and KoTET and ask myself, 'how would I have done it?' Despite being in no position to really have any impact on the game's present, future, or past. That's on the developers. I can only express discontent as a customer of their product: which would be apparent in any desire to have changed the story, but no game will ever be personally tailored to my interests and entertainment. I'd like to hear how other players would have gone about the story! In as many words as it takes to express yourself.

Here's My Go

I would have made the story an adventure focused around the Outlander, Lana, Theron, and bring back Jakarro and C2-D4 rather than create a new faction in the galaxy. The Outlander would have their small rag-tag posse who they'd get to know more intimately than the current story allows. Rather than focus on a tremendously large cast of aligned big characters, it would be mostly limited to these few. The story would bring them on adventures over Zakuul, bringing them to spend more time with its people and being stranded in hours worth of gameplay, discovering the new world and its people whilst trying to hide from the same thing. It would be a one ship, one crew theme like the original game.

The Republic and Empire wouldn't be forgotten, but the Outlander would try to secretly court their support in overthrowing the Zakuulan regime. In doing so, the Outlander would essentially prove their worth to either one or both of the factions, and if succeeding, they would have temporary aid in their hour of need. If failing to satisfy either, the Outlander would have gained no trust and left to overthrow Zakuul with only that small group, which would make the gameplay immensely more difficult. In interactions with these other factions, the Outlander would receive opportunities to meet with their old crew, which could occur in a variety of places chosen by the Outlander - who could also select not to meet with them. The crew would have moved on with their lives, but the love interest would be wanting to keep their thing going, despite not being in constant contact with the Outlander. These characters may be important in influencing your home faction to your aid.

Upon any success, both factions take the opportunity to oust the Outlander and the small rag-tag party who is powerless to stop them, and claim valuable war-prizes from Zakuul to construct new powerful weapons to reignite their campaigns against one another. At this point, the Outlander's native faction would tell them to get on board or be an enemy.

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Paul knows where it's at!

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Yeah, that would have been better.

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Pretty much this. A chapter a month was a lot better than a flashpoint every 6-8 months.

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Same here, i guess we would have had a much better story, but unfortunately, we'll never know what was planed storywise

Pretty much this. A chapter a month was a lot better than a flashpoint every 6-8 months.

That too.

They could even have provided some PvP / Ops or any other new multiplayer content alongside new story content which would've been much better for everyone

What i don't get is why was the content chopped? Someone said "because forum members requested it". OK, but really, chop already created content? I imagine there's a lot of work involved, programming, recording, why throw it to the garbage?

No idea. I'd rather see what was cut than go back into another imp vs pub plot.

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Exactly this.

What i don't get is why was the content chopped?

This is a question that I have been asking myself again and again for the last 2 years. What exactly happened that made them completely scrap their plans? Sub numbers could not have been worse than after KotET, so that cannot be it. Some executive disliked the monthly chapter system and made a fuss? I really would like to know what happened.

I wouldn't have. The original story was far better without ever introducing anything as stupid as the Valkorian family into it. The time wasted on the entirety of Zakuul would have been better spent on a billion other things that made sense in the original timeline.

The Zakuul part wasn't that bad, still it could have been improved a lot, from visuals to story. For example, create more outfits for Vaylin, after all she was the Emperor's daughter, even if she didn't held the title "princess". Lose the headscarf, that sort of thing is worn by old ladies from my country when they go to Church or cemetery.

Make the story more Inquisitor-ish, with Thexan's ghost appearing "for real", not as a projection created by ARIES. Speaking of ghosts and Inq class, make Horak-Mul appear during the battle with Valkorion and making fun of him.

But yes, you are right, the original timeline deserved more attention than the Kardashi.. oooops, the Valkorions .

I would have gone with the supposed original plan ... 3 expansions, 16 chapters each.

Me too overall. Other than that there are certain aspects the story I would have done differently but am sure this would apply to most players to various degrees. From minor changes to not done have KotFE at all. BW could never please everyone. Over all though I liked it.

...I really would like to know what happened.

Anyone feel up to getting some blasters, lightsabers, and what not and marching on BWA to find out? I'll pay for bus fair... with credits!

An in-game (in codex or otherwise) explanation as to why all 8 class-story characters disapeared (so having an explanation about the 7 characters you were not currently playing) would've been nice.

Maybe giving 2 different stories one for FU (which would've been the one whe have) and another one for NFU could've been nice too, for exemple, maybe our NFU could've been with Havoc Squad and Kaliyo rather than runing around in the Odessen forest chasing after Valkorion spirit and talking to Marr and Satele.

I wouldn't have done it. They destroyed the Star Wars feel of the game and the story that had worked on for years. It was garbage and the current player base numbers prove it. It's still garbage and they refuse to retcon it out, so it isn't going to get better.

This is a question that I have been asking myself again and again for the last 2 years. What exactly happened that made them completely scrap their plans? Sub numbers could not have been worse than after KotET, so that cannot be it. Some executive disliked the monthly chapter system and made a fuss? I really would like to know what happened.

They said they dropped it because it was not well received at all. The lack of group content killed the game (a lesson they had to relearn although launch should have been sufficient to teach that to every MMO developer anywhere.) Some players really like the chapter bit and all story, but not enough to keep things going so they had to do something different in an attempt to keep the game afloat. Unfortunately, the newer content is still trash and populations are still, rather obviously, dropping.

The best part of the game is still the starter planet to Corellia stories and group content. Each expansion from that has been worse than the previous one. Time to either fold it up or get a totally new decision making team for SWTOR.

I would have done Chapters 1-9 (through your arrival at Odessan) almost exactly the same with one minor but critical difference; Lana was coming to rescue you not to have you lead, but for your abilities as a free agent (basically the same as during Forged Alliances and Shadow of Revan). She and Theron organized the Alliance during the five year gap and they’ve already gathered your old team and they’re waiting for you at Odessan (so you’re only separated from them for the 1-8 section of story).

Furthermore, they’ve also gathered other movers and shakers from the Republic and Empire (ie all the other class stories; explaining the new cross-faction status quo) and the kicker is, the Fallen Empire story would be a Legacy unlock; Once one character does it, all your other characters can jump right to Odessan at the appropriate level, having been recruited by Theron and Lana.

Chapters 10-15 of Fallen Empire and 1-7 of Eternal Throne would have been flashpoints with a solo-story mode option like the Umbara/Chiss/Nathema flashpoints. FE 16 and ET 8 would have been Operations with a solo-story option for characters that did FE 1-9 and ET Chapter 9 would be a solo-only finale unlocked after completing ET 8 mission (op or solo) to close out the Emperor in your head story.

Arena Grande and Iokath Operation would have stayed as is (Iokath being the ‘Year 3’ Op following Battle of Odessan I and II’ in the previous two years). The Uprisings would have been flashpoints (essentially chapters 10+ of Eternal Throne) just like the Traitor arc. I probably would have added another couple more PVP/Starfighter maps, Daily Missions on Zakuul and an Odessan and Zakuul stronghold and an Eternal Fleet Guild Flagship (available to both sides) into the mix as well.

That would give a decent mix of solo content (FE 1-9, solo-story flashpoints and ET 9 conclusion, daily missions, Arena, Star Fortresses), small group content (FE 10-15, ET 1-7, Uprisings and Traitor Flashpoints + Group Arena), large group content (Battle of Odessan 1 vs. Arcann Op, Battle of Odessan 2 vs. Valyn Op, Iokath Op), PVP content (new maps for ground and starfighter) and for the decorators (Odessan, Zakuul, Manaan and Umbara strongholds plus a new guildship option).

The main thing you’d miss out on with this setup would be the alliance alert missions since you’d either have gotten all yours back in Chapter 9 of Fallen Empire or never lost them in the first place for later toons who skipped that part. But that also would have freed up those resources to bump the other content up to Flashpoints/Ops status so I’d call that a fair trade.

I wouldn't have. The original story was far better without ever introducing anything as stupid as the Valkorian family into it. The time wasted on the entirety of Zakuul would have been better spent on a billion other things that made sense in the original timeline.

I'd agree.

By the end of 3.0 both Revan and the Emperor's, "Kill all life in the galaxy with the force," story elements were horses that were both dead and thoroughly beaten.

Resolving the Revan storyline was smart, and points to the story team for doing it.

The Emperor had also suffered serial defeats, was weakened, and the Ziost content patch was an ideal chance to resolve his storyline. They completely blew it.

Structurally, they had reasons for going the way they did. The studio couldn't afford to make a two faction story going forward, which meant that Republic vs Empire probably wasn't going to work, and they had already used the internal schism card with Malgus. A third party villain was needed.

They went about it in a fairly boneheaded way though. To divest from the faction battles, all you really needed was for the factions to say to the characters, "Hey hero, thanks for the help. Here's your golden pocket watch. Now get out of here. We're busy and we don't need you underfoot." Which they sort of started doing.

The opportunity there was to put the factions on hold and have the character go do something else. Something the factions were ignoring/not interested in. Marr's expedition could have been a good lead in to that, especially if it hadn't been an expedition to beat the dead horse yet again.

The colossal screwup though, was putting the character on ice. They had already set up to put the factions more or less into stasis. The smart move would be to have the character go out on a journey seeking, discovering, and overcoming obstacles.

Having the ultimate, extra-powerful, unstoppable, hostile for no apparent reason super ultra villain suddenly pop out of nowhere and stomp all over everything was, well, pretty lame.

If the character is getting really powerful, and you're not sure what to do as a storyteller, just continually inflating the power levels of the character and the villains is a novice mistake. The correct solution, is to just start have things go wrong for the characters. Chase down dead ends. Have the characters go on bits of adventure where the unintended consequences of the character's actions put them even farther behind than when they started. Let the villain be really good at slipping away while the character is beating up minions and hench-beings. Throw in obstacles the character can't batter through, and force them to figure out a detour around.

Make the journey enough of an adventure, and the boss doesn't have to be super powerful. If the whole thing turns out to be a Jawa named Hrutti Dak leaving a wake of chaos on a "purchasing" trip that went horribly wrong (he wanted to restock his Jawa Junk Emporium), well, it's maybe a bit of a let down, but it could work about as well as the Zakuul storyline did.

The Outlander story is pretty polished in a lot of ways. I'd say though that they made a few big mistakes on the fundamentals when first doing the outline of the plot arc.

The end result is a bit too, I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe too Dragonball Z/Saturday morning cartoon over-the-top style. It's also a poor fit to the preceding story.

Honestly, if Zakuul hadn't been connected to the Emperor, hadn't stomped all over the Empire and Republic, and if say the first five chapters had covered a trek out into the unknown regions to find this lost empire, I wouldn't really have much in the way of complaints about major storytelling for 4.0 and 5.0. The force using anti-social royal family, different philosophy of force users, ancient artifacts etc, would have all been perfectly fine. Whether one would have been fighting to liberate the locals from oppressors, carve out an empire of your own, or just to score the biggest haul of loot in recorded galactic history, there wasn't any fundamental problem with a "Lost Kingdom" sort of storyline.

An in-game (in codex or otherwise) explanation as to why all 8 class-story characters disapeared (so having an explanation about the 7 characters you were not currently playing) would've been nice.

 

Maybe giving 2 different stories one for FU (which would've been the one whe have) and another one for NFU could've been nice too, for exemple, maybe our NFU could've been with Havoc Squad and Kaliyo rather than runing around in the Odessen forest chasing after Valkorion spirit and talking to Marr and Satele.

Oh yeah. It still annoys me that it is not so. It just does not make sense that Valk wants an NFU. (at least not for me)

In general, I would like to have less, but longer chapters with more depth.

There could have been two stories.

1. FU: like now

2. NFU: The whole thing plays 90% in the five years before Outlander is saved. The story begins a few weeks after the O. was frozen. We are with our ship in the outer rim. Here comes a call for help The Republic / Empire (depending on which side we belong to) asks all good fighters for help as the core worlds are attacked. Of course we help. Either because we are so nice or because there is a reward for the help.

It is a bit fought, the enemy is superior to us and we have to flee and hide. We separate ourselves from our companions, everyone goes his own way, because one can hide better individually.

Again, a few months later, we get an encrypted message to meet with someone in a secret location. It's Lana / Theron. She tells us that they want to build an alliance against the enemy. We are led to a hidden place. There are a few refugees (guards, generals, etc.). We also meet Lana / Theron there. (Depending on who we did not meet before). Lana and Theron then say to us that we had been a very good team last time and that we should rejoin.

They tell us that there is a very powerful Sith / Jedi who could defeat Arcann, but unfortunately he is imprisoned. Before we can liberate him, we must build the alliance. So a headquarters (ODESSEN). We build the alliance over the years. Almost all (current) Confederate news, chapters (return of companions only), etc. appear. (Of course different and in some cases even shorter or even summarized. Some companions from the chapters can only be collected as an Alliance message.)

At some point we are ready to rescue the Sith / Jedi. We can create this figure ourselves (appearance, orientation, name, etc.). The headstone, grave, asylum, abandonment, and covenant (the Mistress of Suffering falls away, as we've already intervened before) are grouped together and play from our point of view, not the Outlander.

Chapter X - XIV fall away. For this we help the O. to get stronger. The O. tells us that Valk is in his body.

We do not fight with Arcann, that's the O. For that we have to fight with two very powerful guards. In the end we win, Arcann and Senya flee. O. makes us his right hand.

It could have been this way. :D:D

Since there's no option to scrap KOTFE/KOTET, I would have:

• Not kept the player character in carbonite for 5 years - the player's LI would have come looking and broken them out inside of a year & my reunions would have been awesome. If the player had no LI only then would I have used Theron or Lana.
  
• I would never have abandoned Class companions, but I would have added options to sack some from our crew or allow them to leave if they wished. If any left, only then would I recruit others to my direct crew to a maximum of 8 Any non-class companions would have been an option to join an alliance to take down the emperor. I would not have had so many companion kill options either - for some it was far too late in the story for that.
  
• The story would not have centred around Lana - players would have had a choice of who they dealt with most from their inner crew
  
• Never have called the player character the Outlander or Commander - they would have had titles based on their class
  
• Not included any Emperor spawn (Thexon, Arcann, Vaylin not required) however I would have kept Senya but only as an evil Empress spouse to the Emperor
  
• I may have combined Scorpio/Iokath/Gravestone as a side villain issue alongside the Emperor as main villain
  
• There would have been no player controlled walkers that took forever to get anywhere/kill anyone, fail to loot and gave off super-threat
  
• There would have been far fewer skytroopers and stealthers would not have been disadvantaged
  
• I would not have made characters with abilities like Scorpios (could de-materialise herself then re-materialise) or Vaylins (more powerful than Marvels Jean Gray) suddenly easy to kill. Both of them should have been unkillable without some kind of extra super ability that we quested to acquire making the player character the most powerful being in the galaxy next to the emperor - which they supposedly were already. At least it took several to take down the emperor (though his spirit should not have been killable with a lightsaber to the gut or a gunshot )
  
• Koth - nope. I really can't work out why he was given dominion over my ship. I would not have had alliance specialists either.
  
• Forced to take on 50+ companions - nope
  

-I would not have retconned Vitiate into Valkorian. Valkorian would have been a person in his own right.

-I would not have done a 5 year time skip. Season 1 would have been fighting with your faction against the EE followed by the defeat. Season 2 would have been building the alliance where companions scattered by the defeat would be gathered back up. Season 3 would have been bringing the alliance to fight the EE. Heavy losses could ensue so the alliance isn't overly powerful at the end.

-Valkorian, Vaylin, Scorpio, the Gravestone & the Eternal Fleet wouldn't have been so over-powered individually. Powerful, yes, god-like, no.

-I would not have constantly cut to the villains, I would have kept the focus on our characters. I would also have given Arcann & Vaylin more gravitas so they could be taken more seriously as villains and not come across as spoiled brats.

-I would have continued having open worlds with side-missions so we, as players, can see the devastation wrought by Zakuul and participated in fighting it.

-I would have reduced the Lana/Theron interactions to give more room for other NPCs that often make more sense for the story. And I would have tweaked the dialogue so the character is giving the orders instead of being ordered around.

-I would not have given Acina & Malcom cheap deaths.

uhhh ... I could go on endlessly about this.

Short Version: More Vaylin, More Marr ... Less of everything else.

Edit: Kill option for our incompetent Sith 'Spymaster' please. In fact ... this one might be worthy of it's own thread.

I actually haven't played past KOTET; after replaying halve the KOTFE chapters on my Operative (primary), in prep to check out the rest of the story, I feel like some tweaks could have been made. I'm pretty sure a few of these have been suggested, but I wanted to add my own ideas.

1. I wish it would have been either Lana or Theron to rescue you in chapter three. Depending on LI or faction, it would have required more dialogue tweaks, but that would have been a refreshing change to see play out.

2. Another add-in, depending what you decided with Tanek, in chapter three, I think Novo and Balisk should have joined the Alliance if you spared Tanek or gone on with the regular fight as we see in chapter seven.

3. If you reject Valkorion's power in chapter 5, I think Lana, should have been incapacitated until chapter 9; this would have led to Theron joining you on Asylum or vice versa if number one was followed. Would have been an exciting change. If you used Valkorion's power, it would have played out like we see in-game.

4. I would have liked more dialogue tweaks that fit your character, whether they're a sith warrior or smuggler, they were sprinkled here and there, but I feel like there should have been more.

5. Lastly, I think you should have been able to say hell no to the commander role and just taken up an advisory position. That one would have never happened, but I still wish it had been an option, probably why I want to play through the rest of the story on a few of my toons since they had no interest in ruling.

That's it since as far as my replay I've just gotten to chapter 11, loved chapter 10 on my Operative and every little hint for the agent story. As for the rest, I would have liked to see the next three expansions play out as intended. But, as one who used to raid I wish, there would have been a new operations put in as well.

uhhh ... I could go on endlessly about this.

 

Short Version: More Vaylin, More Marr ... Less of everything else.

 

Edit: Kill option for our incompetent Sith 'Spymaster' please. In fact ... this one might be worthy of it's own thread.

More Vailyn ( eventually a romance ARC and marriage)

More Marr

and ..

please please separate Theron and Zenith! They are NOT the same , despite of THAT voice. "jedi..you're alright" . And my DS uber bad guy Consular melted.

More Vailyn ( eventually a romance ARC and marriage)

More Marr

and ..

please please separate Theron and Zenith! They are NOT the same , despite of THAT voice. "jedi..you're alright" . And my DS uber bad guy Consular melted.

If you want to preach for that be my guest I just want the Vaylin companion. After being subjected to Ashara and Lana ... I feel my Inquisitor is on the verge of completely losing it. That and it'll motivate me to get my non force users through KOTFE/ET.

I wouldn't have. The original story was far better without ever introducing anything as stupid as the Valkorian family into it. The time wasted on the entirety of Zakuul would have been better spent on a billion other things that made sense in the original timeline.

/signed