Star Wars: The Old Republic Discussion

Tomorrow is the day! Who's excited? Me! I am

I feel exactly the same. I haven't played in 2 weeks or so. I am going to log in tomorrow and see what's new ... but otherwise... *shrugs*

I will play with my JK to see the end of this story.

I agree with this so much!  You couldn't be more right if you tried.  The class stories were the best.  I will never for the life of me understand why they didn't stick with that formula.  It seems everyone has this opinion.

I'm overall fine with the story, I just wish it was less awkward for Non-Force Sensitives.

Chapter 12 was just...I don't know what.

That, and screw not being able to talk to all these Companions. I don't care if my Trooper can recruit Qyzen if I can't get to know him.

Other than my own guild drama and server drama, I do understand that a lot of long-time subscribers/founders/raiders have been feeling like Bioware being callous, deaf and abandoning them. Everyone is entitled to their feelings but frankly I don't really see Bioware should struggle to fulfill every wishes and desires nor was it rewarding to loyal players nor having the capacity to compete with other newer MMOs. Stay or leave, unsub or sub, play or don't play. Simple really.

I understand that they're making the consideration that majority of the players preferred Jedi/Sith classes (in millions) over the non-force users which is relatively in the minority (if they take in F2P players which get only a few class to begin with and credit farmers which may bloat the numbers). Considering past expansions are force-sensitive-centric (SOR, Rise of the Emperor, KOTFE), its not really that hard seeing who they catered the most. Its highly unlikely they're going to allocate resources for unique stories for each characters. And you get individual class-centric plot at Rishi like what... three years after the original stories launch? and exactly 15 minutes or so content? Considering they spent $200 millions just on basic SWTOR experience, I doubt they're willing to spend half of that money doing that again for another individual 8 class stories expansion. I already thought they're quite gracious at giving back some of the base-game companions in major chapters as oppose to silent guardian at your backside since the first dlc.

Anyway, spent a couple hours trading what amount of crystals into gifts and isotope stabilizers and reading 5.0 patch notes. Its going to be a major pain in the ass to relearn some of the specs. I'm going to miss Death from Above and my OP-no-more Anni Mara. Although I'm quite happy that preferred get 26 active slots now. But I'm not sure that we're getting another Outlander token. Meh...

RIP Heroics group bonus multiplier, crystals and comms. 

And since I can't access to 70 until KOTFE full launch, I might spend these couple of days focusing on my remaining level 30 alts after this maintenance or park myself at slicing nodes at Zakuul or Darvanis and level them to 600. Will see if 5.0 accommodating to preferred status before I use the Origin codes I bought weeks ago. The inflation would be nasty.

Let's be real, I'm not an MMO guy in the slightest. I'm only here for the Star Wars BioWare writing experience. Which as I said, did not feel much like Star Wars at all this last expansion and as for the writing I'm only assigning a score of meh based on a number of factors: the notStar Wars feel where Star Wars was expected (might be considered a bias), the ill fit of the story to the characters and vice versa (playing the insta60 last year alleviated that somewhat) and the overall mediocrity of the things presented- the only kind of interesting thing was the Eternal Fleet/SCORPIO/GEMINI angle. Shoutout to the heist chapter as well, if it was a standalone more developed and elaborated story featuring the smuggler, agent or even BH, that would've been cool. And I suppose the mechanics and setup of Whispers in the Dark or whatever that's called were interesting even if the conclusion was meh. It's possible the story will pick up again now that Karpyshyn's back in the saddle but it's hard to see how even he might save this if they keep going with the whole beyond light and dark thing (while ironically making the rest of the game conform to light and dark)

As to the changes, I just intensely dislike devs screwing with the game and changing things. Yes I know that's sort of their thing in MMOs. Tha's one of the many reasons I'll never be a fan of this genre. I realize some things that seem bad end up helping. I ranted and raved about the removal of skill trees in 3.0 and level sync in 4.0 and yet the former helped most of my characters come into their own- I ran all hybrids and after disciplines I realized the only one that really worked was Sorc as I had enough heals (for myself anyway) but also Death Field and Chain lightning, allowing me nearly endless options of AOEing mobs; and the latter had minimal impact while opening up more options for leveling and acquiring resources. That being said I still mourn the loss of my pre 3.0 sorc and I definitely don't forgive the removal of Sabotage charge and Orbital strike from my agent, which definitely have removed part of the enjoyment of playing that class solo. That was mitigated by the fun I have playing it heals in FPs but it seems that will be intensely diminished by the RNG gear grind. What I'm losing most in this game is flavor but flavor matters because I'm playing it like a Star Wars game, not an MMO. So I can't really get over my sorc not being able to swing his lightsaber or my agent not being able to take an aimed shot. And removing droid CC? What genius thought that up? Why? It can't possibly unbalance anything. No one's a droid in PVP and the applications in endgame PVE are extremely situational (mostly I just used it to tone the heat down when it seemed we couldn't handle a pull and again, that's assuming those were droids attacking us). This is the kind of crap I'm just tired of dealing with.

Finally, I'm also tired of giving them money to enjoy the game at full power. I despise the subscription model and I've dropped more than enough money at this point on this game, even if you count the eight class stories as full priced SP titles (which is really a stretch). And now that they're giving the finger to non subs even more, that's even more incentive to give them the finger for good.

Ok, I just logged in and I'm going through my chars one by one before playing the new chapter or recruiting Torch.

Seer Sage is done. Minimal changes (I only lost that one saber ability) and after spending my 7 utility points I've got even more utility than before. Not 100% sure what I'll do with the 8th point once I hit lvl70 but I've got some decent options left. I packed up most of my PvP gear... they replaced expertise with mastery as far as I can tell... but most of my other chars simply don't have any PvE gear. In the end, what they wear now doesn't even matter since I'll get the good stuff from the command ... uh thing.

9 more chars to go.

Ok, Shae Vizla recruitment mission takes ~30sec. She's already in your base, says she joins up, you say welcome, she says thanks... done. Why even have that mission? So pointless.

Vengeance Juggernaut changes are okay. Now I can guard in DPS stance and Vicious Throw became Hew. Ravage... well, I guess I'll have to get used to the new animation.

The facial expressions got an update as far as I can tell. Vette looks older now in some moments.

Ok... lvl70. Command Rank 2. Got a blue rated 230 crit implant in my pack, but disintegrated it because I'm sure there's better stuff. Got three crewskills up to 600... need to make new lvl10 augment kits and augments.

This is so much work... I think I'm going to take a break and then play the chapter later. Oh... it looks like I can replay all the chapters on Veteran difficulty.

lol "we reset DvL achievements in case we want to do it again later." -www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9130481#post9130481


These people genuinely appear out of touch with reality.