It's been a bit quiet here recently, and I think it's going to stay that way for a while longer. I'm still playing the game and having fun, but I do kind of feel like I lack things I want to talk about at the moment. I'm a firm believer in the adage that there's never nothing to talk about when it comes to MMOs, but you do need to feel sufficient motivation to sit down and create content about your game of choice, and I haven't had a lot of that recently.
Part of that has had to do with real life, but primarily I'm just a bit down on SWTOR to be honest. Not so down that I don't want to play at all, but lacking that extra level of excitement that makes me want to share my thoughts about it all the time. With the devs seemingly focusing most of their resources on building new story content that they then can't release because of the voice actors' strike and the new season being focused on a theme I don't love, I'm just finding myself a bit short on nice things to say at the moment.
I have a few half-baked posts about evergreen topics in my drafts but those require a bit more energy and work than the more rambly takes about whatever's been going on more recently. And the detailed diaries I kept about my Galactic Seasons progress in the past were something that entertained me at the time but is no longer interesting to me at this point.
Last week I was actually thinking about cutting back my investment in seasons, since I was once again starting to feel a bit stressed out trying to complete my objectives for the week on all servers. It's kind of funny how much more that's become an issue since the addition of Shae Vizla, since you'd think that six servers is only one more than five servers, but looked at differently, doing seasons on all servers now basically requires twenty percent more time, and that's not nothing. I looked back at my posts from Galactic Season 2, when I first started this whole multi-server completion project, and at how much fun I had with it back then, while barely ever feeling stressed at all. I've been wracking my brains about how to get back to that and what might be the best way to perhaps apply some more limitations to my seasonal efforts while still hitting level 100 everywhere, but that's turned out to be trickier than I thought.
The easiest way to go about it of course would be to simply cut a few servers, but that then leaves the question of which ones. Star Forge and Shae Vizla are the ones where I'm the most involved with guilds so surely those should stay no matter what, but I really love my stable of alts on Leviathan too, even if I don't know anyone there... you can't ask me to choose between my babies like that! So I just keep on trucking for now.
At least the weekly uprising is quick and easy now since the devs put story mode into the group finder, and this week has generally been very easy for earning my daily Conquest points since it was Death Mark, a Conquest event that we haven't had in many months due to Galactic Season 7 locking it out for its entire duration, and which makes it incredibly simple to rack up points due to to the repeatable Taskmaster (complete missions anywhere) and Galactic Rampage (kill any mobs, anywhere) objectives.
Sometimes you also get an unexpected windfall in terms of seasons objective completion. I hadn't planned on doing DvL bosses on any server other than Darth Malgus for example, but on Leviathan a guildie was building a pug for them just as I logged on on Tuesday this week, and on Saturday I was up and awake late enough that I managed to leech kills off my guild on Star Forge. On Sunday morning I even stumbled my way into a pug for Colossal Monolith on Shae Vizla of all places, something I definitely hadn't been counting on or actively trying for.
So I'm doing all these things and having fun with them, but that's about as much SWTOR as I can take at the moment, with not much energy or enthusiasm left over for writing about it. I can only hope that 7.7 will bring a couple of new talking points with it whenever it arrives. While I expect that we still won't see any story by then and that master mode Propagator will be out of my league, I've heard talk of the PTS showing dynamic encounters on some new planets, which would definitely be something to get excited about. And well, whenever the voice actors' strike does end, we'll hopefully get one massive story dump all in one go. I'm just not holding my breath for that one at the moment, since we really have no idea when an agreement will be reached and it could still be a while.
Yes, it sounds like the last part of PTS will be the new dynamic encounters. I'm not sure if you saw Keith's latest "executive producer letter" (it slipped under my radar), but there were a few important things:
ReplyDelete"We also anticipate hosting the Game Update 7.7 livestream sometime in early May. More Dynamic Encounters and Master Mode for Relentless Replication will be coming in 7.7 as will additional character customization options and more."
"The team has not stopped working on our story updates! We shared details about "Galactic Threads" in the 7.6 livestream, and are looking forward to sharing a glimpse of "Master's Enigma" in the 7.7 livestream."
What's really interesting here is it sounds like Master's Enigma is actually the 7.7 story content, so when the strike is over we could get another one of those double story updates like Echoes of Oblivion (6.2).
Anyways, thanks for all your posts over the years. I hope you have fun with your free time from not writing. =)
Forgot to include the link to the letter: https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20250331
DeleteYeah, I saw the Producer's Letter but to be honest nothing about that particularly excited me either, as it once again talks more about what already happened than what's coming up, and of the bits that are coming up, I don't think there was anything that hadn't already been mentioned elsewhere before (unless you count the new login/subscriber rewards).
DeleteDon't get me wrong, I'll still be happy to get those things and I'm not going anywhere, but at the moment I feel I need something a bit more meaty to really pique my interest again.
I am completely ignoring seasons on alternate servers. That allows me to engage with whatever activity that you are supposed to engage in as little as I like and still get a season done. That said, I have to agree that I am not wild about the theme of this season.
ReplyDeleteI am also disappointed that an apparently mostly finished story update has gotten delayed this much. However, that doesn't affect me too much because I still have three class stories left on my new server. It's been so long since I played any of those classes up that the storylines are pretty much new content to me. I remember a few beats here and there, but absolutely none of the details. So for the time being I still feel like I have a lot left to do.
My one worry with the delay is that the next story beat might not even be under active development yet. The current story bob coming out in the summer followed by nothing until 2026 would turn off a lot of players. However, I also have the impression that they plan pretty far out, so perhaps that isn't an issue.
I think most players just do seasons on one server if they take part at all - I'm fully aware the whole multi-server thing makes me part of a crazy minority, but once you've gone all that way it's hard to go back! 🙂
DeleteThe class stories are indeed a great way of keeping one busy. I remember it originally took me almost two years to play through all of them once, and that was with me playing the game daily from launch. And then I did indeed also forget a lot about them again and replaying them a second time was still entertaining!
I don't think you need to worry about the devs having stopped story development, because from everything they've said it sounds like they've just continued to work on the planned 7.7 update despite being unable to even release 7.6.
I sadly wouldn't be surprised if they dropped the full grand plan they outlined with the 7.6 story and presented an extremely streamlined story update that covers the intended main points with the actors they can get, just to keep people happy. I hope they don't, but if it's that or wait until 7.8 or even later, I think that's the safer option. :<
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's going to happen, mainly because I don't see how it would even work. From my understanding, a lot of the missing voice work is for the player character (of various origins), so how would you even streamline that without going full KotFE-style for the whole thing, which they know people feel strongly about?
DeleteUnfortunately Antiques is quite correct, as jedipedia indicates The Master's Enigma will be a single instanced quest that summarises the bigger parts of the story and introduces the same new main villain as 7.6 would have done without any of the Hoth and Tatooine bits they touched on in the stream
DeleteHope that clears things up :)
Hm, not exactly - because shortening the story doesn't get rid of the need for the player character voice actors, so I don't see what purpose it would even serve.
DeleteAnyway, this sounds like it treads into speculation/spoilers based on datamining, which I'd personally rather avoid.
I am not sure how you handle doing GS on multiple servers. One is more than enough for me! Especially when you have weeks where there's lengthier objectives.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of the new story hasn't bothered me much. I still haven't run the last one we did get on the one character that can. Hehe... I tend to get sidetracked from running story a lot.
By all means, take a break and enjoy what you do of the game. When the muse hits to write again, do so. :)
Thanks! I really don't see this as a major hiatus or anything, but since I've kept a pretty regular schedule for a pretty long time, I just wanted to get ahead of anyone wondering whether anything had happened to me/I quit the game or whatever. 😛
Delete