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Cease to Hope posted:a lot of the 50 stories involve wandering around in order to find and beat up the guy who was introduced five minutes ago, who has no discernible inner life or motivation other than being there for you to beat up I think ultimately what you come up against is that an MMO with an immersive story experience is necessarily a contradiction in terms, and when you try to make something like that it results in an end product that has the weaknesses of both and the strengths of neither.
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Jan 13, 2019 10:16
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and also the fact that SWTOR is a product of the WoW-era MMO craze where everyone and their mother was putting out an MMO. tastes have since moved on to mobas and then survival games and now battle royales... if it wasn't a product of that era, it probably would have been a better game. then again it probably wouldn't have been made so 
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Jan 13, 2019 18:26
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Based on the Star wars games that have come out since I don't know that it would have been much better 🤷
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Jan 13, 2019 18:34
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Statutory Ape posted:Based on the Star wars games that have come out since I don't know that it would have been much better 🤷 it wouldn't have had these specific defects, at least?
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Jan 13, 2019 18:35
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The big thing I can’t stand storywise about Kotfe/et is that it just doesn’t make sense if you aren’t a sith or a Jedi. The class stories are great for letting you play as an above-average joe in a world of knights and wizards, and the stories (though not always quality) at least lived in that niche pretty well. Then the post-50 content is like, maybe it doesn’t make a ton of sense for Han Solo to be fistfighting revan but whatever. Then in kotfe it’s just straight up “we didn’t bother to write a character that can’t use the force, oh well”
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Jan 13, 2019 19:11
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With the understanding that the vast majority of ToR story content is solo, KotFE/KotET broke the cardinal sin of MMO storytelling...don't make the pc the primary protagonist. KotFE/KotET should have been about helping someone else become the Commander not the player themselves. Like at the end of WotLK Bolvar Fordragon becomes the new Lich King not the player. The endless corridors full of Skytroopers didn't help either.
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Jan 13, 2019 19:46
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DrunkenGarbageCan posted:With the understanding that the vast majority of ToR story content is solo, KotFE/KotET broke the cardinal sin of MMO storytelling...don't make the pc the primary protagonist. KotFE/KotET should have been about helping someone else become the Commander not the player themselves. The player can be the primary protagonist, just not in a story where they become undisputed and all-powerful king of the known universe. You can keep the stakes personal and local, and they can still be very high stakes but won't clash horribly with the technical realities of a shared mmo landscape. Randomly generate every player a padawan at the start of the game. He/she/it has been kidnapped. Now assassins are after you. Execute an elaborate heist and steal 1 billion *quickly outdated currency* (the casino will cover it up to protect their reputation even though thousands of players did it already).
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Jan 13, 2019 20:30
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sassassin posted:The player can be the primary protagonist, just not in a story where they become undisputed and all-powerful king of the known universe. You can keep the stakes personal and local, and they can still be very high stakes but won't clash horribly with the technical realities of a shared mmo landscape. The class stories actually did this. Particularly the non-force ones, but those are the only ones I've played so. The only story where you're a one-off Chosen One is the Knight, but even then that's only because the character archetype is Skywalker who actually is a Chosen One so you gotta have it.
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Jan 13, 2019 20:42
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sassassin posted:primary protagonist Yeah "primary protagonist" is probably a misnomer but I didn't know what else to call sassassin posted:a story where they become undisputed and all-powerful king of the known universe this. Right hand of the king, not the king. KotFE/KotET could have been a much better story if you take down the cruel and naive Arcaan only to redeem and help restore him to the throne after getting him away from his father's influence and his even worse sister takes over...or submit to Valkorian and take Vaylin's side (becoming antagonistic to Lana and Theron in the process) if you're Dark Side. Then once that's settled your character is free to bounce to the next story with minimal entanglements.
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Jan 13, 2019 21:07
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You're always the main character in WoW. You're the cause of every major thing that happens. Bolvar dies in the second zone and showed back up like 2 years later. It's not a "don't make the player the main character" thing, it's about having a supporting cast of major players who are more than just sidekicks. You don't want to make the player the king in a continuing narrative, but having the king that's put in place be a close ally or friend still makes it an accomplishment without tying an anchor around your neck. Aphrodite fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 21:28
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I'm with DrunkenGarbageCan. It's better to have your character be a kingmaker than a king in terms of narrative flexibility. But also the really predictable and sort of laborious gauntlet of guys inside of huts and cookie-cutter dungeons separated by a huge, empty open world with nothing in it but angry mobs that you spend all your time speedering past don't do the story or gameplay any favors. The story is too shallow to justify the focus on it, and the gameplay isn't diverse or engaging enough because there's such a high standard for the story (with !!!!!16!!!!! voice actors reading basically identical lines for every new expansion at this point). I guess what I'm describing is a lack of meaningful connective tissue. In KOTOR you had sidequests with real drama to them that padded out the main story thread and made the hubs feel alive. In SWTOR it's a bunch of guys that you know are there to tell you to collect 18 wampa asses and come back to them (it seems like the starter planet sidequests had more meat to them and it dropped off as you went along). And maybe that's also partly because leveling is so screwed up at this point and all of the planetary quests are the same for everyone, so you just end up skipping all of that and end up with a story quest that's just a bunch of checkboxes that you're hauling rear end overland for no good goddamn reason to get to. I still have class stories I haven't finished because I just end up thinking I could be doing something better than running through the same 8 planets or whatever it is with slightly different words at the end of each cave. Not to mention that 2/3rds of your time is spent just getting from one cave to the next.
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Jan 13, 2019 21:58
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Aphrodite posted:It's not a "don't make the player the main character" thing, it's about having a supporting cast of major players who are more than just sidekicks. You don't want to make the player the king in a continuing narrative, but having the king that's put in place be a close ally or friend still makes it an accomplishment without tying an anchor around your neck. Doesn't really matter if they're a king or merely special advisor to the commander in chief, when the narrative affords the every player character significant influence on the world but none can wield it in any way shape or form that's still an issue. Normal games can provide an individually reactive world space, mmos (generally) can't. An MMO character should essentially never be presented as rich (because the in-game economy is a thing), especially famous (no one outside your guild has even heard of you) or more than adequately powerful for the specific tasks at hand. You ain't special but we thank you for your service to the Jedi Order. There's some weird stuff happening on Naboo go check it out (min. level 35 required).
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Jan 13, 2019 22:11
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Your second rule is not followed by any succesful MMO that has ever existed. Including this one in its original class stories. It also routinely doesn't follow the 3rd one about avoiding being too powerful.
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Jan 13, 2019 22:12
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Aphrodite posted:Your second rule is not followed by any succesful MMO that has ever existed. The medium has yet to be properly embraced. One day a great MMO story will be written that will make its players feel like working together towards collective goals is cool and good and fun.
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Jan 13, 2019 22:30
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sassassin posted:You ain't special but we thank you for your service to the Jedi Order. There's some weird stuff happening on Naboo go check it out (min. level 35 required). I'd love a game that was basically a Jedi Order jobber a la Qui-gon and Obi-wan doing odd jobs and getting into poo poo like Geralt. One of the coolest things in KOTOR is when you take the test to decide what class you should be, they give you a scenario like: you hear a scream, what do you do? And I thought at the time, oh man if they just turn me loose to be a Jedi knight errant, have gun will travel, coming into town and solving whatever random bad poo poo is going down for folks like the A-team, that would loving rule. Of course it didn't end up quite being that, but I can still dream.
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Jan 13, 2019 22:32
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I wouldn’t mind being the emperor of the galaxy if they gave you emperor poo poo to do (even some kind of lazy war table “issue orders to fleets and agents that do things just off-screen” minigame would be something). Instead it’s just frontline stuff and group content that doesn’t make a lick of sense
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Jan 13, 2019 22:39
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Ainsley McTree posted:I wouldn’t mind being the emperor of the galaxy if they gave you emperor poo poo to do (even some kind of lazy war table “issue orders to fleets and agents that do things just off-screen” minigame would be something). Instead it’s just frontline stuff and group content that doesn’t make a lick of sense Yeah you're the leader of a not-insignificant part of the galaxy but you're still doing ground and pound missions. Some Bad Dudes have taken the mayor of Los Angeles hostage but the President of the United States (who of course won the Presidency by killing the previous President) and his elite squad of handpicked commandos have already landed and are infiltrating via the sewers.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:01
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Chickenwalker posted:I'd love a game that was basically a Jedi Order jobber a la Qui-gon and Obi-wan doing odd jobs and getting into poo poo like Geralt.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:01
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Sombrerotron posted:Aren't you essentially describing KotOR (or TOR, for that matter) as it is, except with the main plotline removed? I mean, isn't that what doing side quests (and possibly the planet missions in TOR) is all about? I don't know, am I? Are the sidequests in SWTOR anything even approaching the level of the stuff in The Witcher? KOTOR achieved this somewhat, but I don't think TOR did on any level.
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Jan 13, 2019 23:39
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Chickenwalker posted:I think ultimately what you come up against is that an MMO with an immersive story experience is necessarily a contradiction in terms, and when you try to make something like that it results in an end product that has the weaknesses of both and the strengths of neither. this is true but also not relevant to the problem with the bounty hunter story, which consists largely of literally playing a game of killing/capturing random people in order to move onto the next chapter, until chapter 3 where you're wanted by the republic for all the murders you've done but for some reason the story treats it like you're being framed. it's weak nonsense even by the low standards of wow clone storytelling bounty hunters get very cool class armor that mixes well with anything, have a cool ability kit, a pretty decent bunch of companions besides the male love interest, and mercs are ridiculously tanky for a ranged class that can heal. they just have a terrible class story.
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Jan 14, 2019 00:03
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Also you can become a Baroness. I don't know what males get.
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Jan 14, 2019 00:06
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Baron, presumably
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Jan 14, 2019 00:20
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Ainsley McTree posted:Baron, presumably nope any bounty hunter can get knight of alderaan or homewrecker from that quest, but only women can marry the baron. apparently there were plans for male characters to be able to marry his rival, but that didn't make it out of beta for whatever reason
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Jan 14, 2019 00:25
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Chickenwalker posted:I don't know, am I? Cease to Hope posted:this is true but also not relevant to the problem with the bounty hunter story, which consists largely of literally playing a game of killing/capturing random people in order to move onto the next chapter, until chapter 3 where you're wanted by the republic for all the murders you've done but for some reason the story treats it like you're being framed. it's weak nonsense even by the low standards of wow clone storytelling
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Jan 14, 2019 00:28
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Cease to Hope posted:nope Yeah, there's already a Baron you make marry you. It's launch content, so no gay allowed.
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Jan 14, 2019 00:57
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Ah right I forgot what the deal was. Surely you should be able to at least punch him and take his title
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Jan 14, 2019 01:25
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Ainsley McTree posted:Ah right I forgot what the deal was. Surely you should be able to at least punch him and take his title I finished my first run through Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne a couple of days ago; I'd played a little of KotFE on a trooper when it was released but got sidetracked after getting to Odessen. On the whole I thought KotFE was pretty effective storytelling. Better pacing, more interesting characters, much better done technically than the older content. Sure, there are a lot of deus ex machina superweapons and huge coincidences but it's a star wars game, the entire franchise is built on those things. Playing as a knight this time helped a lot with making it cohere, too. KotET felt worse as all the characters increasingly contorted themselves to fit the needs of the plot. My character in particular acted like a complete moron half the time. I guess they could sell my character's idiocy as being due to the subtle machinations of Ghost Dad, but they don't, and the end is just the dumbest power fantasy nonsense that doesn't remotely work in the context of the game. I get the feeling that they knew how they wanted their story to start and had a good plan for that, assuming you were a knight or warrior, but not so much how they wanted it to end. On the plus side, I did quite appreciate that playing on veteran difficulty was legit pretty hard but still doable for someone going in blind and without any cool end game gear. I wish more dikus let me set difficulty for fun, not to better climb the itemization ladder. I also appreciated that the game let me lower the difficulty for That One Fight in FE chapter 12 that I couldn't win without making me redo the entire mission or anything.
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Jan 14, 2019 04:39
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kotet was kind of rushed out storywise in response to criticisms and so its like whatever the next 2-3 expansions were probably going to be smushed into about the same span of missions as KOTFE always surprised we got as few of those ALERT no-VA just text conversation side missions introduced in KOTFE. thought that provided them some kind of avenue to put out a lot more story content in a shorter amount of time but we eneded up getting like, maybe ten or so of them?
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Jan 14, 2019 05:31
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Aphrodite posted:Yeah, there's already a Baron you make marry you. It's launch content, so no gay allowed. you didn't even need to be gay. there's a rival would-be baroness who apparently had a semi-functional ending in beta where you choose her as the new head of household, but it was cut for launch
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Jan 14, 2019 08:20
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Is the game good? I quit halfway thru the second(?) Valkorion expansion
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Jan 14, 2019 14:11
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Svensken posted:Is the game good? I quit halfway thru the second(?) Valkorion expansion Some people like it, a lot of people don't. It's aged alright but I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone. I recently played some story content that I missed out on and when I got to Kotfe/kotet stuff, it started going downhill faster.
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Jan 14, 2019 16:06
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I still haven’t played any of the post-kotet stuff. I tried to start it on my jugg but it seemed really buggy? There was a mission early on where I had to control a remote droid and I couldn’t seem to exit it, even though I’d done everything it needed to do.
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Jan 14, 2019 16:33
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Ainsley McTree posted:The big thing I can’t stand storywise about Kotfe/et is that it just doesn’t make sense if you aren’t a sith or a Jedi. For as much as the 'story makes no sense if you're not a force user's' been said, was there anything like that said in the story version of the Taral V flashpoint since you end up hearing the force entity's comments without Oteg's help? Since most of my non-force users are Sith Purebloods, it still works under Purebloods all having some degree of force sensitivity, just not enough to warrant getting shipped off to Korriban/Tython.
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Jan 15, 2019 14:05
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Xerophyte posted:Ah yes, pugnic succession. This is not getting enough love.
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Jan 16, 2019 05:25
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I think its time to get my Kyle Katarn back on
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Jan 17, 2019 16:00
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Mostly checking if this is legit, but the other day or so in 'fleet chat it was said back in beta there was an option for the Jedi Knight to betray the Jedi Council and work for the Empire but was pulled for some reason. Anyone know more about this?
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Jan 18, 2019 16:46
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That's because in the JK storyline there's a part where you're captured and brainwashed into working for the Emperor. You break free of his control after a time jump and go back to Jedi business while NPCs occasionally get mad at you for stuff you didn't see happen in the time skip. It's explicitly said to be control though, so the game can easily say it wasn't your fault. There have always been rumors of more elaborate stories similar to the Agent's that never had time, and that's a persistent one.
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Jan 18, 2019 16:54
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Bilirubin posted:I think its time to get my Kyle Katarn back on
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Jan 18, 2019 16:59
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Aphrodite posted:
What other stories are there? I'm a total pushover on hearing cut content stories.
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Jan 18, 2019 17:19
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I heard there were plans to cut the plot arc where the bounty hunter becomes emperor of the galaxy but they accidentally left it in
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Jan 18, 2019 17:21
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