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7.0 sets an awful precedent


ThunderMop

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I don’t understand why Charles Boyd and BW insist on using the solo flashpoint method to deliver their stories. The only times this wasn’t the case was Makeb in 2.0 and then 4.0-6.0 in the Knights of (blah blah blah) expansions, and even then content came out once every month or even two before we progressed the story. I didn’t forget, I won’t let BioWare forget either.

 

The story flashpoints are just piling up and they take SO LONG to get through. Imagine a new player with a subscription (lol) wanting to go through all of the content they missed. The genius of BW put in over 20 of these things just to pad the runtime of their new content and expansions.

 

Why not make Elom a playable planet like Makeb or Yavin IV? Republic and Imperial forward bases can be the hubs for each faction, with taxis taking them to the temple of Darth Nul for a daily area, and they can start the flashpoint from there if you really want there to be one. How was this not thought of? In 7.0 we get a sliver of Manaan, a short story flashpoint, and then what? I get more is coming but I’m tired of saying that. Why is there ALWAYS more stuff coming? We’re not getting new content for at least another month or two and by then people will just leave like they always do.

 

If SWTOR is still so profitable for EA why won’t they fund a bigger dev team? This shouldn’t be called an expansion and I hope others help BioWare realize that. A lot has been stacked against this dev team and I understand that, but at the end of the day look at the new “story threads” we are looking forward to… *spoilers*

- Malgus is back!

-Oh wait he’s breaking free again we don’t have control of him

- We need to figure out what he is up to

- We smacked him up around and put him in prison again lol

- Mandalorians are having mommy issues

-*crickets*

 

What future does this game have if this expansion is the basis for all moving forward? Not even talking about the awful U.I changes, as well as the technical issues that MANY are experiencing, when are we going to feel the effects of this story? A 30-45 minute long story flashpoint is getting to be the WORST way to deliver this content. Bring back the expansive planets, bring back faction stories (doesn’t even have to be class stories), bring in more people to help maintain this game!

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Yeah, that's something I noticed, too. Overall, it feels even less fulfilling than Onslaught, which was at least twice as long and had daily missions. There's absolutely nothing to do on Manaan once you finish it through once. Hell, the whole Manaan story just feels like dumb filler content. At least you felt like you were doing something to help the war effort on Onderon and Mek-Sha.

 

I also hate how the story just keeps jumping from plot point to plot point.

 

"Oh, hey! There's a renewed conflict between the Republic and Empire!"

"Oh, wait, Malgus has gone rouge!"

"Oh wait, Vitiate is back...again."

"Oh wait, now Mandalorians are causing issues!"

"Oh wait, we forgot about Malgus!"

"Oh wait, we're still fighting a war-"

 

Ok, you get my point.

 

I was actually looking forward to seeing how LotS would tie up loose ends and maybe get a narrative set, but nope. It feels empty. I'm sure they'll release more story updates, but that begs the question as to why they didn't just add this before.

 

So, I agree with you, buddy. And I, too, am pretty skeptical on how SWTOR's going forward.

 

Part of me hopes they'll get their **** together, but I dunno man...

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Yeah, I honestly didn't think the last story was very good. I was so sick of the Emperor character, whatever iteration he was in. I was really hoping the ship of sleeping Jedi was going to bring us something new.

 

I rarely have time to play through a flashpoing that is going to take hours. And it honestly isn't fun for me. I started playing this game because my son liked it and we used to duo the class stories together, especially back when you had to do the missions outside the class stories in order to level to where you needed to be. But he didn't play much longer after Rishi because it was all solo stuff.

 

Even now, I enjoy going back and playing class stories more than anything else. I haven't made many male characters, so I go back and do that to see how their stories are different. It's more fun than grinding through Flashpoints, especially when the story content just isn't very good.

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I never liked the story flashpoint system, but it wasn't as egregious when it was mixed with regular content. Given that the latest 'expansion' is literally just a story flashpoint and a zone that may as well be a story flashpoint because it plays as one is kind of grating.

 

Especially since Elom is one of the visually best environments in the game and its reduced to one of the most tedious flashpoints released yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Although I don't mind doing flashpoints when it's my choosing, I absolutely despise these forced story mode flashpoints with <insert dumb underleved new companion> to make the content take longer so it feels like there is actual content.

I hope they start moving away from this. Not sure why this is a thing other some players crying for more difficult content. They have other flashpoints, ops etc., to get that fix if they choose. Regular story should never be made to feel too difficult, tedious and frustrating. Not everyone is geared the same way either for this stuff especially with this horrible system we have now and crafting not worth anything anymore besides selling your soul to get mats.

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the only flashpoints that were fun were near the beginning of the game, when they did SOR. Invading Tython or Korriban as the opposite faction with an awesome helper droid, plus your own COMPANION OF CHOICE was good.

 

Forcing underleveled companions on us that don't know how to stay out of a red circle is dumb.:mad:

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  • 4 months later...

i also got tired of the solo story flashpoint method, having just resubbed and played thru 5.0 to the end of LotS 7.0

 

Will these solo story flashpoints even be used as regular flashpoints to play with parties? If not, it seems like a huge waste of resources. Creating the whole zone and then just discarding it after one use.

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Yeah... went with my spouse back to the game, absolutely GIDDY to do all the cool story content together. It was awesome! Had an absolute blast!

... until the expansions hit. After SoR, we... did _nothing_ together. I think we had 2 quests we were able to do together in all of KoTFE or KOTET and the thrill and excitement died. We were hoping to play together. In an MMO. We mostly spend our time in either our solo instanced worlds or solo flashpoints. Absolutely killed the will to continue. We never even finished to the max cap because there was no content for us to do together. What in the world is a point of an mmo if you can't play together?

 

Yeah, it's an RPG first and all that, but if you insist on being an MMO, perhaps enable your players to play together, besides mind-numbing flashpoints that don't really provide anything useful anyway if you're not even levelcapped. Massive turn off, this was.

 

And I'm experiencing a legit grieving period as I really, REALLY got into my characters (an agent and a trooper) but I see no point in continuing as ... well. I wanted to play an mmo.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I don’t understand why Charles Boyd and BW insist on using the solo flashpoint method to deliver their stories. The only times this wasn’t the case was Makeb in 2.0 and then 4.0-6.0 in the Knights of (blah blah blah) expansions, and even then content came out once every month or even two before we progressed the story. I didn’t forget, I won’t let BioWare forget either.

 

The story flashpoints are just piling up and they take SO LONG to get through. Imagine a new player with a subscription (lol) wanting to go through all of the content they missed. The genius of BW put in over 20 of these things just to pad the runtime of their new content and expansions.

 

Why not make Elom a playable planet like Makeb or Yavin IV? Republic and Imperial forward bases can be the hubs for each faction, with taxis taking them to the temple of Darth Nul for a daily area, and they can start the flashpoint from there if you really want there to be one. How was this not thought of? In 7.0 we get a sliver of Manaan, a short story flashpoint, and then what? I get more is coming but I’m tired of saying that. Why is there ALWAYS more stuff coming? We’re not getting new content for at least another month or two and by then people will just leave like they always do.

 

If SWTOR is still so profitable for EA why won’t they fund a bigger dev team? This shouldn’t be called an expansion and I hope others help BioWare realize that. A lot has been stacked against this dev team and I understand that, but at the end of the day look at the new “story threads” we are looking forward to… *spoilers*

- Malgus is back!

-Oh wait he’s breaking free again we don’t have control of him

- We need to figure out what he is up to

- We smacked him up around and put him in prison again lol

- Mandalorians are having mommy issues

-*crickets*

 

What future does this game have if this expansion is the basis for all moving forward? Not even talking about the awful U.I changes, as well as the technical issues that MANY are experiencing, when are we going to feel the effects of this story? A 30-45 minute long story flashpoint is getting to be the WORST way to deliver this content. Bring back the expansive planets, bring back faction stories (doesn’t even have to be class stories), bring in more people to help maintain this game!

 

I just want to go on record saying that I agree 100% with this OP. I feel sorry for the Devs but I can't lie, Manaan in particular is just awful in every way. I couldn't even finish it the first time, and I'm definitely not going back until it's fixed. That as well as pretty much everything else people are complaining about is so depressing to me. I've played this game for over 10 years now, and don't know where else to go. But now I'm actually looking for another game. But I don't want to leave, I want someone at EA / /Bioware to please pay attention....do something before it's too late. This game IS worth spending more money on!!! We need something that makes our characters feel important again, and to get us emotionally invested again. The current storylines are dull and boring. So I can't even see anything to look forward to right now, I'm sorry to say.

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  • 1 year later...
On 8/6/2022 at 8:04 PM, Foxfirerose said:

 

I just want to go on record saying that I agree 100% with this OP. I feel sorry for the Devs but I can't lie, Manaan in particular is just awful in every way. I couldn't even finish it the first time, and I'm definitely not going back until it's fixed. That as well as pretty much everything else people are complaining about is so depressing to me. I've played this game for over 10 years now, and don't know where else to go. But now I'm actually looking for another game. But I don't want to leave, I want someone at EA / /Bioware to please pay attention....do something before it's too late. This game IS worth spending more money on!!! We need something that makes our characters feel important again, and to get us emotionally invested again. The current storylines are dull and boring. So I can't even see anything to look forward to right now, I'm sorry to say.

It is much cheaper and easier to make the flashpoint stories that are extremely lite on story telling and character interactions/dialogue/choices and consequences.  Why dedicate the tiem and resources to making a threated planet story that then ties into a broader galactic conflict when you can just drop a flashpoint a few times a year and just attach it on to your PC's story with 1 cutscene. 

I get they are limited by their resources but geez, if they want the came to continue and charge people monthly subscription to get to play these new storylines then for F's sake make them better quality.  I only drop in this game for a couple of months every few years, and am never impressed enough to stick around.  I already cancelled my sub this 'round' and will only play until the sub time is over, 3 weeks now I think.  Why would I stay and keep playing when I get barely any of the content I want to play (a story/character driven RPG) and when it does come it is subpar? 

And to think; we could have had a KOTOR III instead.  I will never forgive bioware for doing a MMO instead, cheap money grab banking on the strength of the Star Wars brand and the KOTOR story.  This and what they have done with the Dragon Age series.  So much potential, now they feel like a brand that is in a death spiral.  

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5 hours ago, Whykara said:

SWTOR is literally the most expensive game ever produced.

Depends how you define "most expensive game".  If it's defined by how much it cost to produce, yes.  If it's defined by how much players have spent playing it, it loses badly to e.g. Game of War: Fire Age or Fortnite.

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On 1/21/2024 at 11:44 AM, Whykara said:

SWTOR is literally the most expensive game ever produced.

MMO that require subscription to play are designed to be a money grab; that is why you have to pay for the game on launch AND pay a monthly subscription.  when I say "cheap" i mean cheap in terms of ethics; not in term of overall production cost.  And while the game was the most expensive to produce they have been cutting corners and downsizing support ever since launch.  This means the new content they MUST produce to justify a subscription fee has been getting made cheaper and with worse quality; and that trajectory is very unlikely to change.  

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3 minutes ago, mcguireptr said:

This means the new content they MUST produce to justify a subscription fee has been getting made cheaper and with worse quality; and that trajectory is very unlikely to change.  

Yes absolutely, the new content is not worth the subscription money at all, especially because we get like two content drops a year. I was just saying that KOTOR 3 would have been a lot cheaper to produce.

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13 minutes ago, Whykara said:

Yes absolutely, the new content is not worth the subscription money at all, especially because we get like two content drops a year. I was just saying that KOTOR 3 would have been a lot cheaper to produce.

Alot cheaper to produce and maintain but no way to milk users for a monthly sub fee.  

There is truly nothing about his MMO that is worth a sub fee.  Just make it 100% free to play and rely on the cartel market sales and charge a 1 time fee for expansions. but they won't do that because they are milking users for profit.  That is obviously all the care about.  Milk it until it is dry.  they are in a death spiral; which means they are the stage of a business where they will charge their consumers as much as they possibly can for as long as they possibly can while providing as little quality as possible until they close shop.  

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