Note: I am a proponent of moving the story back to Sith vs the Republic.

 

However, there are considerations to be made.

 

• No Alliance means no Odessen
  
• Heroic Crates need to be rethought.
  
• Story considerations will need to be made.
  
• What to do with ALL the new roster of companions?
  

 

None of these are insurmountable.

 

No Odessen means living off the player's ship.

 

With regards to heroic Crates, I think a good compromise is to allow placement of Oggurub, Hylo, Sana Rae and the bothan in a Stronghold, each with a clicky that rewards you still when you go up 2 ranks.

 

Story-wise, post alliance these 4 can remain your character's support.

 

With regard to ALL the companions, too many to keep on your ship. However, a smart thing that could be done is allow a "roster" the player picks from to accompany him as the main players of a given story arc going forward, and can change the roster at key times. Other companions then may show up in the story, like Tanno Vik in KotFE.

 

If this is to be done well, it needs a lot of thought, and not sure BioWare has the resources.

Note: I am a proponent of moving the story back to Sith vs the Republic.

 

However, there are considerations to be made.

 

• No Alliance means no Odessen
  
• Heroic Crates need to be rethought.
  
• Story considerations will need to be made.
  
• What to do with ALL the new roster of companions?
  

 

None of these are insurmountable.

 

No Odessen means living off the player's ship.

 

With regards to heroic Crates, I think a good compromise is to allow placement of Oggurub, Hylo, Sana Rae and the bothan in a Stronghold, each with a clicky that rewards you still when you go up 2 ranks.

 

Story-wise, post alliance these 4 can remain your character's support.

 

With regard to ALL the companions, too many to keep on your ship. However, a smart thing that could be done is allow a "roster" the player picks from to accompany him as the main players of a given story arc going forward, and can change the roster at key times. Other companions then may show up in the story, like Tanno Vik in KotFE.

 

If this is to be done well, it needs a lot of thought, and not sure BioWare has the resources.

 

Iam fully support going to reps vs imps. It is what kotor always been. I dont mind that devs will sometimes make third party and provide temporal alliances BUT ONLY TEMPORAL. If they decide to make reps and imps enter in alliance forever, make cross-faxtion guilds and wrzs ill just quite this guild. Iam not a fan of huge alliances vs npc

Yes please... Iam tired of Alliance already...It was cool expansion, I very enjoy KotFE, KotET was a bit worse for me, and later I've just got bored. Bring back old good Rep vs Imp war! I could even accept no new planets. Action of story set on old planets (add new instances/zones for 70 level) Edited January 16, 2018 by tummiswtor

The alliance can burn to ash.

I don't mind them going back to Pub vs. Imp but I think they could just keep the Alliance as a third faction choice. Granted, that would be pretty hard to implement in any kind of story moving forward. I like the idea of not being tethered to either, but outside of KotFE/KotET and subsequent story it doesn't really factor into any of the game. I think if they want to keep the Alliance they need to just make it a third faction that people can choose to be a part of instead of forcing them into it. Keep it for those who want it, let those who don't walk away. Edited January 16, 2018 by DuchessKristania

Odessan base could become a neutral 3rd faction base.

 

But TBH, any movement in story happens at a snail's pace these days. How many months is it since Copero - and still no firm release date for the next bit.

 

I expect to be drawing my pension before there is any significant shift back to true 2-faction stories. - And since it messes with a lot of stuff in game it's too big a job to develop.

 

Most suggestions can go in the 'No money, no time, no staff, no profit, no motivation, no vision, too difficult' pile and forever forgotten. This unfortunately probably will end up there, however much the players might want it.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Storm-Cutter

 

Most suggestions can go in the 'No money, no time, no staff, no profit, no motivation, no vision, too difficult' pile and forever forgotten. This unfortunately probably will end up there, however much the players might want it.

 

Sad, but likely true. Still, I think these kinds of threads, as long as they remain productive and don't turn into one big arguemen, can be a helpful and good discussion topic. Who knows, maybe if we promote healthy discussion threads along these lines the devs will take more interest in what the community brings to the table. Optimistic, I know, but I can't help it, lol.

I think the storylines were better, felt more like Star Wars and were better written (perhaps because it was easier to write them?) when the game was Imperial vs. Republic. I would love to see it move back to something like that, and have Odessen abandoned, you move to a new world with your crew that is faction specific (like you would if you were disbanding an Alliance).

 

Then there could be lots of "alliance alert" style missions to sort out who is going with/who is not. Which companions appreciated you enough during your time as "Commander" to stick with you, even though they were originally of the opposite faction. All companions that you've been given in the history of the game should still be retrievable by the terminal regardless of their story line decisions, based simply on the fact that people put money/resources/time into improving their influence, and that part of the game should be kept separate from the characters in the storyline.

 

All of this would be really cool, I think. But seeing as they can't even figure out a way to get the remaining companions returned I also don't have much hope of this ever happening.

 

It's a nice thought, though.

If this is to be done well, it needs a lot of thought, and not sure BioWare has the resources.

 

I really don't see how BW would be able to pull such a thing off. It won't happen.

 

The game will continue exactly as it did with the last updates. That IS the game now. And that IS the story now.

 

Believing in or hoping for anything else is imho naive.

 

I personally don't want to go back to Rep vs. Imp. But I also don't want what we got during 2017 which was for me the worst year in this game's history.

 

I kind of would prefer to continue with little (well written!) story bits which don't have such a big impact on the galaxy. Like the original companion missions. The main story has been told, wrap up the traitor and Iokath parts and then tell some side-stories from the Golden Age of the Old Republic. "The Lost Tales of Vanilla Swtor" so to say. Go back to places, have flashbacks. I don't mind if it's packed into cutscenes that play in the Alliance headquarter of the present: "Hey Vette, do you remember when..." The HK bonus chapter was a good example for what I mean.

 

(I only speak for myself here.)

Lets look at where we are now in the story and think about this. I dislike the Imp vs Rep war theme but prefer light vs dark or civilization vs natural order.

 

Right now we effectively have 3 power players in galactic politics - The Imperials, the Republic, and the Alliance / Empire. There are others out there (like the Chiss) but they alone do not have the power to tip power one direction or another and need to align with one of the 3 political powers for safety or survival.

 

Lets look at another sci fi universe called Battletech for comparison. Originally there were 5 Houses vying for creating the new Star League. 1 effectively (House Liao) has devolved into a buffer state with the formation of the Federated Commonwealth. When they (the FC) became the "driving force" the Clans were introduced resulting in more factions to keep the conflict going. This of course formed the new Star League out of necessary to push back the Clans and a few new entities and powers. When this began to settle and the Inner Sphere was able to hold their own, ComStar broke into factions causing yet another power shift and formation of even more powers. With ComStar arc resolved and the powers that be shifted the story evolved into the loss of HPGs (faster than light communication) again pushing people into a reason to continue to fight.

 

In the end, most stories rhyme what we know as history. In the case of Battletech, the creators jumbled up and tossed historical players into matches for the story. The Original Star League was the Roman Empire. The Houses were the great powers of Europe that arose after the fracturing of the Roman Empire. The Clans were "Lost Tribe of Israel" that morphed into the Mongol Horde. The Word of Blake was the Arabic Invasions and Spread of Islam. ComStar itself was the Byzantine Empire. For Star Wars, its a story of the Colonies vs the British Empire or the US vs the USSR. In my mind, the battle of Rep vs Imp is similar to the early days of Rome vs Carthage. With the destruction of Carthage, Rome became the dominant player where its "symbolism" can be seen in the Republic. The Imperial resurgence is a king to the Mongol Hordes or Barbarian waves (with we want to keep the timelines somewhat uniform). In the end the Republic will fall to arise something new that will replace the republic. Sure the Byzantine Empire could be considered the Republic post KOTET - but the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks which led to the Age of Exploration and the foundations of the modern world we know today.

 

Point here is we could have a Good vs Evil war for simplicity or they could turn it into a multi-factional battle of players aligning and dividing to seize power, but in the long run it will form out to be two camps - good vs evil with factions of slippery morals justifying their switch from one side to the other playing a political game of fence sitting.

 

I think there will be the "Alliance" vs an "Empire" in the end. The Alliance winner of this fight will form the foundations of the prequel Galactic Republic either thru a domination of evil and a effectively ancient story like the original trilogy (where the "republic" fights the giant evil empire) or in that the republic will be reborn from the Alliance in the image of the ideal the Republic once stood for.

 

In the end I see it being Rep vs Imp, just potentially not in the manner of the current factions existing as they are in the original storyline.

The thing is, that wherever the story is going it's already been written. We know from interviews that it takes the writers 6mo to a year to write story for the game. So until the roadmap comes (Assuming Keith puts out a roadmap more then 3mo) we just won't know where they plan to take the story and all this is just time killing speculation.

The thing is, that wherever the story is going it's already been written. We know from interviews that it takes the writers 6mo to a year to write story for the game. So until the roadmap comes (Assuming Keith puts out a roadmap more then 3mo) we just won't know where they plan to take the story and all this is just time killing speculation.

 

6 months to write the story?

 

Really?

 

My 10-year old daughter is presenting an adventure scenario for my RPG group - she's worked on it about 4 hours so far - and it's better than 'someone in your circle of friends defects to the opposition and leads you a merry chase across several planets'

6 months? For a team of professional writers?

 

I wrote ~40 chapters for my RPG group last year, between April and December. - That's on top of my full time job and family.

 

6 Months...? SMH.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Storm-Cutter

6 months to write the story?

 

Really?

 

My 10-year old daughter is presenting an adventure scenario for my RPG group - she's worked on it about 4 hours so far - and it's better than 'someone in your circle of friends defects to the opposition and leads you a merry chase across several planets'

6 months? For a team of professional writers?

 

I wrote ~40 chapters for my RPG group last year, between April and December. - That's on top of my full time job and family.

 

6 Months...? SMH.

 

In Bioware's defense they have to get the story approved by LF and they need to give the dev team time to work on the VO and assets that go into the game. SO Yes it takes a year to add an Expac and even an update like Iokath will take over 6mo.

Edited January 17, 2018 by VedaRa