This week's patch 7.5 brought with it three major new features, all of which I'll write about at some point. However, the one of which it was the easiest to get a general impression was undoubtedly the new seasonal spring event, called Spring Abundance Festival.
Unfortunately it's been a bit hard to locate during its first week, as the mission terminal they put on the fleet is in the exact same spot as the Gree event terminal, which was also active this past week, causing the two quest starters to overlap almost completely. With a bit of careful hovering you could find the right spot to start the introductory mission though.
From the looks of it, there's going to be a story mission that unlocks a new step each week like there is during the Feast of Prosperity, and completion of the first part is also required to unlock the various repeatable event missions. It's a bit longer than most event-type intros, but still not too bad to do on alts. One thing I noticed though was that other players were constantly photo-bombing my KOTOR-style cut scene; I wonder if the devs forgot to tick some box to hide other players from these?
Based on the general theme of the event, I expected a degree of similarity to the Feast of Prosperity, and I think it's fair to say that there is, though I'd argue that Spring Abundance manages to be even more chill. After all, the Feast still has you going out hunting world bosses and there's a bit of pressure to serve those meals in time. At Spring Abundance, aside from having to kill about a dozen mobs for the introductory mission, there are no such pressures. Just chill, 100% of the time, catching fish, baking pies and dancing at the May holo pole.
I've seen some people snark about the very idea of having these activities in SWTOR, but to be honest I don't get why. I thought it was a bit odd that we were sweeping floors for the Gormak as part of the main storyline, but as a side activity like this? Why the hell not? Nobody can be hero of the galaxy 24/7, and who says even a Sith can't enjoy a bit of gardening in their downtime?
The daily activities are cute, fast and fun, and everything gives Conquest points too, which is a nice bonus. One thing that's interesting to me is that the mission structure is a bit different from the usual in that there isn't a weekly that requires you to do x number of dailies, but instead there are several weeklies that are tasks of their own that can only be done once a week, plus the dailies which you can just repeat every day for fun (and profit).
Particularly clever to me is the way they used this for the pie baking and eating, as there is a daily to bake pie, but the mission to sample different pies only requires you to do so once a week, so even if it was quiet and not all pies were available to eat when you first showed up, you can try again the next day. Right now the event is pretty much the opposite of quiet though, mind you - people seem to happily and enthusiastically be taking part at all times of day from what I've seen. There are some pretty nice rewards to be earned as well (though I haven't decided yet what I'll go for myself), so this event just strikes me as a winner all around.
I've had fun doing the little activities for the event. The only thing I didn't like is that the weeklies could all be completed so quickly. I was especially surprised how fast the egg hunt was. I thought those were going to be challenging to find, like the eggs for Netherwing rep back in WoW Burning Crusade. I guess it's nice I finished them so quickly and can move on to other things until the next week, but I don't know if that's best for the event long term.
ReplyDeleteI also would like there to be a little more interaction with other players. Other than the pie baking, none of them involve other players at all. Life Day has snowball throwing. Feast of Prosperity has the world boss hunts. Night Life has the currencies that drop from flashpoints/operations to use the best slot machines and also you get to see other players winning jackpots. Spring Abundance needs a little more in this area.
I think the "may pole" thing should give some benefit to the player because right now it has no purpose outside of the daily. They could add a 25% xp buff that stacks with all other xp buffs and the duration goes up based on how long the player dances up to 2 hours maybe. Or an alternative could be it gives the Ribbons currency for each second and the dance has an hour cooldown or something.
I'm fine with being done quickly on one character. After all this is a game that encourages playing alts, so that just means you have time to repeat the whole thing on more characters. 😊
DeleteYour point about other players is interesting. You're right that there isn't much that requires direct interaction, but to me it still felt social to dance around the pole together and compete for eggs... though yes, I also expected those to be harder to find after the way they talked about this activity on the dev stream, but I'm definitely not complaining!