Around the SWTOR-sphere: May 2024

Has it really already been another month? I've been so busy playing and writing, I feel I've hardly had time to look at other people's stuff for weeks. Fortunately May the 4th was Star Wars Day, so I managed to pick up at least a couple of interesting things around that date.

• The one I saw shared around the most but still wanted to post here as well was this Old Republic Lo-Fi tunes compilation by Morden Wex. Just a nice little twist on some well-known themes, plus the animation with Lana as the Lo-Fi girl seemed very appropriate. I actually found myself wondering where the concept of the Lo-Fi girl came from anyway, and it turns out Wikipedia has a whole bit about that. I thought that was fascinating!
• Sticking with the subject of music, via Bluesky I came across this 12-year old promotional video called Music of the Old Republic. As someone who wasn't really part of the game's pre-launch hype, I had never seen it and thought it was really interesting! Unfortunately it cuts off suddenly at the end, which made me try to find the full version - something at which I didn't succeed, but instead I found a slightly longer one called Composing the Music of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which appears to have been made using the same basic source material but featured different quotes. I had no idea they had five full-time composers on staff when this game was built! No wonder the soundtrack is so good... anyway, I know that this is old material, but I'd never seen it and thought it was really cool, so there.
• Staying on YouTube for a moment, commenter Thander replied to last month's round-up that there was another "Should you play SWTOR in 2024?" video that I should check out, this time by NoblePlays. And yeah, I enjoyed "Should You play SWTOR? (In 8 Minutes)". I like how these videos come out in very different ways depending on what kind of player makes them. Previous ones I featured were mostly created by new or very casual players and quite focused on just how the game works and what state it is in. Noble as a long-time vet focuses more on an audience that already knows what SWTOR is all about and talks about why he still enjoys it after all these years.
  
  I then saw that around the same time, he also released a video called "Should You PvP in SWTOR? A Realistic Explanation" which I also liked. If you've ever been in doubt about whether to try out PvP, please watch this! And I don't just say that because I'd like to see more people in the PvP queue (though I do.)
• In the written blogosphere, not a lot of things caught my eye this month. The only thing I noted down was Intisar posting his thoughts about various patch 7.4.1 features. I know that's a bit late now that we just got 7.5, but I still enjoyed reading his thoughts and opinions.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 11

After how I felt at the end of week 10, I decided to put on the brakes. Yes, I still had some work to do on Darth Malgus, but on the other servers I was around level 90 everywhere, and that with literal months left in the season and no particular reason to push myself. I set myself a hard cap of no more than four weekly objectives per server (which is quite similar to what commenter Thander recommended in response to my previous post, but this decision was actually made a few days prior to that). Until now, I'd tried not to be too specific with my plans for which objectives to pursue each week, but this time I knew exactly what I was going to do:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: I was still going to do this on every server as before.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: This would also get done automatically again.
  
• Visit another player's Copero stronghold: You already know that I did this one too.
  
• Do the Oricon weekly twice or the Osssus weekly once: Usually I quite like the Ossus weekly where I have access to it, but I wasn't planning to do it this time.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: This was going to be my fourth objective on all servers.
  
• Kill four named champion mobs on Balmorra (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): I do these sometimes, but it wasn't going to do them this week.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Hammer Station, Athiss, Battle of Rishi or Nathema Conspiracy): Again, a no this week.
  
• Kill the Hoth world bosses: This was one of three group objectives I was planning to do with my guild on Darth Malgus, but not anywhere else.
  
• Kill champion guards or turrets on selected planets: This was the second one of those group season objectives.
  
• KotET chapter 8 on veteran mode or higher: Still no chapters for me.
  
• Karagga's Palace on story mode: This was the third group objective I was going to do on Darth Malgus, even if I was a bit surprised to see it again so soon.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

My week started once again with a long day at the office, so in the evening I was too tired to do much. I just visited a Copero stronghold on all servers and achieved my daily Conquest score with some clicky objectives.

Day 2 - Wednesday

On Wednesday evening I scored myself some Conquest points and worked on getting kills with my companions by questing on Darth Malgus, Leviathan and Tulak Hord, but three servers was quite enough for me for the day, so the daily objective on Satele Shan, Star Forge and Shae Vizla was once again completed with some clickies.

Day 3 -  Thursday

I know it's getting repetitive, but Thursday was another day in the office followed by a guild ops run in the evening, which meant that I didn't have much energy left to do seasons stuff afterwards, so I once again just got my daily objective done with things like crew skills, companion gifts etc.

Day 4 - Friday

On Friday evening I felt like doing a bit of questing again, but only on Darth Malgus and Leviathan.

Day 5 - Saturday

The other servers had their turn on Saturday morning. On Tulak Hord, my Sith inquisitor finished chapter one of her class story in the process, and on Satele Shan I was baffled to find that for some reason I'd never bought the Dromund Kaas stronghold on that server, so I did that too (good for my Conquest bonus).

In the afternoon I continued to progress my weeklies on all the secondary servers via questing. Once again my alts across different servers were weirdly in sync, as my agent on Satele Shan and my bounty hunter on Leviathan also finished chapter one of their respective class stories.

In the evening it was time for social night with my guild on Darth Malgus, which we used to knock out those three aforementioned group objectives by downing both Hoth world bosses, killing turrets in the Imperial base on Oricon and doing a quick KP story mode run.

Day 6 - Sunday

On Sunday I once again didn't feel like playing that much, so I only did an operation with my guild in the evening (killing Terror from Beyond on 16-man master mode, yay) as well as getting my last few companion kills on Darth Malgus.

Day 7 - Monday

Monday was a holiday in the UK, so I enjoyed spending my morning going through all the other servers to finish getting kill credit with my companion where it wasn't quite done yet as well as progressing various class stories some more to earn some Conquest. I was kind of amazed to find myself doing Battle of Ilum story mode on my level 64 smuggler on Star Forge, since it's so rare for me nowadays to get into post-class story content before the level cap.

I then spent the rest of the day doing other things, until I panicked late in the evening when I realised that I'd have to go to bed early due to needing to get up early the next morning, and that I didn't actually have much time left to get my dailies done. I just rotated through all the servers as quickly as I could, doing a few more clicky objectives and quest hand-ins everywhere as appropriate to tick off the daily objective and get to 4/7 weeklies where I wasn't quite there yet.

Week 11 Thoughts

I've decided that this is a good point to stop keeping these diaries for this season. While I still have quite a bit of "work" to do on Darth Malgus for the achievements, the effort required for that isn't really enough to be worth documenting in this level of detail, and all the other servers are close enough to seasons level 100 that it'll be trivial to achieve in the near future, whether I put any effort into it or not.

This diary was an interesting experiment, but to be honest I'm glad to be done with it as it didn't quite work out the way I had hoped. My idea was that by keeping close track of what I was doing every week I'd find it easier to avoid burning myself out, due to having to be more consciously aware of what I was doing instead of, e.g. "suddenly" finding myself doing the same flashpoint for the fourth time in a row and feeling tired.

I guess that did work to some degree as I found it easier to say "just say no" to certain types of objectives this time around, however that didn't prevent me from still getting in way over my head week after week by underestimating the amount of time that would be required to complete even relatively simple objectives across six servers. Worse, having set myself the goal to write it all down added an extra layer of "work" that actually became a bit tedious after a while. (And yes, I know nobody is making me do this, but I did want to see it through to the end at least.)

Also, I only have so much creative energy and time to spare to write every week (about enough for a post every two to three days tops), which meant that these diaries being a weekly fixture "crowded out" a lot of other potential posts. I've accumulated quite a number of topic ideas in my drafts folder over the last three months that I just didn't have enough time to post about! Most of them weren't time-sensitive, so I'll hopefully still get around to writing about them at a later point, when there isn't so much going on...

For the time being though, patch 7.5 launches tomorrow, bringing with it a new story update, the new spring event and more, so there definitely won't be a shortage of things to talk about for a while.

Drop In: Copero

This week's Galactic Seasons objectives included a visit to another person's stronghold again, and this week the stronghold of choice was none other than Copero - the new one handed out as the current season's main reward. I thought this was interesting because I had little idea what to expect from this stronghold. Obviously a lot of current players had access to it, but I wasn't sure how many would've bothered to list theirs publicly at this point. I hadn't even unlocked all the rooms in my own yet.

Fortunately I didn't have any issues with finding public listings, but it was definitely noticeable that there were fewer of them than there had been for most other strongholds, and only three of the six I visited sported 100% completion.

On Darth Malgus, the highest percentage I could find at the time I did the rounds belonged to Caij Vanda's Restful Resort at 71% completion. Nothing about this one really stood out to me, other than that a lot of the decorations seemed a bit random, giving off that "I'll just use everything I have without outright spamming" vibe that I've come to know well. I wouldn't have thought that the entrance hall would be the best place for a dance floor for example.

I did like how they filled the water in the underground docks with (mostly) appropriate plants though; I thought that was an interesting choice.

My next destination was probably my favourite of this lot, called Shayana-ténèbra's Stronghold on Leviathan. Most of the strongholds I've really liked while working on this series were thematically very consistent and usually a little understated, but this one was... not that. I still thought it had a lot of character though, starting with this weird abomination of different large decos mashed together at the zone-in spot.

Everything about this stronghold seemed to say "I like playing this game a lot and I want to use my stronghold to show that off", starting with the group of ops boss trophies near the landing area.

However, I recognised a lot of the other decorations as the result of "hard work" as well, from season rewards to flashpoint drops to decos that can only be acquired through grinding dailies. I just thought that was interesting. Also, whatever they did with this hallway actually broke the environment a bit - I'm pretty sure it's because of the decos anyway, as I didn't encounter this glitch anywhere else.

In Thahil's Stronghold on Tulak Hord (53% completion), the first thing that struck me was this library-like area in the front room, mostly because it's similar to how I've decorated that room in my own Copero Villa. I think it lends itself to that theme if you want to take the presence of the quest NPC into consideration, since he's interested in historical research.

However, the truly unique thing about this stronghold was how many of those square Gree lights it used. You can see six of the orange ones in the screenshot above, and eighteen of the blue ones in the one of the underground docks below (which had a lot else going on too). There were a lot more than that still, and this was noteworthy to me since they require Gree reputation currency to buy. I can kind of see why this person went for it though, because there's so little room on the walls that your options for lighting and the like are quite limited, and who wants to fill everything with basic junker's lights?

The main balcony looked pretty relaxing and also gave me similar vibes to how I've been trying to make mine look. Again, I think it's just a natural fit.

Apostle Lightwalker's Restful Resort on Star Forge was probably the busiest-looking of the Copero strongholds I visited, with a bunch of utilities crammed into the space where you load in and fireworks going off around you in more than one location - I didn't even know that was a thing.

I took a screenshot of the front room because I liked the use of Voss decos - I think they generally fit this stronghold really well stylistically, though scale is definitely a problem at times, as you can see from the hanging lanterns nearly touching the floor.

I'd also never seen this deco before that looked like a giant version of the weed flowers you can buy from the prefab vendor.

The underground docks revealed that the owner had kind of run out of ideas at some point and did just spam light side signs to get full completion.

Løch-ness Mønster's Luxury Villa on Satele Shan shed further light (pun intended) on the seeming challenge of getting enough variety in terms of lighting into the small indoor spaces, as it had both a green and a red-lit hallway.

It also had what I thought was an absolutely genius underground docks area, with walls used to create something that looked a bit like an airlock and a submarine surrounded by kelp.

Finally, on Shae Vizla there was only a single public stronghold listed when I checked, which was only partially unlocked and only at 27% completion. I don't have a lot to say about Terah's Stronghold because they were clearly somewhat limited in what they had to work with - there were quite a lot of life day decorations inside for example - but I still appreciated the opportunity to visit.

Have you visited other people's Copero strongholds yet? If so, did you see anything interesting?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 10

As mentioned at the end of week 8, there was no seasons diary for week 9 as I was away and travelling. I did have my laptop with me and logged in a few times to get my free points from the weekly login bonus, but that was it.

Returning to my regular routine, I was actually a bit uncertain about how I felt about jumping right back into grinding for seasons, though I thought the weekly objectives for week 9 looked pretty promising and varied at a glance:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, of course.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Would also get done automatically once again.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Empire Space planets Taris, Oricon, Yavin IV, Ziost or Dantooine: I figured I was going to do this one on several servers as usual, though this particular selection of planets is not great for exploration missions, which are usually my preferred way of hitting this target.
  
• Do the CZ-198 weekly twice or the Iokath weekly once: I was probably going to do Iokath where I could, and CZ is short and sweet, though it carries a bit of a risk of burnout when I do it on too many characters in quick succession.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a trooper or agent: I was definitely going to do this one.
  
• Craft prefabs and fabricator crystals/designs: I previously noted that I usually only do the crafting objectives on Darth Malgus since I'm not set up well enough with crew skills on the other servers, but this objective was an exception in the past in the sense that prefabs can be crafted at a lower skill level and don't require as much in terms of materials, meaning I could buy mats from the GTN or with jawa junk and get this done on other servers too. I figured I might do this again.
  
• Play 4-8 warzone matches (wins count double): While the PvP season was approaching its end, I figured I was still going to be happy to do this.
  
• Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double): I don't mind this one, but I probably wasn't going to do both PvP and GSF across multiple servers due to time constraints.
  
• Complete four uprisings on veteran or master mode: As established previously, I'm not a huge fan of uprisings so I probably wasn't going to bother with this one.
  
• Do dailies on Ruhnuk or Kessan's Landing: I was probably going to do another round of Kessan's Landing with Mr Commando on Darth Malgus, but I don't have this content unlocked on the other servers.
  
• Complete the Eternal Championship on Zakuul: I had skipped this one last time, but figured that enough time had passed that I might end up doing it again on at least one server/character that had access.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I spent the day travelling back home and was pretty tired by the time I was settled in and ready to play games. It was also immediately time for an ops run with my guild, so I didn't do too much in terms of seasons. On Darth Malgus I just started on the crafting objective and played one GSF match. I then did a couple of missions on my agent on Leviathan and played two warzones on Tulak Hord, but by that point I was falling asleep on my keyboard, so I just logged into the remaining servers to quickly get my daily objective done with some clickies.

Day 2 - Wednesday

Even though I had a long day in the office, I still wasn't as tired in the evening as I had been the previous night. On Darth Malgus, I finished the crafting objective, played a GSF match and did a few warzones, all of which were losses. This took me to two weeklies completed and progress made on another three. 

On Leviathan, I also did a bit of crafting and played three warzones there too, which were also all losses. One of them was a Queshball in which I saw someone pass the ball from the corner of the bottom floor straight to someone in front of our line on the top floor, which I didn't even know was possible. At that point I'd had quite enough of PvP for the evening.

To achieve the daily objective on the remaining servers, I did a round of CZ-198 on Tulak Hord and Shae Vizla, a round of Iokath on Star Forge, and a few story missions on my agent on Satele Shan.

Day 3 - Thursday

I started my evening with a GSF match and a warzone on Darth Malgus, which completed my GSF weekly and made some more progress towards the warzone one. On Leviathan, I did some Taris heroics on Imp side, followed by another CZ-198 on Tulak Hord. On Star Forge, I played a few warzones on my midbie knight.

Day 4 - Friday

Before reset, I did a round of CZ-198 on both Satele Shan and Shae Vizla. Since I noticed people saying in SV general chat that warzones were popping, I queued up for those as well and got a few matches in.

In the evening, I didn't feel like playing a lot of SWTOR. I just played two more GSF matches on Darth Malgus - not for seasons, but to complete a partially done weekly mission, and did an operation with my guildies.

Day 5 - Saturday

Since I had neglected them the previous evening, it was time to catch up with the other servers the next morning. I did some Taris heroics on Leviathan and Tulak Hord, continued my Star Forge trooper's main story progression on Corellia and completed another round of CZ-198 on Satele Shan. On Shae Vizla, I tried queueing for warzones again close to reset, but sadly nothing popped this time. I used the time to get some crafting going instead and eventually had my trooper chat with her companions for some missions, which also earned me the required points for the daily objective. I stayed and crafted some more until after the reset, so once the crafting weekly ticked over, I was also immediately done with the daily for the next day.

I once again didn't play very much in the evening, just logging in with Mr Commando at some point to knock out both the Eternal Championship and the Kessan's Landing dailies on Darth Malgus, which got me to 7/7 on that server. I also did a couple more warzones just to finish off a weekly mission.

Day 6 - Sunday

I once again did the rounds on the remaining servers before reset. On Leviathan I did one Taris heroic and finished the crafting objective while queueing for warzones, though nothing popped. I then did the same on Tulak Hord, though I got into a Huttmall match there just before I was about to log off. On Star Forge, I continued my trooper's questing on Corellia, and on Satele Shan, I once again did a couple of Taris heroics while also getting started on the crafting objective.

In the evening I set to doing some catching up, since I was still pretty behind on weekly progression. On Darth Malgus I only needed to unlock another room in the new stronghold to earn enough Conquest for the daily objective though, and I figured this would give me plenty of time to work on the missing weeklies on the other servers. However, things turned out to be more time-consuming than I expected. On Leviathan I completed the warzone weekly, did a round of CZ-198 as well as a few missions as an agent. On Tulak Hord I also completed the warzone weekly and did a couple of additional missions on my trooper. On Star Forge I completed yet another warzone weekly... by that time it was getting really late though, so I just did a Taris heroic on Satele Shan and finished the weekly crafting objective before logging off.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning, I quickly knocked out my daily objective on Shae Vizla by finishing up my trooper's class story on Belsavis. I then put my warrior main in the warzone queue again while I was working. I was getting a bit annoyed by the fact that it looked like I might not be able to finish the warzone objective even though my counter was on 7/8, but matches did eventually start popping and I got it done.

Later in the day, after the reset, I got back to finishing off more weeklies, as there was still quite a bit left to do on the other servers. On Darth Malgus, I only needed to get my daily done with some clickies, but then it was off to the races again.

On Leviathan I needed to do one more round of CZ-198, another Taris heroic and a flashpoint on my agent to get to 7/7 weeklies completed. (I was only on something like three missions completed as an agent, but then I queued for my introduction to group finder quest and got a Black Talon... mission completions for days.) On Tulak Hord, I also did two more Taris heroics as well as a few more story quests on my trooper. On Star Forge, I did three more missions on Corellia on my trooper, finished my crafting objective, and finally did a round of Yavin IV dailies on my boosted character.

This got me to 7/7 weeklies completed on all of those servers, but while it was reasonably fun, it also took absolutely forever. I decided to only push for 6/7 on the last two servers by having some more companion conversations on my trooper on Shae Vizla and doing a couple more Taris heroics (plus a few extra mission hand-ins) on my agent on Satele Shan.

Week 10 Thoughts

While my holiday had left me feeling quite refreshed, I was not as happy to jump back into the seasons action as I had hoped, plus I vastly underestimated the amount of time my weekly objectives of choice would require.

However, I did hit season level 100 on Darth Malgus, which is one milestone ticked off. I have to keep completing weeklies there regardless since I want to get the two additional achievements as well, but the other servers are actually not that far behind in terms of levels, so at least the end of my cross-server efforts is in sight now.

How's the Shae Vizla APAC Server after Six Months?

It's been a few months since I last wrote about the Shae Vizla server, but that doesn't mean that I stopped playing on it. The start of Galactic Season 6 did however result in a reduction of my play time. Before that, I was focused on my home on Darth Malgus, with playing on Shae Vizla as my only side gig, but the new season meant that I suddenly had to divide my "secondary" play time among five servers again.

As the server turned six months old a couple of days ago, I wanted to write about it again to talk a bit about how it's doing. Three months ago I acknowledged that it had become quite quiet, but was hopeful that the opening of server transfers would inject some life into it again.

Sadly, that didn't exactly happen the way I had hoped. I mean, the server transfers definitely had an effect, initially. A lot of the cheaper stuff on the GTN was snapped up and prices increased somewhat with the introduction of all those credits into the economy, though not as much as I would've expected. I even heard allegations that people were transferring characters over purely to "shop" before returning to their home servers, though I don't know if anyone actually did that.

Activity also increased for a bit initially, and at least level 80 PvP started popping again after having been pretty non-existent for several weeks. However, this doesn't appear to have lasted. I think guilds are still organising PvP events for their members in dedicated time slots, but just queueing at what should be APAC prime time hasn't gotten me much action in a while, even with my level 80.

However, in fairness, I haven't been around as much recently, so I reached out to some players whom I knew to be located in the APAC region and/or who I knew were much more active on Shae Vizla, to get their more informed input. Thanks to everyone who replied and was willing to chat with me! This group consisted of:

• Xam Xam - currently taking a break from SWTOR, but a well-known SWTOR content creator from Australia who was celebrating the opening of Shae Vizla when it launched
• Kal - another SWTOR content creator and owner of Today in TOR, Kal is also located in Australia and founded the guild Heroes of the Republic/Empire on Shae Vizla's launch day. (This is also the guild my own characters on SV are in.)
• J.R. - lives in Eastern Canada but has been one of the most active people in the Heroes guild, constantly organising and leading events like world boss hunts and activities for seasons objectives
• Paiche - lives in South America but is also very active on Shae Vizla. I mainly interacted with him in organised PvP events that were aiming to get queues popping

Without exception, everyone I spoke to did express a degree of disappointment or concern about the server's population levels. "I didn't expect the server to have this much of a falloff in terms of general population," was Kal's first comment. Xam Xam added: "Looking back, I regret that some players (including myself) and the developers placed greater emphasis on maintaining a fresh start experience or healthy server economy than on the player population."

People mostly seemed to agree that this was due to the way the server had been launched, including the way transfers were handled. J.R. said the following: "I feel there was little planning for the server and was an after-thought.  First, the short notice caught a lot of people off-guard. I believe if they announced the SV launch a few weeks in advance, then more buzz would be created and players that weren't already subscribed would subscribe to make sure they could grab their choice character names."

Paiche thought that it was specifically the intended target audience of APAC players that seemed to have been put off: "They came, saw how grindy it was gonna be with the economy and no transfers and went right back." J.R. also echoed this sentiment: "The initial transfer restriction was met with varied responses [...] but I feel the devs dragging their feet to make a decision on when and how to do transfers led to a drop-off on players who couldn't wait for transfers to unlock. During this time, casual players stopped playing or returned to their main servers. Launching a new server in the middle of GS and PvP Seasons also prevented players from establishing a foundation on the new server. While everyone rushed to create characters on the new server, most people returned to their main servers to finish their partially complete GS and PvP Seasons. I heard this from many APAC players - some of which haven't returned to SV." Paiche also commented on this, as he actually came back to the game specifically for the Shae Vizla launch: "It really was a fresh start [for me] because I didn't have anything to lose by starting from scratch - but other people were in the middle of GS5."

This was interesting to me because from my personal point of view, the launch had been extremely convenient, as I'd just finished up Galactic Season 5 on the other servers, and there was just enough time left to also complete it on Shae Vizla as well if you started at launch and then completed the maximum number of weeklies every week. However, I can see how players who are more casual about seasons may not have felt the same way. With that in mind, it might have been more beneficial to have the server launch at a time when there was no seasonal content going on. Also, while the way the server's opening dropped kind of as a surprise was pretty cool, a bit more notice may indeed have been beneficial to get the word out.

I also thought it was interesting that two of my interviewees chosen for their activity levels on the server were in fact not APAC players. Looking at the Heroes guild Discord, it does often seem to me like a lot of group content happens in what's the middle of the night for me, during US west coast prime time instead of APAC. While every server has visitors from other regions that play for Galactic Seasons or to join friends, it does feel at least to me that Shae Vizla has a particularly high population percentage-wise that wasn't the original target audience. J.R. seemed to get a similar impression, saying that he thought that "SV is unique in that outside APAC prime time the game gets a bump during NA prime time (when I play) as well" and that he considered it the server's biggest win that he'd made "new friends from not only Australia and New Zealand, but also Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and throughout the United States and [was] learning about their cultures". Kal also commented that "it's really nice to see a lot of American and European English speakers coming to the server to hangout in the off-time on their own main servers".

I specifically asked Paiche about PvP, since that was how we'd first got talking and I figured he'd have a better picture of the situation than me. He bluntly stated that it's "worse than on other servers" though he did say it was still happening. Aside from the fact that it can be hard to get pops as has been my experience, he said that the problem is that the only people queueing are the remaining hardcore PvPers and even if they're not going in as premades, the fact that you only really run into these extremely skilled opponents whenever you do get a pop can be off-putting if you're not on the same level, as you'll basically just get stomped a lot. I haven't really seen this myself as much (whenever I do get a pop) but it does remind me of similar experiences I had in PvP shortly before server merges in past years, when the PvP population had kind of dropped down to the most dedicated.

Now, a lot of what I've described and quoted has been on the negative side. It's undeniable that Shae Vizla has become a small server, and many people will be put off by that. Personally I've always hated "dead server" narratives though, as both large and small servers have their pros and cons, it's just that due to the very nature of the fact that large server = many people and small server = fewer people, you'll see a lot more people extolling the virtues of large servers than you'll see proponents of small ones. (Ask me about my aggravations with mega-servers in WoW Classic some time...) Large servers are good for activity queue pops and getting pugs for group content, while small servers excel at providing a sense of community and a more relaxing and immersive experience for solo play (as you're not jostling elbows with ten other players doing the same thing every time a quest giver sends you out to solve their problems).

Paiche specifically asked me to quote him as saying that "Shae Vizla is the best server for solo players". In terms of community, J.R noted that "of all the servers I’ve been on, I’ve had great pug experiences and minimal toxicity on SV as compared to all the other servers. And this is the main reason I increased the time I spend on SV. I think joining a guild with similar objectives as you helps greatly." This was echoed by Kal by saying: "It is really nice to see the same names around every single guild you log into, it's like the entire server is one massive extended family or school to be honest, with all the different kinds of players like jocks and nerds in their different guilds". He also added that "with or without the server transfer limits, SV's GTN is probably the best in the game, there's no other server where playing 20 minutes of heroics casually each day lets you buy Gold or Platinum cartel market items".

About the "new server" experience in general, Xam Xam commented: "As much as I enjoyed the fresh start experience for a time, I don't think the APAC Region was the right place for it. [...] Regardless, I think this 'experiment' shows that there is an interest in a fresh start experience for SWTOR. Perhaps a fresh start server could be launched with a proper marketing campaign and much more notice in a more populated region someday." 

I have to admit I'm less sure about that one myself. I definitely loved the excitement of the experience myself, but based on how quick and steep the drop-off in engagement was, I'm not sure it would really be worth the effort to do more of this kind of thing. Based on my personal experience at least, even World of Warcraft - which is much bigger - has struggled with population management after its recent new event server launches.

Anyway, to get back to Shae Vizla, I think it's got some challenging months ahead to be honest. While I don't think the smaller population size is inherently a problem and does in fact offer some unique perks highlighted above, I personally feel like the server is currently struggling to really find its niche. To make a comparison to the Leviathan, which is generally known to be SWTOR's smallest server nowadays - I would never question it's viability because it has a very clear target audience: French speakers. So if, for example, you're a French person who also likes to do group content or PvP, you may feel the pull of a larger server like Darth Malgus where queue pops are more reliable... but people would be chattering at you in English there, in content where it's important to communicate and understand each other, which is a definite con if you're not comfortable with the language.

However, as far as Shae Vizla goes - the main advantage of having a dedicated server in the APAC region is finding people to play with in your time zone and the lower ping you get in activities like PvP or ops, where lag can really screw up your performance. Yet that's exactly the kind of content that's harder to get into on a small server, and from the sounds of it, many APAC players chose to remain elsewhere. So your choices become playing on one of the US servers, where your ping is bad... or playing on Shae Vizla, where your ping is great, but you might not actually find people to do the content with at all. I know which one I'd pick.

Players have somewhat limited power to improve the situation. They can form guilds and try to organise events, which can work well for a while, but it doesn't take much for any such group to fall below the critical mass needed to keep going. Paiche thought it would be good if Broadsword could encourage more players to move to Shae Vizla with some special sort of incentive: "Maybe 2xp again, double drops, cosmetics, decos, I don't know. Something that makes SV enticing to play in." On the forums I've also seen a group of players clamour for unrestricted transfers, and that all players located in the APAC region should simply get free transfers regardless of subscription status. I'm not sure how well any of that would work, but I kind of suspect that Broadsword considers their work on the server "done" for the moment and has moved on to focusing on other matters either way.

So my advice to you if you're in the APAC region and considering Shae Vizla as your destination would be:

• If you primarily play solo, go ahead and have fun.
• If you're happy to quest by yourself, but also want to do some group content, find a guild that caters to your needs and you'll also be fine.
• If your idea of a fun evening is to shoot the shit on the fleet and just queue for activities, hoping for quick pops, unfortunately Shae Vizla is not the right place for that right now and you're probably better off on one of the US servers.
  

Feel free to share your own thoughts about and experiences with the Shae Vizla server in the comments.

Drop In: Tatooine

Being on holiday doesn't mean that I was going to skip writing about week eight's tour of Tatooine strongholds I did for seasons.

Like Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine was among the first batch of strongholds added to the game, and I have a particular fondness for it because out of that first set of four, it was originally my favourite. Unfortunately, it being old and from a time when strongholds served a slightly different purpose than they do now, I also saw some more evidence of old-fashioned deco spam, though not as much as I did on Nar Shaddaa.

I visited a Tatooine stronghold on all six servers this time, starting with Tlaocetl's Vacation Retreat on Darth Malgus. The first thing that struck me about this stronghold was that the decos were a pretty contradictory mix in terms of themes, with the room where you load in containing a bar, a serene fountain and an altar covered with skulls all in close proximity of each other.

As I looked around the other rooms, I initially got the impression that it was all a collection of personal trophies, but then I also found a room that was completely empty and a couple more that had obviously just been "spammed" to get to 100% completion.

On Leviathan, I visited Karen Himeki's Syndicate Nerver Center, hoping that perhaps the name was hinting at an underworld theme, but in practice this stronghold was probably one of the most competently done yet unexciting strongholds I've ever seen. Imperial flags and guardsmen indicated a clear faction preference, and several rooms contained setups with tables and comfy-looking couches that looked like nice places to hang out, but I didn't get much of a sense of purpose from the place. Unless the purpose was really just to make a comfortable place for Imps to spend their free time, in which case the owner succeeded at that.

My favourite stronghold of this lot was the one I visited on Tulak Hord, called Vermächtnishändler's Black Market (the character name is German for "legacy trader" by the way, implying that it's a bank/GTN alt, which somehow made it sound even more fitting).

What I liked about this one was that a lot of the rooms were very strongly themed and at least loosely fit the overall theme as well, starting with this very striking view when you first load in:

There were also multiple cantinas.

A detail I particularly loved was this outdoor bantha enclosure consisting of fencing and sun roofs and which used last season's depository of dark wisdom to create what looks like a sort of feeding trough for the animals.

The owner was also clearly proud of their PvP prowess, as they had a whole room dedicated to their various trophies.

Then there was what I could only call a "droid room"...

... and a Hutt room, though I'm not entirely sure what's going in the little scene that's set up in it. It looks like one guy is threatening the Hutt and the other one is defending him? Maybe?

On Star Forge, I visited Monsieur Fancypants' Hideout at 99% completion, which amused me with its name. I was surprised that this was the only Tat stronghold I visited that actually featured the Sarlacc pit deco (from what I saw).

 

 

Other rooms once again revealed a strong Imperial focus, with dark side relics and Sithy NPCs front and centre.

The room that really surprised me in here though was an unassuming hallway. You don't expect hallways to be interesting, as they're usually just connectors between different rooms, but this one was absolutely stuffed with carbonite trophies and flashing red lights, which just made me go "WTF", haha.

On Satele Shan, Kaómi's Republic Sanctuary finally offered a bit of reprieve from all the Imp lovers, with a stronghold filled with Republic guardsmen and featuring a briefing room that I liked.

The thing that really stood out to me in this stronghold though was its use of desert flora. You don't often see these cactus plants from Ruhnuk used for example, but this player really selected the right plant decorations to create scenery that looked appropriate for Tatooine, instead of simply assuming that an endless water supply could create an oasis where everything and anything can grow anyway.

Finally, on Shae Vizla I was once again somewhat limited in terms of choice and ended up visiting Ralyne's Marketplace Cantina at only 39% completion. One funny thing here was that I soon realised that it belonged to a guildie and they were actually inside while I was roaming around, browsing the GTN or something.

The owner once again did what they could with a limited number of decos, with a pretty "standard" selection of items as well as a dedicated relic room and med bay.

The funniest and most interesting thing to me was a small room containing only two decos: an animated metal/rubbish conveyor belt and a floor tile that's meant to look like there's a beast pit underneath, and they had been positioned in such a way that it looked like the conveyor belt's contents were being spilled into the pit. I don't know why, but that just tickled me.

Do you have any thoughts on these Tatooine strongholds or the ones you visited yourself for last week's season objective?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 8

Week eight was a surprise in terms of Galactic Seasons weeklies as the devs took their recent experiments with doubling up on certain objectives to a new level, with all three of the companion kill achievements being active in the same week. Here's the full list of everything that was on offer and my thoughts on each objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Naturally.
• Earn the seasonal currency: Would also get done automatically.
  
• Visit another player's Tatooine stronghold: Another one for my "drop-in" series of posts, so sure!
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: I mean, as previously established, this is really easy to do, so I was probably going to do it on all servers.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a dps companion: ... even if I needed to kill 200 mobs.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a tank companion: ... or 300, for that matter.
  
• Kill the Quesh and Nar Shaddaa world bosses: I'd had decent luck getting these done on several servers in week one, so I was up for doing that again.
  
• Earn 40 medals in warzones: I'd actually finished my last PvP season achievment on Darth Malgus the previous week, but this was going to be easy enough to do. I just wasn't sure whether I would feel like investing the time on other servers or whether I would even be able to get pops.
  
• Heroic space missions:  As mentioned previously, I'm not good enough to do these as I never even finished all the normal space missions.
  
• Play 5-10 arenas (wins count double): Since I no longer needed any PvP season objectives, I thought it was unlikely that I was going to bother with arenas.
  
• KotFE chapter 13 on veteran mode or higher: Once again, a chapter I wasn't going to bother to repeat.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

After a day in the office I had limited play time in the evening, though ops was cancelled so that awarded me a couple of hours extra. I did the world boss objective on Leviathan, Tulak Hord, Star Forge and Satele Shan. On Tulak Hord I also did the Coruscant world boss since I initially replied to the wrong group request in general chat (lol). On Star Forge I also got lured into healing a master mode Dash'roode/Nefra pug while waiting for more people to show interest in the world bosses. On Shae Vizla and Darth Malgus I just focused on getting my daily objective done with a bit of questing/clicking.

Day 2 - Wednesday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla to check for world boss groups and tried to queue for some warzones, but had no luck on either front. 

I then didn't log in again until relatively late in the evening, when I did the daily Conquest round on all servers, mostly by continuing my class story on different characters. This always made at least a little bit of progress towards one of the companion kill achievements as well.

Day 3 - Thursday

Thursday was another office day, and when I came home I didn't feel like doing much more than what I'd done the night before. It was kind of funny to me that I ended up working on my class story on Alderaan on no fewer than three different characters/servers. I'm not trying to keep them in sync - rather the opposite to be honest, to avoid repetition - but for some reason I have a lot of characters on the secondary servers that are more or less at exactly the same stage in the story. Might be related to me always playing them for seasons at the same time...

Day 4 - Friday

Another similar day seasons-wise, as I did ops with my guildies in the evening and then did the rounds on the other servers doing various quests. The "kill things with your companion" achievements were slowly starting to get ticked off as well, though it was interesting to me how few mobs you actually have to kill on some of the earlier planets and how much it ratchets up later on. Taking a more progressed character for a spin for this definitely worked better than doing it on a lower level if you were just following the class story.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I logged into Darth Malgus to do a few warzones and a bit more questing. I also did a quick check on Shae Vizla to see whether any world boss groups were forming or level 80 warzones were popping, but there was no sign of either.

I played again in the evening, first killing the two world bosses with my guild on Darth Malgus, followed by some PvP which got me the warzone medals objective. On the other servers I did another round of questing once again, with most of them ticking off one or more of the companion objectives by this point. Again I had some weird parallels as my trooper on Tulak Hord and my knight on Leviathan were on literally the exact same planetary story quest on Balmorra.

Day 6 - Sunday

I didn't play until the evening, when I did some PvP and questing on Darth Malgus, getting me to 5/7 there, with just some more mob killing left to go. On Leviathan, Tulak Hord and Star Forge, I visited a Tatooine stronghold and also did some more questing. As it was late by that point, I decided to save the daily objectives on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla for the next day.

Day 7 - Monday

It was a holiday in the UK, so I had all day to devote to non-work activities. I logged into Satele Shan and Shae Vizla in the morning, visiting a Tatooine stronghold on each and knocking out the daily objective with a bit of questing.

In the evening I returned to do the rounds on all servers again, once again completing story missions on characters everywhere to get the last few companion kill objectives and finish various personal Conquest targets. This left me with 7/7 weeklies completed everywhere except on Shae Vizla, where I'd failed to get a world boss group or any warzone pops for the PvP objective.

Week 8 Thoughts

The triple companion objective resulted in a pretty wild week as you could basically get to 5/7 without doing anything truly season-specific - as long as you did any kind of non-instanced content that involved your companion and rotated through all the different roles. I used this mostly to advance my class story on different characters on all servers (and didn't feel the need to go into a lot more detail about which character was on exactly which step). With the stronghold visit and the world bosses I could then get to an easy 7/7 everywhere except Shae Vizla, where I ended on 6/7 as I couldn't find a world boss group this time around (though I'll confess that I didn't try all that hard either).

I'm not really sure how I feel about this particular experiment in having all the companion objectives active at once. On the one hand, easy season progress, yay! On the other hand though... it almost felt like it wasn't really a season since I could get points for just questing, which is usually not the way this works.

There won't be a Week 9 Diary by the way as I'm travelling, and while I have my laptop with me, I don't really feel like spending much time on gaming. I'm not too worried about missing a week as I'm seasons level 90 on Darth Malgus and around 80 everywhere else at this point, so I'll be able to ease up on the other servers soon anyway.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 7

This is being published a bit late since I wanted to get my April round-up and the dev stream highlights out on time, but I didn't forget! To clarify, this is about the period from 23rd to 30th of April.

I'd been pretty excited about doing Galactic Seasons objectives for the first six weeks, but week 7 was the first one where I looked at the weekly objectives and kind of thought "meh". I think this was mainly due to the fact that repetition was starting to become noticeable to me for the first time. Here's what I thought about each weekly objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, I'd do that one.
  
• Complete the GSI weekly mission: Somewhat time-consuming so I definitely wasn't going to do this everywhere, but I do like me a bit of GSI action every now and then, so I figured I was going to do this on some servers as least.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Will get done automatically, so yes.
  
• Blow up enemies with destructible barrels and the like: I was probably going to do this one one way or another because of how easy it is to complete.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: This was the first objective that made me sigh a little. Didn't we just have this one? Oh, apparently that was five weeks ago. Didn't feel that long ago, somehow.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Hutt Space planets Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, Makeb, Darvannis or Ossus: This one also felt like I'd done it before, but I triple-checked and it hadn't been featured yet this season. I can only guess it felt that way since I'd done a fair bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa while working on other objectives in previous weeks. Still, this wasn't too bad and I was definitely going to do it.
  
• Craft invasion forces and dark projects: As usual, yay for crafting on Darth Malgus but nowhere else.
  
• Complete four uprisings on veteran or master mode: Still not a huge fan of uprisings and I could still feel the after-effects of spamming them for Total Galactic War. I figured maybe I'd do this on Darth Malgus, but surely nowhere else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now this one was definitely repetitive because these exact same flashpoints were featured only two weeks ago. I appreciated them then, but going through the exact same routine only two weeks later was definitely going to be a no from me.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: And the more annoying one of the two GSF objectives again... I figured I probably wasn't going to bother with this one, except maybe on Darth Malgus.
  
• Karagga's Palace on story mode: Now this was one objective that made me happy, as I was pleased to see that like the vet mode ops objective in week two, it had been reduced to requiring only one run - instead of previously four! I was hopeful that I'd be able to get this done on multiple servers since I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find pugs for it.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I got home very late that day as I attended a memorial for the recently deceased co-worker after my shift at the office. I didn't really feel like playing games after getting home, so I just logged into each server briefly to collect my daily login reward and achieve my daily allotment of Conquest point via various clicky objectives.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I had a lot more free time that day but still didn't really feel much like playing SWTOR for most of the day. I did eventually log in late in the evening to do the rounds again. On Darth Malgus I just did some crafting, followed by some GSI dailies on Leviathan.

I've settled into a routine when it comes to doing the GSI weekly, which involves doing Buried in Time on Tatooine, followed by two of the missions on Alderaan, digging up ancient weapons near House Teral and toxic waste barrels near Outpost Luurdes just a short ride over. This is very quick and easy, and I just do it several days in a row. This time, I also did the heroic on Tatooine (since you need to do one for the weekly) and blew up the womp rats near the barrel in Anchorhead a couple of times while I was there.

I then logged over to Star Forge to see whether any ops pugs were advertising for KP story mode in general chat. It took a little while, but eventually I saw a group form on Imp side. It was a nice and smooth run that also got me some achievements, as I'd never done KP SM on Star Forge before.

On Shae Vizla, I did a bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa until I'd earned enough Conquest for the daily objective. By that point it was late though and I was tired, so I decided to leave the remaining two servers for the next day.

Day 3 - Thursday

In the morning, I logged into Satele Shan and did a round of GSI dailies mirroring what I'd done on Leviathan the night before.

After that, I logged into Tulak Hord and did the Nar Shaddaa bonus series, since I couldn't remember whether I'd completed it on that server before, just that I had all these issues with false starts and bugs. It's a shame that you pretty much have to do them in a single day now to make sure they don't bug out, and with that in mind I've found it best to be laser-focused on only the missions actually part of the chain, while making a note to come back for any heroics or unrelated exploration missions in the area another time. Either way, this completed my Hutt Space missions weekly.

In the evening, I spent some time on Darth Malgus doing stuff not strictly related to seasons, such as PvP, ops with my guild and a bit of questing (though this did also get my daily objective done).

When I visited the other servers afterwards, I did another "round" of GSI dailies (meaning the eggs on Tatooine and the two dailies on Alderaan) on both Leviathan and Tulak Hord, followed by a round of the Black Hole on Satele Shan (since that's the only server where my main's a stealther) and a round of Ossus on Star Forge (the only secondary server where I have access to that planet). Finally, I continued doing non-class missions on Nar Shaddaa on Shae Vizla until my daily was done there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I didn't log in until the evening again. Starting on Darth Malgus, I did a variety of activities there, including a GSF weekly. I'd originally planned to skip that particular objective, but our Imperial alt guild was a bit low on Conquest points, so doing the GSF weekly a couple of times seemed like a good way to boost our score. Winning two matches only got me to 7/25 medals however.

On Leviathan, I went out to Nar Shaddaa - I knew that I'd completed the bonus series before, but I could've sworn I had some other side missions left to do in the area. This turned out to be wrong as I couldn't find a single one - clearly my spreadsheets to track progression across different alts aren't detailed enough for this. I instead started questing on Quesh until I hit my daily Conquest.

On Tulak Hord, I did some more GSI dailies, after which I logged over to Shae Vizla since I thought a KP guild run might be about to start. However, when I double-checked the time it turned out that I was wrong and the actual start time was something like 2.30 am my time, so I went and did some more quests on Nar Shaddaa instead. (I was clearly not having the best day in terms of knowing WTF was going on.) It didn't take long for me to complete my Hutt Space objective, so I went and started another GSI weekly mission. The Imperial version of the heroic on Tatooine has a bugged spot so you always need to check there first to make sure RNG hasn't assigned it to you, else you need to come back the next day (some say resetting the mission can also work but I've had no success with that personally). Fortunately I was lucky that day and the bugged spawn was not included in my objectives. On Alderaan, I realised I'd forgotten how much more of a pain the Killik weapons are to dig up on Imp side, as the nearest location for Imperials requires going up a long and winding mountain path with lots of bugs in your way. I eventually got there, but I vaguely seemed to remember actually preferring a more distant location with less of a hassle to get there...

On Satele Shan I did another round of Black Hole, and on Star Forge a round of Onderon for the daily area objective.

Day 5 - Saturday

I only played for a couple of hours in the evening, and only on Darth Malgus. Not everything I did was about seasons either, though I did do Karagga's Palace on story mode with my guild, and another GSF weekly. I got it in two wins again, though this time they yielded ten medals, getting me to 17/25.

Day 6 - Sunday

I got up late but with enough time left before the reset to do the rounds on the other servers. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, I completed my GSI weeklies, and on Star Forge I figured I had it in me to do one more of these this week, so I started it on my trooper (including the heroic on Tatooine and blowing up some womp rats). On Satele Shan, I did some side questing on Nar Shaddaa.

When it came to Shae Vizla, I only had twenty minutes left before reset, but I figured that should be enough for a quick round of the Black Hole, right? Even on a character that is a healer (my level 75 consular)? Even if their highest-level companion is only influence level 12? (I hope you can tell where this is going...) I started but quickly realised that things weren't going fast enough. I decided to skip ahead to the heroic, since I figured I could at least finish that, but it was going so. Slow. Just as I was starting to wonder what would happen to someone inside a mission phase if the reset happened while you were doing the quest, I actually managed to die on a pull and just gave up. I quickly relogged my warrior to get my last few Conquest points for the daily objective before reset, but even that took too long and reset arrived with me being only 150 Conquest points off the daily objective. I was so annoyed I just logged off.

I logged back in later in the evening, completed the partially done Black Hole weekly on my consular and then did some GSI dailies on my warrior again (opting to take a taxi to the more distant but less awkward location for Killik weapons this time), followed by some more of those on my trooper on Star Forge.

By then it was time for ops with my guild, which took up a good chunk of the evening. Afterwards I did another GSF weekly, which was done within two wins again, and yet I was still only on 23/25 medals after that. This is what makes this weekly so frustrating. It doesn't even matter if you play well/win, whether you get any medal credit feels like a complete roll of the dice. Like, how many weekly missions should a single seasons objective require? It's ridiculous. After that, it took two more matches to get those last two medals. Yes, two matches for just two more medals.

After a couple more warzones, I switched to the remaining servers where I hadn't done the daily yet and got my daily Conquest allocation done with some questing on all three.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I logged in on Darth Malgus and quickly knocked out two more weekly objectives by doing a round of Onderon dailies and blowing up some womp rats. I'd held off on my last two objectives until close to the end in case Mr Commando felt like doing flashpoints or uprisings over the weekend, but that didn't happen, so I had to get to 7/7 by myself.

I then logged in again in the evening to finish off my personal Conquest on a couple of alts and get my daily objective done that way. On Leviathan, I completed my bounty hunter's personal Conquest on Quesh (a good Hutt Space planet to jump ahead to, and I was kind Nar Shaddaa-ed out).

On Star Forge I did two heroics on Makeb to get some more Hutt Space kills - the Ossus dailies on Thursday had taken care of the mission part of that objective but I had barely killed any mobs. Makeb was good for achieving the opposite.

On Satele Shan, I'd left things off with several Conquest objectives partially completed so that I only had to do a single mission hand-in on my agent to be done for the day.

Finally, I finished my SWTOR week on Shae Vizla by doing one more round of Black Hole and completing my GSI weekly.

Week 7 Thoughts 

I started this season with a promise to myself that I wasn't going to burn myself out doing objectives I didn't enjoy, but then I was so excited that I did 7/7 weeklies on all servers for several weeks anyway. This week though, I could definitely feel my enthusiasm wane for the first time, with several days where I just didn't feel like playing much at all. I was still going to get 7/7 on Darth Malgus, but I quickly resigned myself to probably only getting three or four weeklies done on the other servers. In the end I still did a bit better than that, achieving 6/7 on Star Forge and Shae Vizla, and 5/7 on all the others.

I didn't even think that the objectives were particularly bad, but there was definitely little to no synergy, and the feeling of repetition got me more than anything else. This was the first time this season where I really felt the conflict between "wanting to do the thing because I want to have the thing completed" and just not feeling the actual gameplay in that moment. It's a pretty normal thing to feel, but also something I personally like to keep an eye on, as I'm quite capable of making things un-fun for myself by being too determined to get things done no matter what. With that in mind, I was glad that I was able to recognise that I was not really feeling it this week and say "oh well, not gonna go all out this week then" pretty easily and early on.