Star Wars: The Old Republic

Though other flash points have been linked to missions also. The missions dealing with the revanist has four so far. Going to eventually see how it plays out for a character that has ties to the group.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

I've only been playing single-player, though I've conspired with a friend to play together sometime soon, and I'm trying to convince my sister into playing the game as well. The thing that I find awesome about SWTOR is that it can very much be a single-player game without feeling impossible or like you're missing out on content. I've thoroughly enjoyed the stories of all the classes, and even though it's just a minute detail, I love the Legacy system and all the ways you can connect your characters to each other. I've got my own little backstories that unite them all, which is a lot of fun imo.

Also, regarding V As, the Bounty Hunter and Sith Warrior's respective actors both work really well for a Cathar character. I picked less bulky builds for them both (build 2 in character creation; 3 and 4 just looked weird), but the fangs the Cathar have really bring out an intimidation factor that suits them.

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some children." -Bur

If I might ask, having not played The Old Republic, who would any of you say is the deadliest character in-universe/gameplaywise?

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

I think lore-wise, Inquisitor is the strongest. Force-users are stronger than normal people by default, and although no-force player characters can match up with NPC force users, if you really think about it, it's mostly the enemy underestimating them and paying the price.

The reason I say Inquisitor is the strongest, is that a very large portion of their class story is dedicated to increasing their force abilities, and the So R expansion gives them access to a machine that can make them (and only them) functionally immortal.

On top of that, they have control over their own cult on Nar Shadaa, and a good portion of the Imperial Fleet, so they're also very powerful politically.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

Plus, if your going the sorcerer route, inquisitors get all the lighting. And lightning, as you know, can do anything

edited 2nd Sep '16 1:43:22 AM by chaosconsortium

Sorcerers get more basic lightning skills, Assassins get upgrades to Inquisitor lightning skills.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

It depends on how you mean, exactly. Just the player characters, or are we including NPCs? Do you mean personal power, political power, or both? Does having immense power but never doing anything with it disqualify you?

For player characters: probably either the Knight or the Inquisitor, for "personal" and "political" power, respectively. The Warrior might be a match for the Knight on a personal level, but as far as I'm aware he never displays any unique abilities like the Knight does.

The Knight is a special snowflake who can resist the Sith Emperor's Mind Control. The number of people who managed that can be counted on one hand. One hand missing most of its fingers, actually. I can't remember if a reason for that is ever given, or the Knight is just that hardcore. The Knight is also the single most skilled lightsaber combatant in the Jedi Order, which is certainly worth something.

The Inquisitor spends most of his storyline learning Sith rituals to boost his power level, and ends up a member of the Dark Council by defeating a member first in large-scale battle (outmaneuvering him politically and strategically), then in single combat. I'm not convinced he could take the Knight in a straight-up fight, but he's a legitimate badass on a personal level who is also one of the twelve dudes who runs the Empire.

For NPCs, there are really only two choices: either Revan or the Sith Emperor. Honorable mention goes to the Dread Masters, though, a group of six Sith who were so terrifying (literally, their specialty is manipulating fear via the Force) that the Empire thought they went too far and sealed them away, but they're disqualified for a) being six people, and b) getting all their plans shot down before any of them could come to fruition.

Revan is incredibly powerful on a personal level, able to use the Light and Dark sides of the force with equal proficency. He's also incredibly charismatic, gathering a group of defectors from both the Republic and the Empire and forging them into a force that threatened both at once to the point where they were willing to team up to take him on. He's also, like the Knight, one of the only people able to successfully break free of the Emperor's mind control. He's also really bad at staying dead, though the most recent time seems to have done the trick. For now.

The Emperor is an apparently-immortal, body-hopping Force user who's honestly closer to a Force god than a Sith lord. He can mind control literally anyone, and so far there have been exactly two people in the galaxy shown to be able to resist his influence. He's harvested entire planets of their Force energy (killing everything on it in the process) at least twice; once in his backstory, and once on-screen. The main argument against him being the most powerful ever is that he rarely actually does anything with his immense power. His physical incarnation has been defeated multiple times (though that seems to be more of an inconvenience to him than anything else), and although he had total uncontested control of not one, but two unrelated empires, he never really does anything (letting his minions run things in his place), and is eventually removed from both positions (though that seems to be All According To Plan™).

edited 2nd Sep '16 6:33:37 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

What about Darth Jadus?

Er, sorry, I should have specified but I meant the KOTOR series overall. This seemed like the appropriate thread, but then the KOTOR franchise is quite huge so just TOR is fine.

And yes, player characters and NPC's. I wasn't looking so much for the most powerful, but the deadliest - the one most willing to use that tremendous power/the highest kill count.

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

It pains me to say it a little, because he's a total Villain Sue (even if Knights Of The Fallen Empire redeems him somewhat for me), but the Emperor probably gets the top spot in terms of both Offscreen Villainy and sheer power in the Force.

Take him out of the running, though, and Revan probably jumps to the lead in terms of personal power what with holding off the Jedi grandmaster, one or two Dark Council members, and up to a half-dozen or so other high-level combatants simultaneously. In terms of bodycount, if we take that to mean responsibility for deaths if not personal defeat, the Exile and Bao-Dur with their Mass Shadow Generator share one of the higher tallies, along with Darth Nihlus who ate at least one planet with his powers, possibly more than one, and as that character's Shadow Archetype, is implied to be what the Exile could have become if the latent powers she derived from becoming a 'wound in the Force' were directed differently.

Darth Jadus is stated in-universe to be second only to the Emperor himself in terms of raw power, though as much as I might like the character that's more of an Informed Ability— we never really get to see him cut loose, and it's possible for the Imperial Agent to keep him at bay long enough to outplay him. Although that could just come down to hubris on Jadus's part. That estimation probably doesn't take an outsider like Revan into account. Presumably this means Darth Malgus, the box art villain, he of the cutscenes and flashpoints, isn't as powerful as Jadus, but he's certainly the more visible of the two.

Where this puts Malak, Sion, and Traya, among others, is anyone's guess, with no direct means of comparison between one game and the next. There are a lot more Sith in the time of SWTOR, but Malak was Revan's apprentice, privy to some of his secrets in a way no one else ever was, and *the* Dark Lord of the Sith for a time. Meanwhile, Sion's power is unique, and while there are more powerful Force users and more skilled fighters even in his own game, it seems like the only reason the Exile could win against him is because deep down Sion had been wanting to die for a very long time. As for the latter, we only fight her one on one, but she kills all the reassembled Jedi Council members with ease, and it's always vague how much power she actually has versus what she shows— everything is a test with her. All we know is that she couldn't stand against Sion, never mind Sion and Nihlus both at the same time.

In terms of non-Force users, special mention has to be reserved for Scorch AKA Shae Vizla AKA Mandalore the Avenger and HK-47, either of whom can likewise handle a full flashpoint group in a (mostly) straight fight on their own.

edited 2nd Sep '16 12:02:56 PM by Unsung

Well we did get to see some of what the Emperor could do on Ziost. Possession, powering up those possessed, and wiping all life off the surface of the planet.

I don't think there's any doubt the Emperor is the most powerful. He's on another level from the rest, closer to a dark god than a man at this point. I just don't like saying it, because at least in the main game, he's really not very interesting.

edited 2nd Sep '16 11:43:50 AM by Unsung

He's even less interesting as Valkorion, if only because Zakuul is boring and, as if this were possible, even more one-dimensionally evil than the Sith. They restarted the Alderaanian Civil War because the people of Zakuul watch it as live entertainment. Plus, the necessity of being able to see the Force in terms of Blue-and-Orange Morality is a completely Informed Attribute: Valkorion, Arcann, and Vaylin are all ridiculously Capital-E evil and would be indistinguishable from garden-variety Sith Lords if they carried red lightsabers. That's why I really dislike Chapter XIII of KOTFE — Satele and Darth Marr are telling me that Zakuul sees the Force in a new way, neither light nor dark, and based on how they're actually portrayed, I don't believe a word of it.

I think Bio Ware hit a snag when they realized what made Star Wars Star Wars was not what Bio Ware wanted Star Wars to be.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

To be fair we mainly are seeing the three evil members of the Empire's Force-users. We don't know how the rest of the Knights would act.

I think there was an interesting idea in Zakuul, and as mentioned it's a shame we don't really get to see it. The amount of cameos going on after the first nine chapters hurts what was shaping up to be an interesting conflict regarding the problems with Utopia Justifies the Means as a motivation, as well as bringing back the notion of gray Force users, which seems to be something of a pet issue for Bioware.

Zakuul on the whole reads as a Take That! on The Culture, with its hedonism and reliance on droids. Being a big fan of the Culture, I was interested in seeing where they took that. 'Ultimately nowhere' is the answer there, but it was a fun idea while it lasted.

Even if Valkorion was still very much the consummate fantasy evil overlord, I enjoyed the chance to banter with him for an extended period of time, because that's something that we didn't really get to do that often (or at least not for very long) in that classic genre-story way during the main game. Valkorion exists to devour the scenery and if his proposals aren't very tempting unless you're already playing a pretty corrupt character, then that's fine, because archetypal good/evil conflict is what Star Wars is about anyway. Arcann exists to carry the Villain Ball and serve as a Hate Sink so that Valkorion and the Sith seem less evil by comparison, while Vaylin is there to Starscream at him, and to set up what is obviously the much greater long-term threat.

It was all very formulaic, but I don't especially mind, because it was paced well and the action felt nicely over the top, and that's what I've come to expect of Star Wars. It's only when the pacing really bogged down after Chapter IX that I was more disappointed. Admittedly because my hopes weren't all that high going in. It'd be nice for them to commit to the more complex story they seem to think they had, the shades of gray that Zakuul is probably supposed to represent, but this is Bioware we're talking about. They never really go all in on that kind of thing.

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:08:42 PM by Unsung

Can someone explain the point of adaptive armor? Whenever I hover over it in vendors to see the stats they're always far, far lower than anything else I have.

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some children." -Bur

Anyone can wear any adaptive armour, regardless of class restrictions. They're also completely moddable, which means as long as you can buy/craft the necessary mods, the armour remains usable at any level.

They all have a base rating of 8 with no mods installed, but if you've outleveled the area where they're purchased/dropped/rewarded, then you'll need to re-mod them.

edited 5th Sep '16 9:41:49 AM by Unsung

Yeah, like you can put better upgrades on them that make them better armor and basically you never need to wear anything again. Really good if you want to just wear a cloak the entire game.

I think he's talking about orange armor in general. "Adaptive" armor means it automatically uses the stats of the heaviest armor type you can use — so with same piece of adaptive armor, a trooper gets the stats of heavy armor, a smuggler gets the stats of medium armor, and a consular gets the stats of light armor.

However, with "custom" equipment (usually called "orange" gear because the inventory icon is outlined in orange), you'll often have terrible stats because orange equipment is just a "shell" — the actual stats are provided by different pieces that can be fit into the shell. Orange gear has a main piece (armoring for armor, barrels for ranged weapons, hilts for melee weapons) that provides most of the equipment's stats (armor rating for armor, damage rating for weapons, etc), plus modifications ("mods") and enhancements that add more stats (mastery, power, crit, etc) without actually changing the damage/armor rating of the equipment.

You can get orange gear for all "visible" pieces of equipment plus your offhand (even if it's not visible, like a shield or generator), meaning everything but earpieces, implants and relics. Orange gear in your waist and wrist slots don't have space for an enhancement, though (just armor and mod). All equipment (orange or not) can also have an augment ("aug") slot added, which is simply another piece that can be fit into the shell and boost your stats. You generally don't need to worry about augs until you're at level cap and running HM operations.

This system was originally put into place so people could keep armor they liked the look of, and upgrade the stats (via new armoring/mods/enhancements/etc) as needed. This is technically unnecessary now (since they recently added "outfits", which lets you create separate cosmetic loadouts that have no effect on your stats), but basically everyone still uses it because it allows you to mix and match different equipment pieces to achieve the stat balance you want. Plus, augment slots are sort of a pain to add to stuff, so might as well add it to your orange gear once instead of having to add it to every new piece of gear you get.

tldr; if you're looking at "new" equipment that has absolutely terrible (ie, near-zero) stats, it's probably an empty shell and you're supposed to fit armoring/mods/etc into it. You can buy the individual pieces from vendors on the fleet (in the "supplies" section; the vendors are labelled by level) for common crystals, which you get as mission rewards. Certain drops also have equipment pieces that you can remove and use in your own orange gear, though removing pieces like that costs credits. You're usually better off buying from vendors until you hit the level cap.

edited 5th Sep '16 12:27:56 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

New CGI trailer for the upcoming expansion. I'm kind of surprised that they still have the money to make these sorts of trailers.

Oh damn, that's rough :( No wonder she left.

So is Vaylin basically like Jack from Mass Effect 2, but evil?

Variations on a standard theme. Look at it from the right angle, and the idea of isolation and torture turning psychics into monsters is the basis of Dragon Age's templar/mage/demon conflict. The story itself has a lot of traction in modern times, with abuses in hospitals and psychiatric facilities being fresh in the public consciousness. Just look at Stranger Things.

Senya doesn't look quite like herself in that video. Which is odd, because all the KOTFE characters are a step closer to realism than the rest of TOR as it is. Neat to see Vaylin and Senya in the spotlight. Wish we'd gotten to see a little more of both characters before the grand finale. I wasn't surprised to see Vaylin take over as Big Bad, but I do think that transition could have been foreshadowed more heavily to the benefit of the overarching Three-Act Structure of the expansion as a whole.

I thought it was interesting how it covered some of the same material as the Sacrifice trailer (like the twins training in the gladiator pit, for example), but from a different perspective. From a narrative point of view, they're clearly trying to paint Senya and to a lesser extent Vaylin as sympathetic. I'm not sure I buy it, personally. Senya wants to save her daughter, which is understandable, but I don't think that Vaylin wants to be "saved". It may be true that she Used to Be a Sweet Kid, but now she's marginally-sane Chaotic Evil and loving every second of it. I can't really see her being redeemed in any meaningful sense without it being completely ham-fisted, so the best that Senya can really hope for is to keep Vaylin on a tight enough leash to make sure she doesn't hurt anyone else in the meantime. If that really is Senya's plan, then more power to her, but I'm afraid we're going to see her try to turn Vaylin good again and it's going to blow up in her (and everyone else's) face.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

It wouldn't surprise me if they do it anyway. They did it in Kot FE.

While I remember, the Dv L event has ended the portion that decided what companion you got, and it will end upon the next expansions launch. I think it's some time this month? Not absolutely certain.

edited 9th Oct '16 2:16:25 PM by Ekimmak

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.