SW The Old Republic: Sith Inquisitor

[SabreMau]

It also depends on the timetable for these. Inquisitor is likely going to span three months or so, and it's just a guess but I doubt he'll launch straight on into the next story, so as to give the calendar time for variety.

Then again, this is a bit off of precedent in two ways. First, that multipart game reviews have always tended to be squeezed together into short contiguous bursts. Imperial Agent was six parts put out in the span of two weeks. KOTOR was ten videos in a single week. Dragon Age II started with three videos in a week, four videos in a week a few months later, then five videos in ten days later on. Releasing Inquisitor as only one part every couple weeks is a marked departure from that, which I can assume is to keep the workload from crashing together like what apparently happened during Dragon Age II (when the ceiling also came crashing).

Second, that all three requests for Inquisitor/Warrior/Hunter were received at about the same time. They could be consecutively reviewed to reflect that, or there could be 6-12 months off in between them to space out the schedule and give other material some time. Hard to tell without precedent, but those three would need to happen first, and then the queue would have to empty out enough to put game reviews back on the menu. Again, I have no insider information on Chuck's schedule-making, just extrapolating from observed past evidence and my guesses could be off, but I'm not optimistic on seeing the Republic stories reviewed here anytime in the next few years.

[Independent George]

How much would it cost to get SFDebris to do Smuggler?

I still haven't completed any of the stories yet, but Light Side Inquisitor and Dark Side Smuggler were the two combinations that really stood out to me, and were loads of fun to role-play (through Chapter 2, at least, which is as far as I got). The dialogue felt natural, and I don't think I ever had to break character to advance. Imperial Agent was also good, but hardly 'fun' to role-play even on light side. If anything, it was even more stressful, as you were afraid of being found out.

[chaos42]

I can never bring myself to play crazy, psychotically evil characters; unfortunately, that's how most games write the 'evil' path. As irritated as I get with dialogue wheel and simplified alignment system, at least it does give you the leeway to play practical, self-interested kind of evil. That's how my light-side inquisitor is turning out - and, more importantly, it is written properly that way. Yes, a non-crazy Sith playing the long game should still be dark side instead of light side, but the dialogue actually makes sense even if the alignment doesn't.

Eh, if you're a ambitious ruler who DOESN'T abuse his subjects then how are you evil? It kind of goes with the territory in Star Wars.

and exactly how many of those guys are still alive in the eu or cannon??
none they all get killed by the forces karmic boomerang.

The problem with a lot of star wars villains is that their all patterned after either the emperor or the misconception of vader being a you have failed me for the last time villain.

A smart villain is like thrawn in the zahn novels. Smart calculating but only killing someone if they are detrimental to your group not for one mistake they make. also able to listen to others ideas and take the time to teach people how to think outside the box.

Hilariously, Zahn's responsible for the misconception cause he's the one who popularized the whole Vader would kill you just for being in within killing distance.

im not sure on that it was something that was talked about even before the zahn books at least it was with the kids when i was young before the zahn books came out, i actually have the original hard covers my mother gave me as a present for christmas though its been years since i read them it might be a good time to re read them as they are good books

though the other thing is we have a lot more fiction on this subject now then we did then so vaders only material was the movies and some comics so i don't know how fair it is to say its zahns fault -then again it could be that its an echo effect, one person says one thing and we telephone it till its changed what was said. who can say. but i will say it again if your truly a cunning bad guy you don't just use force to get what you want cunning and proper application of power is what is needed unless you want to join the million of dead wanna be overlords

[Nealithi]

The inquisitor/Sorcerer was my favourite class story in the game. I chose light side the whole way because I hated throwing away resources. And I loved everyone's confusion that I wasn't cackling with sadistic glee. Even facing jedi was a thrill as you prove to be better than the supposed good guy guardians of the light. This review is going to be awesome.

Though I will ask here. WHY did they dumb down the character building? The initial work meant you built what you wanted to play and you could make it work. Lots of lightning while dabbling at healing. Maybe a few lightsaber stunts. Pick as you go. Then the you selected a blunt path. Now it is just laid out with you are all cookie cutters. And your old characters kept being redone to the knew paradigm was depressing.

[chaos42]

probably to make it simpler, remember they removed the subscription fee so its free so the only thing they can do now is make it so you will want to buy stuff so by making everyone's skill options more limited you can make them think about buying in game items more to give them an edge in pvp and such

[SuccubusYuri]

It's generally a practical measure. That's what it was with Warcraft when they did the same thing in 2010/2012. When you have an open talent tree, as the launch versions of both games did, you have dozens of permutations per class, as players calculate that moving a single point from X talent to Y talent will next a 0.3% dps increase. What that ultimately means is that for pvp and pve, some specific trees will be broken, but broken in such a specific way that players who take the "intended" path will be weaker, even though you want the deep-tree talents to be rewarding.

You can save a LOT of staff hours if you cut your talent tree down to, as wow did, 27 "classes", or as SWTOR does, 24 classes, where you can deliberately say "your math is this and can never exceed or drop below this", then it's just a matter of balancing them against each other, not themselves, which both games still fail, miserably, at.

This is why both games also featured gear-dumbing down as part of those changes, to reduce the number of probabilities that the balance team has to struggle with, and both games have just gone to procedurally generated stats on gear.

[SabreMau]

probably to make it simpler, remember they removed the subscription fee so its free so the only thing they can do now is make it so you will want to buy stuff so by making everyone's skill options more limited you can make them think about buying in game items more to give them an edge in pvp and such

They didn't actually remove the subscription fee, they just removed the requirement that you subscribe in order to play. They also, at least as of the last time I played, really cut back on how fast you level, how many items you can carry, how many items you can store, how much money you can carry, what kind of items you can equip if you're a non-paying player. Yes, you can technically "play for free" and complete all of the original content through the level 50 class stories, but comparing that to the much smoother experience as a subscriber, or even a former subscriber (referred to as "preferred" status, not all of the freeplay restrictions but some of them) has them making players want to pay them just to get through things easier.

[Robovski]

The shine came off for me after I had to respec my merc for the 3rd time to accommodate these changes. My character was getting less flexible and doing less of what I wanted and it got simpler and dumber. I've yet to finish any character completely as I get bored once I'm grinding along at the level cap.

One change that annoyed me that came from the community was changing a rocket attack from the wrist to the back as it was more like Boba Fett. I was fine with the wrist rockets, it had a nice animation and it was my own thing. But Nooo, the merc has to be like Boba Fett...

[Nealithi]

The shine came off for me after I had to respec my merc for the 3rd time to accommodate these changes. My character was getting less flexible and doing less of what I wanted and it got simpler and dumber. I've yet to finish any character completely as I get bored once I'm grinding along at the level cap.

One change that annoyed me that came from the community was changing a rocket attack from the wrist to the back as it was more like Boba Fett. I was fine with the wrist rockets, it had a nice animation and it was my own thing. But Nooo, the merc has to be like Boba Fett...

Ugh. I never finished the bounty hunter. That change sounds just sad.

[chaos42]

the point i was making that they are trying to make it so you have to buy stuff which is how all these games are going moving more and more towards services that can keep milking people. i don't mind the occational purchase of digital data for a game but i don't like it when a game keeps nagging me for it or makes it so the only way to keep playing is to keep buying, personally i think someone needs to just make all the story from this game into an interactive visual novel we can play that would be more fun at this point