Looking for Good Views

The Best View in SWTOR contest has returned once again! I noted last year that we were at risk of running out of planets to feature, and that has indeed resulted in a rather strange selection this time around. Instead of the usual ten planets, there are only five eligible locations this year, namely:

• Ziost
• CZ-198
• Section X
• Minboosa District
• The Black Hole

Aside from the fact that none of these are among the most picturesque of places, some of the choices struck me as a bit odd. CZ-198 and Ziost make sense as these were indeed among the last few planets/moons yet to be featured, but for some reason Darvannis was still left out. I know it's not the most exciting place to look at, but neither are most of these!

The Minboosa District is technically part of Hutta, which was featured before, but it's a new area, so including it made a certain kind of sense. What's surprising is that the Interpreter's Retreat and Kessan's Landing weren't included using the same kind logic.

Instead we got the Black Hole and Section X, which are separate maps, sure, but since they are old they were technically already included as part of Corellia and Belsavis last year. I recall that at least one of the finalists for Corellia was in fact a shot taken in the Black Hole, and my own submission for Belsavis was a shot of Section X. I guess I can simply submit the exact same image again? Just seems a little odd.

Anyway, last year I used the occasion of the contest returning as an opportunity to showcase my own submissions from the year before, but this year I'd like to talk about my observations about three of this year's locations instead.

Ziost is of course a unique planet in the sense that it has a "before" state that only exists during the storyline and which is very different from the permanent "after" state in which we get to do dailies. I had several alts with the Ziost storyline active and thought I'd be clever by taking screenshots on these otherwise impossible to access maps, but I've got to admit I liked none of them enough to submit in the end. Looking out at the skyline in front of the People's Tower certainly made me rethink the impact of Vitiate's actions that day, but the buildings honestly looked a bit basic and like the designers intentionally didn't put that much work into them, knowing that they would live in a phase only used for a single storyline where nobody would spend a lot of time marvelling at the scenery (and who would blame them).

Somewhat basic-looking Ziost skyline

I can see why CZ-198 was saved until the end because while it's an extremely popular daily location, it basically just consists of a landing platform and some indoor spaces. I look forward to seeing whether someone actually manages to come up with a good shot of the place, because I certainly didn't.

The Minboosa District mostly consists of a lot of swamp and pipelines (and I learned that the annoying Xuvva spawns that can see through stealth are not limited to the storyline but just always there it seems), but while scouting the area for good shot locations I was surprised to realise that there's actually a whole sub-zone that we never go to during the storyline. I didn't think it was particularly pretty so I didn't take a picture of it, but it did make me wonder what was up with that. With Broadsword's more limited resources nowadays, it seems odd to have such a large chunk of an already relatively small map not serve any purpose.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this year's contest. It's worth noting that the devs have acknowledged that they're basically out of planets now and that they're thinking about what other topics future screenshot contests could be about, such as strongholds or outfits. I'm not sure how that would work because surely then it'd more about building a good-looking outfit/stronghold rather than about being able to take good screenshots of the world we all share? Personally I think something like flashpoints might work better, but we'll see. If you want to enter the current competition while the going is still hot, you have until the 20th of October.