SW The Old Republic: Sith Inquisitor

[Worffan101]

From what Chuck talks about in the latest video, yeah, Star Trek Online's system sounds pretty similar. You can't sell C-Store ships to other players. But there are a ton of other ships that can be sold and traded. Ships that come from Lockboxes or the Lobi Store, for example, can be sold on the Exchange. So can weapons and gear you find or craft. I was actually making a pretty good amount of Energy Credits for a while crafting gear, though I had to stop for a while because I exhausted my Dilithium reserves, and haven't gotten back into it.

It's actually possible to get pretty much anything in STO's C-Store without ever spending a dime on it. There's a Dilithium Exchange in the game, where you can buy Zen, their store currency, from other players with refined Dilithium. The only real limiting factor is the rate at which you can refine Dilithium, which is normally 8000 a day. If you're in a Fleet with a sufficiently advanced Dilithium Mine, you can refine another 500 a day. And if you have a Life Time Subscription, you can refine another 1000 every 48 hours. Which brings the grand total to 9000 a day, per character. I have 5 characters in the game with enough Dilithium to buy 20 Zen a day, and still have some left over for things I use it for in game.So 100 Zen a day. It would take me about a month to save up for a T-6 Ship at that rate. Which isn't too bad. I have a couple more Captains I'm hoping to have add to this, but they don't have Dilithium to contribute to my buying yet.

Also, STO gives away 3 T-6 ships a year, just for playing. Anniversary Event, Summer Event and Winter Event. Participate in these for I believe 25 days each, earn a T-6 ship. Beggars can't be choosers on these, but still, end game ships given away for just playing.

I've never spent a cent on the game, started during Legacy of Romulus, and I've been in school, and I don't have a sub (never have), and I still own like, half of the ships in the game.

STO is basically a gigantic theme park of the game with some fun stories to watch. The faction stories are generally decent (Romulan is great), Nimbus is OK if a slog of running around, the Cardassian arc is fun though I don't like the Terran Empire shoehorning, Devidians are neat, the Breen arc is dated but good, loved the buildup to the Iconian War (Delta Rising, the Sphere bit)...

then it kinda shits the bed, the Iconian War, Kobali affair, and the Temporal war arcs are all painfully stupid (as in, Daniels literally causes the entire war due to his own incompetence and thoughtlessness, not to mention killing millions through failure at technobabble that he claims to be adept in), and even the TOS stuff, while nostalgic, is sadly tied to the idiotic temporal cold war nonsense. The Tzenkethi arc was also disjointed and I don't like the turncoat Tzenkethi, she's just a bad attempt at copying the more popular Eldex from the Vaadwaur arc.

Victory is Life, though, is a freaking blast. Yeah, you're effectively a guest character in somebody else's story, but it's a big flashy DS9 epic and it gets the feel just right despite some plot holes and contrivances. I kinda wish that my Jem'Hadar character could've been more central to the narrative, though.

tl;dr: In my opinion, it's a fun game, it's just...a theme park. Much like Champions from what I've seen of champions.

[CharlesPhipps]

Star Trek: Online has some good elements and bad elements. Part of this is due to the extensive rewrites it did which included some great moments and some terrible ones.

[BunBun299]

I actually kinda liked what they did with the Temporal Cold War and Iconian arcs. Some missions here or there in any arc I don't care to replay. Still, I enjoy most of it for what it is. And I can at least tolerate the rest.

I'm just starting on the Victory is Life expansion. It just came to Xbox a couple days ago, but I like it so far. Especially with my Captain getting to meet some of her heroes.

Also, while i have acquired many ships in that game, the main ship of my main Captain is and always shall be the Defiant Class. Or as it is more properly known, Ben Sisko's Mother Fuckin Pimp Hand!

Really wish SWTOR would come out for Xbox One and/or PS4. I just can't adapt to mouse and keyboard play. Yet the more I watch these reviews, the more I want to play it.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think everything went to hell when the Iconians were made the enemies vs. the Undine.

[BunBun299]

I think everything went to hell when the Iconians were made the enemies vs. the Undine.

Why is that?

[CharlesPhipps]

Why is that?

The MMORPGs I've played are World of Warcraft, TOR, and Star Trek Online. In Star Trek Online, they had a pretty straight forward plotline established of:

The Klingons vs. the Federation.
The Romulans trying to be an independent power between the two gobbling up their territory.
The Undine manipulating the two sides against one another.
The Borg as the spoilers between all three factions.

It was a complex political situation but it all was linked together in a way which worked. You had the Cardassian True Way and their alliance with the Mirror Universe and other "arcs" but they were separate from the main plot like the individual episodes of Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War.

The Iconian Plot added a different layer of "and they were behind the Undine who thought they were the masterminds!" Plus, it also led to the whole massively convoluted Delta Quadrant adventure which was also related to the Iconians and then time travel and so on and so on. It became a muddled mess of the Iconians being the Illuminati behind the Illuminati.

But YMMV.

[SuccubusYuri]

Well, to be...fair? Almost all MMOs fall into the dumbing down trap. Which makes some logistical sense, and is probably a measure of practicality. When MMOs launch, their universes tend to be complex and interwoven, and that makes a lot of sense because the project has been in development for 4, 5, up to seven years in some cases. But when the Xpacs start rolling out, the timetable shrinks, a lot. So you maybe have a plan with where your story is, and the next few steps come the patches, but then what? It's a lot of improvising, and often with a new writing team, and that can have "the fanfiction effect".

I mean even among your list, Warcraft started out with a very complex universe, and while its salvaged by the sheer volume of licensed content Blizzard sponsors, when it comes to the games themselves, the Xpacs have been very narrow and liner since Wrath (we must fight Arthas/Deathwing is responsible for everything bad, etc) SWTOR also has condensed to center around the Eternal Empire storyline, with class story concerns being of secondary, if even present, importance.

Wildstar was the same way, launching with intricate story and many angles for the independent races, but as soon as Raids were added (and we killed many of those looming canonical threats) and the story needed to move forward, it very quickly pooled both factions together, more or less, and pitted them against the baddie of the patch. Phantasy Star Online 2 kind of went the same route; once they had mostly finished the Dark Falz arc, it's become more or less just a roller coaster ride for the art team to make up a bunch of new locales and play with the setting.

I think it's just a symptom of the MMO dev cycle, and the real problems come when that condensation fails hard, and it's very apparent that things WERE better in the past.

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like Chuck's choice to do a Dark Side Inquisitor playthrough is less interesting than some of the options here.

Because the Alderaan story was AWESOME from a Light Side Sith perspective. You tried to play the romantic matchmaker between the Jedi Master and the Assassin Queen as a peaceful way to stop the Jedi versus just killing him.

And everyone treats it as insane.

Because it is.

[Worffan101]

Why is that?

The MMORPGs I've played are World of Warcraft, TOR, and Star Trek Online. In Star Trek Online, they had a pretty straight forward plotline established of:

The Klingons vs. the Federation.
The Romulans trying to be an independent power between the two gobbling up their territory.
The Undine manipulating the two sides against one another.
The Borg as the spoilers between all three factions.

It was a complex political situation but it all was linked together in a way which worked. You had the Cardassian True Way and their alliance with the Mirror Universe and other "arcs" but they were separate from the main plot like the individual episodes of Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War.

The Iconian Plot added a different layer of "and they were behind the Undine who thought they were the masterminds!" Plus, it also led to the whole massively convoluted Delta Quadrant adventure which was also related to the Iconians and then time travel and so on and so on. It became a muddled mess of the Iconians being the Illuminati behind the Illuminati.

But YMMV.

I think the REAL problem was that the Iconian War itself was layered in SO MUCH STUPID that it broke people's suspension of disbelief. Delta Rising set a pretty high bar by being (patrol missions aside, and they later patched out that requirement which ironically made some minor dialogue bits confusing) a very, very strong space opera war story, despite the presence of the Talaxians, Kobaligate, the presence of the Talaxians, Neelix, the presence of the Talaxians, the fact that the Kobali are graverobbing lying rapists who we never should have allied with, the presence of the Talaxians, and the vocal minority on the game's official forums who thinks that we should've handed the Kobali over to the Vaadwaur for extermination. And the presence of the Talaxians of course. But other than that it was great.

The Iconian War, though? I can't think of anything good to say about the Iconian War.

The Temporal war arc can best be explained as "Daniels forgot that he's a time traveler and so didn't jump back another 5 minutes to take the starter chip out of the Mary Sueperweapon, and so lots of people died and a lot of shitty Enterprise episodes happened". It's painfully bad, to the point that I nearly skipped the cutscenes.

I feel like Chuck's choice to do a Dark Side Inquisitor playthrough is less interesting than some of the options here.

Because the Alderaan story was AWESOME from a Light Side Sith perspective. You tried to play the romantic matchmaker between the Jedi Master and the Assassin Queen as a peaceful way to stop the Jedi versus just killing him.

And everyone treats it as insane.

Because it is.

I remember that! I was playing Darth Imperius as a massive troll who was actively thumbing his nose at the Sith in general, AND YET still becoming, to his consternation, the most powerful Sith lord evar.

Man, lightside Sith have so many fun options. I remember as a Warrior on Alderaan when I was dealing with this sicko who wanted me, Lord Badass, who's killed dozens of Sith and Jedi alike and walk with the movers and shakers of the Empire with my personal spy walking right behind me pretending to be a slave and nobody fucking notices, to go out and do his dirty work for him by kidnapping the woman he wants to screw...so I could've killed the guy on the spot, but I decided instead to take the snooty noble ass down a peg of seven and remind him who is actually important because they fought their way to the top and did it cleanly by stabbing everybody who challenged me in the face, and who is a puffed-up little toady clinging to meaningless titles, so I told him to fuck off the planet, never come back, and oh by the way I'm revoking his titles and making sure he's left penniless.

That was so fun. Then I walked right up to the Dark Council with my secret light-side Jedi apprentice walking right the fuck behind me, and they didn't lift a finger about her.

I love being a Sith Lord.

[Trooper924]

Man, lightside Sith have so many fun options. I remember as a Warrior on Alderaan when I was dealing with this sicko who wanted me, Lord Badass, who's killed dozens of Sith and Jedi alike and walk with the movers and shakers of the Empire with my personal spy walking right behind me pretending to be a slave and nobody fucking notices, to go out and do his dirty work for him by kidnapping the woman he wants to screw...so I could've killed the guy on the spot, but I decided instead to take the snooty noble ass down a peg of seven and remind him who is actually important because they fought their way to the top and did it cleanly by stabbing everybody who challenged me in the face, and who is a puffed-up little toady clinging to meaningless titles, so I told him to fuck off the planet, never come back, and oh by the way I'm revoking his titles and making sure he's left penniless.

That was so fun. Then I walked right up to the Dark Council with my secret light-side Jedi apprentice walking right the fuck behind me, and they didn't lift a finger about her.

I love being a Sith Lord.

My personal favorite LS Warrior moment was also on Alderaan when you finally track down Jaesa's parents and proceed to convince them to defect to The Empire just by talking to them--all to the disbelief of their Jedi bodyguards.