30/10/2019

Onderon Jungle Fight

There is so much great stuff in Onslaught that I want to talk about, but today I have to get one not-so-great thing off my chest.

First off, they changed the way reputations work after seven years: Previously, gaining reputation meant that you were rewarded reputation tokens which you could then consume at your leisure, up to a weekly cap. This meant that if you binged hard on new content during the first week, you could technically save up enough tokens to later max out your reputation over the course of several weeks simply by using them up over time as they came off cooldown. Once you had achieved maximum reputation, you could then vendor any remaining and future tokens for a few extra credits.

In Onslaught, Bioware has effectively done away with this system, and tokens only exist as a technicality. You can see the token icon when you get a quest reward, but it's consumed/the reputation is awarded instantly, and if you're already at the weekly cap you simply don't get anything. I can't help but find this disappointing, as I struggle to see how players are supposed to benefit from this change. It just feels like a cynical move to get people to grind daily areas for longer.

I can't say I'm particularly thrilled to do this on Onderon in particular, because it's a rather odd daily area. It's no Iokath in terms of confusion and inconvenience factor, but for some reason the person who came up with most of the daily missions decided that making lots of quests with minimal instructions that require you to find small clicky things on the ground in a wild, overgrown jungle was a good idea. Needless to say, I don't agree.


This green circle on green grass is actually one of the more visible markers.

It does get a lot better once you know what you're looking for and roughly in what area, but the first time around the full round of dailies took me around two hours on each faction simply because I couldn't find things, and the instructions were lacking. "Plant listening devices in the jungle" - where exactly? On the trees, on the ground? Even with a general area marked on the map it took me a while to find the small circles among the bushes where I was supposed to place the things.

As another example, on Imperial side there was a quest that had me collecting armour and weapons from Republic forces in a specified area. I think I did around three laps of their camp, killing everything in sight, until the lack of drops drove me to look up what I was doing wrong and I found that I wasn't supposed to take these things from actual Republic troopers but had to find specific small clicky items lying on the ground (because I needed that one specific datapad, piece of armour etc., not just any old one apparently) - if they weren't bugged that is. The last one I could only pick up after switching instances twice.

Republic players are not so lucky of course, as the "final ship's log" they are supposed to pick up as part of another daily mission has been unclickable since launch and no amount of instance switching has seemed to help. Yesterday's patch was supposed to fix it according to the patch notes, but we've not seen any evidence of the actual fix so far, still having no luck with it even after completely dropping the quest and trying to start over.

The only reason I remain keen on doing the rounds on Onderon right now is that it gives me a good excuse and opportunity to gather some of the new biochem materials, which are required in absolutely stupendous amounts to craft anything at all (but that's a subject to tackle another day). I doubt that I'll be coming back to these dailies for sheer fun of it once I'm done with the reputation though.

12 comments :

  1. Ugh. I'd been hoping that if I maxed out the rep the tokens would start showing up in my inventory. The game has soooo many old rep tracks it's hard enough to catch up to veteran players already!

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    1. update: I was on voss and a rep token dropped off of a random mob, and *that* appeared in my inventory as usual.

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    2. It might be that they've only implemented this new system on Onderon, which would at least be something. Still sucks for the new reputation though.

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    3. I think so - I ended up in KDY these days and the rep drops were still to click. I think it's a waste to have all the extra rep you gather become nothing, but, then again, I haven't seem to reach the cap yet.

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    4. No, the other reputation rewards from quests (at least in CZ-198, Rakghoul Resurgence, and Yavin) are still automatically used, but drops off mobs are normal.

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  2. I was wondering if it was a bug. I wouldn't mind a system that automatically gave me the reputation points until I maxxed out for a week and then started giving me the tokens. If it is a change at least the token is in the rewards so they (hopefully) could change it back to the older system if enough people ask for it.

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    1. Ah, the good old "not sure if bug or feature" excuse. :P I don't think something like the tokens getting consumed automatically and not being awarded at all if you're already at the weekly cap would make its way into the game as a bug though...

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    2. It's a good excuse. ^_^ When it comes to Swtor patches you just never know what is intended. My poor BH is missing getting that level 75 gear by doing story mode KotFE & KotET. I thought that was intended, but I guess not.

      I do wish they would take a page from Wow and put in the systems changes a month before releasing the new content. That always feels like a good way to hammer out some of these types of bugs.

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  3. Onderon jungle is a real pain to get by, visibility is terrible and sometimes it makes me just want to put in lowest Graphic's setting to see if it's less confusing. Also, even the quest-points marked with triangles DON'T highlight the quest they belong to when you hoover over it with your mouse (as it happens in vanilla game), so I've spent ages trying to lit out torches in the absolutely wrong spot. A joy.
    One thing that IDK if it's new or I just missed before, is that GF now will only allow you to play story/level appropriate flashpoints in early levels - I'm now at 24 and I've only got Hammer Station, Athiss, Mando raiders and KDY as options. I knew they were setting groups according to level/gear rating, but not that they had limited the selection as well. It's kinda neat, if I had known, I would be queued for HS for a long time now! Hashaha

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    1. I haven't had any problems with the triangle markers personally - that's something at least!

      And your observation about the group finder is super interesting, because I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else before. I'm undecided how I feel about it... I've long said that people getting into places like Blood Hunt at level 20 doesn't make for a great experience, both gameplay-wise and in terms of narrative. On the other hand though, having access to such a huge variety of options early on was kind of nice as an experienced player. Time to level another character through flashpoints I guess...! :P

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    2. Well, but, even as an experienced player, some later flashpoints are more too much of a nightmare for having the possibility of doing them feeling like a good thing, specially bosses that rely heavy on mechanics that you may not yet have gained. Besides, it doesn't matter how much more stats you give me to scale me up to 70-75, I won't have enough energy/forcepower/whatever to deal with longer fights because I don't have the passives that will allow for my rotation to work (I find my self mindlessly hitting the same keys even the ones that I haven't learned yet, such as e for shadow strike at the appropriate time - it doesn't help that the "peak order" is what organises all my keybindings, meaning there's barely any difference between most classes).
      I mean, my son got sent into Copero as soon as the flashpoint was released and I think he was not yet in his 40's (a sage). It took him hours and hours, a dozen of replacements and a lot of patience to get through it. I hadn't even done story on it yet, so when he came asking me something I just yelled a lot of "lalalaa not listening lalalaa" (come to think of it, I don't think I had done Umbara. Couldn't bring myself to face it as I had been spoiled for the traitor and gotten upset enough to resub).
      I think the way they are setting it now is a good compromise between limiting it according to the story-place you are and leaving it all open. PERHEAPS the best option would be to have a toggle feature so you could choose to remain "spoiler appropriate areas" or "just everything" (though of course you can just unmark stuff if you don't want to go through it, but real newcomers will find if complicated).

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