SW:TOR: Consular Story Complete

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

I’m always surprised when my plans in MMOs actually come to fruition.

Yes, my plan had been to replay the base content of Star Wars: The Old Republic as a Jedi consular in order to see the Republic side of things, and somehow that’s actually what ended up happening.

I now bring you my thoughts on the class, its story, and the Republic.

On the consular:

Having played it all the way through, I’m still not getting why the buzz around the consular story is so negative. While it’s definitely nowhere near as spectacular as the agent story was, I still enjoyed myself quite a lot.

What I like most is how well they sold the class fantasy. The consular story is all about delving into ancient lore, healing the sick, and diplomacy. I’m not the biggest fan of the Jedi (even relative to my already lukewarm feelings toward Star Wars as a whole), but the consular story captures the essence of what it is to be a Jedi incredibly well.

It’s also a welcome change of pace from the more bombastic stories video games tend to focus on. Of course, the game mechanics still involve no end of combat, but story-wise, the consular story is far more focused on making peace rather than war.

You do start to feel like a true paragon of virtue and enlightenment. That appeals very strongly to me — it may not for everyone.

I also thought it was very interesting to have so many diplomats and envoys on your ship, in addition to the usual companions, many of them compelling characters in their own right.

Though it does make me wonder where they were all staying, considering there are only two beds on the ship. Pity the poor soul bunking with Qyzen; he’s awfully spiky, and he’s cold-blooded, so you know he’d be a blanket-hog.

And once again I was struck by how very much SW:TOR does not feel like Star Wars to me. The names are the same, but the style of storytelling in this game bears no resemblance to the movies, and it’s almost hard to believe they’re nominally part of the same franchise.

Coming from me, that’s a compliment.

I do have a few complaints about the consular. One is that chapter three is by far the weakest. The unique class flavour is mostly thrown away for a very standard “save the world” story, and the one big twist is very easy to see coming.

Also, while the agent story easily could have stood alone as a solid game in its own right, the consular story does feel very much like a side-quest (albeit an unusually good one). It feels tangential to the main game, and not terribly important in the greater scheme of things.

Finally, the class itself just isn’t that fun to play. Button bloat is a big problem for SW:TOR in general, but the consular, at least as the sage sub-class, is an especially egregious case. How many different “throw sparklies for moderate damage” spells do I need? My agent had too many buttons, too, but at least they all flowed together into a natural and somewhat satisfying rotation. They all had a clear purpose within the greater whole. Sage is just playing whack-a-mole with a dozen barely distinguishable short cooldown abilities.

Companions were also at times a source of frustration.

On companions:

The consular story once again had me frustrated by how slowly you unlock companions in SW:TOR. It took me an incredibly long time to unlock any companions I actually liked.

I also found it strange — though also somewhat amusing — how unbelievably out of place the first few consular companions are. I’m playing the game’s most peaceful and virtuous class, yet my first three companions are a fanatical lizard monster who hunts sentient beings for sport because he thinks life is a game and he’s trying to get the high score; a weird, creepy pervert who is accompanied everywhere by his self-aware holographic sex doll; and a homicidal, megalomaniacal terrorist.

Qyzen, at least, did grow on me a bit, though it’s still hard to look past the “murders innocent people in the name of his bloodthirsty goddess” thing.

Tharan makes my skin crawl, though. He comes across as the sort of guy who’s going to get caught installing hidden cameras in a middle school bathroom at some point. And Zenith just seems to be the Twi’lek version of Arcturus Mengsk. I can hear him giving the speech now:

“I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Sith, or the Jedi, or anyone! I will rule Balmorra, or see it burned to ashes around me!”

Thankfully, they were just saving the best for last.

Felix is a pretty basic character, and his arc never really went anywhere, but he’s a likable enough guy, and he’ll always be welcome on my ship, no matter how scrambled his brains are.

Nadia, though, is the one who was worth the wait.

I gather Nadia is a character the community is somewhat divided on. I certainly grant her eagerness and naivete can at times be a little abrasive.

But in the end I was won over. Her joy and wonder are just too infectious. Surprisingly, even despite the severe limitations of an MMO, I’d rate Nadia as one of my favourite Bioware romances to date; it’s a sweet story, and it plays out well.

I particularly liked how in this case it was more a case of Nadia pursuing the player character than the other way around. Normally in Bioware romances the NPC doesn’t display any interest until the player does. It’s like a switch goes off in their head and suddenly they like you.

Which is of course exactly what happens, but the artificiality of it is painfully obvious. By making her the aggressor (for lack of a better term) in the relationship, Nadia comes across as a lot more real.

I also thought it was interesting how Nadia appeared in the story long before she became a companion. I am left to wonder why they couldn’t just make her a companion right away,* but at least it gives the player plenty of time to get to know her, even if they can’t adventure with her until near the end of the game.

*(I understand there’s nominally a story explanation for it, but it feels a bit flimsy.)

On the Republic:

This was of course also my first time seeing the Republic side of things.

I don’t like it.

Now, I’m not sure exactly why I find the Republic so uninteresting. Part of it is definitely that the moral choices are a lot easier. I really agonized over a lot of the Imperial choices, but bar a handful of exceptions, the Republic choices are usually between “do the obviously right thing” or “be a petty, evil prick for no reason.”

But even beyond that, the Republic just feels so colourless and bland. Maybe everyone is just so nice the faction doesn’t feel real. Maybe it’s how dorky their uniforms are. Maybe I just like British accents a little too much.

I may still play Republic classes, but it’s clear my heart lies with the Empire. And that’s pretty surprising, because I never like playing the bad guy in games.

On the future:

Against all odds, I’m still enjoying SW:TOR, even if a few of the game’s bad habits are beginning to wear heavily on me — like the lengthy travel times enforced by its sometimes wonky quest flow, and its ludicrous over-abundance of trash mobs. I don’t see myself leaving it behind any time soon.

Right now I’m still thinking I’ll finish the inquisitor storyline at least before moving on to the expansion content. Maybe a few other classes, too — we’ll see. I do want to finish at least most of the class stories eventually, though I can’t guarantee my interest will last that long.

One thing in my favour is that nearly all my characters were created during a double XP event, meaning they’re all a fair bit ahead of the leveling curve. I can afford to skip quite a lot of the non-class content, which should keep things from being too much of a grind.

My plan is still to return to my agent whenever I finally move into the expansions, and I don’t currently expect to play any other characters after finishing their class stories, but we’ll see how it goes.

I may be taking more detours into other games along the way, as well. Right now I feel a strong, sudden call from a old flame… a wild frontier where a young Yukifyo woman can make a name for herself…

* * *

By the way, I finally figured out the issue with images on my blog, so you should now once again be able to click screenshots for full-size versions. Which I certainly hope someone is going to do, since I am unjustifiably proud of my screenshoting skills.

Tyler Versus the MMO Trinity, Part Three: My Solution

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

Over my past two posts on the so-called “holy trinity” of group roles in MMORPGs, I’ve discussed my problems with the trinity, and some of the good times I’ve had outside the traditional role system.

Now, we reach the end of this long journey as I outline my personal plan for how to “fix” the trinity.

For some crazy reason I decided to do all three of these posts at once. It’s well after midnight, we’re approaching hour three, my fingers are sore, and my brain is fuzzy, but Hell, let’s do this.

First, some caveats:

I was hesitant to do this for a very long time because I don’t like playing armchair game designer. Well, actually, I like it a lot, but I don’t like the risk of being seduced by the idea that I actually know what I’m talking about, or giving anyone the idea I think I’m better than I am.

I am not a professional game designer. I know this. I’m not going to pretend I can do a better job than they can, because I can’t. This seems like a good idea to me, but what do I know?

And I really doubt anyone particularly wants to hear my pie-in-the-sky ideas for how games should be designed, hence why I haven’t done posts like this before now. But if I’m going to talk about the trinity, I think this is a necessary part of the discussion.

Second, I want to stress once again that variety is what I want. What I’m about to outline is a solution to the trinity. It is not the solution to the trinity. I obviously think my idea is good, but I wouldn’t want to see it become the only system used by MMOs. I want a mix. Some games with traditional roles, some with softened or modified roles, some with no roles.

That said, this is a plan that I believe would solve most of the problems with the trinity while preserving much of its virtues. Your opinion may vary.

On with the show!

Where Guild Wars 2 failed:

Unfortunately, Guild Wars 2 has become the poster child for trying to break the trinity. I say “unfortunately” because they did an awful job of it. Of all the games I’ve played with no trinity or a relaxed trinity, GW2 is the only one that fails to provide fun group dynamics. Ironic considering how much of a selling feature it was.

Things are supposedly a bit different now that raids are in, but at launch, Guild Wars 2 essentially eliminated tanks and healers. This solves some problems, but it also made pretty every class play mostly the same. It made a lot of things into mindless zergs, and combined with dungeon design that wasn’t sufficiently removed from that of trinity games, it was just broken as all Hell.

But there are lessons to take from Guild Wars 2’s failure. They were in the right neighbourhood, but they chose the run path.

You see, they got rid of the wrong roles. Tanks and healers are fine.

I say it’s DPS that needs to go.

Death to DPS:

Wait, what?

Tyler, you want to delete the overwhelmingly most popular MMO role? The one you play the most? Are you high?

But think about it. There’s method to this madness.

Imagine what happens when DPS is no longer a dedicated role. You no longer need to tune healers and tanks to have lower damage. In a world where no one is a DPS, everyone is a DPS.

That immediately solves the problem of it sucking to solo as a tank or healer.

Then think about what group compositions look like in this hypothetical game where there are only two roles, not three. When you can only include tanks and healers in your group, the responsibility is much more shared.

This solves the problem of the disproportionate sharing of responsibility. It’s not just one tank and one healer. There’s several of each. That glorious double tank run I had in SW:TOR? That could be the norm.

In such a paradigm, if you screw up and get yourself killed as a tank, it wouldn’t be a guaranteed wipe. The other tank(s) would pick up the slack.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds tremendously appealing to me.

Similarly, this makes forming groups a lot easier. Tanks and healers obviously wouldn’t be a rarity, and in theory, such a system could be balanced to no require rigid party compositions. We’re getting far into the hypothetical here, but I think it could be the case that if you have more tanks, your party takes less damage and needs fewer healers, and if you have more healers, you can restore more damage and need fewer tanks.

This would necessitate softening both roles a bit. For example, healers couldn’t simply spam heals all day. They’d need to mix both heals and damage.

This would require slowing down the pace of both heals and damage. Not slowing combat altogether. You know me; even the standard 1.5 second global cooldown feels sluggish to me. But tanks don’t need to be losing half their health every few seconds. There should be time to recover from a mistake, and on the flip side recovery from bad play shouldn’t be one click a way. Healing is at its best when it’s a tug of war.

I’d put heals on cooldowns or otherwise limit them. Not heavily — healing should obviously be a core part of playing a healer. But it shouldn’t be all you do. Like the devoted cleric in Neverwinter, there should be a degree of adaptation based on the needs of the moment. Sometimes it’s about healing. Sometimes it’s about pouring on the damage.

I’d also like to see a little less emphasis on straight up healing and more on buffs and utility. I like The Secret World’s take on buffs — short duration, dramatic effect — and I’d like to see more of that.

So under my hypothetical design, healers would perhaps be more accurately described as support. They keep their parties afloat through a broad toolkit of heals, buffs, and damage.

As for tanks, I’d soften their role a bit, too. I’m not sure I’d do away with aggro mechanics altogether, but I don’t think tanks should be expected to hold aggro on everything all the time. I’d probably make taunts an emergency cooldown rather than a bread and butter ability. Combat need not be total anarchy, but there should be some unpredictability to it.

Slowing down incoming damage supports this, as well. With mobs delivering hits that aren’t so massive, healers (or supports) can take a few hits without collapsing, and combat can afford to be a little less carefully choreographed.

Aggro mechanics are one of those things about the trinity that are painfully artificial, so I’d put a greater emphasis on tanks controlling enemies directly through slows, stuns, pulls, knockbacks, and abilities that manipulate the battlefield. Let them physically impose their will on enemies.

By softening the roles this way, you’re providing everyone a broader experience of combat. Everyone is, one way or another, interacting with enemies, delivering big and satisfying attacks, and aiding their team in a crucial way. At the same time, distinct roles aren’t gone entirely. There’s choice and variety.

It even solves the realism issue to some extent. With multiple tanks, it’s at least somewhat plausible that they could hold off enemies from their weaker team mates. Not because Orcs are magnetically attracted to dudes in plate for some reason, but because they form a physical barrier around their allies. I think I could suspend my disbelief for that.

It’s probably not as simple as I’m making it out to be, but to me, a two-role system seems like an option that avoids the worst flaws of the trinity while still offering much of its benefits.

* * *

Thus concludes my epic series on the trinity. My duty as an MMO blogger is done. Agree or disagree, I hope I’ve at least provided some food for thought, or entertainment value.

While you’re reading epic rants on traditional MMO design by yours truly, why not check out my latest article on MMO Bro: The Case Against MMORPG Button Bloat.

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Tag Archives: Star Wars: The Old Republic

SW:TOR: Consular Story Complete

Tyler Versus the MMO Trinity, Part Three: My Solution

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