Hello There! We're the Recruitment Department for The Remnants of Hope's SWTOR Division! Thank you for taking the time to check out The Remnants of Hope! Remnants of Hope is going through a period of rebuilding at the moment as we rebuild following a split in our division’s community, and we are looking for individuals who are interested in being part of a large community that currently spans 4 different games. We remain a family friendly community that believes in a “Play How You Want” mentality and work to be open and inclusive to people and have formed a mature community from all walks of life. We are a community that was founded in 2009, 13 years ago now and have seen many communities and members come and go, including some of our divisions in it. Currently we play WoW, ESO, GW 2, and of course Star Wars the Old Republic. A big part of our success is our highly organized community and our approach to membership, leadership, and what it all means. Our primary focus is our community, from the wider level to the divisions that play in each game, and providing both the tools and resources to organize and play as we want to play. While things may be a little slim at the moment on the SWTOR side of things if and when you join and become a full member you also get access to the community as a whole, and the ability to play these games with thriving and engaged divisions with their great leadership and members in our community. We have both a main Republic and Imperial guild for people to play and engage content with whatever faction they want, and is a great place to hang out while leveling alts or re-experiencing the story. We offer weekly events for PvE and PvP, though at this moment we are not running Operations of any kind as we rebuild our group and leadership for that. If you are interested in learning how to run operations or be part of building a new team there you are more than welcome to apply, but we do want you to know where things stand currently to avoid any false expectations. Goal: Our main goal is the server as a place of relaxation and fun for everyone. In order to ensure that each of our members has the best experience possible, we sustain an atmosphere of integrity and respect with a constant drive to improve. What we are looking for: We are looking for mature, fun loving, and freindly natured people who are also team players ready and willing to dig in and help us rebuild, and to become part of the history and legacy of the RoH community, both here in SWTOR and abroad. If this sounds like something that would interest you, or you just want to see what we are all about, click the link down below to begin your journey with us at the Remnants of Hope. Website: https://www.remnantsofhope.com/ Apply Now: remnantsofhope.com/boards/index.php?/topic/8550-how-to-join-remnants-of-hope-application/ Timezone: Eastern - International Most Active Playtimes: 7pm EDT - 12am EDT for most events, but players on during most parts of the day Server: Star Forge Voice/Chat: Discord & Forums Recruitment Status: Open Division Commander: Opinfinwal

I'll apologize if that example made it seem like I was saying they could and should redo old content, or even a real dig at it, that was not the intent. I would much much rather they spend what resources they do have on new content and moving things forward on new fronts, like i would love it if there were more moments for current slate of companions like Lana and Theron. The purpose of the thread, which admittedly could have gotten lost in the bloat and lengthy posts, was to call out a problem I saw in how quests were designed in terms of active vs passive voice for the republic. That example wasn't meant to be "redo this" but just to point out how different the experience for the factions tends to be in the games, with Imperial characters always feeling like they have more agency and republic ones always reacting to something. KOTFE and KOTET were I think in some ways far more enjoyable for me on my republic toons because there was way more power in the voice (even if the choices weren't everyone's cup of tea) and i found my characters who had been like almost entirely light side finding shades of grey and complexity they'd been lacking in earlier content. Now with Onslaught and heading into Legacy I noticed the voice was shifting back into the passive again, with a real emphasis on the imps are now doing something what are we going to do in response. And it's sort of jarring because that moral complexity and agency for the character is just... gone again. So yes, like you said it was just meant to be something to keep in mind for moving forward and to watch for. I do actually still really enjoy republic content, don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for good hero stories. And there are certain moments like say Tau and Arn's relationship that are impactful, because your character gets a choice in shaping how that goes. It's just that I see this slip back into passive voice as the dominant voice of the Republic experience again, and that really is a problem. The passive voice has it's place, but you never want it to be the dominant one in a character narrative driven game. I'd just love to see more focus on the active voice as things move forward, especially as it's clear they are moving to bring the republic and imperial storylines back in synch for a shared universe state.

Actually as I had this thought after, here's a quick look at what I mean to help it be a bit more clear, and 1 really quick easy difference that could have been made to change it. Dromund Kaas vs Coruscant Planet story Arcs: Dromund Kaas: There is this cult of revanites and you are asked to infiltrate them and expose them by a sith. Coruscant: There are infrastructure problems and you are asked to help fix them. At this point both sides start in a very similar way. But from here they diverge wildly in terms of voice. Dromund Kaas: Choose how you are infiltrating them, and while you are there how do you accomplish this goal. When it comes to Revan's Mask do you get it to the person who makes your goal or revealing the Revanites easier/more direct/better reward, or to the person who might do the most good with it. You have the trial where you answer questions and though there is no DS or LS rewards to them you get a good chance to flesh out your thoughts. End of arc, you meet the master and you are given a choice, do you agree to bring down the Revanites as originally intended or to help them live the way they want and divert attention. Coruscant: You arrive at the hydrosupply to find it broken and after fixing it you are given a choice, help the poor kids or be an *** and send them off. You go to the Justicar section then after this and are greeted by the Ugnaughts who have also taken parts because they were trying to fix a large problem for themselves. Do you help the Ugnaughts or do you not. Finally the last step is a simple go to x and fix x 3 times. There was way more impact to the Dromund Kaas arc, and there was so much more that could be learned by how your character would respond in those particular moments. Conversely for the Republic you get there and the choices you are faced with aren't about whether to repair the thing or not but how you dealt with someone who did something to it. And there was no real reason to choose darkside options here other then honestly being an ***. A really simple fix to this could have changed it immensely. What if instead of getting there after something was completely broken you got there in time to witness what was happening. Then you get to choose with the Kids whether you let them sabotage the water supply to help them out, which hurts others, or you stop them as you were asked to do for the greater good. Similar thing for the Ugnaughts. Then at the very end instead of a simple go back to x and turn in you get the chance to justify your actions. Say you let them get broken, do you come clean and tell them what happened and why though it might endanger the alliance, or do you hide what you did to try and protect it. Nothing mechanically would need to really have changed in how you experienced the quest, but a simple change from passive to active voice really changes the impact of the story and character development. And it's not about being more aggressive or the Republic doing something the Republic wouldn't do, it's about your character and defining how they react when doing something vs how do they handle something that was done to them.

Thanks for the responses and reads, it's been fun to hear some other thoughts on things. One quick clarification on my end as I saw it come up with Initiative/Active = aggressive which wasn't entirely what I meant, though I do think there is room for that as well. Edit: Clear example in next post might also make this more clear than following but leaving it for posterity/read after. Republic Initiative on things: So the game itself is full of examples of the Republic doing things, many highlighted by phalczen which is a good summary. I think my issue is that when it comes to the player experience it's all as a passive bystander of events. The great summary of stuff Phalczen mentions is stuff that happens to and around the character, not something you get to actively really be a part of. And there is way more impact in a story when you are deciding what you are choosing to do, or not, vs always responding to what someone else is doing to you. Yes on Iokath the Republic is involved and you do get a choice there, as well as the loyalist and saboteur content later on. My complaint is more that outside of some class content stuff in the 1-50 content every planet and sidequest is almost exclusively the player character reacting to what someone else is doing to them, and not what they are themselves doing. This is what the passive voice is, you are not an active participant in the plotline, rather you are a bystander/reactant to it. And while i love a lot of the old content there is a certain shallowness to this in that most of those options boil down to 1) LS: we are better than this or 2) DS: they deserve to die for this, 3) How does their action benefit me? It's really never about exploring what your characters stand for but rather what you think about what others are doing. Conversely when you are part of the group actively doing things you get to choose a much broader range of choices, and they all explore what you believe in. Do you support the action, if yes to what extent do you support the action, if no what are you going to do about it, do you care about what happens on the other side afterwards, and what do you think about those who share your side but who disagree with you. I think one of the reasons there is (or at least was) pretty broad consensus that the Imperial experience was more interesting kind of boils down to this fact. The entire game is largely about what are you doing, why are you doing it, and here's what happens as a result of this. The republic experience is one where almost everything is happening to you, and your story is about how you react to them. I'm not necessarily saying they need to be the aggressors in like invading or occupying a planet Balmora or Corellia style, but the faction narrative would benefit much more from them giving players things to do that let them define who their characters are based on their actions (which is generally more rewarding) vs the passive voice default they currently have which is defining themselves solely on what has been done to them. I actually think both sides could benefit hugely from a mixture of the voices with both getting to define themselves on their own actions but also what others are doing to them. In writing authors are strongly encouraged to write in an Active voice as it's more powerful, especially in video games where players need to feel their characters have agency and impact. There is a time and a place for the passive voice as well, especially in a game like SWTOR where there are two sides to the narrative and both sides need their moments to stand out and do things. And the Republic is doing things, even more than phalczen mentioned, but even then it's something that happens to the character, not something they are actively choosing themselves. I just think the game would benefit so much more from that side's characters gaining an active voice in the story vs always having the story happen to them.

Now i realize the forums are perhaps not the best place for honest discourse, and this is not a x faction is better, or criticism of the story at large. I'm a returning player who's been playing through a mixture of republic and imperial storylines, with a variety of moral choices, and different decisions made in the expansion and there's been something that's been bugging me so I spent a bit of time thinking about what it was exactly and wanted to just share my insights about a game I really do enjoy. Also enjoy the username as it's over a decade old from a time when i was a much edgier youth at the start of SWTOR, as one does, and it's stuck now lol. I've been struck by how varying the narrative impact has been across classes and factions, how they did in KOTET and KOTFE, and where they stand now at the end of Onslaught now that they are returning to faction bit. I actually really enjoy hero stories, and i enjoy the struggle and the conflict, making personal sacrifices to benefit others. And while the republic stories really do feel geared for this I also really struggle with retention and interest. At the same time with Imperial I find myself far more engaged with a much wider ranger of reactions. There's content that makes me genuinely uncomfortable, content i enjoy, and even bit where i find a lot of shades of grey that are enjoyable and make me question if it was the 'right' thing to do. Love it or hate it the imperial side takes your character and puts them into the heart of the faction, exposes you to the extremely ugly side, the positive bits, and the many many things in-between and it makes you take a stand on things. You know who your character is in this world, and what they believe in, and what they are willing to do for it. And by and large they are the faction that is always doing something so you are always engaged, and always making choices into whether you support it or not. You also see the changes play out in the game itself, not behind the scenes or in codex entries, and you generally get some voice in defining how they feel about it. And this is where I think a lot of the Republic's problems are, and honestly something i see reflect in a lot of the rp communities around the republic content as well. The Republic has in almost every bit of content been the one having something done to them, at least in terms of what we get to play. If you're reading the codex logs, look into characters and story beats you do see that the Republic actually is doing things, but we only play in the passive voice content. Even the upcoming expansion is once again, the empire is invading some place and the Republic side is going to be trying to stop them. And it feels like such a missed opportunity because there is so much content out there where the Republic should be driving things, so many areas and themes it should be doing and others reacting too. And there is so much more to the Republic morality then what is ostensibly hit upper right to do good and win. So many realities about living in a moral society fighting an evil power that should require thinking about what choices you are making, and far more importantly, there should be consequences that make you think the way a lot of imp ones do. I really, genuinely love SWTOR for the game that it is, and even when i play other bigger MMO's I always find myself coming back for it, and the world they've built that is interesting and full of conflict, both internal and external, that is waiting to be explored. So this is not ripping on what's been done. But these are four really simple changes i think that could add so much to the setting and experience at large. Edit: I realized I forgot to mention this but there will be spoilers for old content. 1) Be Proactive: It's crazy to me that the game is ten years old and during all this time the Republic has not once had a real storyline where they invaded an imperial planet, one where the citizens were truly loyal to and supportive of the empire, and they have never had to deal with how this works. You read and hear about the conflict raging around you, and the game is nothing but planet the imps are invading and doing sneaky stuff with. But we know there were so many republic characters in the setting calling the shots who genuinely believed the only way to end the war was the total defeat/destruction of the empire and the sith in particular. Jedi, troopers and more who passionately felt this way and were working towards it. But... no one's every really had to deal with what this actually looks like. The closest we got was the invasion of Ziost at the end of the Revan content, where Seresh and the republic fleet gladly committed themselves to invading an imperial world in trouble and vulnerable, and we know from the story beats they killed a lot of people because this helped fuel Vitiate's return... but we never see or deal with this. There's no grappling with how will the republic handle a population that doesn't greet them as heroes but as conquerers. And we've seen from Ord Mantell that Republic troops in that position are capable of a wide range of things. But even more than this we've never really outside of the consular story dealt with the politics and complexities of the republic and what goes into maintaining it, adding to it, or keeping things from leaving. There's so much out there for the Republic to actually be doing, and for Republic characters to have the ability to actually take a stance on, and it's just a shame it's never really happened. 2) Morality: Good doesn't have to always be nice, and it doesn't have to always win. One reason i have always been a bit bemused by the "choose your side" content was how much of the current content is built so you really only get the good story if you are choosing light side options, and the darkside is really just subtractive. It's not exactly surprising that upwards of 2/3'rds of the time lightside wins, because it's really the only way to get more content. And I'm not saying the darkside should win more to be clear... it's more a note on how shallow so much of the lightside stuff is. It's very much a one note story, and every time you choose it you win with no consequences or depth to the actions. But there's so much more room for this to do more. Imagine if during the expansions when you were the commander of the alliance you chose lightside every time and there was a story beat later on where you'd spread yourself to thin and now you couldn't do something later on. Imagine confronting a choice where doing the right thing personally was bad for society at large. There's so much room to really make the light side options more impactful then push to win every time like they are now. And the Imp side proves this because there are times where dark side is better for the empire, and other times where light side is being selfless for the empire. It doesn't have to be so one tone and shallow, the good can feel so much more satisfying or meaningful when the alternatives are solid and worth considering. 3) The Jedi are Problematic: There's a lot with the Jedi that is really just never addressed or looked into. Which is a shame because we do look into a lot of these things with the Sith, and imperial characters do get to take stances on it. So maybe we could as we currently are seeking to rebuild the jedi order in the game actually look at what we're rebuilding and ask ourselves if we're okay with that. Let's start by say looking at the youngling problem. There is a very questionable ethics in the fact the Jedi Order takes children from families when they are very young and take them away to be trained as Jedi. There is a logical reason, it prevents them from developing undo emotional attachments, something that's hard for any jedi to deal with. But there's so much emotional stuff in this that's ripe for examining as well. Have a story beat where you find a child that's strong in the force and should be trained as a Jedi. Mediate between the family and the Jedi and resolve it as they see fit. Have the lightside option being taking the child for the order so they can grow up as a defender of the republic and disciplined so as not to fall to the darkside... and then make the darkside option keeping the family together and make it the more emotionally satisfying one. Like point 2 says good doesn't have to be nice, and there's a lot about the Jedi that just isn't nice. Like... just everything that happened to Theron as a kid, really just awful stuff and they don't really feel bad about it. Another thing is the fact that in the base game you had jedi characters actually face darkside/lightside points for dealing with emotional attachments... then you dropped that immediately and never looked back. But now that we're rebuilding the order it might be worth a questline dealing with that, especially if characters are dating someone as that is expressly forbidden by the code and is a darkside option. The point being they don't need to be just reacting to the Sith, there's a lot there for them to be doing and dealing with. 4) Internal Politics: The empire is full of this and honestly it's some of it's better content. And the Republic has this too... but it all happens behind the scenes. But there is so much for the game to do when looking at what keeps a republic of thousands of planets functioning in a war that's been going on for around half a century. What compromises have to be made morally for the greater good of keeping the republic together and functioning and what are the consequences of saying no. There are the occasional story beats that deal with corruption in the game but it's treated as if it was just pointless self serving. What if though the players had to confront making a really uncomfortable compromise for the greater good of the republic, or they could choose to do the right thing and say no but watch as it genuinely weakened the republic as a result, as least initially. There are so few genuine moments of complex morality put forward to republic players in terms of what's the right outcome, and more importantly who is it right for, when so much of it is portrayed again as choose lightside and everyone always wins. Mostly because again, it's all happening behind the scenes... so maybe let players experience it and make their own choices. That's it, that's my ted talk. I hope for anyone that read it all the way through it was at least entertaining and maybe something to agree or disagree with. I love the game and I do love playing republic characters, i love the feel good moments and the ethics and principles the republic and jedi stand for. I just feel there are so many missed opportunities because the game is written as if everything has to happen to them, and they are never the ones really doing things. We see all this intrigue and drama happening behind the scenes but we never really get a voice in stuff or a chance to really choose where our characters fit in the Republic or where their lines in the sand are. Which is just sad because that's my favorite part of playing Empire. As uncomfortable as those choices can be at times they are the ones I remember and I'd really just love more of that in the Republic too. Especially coming out of KOTFE and KOTET where regardless of what you felt about the story you had a voice and you were taking stands on things. Now it's like we're going back to the default "the empire is invading what do we do?" and I really hope we get more content that looks way more at what exactly the republic is, and that our characters get to go from a passive voice of what's being done to them and a more active voice about where they stand on things and what they are going to do about it.