I was somewhat disappointed by the last two dev streams, but the voice actors' strike ended a few weeks ago, so I was positive that we'd get some good news about the next story update this time, and I was also hopeful that whatever they were going to announce about Galactic Season 9 was going to be more appealing to me than Season 8's uprising focus had been. I did get both of those things, but as I always do, I have some nits to pick as well.
Story is coming... but later and perhaps less than we'd hoped
At least when talking with some of my friends, there had been a hope expressed that the next story patch would be one big "catch-up patch" giving us a bigger chunk of story than usual, kind of like how Echoes of Oblivion and Spirit of Vengeance (which were originally supposed to be separate pieces of content) were both released at the same time after delays caused by Covid.
This... is not going to be the case. 7.8, which will come out before Christmas, will have the "Galactic Threads" story that was originally meant to be included in patch 7.6 last Christmas, and then they'll speed up a little bit and add "Master's Engima", the story originally built for patch 7.7, with 7.8.1, which should then launch at some point early next year and would usually have included only the start of Galactic Season 10 and no story update.
While I'm glad to finally have something close to a date, having to wait another four months or so until the next story drop still hurts - by that point the game will have gone nearly 18 months without a story patch, which is unprecedented in this MMO's history.
The other thing that stuck out to me is that if we're getting the story that was meant to be in 7.6 in 7.8, what was meant to be in 7.8 before that? No story? Ultimately it feels like aside from the delays, we also lost one of the twice-a-year story installments due to the strike, which sucks.
Same thing with date nights by the way - they mentioned working on one back in the 7.6.1 stream, but now we won't even get one with 7.7.1, with the next expected release (Torian and Kira) coming with 7.8.1 next year.
Galactic Season 9: Flashpoint Resurgence
As for GS9, its theme is flashpoints. Yippee! There will be Czerka buffs involved like there were for uprisings during GS8, which I don't really care about, but I'm good with running flashpoints with or without buffs. Unfortunately it sounded like the objectives will be veteran mode only, which is a bit disappointing to me personally and will not encourage my guildies to group up I reckon, but still, it's flashpoints.
The most interesting bit of the stream to me personally was the devs talking about how they were using the occasion of this seasonal focus on flashpoints to make some changes to the activity finder. A big quality of life improvement they will make is that you'll finally be able to queue as multiple roles again, change roles while queueing (so that you can e.g. do dailies in a dps spec while queueing for a flashpoint as healer) and it will take both of your combat styles into account, meaning you could queue as all three roles if you wanted and have the right combat styles for it. Now, to be clear, only the last bit of that is actually new - both the ability to queue for multiple roles and the ability to queue as a different role than you're currently playing were in the game before but got patched out at some point, I think because they were buggy or causing issues of some sort. Still, I'm very glad to see these features make a comeback at last.
They are also going to improve the loot you get in flashpoints while levelling, though it's not entirely clear what that will mean - I'm guessing more gear that is actually appropriate for your level and combat style, because getting drops that you can't even use or not use for another twenty levels was definitely a thing sometimes.
For the max levels, you'll no longer have to queue for all flashpoints to be eligible for additional daily/weekly rewards, but can exclude a few that you may want to avoid. You still won't be rewarded for just spamming Hammer Station and nothing else, but you can untick a couple you don't like, which I guess is nice.
No more "spacebar plz"
The thing that kind of shocked me was that in connection to all these flashpoint changes, queued veteran and master mode flashpoints will no longer feature any cut scenes or group conversations; everything will just be auto-skipped and if there was some sort of decision to be made (such as whether to kill or spare the captain in the Black Talon) it will just do so automatically. If you want to see the conversations and cut scenes in the future, you'll need to do story mode (where available) or manually walk into the higher difficulty with some friends.
Now, I completely understand why they are doing this and I'm sure many people will consider this a major quality of life improvement. I made a whole compilation poking fun at people's urge to skip the cut scenes seven years ago. I've seen it all, from the guy who drops group the moment you zone into the Esseles or Black Talon, to endless arguments about who isn't hitting their space bar and why. It was a source of friction for sure.
AND YET. I myself have always loved the group conversations in flashpoints and was generally happy to watch cut scenes if other people wanted to do so too. I enjoy running flashpoints, but I never "spammed" them to the point where getting the Esseles again made me frustrated. (The only flashpoint that I've managed to get utterly sick of is Hammer Station, and that has nothing to do with cut scenes and everything to do with the community.)
I also felt that the group conversations often inspired fun little interactions, such as when a dark or light side choice got people chatting. My guildies have seen me express (not-entirely-serious) outrage at killing the engineers or leaving Asara behind in the Esseles more than a few times. And some of the cut scenes also just genuinely looked nice! I have a whole collection of screenshots of pugs in Czerka Corporate Labs, from that last cut scene that shows your group walking into the room looking heroic.
And all of that is just going to be... gone? Telling me that you can technically build a group manually and walk in to still see the cut scenes is a bit of a cold comfort because let's be real, how often do people do that? How often have you run Kuat Drive Yards since it was removed from the group finder? I just feel like this is going to be one of those things that will end up having negative ripple effects that people won't fully feel until later down the line. Or maybe I'm just a relic of ancient times for having actually enjoyed interacting with my pug mates in small ways, even if there was friction sometimes.
Be free, F2P-ers!
A big change for free-to-play players that's coming with the next patch is that the devs will be dropping a lot of the old restrictions on that type of account. You will now also get sprint at level 1, have all action bars unlocked, be able to hide your head slot and equip random purples that you get while levelling. Honestly, with some of the things they mentioned I didn't even know there were restrictions for that: What, F2P players couldn't display legacy titles before? Or equip companion customisations? WTF?
Even as someone who's always been subscribed, I think this is great news. SWTOR has had a reputation for having extremely draconian F2P restrictions for a long time - I remember how the limited action bars were a source of ridicule across the entire MMO community when the game first went free-to-play. I think the devs did the right thing by being cautious when they first changed payment model back in the day (mostly because other MMOs that followed suit later and kept crowing about how much more generous their F2P model was in comparison, such as Rift and Wildstar, did ultimately not end up doing well).
However, all of that was over a decade ago, times have changed, and there's just no reason to be quite so brutal with all those restrictions on what's effectively the game's free trial mode. Annoying players with arbitrary feature locks before they've even left the starter planet was just never great, and I hope that these changes will give more people a chance to actually fall in love with what the game has to offer and then spend some money on it happily instead of feeling nagged from the get-go.
What about subscribers though?
So as not to leave subscribers feeling unappreciated, the game will run a new "subscriber login event" from September to December where you'll earn a special currency if you log in at least four times a week, which you can then use to buy some goodies. I kinda raised my eyebrow a bit at one of those goodies supposedly being "endgame gear" but we'll see. I really don't need more free stuff myself, but I can't blame them for trying to offer subscribers a bit more carrot while easing up on the F2P stick.
Say farewell to endless free CC
Speaking of carrots and sticks, regardless of your subscription status, you've long gained 100 free Cartel Coins per month if you've got a security key attached to your account. I often saw delighted comments from people who came back to the game after some time away to find that they'd accumulated thousands of free Cartel Coins while not playing. While that was nice, considering for how long the game has been running at this point, I can't blame the bean counters for concluding that someone coming back after years and immediately finding $40 worth of Cartel Coins in their account was maybe not so good for their bottom line. No, that free CC is not going to go away, but it will only be awarded going forward if your account was actually active in the last 30 days.
Decos, Graphics, DirectX
Under "other topics about which I don't have that much to say", we have the Feast of Prosperity returning this autumn with some awesome new decos that I'll definitely want to grind for. (I actually broke my habit of ignoring Twitch chat to type "LOVE LAMP" when they showed the new ceiling lights.)
The character customisation updates continue, with Rattataki getting updated textures next, and dark-side corruption getting a much-needed revamp so that it no longer turns every character into a pasty white dude regardless of their previous skin colour. (I might actually give showing it on my dark-siders a try once this goes live - I previously always disabled it precisely because it changed your skin colour so much and I didn't want to look like an albino axolotl.) Also, after they added all those skin colours for aliens in the last patch, they are expanding on this by adding more hair and montral colours with 7.7.1.
Finally, in technical news that I have to file under "I don't know enough about this to have an opinion but I guess it sounds good", they are making good progress on updating the game to DirectX 12 but there's still some work left to do.
As usual, if you want ALL THE DEETS, including things I didn't mention here and images of various rewards, here are some other places you can look:
- VOD on YouTube (Twitch had some hiccups and split it into several parts)
- Official recap article
- Swtorista
- Today in TOR
Remembering the occasional hassle we had organising groups for uprisings, I'm not looking forward to the same inevitably happening with flashpoints. On one hand, I'm glad that the season queue negates part of that issue, but unless everyone agrees to enter manually that still involves dragging a pug or two along, which for me... I dunno. I much prefer doing stuff like this exclusively with guildies, as a guild group is less likely (... depending on the guildies...) to absolutely insist on skipping everything left, right, and centre.
ReplyDeleteI'm saddened by the loss of cutscenes. Apart from adding flavour and as you say occasional humour into a run I'm very curious to see how Black Talon will be handled in group environments with the alignment-dependent first boss.
I also find the rewards they showed off rather... lacking? I guess? Once ahain, an odd disconnect between season ans rewards theming. The mounts are so-so and getting Yavin stronghold decos is bizarre. I wonder if we'll also get the Yavin utility bundle this patch like we've seen for Copero, Nar Shaddaa, and Courscant / DK? A T7 customisation is nice, but a very weird meta reward, and it's now even more perplexing that they didn't add an Imperial equivalent during GS5 as this demolishes any "well, it would kinda directly spoil T7 being for everyone" defense I created back then. Ah well.
Interested in seeing what the weapons and armour will be like, though.
7.8 (and subsequently 7.8.1) being the story patch does hurt. It would perhaps have been too much to ask for 7.7.1 to give us something, but... yeah, unless the story for 7.0 would always have come to a close with The Master's Enigma, we have indeed objectively lost out on story after all. We'll know for sure when / if 7.9 rears its head.
We'll see how this all pans out, I guess.
Regarding rewards: Uprisings. I 100% get would be difficult to tie a single theme to. Basing the theme on Zakuul or the Alliance makes no sense from a low-level player's perspective, so makes sense to keep those generic.
DeleteFlashpoints, though? At least twenty-two of the thirty-three flashpoints (if I've done my maths correctly) have us play the part of being an Imperial or Republic strike team, all of which are accessible lomg before hitting max-level. I don't know where to place the Rishi flashpoints in that given the more faction-neutral aspect of the story at those points, and Objective Meridian is possibly a twenty-third as well.
Granted, only seeing the vehicles isn't helpful. It's plausible that the weapons being Andor-themed may have some sort of factional aesthetic. I don't think the armour sets sound like they will, but you never know.
Point is, this season feels like it suits the Coruscant and DK reward theming much more than GS8!
I think it'll be hard to get guild groups for these veteran mode flashpoints just because it's veteran mode only. With the uprisings, you could at least do any difficulty, so we could make it more interesting by doing vet or master mode together. Vet mode flashpoints don't really feel like they'd be worth the effort of waiting for and building a group manually when you can always get a quick pop in group finder and get it over with.
DeleteMy feelings are much the same as yours. I know many folk (most folk?) just want to finish as quickly as possible, but I’m always down for the full experience if I pop in the queue. “Intisar always does the bonus,” is a running joke among my friends. But I admit there is a difference between being willing to run a quick flashpoint, and instead getting Esseles with a level 10.
ReplyDeleteBut it’s always been a part of SWTOR. I still like winning conversation roles and hearing what my character has to say. Personally, I would rather do that Esseles with a newbie than a joyless Hammer Station speed run. But I know others do not share that opinion.
I’m also not wild about tying Season objectives to the group finder. I too prefer to run with friends and guildmates. If it’s just two of us we can use companions and maybe pick up others as they log in. And good luck to folks who play at off times on low population servers. I rarely got Uprising pops during the Season on Leviathan and SV.
As I've said in the past, the group conversation system was the number one thing that got me interested in SWTOR back in the day. It's been sad to see it lose relevance when they stopped creating new storylines that you could progress as a group, and then again when the social points system was removed. This kinda feels like the final nail in the coffin and one of the game's unique USP's basically being lost.
DeleteI'm not too worried about the season objective being tied to the group finder, but I agree that it would've been nicer if manual runs also counted. I actually had few issues getting uprisings done even on the smaller servers, and I expect flashpoints will be even easier since they are generally more popular.