Legacy of the Sith attracted a fair bit of criticism when it launched with a remarkably short storyline. Granted, this was also largely because there had been a fairly major part of the expansion delayed until August, but the resulting expansion has had many refer to 7.0 as an "expansion" in quotation-marks.
I'm reminded of a comment I saw reviewing 7.0's launch, deriding it for being too short to be worthy of a tenth anniversary, and that only a campaign totalling "20 hours at least" would have been acceptable.
It is true that other MMOs are capable of releasing large story updates which do take a fair bit of time. The Elder Scrolls Online has released several chapters - their version of expansions - over the past few years, each with at least 20 hours of content. This is not including the four dungeons that may provide extra context for the goings-on or the small zone DLC that provides its own story and, over the past four years, an epilogue to the story started with the first annual update.
World of Warcraft of course puts out massive expansion updates, with each individual zone released being the equivalent of at least medium-sized planet in SWTOR.
I'm not familiar with how Final Fantasy XIV handles its expansions, so for the interests of fairness I shall be leaving it out.
Of course, neither of the games I mentioned has to put nearly as much effort into the voice-acting compared to SWTOR, which must pay forty-eight voice actors in all three languages just for the main classes alone every time an update comes out that involves our characters in a more robust manner than just rolling out the KotOR overlay. They can afford to spend more money and time on building large worldspaces and flooding them with short bite-sized quests that are mostly quite basic in structure.
That's not to say that SWTOR hasn't experimented with the WoW formula. Rishi is by far the closest we have come to seeing a WoW-style quest system, and I'm honestly so glad they never tried to repeat it. The quests were numerous, but they were also incredibly short and ultimately many of them could just have been part of longer quest-chains, as is more traditional-SWTOR.
However, there is one quite significant advantage to shorter quest-chains. Replayability.
~~~
SWTOR is perhaps unique among all MMOs in that you are actively encouraged by the game itself to play more than one character, even within one faction.
WoW has different factions, sure, encouraging its playerbase to roll at least one Alliance and one Horde character if they want to see how some of the major stories differ. ESO tries the different factions route as well, but because of how they've set questing up eventually all characters will have the option of exploring and completing quests in the other alliance zones as if they were created as those factions. The only major difference, beside class and race, is just what level(s) your characters may be when they first explore them.
SWTOR, which has historically tied classes to character in ways very few MMOs really have before, therefore has a unique incentive to rolling new classes. Your bounty hunter may see the same general quests as your Sith inquisitor, but both hunter and inquisitor have their own independent storylines to complete as well, giving each their own unique perspective.
This is where the shorter questlines in later stories start to become more of an advantage. Thinking to my alt-characters in ESO, even though I have enjoyed playing them I also baulk at taking them further into the story than they already are. Not only do I already know exactly what's going to happen, but it's also quite a significant time investment. Doing a map that takes 12 or more hours to complete once is fine. Doing it twice, more annoying but still somewhat bearable.
Doing it for every single one of your characters, especially if you have over half-a-dozen? No, thanks.
SWTOR has certainly done its bit for introducing the grindy tedious-to-repeat storylines that can easily take a full day or more to complete. Knights of the Fallen Empire is a prime example, as not only do you get subjected to the endless chapter-after-chapter phenomenon (just let me take a breather, alright?!) but you also have a lot of other stuff to do as well. Alliance alerts, Star Fortresses, the Eternal Championship, on and on it goes.
Fortunately, after Fallen Empire it seems BW learned a much-needed lesson. The traitor arc is still a pain to repeat due to how out-of-left-field it all seems, but at least you can take your time with it more and aren't forced to back out of an annoying cutscene and / or endure a forced loading-screen without a moment to catch your breath.
Sure, if you have only one character in SWTOR, all this is probably fine. It certainly all seemed fine to me the first time I did Fallen Empire, after all, but back then we only had nine chapters, and I had only taken one character through it. Ten characters later, and the novelty has far worn off. Even years later, I still find little-to-no enjoyment in the majority of chapters, and even the ones that I used to love I mainly spacebar through unless there's a scene or two I particularly enjoy.
Yes, the stories nowadays are far shorter than they were in some prior expansions, but I honestly don't mind that. It makes it much less of an ordeal to get alts and new characters caught up to things than it used to be - at least, once you get them past some of the lengthier aspects of the storytelling. Certainly, had 5.0 and 6.0 both followed the Fallen Empire formula as they were intended to, I for one would be much less tolerant in getting characters through them than I am. At least 5.0's nonsense culminates in Jedi Under Siege, which is still my favourite storyline since Imperial Makeb.
As a case-study to illustrate my point, I turn to my newest Sith warrior, Avsa. Created earlier this year because I realised just how much her predecessor's permanently-gappy codex entry (admittedly, due to skipping large parts of content to avoid the slog of Fallen Empire) was bugging me, she had been resting on her laurels the past few months while I grappled with my uncertainty about my investment in SWTOR.
A little over a week ago, spurred on by finally discovering an aesthetic that 'clicked', I resumed proceedings with her at last. She was still sitting at the very start of Act II, having not even gone to Nar Shaddaa to interrupt the SIS meeting, so still had a fair bit to go. Within that week, she completed every significant storyline left open to her, including the HK-51, Lorrick, and Czerka storylines, with only the original Shroud, Seeker Droid, and operation questlines left open to her because I need to get into groups for those.
 |
| This screenshot feels so very empty without three other players. Sorry, Quinn, you just don't compare. |
Unlike with the veteran mode flashpoints, I can't find a way to solo an operation. Not complaining about that in the slightest, however!
A week, that's all it took, and some expansions took less than a full day to complete in-full (I say, noting that just before the turn of the year, she completed Iokath-through-Ruhnuk in a single day, thus finishing the bulk of 5.0 and the entireties of 6.0 and 7.0 as it is right now within 12 hours). I should also state that, as is tradition with my characters now, throughout all this time she's also been fully-exploring planets, doing every quest open to her, finding all the matrix shards, and completing all Alliance alerts (except Lokin's) and Star Fortresses, so she hasn't just been rushing and only doing the purple quests.
A single week. And a day.
And I love that. It isn't a considerable slog to get a fresh-faced character caught up to everyone else, requiring a full day or more to do even the first part of each released expansion as you might see in ESO or WoW.
I'm sure that there will be those people who look at my example and say "yes, that's it, that's the problem!", and I really do have to question just how these people choose to play their games. I get that there are a lot of people who just like to sit down and grind something endlessly. Heck, in WoW there were people getting to nigh-max reputation with the factions in the new expansion within the very first week, and that's not a simple feat in the slightest.
So I'm sure there are a lot of people who would love to have the opportunity to have something 'big' to grind for in SWTOR, no matter the cost involved. To take several characters on a long, twisting story path that would have them question who they are and what their place in the galaxy is again over several hours, just like Fallen Empire.
I'm most definitely not one of those people. I don't mind story content taking some time, but there is a fine line that must be drawn between "just right" and "too much". I don't deny that, at times, SWTOR hasn't even reached the "just right" line, looking at it from a purely up-to-date perspective. That is to say that this is ignoring alts, freshly-rolled characters, and even entirely new players themselves; just looking at characters who were already caught up and ready to get started with the newest content.
I for one find that games can sometimes get 'too big'. Throw in enough story that takes a lot of time, and it becomes a very daunting prospect to just do that much. I feel, for example, that the most recent LEGO Star Wars game fell into that trap by including just so much side-stuff that needs to be done alongside the main campaign, whereas previously they were just a fun little adventure in whichever universe they were set.
I have exactly one character in ESO who is caught up to almost everything the game has to offer - the exceptions being quests for the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild since she is not that sort of character (I have done them on others, so I haven't missed out entirely). Knowing how big the gulf is already between her and the next-closest character, and being all to aware of just how much bigger it is likely to get should I continue on with that game in the new year, I just feel no incentive to getting anyone else caught up.
Not when I know how much time I already had to put in just to get one character up-to-speed.
Similarly, my singular max-level character in WoW has only completed the Dragonflight story (to be fair, she was one of the new instant-68 dracthyr evoker characters), so still has content from nine other major releases open to her. And that's a lot of content to even consider starting the path for. Sure, questing will be quick in many of these places, since level-scaling at max-level isn't a thing on a permanent basis in WoW so everything (even in previous dungeons and raids...) dies in one hit, but I don't think that makes it any more fun.
If anything, that just makes it seem more tedious; not even the core gameplay in the majority of these instances can provide any meaningful enjoyment...
~~~
I acknowledge that this perspective would be very different if I only had one character active in SWTOR. I imagine that the shortness of the content would be all the more obvious, and therefore I would be joining those complaining about it, asking for longer stories for every update.
As it is, I genuinely don't mind it. A short storyline makes it much less tedious to repeat across several characters, although the repetitiveness of even something like Ruhnuk sets in pretty quickly. At least Manaan, Mek-Sha, and Onderon offered different perspectives based on faction, something not even Shadow of Revan, the last expansion prior to 6.0 which provided different versions of each cutscene between factions, did in any meaningful capacity.
That all said, I wouldn't object to getting somewhat more-substantial storylines in the future, although I would never want to see a return to Fallen-Empire-style content. Maybe even something like that wouldn't seem as much of a slog if there wasn't so much extra stuff, or if the chapters didn't continually run into one another meaning that you could actually start them in your own time rather than having to back out almost every time if you just wanted a break.
As long as any future story remains convenient to replay across several characters, irrespective of faction, I'm happy for BW to try anything once.
No comments:
Post a Comment