I dont know about anyone else... but does anyone else feel that Makeb is a failure in relation to the story. "Vanilla" ToR was awesome in the fact that each class had its own individual missions. Made the story personal, repeatable, and fun. Makeb is nothing of the sort. It feels like WoW imo. I dont feel the same draw to the Makeb missions as I did leveling my other characters, and I hope that Bioware learns from this endeavor. Because if they release more like this expansion, I dont think the game will survive. Thoughts?

While I have personally been unable to play the Makeb storyline in-game, I have watched full walkthroughs and I must say it bothered me on a personal level on how the Makeb storyline is the same for each player depending on faction, and I was expecting there to be different missions and stories for each class. I wasn't disappointed in the DLC, I just think they didn't deliver on what Bioware is commonly known for:Amazing story telling for the games they make. The gameplay was decent from what I saw and I just wish they put more time into it. I suppose I can't complain, considering its only $10 US. Edited June 27, 2013 by Xerion_Viktus

The actual pacing of the story is much better than "vanilla" because it's one consistent quest chain with one story rather than several disjointed stories with side-quests that can become confusing.

 

However, it suffers from several flaws which make it the worst planet in the game, in my opinion, as far as story is concerned. WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD for Makeb and all class stories.

 

1. It does not feel like Star Wars. There's no mystery, there's no destiny, there's no secrets of the Force, there's no Force users to meet or fight against, there's no bounties to hunt, there's nothing to smuggle.

2. There's an overarching feeling of pointlessness. We were told almost from the start that the planet was about to implode very soon - so why should I care about anything that's going on in the story?

3. The "importance" of what we're doing is told to us, rather than shown. Yes, Isotope-5 will "win the war" and Darth Marr keeps saying "it's so important!". But we're never shown how or why and the player is given little reason to care.

4. "These are the most powerful enemies the players are yet to face!" I'm the absolute last person that cares about power level when it comes to story, but give me a break, please. We're fighting a bunch of hired mercenaries. Were Darth Malgus, the Emperor, Darth Baras, Darth Thanaton, and Revan just cannon fodder compared to these mercs? I nearly started spacebarring after the NPCs could not shut up about how "This Whiphid is SO POWERFUL, even the other mercs fear him!"

5. Virtually nothing changes if you play the same story with a different class, giving this planet storyline the lowest replay value. Even the planetary storylines of levels 1-50 had oodles of class-specific flavor dialogue. Or at the very least the player characters themselves would all have unique lines. In Makeb, the player character classes all say the same lines except for the intro and outro. My previously witty Bounty Hunter with his snappy comebacks and amazing one-liners was now droning on for 3-4 sentences like an Imperial loyalist. I could tell even the voice actor was struggling.

6. The following classes have no convincing motivation to go to Makeb: Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, Agent (if you defected or became a free Agent or erased your existence), and Smuggler. I could list out my reasoning for this but I think it's fairly self-evident.

7. No comic relief. The whole story is just too dry and serious. The mission team you're working with are probably the most boring collection of individuals that could possibly have been collected, and their motivations and willingness to die for the mission are not really convincing.

 

And several more flaws which are related to the planet design rather than the story itself:

1. The mesas are all disjointed and taking a speeder fades to black. It feels like you're going through a series of instanced hubs rather than exploring a large, open planet.

2. You can't walk more than 2 feet without aggroing a bajillion enemies.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Jenzali

Personally I could live with the story continuing the way Makeb was done, but it would have to be released in some reasonable pace. That being said, I would like to see a new class chapter every few years as well.

I would prefer a new expac with multiple branching story arcs that you can follow instead of just the one. I would settle for at least 2 branching storylines/zones. Having to do the same exact story on alts sucks big time.

 

It sucks that Makeb got 1 storyline, no class stories and i'm sure you guys noticed that there are a ton of mission terminals handing missions out now. I'm afraid that the next expac is going to have quest hubs that you arrive at and there are going to be 5-6 mission terminals at each hub handing out missions. Replace those terminals with orcs, humans and gnomes and you have yourself a typical WoW questing hub. It seems like SWTOR is releasing content, not doing all of the VO work and just putting it out there on mission terminals which have text box quest descriptions just like WoW. I dont know what to make of that yet, in fact i dont think i would mind too much if humanoid NPCs in SWTOR starting handing out missions in text box format.

I found no thrill whatsoever. I played through the story with my Bounty Hunter and I am currently working on it with my Knight and in both situations, I find the story and area dry and poorly thought out. When I finished with my Bounty Hunter, I literally yelled "What!? That was it?". Don't get me wrong, I am glad we have the expansion and I know more will be made, but I just hope that Bioware learns from this simple mistake. One of the main reasons we play this game is for character development. My Bounty Hunter has come so far, has overcome Mercenaries, Targeted Bounties, Jedi, Sith, Monstrous Creatures, and much more. He started out as a nobody and eventually made his way to being a great Bounty Hunter. I was hoping for more progression, more involvement and more improvement for my character and his companions. The Makeb planet and story seemed to spit in my face, shattering that hope for more involvement and action. So please Bioware, lets make the next Expansion better by getting more in depth on the character's story.

The storyline is not even what bothers me the most about Makeb. What bothers me is the leveling.

 

If you played ToR before the expansion, then you were probably well geared when you went to Makeb, and you killed stuff without any problem. However, if you are a new player, just hit 50, and think about going to Makeb, well... think again. The level 50 gear you get from questing and mods you buy with comms aren't enough to survive once you hit Makeb.

 

Another problem I noticed is that the lvl of the mobs escalate quickly; after you do the first 15-20 quests, mods are already 51-52, meanwhile you barely made it to 51 or still at level 50. After that, you go to the next zone, and now the mobs are already 53 or even 54.

 

If you ask anyone in chat, they'll tell you to avoid Makeb and do the old level 50 dailies, FP, and HM FP, and then hit Makeb once you are leveled up and geared up. That shouldn't be the way things work. If you release a new xpac, you should make sure people who get there at level 50 can actually quest and level up without too many issues, as it's been from 1 to 50.

The storyline is not even what bothers me the most about Makeb. What bothers me is the leveling.

 

If you played ToR before the expansion, then you were probably well geared when you went to Makeb, and you killed stuff without any problem. However, if you are a new player, just hit 50, and think about going to Makeb, well... think again. The level 50 gear you get from questing and mods you buy with comms aren't enough to survive once you hit Makeb.

 

Another problem I noticed is that the lvl of the mobs escalate quickly; after you do the first 15-20 quests, mods are already 51-52, meanwhile you barely made it to 51 or still at level 50. After that, you go to the next zone, and now the mobs are already 53 or even 54.

 

If you ask anyone in chat, they'll tell you to avoid Makeb and do the old level 50 dailies, FP, and HM FP, and then hit Makeb once you are leveled up and geared up. That shouldn't be the way things work. If you release a new xpac, you should make sure people who get there at level 50 can actually quest and level up without too many issues, as it's been from 1 to 50.

 

I didn't have too much trouble with it after I hit level 50. I had only done the Illum story missions, and the Lost Island, and I was geared enough to do Makeb. I didn't stomp everything in my path like I do now on CZ 198, Makeb, and Oricon dailies, but, I had fun. I also didn't notice the enemies leveling up too much, honestly, my only problem with Makeb was the apparent prestigious Goon Academy located on Makeb, in which all the galaxies brightest goons went to study Goonism, leading to Makeb having 100 percent Goon density.

 

EDIT: Oh wow, I thought you were OP for some reason. To the OP, while not having an individualized Class Story does damper replay value, I think, individually, Makeb's story is better then some of the class story chapters.

Edited February 19, 2014 by LordGarmaZabi

Makeb storyline was better than some parts of some class stories, but there's this little difference: class stories per planet were way faster to do than Makeb planet storyline. Class stories were usually one quest per area and that quest was a pretty fast one (go to a story area, talk to a guy, done). While Makeb is more like go there and plant explosives, then go there and secure a holoterminal, then rescue prisoners, then kill x amount of mobs, then kill the chief of those mobs, next area. (Okay, that was a bit over the top, but you got the point.) And just like most of the other planetary storylines, it was interesting the first time and okay with the second time. But after that, it just gets boring. It's like they wanted to give you a lot of quest but not too many questgivers, so they just made all the quests one long quest you are "forced" to do.

 

I'm playing through Imperial Makeb third time right now, and I'd really be ready to skip almost everything that comes after Cytharat stops showing up and just go straight to Archon.

Yes the story should continue asap, maybe Marr with some fancy isotope thingies(that don't look like lamas).

 

There's mystery, there's evil sith(which is cool and rational), maybe some new mysterious moon...

 

and will be fun to kill some more DCmembers...

 

 

"I wont be satisfied before i'll put my lightning through Darth Nox's chest"...

I don't know, I actually rather liked Makeb on my agent. I took the batman ending and erased my identity, the intro for me was a bit different with Marr making it clear that he has spent a lot of time and effort looking for me and my crew, that we should be executed, but that he desperately needs our help, that the empire is falling apart. That was enough motivation for me. The story was also rather believable. As an agent its my job to look out for the little guys, the members of the strike team sent on a suicidal mission in a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war. As things get bad and people start dropping like flies it does build up some drama and I definitely did feel some rage building up towards the Archon after what happened to Sytharat and Katha.

 

I think the imperial story was done very well actually, would have been nice to have some companions commentary or consequences to the various choices but it was still a blast to play through the first time (I only have one imp so no need to rerun it a bunch).

 

The pub story however was just painful to play. It was horribly boring. You and your team never felt threatened, in the pub story you were the unstoppable wrecking ball kill bajjilions of mercs, casually strolling into secret fortified enemy facilities and killing everything that moves, then walking into taborros palace for a disappointingly short and boring fight followed by an equal boring kill him or let him die choice. Booooooooring. There was never any real threat, no memorable characters, no worthwhile choices (they all boiled down to "here's a scumbag, do you want to kill him or spare him? either way you'll hear nothing of it so have some light/dark points as you like"). The scene at the end of the imp story line where Katha staggers into the throne room and bluffs the Archon into thinking you're going to destory the planet was brilliant, the fact that you couldn't save her form the wounds she recieved was horrible. The fact that you could at least save Lord Sytharat was uplifting, and if you cared at all about the fate of the empire and your team you had some real drive to do this right. On the pub side you just stroll through blasting things. There are no moments of inspiration, real danger, not a single major setback.