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

If other MMOs started doing more then yes it would be unreasonable, however few other MMOs are doing it better than SWTOR at the moment. That may change, we will have to see, the two "biggies", seem to have their own issues, ESO and Wildstar. SWTOR needs competition that will hit it hard, I suspect that neither of these two will though, if it was going to change (although I suspect BW would simply shut it down).

Exactly. And it could be that they had to bring in X amount of $ before they could even start the story project. Maybe they recently hit that goal and have started the process. A process which takes time.

We don't know what their internal processes are. We don't know the order of things or even what they really want to give us, in their heart of hearts. But, hitting specific milestones or checkpoints before even beginning certain projects does seem reasonable. They can't just snap their fingers and make all projects happen. It's called prioritization. So far, from my point of view, they seem to actually be pretty good at it.

Of course. But it's the duration of the wait that matters.

Players will wait until they've finished the last round of content. Then they'll find something else to do in the game for a little while longer, possibly measured in months but seems more likely weeks. Then they'll find something else to do that isn't your game.

It's that last part that's problematic if your game is a for-profit business. You need to balance the content releases thoughtfully.

Geezus...twice in a week I find myself agreeing with you Darth This is exactly right. I know that GSF and Housing will expand things for players to do, and hopefully that will keep them around between Ops/FP releases, but we've gone for a loooong time in MMO terms without the things that have kept players here.

I'm usually right. I've had the bad habit of hiding that behind my presentation. Trying to improve that.

Oops, bad presentation right there.

I'd love to agree with you again, but then we'd both be wrong

I commend you on the effort Thank you!

I'm pretty sure the Devs has commented this a few times on their Cantina Tours. The class stories are indeed a driving point and are going to be touched on again but they wish to continue on the focus on the overall effect aka planets like Makeb where everyone is apart of one story line.

The reason I see for class stories coming out slowly isn't so much voice acting or cost but the story itself. You can rush it to please the fans that want it but end up making the most crappy story ever that it ends up making your fans cry out and walk out the door. On top of that Bioware has always did this nice job of making each story somewhat overlap giving hints or bumping into npcs that you have seen or even fought in other story arcs which is rather neat. But to lay it out nicely you have to look at all these factors

1. You have about 8 Stories to make

2. You have companions that need to be voiced and scripted to play out the scenes. You don't want your companion in the back ground saying....Hey and your reply is hey yourself and that's it

3. You want to create the feeling like your story matters. The best thing about the current stories is they are different and they have such great twists and turns in the story that it makes you want to continue. Playing the Sith warrior story was awesome and I played it straight until the end and was happy on the end and even found out the end could be played out a bit differently not much but could have some interesting npcs appear before you if you didn't go all sith on everyone.

4. You have to have a backstory to drive the character stories. All the current ones are based of the Empire and Republic treaty which is they are all nice and friendly but are starting small operations behind each others back. To keep the next story arc you need to push the back story up and make it interesting now with the new push into the direction of all out war again this would make an awesome time to create the character stories as now you have this all out war.

5. It takes a lot of time to make a story, look at Disney movies to live actions half of production is just on story development and script writing and the going back and forth making things work out. Also have the idea of choice like killing someone or letting them live does play a role for those that played their story arc a bunch of times will notice the few different scenes either added or removed when they killed someone, even though these scenes are so small they do play an effect to your story and feelings.

To be honest I thought the character stories were over but when you look at things like player housing and the guild flag ship which were asked at the beginning of launch ..heck even before that and the answer then was "not at the moment" and now looking a few months ahead we got 2 things we asked for and one being a big shock which was the guild flag ships even though have nothing tied to them as they can't be used for pvp (at the moment) but the fact something mentioned at start about the idea and now a few years later we are getting them puts hope. It's just time and making sure the right steps are being done before if they rush and do the wrong steps all the time...well pretty much everyone will be moving on.

Also for the ESO story...I hate it. I started with the first elder scroll series and been somewhat up with the lore and what they are doing is kind of strange and conflicting. Ontop of that the game mechanics for the story doesn't feel like a story it feels like a rush up job on the Phase system WoW uses. I found myself driven in some moments and then the next so much crap is going on and one wrong step out of the quest area it all disappears as you phase back into the online world, one example is one of the starting dominion story quest has you going to a tunnel well you think ok I should be by myself or with group friends....nope your shoved into the tunnel with everyone doing the story and trying to listen to the story play out when someone keeps jumping and roaring all over the place is annoying.

Please refrain from speaking for others, when you mean to speak for yourself. Besides, not all players appreciate class story. Keep in mind.. at launch the game was over-run with spacebar junkies that speed leveled their way to 50 so they could be the first to complain that a brand new MMO has very little end game content.

Would we all like more class story? Sure!

Have most of us accepted the design choice they have made at this point and embraced the faction story arcs as the post 50 story content? I believe so... I certainly have.. and most people I talk with in-game do as well.

Complaining and condemning their choices is not helpful, and certainly not constructive at all. Obviously, some players will not cope well with the choice.. but coping skills and responsibility rest with the player, NOT Bioware. With north of a million active players... there is no pleasing everyone.. and fact is.. IF they announced new class story tomorrow... there would be people posting up and down the forums about how it sucks and they don't want it. 100% of players DID NOT choose class story as their priority for new content in the long running poll in the forums here. When presented with the option to select multiple content options....class story topped out at about 60% as I recall -----> meaning that about 2 out of 3 players would enjoy more class story as one of 5 content areas they would like to see expanded.

Nice to have... yep. Consistent in their comments about future class story...yep. Going to happen.... nope... not in the forseeable future. And while you and others can start as many brush fire threads as you wish, it won't change their planning.

They know class story IS popular. Complaining and condemning their choices here adds absolutely no fidelity to the discussion topic.

Okay.

Please refrain from assuming the word "we" includes YOU or is inclusive of "everyone"...it's not. All he's doing is speaking for more than one person, not everyone, not you. Picking out that single word as your opener, negates anything else you had to say because it's petty and ridiculous.