A/V The Old Republic MMO: The New Official Thread

Aww. They killed Liam Dentiri.

 

Is Revan behind both sides' operation?

 

Wait...Revan?

 

I bet it was him.

 

So... Are there any Republic players that have done a walkthrough of our two new flashpoints?

 

Apparently player housing is coming.

 

My interest in the game was already renewed by the fact that I'm almost 50 on my Warrior so I'll be starting a Consular soon; then the videos of the 2.7 Flashpoints doubly renewed it. Now it's triply renewed! I hope the housing is free (though Cartel Market furniture is a given). I guess you could pay a small fee of credits each month like a "rent," but I'd prefer just a free house which comes with basic furniture, and more "advanced" furniture that looks fancier, and things like training dummies and GTN terminals, can be bought for CCs or something. Here's hoping!

 

I'm pretty mentally checked out on SWTOR now. The game isn't what it was supposed to be without continuations of the class stories which are the foundation of the game, so in terms of new content there's nothing to distinguish it from most other MMORPGs from a story perspective -- see Guild Wars 2. I still have interest in the class stories which I haven't finished, but TBH besides the upcoming double XP weekend I don't know when I will do them, and the F2P restrictions are really crippling so it's not something where I feel like I will pay $15 to play it one weekend a month.

 

The player housing announcement sounds nice, but that depends on how they implement it. The player ship already serves as a home base, and even there, the nicer stuff (mailbox, vendor droid, GTN) costs a lot of credits. Still, could be fun depending on what they put in. Already saw a comment that it'd be nice if your companion was included, which reminds me of parts of Mass Effect.

Saw the scenes associated with the new flashpoints on Youtube- looks like something is brewing, though it probably won't be until the next update that we find out more. Kind of sad seeing those NPCs that your low-level Jedi or Sith character talked to as bosses in this flashpoint. Too bad they don't get any dialogue, that might've been funny.

2.7 should be pretty interesting (they're reusing old Consular PVP gear as new Legacy gear, but as I've never done PVP much, it'll be nice to get access to it, and something different from the soldier or the ugly Oricon gear). IF the player housing is on Coruscant or something like that, just hope that there will be an option to go directly to there rather than having to travel through Coruscant- most planets take a while to load on my computer.

 

That's pretty cool. I was wondering if TOR was ever going to get around to housing. Now I'm curious to see how they're going to handle it. The maps don't really have space for Galaxies-style houses, I don't think, so ME-style apartment suites would have to be the way to go. I mean, that's what the trailer sort of seems to imply anyway, but I guess it depends on what planets you can buy a place at.

 

I would guess it would be on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas. I would like Nar Shaddaa, though. Other than those three planets, I don't really think it would work on the more "theme park" type planets, nor necessarily should it. Alderaan might work, but Taris, Balmorra, Quesh, Hoth, Belsavis, and Voss don't really seem appropriate, and Corellia is a warzone.

 

Well, they could do what Aion did, where a new zone was added where you could get a free apartment or bid at auction for one of the larger houses that are there. But... I doubt they'll bother to do anything that in depth.

That would definitely be very, very cool...

Sadly, I'm very skeptical about the chances of it happening, though, if you think how they aren't bothering with continuing the class stories, so I'm equally doubtful they'll bother to record new dialogue for each class's companion... shame though.

 

I'm glad they didn't abandon this game but tried to add new ideas, still would love to see more class story.

 

From what I understand, the game design was fundamentally flawed, because the cost of retaining the voice actors to record new dialogue for every single class character of each gender, along with every single companion for that character, was prohibitive for the continuation of class storylines, so all future content is going to be what we've gotten since the game went F2P. I guess EA or Bioware expected the game to be similar to WoW with millions of subscribers so they could afford to generate that new content, and it wasn't.

That's why it's always a shame when a subscription MMO goes F2P, because that basically kills its potential for new content. Once it goes F2P -- or rather, the reason why it went F2P -- was due to the lower than expected revenues, which results in less money to invest in new content, and going F2P results in a sizable amount of time spent creating new content being spent on the "cash shop" aesthetic items that people pay money for, rather than gameplay content.

 

Even from a story perspective it was flawed/meant to end from the beginning. The game starts with the player being special and elevates them constantly further.

 

I assume that "leveling" is purely a game mechanic and isn't representative in the story. When I face Imperial troopers in the endgame, they're level 50, but when I face them leaving Tython on the Esseles, they're level ~10. I don't think I'm supposed to interpret that the Empire is sending progressively more powerful soldiers whom coincidentally happen to match with my personal progression in their ability, but that so-called "trash mobs" are perpetually at a similar level of threat to you to always represent that base level of threat. Which is to say, I don't think that the characters necessarily increase their power at the rate which the game mechanics suggest.

 

Presumably.

But it kind of sucks, and I wish RPGs would stop doing it. I invariably prefer more "IU representive" progression for player characters.

It also bothered me in Dragon Age when, like, all the common as muck footsoldiers you faced down by the Denerim endgame were in silverite/dragonbone armour. Lore wise, they should have been in veridium or red steel, tops.

 

I imagine Chessalvakia was more getting at how you end up a Dark Council member and stuff -- albeit, of course, nothing's ever stopped Luke Skywalker insisting on doing every minor task.

As for F2P...? Interestingly, I'm seeing more and more MMOs start out F2P from day one, and it working out more or less fine. Certainly, I've not really see anything that has as regular updates as Warcraft, but a lot of the Asian stuff like Aion still have pretty big annual patches. They survive more off the cosmetic market though, which TOR just... doesn't seem to have really been built for. Its got nice graphics, but the artistic style does limit the desire -- and, honestly, 90% of the Cartel outfits just suck.

It's strange, as Aion sells mountains of levelling and item upgrade crud, which I believe sell by the bucketload, but TOR...? Do many people bother buying XP Boosts? It's always seemed redundant to me, tbh. And yay, you can get a few new hairstyle options, but... that's the problem: a few. If they want the cosmetic market to be their bread and butter, I've not understood why they just did a few human hairstyles, and stopped there; they should have rolled out tons of custom haircuts not available normally, and lots more cross-species customisation, but... I dunno, I just feel they've never really got how to milk F2P properly.

Heck, something that would have been utterly awesome? Faction change quests. They talked about these as a possibility back before release, but it ended up not happening. But now that they've abandoned class stories, and the endgame content is now purely Empire or Republic, without anything further, then there's little preventing a redeemed Sith Warrior playing through the same Republic questline, as the dialogue is all generic now anyway, without class reference being needed. And there again they'd be able to make some money, as both Warcraft and Aion make you pay for faction changes, so TOR could do the same thing.

 

Player housing?!? Aw hell. Do yall have any idea how much it'll set me back to buy and furnish eight houses? It's a good thing I stopped playing after finishing off that last character.





Oh, who am I kidding. I'll get sucked back in, and find myself playing interior decorator...

 

The increase in power isn't just mechanical. In ~ 3 years my Sith went from a powerful force sensitive slave to sitting on the Dark Council. Most of the other classes have a similar rise in power over an equally short period. Instead of earning power it's handed to us on a platter then boosted to the sky. If they had intended for the game to have a continuing story they would never have done that.

 

I'm not saying that there isn't an increase in the player's power. I'm just saying that the game mechanics exaggerate it.

 

If your calling a title/occupation in SWTOR a game mechanic what is not a mechanic in the game?

 

Spoiler

Some data from the game was mined a little while back on the SWTOR Reddit for the next two flashpoints following Tython/Korriban: Manaan and Rakata Prime. According to the miner, the files implied that the invasions were orchestrated by the "Order of Revan," which I assume is simply the Revanite order under a slightly different name.

In addition, an NPC called "Revan" was added to the Rakata Prime flashpoint.

This is, unfortunately, perpetuating misinformation. Multiple times, the team at BioWare has said that the voice acting is a relatively low cost in relation to the rest of the game (and even less so during initial development, because LucasArts handled primarily the hiring of voice actors). For instance, Massively.com reports James Ohlen said:

I would look at sources such as these before spreading those rumors around.

I completely understand and agree. I sincerely hope class stories make a return, or at least class-ish stories that lead into faction stories until they can afford the time to create true class stories. And, though it's anybody's guess as to what this means for class stories, this mail message was sent to Sith Warriors on the PTS after completing the Tython/Korriban arc... (class spoilers)

 

If voice acting is so cheap, then why are they not continuing the class storylines?

Proportionally the voice acting might have been cheaper than the cost of developing the game, but now they need to justify the cost of bringing them back for all new content, and it's substantially cheaper to do something like Makeb in which they don't have to do voice work for every single companion character.

Anyway, my overall point was that the game was predicated on their "fourth pillar" of story, and now that they've gotten it out the door they realized it's not cost-effective to do the type of story that the game started with, whether it has to do with the cost of voice acting or merely the cost-effectiveness of writing new content for each individual class.

 

Because creating eight distinct class stories, each with their own companion conversation variables, light and dark variables, and unique areas, requires time and resources? Not that I agree with this decision, but BioWare clearly decided that creating eight different stories, each of which would roughly be seen by an eighth of the game's population, was not worth it when compared to skimming them down to two unique stories seen by half the population each.

EDIT: That said, recent signs have shown that they are very, very well aware of how much people want class stories.