Between Seasons

Both Galactic Season 3 and the PvP season are finally over and yet she's still talking about seasons? This or something similar might be what's going through your head after seeing another blog post with "seasons" in the title. I can't deny it though, the introduction of seasons has really changed the way I play the game in some ways.

During the season itself I get very focused on completing it, with most other activities taking a backseat to completing my weekly objectives. This can be a pretty intense time in terms of how time-consuming things are. Naturally, when I'm done with the season, my first instinct is to lean back and relax. I still like to log in every day to progress my login character if nothing else, but there's no real pressure to play every day or do anything at all. I quite like to use this time to catch up with other games a bit that may have gotten neglected in recent months.

Another thing that happens during seasons though is that I'll play a variety of characters to complete objectives and will often find myself thinking something along the lines of "gosh, I should really do X some time", with X being some kind of task tied to the character in question, such as finish their class story, get them through the most recent patch content, level them to 80 or whatever. When the season is over, I quite enjoy casually coming back to these bullet point items and actually ticking some of them off at a casual pace. After the laser-focus of the season, this can feel particularly rewarding in a different way.

Unfortunately, it usually doesn't take long for things to get somewhat repetitive. Getting that first alt caught up with the current patch feels great. However, then I look at the next one on the list and think "well, I just did that, didn't I" and don't necessarily feel like doing it all again right away. I do enjoy replaying story content in SWTOR, but I still tend to need a bit of a break between doing it yet again and again.

And, to be honest, that's when my activity in the game tends to drop off a bit and I start to feel ready for the next season. Looking at Steamcharts for general trends, it does look like a season ending does result in somewhat of a drop in activity in terms of the wider population too, so it's no surprise to me that Bioware seems to be looking to get Galactic Season 4 out the door as soon as possible.

I also thought it was interesting to see earlier this week that next Tuesday is going to bring the first Total Galactic War of 2023. I don't think it's a coincidence that Bioware decided to schedule the game's biggest Conquest event to go live only a week after the end of seasons. They know that this is an event that players find interesting in a similar way to seasons, and until the next one of those is ready to go, it's best to pull out all the stops to keep people engaged. I can't say I feel like complaining.