Devs at the latest cantina: Class Story, not at the moment...

Because once you are done with them, you want them to continue to deliver similar content. Or when we've had one of the hundreds of "I'm leaving because of a lack of class story" posts over the years have you just refused to pay attention?

How are you going to get EA to fund the additional staff required to do class story on top of everything else they're already doing? If they had the revenue to do it now, they'd do it now.

I assume nothing. You said you want class story in addition to everything you're getting now. They're delivering what you're getting now with the team they have. In order to deliver more, they either need to space out the releases by a lot more (and face community backlash) or increase staff (by getting budget from EA, for which they need a business case).

The BioWare team needs a business case to deliver class story on top of everything else we're getting now because it needs more staff to do it. The equation can't be more simple. Or are you suggesting they forego delivering something else in favor of class story?

What would you cut to appease the crowd who demands the word, "class" in front of "story" just because "class", ignore "good".

Don't worry, I totally get that.

That's why Makeb was upsetting - it was like "Hi Iron Man! Now I am going to give you work for suited for some random S.H.I.E.L.D. agent..."

And as Iron Man, you're just left like "Is that it? Isn't there some sort of supervillian to stop somewhere? JARVIS, call Pepper and tell her I'll be back by the afternoon and we can go get some drinks."

And this goes into what I've said earlier...

http://www.swtor.com/community/newre...eply&p=7314778

Why invest onto something that will ultimately fail to retain subscribers, to begin with? Especially when, as NoFishing mentioned, people can play class storylines for free?

Hello? You there? Have I been stumping for class story lately? You paying attention to what is actually being said?

Because the way I took fish's comments is he is against any type of investment in questing. I've been advocating infusing more class flavor into FACTION quests, and to also have FACTION quests released in very small doses every 3-4 months that lead out of the last expansion planet story and direct us to the next expansion planet to keep those of us who loved class stories still invested and subscribed.

Where you seem to be going with this is a strawman argument I didn't make.

I like that except for "very small doses".

Yeah, they probably can't be "big", but they should be bigger than "very small"!

I guess you missed the point of what I said. You claimed that adding class content would require 400% spike in revenue, which was completely absurd, and then followed it up by (again) incorrectly assuming that my specific interest was in full-fledged class storylines alongside faction stories. Wanting class-related content =/= demanding full-fledged storylines.

Further, given the surprise people experienced at seeing player housing and legacy storage out of nowhere, I'm baffled as to why you seem to think that not seeing a particular feature being introduced at a specific time means it can't possibly be in development or at least be planned for later.


For someone who claims to be trying to consider the business side of things, you seem to be rather comfortable making baseless/uninformed assumptions about how projects work so long as they support your argument. For example, why are you assuming that the costs of things like GSF or player housing or legacy storage will remain static after development is complete and they are in game? Why are you assuming Bioware either doesn't have plans to continue class-related content later or (at least) is amenable to being convinced to do so?

Unless you have SWTOR's budget and financial forecast, how can anyone on this forum even attempt to answer this? Yet again you resort to an absurd argument to try to make a point (yet you're more than happy with making up facts about the budgeting out of thin air to support your own "case").

Not to mention your never-ending attempts to lump everyone together into one group that apparently only cares about the 'class' aspect and doesn't care about the financial side of things, quality, anyone that doesn't agree with them, etc.

I'll ask again - since you apparently don't have any interest in class stories, have no interest in being convinced otherwise, and apparently don't hold a high opinion of anyone that does want them, why are you in this topic?

I am and no need to get overexcited.
And I ask again: How will that help drawing and retaining subscribers on the short-to medium run? Other than to cater for a minority most likely?

Plus, you have class storylines available for FREE in the game and you're advocating for... Having future related content available only for subs?

Again, I don't think you're asking for a repeat of the scope of the Origin World to Corellia class stories. You have said you aren't.

However you are asking for class stories on top of everything we already get, which does require more staff.

They've definitely shown the ability to surprise us. I'm not only surprised at getting housing and guild flagships, I'm also surprised at the size of the team they must have to be able to work on three big features in parallel.

But that doesn't mean they're working on, or will work on, or even should work on, class specific stories.

I'm not assuming that. Actually, I'm assuming that BioWare will leave a smaller team on the new features to add more to them and move the rest of the team on to other features, none of which are class story.

I assume that they are not working on class story because a) they've told us that they aren't and b) they stopped class stories before release (yes, they had already traveled down the faction story path with story that was present in the original release of the game). This has been their plan all along.

I think that the BioWare team would probably like to be able to add class-specific stories to the game. I think they would like to be able to add a lot of things to the game. But I know they have to live within the realm of software development reality, and that means they have to make trade-off decisions and prioritize features, because it is the only leg of the development management triangle they control, and they've prioritized class-specific stories out.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist, preescient, or even on the team to understand that in order to add more features on top of what you're already doing, without impact to schedule, you need more staff. You probably do need some experience in software development to understand that even if you do add team, there's still no guarantee it gets you the features within the schedule.

You need but a cursory understanding of how businesses really work to understand that you need a business case (read: a story that convinces executives that what you're asking for will be profitable) in order to get more budget.

OK, tell me. Why do you care so much that the word, "class" is the adjective that simply must be applied to "story"?

Lol well, let's put it this way - they should be as much as they can without the devs getting off track for their main updates.

Usually in DDO for instance, which is a quest-based game, they have big patches for the really big updates where new areas and a lot of quests are released. Then in between, they have about 3-4 minor updates, and among those, you usually would get 1-4 new quests in existing areas. It gave people something to do while waiting for the big update to hit.

That's all I am looking for. I think I'd be very happy with SWTOR if they would, in between expansion planets, gave us some quests to toy with in between every so often. And not to mention, it also generates interest, as the idea would be that the closer you got to releasing the expansion, the more the stories would point toward that direction - but since the players wouldn't know about it until the expansion is released, there would be a lot more buzz about where the quests COULD be pointing towards. Always better to have your players talking ABOUT the stories rather than complaining about a lack of them past a certain point.