What's Coming for the Rest of the Year

As briefly mentioned in my last post about the Steam launch, there were other things that the team talked about during the livestream, such as what content updates we could expect for the rest of 2020. The fact that talking about those things wasn't the main event should give you a hint as to how meaty they were (not very).

Am I a bit disappointed that there isn't more? Yes. Is it a big deal for me? Not really. SWTOR isn't the only game I play, but even though I do play it a ton I rarely feel like there's nothing for me to do even after more than eight years of being a continuos subscriber. But people play the game in different ways and have different circumstances, and if you feel that what's coming up isn't enough to justify you staying subscribed for the whole remainder of the year that's perfectly sensible. Just don't expect me to agree on a personal level because for me it's fine.

Anyway, with that out of the way (to pre-emptively answer the inevitable "this game's in maintenance mode, I'm cancelling my sub" comments), what is coming?

First off, we'll get another new world event in autumn, but this one will be longer-running and seasonal instead of tied to a Conquest week, like Soovada and Life Day. It will be called "Feast of Prosperity" and be centred on... Hutts and food I guess?

Now, those of you who've been following my writings for a while may know that I'm not a huge fan of seasonal events. It's not that I hate the idea, but all too often I just find them incredibly lazy both in conceptualisation and implementation, such as how lots of fantasy MMOs just happen to have some version of Christmas in their worlds - oh, it has a different name of course but it also just so happens to be celebrated in all the same (or remarkably similar) ways as in real life, which is not helpful when part of the appeal of playing the game is escapism. The event activities are often a copy and paste from one event to the next as well - I remember when I last played retail WoW, pretty much every single seasonal event had been reduced to grinding some sort of token to buy cosmetics and queueing for a special event boss once a day in hopes of getting a rare mount. If players liked it once, they'll like it a hundred times! Game design, everyone!

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there... anyway, my point is that announcing a new seasonal event that has a clear relation to a real-life holiday is not a good way of getting me excited. (Where's my Grinch hat?) So my first reaction to that announcement was a bit of a sigh and eye-roll - so we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving in a galaxy far, far away now? Sounds grand.

Buuut I'll admit, once I heard some of the details, things started to sound more appealing. Supposedly there'll be repeatable non-combat missions to do (something I've come to appreciate a lot more since starting my pacifist project), and an incentive to kill world bosses for "rare ingredients". I'm trying to figure out how that will fit in with the theme - will we be farming Grandfather on Balmorra for Big Bormu Livers to feed and amuse Drooga the Hutt or something? Okay, that actually sounds kind of weird and funny; I'm game for that.

The 6.2 story continuation that was originally meant to happen in summer will now go live in late autumn/winter, though it will contain two story updates at once (we'll see how "big" that feels in practice). First we'll get the resolution of the arc that Kira and Scourge set up at the end of Onslaught, and then apparently a flashpoint introducing us to a new storyline about internal Mandalorian conflict. I've said in the past that I'm not crazy about Mandos, but I'll admit that this sounds interesting, especially as we haven't dealt with them in a while. I hope this ties into the conversation you have with Shae at the end of KotFE chapter fourteen about how to keep the Mandalorians busy going forward and whether they can adapt their culture to be a bit less bloodthirsty.

In terms of gameplay changes that aren't currently tied to a specific update, Conquest, crafting and amplifiers were mentioned as systems supposed to receive further tweaks, but what really stood out to me was Lead Designer Chris Schmidt mentioning that they were looking at adjusting older content to be more in line with newer design, in terms of things like travel time, number of mobs you have to kill etc. I find this quite intriguing, though I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I think the way they've balanced things in Jedi Under Siege and Onslaught has been very good, but the last time they tweaked low-level content like that in 4.0 it was a bit of a mixed bag to be honest. Additions like extra quick travel points were welcome, but content removals like cutting out most of Czerka's underground base on Tatooine or binning that one heroic on Alderaan just to reduce travel time on a story mission in the area were not. So we'll see how that pans out I guess.

Honestly, writing all of this down has actually made me feel a bit hyped about it. There are only five months to go in the year (I know, right) and we're getting all this stuff? Yeah, more's almost always better, but to be honest that sounds like plenty to keep me interested and busy.