Blaugust the 21st: To Side Quest Or Not to Side Quest

Syp is talking about the SWTOR side quests, and he thinks they should be done away with. I'm of two minds on the subject. And I have a couple questions. First, which side quests are we talking about? The planets you visit all have story quests that help explain why you're there. I feel that if those are done away with, there would be little point in having the planets in the first place. You could just shuttle from one portion of your story to the next, with out all the elaborate set dressing. I realize that there are additional side quests that contribute little to the planet story nor of course to your own class story. Perhaps they're expendable, but how many of those are there, really?

Second, are we talking about eliminating the side quests on the current planets or only for future expansions? Either way, I think that would cause SWTOR to become extremely linear, which it already is to some extent. As a counter example, I think Vanilla WoW was pretty wide open as far as what the player could choose to do. It may be a theme park, but at least at Disneyland, I get the choice of a several of themed areas and then I get to decide which rides to ride when I get there.

"Who would have wanted to see Luke Skywalker actually go into town and pickup those power converters?? I feel like it’s a film moving along at a great pace. I just wish they would keep the idea and just have the story line."
~Pedge, the original inspiration for Syp's post.

Do you really want just a film's worth of content? That's neither the way MMORPGs are done, nor the way BioWare's SPRPGS are done. There's a ton to do in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games that are not directly related to the character arcs. And yes, if Star Wars had been a multi-season TV series, we would have seen Luke go to Tosche Station and hang out with his friends in an early episode. Also, is it so hard to follow the various story plots? Do you not watch multiple different TV series during the week, sometimes even on the same night? Or do you only ever binge watch on NetFlix? How do you ever follow all the threads of Game of Thrones? SWTOR is not a film, it's a game—and in many ways, a complex one, from a story/plot perspective.

I admit that Balmorra & Taris some of the planets seem to bog down a bit . But some of the planet quests are quite epic on their own. Like Vagrant Zero, I like that the option is there. Just last night I stepped onto Alderaan on my story-only Jedi Knight. However, it's my first time on the Republic side, and I realized that I have no idea what is going on around me (other than seeing it from the other side). Quite frankly, it was disorienting. Going through the full planet stuff is cool at least one time, but I appreciate the ability to just run the main quests if I want to, due to 12x XP. And as Syp pointed out, getting companion affection and DS/LS points becomes a lot harder without the planet quests, since they're not 12x. Please keep our options open, BioWare.

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If you're interested in joining the madness (Vloggers are welcome, too!), Belghast has a set of rules for qualifying for any prizes at the end. Your second stop should be the Blaugust Nook, where Bel is keeping track of everything and community members are sharing encouragement and ideas.

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