tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15382331141331153632024-03-18T22:20:34.824+00:00Going Commando | A SWTOR Fan BlogShintar's adventures in and thoughts about Star Wars: The Old Republic, from launch up til now. Probably the oldest, consistently updated personal fan blog of the game on the net!Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.comBlogger1314125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-81094348782408341412024-03-18T21:46:00.000+00:002024-03-18T21:46:24.300+00:00Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 1<p>It's been a while since I last posted a detailed diary of my Galactic Seasons exploits - in fact, the last time I did so was almost exactly <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/03/galactic-season-2-notes-on-weeks-3-6.html">two years ago in Season 2</a>. I basically stopped writing these posts because I found that the changes to the system after Season 1 made it so much easier to get both the daily and weekly objectives done that I didn't really think it was worth going into detail about how exactly I completed them each day/week.<br /></p><p>This was quite a contrast to Season 1, when my blog basically turned into <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/06/"><i>nothing but</i> my Galactic Seasons diary</a> for three months. This was because the first Galactic Season used a very different model that relied a lot on randomised daily objectives and was a lot more demanding of your time. It fills me with a certain degree of amusement now to look back at the time I fretted about <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/06/shintars-galactic-season-diary-week-9.html">whether I could get two rounds of dailies done before having to shoot off to an emergency dental appointment</a>. I mean, that toothache sucked ass, but the circumstances seem funny in hindsight.</p><p>Anyway, the reason I decided to give this diary thing another shot this season was that, now that I'm effectively doing seasons on <strike>five</strike> <i>six</i> servers, it's actually somewhat demanding again, and it's only going to be more so this season with the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/03/galactic-season-6-reputation.html">nerf to the reputation Conquest objective</a> for easy points! I thought it would be interesting to document my journey as it happened once again, and maybe approaching the whole endeavour with more awareness might also help me with not going <i>too</i> crazy pushing myself through too many objectives every week.</p><p>I think for clarity it would be good to start by listing all the available weekly objectives for week one as well as my thoughts on them, as my descriptions of my daily play sessions might seem incredibly random otherwise.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Earn 200k Conquest points:</b> This is one that kind of takes care of itself while you work on other objectives, so pretty much a freebie on all servers.</li><li><b>Earn the seasonal currency:</b> Same for this one.</li><li><b>Kill 100 mobs with a tank companion:</b> An easy filler that can be done in a variety of content and stacks well with other objectives; I figured I'd do this one on several servers.</li><li><b>Kill four named champion mobs on Quesh (2 Republic, 2 Imperial):</b> Not one of my <i>favourites</i> since you have to do a lot of driving around for not much action and minimal Conquest points, plus if you're unlucky there can be quite a bit of wait time for respawns, but it's an objective that's easy enough to do as long as you have a high enough character on both sides of the faction divide.</li><li><b>Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor:</b> Wanting to be able to complete these origin story-based objectives is why I have at least four alts on every server now, and it's almost guaranteed to be one of my picks on each of the secondary servers.</li><li><b>Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Outer Rim planets Tatooine, Hoth, Belsavis or Rishi:</b> Another one I choose often as it can be completed easily and in so many different ways, which counters repetition while playing across multiple servers.</li><li><b>Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance):</b> I like flashpoints but this objective can be kind of time-consuming compared to others. I'll always pick it on Darth Malgus as an opportunity to play with Mr Commando, but I'll want to limit myself to only doing it on one or two of the other servers.<br /></li><li><b>Kill the Quesh and Nar Shaddaa world bosses:</b> Very easy and rewarding if a group can be found within a reasonable amount of time. Camping them by myself while waiting for a raid to come by gets boring however.<br /></li><li><b>Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double):</b> Like the flashpoints, this one's a bit time-consuming, so probably something I'd choose to do on a few servers but not on all of them.</li><li><b>KotFE chapter 14 on veteran mode or higher:</b> The only objective of the week that I knew I definitely wasn't going to bother with anywhere as I don't enjoy replaying chapters on characters that have already done them.<br /></li><li><b>Kill the Kessan's Landing world boss:</b> Another quick and easy one if a group is available but that "if" does matter.<br /></li></ul><p><b>Day 1 - Tuesday<br /></b></p><p>Patch day was an office day for me, which meant that I didn't come home until late, and as soon I had the game patched up it was time to jump into a scheduled operation with my guild. After that I didn't have a lot of time or energy left to work on seasons objectives. I just did a bit of puttering around on alts to earn enough Conquest points to complete the daily seasons objective, such as raising a companion's influence level here and doing a bit of crafting there.</p><p>I thought it was interesting that the <a href="https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20240311">preview of the first four weeks of seasons objectives</a> didn't include a single one that could be completed in PvP (not counting GSF), which means no overlap between the two seasons for at least a month. In order not to neglect <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/03/jumping-into-pvp-season-5.html">my PvP ambitions</a> right away, I did three warzones on my level 80 dps Juggernaut and won all three. I wish I could just be happy about good luck like that, but since it's so random whether I end up on the winning side or not I always just feel like I'll "pay" for the lucky streak later (by having an equal or worse losing streak).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZsq5Y9NDPu6hdMH5EBl65qQKiy1Hq4V6XB-hyF4QuYi3IYp3DMxm6SFK_UiE3R028Q3JB2miCv5eXmfHAJmHARsUMbuCywoOkv3iEWrsvn5XYZL2-fNLWwpwTysDUu4TKA_J9E7sL6NddE44oN5wEwb87u7cBcXIJ4epiARBhpZDeEc97lr9-npSYYc8/s1920/Chatoh%20overwhelmed%20by%20lightning.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A male Cathar Sith inquisitor kneeling down and wreathed in lightning, with a pained expression on his face" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZsq5Y9NDPu6hdMH5EBl65qQKiy1Hq4V6XB-hyF4QuYi3IYp3DMxm6SFK_UiE3R028Q3JB2miCv5eXmfHAJmHARsUMbuCywoOkv3iEWrsvn5XYZL2-fNLWwpwTysDUu4TKA_J9E7sL6NddE44oN5wEwb87u7cBcXIJ4epiARBhpZDeEc97lr9-npSYYc8/w400-h225/Chatoh%20overwhelmed%20by%20lightning.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Since it was late, I wanted to limit my efforts on the other servers to quickly grabbing the daily seasons objective. On Leviathan I did some quests on Korriban on the lowbie Sith inquisitor I created <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/gs5-review-leviathan.html">last season</a>, which got me there quite quickly, but I also knew that I didn't actually feel like questing this much on every server that late at night. In the past I would've just popped a reputation token everywhere else to get it over with, but of course that was no longer an option. Through a bit of trial and error I found out that I could still get to the required 25k points on Tulak Hord, Satele Shan and Star Forge with (relatively) minimal effort by using a reputation item, raising a companion's influence, levelling up a crew skill, doing five crew skill missions (they can be low level to make it quick) and placing five stronghold decorations - give or take one or two of the smaller objectives depending on my stronghold bonus on each server and on whether the character is in a guild with any additional bonuses.<p></p><p>On Shae Vizla, I put myself in the queue for warzones and GSF just to see whether the transfers had already made a difference (even though it wasn't prime time for the Aussies) but I had only been in the queue for a few minutes when I saw someone looking for dps for the two weekly world boss objectives. This was too convenient to pass up, so I ended up completing three weekly objectives in quick succession (the two world boss ones plus the one to find blueprint fragments). Ironically, this meant that I unlocked the Copero stronghold on Shae before I did so on Darth Malgus, though it was 1 a.m. for me at that point and I was too tired to even look at it; I just wanted to go to bed.</p><p><b>Day 2 - Wednesday<br /></b></p><p>I tried queueing for warzones and GSF on Shae Vizla again for a bit before the daily reset (which happens at noon in my time zone) since that's closer to APAC prime time and I actually got into a level 80 warzone... though that just ended up being a reminder of why doing PvP with a higher ping <i>can</i> be frustrating, as I jumped out of the starting zone into the pit in Huttball, and then watched - <i>while down there</i> - as an Operative holotraversed up to where I had stood before and scored.</p><p>I continued queueing past the reset and got into another warzone and two GSF matches. I won both of the latter, which completed my first GSF weekly mission since Galactic Season 5 and also got me two thirds of the way to the GSF weekly seasons objective. The matches themselves were a bit weird though. In the first one I was top damage, which never happens, and in the second one we had more than twenty self-destructs before either team even had time to capture the first satellite. I actually asked in chat what was going on and someone responded that they were "cycling through ships for Conquest points". (I later saw this behaviour to a lesser degree even in a death match. Just... ow.) Sooo... when the devs inevitably nerf <i>that</i> Conquest objective or change it to require more interaction to get credit for flying a given ship, you'll know whose behaviour is to blame.</p><p>In the evening I started my game time by doing some PvP on Darth Malgus. It may surprise some, but in a way I'm actually the least focused on seasons on my home server, because I spend so much time there that objectives will basically get done one way or another. It's the other servers where I really have to work on it to achieve the desired progress. Either way, doing this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly so that I could finally unlock the new stronghold on Darth Malgus.<br /></p><p>After also completing one GSF weekly mission, I decided that it was time to do the rounds on the other servers again. I played two GSF matches on Tulak Hord that were horrible losses and decided that was enough GSF for me for the day. I saw someone talking about world bosses in general chat so asked whether there was a group going and got a whisper in reply that there wasn't one "but why don't we make one?" Turns out that "us" making one meant that the other person sent me a group invite, made me leader and then just sat there expecting me to do the work of getting more people. I tried to LFM a few times but got literally zero responses so just excused myself after a few minutes.</p><p>On Leviathan I continued my baby inquisitor's journey across Korriban, and on Satele Shan I did some side questing on Belsavis, since my level 80 consular was already there for his class story anyway. On Star Forge I kept things quick by just doing two dailies on Rishi (which also gave reputation!) using my boosted inquisitor, and then doing a few more clicky things to make up the difference for the daily objective. (This would generally become my MO throughout the week if I didn't quite hit the required number of daily Conquest points with my initial choice of activity, and I didn't always mention it anymore.)<br /></p><p><b>Day 3 - Thursday</b><br /></p><p>Another day at the office meant limited play time once again. Once home, I decided to log into Tulak Hord first this time and arrived just in time for the formation of a world boss group. However, they didn't want to do FR3-D0M for some reason, so I hopped over to Ord Mantell by myself just to check whether anyone was doing the boss there at all. One (1) guy from the previous world boss group showed up too and decided to pull. I'd heard that FR3-D0M was technically soloable, but technically and practically are two very different things, so I was unsure how we would do with just the two of us, but we killed the boss just fine.</p><p>I logged into Leviathan to keep an eye on fleet chat there while eating dinner in case I could catch another world boss group. However, there wasn't much going on there, so I eventually relocated to Quesh to see whether I could leech off any passing guild groups that were there to kill the world boss, but had no luck on that front either. I just learned that <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/hotblooded-on-hoth.html">like Gargath</a>, the Rogue Cartel Warbot doesn't move until you get too close to him. His personal cut-off between caring and not caring about your presence is at 70m.<br /></p><p>I decided to leave Leviathan for now and played a GSF match and two warzones on Darth Malgus before returning to doing the rounds on the rest of the other servers. On Star Forge I did another two Rishi dailies, and on Satele Shan my consular did some more side-questing on Belsavis. Back on Leviathan, I decided to return to my little inquisitor, who only killed like five mobs on Korriban before triggering the "gain five levels" Conquest objective - I was happy to take the easy way win for the day and moved on to Shae Vizla for the evening.</p><p>I unlocked the stronghold there and put my warrior in the queue for GSF, warzones and flashpoints, but got impatient when nothing popped within ten minutes, so I ended up swapping to my consular to do some side-questing on Tatooine instead.</p><p><b>Day 4 - Friday<br /></b></p><p>Since there was a login reward of eight seasons points for four consecutive days of logins this week, this meant that after the daily reset on Friday I was able to unlock the Copero stronghold on all servers that day, even where I hadn't completed many objectives yet. <br /></p><p>I tried queueing for some activities on Shae Vizla around lunch time again (mostly keeping the game in the background while doing something else) but only got one warzone pop in over an hour of waiting. After the daily reset I saw someone put together a group for the Dromund Kaas world boss, which I decided to join for easy daily objective completion (plus I had the weekly world boss quest on 3/4). Just as I was thinking about logging off again, I got a GSF pop though, which allowed me to complete the GSF seasons objective and another weekly mission.</p><p>In the evening I did some PvP and a couple more GSF matches on Darth Malgus before it was time for ops with my guild team again. Afterwards I did some more PvP before finally switching to Star Forge. There was a world boss group forming in general chat there, so I jumped right in and was able to tick those two weekly objectives off on this server too. I then just hopped over onto my inquisitor to do two more dailies on Rishi.</p><p>After that I returned to the Leviathan and finished off the last few quests on Korriban to get credit for my 15 missions done as an inquisitor, before switching to my level 80 knight and killing the two named Imperial champion mobs on Quesh.</p><p>It wasn't that late for a Friday, but I was tired so decided to leave the dailies on Satele Shan and Tulak Hord for the next morning.</p><p><b>Day 5 - Saturday<br /></b></p><p>Ah, the weekend! I logged into Satele Shan in the morning and first checked general chat on the fleet to see whether there were any world boss groups going on, but there was just some paragraphs-long discussion about philosophy and science, so I continued my consular's questing on Belsavis once more. Within a matter of minutes, I ticked off four weekly objectives in a row: Outer Rim missions, questing as a consular, playing with a companion set to tank, and finding currency. I love it when things line up like that, and this also sorted my Conquest for the day with ease.<br /></p><p>After that I hopped over onto Tulak Hord and did a GSF match there, which completed my trooper's GSF weekly mission and the daily seasons objective. Having achieved my goals much quicker than expected, I logged into Shae Vizla to queue for some PvP and was happy to complete a warzone weekly mission there for the first time since PvP Season 4 ended.</p><p>Later in the afternoon, after the daily reset had happened, I logged into my knight on Leviathan and started doing some exploration missions on Tatooine while also putting myself into the queue for all four flashpoints eligible for the seasons objective. I got a pop for veteran mode Cademimu after a while, which pushed me over the number of Conquest points needed for the daily objective.</p><p>Next I went to Tulak Hord and put myself in the GSF queue on my trooper while getting started on the Tatooine bonus series. I got a pop about halfway through it and won the match, which completed that seasons objective and my Conquest for the day, however due to the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/gs5-review-leviathan.html">bonus series being known to bug out if you pause halfway through</a>, I pushed on to complete it the same afternoon anyway. This completed the Outer Rim missions and questing with a tank companion objectives, making Tulak Hord the first server on which I was on 7/7 weeklies completed for the week.</p><p>Checking in on Star Forge, I did two more Rishi dailies on my inquisitor and completed her weekly Conquest target, but I noted that this hadn't really advanced me all that much throughout the Outer Rim objective since while I had done eight missions, they'd been so easy that I'd only killed less than thirty mobs. Since I don't like just grinding mobs without a purpose, I made a note to myself to tackle the requirements for the remaining, only partially completed objectives on other characters over the next two days.</p><p>On Satele Shan, I consulted <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2018/10/on-alts-progression-and-story.html">my missions spreadsheet</a> and realised that my consular had never done the Directive 7 story, so I decided to do that flashpoint on story mode for a triple whammy of story, seasons and progression of the first quest you get in the Copero villa (more on that another time).<br /></p><p>In the evening it was time for my guild's social night on Darth Malgus, which helped me tick off the two world boss objectives there before we launched ourselves into an operation. Afterwards Mr Commando and I conscripted two damage dealers to run D7 and Spirit of Vengeance on master mode for another seasons objective. After that I was properly conked out and went off to enjoy an early night.</p><p><b>Day 6 - Sunday<br /></b></p><p>I started my Sunday morning by logging into Shae Vizla and continuing my side-questing on my consular on Tatooine. She was effectively working on three objectives at once that way, but I only needed two more for the week. The Outer Rim and companion tank ones completed way before I would have hit 15 missions as a consular, which made Shae Vizla the second server on which I completed 7/7 objectives for the week.</p><p>As this meant that I was caught up with daily objectives for the current reset, I decided to return to Star Forge and do some work on the consular missions objective on my newest baby alt there. Being only level 2, she wasn't going to contribute to Conquest anyway. Breezing through the early Tython quests, she hit the 15 missions completed (keeping in mind my boosted inquisitor had already done 8 missions on Rishi as well) by level 7.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiawbzDVzSdCiNy_VXSTD3lOU-nANtgP8J0e-bYdWrQ0FzXaUHabAnVa9dbw5HWRZiTtcT3RSqTOyxnPk-GCox2A6-xxYwv18R9bIq5CtmcylSjsoUJ01BkcyC72LCmawtLpykkDfRwwVmrT9pN3Dt60P_Fg15goXEENMp26FcXkSmB7qyjhiYnPipRTyQ/s1920/Shintisar%20up%20close%20on%20holo%20with%20Master%20Yuon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A female Mirialan Jedi consular on Tython, calling Master Yuon on the holo" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiawbzDVzSdCiNy_VXSTD3lOU-nANtgP8J0e-bYdWrQ0FzXaUHabAnVa9dbw5HWRZiTtcT3RSqTOyxnPk-GCox2A6-xxYwv18R9bIq5CtmcylSjsoUJ01BkcyC72LCmawtLpykkDfRwwVmrT9pN3Dt60P_Fg15goXEENMp26FcXkSmB7qyjhiYnPipRTyQ/w400-h225/Shintisar%20up%20close%20on%20holo%20with%20Master%20Yuon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />I returned to the game in the late afternoon/early evening. Starting on Leviathan, I logged into my level 34 bounty hunter and travelled to Quesh to kill the two named Republic champions there. At 34, he was a bit low for the planet, but <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/liabilities-of-taris.html">my experiences on Taris last season</a> taught me that this wasn't really a problem. I did however arrive just in time to see someone quick travel away from the first champion's corpse, so that I had to wait for him to respawn. On my way to the second one, I saw a level 80 zoom past me as I got dismounted by a group of weak mobs and quietly went "nooo" in my head as I figured that he'd also kill the second champion just before I could get there, but I managed to catch up in time to get a few hits for credit in. After that I continued to putter around a bit longer for Conquest purposes, which pushed me over the 200k weekly objective.<p></p><p>On Tulak Hord, there wasn't much to do since I was done with the weekly objectives, but since I had invaded small yield with the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/gs5-review-tulak-hord.html">two-person guild</a> again, I had incentive to still fill that bar up as well. Fortunately I had a half-finished GSF weekly mission in my log, so one GSF win later I was done with my daily Conquest and the guild's Conquest target was most of the way there as well.</p><p>On Darth Malgus, I played two warzone matches to complete another character's warzone weekly and knocked out all four champion mobs on Quesh to get myself to 7/7 seasons objectives on my home server at last.<br /></p><p>I continued on to Star Forge, where after some contemplation in regards to what I could do to complete my remaining weekly objectives while minimising boring repetition, I decided to do the Hoth bonus series on my trooper. It had been so many years since I'd last done it, I literally couldn't remember a thing about it at first, though some bits started to sound familiar once I got going. When I got to the mission about the Onderonian beast-lord I literally shouted "oh snap" out loud, much to the consternation of Mr Commando, since I had never realised that the blackmail you can use on Akoru as an Imperial during Onslaught isn't just made up, but based on this actual quest chain. Ahh, this game is still so good, you guys! Anyway, that finished my companion questing and Outer Rim missions objectives, leaving me with just a smidge more Conquest points to gain for both my personal target and the 200k Conquest points objective, but I decided to leave that for Monday.</p><p>On Satele Shan, I decided that after playing nothing but my consular there all week, I should give some love to my level 62 knight instead, so I had her kill the Imperial Quesh champions and put her in the queue for vet mode Cademimu and Mandalorian Raiders. She quickly got into a run for the former, which was fast and smooth. I then sent my level 38 agent to kill the Republic targets on Quesh, and with that Satele Shan was on 7/7 weeklies completed too.</p><p>Shae Vizla was already done as per my earlier paragraph about questing in the morning, and I had the Taskmaster Conquest objective for sub-80 characters sitting at a partial completion of 9/10, so I basically just had to make my Jedi do a companion mission for Qyzen to tick it over and that was that done for the day as well.</p><p><b>Day 7 - Monday</b></p><p>With four out of six servers sitting on 7/7 and the other two being as good as done too, there fortunately wasn't too much left to do. On Darth Malgus, Star Forge and Tulak Hord I completed my daily objective with some clickies and a bit of puttering around. On Star Forge this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly objective for me, and on Tulak Hord it achieved my guild's small yield Conquest target.</p><p>Leviathan was where I had the most work left to do, as I needed one more flashpoint plus a bit more questing on Tatooine to wrap up my last three weekly objectives, plus my bounty hunter had (unintentionally) gotten really close to reaching his personal Conquest target the previous day, so I wanted to make that tick over as well. The latter was easily achieved by having him do a bit of story questing on Balmorra. After that, I got back on my knight and queued for all seasonal flashpoints on both difficulties again, which got me into veteran mode Mandalorian Raiders this time. It was another uneventful run, except that someone asked to "focus boss" on the last encounter, which is not usually a good idea... as it turns out, you can indeed burn him down before the turrets kill you nowadays, but I still didn't see the benefit as the turrets don't despawn and you can't exit in combat, so you need to run around and still kill them all afterwards <i>anyway</i>. A few more Tatooine exploration missions later, another personal Conquest target was achieved, as well as 7/7 season weeklies.</p><p>This just left the daily objective on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla, and I took care of that on both servers by completing Conquest on an alt each.<br /></p><p><b>Week 1 Thoughts</b></p><p>Well, that whole "not going too crazy with the playing on multiple servers" thing didn't quite work out, did it? Seeing how I pushed myself to completing 7/7 weeklies on all six of them once again. In fairness, this week had a lot of very easy objectives, several of which could be completed in multiple ways, so it was honestly just pretty fun. I do think that based on the information we've been given, I'll want to take it easier in week two since the objectives on offer will be different.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-31362911811788568182024-03-16T11:37:00.004+00:002024-03-16T11:50:46.969+00:00Persistent Pet Pals At Last!<p>I threw a bit of shade at the devs in <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/03/galactic-season-6-reputation.html">my last post</a> for failing to communicate what felt like some pretty important changes that weren't entirely well-received in the patch notes ... but 7.4.1 also contained a <i>very good</i> change that they forgot to include in the patch notes. <a href="https://www.generic-hero.com/ThisWeekinAurabesh/">Intisar</a> was the first to point it out to me on Discord, but I haven't really seen anyone else mention it so far, so I wanted to give a shout-out to it here:</p><p><b>Pets now persist through loading screens and relogging.</b></p><p>Pets disappearing every time you zoned had been an issue for literally over a decade. There was <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/573723-active-pets-do-not-persist-when-loading-a-new-area-or-changing-instances/page/2/">a thread on the bug report forums for it</a>, created in June 2013, that people bumped every so often, but it was clearly not a priority for the devs to fix. And to some degree I could understand that, but on the other hand... they sell pets on the Cartel Market! Pets disappearing all the time has <i>got</i> to have hurt sales of the little critters, surely.<br /></p><p>I'm not exactly a pet fanatic myself, but I do <i>like</i> them and have some fond memories attached to more than a few of them. Just check the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/search/label/pets">pets tag</a> on this blog. Remember <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2017/05/saving-grophets.html">my grophet phase</a>? Those were the days.</p><p>However, the constant need to re-summon them was just too annoying. Even if you put them on your quick bar for easy access... this game has a LOT of loading screens. I'd usually get a new pet, get it out and go "aw, how cute"... but it'd be gone within five minutes of me doing anything and at most I'd remember to re-summon it a couple of times before getting bored and giving up/just forgetting about it. Which is a shame!</p><p>I also put this piece of feedback into one of my responses to <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/surveyed.html">the survey Broadsword sent out back in November</a>, so I've been absolutely delighted to finally see this bug get fixed. I think my guildies were rather bemused when I told them to all get their favourite pets out during Friday night's ops.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpk6v_hQncUAWw6tDtKLt_ACp7EBw391xb-u3DdOCHpRi2nailqFrdKnt-zxAglYWSxrs0vOrwakpbBfcHxCD1kiWBlyq2I36E_twLZckBRw6Djs9gnYklE0ZamycmUa0GU6itTvVgulGz0zROg2dqCT2HI1Sd0awQPk_o3qHo04HKzp2EAnr0kwaq0ng/s983/Shintar%20and%20Orishan%20being%20followed%20by%20Loth%20kittens%20on%20Brontes.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Loth kittens following their owners around on the Dread Master Brontes fight in Dread Fortress" border="0" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="983" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpk6v_hQncUAWw6tDtKLt_ACp7EBw391xb-u3DdOCHpRi2nailqFrdKnt-zxAglYWSxrs0vOrwakpbBfcHxCD1kiWBlyq2I36E_twLZckBRw6Djs9gnYklE0ZamycmUa0GU6itTvVgulGz0zROg2dqCT2HI1Sd0awQPk_o3qHo04HKzp2EAnr0kwaq0ng/w400-h281/Shintar%20and%20Orishan%20being%20followed%20by%20Loth%20kittens%20on%20Brontes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />After a bit of testing, I can confirm:<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>That pets do now persist through general loading screens/area transitions.<br /></li><li>The game does remember which pet you had out when you last logged out.</li><li>They do go away if you are defeated - the little toggle on the icon stays on as if your pet was still there, but you need to un- and re-summon it after dying. I can live with that one; just means I have to remember to re-summon the little buggers after wiping in progression ops.</li><li>They won't follow you into PvP, but they'll re-appear by your side when you come out of the match, even if you died during the fighting.<br /></li></ul><p>I'm excited every time I log into an alt now, thinking about which little critter they should have by their side... because I know the game will finally remember and I won't have to think it through all over again the next time I log in. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the little buggers around the fleet!</p><p>So if you have any pets you like and you just kind of gave up on getting them out in the past because they'd just disappear - now is the time to get them back.</p><p>Just remember to un-summon your pets if you're doing the Coratanni fight in Ravagers. As far as I'm aware she still has that bug where someone having a pet out can cause the encounter to reset (I'm guessing because some boss ability targets the pet and causes things to go wonky).<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-67604116830318662892024-03-14T21:44:00.002+00:002024-03-14T22:08:26.787+00:00Galactic Season 6 & Reputation<p>Galactic Season 6 is here and we can all get a shiny new villa! Everyone is happy! Or are they?<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh22VD-l6i-QEh3V3XLMU-P6Lss8lDuiuy8tW68Ux67enFNgpd8Cn9jekBdcX5rvvpRYL6HLVztlmX51EUko1xOA92ilxIvn0o0_gB_QEBlHT18Msp30kTmcxXpt6vXR7vGj9MeTJbuXbKPBSArq69lrYiuZVJZehL0R6yx0w37Oqw6OymALBYkfjJ-W9U/s1920/Shintar%20stretching%20in%20the%20Copero%20stronghold.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shintar the trooper with Amity by her side, performing the /stretch emote on the stairs of the Copero stronghold" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh22VD-l6i-QEh3V3XLMU-P6Lss8lDuiuy8tW68Ux67enFNgpd8Cn9jekBdcX5rvvpRYL6HLVztlmX51EUko1xOA92ilxIvn0o0_gB_QEBlHT18Msp30kTmcxXpt6vXR7vGj9MeTJbuXbKPBSArq69lrYiuZVJZehL0R6yx0w37Oqw6OymALBYkfjJ-W9U/w400-h225/Shintar%20stretching%20in%20the%20Copero%20stronghold.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>As it turns out, GS6 launched with an unexpected amount of grumbling and confusion. In all their excitement about date nights, and in their eagerness to provide details about the new stronghold, it seems the devs forgot to mention a fairly important change coming with GS6: that for the first time since Season 2, there isn't a new reputation track to be filled out throughout the season.</p><p>Now, by itself, I don't think that would've been a huge deal, even if it came as a surprise. I've had conversations with quite a few people over the last couple of years where we basically agreed that the seasonal reputations were a bit <i>weird</i>, both from a narrative point of view (gaining reputation with a faction you never really interact with aside from your seasonal companion where applicable) <i>and</i> from a practical point of view (what good is a reputation that doesn't grant you access to anything other than an achievement).</p><p>However, while the devs removed the reputation, they left in the seasonal currency that was previously used to gain it, which is now not actually a currency anymore but literally just a grey item whose acquisition counts towards an achievement tracker. You can't really blame people for being confused by the fact that level two of the seasons reward track was effectively prompting players to claim nothing but a bunch of vendor trash. <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/934145-upcoming-patch-schedule/#comment-9804937">Musco actually took to the forums today to add a bit of context to all of this</a>, and among other things he explained that they ended up at this awkward halfway point because while they did want to get rid of the seasonal reputation, they were also a bit worried about taking away too much at once - however, he admits that the end result ended up being unnecessarily confusing.</p><p>I will say that personally, I liked the seasonal reputation track because as someone who's been playing the game since launch, I've maxed out literally every other reputation in game on my main server, and each season adding a new one was handy for Conquest, as "gain reputation with a faction" is a Conquest objective that awards a ton of points and that was otherwise inaccessible to me.</p><p>However, that Conquest objective has in fact been the third point of contention, because it also received a stealth nerf with the patch that reduced its points value to a small fraction of what it used to be. On my main server that's no skin off my back, considering that I have no more ways to gain reputation until they add another daily area or something anyway.</p><p>On the other servers however... that daily Conquest point boost from clicking a reputation token was a godsend during seasons, especially on days when I was tired and only really looking to get credit for the daily objective on each server. Log in, press a button, done. I don't think I relied on it <i>too</i> much, since I do actually enjoy <i>playing</i> on all servers, but I know others that leaned into it quite heavily. <a href="https://todayintor.com/2023/04/14/easiest-galactic-seasons-levels/">Today in TOR had a whole guide on how to reach Galactic Season level 100 "without playing any content"</a>, just by pressing reputation tokens, and I think ultimately that's the kind of thing that's considered clever as long as only a few people do it but that turns into degenerate gameplay as it becomes more widespread and accepted as the "best" way to do things.</p><p>So I think that nerf was completely deserved and understandable. It didn't really make sense for a single button click to grant more Conquest points than completion of one or even multiple daily areas. I do think the devs are going to back-pedal a little bit after the amount of pushback there's been on the forums but I don't think we'll go back to the old numbers. Either way, there are still other low-effort ways of earning Conquest points for when you're starved for time - they'll just require more than <i>one</i> button push.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-12308394924039303672024-03-12T22:46:00.004+00:002024-03-12T22:46:40.876+00:00Patch 7.4.1 Is Here!<p>It is here, patch 7.4.1, and with it several new features:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20240312">Galactic Season 6</a></li><li>The first four Date Night missions</li><li>Server transfers to Shae Vizla</li></ul><p>I'm sure I'll have <i>plenty</i> to say about all of these in a couple of days, but for today, I'd just like to highlight a few other <a href="https://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/31124/game-update-7.4.1">patch notes</a> that I enjoyed:</p><p><i>A new Character Convenience unlock has been added to Legacy Perks! Once unlocked, players will be able to reach the GTN at any time without needing to travel to the Fleet, their personal ship, various planets or Strongholds!</i></p><p>I can't say that I recall ever wishing for a portable GTN myself, but I think this is a good addition. More legacy perks are always welcome! I could see this being useful to raiders who realise that they don't have a stim on them just as they're about to pull a boss in an operation for example.<br /></p><p><i>Ancient Armaments Added To Daily Login Rewards: Ancient Armaments contain various armor appearances including ones that could not previously be acquired or traded. These armor pieces do not contain stats or mod slots and are intended solely for Outfitter. These armor pieces do have dye slots and can be traded and bought / sold on the GTN. The armor pieces that are available inside of Ancient Armaments are now also available as random world drops.</i></p><p>Now this is probably the biggest patch feature that came as a complete surprise. <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/933986-thanks-for-the-new-world-drops-in-741/#comment-9802977">Joe Stragmalia expanded on the subject on the forums</a> to clarify that this includes hundreds of weapons and over 2000 armor pieces. I'm very curious to see how this addition will shape up in practice.</p><p>More outfit choices that you can acquire through gameplay are always a good thing, and I know that there was demand for at least some of these world drops (the reason they were rare was that they would only drop while your character was in a specific level range, and with how fast levelling is nowadays, it was very easy to outlevel even the chance of having them drop). On the other hand though, I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these old pieces will actually be considered quite ugly by most players, and since they have no stats and can't be vendored, I wouldn't be surprised if the GTN ended up being a bit flooded with them in short order. Again though, more cheap cosmetic options available for credits is not a bad thing.</p><p>What I'm curious to see is whether these are all based on world drops or whether other looks that are no longer available otherwise are included as well. I'm thinking of things like old flashpoint armours that I still own on some of my oldest characters, such as the <a href="https://swtorista.com/torfashion/torfashion-armor.php?id=3823">Black Talon Hunter's Body Armor</a> or the <a href="https://swtorista.com/torfashion/torfashion-armor.php?id=2843">Cademimu Sharpshooter set</a>.<br /><br /><i>Outfits will now be included when characters are transferred between servers.</i></p><p>This is great news but amused me since I just pointed out in <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/around-swtor-sphere-february-2024.html">February's community round-up post</a> that outfits not transferring was an important thing to consider before transferring to Shae Vizla. As someone who's not planning to do any transfers any time soon, I'm still pleased that next time I'll make a character copy to the PTS, the first thing to do upon logging in won't be staring in horror at my outfit-less character displaying whatever hodgepodge of armour they were actually wearing underneath.<br /><br /><i>Fixed the Unread Mail UI icon so that it once again properly updates when new Mail is received.</i></p><p>Oh yes please, that only snuck in recently and was quite annoying.<br /><i><br />The Mantellian Flutterplume’s name is now spelled correctly.</i></p><p>But... how was it spelled before then? 🤔<br /></p><p></p><p></p><p><i>Removed a random floating bottle on Dantooine.</i></p><p>Glad to see we're focusing on the important things!<br /><br /><i>Several Nova Blade pirates on Rishi who were hostile in previously-neutral areas have been asked to calm down a bit.</i></p><p>I think I know which mobs this refers to... I think they were originally added for the Feast of Prosperity story chain? They lurk on the west side of Raider's Cove and I've unintentionally aggroed them (always feeling a bit surprised to be attacked in town) quite a few times.<br /><br /><i>Added the following to the appropriate mission terminals: [DAILY] Grateful Grazers (Republic), [DAILY] Panther Training (Imperial), [DAILY] Turn the Lights On (Both), [DAILY] Unstable Readings (Both) </i></p><p>This one surprised me because as I mentioned in <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/kessans-landing.html">my post about Kessan's Landing</a>, I figured placing these missions outside of town was an intentional design choice reminiscent of Yavin IV and Ziost. Did people find these too hard to find?<br /><br /><i>The Galaxy Map icon will no longer be highlighted for newly created characters that can't access it.</i></p><p>Not that this isn't a good thing... but wasn't this <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/09/patch-731-and-galactic-season-5-are-here.html">supposed to have been fixed in 7.3.1</a>?<br /><i><br />Regeneration Toys will correctly regenerate resources for all origin story and combat style combinations.</i></p><p>Once again, I just wonder which toy/origin story/combat style combination was bugged here. Let me know in the comments if you know!</p><p>Anyway, lots of other stuff to look at in game, so I'll get to that for now! <br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-63317622820294253752024-03-10T22:33:00.004+00:002024-03-10T22:40:47.381+00:00What Have We Lost?<p>Conquest is a big factor in how I play the game, and my favourite Conquest event is Total Galactic War, something about which I've <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2014/10/total-galactic-war.html">written</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2018/07/total-galactic-war-returns.html">many</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/02/war-still-surprisingly-good-actually.html">times</a>. I know I'm not alone in this, and it seemed like Bioware recognised the event's potential as something that drives activity as well, as they tended to cleverly schedule it for times that were otherwise "lull periods" over the last couple of years - such as between seasons, or during the months when Legacy of the Sith ended up being delayed.</p><p>With that in mind, me and many of my guildies were certain that we'd get a Total Galactic War some time in February, before the start of Galactic Season 6. Every week after reset, we'd check to see what the next week's Conquest event was supposed to be, and every time we were a little disappointed that it wasn't TGW - but we figured it was going to come around soon. Except... it didn't. GS6 launches this Tuesday and it seems unlikely that the devs would insert an event like TGW right at a time when people are already busy with seasons anyway.</p><p>In the comments on <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/kessans-landing.html">my post about Kessan's Landing</a>, someone asked whether I expected any big changes in what kind of content we're going to get in future updates, now that SWTOR's development has fully moved to Broadsword. I responded that I didn't expect any drastic changes since it's effectively still the same people making the game, but with that train of thought on my mind, the "missing" Total Galactic War gave me pause.</p><p>I think the transition to Broadsword has mostly gone well from a player perspective. New content delivery hasn't slowed down, and if anything, <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-devs-speak.html">the devs seem a bit more relaxed/happier in their public communications</a>. But as another commenter said, there were a lot of lay-offs in the transition, right? That's got to have had an effect, no? We don't know the exact numbers, but based on <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-development-third-party-bioware">the official statement at the time</a>, the team could've lost up to slightly less than half of its members.</p><p>Honestly though, even if we assume a worst case scenario in terms of numbers, that doesn't necessarily mean that future content updates will suddenly be half the size. There are job roles that are valued internally and that do help to improve quality and processes but that don't have an obvious impact on the size of the final product. Plus past word through the grapevine indicated that Bioware was quite liberal with re-assigning SWTOR devs to other projects if it suited them, meaning it's possible that some of those people who were sadly laid off during the transition hadn't been doing that much work on SWTOR in practice recently. All speculation of course, but my point is that it's probably not as simple as "x% of the team not making the move means x% less content from 7.5 onwards".</p><p>I don't work in games or development, but in online retail, and a bit over a year ago a situation arose in my small team where literally everyone but me handed in their resignation within a relatively short period of time. This was scary for me personally because it meant that I suddenly had to cover the work of three people, though fortunately management was very supportive and we eventually got replacements for those who had left. However, what was really interesting to me during that time was how effectively I was able to keep our basic output going. Everyone else just agreed to temporarily slash everything that wasn't absolutely essential to keeping operations going, from optimisations to reporting to countless meetings. And it worked! So from a customer's perspective, there was probably no noticeable difference at all, even while we were very aware that we were doing things "sub-optimally" behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if the SWTOR devs had to do some of that immediately after the move to Broadsword, but at this point they've probably settled into some different processes anyway.</p><p>What does all of this have to do with Conquest again? Well, it made me wonder whether "making sure certain things happen with Conquest" was one of those small things that actually did get lost in the transition. The last Total Galactic War happened in early September, which was technically two months after the move, but based on past datamining I read about, the Conquest schedule actually seems to get locked in several months in advance, so that event could've been a leftover from before the move. I also noticed that both 7.3's <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-interpreters-retreat.html">Interpreter's Retreat</a> and 7.4's <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/kessans-landing.html">Kessan's Landing</a> didn't come with any "kill enemies" Conquest objectives like they exist for pretty much every other planet in the game. So it might well be that there was a specific dev who tended to look after that stuff and who no longer has time to do that or is no longer there at all. It's a small thing, and if this is the worst side effect to come out of the Broadsword transition, I'll be a happy camper; it's just something that stood out to me as a Conquest enjoyer.</p><p>Have you noticed anything in the new content releases since last July that struck you as unusual and that you think could be attributed to the move?<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-84587930785087610352024-03-06T21:24:00.003+00:002024-03-06T21:29:21.687+00:00Jumping into PvP Season 5<p>I've <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-season-of-moderation.html">grumbled in the past</a> when I felt that seasons were too close together and that there wasn't enough of a break between them to "recover" from the intense investment they spark in me, but right now it's been one and a half months since the end of <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-end-of-galactic-season-5-future-of.html">Galactic Season 5</a> and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/pvp-season-4-arenas-pvp-on-shae-vizla.html">PvP season 4</a>, and I've got to admit I'm feeling more than ready for something new.</p><p>As a result, I hurled myself into PvP season 5 with previously unknown enthusiasm when it started a week ago. It's really quite interesting, considering that I was <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/02/my-thoughts-on-pvp-season-1.html">decidedly "whelmed" when the new PvP seasons were first introduced</a> and continued to feel that way for the next two seasons after that. It was only last season that everything changed all of a sudden, and I found myself craving more of that feeling.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJZ4gNlSQXcKLI-hmMaiLY3-gxNX76htQ-h8Yg4bZvk1B6WV3ERdTpKy5tpDsUzqMMeePKvSp5Nd6eX8EgMUIwREpMzhvoluiA4xQaXfYjdoXQPaWxsA7voxk2weV3FAPiqFU9A4H4JiuSI_dMNF2ODk92IwcFe66aFVVddDsUQXvzlMBwDhe_-QBP5Y/s1920/Skiella%20in%20Voidstar.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A cathar Jedi shadow surrounded by other players in the Voidstar starting area for attackers" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJZ4gNlSQXcKLI-hmMaiLY3-gxNX76htQ-h8Yg4bZvk1B6WV3ERdTpKy5tpDsUzqMMeePKvSp5Nd6eX8EgMUIwREpMzhvoluiA4xQaXfYjdoXQPaWxsA7voxk2weV3FAPiqFU9A4H4JiuSI_dMNF2ODk92IwcFe66aFVVddDsUQXvzlMBwDhe_-QBP5Y/w400-h225/Skiella%20in%20Voidstar.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Darth Malgus</b><p></p><p>My focus was obviously going to be on my home server Darth Malgus again, where I set myself the goal of completing all the seasonal achievements like in season 4. The only thing I wasn't too fond of last season was that due to how late I pivoted towards completionism, I found myself having to grind more arenas than I was really comfortable with towards the end of the season, and for extra medals as well. Obviously the way to avoid that this season was to start strong so that I'll be able to slack off closer to the end instead (and also keeping in mind that there'll be overlap with Galactic Season 6 again). I'm happy to say that I've been very pleased with my week one efforts, as I already earned more than 400 medals and completed six PvP weeklies. I know I won't have the energy to keep going like that as the season progresses, so I'm trying to build as much of a buffer as I can.</p><p><b>Shae Vizla</b></p><p>I knew I wasn't going to repeat the absolute mayhem of last season, but I was hopeful that the launch of the new season would reinvigorate the PvP queues on Shae Vizla - alas, this has not been the case. The <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/three-months-of-apac-life-waiting-for.html">waiting for transfers</a> continues. However, some people who do want to achieve seasonal progress over there have started taking things into their own hands, which I was happy to see. Someone in my guild specifically invited people to queue for lowbie PvP at what was close to midnight on Saturday for me, and since I missed the PvP vibes on Shae Vizla, I thought I'd check it out. There were only five or six of us from the guild, but that was enough to at least get arenas popping, and after some advertising on the server Discord a few more people from other guilds joined in, and we were able to alternate between warzones and arenas almost non-stop for three hours. The power of community! I'll try to join them again this week, even if it means staying up late for me. I just appreciate these kinds of community efforts.</p><p><b>Star Forge</b></p><p>Wait, since when do I care about PvP on Star Forge? Well, it was my first "secondary" server and several of my American friends and acquaintances play there. Still, I wasn't really planning to give it special attention between seasons, but then luck would have it that I ended up joining Swtorista's raid team for a few of their runs, and I started to feel a bit embarrassed about my lack of gear over there. It didn't really <i>matter</i>, and it was still better than the 324 gear with which we all had to start raiding when Legacy of the Sith first came out, but it just bugged me a bit, so I vouched to work on upgrading my gear via a bit of casual PvP at least, while seeing where this gets me on the seasonal PvP track as well.<br /></p><p>You can tell how huge Star Forge is because even though I'm in a different time zone, pops are always really quick, regardless of what time of day I queue up. It's such a contrast to the situation on Shae Vizla in particular... I've never minded the lack of cross-server functionality in SWTOR, but I've got to admit that seeing the stark differences between these three PvP ecosystems has definitely made me think.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-19088929100487673072024-03-03T23:28:00.001+00:002024-03-03T23:28:32.148+00:00Back in My Day: Datacrons<p> "<a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/search/label/back%20in%20my%20day">Back in My Day</a>" is a (very) irregular series in which I muse about how certain aspects and features of Star Wars: The Old Republic have changed over time. After writing my post about <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/kessans-landing.html">Kessan's Landing</a> last month, I really wanted to talk a bit more about datacrons.</p><p>Datacrons are a funny subject to consider for this series, because in some fundamental ways they haven't changed <i>at all</i>. That +2 presence datacron you might stumble upon on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas is still in exactly the same place it was in 2011, and you still interact with it in the same way: click on it and you'll get a stat boost. However, some things <i>have</i> changed:</p><p>Most notably, credit for datacrons wasn't legacy-wide until Knights of the Fallen Empire, so if you wanted certain stat boosts, you had to pick them up on every single one of your characters. However, the degree to which datacrons affected your character's power level was also somewhat different. Last but not least, as the devs added more datacrons to the game, their approach to what kind of experience players hunting for those new datacrons should have clearly changed.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXt-6AHT6VzJS-awYY75o4slCrxuDAGQFmNXR4YZgPbVzKPQi1Q1QvbVhmfGGWOd40N91-054xYOsAmt9nDHPprOtxFUzXW-7hfCWSBQIZPJPUcG6LPc5NQCTHWN8Bo9oWgoni5L8p0BiKSd2WEQFhJaDFr9uXwiU00rQOleQdM1yaMvjvNl7Tf0U-yJ8/s1600/Jawa%20Balloon%20coming%20closer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shintar the trooper waiting for the Jawa balloon next to a random bounty hunter. You can tell it's early in the game as she's wearing the original Columi gear" border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="1600" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXt-6AHT6VzJS-awYY75o4slCrxuDAGQFmNXR4YZgPbVzKPQi1Q1QvbVhmfGGWOd40N91-054xYOsAmt9nDHPprOtxFUzXW-7hfCWSBQIZPJPUcG6LPc5NQCTHWN8Bo9oWgoni5L8p0BiKSd2WEQFhJaDFr9uXwiU00rQOleQdM1yaMvjvNl7Tf0U-yJ8/w400-h235/Jawa%20Balloon%20coming%20closer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>The Power of the 'cron </b><br /><p></p><p>I think it's safe to say that datacrons were always considered optional content, but what that meant at launch was a bit different compared to what it means now. +2 endurance grants you about 20-26 extra points of health from what I understand (my own quick testing in game showed about 10 HP per stat point but I saw claims on the forums that it was 13), which was never a huge number... but relatively speaking, it was worth more when your total health pool at max level was 20k as opposed to the 400k or so we're seeing nowadays. I never heard anyone say that it was <i>mandatory</i> to get all datacrons relevant to your class to get into raiding... but it was certainly <i>recommended</i>, especially if you were planning to push into higher difficulties.</p><p>There was also the matter of matrix shards. At launch, getting gear for your relic slots was not a trivial matter, and one way to get a really good one was to assemble a "matrix cube" out of three matrix shards, which would form a basic relic with some useful stats on it. The <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/03/datacron-adventure.html">first time I took an active interest in datacrons back in the day</a> was precisely for that reason. As far as I'm aware, this functionality is actually still in the game, it's just that nobody bothers with it anymore because the devs never made an update that would've allowed you to build better matrix cubes than those original level 50 ones.</p><p><b>Hope you like jumping </b><br /></p><p>Because credit for datacrons was character-specific and you needed to physically collect matrix shards on each one, you had to revisit some of them a <i>lot</i>. It is worth noting though that you didn't need <i>all</i> datacrons on every character. Before KotFE introduced the mastery stat, each advanced class had a proprietary stat to themselves (aim for troopers/bounty hunters, cunning for smugglers and agents, strength for knights and warriors, and willpower for consulars and inquisitors), so anything that granted a stat that didn't really do anything for you could safely be ignored.</p><p>I actually didn't bother with datacrons for the most part while levelling up my first few characters, and I didn't find more than a couple organically, but the longer I played, the more often I found myself <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-datacron-adventures.html">grouping with other people</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/07/late-night-adventures-on-balmorra.html">who felt the urge to share their knowledge</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/10/reconsidering-my-stance-on-datacrons.html">about datacrons</a> close to our position, so I started to learn more about them over time in a pretty organic way. Things kind of reached a peak when I started regular questing with my pet tank, as he knew all of their locations and wanted to pick all of them up as part of the levelling journey on every character.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYZJLsdOwP8E4u4TBrV5lK7qtTzOZbOUYPqPrFqj-T4x9dNRbLvKqrzhyphenhyphenNRqYPFZGeBP_aL6pBZPGR0j_0Q33kPPFfvEJsLP2OFJQtYCnyWaeCRi2IyfcaEFM2lr_n9s4hCRp_uTDFP-4cmWM8deEZ9o6ZlzlfIfe1sbJrB4PU-OVNWvZ-ZMCgrn5aEB4/s1680/Corellian%20datacron%20fail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Two smugglers tumbling through the air while trying to land next to the blue mastery datacron on Corellia" border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="1680" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYZJLsdOwP8E4u4TBrV5lK7qtTzOZbOUYPqPrFqj-T4x9dNRbLvKqrzhyphenhyphenNRqYPFZGeBP_aL6pBZPGR0j_0Q33kPPFfvEJsLP2OFJQtYCnyWaeCRi2IyfcaEFM2lr_n9s4hCRp_uTDFP-4cmWM8deEZ9o6ZlzlfIfe1sbJrB4PU-OVNWvZ-ZMCgrn5aEB4/w400-h235/Corellian%20datacron%20fail.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />When Bioware first announced that datacrons were going to become legacy-wide, <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2015/08/rip-red-goo.html">I actually wasn't that thrilled</a>, because they were a form of content to me that made playing alts more entertaining, and I didn't like the thought of that going away. I <i>will</i> say that nearly a decade and several dozen alts later, I feel that it was probably the right decision... though part of my enjoyment of playing on other servers has definitely been having a reason to revisit some of those datacrons for the first time in many years.<p></p><p><b>Datacron gameplay</b></p><p>Unless I miscounted, the game offered 90 datacrons to collect at launch. I would say the ways to acquire them fell into four basic categories (with some overlap between them): simply finding them in hidden locations somewhat out of the way, requiring completion of a jumping puzzle, requiring some sort of item interaction (e.g. picking up the MGGS from the vendor and taking it to the right place), or riding some sort of lift or floating device to a specific location. God knows how many hours in total I spent riding the Jawa balloon on Tatooine... but in hindsight, none of these were <i>overly</i> demanding. If you set out on a fresh character to pick up all of them, it would take several hours of your time, but considering how many of them there are, it wasn't unreasonable (unless you were <i>really</i> bad at jumping I guess).<br /></p><p>However, once the devs started adding new datacrons with expansions and patches... they started to get more inventive. The Makeb presence datacron was still in line with what had come before, but the endurance one was an <i>insanely</i> long jumping puzzle that would send you all the way back to the start every time you failed. And then the Rishi one involved an item farm that required a silly amount of grinding - not something you would reasonably want to do on every character. Though at least both of those datacrons were shareable, so that one person who completed the whole journey was then able to summon others to get credit without them having to go through the whole ordeal themselves.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGf6Ycz3jsc-Gkoqf2UjK9ntYNk6CB3PVUpK1bn4olTMMMoUT0D1RCkKpOtKI3yvSvidhRXyG7BJYCb0uLjoMso4Ft2IoCPAeTt9-IwJE54kK0CLYSBm_eNCgdQTPU_59APwf6rfUgN-4XanIAm_cGwsxEh2VEwK0iQvp2RsEn-QGjFJYrDAZ8LEf3Ce0/s1920/Approaching%20the%20Makeb%20endurance%20datacron%20with%20Nev.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shintar the trooper recovers some health standing next to a friendly Sage while on her way to the endurance datacron on Makeb" border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="1920" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGf6Ycz3jsc-Gkoqf2UjK9ntYNk6CB3PVUpK1bn4olTMMMoUT0D1RCkKpOtKI3yvSvidhRXyG7BJYCb0uLjoMso4Ft2IoCPAeTt9-IwJE54kK0CLYSBm_eNCgdQTPU_59APwf6rfUgN-4XanIAm_cGwsxEh2VEwK0iQvp2RsEn-QGjFJYrDAZ8LEf3Ce0/w400-h213/Approaching%20the%20Makeb%20endurance%20datacron%20with%20Nev.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />After KotFE we didn't get any datacrons for a while, but once we got to Ossus, I thought it became quite clear that the devs had decided to take a different approach now that datacrons were legacy-wide. If you weren't expected to get to a datacron more than once, they could make it pretty hard and time-consuming the first time around without that feeling entirely unreasonable. Two of the three Ossus datacrons were still pretty "old-school" in the amount of effort required, but the third required you to both jump and puzzle in a personal phase where you couldn't get any help.<p></p><p>We saw a similar pattern with Onslaught, where the Mek-Sha datacrons and one of the ones on Onderon were pretty standard jump or ride puzzles (though I thought the jumping ones were fiendishly hard, if not punishingly long like the Makeb Endurance one) and then the Onderon Mastery datacron was a brutal combo of jumping and puzzling <i>on a timer</i>, making it one of the hardest datacrons in the game so far. Ruhnuk and Kessan's Landing haven't been as harsh in terms of skill requirements, but once again involve a personal phase and completion of a long quest chain beforehand, which to me makes it pretty clear that the devs are trying to make each datacron more of an experience now, knowing that you probably won't be visiting it more than once.</p><p>I have no particularly strong feelings about this. I think it makes sense with the way the game has evolved, but it does also mean that datacrons have changed from being more of a collectible power-up that usually supported and sometimes even required grouping in the early days to having more of a solo skill challenge focus now.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-77209075043702680742024-02-29T12:04:00.001+00:002024-02-29T12:21:33.083+00:00Around the SWTOR-sphere: February 2024<p>February is the shortest month of the year (even with the extra day we get this year) and it was a fairly quiet month in SWTOR as well, though we did get some news about what's coming next in the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/741-dev-stream-highlights-thoughts.html">7.4.1. dev stream</a>. This post however isn't meant to be about official news, but rather about random community content I came across throughout the month and that I wanted to share.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First off, <b><a href="https://swtorista.com/" target="_blank">Swtorista</a></b> did a thing again (shocking how she keeps doing that, isn't it) and released her <a href="https://swtorista.com/2024/" target="_blank">updated "Ultimate Guide of Guides" for 2024</a>. This is a massive list of resources covering pretty much every possible aspect of the game that she and her right-hand Admiral Zahk (is that his proper title?) have been maintaining for several years now. I'm flattered by the number of useful posts they found on this blog, considering that being useful is not my primary goal. I can only recommend checking this guide out, even if you don't have a particular question right now... the links are sorted by topic, so maybe just have a quick look at an area you're interested in, and who knows, maybe you'll find a link to a page or even another content creator that you didn't even know existed. I had no idea that Swtorista had name generators for every single species you can play as for example. (Also, fun fact, before this year I never realised that she actually kept a copy of this guide on her website, as I only ever came across the version maintained in a <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/933568-the-ultimate-guide-of-guides-for-swtor-2024/" target="_blank">sticky thread on the official forums</a>.)</li><li>Ted from the <a href="http://sotorpodcast.com/" target="_blank"><b>SOTOR Podcast</b></a> lived up to his promise of not going quiet for quite so long again and released not <a href="http://sotorpodcast.com/episode-123-shae-vizla-moving-day/" target="_blank">one</a> but <a href="http://sotorpodcast.com/episode-124-you-had-me-at-copero/" target="_blank">two</a> new episodes this month. I'd like to particularly recommend the one about <a href="https://sotorpodcast.com/episode-123-shae-vizla-moving-day/" target="_blank">server transfers to Shae Vizla</a>, especially if you're planning to make use of the free transfers coming in March. I've never actually done a server transfer in SWTOR myself (not counting character copies to the PTS), and there are actually quite a lot of things to keep in mind in terms of what will come with you and what won't. Outfits not getting copied over and needing to be recreated on the new server is a big one for example!</li><li>On the subject of the Shae Vizla server and transfers, I came across a video by small YouTuber <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Thoroughmas" target="_blank">Thomas Midena</a></b> called "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPocGDElTc" target="_blank">How not to launch Australian servers (a Star Wars: The Old Republic story)</a>". As the title suggests, he hasn't been too happy with how things have gone so far, but I thought it was interesting to hear from another player in the APAC region and I really liked his measured approach and the way he articulated his thoughts.</li><li>In happier video news, another small YouTuber I came across this month was <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@SWTOR-Homemade" target="_blank">HomeMade SWTOR</a></b>. Specifically I watched his video "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvzW6HDGo8w" target="_blank">The Mandalorian: StarWars story Episode 15 || The Shameful Hunt ||</a>", which is basically... the bounty hunter story on Corellia? I'm not usually one for SWTOR story playthrough videos because let's be honest, I can and prefer to do the playing myself, but I thought it was interesting how HomeMade tried to edit things together in a unique way, with bits of different music added and by interspersing snippets of footage of movement and combat between the in-game cut scenes to make things flow better.</li><li>Aaand, one more video about something completely different - an operations boss kill! A video called "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXsR3yBV0-c" target="_blank">SWTOR Master Mode Styrak With No Knocks 7.4</a>" by <b>Draxzim</b> caught my attention due to its title. I wrote <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/05/eight-years-with-dread-master-styrak.html">a whole long-ass post about my own "history" with Dread Master Styrak a few years ago</a>, but to summarise in a nutshell what intrigued me about this video title: on master mode, this fight has a mechanic that usually requires several people in the group to have a knockback, so I immediately wondered how this group achieved a kill without ticking that box. My first reaction was to theorise that 344 gear had allowed dps numbers to get so high that it simply wasn't needed anymore (since the main purpose of the knockback is to buy you time to kill an add). Spoiler: not exactly. Instead, what this group did was bring a party that consisted of nothing but Powertechs (except for the healers obviously), and they all specced into the Sonic Rebounder utility, which causes their AoE taunt/aggro drop to put a ring around everyone in range that reflects the next attack done to them back at the attacker. Then, when it came to the phase where you'd usually use the knockbacks, they didn't interrupt the big add's AoE damage channel but instead rotated through all their rebounders to reflect its own damage back at it for a massive damage boost. This is, frankly, incredibly cheesy and bizarre, but it clearly took no less effort than organising knockbacks would've done, so I totally respect it. I'm always fascinated by people coming up with alternate solutions to gameplay challenges.</li><li>Finally, my favourite post from the <b><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/" target="_blank">SWTOR subreddit</a></b> in February was one that only got a moderate number of upvotes but which I personally thought was amazing, called "<b><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/1ag1rxz/what_is_your_favorite_least_favorite_noise_made/" target="_blank">What is your favorite / least favorite noise made by your toon when being attacked?</a></b>" Why did I love it? Because it's an extremely random question that I never would've thought of asking myself, and the way people described their characters' groans and shouts in writing in the responses was very funny to me. "HEEUUURRRGGHHH!" (That's someone describing a male Sith warrior, and I bet if you've ever played or spent time around one, you'll know exactly what it refers to.)</li></ul>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-52422103321036756252024-02-27T22:44:00.002+00:002024-02-27T23:07:53.260+00:00Republic Saboteur, Part 3<p>It's been a while and a half <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/07/republic-saboteur-part-2.html">since I last wrote about my Republic saboteur character</a>. I think I put her on ice for a bit since she's a smuggler and at the time I felt that I should prioritise getting my "main" smuggler fully caught up with the story first before taking this one any further. Also, she'd just hit Echoes of Oblivion, which is an <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2020/12/62-story-time-echoes-of-oblivion.html">excellent piece of story content</a> but <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/03/echoes-of-afk-ness.html">not the most appealing in terms of replayability</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbi4HN-DGyrctqJC8rOQl9BcVzQHeDjKCsB8CpOB9UAuClp0eWWnNC1QBMSivTpAWKsKgGs3QQ4vGNatLoBLKxugUmrYvYv4X0Xp4L-MzWHaXVHypzRpg-sMNCEql5YfGw860O_NxuR1Y20wcdBzhmLJ2c_ViHAGf4SzoUx45ocPV82Kj7X6qA_hHF8_I/s1920/Racelle%20and%20Arn%20watch%20Imperial%20fighters%20escape%20on%20Manaan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A pink twi'lek smuggler and Arn Peralun watch an Imperial fighter get away in the Manaan night sky" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbi4HN-DGyrctqJC8rOQl9BcVzQHeDjKCsB8CpOB9UAuClp0eWWnNC1QBMSivTpAWKsKgGs3QQ4vGNatLoBLKxugUmrYvYv4X0Xp4L-MzWHaXVHypzRpg-sMNCEql5YfGw860O_NxuR1Y20wcdBzhmLJ2c_ViHAGf4SzoUx45ocPV82Kj7X6qA_hHF8_I/w400-h225/Racelle%20and%20Arn%20watch%20Imperial%20fighters%20escape%20on%20Manaan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Anyway, to mirror <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/05/imperial-saboteur-part-1.html">my series</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/06/imperial-saboteur-part-2.html">about my</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/10/imperial-saboteur-part-3.html">Imperial saboteur</a>, I still wanted to write a third post about her journey through the rest of the Onslaught story after Objective Meridian, up to the Legacy of the Sith launch content. There've been a few additional saboteur choices in the updates that have been released <i>since</i> then, but I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about those, if anything at all. Maybe I'll make a sort of summary post at some point to talk about how 7.2 and beyond have treated both Imperial and Republic saboteurs. <br /></p><p>Anyway, I'd actually like to start with a comment on the Dantooine pirate event, whose little story tidbit strictly speaking takes place before Onslaught, but which I often do whenever, since it's not really important to the main storyline and only accessible once every couple of months. I didn't mention it at all when writing about my Imperial saboteur, so I was quite surprised and perplexed when I did the Dantooine dailies on my Republic saboteur and noticed differences! For example the mission to "take back" supplies from Imperial Pillagers has you delivering them right back to the Imps at the end, which I thought was hilarious but also kind of blatant? And the one with the Republic traitor has you warning him so that he can get away instead of being killed. So much detail for saboteurs in a daily area that isn't even active most of the time! I was most pleasantly surprised. In hindsight I do seem to vaguely remember that for Imperial saboteurs, at least the mission where you sabotage the farms also may have had some sort of choice and I simply forgot to write about it? I'd have to go back and double-check some time when the event is active again.<br /></p><p>Anyway, to get back to the main storyline, in "The Task at Hand", the immediate follow-up to Objective Meridian, saboteurs are told that things are not going well for the Republic. There's a conversation choice where you can recommend fighting Hutts that are demanding bribes.<br /></p><p></p><p>When Lana brings up Balmorra and Zenith, the saboteur option is once again to ask her to not even bother. I just find it kind of amusing that regardless of which faction you're on, "don't bother with weapon shipments on Balmorra" is sabotage either way.</p><p>When I started Secrets of the Enclave, I was surprised by dialogue that had Arn stating in an insecure tone that Tau was away on another assignment on Balmorra that he didn't know the details of, something I didn't remember encountering in any of my other playthroughs, but I'm not sure whether that was actually related to being a saboteur, as I seem to remember reading that there are some conversation choices - regardless of your overall loyalties - that drive Tau and Arn apart somewhat? It's not something I've researched in great detail.<br /></p><p>Like on Imperial side, I had the option after the initial briefing to tip off the opposite faction in regards to our impending Dantooine trip, and I was amused that NR-02 thanks you but tells you that Imperial Intelligence already knew about it anyway. I thought that was an interesting touch and shows them being a step ahead of the SIS. After landing on the planet and seeing the Empire there, you can further complain to your companions about how the Republic is always too slow and therfore frequently loses to the Empire's ruthlessness.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKWW7hktwSrWRYIzs9oMgUtrhyphenhyphent_naoIgq3Y8wAtz1ky56kOLgWLpYW1tkitNCk3JlwIhxig7UbYj5vU7ARNNf31l_ZOyfFmdvN9sjreBLN4XvsQSwE3R6OBm84KCBRjCfsJzhrCShC4U2egdeUpwIA7j2V5x54RuoYHYkOgF9_AeeM8R34mERqOs2YoU/s1920/Racelle%20gives%20kolto%20to%20Lord%20Ziliss.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A pink twi'lek smuggler offers kolto to an injured Lord Ziliss in the Secrets of the Enclave flashpoint" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKWW7hktwSrWRYIzs9oMgUtrhyphenhyphent_naoIgq3Y8wAtz1ky56kOLgWLpYW1tkitNCk3JlwIhxig7UbYj5vU7ARNNf31l_ZOyfFmdvN9sjreBLN4XvsQSwE3R6OBm84KCBRjCfsJzhrCShC4U2egdeUpwIA7j2V5x54RuoYHYkOgF9_AeeM8R34mERqOs2YoU/w400-h225/Racelle%20gives%20kolto%20to%20Lord%20Ziliss.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>The big thing that caught me by surprise in this flashpoint though was that after the fight with Lord Ziliss, I had the option to send the others away, implying that I was going to "take care" of her by killing her, just to then hand her a kolto pack and send her on her way. That was another delightfully overt act of sabotage that I hadn't expected - I guess because Imperials get no such option due to Rivix always killing the Republic Captain, even if you want to spare him.</p><p>Finally, while doing Manaan, the main thing that struck me was that it was funny how unimpressed I found myself by Gallo's rants about the Republic as a saboteur. It's not as if I'm here to work for them either, you know! When it comes to blowing up the ion cannon, the saboteur option was to weaken the blast so that some ships would be able to escape, which I didn't think was too impressive.</p><p>However, what I didn't anticipate that when it comes to choosing between saving Gallo or the kolto, the saboteur option is to save neither! For all the scummy things I've done in the name of sabotage (still haunted by <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/07/republic-saboteur-part-2.html">shooting Narlock in the back</a>), this one was a bit too much for me. It just had too much of a "watching the whole world burn" vibe, which I didn't think suited my smuggler, so I just decided to sacrifice Gallo in order to save the kolto. I don't think this is saboteur-specific, but I was surprised to hear Admiral Rava actually reveal why Gallo had beef with him at the end, something I'd always wondered about. Did I really never choose the kolto over her before? Huh.<br /></p><p>Anyway, I was still curious how that saboteur option of saving neither would have played out and specifically how you'd justify such an action to Arn, so I looked it up on YouTube and was surprised to find that if you choose that option, your character <i>pretends</i> to save Gallo and her men but then sabotages the pod so that they die anyway? Cold, man.</p><p>Once everything's said and done, Darth Xarion himself gives you a holo call to congratulate you on your good work, and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/10/imperial-saboteur-part-3.html">like on Imp side</a> I wasn't really convinced. Sure, I did some sabotage, but more than anything I still helped the Republic drive the Empire off, which seems like it should've been the bigger deal...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHJ5r2Hxw54CatzmvkDqaq8XPAWRVSn4VxDoxeqRcp3O3PoUIkfyULQkMDszEeL_yrfMntJWatfyPf4CZ9yzxoLzGrLkeEus0s8FjmRIkZdGTo_KKmz6hDk7gLq7u0OmIt9bmMoMS4QbA-CMMF5S5uL_BzEK8L8LwozpdZuTcasQrz3XoCyHrPkWJyzo/s1920/Racelle%20reports%20to%20Darth%20Xarion%20at%20the%20end%20of%20Manaan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A pink twi'lek smuggler stands at the edge of the ocean on Manaan while talking to Darth Xarion via her holo communicator" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHJ5r2Hxw54CatzmvkDqaq8XPAWRVSn4VxDoxeqRcp3O3PoUIkfyULQkMDszEeL_yrfMntJWatfyPf4CZ9yzxoLzGrLkeEus0s8FjmRIkZdGTo_KKmz6hDk7gLq7u0OmIt9bmMoMS4QbA-CMMF5S5uL_BzEK8L8LwozpdZuTcasQrz3XoCyHrPkWJyzo/w400-h225/Racelle%20reports%20to%20Darth%20Xarion%20at%20the%20end%20of%20Manaan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>And that's it for Republic saboteur options up to 7.1 - oh, except for one more bit that doesn't really have anything to do with the main story but that I noticed when I picked up the one-time story mission for R-4 Anomaly: I thought it was very odd that it's given by Jonas Balkar even if you're a Republic saboteur, because as a smuggler my character had never actually met him! And he doesn't introduce himself either. That seems like an oversight to me (and a problem that Imp side doesn't have, because while Imperial saboteurs don't really interact with Darth Xarion, they've at least <i>met</i> him during Onslaught so getting a call from him doesn't seem <i>completely</i> random).</p><p>Still, all in all I've got to say these saboteur playthroughts have only increased my appreciation of the Onslaught story content - I think that short of the original class stories, Ossus to Manaan is probably the series of updates with the most complexities and variations influencing different outcomes in the game. It's not entirely bug-free and there are some bits and pieces where certain choices feel like a bit of a stretch, but still, it must've been a humongous piece of work to script all of that, and in a manner that still <i>mostly</i> makes sense for so many different choices.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-80434639582671605012024-02-18T23:28:00.002+00:002024-02-19T12:24:29.504+00:00Three Months of APAC Life & Waiting for Transfers<p>The situation on SWTOR's newest server Shae Vizla remains fascinating to me, and I feel compelled to keep writing about it.</p><p>I've continued to play my characters on there even after the end of seasons. With no seasons objectives to chase, I've dialled down my time investment, but I basically made it my goal to at least still reach my personal Conquest target on all four of my characters every week. It may sound silly, but even though I'm not in the APAC region myself, I really want this server to succeed, and I kind of feel like I'm helping at least a little by adding four encryptions to the guild bank every week to help with further expansion of the guild ship.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTWgBOzY9Vgv_K0dX6oov8xbGzl2HUjOh0zcDLRpzAAhhmjrV1LkbjotrJXyO_lwFmMtC7Sny2T3nSSvd32wJ2Vw1PoJBjbYjFYNivMkSNnPY0U80miuVVtfoZI_B8h5ABvftTAYTlxVSP1YM76IJQh58lHu-tz6pWVZyXMZ5EKW6fIGMycd4gDyhOnmQ/s1920/SV%20Shintar%20looking%20out%20at%20Coruscant.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A Togruta trooper looking out at the Coruscant skyline" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTWgBOzY9Vgv_K0dX6oov8xbGzl2HUjOh0zcDLRpzAAhhmjrV1LkbjotrJXyO_lwFmMtC7Sny2T3nSSvd32wJ2Vw1PoJBjbYjFYNivMkSNnPY0U80miuVVtfoZI_B8h5ABvftTAYTlxVSP1YM76IJQh58lHu-tz6pWVZyXMZ5EKW6fIGMycd4gDyhOnmQ/w400-h225/SV%20Shintar%20looking%20out%20at%20Coruscant.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>At the moment it certainly does feel like the server needs every bit of help it can get. I'd love to be able to say that everything is going great, but to be honest things are a bit down in the doldrums right now. I fully expected activity levels to decrease after the end of seasons (after all, it happens on all servers), but I wasn't quite prepared for how drastic a change it was going to be.</p><p>During the last week of <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/pvp-season-4-arenas-pvp-on-shae-vizla.html">PvP Season 4</a>, I was still spamming level 80 warzones on my warrior to get the 2000 medals achievement. The next week, after the season ended, I spent several mornings (which is evening prime time in Australia) questing while in the warzone queue, and on most of those days, I didn't manage to get into even a single match. There was one single day on which I managed to get pops for two games where both teams were only partially filled. I eventually gave up on queueing, since it was clear that I didn't stand much of a chance of getting any more PvP weeklies done in that environment.</p><p>The server is not "dead" exactly; there are still plenty of people questing and guilds organising group content, and looking at the guild Conquest boards as a measure of activity, Shae Vizla still seems to have more active players than the French server for example. However, content you have to queue for has definitely taken a hit, and I'm sure those who were still trying to get into e.g. warzones like I did, were only further discouraged by queues dying out so suddenly.</p><p>I already mentioned <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-end-of-galactic-season-5-future-of.html">last month</a> that the devs told us that transfers were incoming, and while I feel that's good and even <i>needed</i> at this point, it probably didn't help with keeping the server lively in the short term either. I'm sure more than a few people took the transfer announcement as their cue to go back to their main legacies on other servers for now, knowing they'd soon be able to transfer them over anyway.</p><p>We have more details about the server transfers as well now, though we're still lacking an exact launch date - we just know they'll open with <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/02/741-dev-stream-highlights-thoughts.html">patch 7.4.1</a>, coming at some point in March. The <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/933296-follow-up-on-shae-vizla-server-character-transfers/#comment-9799491">details of how everything will work</a> as per the forums are:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you're a subscriber and have been subscribed since the 2nd of January, you'll have 30 days to claim up to 16 free character transfers to Shae Vizla. You don't actually need to live in the APAC region to get these; subscription status is all that matters.</li><li>If you're a subscriber but not since Jan 2nd, or if you used up all your free transfers and want to buy even more, they'll be available at a discounted price of 500 Cartel Coins (which is roughly 5 USD).<br /></li><li>Free or preferred players have to pay 1000 CC per character, which is the normal price for character transfers. It will also be the normal price for everyone once 90 days have passed.</li><li>To be eligible for transfer, characters need to be at least level 20 and can only carry 15 million credits.</li></ul><p>This was originally announced about ten days ago, originally with stricter requirements to be eligible for free transfers and a lower credit cap per character, but there was a lot of pushback against those two items in particular, so I wasn't surprised to see the devs listen to the feedback and make adjustments.</p><p>How "fair" all this is, I don't know, and opinions seem to vary wildly based on people's backgrounds. I've seen some comment that when you're opening a new regional server, obviously <i>everyone</i> from that region should get <i>limitless</i> free transfers. To me, as someone whose first exposure to MMOs was World of Warcraft charging an arm and a leg for character transfers and making big bank from players struggling to find the right server for them, this seems pretty generous. Either way, it's not really relevant to me personally in the sense that I'm not planning to move any characters as I'm quite happy to keep all my legacies separate.</p><p>I <i>am</i> curious however to see what the influx of credits will do to the GTN. 15 million credits may not sound like much, but if you make full use of the free transfers, you could bring up to 240 million over. And again, to some people that may not sound like much, but I can't emphasise enough how different the economy on Shae Vizla is right now compared to any of the other servers.</p><p>After three months of casual play, I have less than 10 million credits in the bank (though I've also spent a few million on unlocking legacy perks). The GTN doesn't let you see all the items on sale at once, but after a quick search through various categories, the most expensive item I could find for sale was one of the new shiny dyes for 50 million, so whoever gets in there first after the transfers open will get to have a field day snapping up some bargains I guess.</p><p>As <a href="https://mmobits.com/2024/01/24/the-shae-vizla-experience-should-there-be-server-transfers/">Xam Xam mentioned in her recent post though</a>, worrying about the economy is one thing; ultimately the server needs active players more than anything though. I'm curious to see whether the launch of the new PvP season in ten days will make a difference (I will certainly try queueing again myself), but the new Galactic Season and the opening of transfers in March will be the real litmus test. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will give Shae Vizla the desired injection of activity. Whatever happens though, I'll be writing about it!<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-71857780211931523922024-02-15T21:45:00.004+00:002024-02-18T21:24:28.941+00:007.4.1 Dev Stream Highlights & Thoughts<p>Last night we were treated to SWTOR's first dev stream of 2024, centred around patch 7.4.1. This was actually unusual, as the pattern in the recent past has been to only have livestreams in the run-up to a <i>major</i> patch, not for the minor ones. Interestingly, Jackie noted right at the beginning that they are planning to do more of this kind of thing going forward, which is nice in terms of communication, though I think at least in the short-term, it also confused some players who don't necessarily pay super close attention to how the game's patch cycle has been shaking out in the recent past.</p><p>What I mean by that is that I saw more than a couple of comments from people who seemed to simply equal "dev stream" with "next major update" and who then expressed disappointment that the stream didn't show off any new <i>major</i> additions. To be clear, everyone, 7.5 is still coming and will have more in it! In fact, they did tease a little bit about that, but more on that closer to the end of this post. <i>This</i> stream simply talked about the launch of the next Galactic Season, something that wouldn't have received its own stream in the past.</p><p><b>Galactic Season 6 & Other Bits </b><br /></p><p>We haven't been given a date for Galactic Season 6's launch yet, but they stated that they're targeting a March release, which makes me expect that it'll come out in three to four weeks. They're continuing in a similar vein to Season 5, with some lightweight story missions and no new companion. Instead, this season's big reward will be a new stronghold on Copero of all places, and the seasonal quest givers will meet you inside it. You'll unlock basic access right away, with more rooms being added via the subscriber reward track, and the three final rooms apparently requiring Cartel Coins to unlock. This seemed to stir some controversy, much to my surprise, considering that the seasons track usually also contains some CC anyway, so I'd expect it to finance those final rooms more or less automatically.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SVRQMysO_O7ELbJeCyo2u8YpGsUbCJJ9yFauDhQR-ajC9PGLXPcCb1qOIp-dUP0i2u3P3Af8-fe4u8XVb-dtOmEyMSADhoffnUonM_ND7dmrYF4dvVBYVo0zQEnuRizypJ-DFutslQWJVJrzjUd4rc9WHVhKICl9RhjiNqy3pF6HbUD7ARFY6Tb5nDE/s1916/Copero%20stronghold%20intro.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The sun setting behind a mountain range on Copero" border="0" data-original-height="979" data-original-width="1916" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SVRQMysO_O7ELbJeCyo2u8YpGsUbCJJ9yFauDhQR-ajC9PGLXPcCb1qOIp-dUP0i2u3P3Af8-fe4u8XVb-dtOmEyMSADhoffnUonM_ND7dmrYF4dvVBYVo0zQEnuRizypJ-DFutslQWJVJrzjUd4rc9WHVhKICl9RhjiNqy3pF6HbUD7ARFY6Tb5nDE/w400-h205/Copero%20stronghold%20intro.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Hearing about the return to Copero was a pleasant surprise, and I like that they're continuing to experiment with different rewards. From the screenshots, there's maybe a small risk that the Copero stronghold might end up feeling a little similar to Rishi, what with the beach front property with palm trees and all, but it's definitely different enough to still be interesting. I'm also happy that we'll be getting another seasonal storyline.</p><p>We also learned that PvP Season 5 will start in two weeks, and that character transfers to the Shae Vizla server will open up with patch 7.4.1, but I'll talk more about that in a different post. There was also the usual promotion of new Cartel Market stuff, though none of it vowed me like the original reveal of the shiny new dyes did last time. Maybe the Gothic Master armour set for one of my Sith warriors...</p><p><b>Date Night's Here! </b><br /></p><p>The big and unexpected reveal of the stream was the release of "date nights" coming with 7.4.1. Now, these have some history already, as they were first data-mined about a year ago and people have been going nuts about the idea ever since. I even saw someone ask on the official forums how to get the mission to go on a date with Arcann, just to be told that this content wasn't actually in the game. This is why I always say not to put too much stock into data-mining!</p><p>However, they really <i>are</i> coming with 7.4.1: Alliance alerts that let you hang out with your romanced companion for a bit. Why did they promote this as a new feature instead of simply a bunch of new alerts? Because they will apparently be weekly repeatable, which I thought is quite neat. I remember reading a comment somewhere once where someone bemoaned that once the story was done, you could never <i>ever</i> talk to your companions again, even if one of them was officially your spouse. That person said that they wished that they could at least have some repeatable conversations like at the campfire in Dragon Age. And this sounds pretty close!</p><p>Before you get too excited though, we only get four to begin with: Lana, Koth, Theron and Arcann. The devs' desire is to eventually include something for <i>all</i> romanceable companions, but considering just how many of them there are, even the most optimistic timescale I've seen quoted would require more than five years to get to those last few companions.</p><p>Personally, I'm not a huge romance fanatic (my main never romanced anyone in my twelve years of playing for example), but I have dabbled in it on different alts, and I do like the idea of adding a bit more depth to companion relationships this way. I've never romanced Lana or Koth myself, but maybe this will give me an incentive to do so! More reasons to get characters to the other side of KotFE and KotET are always welcome.</p><p>Finally, in regards to 7.5, they confirmed that it will take place on Hutta and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/will-we-return-to-hutta-in-75.html">that you could indeed tell so from the current loading screen</a>. The update will be called "Desperate Defiance" and will also feature the final part of the Lane Vizla storyline as well as a new spring-themed world event. That last part was actually the most intriguing to me because based on previous releases, I wouldn't have expected 7.5 to land before June. However, that's almost summer and would be very late to launch a spring-themed event, which makes you wonder whether this patch might actually launch earlier, and if so, what else that might mean for the game's patch cadence in the future. Most curious!</p><p><b>Freebies & Links</b><br /></p><p>As usual, there's a free stronghold deco you can claim, using the code LotSKrovos (not case-sensitive). Just don't get tripped up when trying to claim it, as the old link to redeem codes from the main user interface appears to go to dead page right now. Make sure to log in, go to your new account page, and scroll down to the "redeem code" button there instead.</p><p>Also, not exactly a freebie, but they also announced a major Cartel Market sale for the armour and decoration categories running until the end of February. There are some good deals to be had there if either of those things interest you. <a href="https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-decorations-and-armor-category-cartel-market-sale-until-february-29-2024/">Swtorista has some recommendations and screenshots of everything</a>, while <a href="https://todayintor.com/2024/02/15/swtor-february-cartel-market-sale/">Kal offers a full written list of everything included in the sale</a>, which is handy if you just wanna do a quick Ctrl+F to check whether something specific is reduced.<br /></p><p>Finally, if you want to see or read more details about the stream for yourself, you can watch the <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2062770976">Twitch VOD</a>, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCBNVHEdvpo">YouTube upload</a>, or read detailed written breakdowns <a href="https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20240213">on the official website</a>, at <a href="https://swtorista.com/articles/what-to-expect-in-update-7-4-1-in-swtor/">Swtorista</a>, <a href="https://vulkk.com/2024/02/15/swtor-7-4-1-announced-galactic-seasons-6-copero-stronghold-date-nights-and-more/">Vulkk</a> or <a href="https://todayintor.com/2024/02/15/swtor-7-4-1-update-livestream-news/">Today in TOR</a>.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-68948349435000779562024-02-11T23:27:00.003+00:002024-02-12T00:15:12.888+00:00Bad Romance<p>I actually finished the Sith warrior class story on Shae Vizla! For as long as I've had alts on other servers, this is the first time I've actually completed a class story on a server other than Darth Malgus, and while it may be silly, I'm kind of proud of myself. I also realised that it had been a really long time since my last full Sith warrior playthrough in general... six or seven years, based on some comments I made on this blog.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIMiHQDG6T_cnoh2-cFPYPMJXujC_YBnCbaVkFAEv8r9S0F0j8lqa6crHhsD6t74hiZGfgdZZ4GQgXndkcyokuVvQqoOQIqhOSb14-52Xb4tlpF4Ss2EtmYTA-TcUJ_mawxx_hF08YUCyUEQDeY1MalWnDv5LrnduVa1ytObk8fzCakrjUWH3oWgFfSY/s1920/Apacella%20about%20to%20face%20Baras.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A female Sith Pureblood standing next to an Imperial banner with her lightsaber drawn, near the end of the Sith warrior class story" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIMiHQDG6T_cnoh2-cFPYPMJXujC_YBnCbaVkFAEv8r9S0F0j8lqa6crHhsD6t74hiZGfgdZZ4GQgXndkcyokuVvQqoOQIqhOSb14-52Xb4tlpF4Ss2EtmYTA-TcUJ_mawxx_hF08YUCyUEQDeY1MalWnDv5LrnduVa1ytObk8fzCakrjUWH3oWgFfSY/w400-h225/Apacella%20about%20to%20face%20Baras.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Something I hadn't done in even longer was romancing Quinn. I wrote a post about the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/08/romance-review-base-game-guys-for-gals.html">different base game romances for female characters</a> last year in which I mentioned that I quite enjoyed the dynamic with him, but I've got to confess that this was all based on memories from over a decade ago at this point. I thought it would be fun to finally go through that particular storyline again with my newest Pureblood. Boy, was it a confusing experience.</p><p>To be clear, it's not that I completely changed my mind about Quinn or anything, but I basically hadn't considered that the way companion conversations work had changed in the meantime, and what effect this would have on the experience.</p><p>To refresh everyone's memories, at launch the class companion stories weren't tied to main story progress but rather to that particular companion's influence (then affection) level with you. I don't remember when exactly I went through most of Quinn's conversations, whether it was earlier or later, but I do recall that I was generally very bad at maxing out companion affection (I made a whole <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2014/04/have-you-maxed-out-your-companion.html">post on that subject back in 2014</a>), so I probably didn't see at least half of his storyline until after completing the overall class story. Either way, I have no memory of how this interacted with his "big twist", but I figure it probably can't have been that big of a deal or I would've remembered it.</p><p>The point is, with Knights of the Fallen Empire, companion conversations were changed to unlock automatically after completing certain steps in your class story. I was very much in favour of this change, since it meant I actually did them at a sensible pace now instead of oscillating between basically ignoring my companions and going on gift-giving binges to get them to talk to me. I'm not sure how I expected this to affect the Quinn romance, but I know that what I actually got, wasn't it.</p><p>I was initially quite excited and keen to get the ball rolling, so I always made sure to talk to Quinn before any other companions, but he seemed coyer than I remembered, and it felt like it took forever for things to heat up between him and my warrior. I kept waiting for the big confession of love, but it just didn't come.</p><p>Eventually we got to the end of Voss and then the visit to the Imperial ship where... "the thing" happens. I couldn't help but think that surely it would've been more impactful if we'd already been closer beforehand, but I still chose a conversation option that said something like "we're breaking up". I was reminded of just how incredibly clunky the bit where you end up sparing him for "reasons" feels.</p><p>Then we got back onto the ship and I went to talk to him again to see what the next conversation was and... it was the big confession of love. My jaw just kind of dropped. Like, we literally got close to killing each other five minutes ago. Timing!? And I'd chosen the conversation option that said we were done, too!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqqBlshOtXlffvnXwca5eNHxb0at3dIkeOndBLvPRhQdfdaVdtG015UVBSQHaoOnQZVM-hbBwnegv-SmTzoG4aWK-FkLTvdChM_V1RaD9Dp18FuznmBGNyyZiulps7O5VwmOE7MDlVUtQIgQN-elbf3r6Stij8hdvvv_0sJxJz5ohxJhccwBlwMOk7FZg/s1920/Apacella%20kissing%20Quinn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Close-up of a female Sith Pureblood kissing Malavai Quinn" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqqBlshOtXlffvnXwca5eNHxb0at3dIkeOndBLvPRhQdfdaVdtG015UVBSQHaoOnQZVM-hbBwnegv-SmTzoG4aWK-FkLTvdChM_V1RaD9Dp18FuznmBGNyyZiulps7O5VwmOE7MDlVUtQIgQN-elbf3r6Stij8hdvvv_0sJxJz5ohxJhccwBlwMOk7FZg/w400-h225/Apacella%20kissing%20Quinn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>I tried to justify it in my head with something like that the emotional turmoil of all that just brought their real feelings to the surface even stronger or something like that, and I allowed the romance to continue, but it still just felt <i>weird</i>.</p><p>It's kind of funny to me that even replaying content I've done before <i>while trying to achieve the exact same outcome</i> can result in such a dramatically different experience. Maybe the game has changed more over the years than I usually give it credit for.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-84333540955845400782024-02-07T21:28:00.001+00:002024-03-10T23:33:32.361+00:00Kessan's Landing<p>I've settled into a kind of routine when it comes to writing about SWTOR's major patches: write a first impressions post, put together a detailed review of the new story content, sum up how I feel about the new planet/flashpoint/operation/whatever the main new gameplay feature of the patch is, followed by a couple of additional posts for any other business, such as UI updates or other minor changes.</p><p>As far as 7.4 goes, <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/74-first-impressions.html">I</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/chains-in-dark-story-review.html">covered</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/is-swtor-unusually-bottom-heavy.html">most</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/thoughts-on-new-galactic-trade-network.html">of</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/meeting-curator.html">that</a>, but the one thing I was still missing was a rundown of the new planetary map on Ord Mantell, Kessan's Landing. To be honest, I think the main reason I've been putting off writing about it is that it's been... fine. <i>Good</i>, even! I have no major complaints. At the same time I didn't exactly feel blown away by its awesomeness, so... I've just kind of struggled to find a lot to say about it.</p><p>I suppose the one thing I'm not too fond of is that it's night time there. I guess the devs opted for that to strengthen the slightly oppressive mood that hangs over the town, plus to create additional visual distinction between Kessan's Landing and "old" Ord Mantell, as the two areas use a lot of the same general "building blocks" otherwise, such as sandy beaches, rocky cliffs and glowing lava flows. Night time is never great for taking screenshots of your character though.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6eadRcy7PSlW02xhiLBBUV-VCFzuDozgb5r-wq6R3lrbAwjwTdR7U48JsTei9coEBxYyAK7LW0u40g1whjvTnM4ePEnf-1kVSqeBoVJ38wOYq4wSgCyTRX2AweNy1GlRE_W_s3pjJ7GV3FVtcTYOJ0WEAAR-6XVdH60X2bRcJoN9Mu_G5BbyY9rhQChc/s1920/Giant%20moon%20over%20Kessan's%20Landing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A building next to the sea side at Kessan's Landing, with a giant full moon on the horizon" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6eadRcy7PSlW02xhiLBBUV-VCFzuDozgb5r-wq6R3lrbAwjwTdR7U48JsTei9coEBxYyAK7LW0u40g1whjvTnM4ePEnf-1kVSqeBoVJ38wOYq4wSgCyTRX2AweNy1GlRE_W_s3pjJ7GV3FVtcTYOJ0WEAAR-6XVdH60X2bRcJoN9Mu_G5BbyY9rhQChc/w400-h225/Giant%20moon%20over%20Kessan's%20Landing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Doesn't mean there aren't any nice vistas to look at. </i><br /></p><p>I also thought it was interesting how much bigger Kessan's Landing is compared to many older in-game towns. All the villages on the starter planets tend to consist of like, five buildings, which is quite video-gamey and not very realistic. I liked that Kessan's Landing felt more like a real place where people could actually live.<br /></p><p>The dailies were decent fun. As I've said many times before, I'm not a huge fan of dailies, but I do like doing them <i>sometimes</i>, and they are one of the better types of content for me and Mr Commando to do together nowadays, considering that the story is a purely solo affair. After the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/12/dailies-on-ruhnuk-confusion-central.html">troubles we had with Ruhnuk</a>, it was nice to return to a mode of running dailies that felt more relaxed and less punishing. The map is reasonably open for the most part, meaning you don't have to fight every single mob you encounter, except for the narrow tunnels leading up to and inside of Fort Ronning, but that's okay because it adds flavour by making that particular area feel more dangerous.</p><p>Mr Commando soon figured out a path that took us through a full round of both normal and heroic dailies in good time, and we faithfully did that every week until we maxed out the reputation track. I thought it was interesting that while most of the dailies come from the terminal in town, there are a couple that have to be "found" and picked up from NPCs around the area, something that reminded me of Yavin IV and Ziost. I was just a bit disappointed that the missions seemed to be exactly the same for Republic and Imperial players - with exactly one exception, oddly, in that Republic players have to save grazers while Imperials capture an asharl panther.</p><p>The heroics were decent fun to duo as well, and the [Heroic 4] is proper hard without feeling like a slog, as you basically just have to fight one mob with a lot of health that also has some hard-hitting mechanics. Ironically, the open world boss FR3-D0M felt relatively easy in comparison, though at least it has some bad stuff you actually need to step out of - as opposed to Kithrawl on Ruhnuk who's basically a big sack of potatoes that you <i>just</i> need to wear down.</p><p>Kessan's Landing also has a new datacron, which... honestly, maybe I should just make a whole post about the evolution of datacrons at some point. However, for this post it's enough to say that the most recent trend with them has been to force players to do the work themselves, ensuring that people can't just get summoned to the datacron location on day one and get their stat buff without even knowing what was involved in unlocking it.<br /></p><p>The Ruhnuk datacron also required you to do a lengthy relic hunt quest chain first, which I didn't mind - my issue with <i>that</i> was more that it also felt like it was meant to benefit your daily-running, and completing it for that purpose on every alt felt tedious to me. In that regard I have to give the devs props for making the relic hunt equivalent for Kessan's Landing irrelevant to the dailies and <i>only</i> required for the datacron, so you only really need to do it once. As it was, I thought it was a fun little quest chain that sent you traipsing around the galaxy (and that featured another cute gonk droid). Fun fact: during the part on Quesh I got the codex entry for "lobel" on my main... only took me thirteen years. I might even repeat the quest chain on an alt at some point, but I'm happy knowing that I don't <i>have</i> to in order to be able to do the dailies efficiently on alts.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxwNMW7agRP635WSb8y07_OXKTyG5P9ly6HzkH-iTzvgrSZT6KRlLwXIjaFfng-fDz1QThJSjfw_7-3nDlrIaOs5iNHWqGYYMOB-LPE8lSyL4DpRTwdOuMo7YEY4oiAeIy3PS0Lkb6HM1IeYDHtxPfqkRi4ze_wehLxxqF4qaxF6qm5xMzdOnh9tHdMfQ/s1920/Shintar%20getting%20the%20Kessan's%20Landing%20datacron.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shintar the trooper looking at the Kessan's Landing datacron" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxwNMW7agRP635WSb8y07_OXKTyG5P9ly6HzkH-iTzvgrSZT6KRlLwXIjaFfng-fDz1QThJSjfw_7-3nDlrIaOs5iNHWqGYYMOB-LPE8lSyL4DpRTwdOuMo7YEY4oiAeIy3PS0Lkb6HM1IeYDHtxPfqkRi4ze_wehLxxqF4qaxF6qm5xMzdOnh9tHdMfQ/w400-h225/Shintar%20getting%20the%20Kessan's%20Landing%20datacron.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Completing the chain unlocks access to a secret cave where you then have to go through some puzzles to get to the datacron. I initially got a bit frustrated by the part inside the cave because it felt quite lengthy, yet any failure would send you back to the very start and force you start over from scratch. On my first visit I eventually gave up after dying to the hidden droids in the lava one too many times, but funnily enough, when I came back a couple weeks later I simply changed one utility to boost my speed and easily made it through that same lava bit on my first try. Gotta use that brain!</p><p>After that I was extremely paranoid though as I didn't want to get sent back to the start yet <i>again</i>, so I only progressed very slowly and with a guide on hand. I was in fact so slow that the door you're meant to unshield and blow up had re-shielded itself by the time I reached it. Fortunately I only had to backtrack a little bit to unshield it again. Ultimately it was far from the hardest datacron I've ever done, though I definitely would have appreciated a couple of check points along the way.<br /></p><p>Most of all though, I'm really happy with the way the dev team has managed to deliver a new planetary zone three major patches in a row now, and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/will-we-return-to-hutta-in-75.html">with any luck we'll get another one in 7.5</a>. This is something I love and definitely don't take for granted. And as I said previously, <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/07/planets-id-like-to-revisit.html">I'm more than happy to revisit existing planets</a>, so I don't mind at all if it's not <i>entirely</i> new environments.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-77151925541560797282024-02-03T22:26:00.003+00:002024-02-07T17:42:39.468+00:00Bring Back Kuat Drive Yards!<p>The other week I stayed up late to join some of my guildies on the APAC server for a little activity called "doing flashpoints that aren't in the group finder". This meant running Colicoid War Game and Kuat Drive Yards.</p><p>I hadn't done Colicoid War Game in literal years, and I'd forgotten how quick and fun it was. I kind of found myself longing for reasons to visit it more often, but it's been out of the group finder for so long now (it was removed with the launch of Fallen Empire) that I don't expect it to ever make a return to the mainstream at this point. And for as much as I do love it, I also can't deny that it is indeed very different from pretty much every other flashpoint, which doesn't make it very accessible to the average pug. At least it gives normal veteran flashpoint loot now if you do decide to run it manually - I recall at least one occasion in the past when I completed it with some guildies and we discovered that it gave no loot at the time, which was shortly after it had been taken out of the group finder.</p><p>Thinking about Kuat's removal from the queue was a bit strange though. It was, after all, designed with the group finder in mind - in fact, the story mission still tells you to queue for the flashpoint via the group finder, even though that's no longer possible. (Fortunately it also progresses when you enter normally.) In fact, there was a period between its introduction and the release of Shadow of Revan when running KDY was all the rage for fast levelling. I had guildies who would do <i>nothing else</i> during double XP and I honestly found it kind of obnoxious at the time. I was glad when this behaviour fell out of favour after the levelling changes that came with Fallen Empire. However, Kuat stayed in the veteran queue for years to come... until it was taken out with 7.0, that is.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoT9jNFKVa0a5Cq06PZ7UVQ7Pf4qKNRfOzr7AmHaXhAXJ7H5cAJI-nsj8ThpNEcuZmpn9T4HWLxEDjVlpWShWR9nB-mrZRHEsIm2ZiAVqVutrSS1W-RuoKrgmDxxoCnBcCgzxO_DMj4iiUgf5XCm-NZoH7W5CH0yQvGJOhoANNMPDcTFaOjwdJD8PbSX4/s1831/Apacella%20during%20Imperial%20Kuat%20Drive%20Yards%20intro.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Three player characters listening to Admiral Ranken and Lord Krovos during the Imperial Kuat Drive Yards intro" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1831" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoT9jNFKVa0a5Cq06PZ7UVQ7Pf4qKNRfOzr7AmHaXhAXJ7H5cAJI-nsj8ThpNEcuZmpn9T4HWLxEDjVlpWShWR9nB-mrZRHEsIm2ZiAVqVutrSS1W-RuoKrgmDxxoCnBcCgzxO_DMj4iiUgf5XCm-NZoH7W5CH0yQvGJOhoANNMPDcTFaOjwdJD8PbSX4/w400-h236/Apacella%20during%20Imperial%20Kuat%20Drive%20Yards%20intro.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>I've tried to find out what could've been the reason for this but haven't been able to find a conclusive and satisfying answer. One poster suggested that people would drop from it because it was too long, which instantly struck me as absurd, considering that we also have flashpoints like the Esseles, the Foundry and Directive 7 in the queue.</p><p>Another suggestion I saw was that it was too difficult, something that at least seemed to be corroborated by the fact that our little guild group had to discover that you need to be level 55 nowadays to be allowed to enter. (This sucked because one member of the group was 53 - which should have been more than good enough to do the flashpoint - and was forcefully excluded.) The minimum level <i>used</i> to be 15! Remembering that also seemed to make the idea of KDY ever having been too difficult kind of ridiculous, but then I recalled the time I made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42fpaeAetU">this video</a>... the last boss in KDY (any of them) could definitely be a bit challenging depending on your group setup if everyone was low level. Still, even if it was maybe too hard for a group of level 15s, if they already raised the minimum level required to enter, I don't get why the devs couldn't have left it in the group finder in <i>that</i> form.</p><p>The only other idea I had was that it might be related to the fact that only the last boss in Kuat drops any gear, which definitely makes it kind of unrewarding compared to any other flashpoint. Surely that's not something that's impossible to overcome though? There's a bonus boss in every wing; if they added gear drops to those, you could get three per run in total, which is closer to other instances. Or maybe they could add some of those loot boxes that drop from the sky in other flashpoints after the completion of each wing? Heck, even if all of that is too complicated to implement, I still don't feel like "it gives less loot" is a reason to completely remove an instance from the group finder. I'd still rather have it there, with the risk of some people dropping group if they get it, than just being unable to easily find a group for it entirely. People already avoid certain other flashpoints for other reasons too.<br /></p><p>Unlike Colicoid War Game, Kuat is not a stand-alone story that doesn't really tie into anything else. Aside from its lore connection to Galactic Starfighter, it introduces several characters that become more important later: Admiral Aygo for the Republic and Zasha Ranken and Lord Krovos for the Empire. Seeing the cut scenes with them should be accessible! And that's without even getting into the fact that it has a reputation track with rewards tied to it that can't be advanced anywhere else. I guess I'd even take a dedicated solo mode at this point (even though I'm not a fan of them in general). As it stands right now, it's technically possible to solo veteran mode at max level, but the last boss can be a major PITA and is likely beyond soloing for a lot of players that could otherwise clear the rest of the instance by themselves with ease.</p><p>It feels funny for me to be campaigning for the return of KDY to the group finder when there was a time when I rather disliked it, but that was so long ago now... as the saying goes, distance makes the heart grow fonder - and I've definitely not seen enough of Kuat Drive Yards in a while now. Bring it back!<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-79361618397939595872024-01-31T08:48:00.002+00:002024-01-31T08:52:31.045+00:00Around the SWTOR-sphere: January 2024<p>I've had several reasons to think about what it means to be part of a community of content creators over the past two months. (Long story short: Interacting with other creators should always be a positive and inspiring thing; be wary of anyone who acts like they're the only one creating anything of worth and is cagey about giving credit to others.) Bhagpuss was also musing on how <a href="http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2023/12/bringing-back-blog-bounce.html">there used to be more exchanging of links and ideas between blogs</a>, and one thing that stood out to me in that post was his mention of how there used to be more sites that did regular round-ups of what other blogs were writing about. Anyone else remember MMO Melting Pot? Or SWTOR Network?<br /></p><p>I'm always happy to link to other creators where it's relevant, and I do have the blog's sidebar to promote a whole number of other SWTOR sites, but it's only visible on desktop and I don't know how often anyone even looks at it, so I could definitely do more on that front. So I thought... why not try being the round-up person myself for a bit? I look at a lot of SWTOR content over the course of the month that I rarely bother to share, even when I enjoyed it, so maybe I should do that more often?</p><p>So consider this new series an experiment. I don't know if I'll bother to make a post every single month, but we'll see how it goes. Without further ado, some SWTOR-related things I saw in January and that I thought were worth sharing.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The year was off to a good start with the <a href="http://sotorpodcast.com/" target="_blank"><b>State of the Old Republic podcast</b></a> releasing <a href="http://sotorpodcast.com/episode-122-twelve-years-of-swtor/" target="_blank">its first episode in over six months</a>, looking back at the last two patches. Ted is a great guy who even <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2017/08/shintar-goes-has-gone-podcasting-again.html">had me on as a guest once</a>! I left an encouraging comment on the new episode but it seems to have been eaten by a spam filter or something.</li><li>I don't need to tell anyone who <a href="https://swtorista.com/" target="_blank"><b>Swtorista</b></a> is and she always has something or other going on, but it's worth noting that she started 2024 by unveiling a big project that had been in the works for a while: <a href="https://swtorista.com/articles/planet-secret-maps/" target="_blank">interactive maps for all the base planets</a>. These are great for newcomers and veteran players alike who are interested in ticking some specific item off their personal to-do list, whether it's that last pesky lore object that's eluding you or a mission NPC that you could swear used to be in a different place last time and now you can't find it (that would be me). I used to have a site called SWTOR Ultras on my bar that used to provide something similar, but since it went down it's nice to see someone else provide this feature now. </li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@NoblePlays" target="_blank"><b>NoblePlays</b></a> is a YouTuber that's been around for a long time but who never quite took off (at least as far as I can tell) due to his (public) interest in the game being very on and off (being down on the game and stepping away from it, then coming back, then stopping again a few months later etc.) I suppose he could be on another one of those roller-coasters right now, but that didn't stop me from enjoying his recent video "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPzBFp9h-lY" target="_blank">SWTOR Is Actually Amazing For 2024</a>". It was technically released in December but I didn't come across it until a couple of weeks ago.</li><li>"Is [MMO] worth playing in [year]?" is almost a YouTube video genre of its own at this point, but they are popular for a reason! The first one I came across for SWTOR this year was "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpyPrstc_8" target="_blank">Should You Play Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2024</a>" by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Renfail" target="_blank"><b>Renfail</b></a>. He's not someone I usually watch, but when this popped up it seemed familiar enough that I might have seen one or more of his videos before. I was kind of surprised that he's been playing since launch and is clearly very knowledgeable about the game, but apparently he's only completed three of the original class stories (at least according to the character selection screen that he identified as his main server) and pronounces Revan as "reh-VAHN"? Just goes to show again that there are very different ways to love this game.</li><li>Fellow blogger <a href="https://www.generic-hero.com/ThisWeekinAurabesh/" target="_blank"><b>Intisar</b></a> always likes to ring in the new year with some predictions for what's to come, some of which turn out to be wrong and some of which are just plain silly, but they are always 100% enjoyable to read. Go check out his <a href="https://www.generic-hero.com/ThisWeekinAurabesh/2024/01/08/we-cant-rewind-five-predictions-for-2024/" target="_blank">Five Predictions for 2024</a> right now.</li><li><b><a href="https://mmobits.com/category/star-wars-the-old-republic/" target="_blank">XamXam</a></b> is also an old hand when it comes to SWTOR content creation, but I particularly enjoyed her <a href="https://mmobits.com/2024/01/24/the-shae-vizla-experience-should-there-be-server-transfers/" target="_blank">sharing her experience on the Shae Vizla server as an actual APAC player</a> this month. I've done a fair bit of writing about <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/enjoying-new-server-smell-on-shae-vizla.html">my</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-week-of-apac-adventure.html">own</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-shae-vizla-apac-server-is-month-old.html">experiences</a> <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/struggling-with-credits-on-shae-vizla.html">there</a>, but as a European I'm obviously not the main target audience for the server, so it's interesting to hear the thoughts of someone who actually lives in the right part of the world for it to make a difference to their experience.<br /></li><li>I have a complicated relationship with reddit and the <b><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/" target="_blank">SWTOR subreddit</a></b> in particular, but I do like to check in on it every now and then, and every now and then it definitely contains some interesting, funny or insightful posts. My favourite in January was one called "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/194dwmr/thanks_for_everything_swtor/" target="_blank"><b>Thanks for everything, SWTOR</b></a>", which may sound like a goodbye but isn't. Rather, the OP muses on just how much time they've spent in the game, how many memories they've made and how much they've learned and changed over time. I thought it was particularly interesting that they still felt bad years later about some occasions where they'd been unnecessarily mean to people, I guess because most of the time you only expect the one being insulted to carry that memory with them.</li><li>Another thread I really enjoyed was called "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/1addv70/whats_the_most_genuinely_emotional_moment_in_the/" target="_blank"><b>What's the most genuinely emotional moment in the story?</b></a>" in which people shared some of their favourite funny, sad or generally epic story experiences. While the original post is just a question, there are some great memories to be stirred in the comments. (Beware of spoilers though if you haven't played many of the stories yet!)</li><li>Just in time for the deadline! As I was getting ready to post this, I saw some people on Twitter share <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/if-you-like-baldurs-gate-3-you-should-play-one-of-biowares-best-ever-choice-driven-sci-fi-rpgs/" target="_blank">this article on <b>Games Radar</b> called "If you like Baldur's Gate 3, you should play one of Bioware's best-ever choice-driven sci-fi RPGs"</a> (quite a mouthful, that title). Anyone who's been a fan of SWTOR for any length of time won't really find anything in there that they didn't already know, but it's always nice to hear about people (re-)discovering everything that makes SWTOR great even in its 13th year.</li></ul>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-15820516667871288332024-01-27T16:55:00.002+00:002024-01-27T19:10:50.551+00:00Seeing How the Other Side Lives<p>I know that the way I play SWTOR puts me into a small minority relative to the overall player base. Doing PvP, doing operations, doing Galactic Seasons on all servers... most players don't do those things. Still, I tend to think that having at least dabbled in pretty much every part of the game, I should be able to "get" what drives most players. While the story is not necessarily my main focus nowadays for example, I've played and enjoyed it, so I can completely understand why someone else's play experience may be centred around it.</p><p>Spending time in more casual guilds on other servers during seasons has been rather eye-opening in that regard, which is to say that I've been quite surprised by some of the things people talk and seemingly care about. Here are three of the biggest items that caught me off-guard:<br /></p><p><b>1. Companion power</b></p><p>I feel a little confused every time I see someone talk about what the "best" companion is. Most of them are identical in terms of their abilities, and the few who have a bit of an edge in one area or another still aren't massively different. Since every companion can play every role nowadays, the thing that matters the most is whether you like their look and voice lines, not how well they can "parse".</p><p>But people care a lot about min-maxing their companion performance. I always thought the Commander's Companion, a consumable that you can buy on the Cartel Market and that instantly raises your influence with one companion to fifty, was kind of a dumb item. Who would spend real money on that when there are multiple ways to raise your companion influence organically? Apparently the answer is: a lot of people.</p><p>And not just that, but apparently those same players consider it pretty much mandatory to have all of their companions maxed out, which honestly kind of blew my mind. I've been playing this game since launch and not one of my characters has all their companions at maximum influence (though my main is the closest simply from years of running crew skill missions). Some don't have a level fifty companion at all. Because from my point of view... it's just not needed?</p><p>There are a few use cases for maxing out companion influence, such as if you're heavily into crafting and want to maximise those crits, or if you're working on one of the game's extremely tough solo challenges. There's a reason my Sage, on whom I did KotFE on master mode back in the day, has exactly two level fifty companions: Lana and Senya (because I felt the need to max out their influence while working on tough chapter bosses).<br /></p><p>However, in PvP and group content (where I spend a lot of my time), companions are irrelevant, and most other solo PvE content is so easy that your companion's exact influence level makes no noticeable difference (at least to me). Seriously, if I quest with a companion that's under level ten, I may notice that they "feel a bit weak" so to speak, but above twenty or so they are more than powerful enough for pretty much anything, meaning I don't really notice further increases in power level.</p><p>Maybe this is a remnant of my experience playing at launch, when companions were much weaker than they are now and gear affected their output, so it made sense to try and squeeze every little bit of extra performance out of them. Compared to that, they still feel OP to me in their current form regardless of influence level, but others will have a different perspective.<br /></p><p></p><p><b>2. Running heroics</b></p><p>I used to love heroics when the game first came out and they were genuinely challenging open world group content. When they were turned into just another type of daily in Fallen Empire, I was <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2016/02/heroics-are-new-dailies.html">not impressed</a>. I'm not much of a daily runner at the best of times, and now there were even more of them, just with mobs that took longer to kill. I got pushback for this opinion even back then, so I knew that others felt differently.</p><p>Even so, I've been kind of flabbergasted by the number of people I see for whom running heroics is a regular part of their routine every day. I don't know whether it's just been particularly pronounced on Shae
Vizla because people see them as a good way of making credits, but I could absolutely not play that way and it's kind of weirdly fascinating to me that so many players seem to actually enjoy this kind of grind.<br /></p><p><b>3. World bosses</b></p><p>I've always quite liked world bosses, but my general experience has been that they're fun to do once for the achievement, and then maybe another couple of times for one-time missions. After that they just become kind of unrewarding to revisit repeatedly in my opinion (unless one is an objective for Galactic Seasons of the Feast of Prosperity of course). If you're already bothering to put a group together to do some sort of group content, why not do something that pays more than a few credits and a couple of Conquest commendations?</p><p>So I was quite surprised by the amount of world boss hunting I've seen going on and the sheer enthusiasm some people have for it. When Heroes of the Republic did Nightmare Pilgrim for example, people were pretty much counting down the minutes to the event for at least half an hour before it was actually meant to start. Now, I did learn that while you're levelling, killing world bosses gives pretty good XP, so some people use it as a form of power levelling - can't really argue with that. Likewise, if you're a new guild, world boss events are a way of being inclusive of characters at lower levels.</p><p>However, at max level I'm honestly still not entirely sure why people seem to do them as much as they do. My best theory is that players who <i>mostly</i> like to play by themselves see them as a low-pressure way of socialising, where you don't need a specific group composition, there's rarely more than one boss mechanic to worry about and you don't necessarily have to talk. Heck, with guild ship summons the whole thing can pretty much be reduced to "accept summon when it comes, whack whatever's in front of you until it's dead, leave". But maybe that's just what some people are looking for to feel connected to their guild and if they're too shy or time-constrained to invest time in activities like flashpoints or operations? I'd never really considered world bosses filling that specific niche before.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt6dBOuIu7Tcuh5EISlA1SMzvgBh2PVkI0KizH9s8neOAcDrcVXerH5xKFNoB6x4dUyz0zAI9ae7hIHMEnYguFGAQIHy3bNEKS21LPz3LGGR6W2Xz5yMu4ZWXX-vc_9EfhL73oERrDxCETD4DXNWQqIs-QsN8VVozErNSgeg4vcxOB1fgd0KSxrD3eLaM/s1920/Heroes%20of%20the%20Empire%20fighting%20Nightmare%20Pilgrim.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Heroes of the Empire fighting the Nightmare Pilgrim on Voss" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt6dBOuIu7Tcuh5EISlA1SMzvgBh2PVkI0KizH9s8neOAcDrcVXerH5xKFNoB6x4dUyz0zAI9ae7hIHMEnYguFGAQIHy3bNEKS21LPz3LGGR6W2Xz5yMu4ZWXX-vc_9EfhL73oERrDxCETD4DXNWQqIs-QsN8VVozErNSgeg4vcxOB1fgd0KSxrD3eLaM/w400-h225/Heroes%20of%20the%20Empire%20fighting%20Nightmare%20Pilgrim.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Have you ever come across an activity or way of playing the game that utterly surprised you with how popular it was with other players?<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-36178616694741683192024-01-24T22:36:00.002+00:002024-01-25T18:19:12.393+00:00PvP Season 4, Arenas & PvP on Shae Vizla<p>PvP Season 4 ends in five days, and I managed to do something this season that I've never done before: for once, I didn't just complete the main reward track, but I also completed <i>all</i> the seasonal achievements. And I didn't stop there either! Not only did I do all this on Darth Malgus, but I did so on Shae Vizla as well, which is a huge jump from never even getting all the achievements in the first place.</p><p>There was no tangible reward for doing this, I just kind of happened to get about 80% of the way there (on both servers) without really trying, and then I figured I might as well put in the extra effort to push myself over the finish line.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNu-rND_rb6GIFsGubNF3wWbXbDHtIgaosT21R853dSjIpHR7cItSeb17Iov-J6baaAw58bYnei7VUOgYdfJjp_hHAH2nkTjQ29E93o_yKGtEIpA9_mXBdlVoflFyJK1n2rWo19HIBL7EqkVgg8vgfZb4V6-sPw5bPkfTxnXlzoH77swOTwfm6PdaxIYM/s1480/Cheriza%20in%20Voidstar%20with%20PvP%20season%204%20legacy%20title%20showing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sith warrior Cheriza from the Black Sun Squadron guild displays the PvP Season 4 legacy title "No Quarter Given"" border="0" data-original-height="971" data-original-width="1480" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNu-rND_rb6GIFsGubNF3wWbXbDHtIgaosT21R853dSjIpHR7cItSeb17Iov-J6baaAw58bYnei7VUOgYdfJjp_hHAH2nkTjQ29E93o_yKGtEIpA9_mXBdlVoflFyJK1n2rWo19HIBL7EqkVgg8vgfZb4V6-sPw5bPkfTxnXlzoH77swOTwfm6PdaxIYM/w400-h263/Cheriza%20in%20Voidstar%20with%20PvP%20season%204%20legacy%20title%20showing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Loyal readers may recall that the reason I never bothered with completing all the seasonal PvP achievements before was that <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/02/my-thoughts-on-pvp-season-1.html">I didn't like queuing for arenas</a>. I don't mind them from a gameplay perspective, and I was quite content with having them pop up every now and then when unranked arenas and warzones shared the same queue, but when they were split out with the launch of PvP Season 1, I found the dedicated arena queue to be way too toxic for my taste. The repeated personal insults were just too upsetting, and I certainly wasn't having enough fun to make up for that, so I decided to simply nope out of that part of the game.</p><p>What happened to make me change my mind? Well, <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-apac-region-server-launching-today.html">the Shae Vizla server happened</a>, and as I mentioned in <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/enjoying-new-server-smell-on-shae-vizla.html">my first impressions post</a>, doing PvP over there was an absolute blast during launch week. I actually dared to queue for both modes again for the first time in ages because I figured, we're all level ten with a hundred credits to our name, how could anyone <i>possibly</i> find a reason to take things too seriously and be toxic in that environment? And people were indeed pretty good-natured for the most part. I encountered exactly one guy being toxic in an arena during those days, and that was after he lost a drawn-out one-on-one against an opponent. The way he yelled insults at that person was still unnecessary and stupid, but it was also such an obvious case of someone just being a sore loser that even I couldn't take it too seriously.<br /></p><p>I was having so much fun in that environment that I earned the maximum number of PvP season points during the first two weeks of the server's life without even paying attention. Once I noticed, I thought to myself: <i>Hey, if it's going to be that easy and fun, I might as well complete the PvP seasons track here too.</i> It didn't <i>remain</i> that easy once queue pops started to slow down, but for a while they were still consistent enough that I could complete multiple weekly missions for both game modes across my stable of alts.</p><p>Meanwhile, I was working on completing the PvP season track on Darth Malgus as well, by following my usual modus operandi of doing nothing but warzones. However, the experience on Shae Vizla made me reconsider my stance on arenas. I'd also heard some other players who weren't exactly PvP gods mention that they were doing arenas for the season on their home server and that things weren't so bad in the lowbie and midbie brackets since you were less likely to run into toxic try-hards there. So I decided to start queuing for arenas in the lower brackets on Darth Malgus as well and... it was actually decent fun. I didn't encounter any toxicity, and mixing things up with the occasional arena weekly made my seasonal progress easier as well (since sticking to only one mode makes it harder to max out your points every week).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCRxyQxJndTda3j9YYMdG3bIrfkMA8EAPNyU7wwAYcXieM6cA7iQLUIFpu1Voz2F1_8fwQzZIhnmRiape7m18qLWU-XGcQDuWymvWo0bWHfY3asdjv7P4rKMK2bbjqX8RCx7LnU-TDlmfi3HnySHwsSFlAdhB-5kzpEfDPzsOrJKVRF7zRfR1hJoLgWs/s283/Confused%20enthusiasm%20in%20an%20arena.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Ops chat during an arena: Siarru says: "Yeehaw! Let's kill some Imps! Wait, are we Imps?" Zataa replies: "Cue 'are we the baddies?' - it's mixed." Ni'kesho says: "I am." Siarru comments: "Damn, so confusing."" border="0" data-original-height="151" data-original-width="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCRxyQxJndTda3j9YYMdG3bIrfkMA8EAPNyU7wwAYcXieM6cA7iQLUIFpu1Voz2F1_8fwQzZIhnmRiape7m18qLWU-XGcQDuWymvWo0bWHfY3asdjv7P4rKMK2bbjqX8RCx7LnU-TDlmfi3HnySHwsSFlAdhB-5kzpEfDPzsOrJKVRF7zRfR1hJoLgWs/s16000/Confused%20enthusiasm%20in%20an%20arena.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>After I completed the main reward track on both servers and thought about writing a post about that, I had a quick look at my achievement progress and was surprised to find that on Shae Vizla, I had in fact completed everything bar the 2000 medals achievement, and even for that one I was already most of the way there. It seemed like a no-brainer that I should continue playing until the end of the season to get that ticked off as well.</p><p>Then I checked my progress on Darth Malgus for comparison and found that I was even closer to completing the medals achievement there, though I was only on six out of twelve arena weeklies completed. After a bit of deliberation, I decided that it might be worth trying to push that to completion as well.</p><p>At first, things seemed to go well enough, but then I got into an arena with my midbie Scoundrel where someone went off on me big time after we lost the first round, spamming "shit healer" in chat over and over, to the point that another person on our team actually told him to chill the hell out. In that moment I felt that familiar surge of adrenaline caused by a mix of embarrassment and anger and immediately thought to myself: <i>Here we go again, this is why I stay out of fucking arenas.</i> I thought that was going to be the end of that particular experiment.</p><p>But for some reason, I pressed on anyway. I think it was due a mix of factors. While I was initially very flustered by the guy's insults (I <i>knew</i> I hadn't done great in the first round and was already feeling bad about that, which is when I'm particularly susceptible to insults making me feel even worse), I thought I actually played quite well in the second round, and while we still lost, I thought it was very obvious that it wasn't due to me being a "shit healer" but due to the fact that our dps was doing way, way less damage than the enemy team and I could only compensate for that for so long. The fact that another member of our team spoke up to... well, not exactly defend me, but to agree that the mean guy was way out of line, also helped a little.<br /></p><p>Around that time I also happened to come across <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2013/02/catharsis.html">this old blog post of mine</a>, in which I told the story of being intimidated by a PvP bully and then encountering him in a different context. In that story, we actually ended up getting along in the end and he apologised for having been an ass before. I don't expect the guy from my most recent encounter to ever get to that point (though it was a character name I recognised from previous matches), but I did find an odd kind of comfort in the idea that like my old nemesis back then, he might actually feel kind of embarrassed if he realised that people will remember him for this kind of behaviour and that it may well give him a bad reputation.</p><p>Either way, I pressed on and fortunately didn't have any more encounters like that, though I'll say that ticking the boxes for six more arena weeklies still wasn't the most fun thing I've ever done. Arenas may technically be shorter than warzones in terms of match duration, but their queues aren't necessarily any faster, so I spent a lot of time waiting for pops. The resulting matches were often only partially filled and hideously imbalanced, and losing a 3v4 game while getting zero medals for your efforts feels worse than losing normally. I was very glad when I was finally done, and grinding out the remaining medals in warzones was much more pleasant, not just because I prefer warzones, but because medal acquisition is much smoother there. Unlike when you're getting stomped in an arena and finish with zero medals, you pretty much always earn some medals in a warzone even if it's a loss.<br /></p><p>Meanwhile I encountered a different problem on Shae Vizla: that of the lowbie and midbie queues suddenly dying. I'd previously enjoyed mixing things up by playing different characters, but I was at a point where I had only ten days left to earn a little less than 300 medals, and spending hours in queues that might never pop just seemed like a waste of time in that situation. (Never mind that if I did actually get into an arena, it might end up being another one of those zero-medal matches, basically making them worthless for my purposes.)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkz9AlzXAWcEB_hDPta0BSk18ZaaBH-5Bg6_1FLiYKJz5wANqdgZaGP1OPMnSk7Uon2m-3eWHpHQdxbNGB0Gb55d5b0wRIUC1tGXGJ1m6IbLsln4nQb8M6t-uZ6_5XSPLIsMhBSyfEQnubCP-IgwkpG0hZvquYAtzz6G3BKHfKuEhTHZY222cXoczej5g/s1480/Apacella%20in%20Ancient%20Hypergates%20with%20PvP%20season%204%20legacy%20title%20showing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sith warrior Apacella from the Heroes of the Empire guild displays the PvP Season 4 legacy title "No Quarter Given"" border="0" data-original-height="971" data-original-width="1480" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkz9AlzXAWcEB_hDPta0BSk18ZaaBH-5Bg6_1FLiYKJz5wANqdgZaGP1OPMnSk7Uon2m-3eWHpHQdxbNGB0Gb55d5b0wRIUC1tGXGJ1m6IbLsln4nQb8M6t-uZ6_5XSPLIsMhBSyfEQnubCP-IgwkpG0hZvquYAtzz6G3BKHfKuEhTHZY222cXoczej5g/w400-h263/Apacella%20in%20Ancient%20Hypergates%20with%20PvP%20season%204%20legacy%20title%20showing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />So I had to ditch my alts and focus entirely on playing my level 80 Juggernaut. Even on Shae Vizla I still preferred to give the max-level arena queue a wide berth, so I focused on warzones only. They were still popping reasonably often, but considering that there are only a few specific hours in the day when my play time overlaps with APAC activity, I was starting to worry that I might fail due to a lack of pops just short of crossing the finish line. The maths told me that with an average of about eight medals per warzone, I only needed to play four per day until the end of the season, which is quite reasonable, but again, considering that some days I might not get to play at all... to be on the safe side, I decided to pour all my efforts into binging PvP on the weekend and ground out 150+ medals over the course of those two days (much to the amusement of Mr Commando), ensuring that I only had a few matches left to do afterwards.<br /><p></p><p>Doing max-level warzones on Shae Vizla was very fun in a different way and strangely nostalgic by the way. Because the population is relatively small, you see a lot of the same names over and over again, and you soon learn who the PvP guilds are, who the healers are, and what general weirdness to expect. (For example there was this one guy who liked yelling in all caps in a foreign language(?) in general chat during warzone matches. No idea why.) It kind of reminded me of <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-tales-from-warzone.html">the game's early days</a> and the kind of community-building I got to witness in the days before mega servers.<br /></p><p>Is there a moral to all this rambling? I'd say the main takeaway for me was that I was reminded that I do actually enjoy arenas in moderation. There's a particular kind of fun to the mayhem that is picking who you should go for first, trying to focus an opponent down quickly, switching targets, kiting enemies and all that jazz. Doing them while levelling probably also teaches you how to use your class toolkit better than anything else in the game, because you'll be actively eager for every new button that helps you deal with various problems you'll encounter, such as using defensive cooldowns to not die, interrupting healers, or gaining counters to knockbacks and roots. Almost more importantly, you then get to <i>practice</i> using these skills over and over again, making sure that you'll actually remember that they're there. In solo PvE you just don't need those things nowadays and it's easy to forget parts of your toolkit if you don't use them often enough.<br /></p><p>I also started to be a bit more liberal with the ignore feature this season than I've been in the past if people are being horrible, and I wonder just how much chatter this is actually blocking out now. There's been more than one occasion where I saw interactions in warzone chat that made it clear that I was missing something due to having someone on ignore. It's something I do remain conflicted about, because while not having to listen to certain types of people definitely improves one's gameplay experience, it also seems like a bit of a shame to remove any chance of reconciliation, especially if the infraction wasn't <i>that</i> egregious.</p><p>Finally, it's worth noting that I spent a significant percentage - if not the majority - of my time PvPing this season not as a healer, but as a dps, most frequently as a Juggernaut, and I've got to admit that for the first time ever, I'm kind of finding myself doubting my commitment to healing. I still love it in general, but in PvP it's often just so... unsatisfying. You can heal for millions and yet feel like you've achieved nothing, all while being more likely to get crap from team mates and enemies alike regardless of what you do. Yet playing as a Jugg, seemingly nobody cares how good or bad you are, and even if I die ten times during a match, I rarely feel too bad about it because I hit hard and still feel powerful in defeat when it takes multiple enemies half a minute to take me down. Just something to think about.<br /></p><p>Either way, it's been a ride, and while it's been fun, I also think this is one experience I'm unlikely to repeat (100%-ing the PvP season on two servers that is). I don't think I'll ever be able to complain about the 2000 medal achievement being too much again though, considering I effectively earned more than double that number this season.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-35193346699914039932024-01-20T23:50:00.002+00:002024-01-25T18:15:51.272+00:00The End of Galactic Season 5 & The Future of Shae Vizla<p>We're in the last week of Galactic Season 5 and I'm happy to say that I managed to complete the season reward track on the Shae Vizla server with several days (and several weekly objectives) to spare. So did many others, based on the chatter I've seen about it.<br /></p><p>I don't think this is a coincidence. I'm pretty sure the devs counted the days and intentionally launched the Shae Vizla server at a point when there was <i>just</i> enough time left to complete the season track without using any buyout options - ensuring that seasons fans would be drawn to the new APAC server and give it a nice boost in activity for its first two months. It also seemed to me like the weekly login reward was giving season points more often than usual, presumably to help get more people over the finish line.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_z0lR3PPTljZb8IWX8JGr6zwzDihPRthIqzLyEO379q5Hgh0tsm40COfb6EWsvwuuLx6S56qtNHS2oOoGoav4eiHJsAyHJ7_ST82YJCxxHkmH5bGrFFycXBlgecTfab6UTpcLPpnq4FDmj0NfOo-TVOK6j2i1UvE7ptHfngyFCIhMPSGTSHmSz8JSH8/s1920/Apacella%20on%20armasaur%20on%20Belsavis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Apacella riding an armasaur mount in the Imperial base on Belsavis" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_z0lR3PPTljZb8IWX8JGr6zwzDihPRthIqzLyEO379q5Hgh0tsm40COfb6EWsvwuuLx6S56qtNHS2oOoGoav4eiHJsAyHJ7_ST82YJCxxHkmH5bGrFFycXBlgecTfab6UTpcLPpnq4FDmj0NfOo-TVOK6j2i1UvE7ptHfngyFCIhMPSGTSHmSz8JSH8/w400-h225/Apacella%20on%20armasaur%20on%20Belsavis.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Personally, I finished the season at legacy level 27, with one character at level 80, and three alts at 59, 34 and 30 respectively. None of them completed their class stories yet, but at least the warrior is getting close, having just finished Belsavis. This is a lot more progress than I made on <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/07/galactic-season-2-complete-on-leviathan.html">Leviathan</a> and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/07/galactic-season-2-complete-on-tulak-hord.html">Tulak Hord</a> when I first started playing there in Season 2, but as mentioned previously, I've been doing more than <i>just</i> seasons on Shae Vizla. Grinding Gree reputation during Gree event week for the first time in years was one hell of a nostalgia trip; I'll tell you that.</p><p>I can't help but wonder what lies in the server's future though. As per <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-shae-vizla-apac-server-is-month-old.html">my post from a month ago</a>, there was a noticeable drop in activity when 7.4 came out and a bunch of "tourists" presumably returned to their home servers, but after that things were pretty stable for a little while. However last week, which was when I believe the very first players were able to complete the season (if they had maximised their point gains with 12-point objectives every week), I noticed a pretty sharp drop in below max-level PvP activity. Until then, I'd been completing both the warzone and the arena weekly on my levellers pretty consistently, but seemingly overnight, lowbie and midbie matches of both types just stopped popping completely, making it impossible to get any PvP done if you didn't have a max-level character yet.</p><p>Now, the seasonal model always affects the levels of in-game activity on <i>all</i> servers, but personally at least I've never noticed this being quite as pronounced as I've seen on Shae Vizla. Whenever I queued for both warzones and arenas for example, you could tell which mode was a season objective that week because it would suddenly pop much, much more often. When <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2024/01/struggling-with-credits-on-shae-vizla.html">I decided to try gearing up my level 80</a>, I thought I'd queue for GSF since I remembered that being an easy source of gear early on. I queued for hours without getting a single pop. The next week, there was a GSF-related seasons objective, and suddenly I could get the weekly done easily, multiple times over. I also know that (what I think is) the third biggest guild on the server advertises openly that its focus is on doing Galactic Seasons across all servers. I for one am curious to see what happens to them and the population in general once the season ends. Not that the devs leave long breaks between Galactic Seasons nowadays anyway, but still...</p><p><b>The Transfer Question</b></p><p>One obvious way of giving the population a boost would of course be opening up server transfers to Shae Vizla. I don't think many people minded transfers being locked initially when the server first launched, but pretty much from week two onwards, long-time APAC players with legacies on other servers kept asking why transfers weren't open yet. Shortly before Christmas, <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/932015-shae-vizla-launch-updates/?do=findComment&comment=9792780">Keith took to the forums to say that they weren't even sure whether they should enable transfers at all</a>, a statement that received a fair amount of pushback. Justifiably so in my opinion - while I've enjoyed the fresh start experience a lot, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the main purpose of the Shae Vizla server was to provide a home for both new <i>and existing</i> APAC players.</p><p>Yesterday we finally received another update on this matter, as <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/933296-follow-up-on-shae-vizla-server-character-transfers/">Jackie confirmed that transfers are indeed coming</a>, and that there'll even be a limited number of free transfers available for loyal subscribers, however they'll limit the number of credits you'll be able to take with you. This makes sense because the disparity between the Shae Vizla economy and those of other servers is currently so big that someone transferring in with a stash of a few billion credits earned on e.g. Star Forge would be able to buy out literally the whole Galactic Trade Network.</p><p>While I'm generally in favour, I do wonder how this will affect the experience of those who choose <i>not</i> to transfer any characters. (While I've got characters on all servers nowadays, I've made a point of keeping all their legacies separate.) I expect guild chats may become quieter as anyone who took a transfer will no longer be popping achievements all the time, activity at level 80 will pick up but will likely also be a bit of a two-class system for a while if people transfer over with full gold augments. Even with a stringent credit limit I suspect that there'll be at least a small degree of inflation. However, ultimately Shae Vizla should be allowed to become a server just like any other, one that simply happens to be located in the Oceanic region. The fresh start has been fun, but ultimately wasn't the goal.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-30002386013934972132024-01-17T21:08:00.001+00:002024-01-25T18:15:15.793+00:00Meeting the Curator<p>Aside from the big <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/chains-in-dark-story-review.html">Chains in the Dark story update</a>, patch 7.4 also contained a smaller side story with KOTOR-style cut scenes, which continued the storyline that started with Lane Vizla on Ruhnuk in 7.2.<br /></p><p>What's it about? <b>Spoilers ahead:</b> <br /></p><p>Lane recalls you to Ruhnuk to tell you that she's been working on restoring the small Basilisk droid you left with her but she's made no real progress as she just doesn't know enough about their inner workings. She has however found out about a reclusive rich guy called the Curator who apparently collects rare droids, and she wonders whether he can help. As he shuns company, she wants you to infiltrate his home stealthily, while pretending to be a courier with his newest purchase.</p><p>For this, you have to fetch a bunch of stuff from around Ruhnuk, Mek-Sha and Dantooine. You then go to the Curator's house, which just happens to be on the outskirts of Kessan's Landing (convenient!). Your disguise gets you in, but it quickly becomes obvious that you're not delivering the real goods he expected (though I think it's funny that he instantly turns on the messenger instead of assuming the seller sold him a fake or something like that). His defenses consist of nothing but some antique astromechs though, which are disabled with as much as a kick and a slap.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqQwhoEStH5OS7Z4H_oIm3x3zSckvkDMuO6XWbSJ6dNGfR9RdSLwEr5zWRoAGQR4hBnkYmOUgu2qUEZa7u4xFIu0B8Go_npeoKBzCRanB_YSOHgGfve49LlkxUuqYJHGtiLDQhhOLLpwA_b8mXThBUWDHatkJZEM9mVgZ83m0HSuG8vKRITEJswDJjF4/s1920/The%20Curator's%20defense%20droids.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Three astromech droids" border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="1920" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqQwhoEStH5OS7Z4H_oIm3x3zSckvkDMuO6XWbSJ6dNGfR9RdSLwEr5zWRoAGQR4hBnkYmOUgu2qUEZa7u4xFIu0B8Go_npeoKBzCRanB_YSOHgGfve49LlkxUuqYJHGtiLDQhhOLLpwA_b8mXThBUWDHatkJZEM9mVgZ83m0HSuG8vKRITEJswDJjF4/w400-h164/The%20Curator's%20defense%20droids.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>When you demand to know more about Basilisk droids, he has to admit that they are so rare that even he doesn't own the schematics... however, he knows of an equally as rare/even rarer(?) HK-24 droid on Belsavis, a type of droid that was specifically used to hunt Basilisks and should therefore have lots of information about them. He suggests that you retrieve its memory core, and that in exchange for providing you with its location, he gets to keep the chassis for his collection.</p><p>You do go along with this plan and return the HK core to Lane. She puts it into an old astromech to access it and the astromech goes absolutely nuts, yelling about how it's malfunctioning and wanting to self-destruct, followed by an attempt to destroy the powered off Basilisk droid. </p><p>Lane asks you to return the astromech to the Curator to see if he can fix it up to not go crazy. He's not too pleased to see you again but offers to put together a bespoke restraining bolt. While you fetch some parts for him, he puts the HK-24 core back into its chassis and of course something goes wrong, causing it to turn on and attack him. You come back in time to take it out again and protect him, after which the memory core goes back into the astromech with a restraining bolt applied.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXODrb8Dml1YphMAsMJot9sqxUbeEgbt49x6CIpR69X0vTFamUPeJv5BuBZb46urtHFcA2JOfuF2yFdTYEp-JtTzivziyezQkGOqa8WYM-XwzazfMXQNdFI0zxH-C2D6CZ3fjE-hgDc60qKO_N8kFiJ7eEVwDZJmrBW1z68puaRdDl9RqbWh9-0DM3ePc/s1920/Arrah%20and%20the%20Curator%20next%20to%20the%20HK-24%20chassis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Curator talks to a Sith while standing next to the lifeless HK-24 chassis" border="0" data-original-height="757" data-original-width="1920" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXODrb8Dml1YphMAsMJot9sqxUbeEgbt49x6CIpR69X0vTFamUPeJv5BuBZb46urtHFcA2JOfuF2yFdTYEp-JtTzivziyezQkGOqa8WYM-XwzazfMXQNdFI0zxH-C2D6CZ3fjE-hgDc60qKO_N8kFiJ7eEVwDZJmrBW1z68puaRdDl9RqbWh9-0DM3ePc/w400-h158/Arrah%20and%20the%20Curator%20next%20to%20the%20HK-24%20chassis.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>When you turn it back on on Ruhnuk, it still gets somewhat agitated, seemingly arguing with itself, but in a somewhat more restrained manner. Lane also says that the Curator has contacted her and wants to sponsor the restoration of the Basilisk droid.<p></p><p>This story was about what I expected in terms of length and depth. I was a bit surprised by just how silly it was, considering that the previous installment of this storyline was quite serious. Not that there's anything wrong with silly, but we did just have the goofiness of the <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/10/galactic-season-5-story-review.html">Galactic Season 5 story</a> as well...</p><p>There were only a couple of small things I didn't like. For example I was thrown off by the fact that during the first conversation with Lane, her pronunciation of the "G0-T0 eye" (the thing you're supposed to pretend to deliver to the Curator) changes between "go-to" and "gee zero tee zero", which is quite a big difference.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ZQzsMGF-BGB2d7sFzWLJdI9OAg9KyRzH7sPORsThyQdG4GwM7thTDDH8AAVOjreER3pfyVP2e81uMR3j_6FLirFKJ-709kEEVhF7MvDvm74_mkG-jmoNc4_mX5KQ-wnRlI-T6LR3pfnO-h9gBeyUly7aQCd7xbUHMHMzrMK582kIp00l8z90dhmFXKw/s1577/Shintar%20dressed%20up%20as%20a%20courier.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shintar the trooper with her arms crossed and looking grunmpy while wearing a delivery uniform" border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="1577" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ZQzsMGF-BGB2d7sFzWLJdI9OAg9KyRzH7sPORsThyQdG4GwM7thTDDH8AAVOjreER3pfyVP2e81uMR3j_6FLirFKJ-709kEEVhF7MvDvm74_mkG-jmoNc4_mX5KQ-wnRlI-T6LR3pfnO-h9gBeyUly7aQCd7xbUHMHMzrMK582kIp00l8z90dhmFXKw/w400-h224/Shintar%20dressed%20up%20as%20a%20courier.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Also, the whole premise of pretending to be a delivery person was a bit... eh. It wasn't quite sweeping the floor of the Gormak cantina, but it felt close. Not exactly a job for an Alliance Commander or Sith Lord in my opinion. The whole thing was a bit weird from a mechanical point of view as well, as they literally make you put a whole gear set on, which in the age of the Outfit Designer doesn't change your appearance anyway (unless you go and select "show gear as outfit", which I did for my own immersion, but it did feel a bit clunky). I would've expected to just get a quest item that you click and poof, you're disguised. But I don't know, maybe someone out there was really happy to get this cosmetic gear set for future pizza delivery roleplay (since you do actually get to keep it)?</p><p>Finally, the last thing that got me was that when you're on Belsavis and some guards stop you, you have to kill them even as a Republic trooper! That just felt wrong; there should have been a non-violent solution available.</p><p>Aside from those things, I quite enjoyed the story. I had a good chuckle at all the droid shenanigans, from the ridiculous defense droids to the maddened HK to digging for parts outside the Curator's house. I did laugh out loud at the bit when you first leave his house and there's this glowy chest next to the door... I was like "Is this a lore object?" and clicked, just to be greeted by an "intrusive thoughts" cast bar, which finished with my character swatting the relic off its pedestal, to an audible expression of dismay from the Curator.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wWO1VxMq0sJe6KrJouZKlX3LPJ-icSzk1ontI2mws3-53bT3S0O8neFBBYfgW6NCr9FcfGGmhkZtFgmx4pE5o9GW_nCHRU2ghFJCzPOL23i6jm_5aGBIaESM7var5tNrBVlg5iU4ZlWXjBSYbEbmVwRVMfeYof6-8wyHQJDVRLVX8mHWgn50-D6_pYE/s524/Arrah%20having%20intrusive%20thoughts%20about%20one%20of%20the%20Curator's%20relics.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sith warrior Arrah has an intrusive thoughts castbar while eyeing a relic" border="0" data-original-height="524" data-original-width="496" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wWO1VxMq0sJe6KrJouZKlX3LPJ-icSzk1ontI2mws3-53bT3S0O8neFBBYfgW6NCr9FcfGGmhkZtFgmx4pE5o9GW_nCHRU2ghFJCzPOL23i6jm_5aGBIaESM7var5tNrBVlg5iU4ZlWXjBSYbEbmVwRVMfeYof6-8wyHQJDVRLVX8mHWgn50-D6_pYE/w379-h400/Arrah%20having%20intrusive%20thoughts%20about%20one%20of%20the%20Curator's%20relics.jpg" width="379" /></a></div><p></p><p>I believe there's been an indication that part three of this storyline, when it arrives, will bring it to its conclusion, presumably with us actually getting a Basilisk... companion? Then again, I'll be very surprised if this is the last we've heard of the Curator, and I wouldn't put it beyond him to mess things up somehow...<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-47074237099560778012024-01-12T22:38:00.006+00:002024-01-25T18:12:23.696+00:00Guild Level 600<p>Back in December, I noticed that Twin Suns Squadron, my guild on Darth Malgus, had hit guild level 600. I gave it a brief mention in the guild message of the day but didn't really think about it beyond that. Until a few days ago that is, when I noticed that we were still level 600... and that our guild XP bar had stopped moving.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgN9LVqUcvmGwkpd5E5cKFFB5JEL86616WK1Wn-VVvK6-qoRIwtCjOD1WFuM7puoAVJa-YqWShkRrlzZDN_wWWo_lcg_tz1t2Pou1-MZsKaE_0tEjir4PSXf-hy0_rWIldxWV6gWcIt2RVthFp3aFYOptBRZabN9TBbM4auYrLFjDsob-h9N4-6ahhakU/s660/Twin%20Suns%20Squadron%20XP%20bar%20at%20level%20600.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Twin Suns Squadron's guild XP bar maxed out at level 600" border="0" data-original-height="155" data-original-width="660" height="94" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgN9LVqUcvmGwkpd5E5cKFFB5JEL86616WK1Wn-VVvK6-qoRIwtCjOD1WFuM7puoAVJa-YqWShkRrlzZDN_wWWo_lcg_tz1t2Pou1-MZsKaE_0tEjir4PSXf-hy0_rWIldxWV6gWcIt2RVthFp3aFYOptBRZabN9TBbM4auYrLFjDsob-h9N4-6ahhakU/w400-h94/Twin%20Suns%20Squadron%20XP%20bar%20at%20level%20600.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>It was only then that I realised that we'd in fact hit the level cap for guilds. I'd had no idea that there even <i>was</i> one. I mean, I guess I always figured that there <i>had</i> to be one for practical reasons, but I expected it to be a really high number that we weren't going to reach for many more years, such as 1000.</p><p>However, apparently the cap of 600 was well known before anyone even got to it, as a quick Google search for "swtor guild max level" revealed <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/a74f91/guild_level_calculations/">a reddit post from over five years ago</a> that already stated it to be 600 back then. Though that same post also posited that "guilds can first reach it in the week of August 27, 2024", which obviously turned out to be very wrong. (It's possible that XP rates were changed at some point after said post was made though.) I couldn't find anything on which guild was the first to hit level 600 or when, but apparently Stroke my Wookie of Darth Malgus <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/vc2dx9/first_guild_to_level_500/">hit level 500 in June of 2022</a>.<br /></p><p>I feel slightly sad now, both that I missed the opportunity to celebrate the ding itself due to not even realising that it was going to be special, and because our guild has no more levelling to do now. I just like making bars go up and I'll miss that.<br /></p><p>When Twin Suns Squadron first hit level 100, I was so excited that I <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2019/07/guild-level-100.html">made a whole post about it</a>. Then again <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2020/02/guild-ding-200.html">when we hit 200</a>, and again <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2020/07/100-levels-of-empire-life.html">when our smaller Imperial alt guild hit 100</a>. At some point it stopped feeling that exciting though, and like I said, I kind of started to think that we were (effectively) going to continue levelling forever. Now I wish I'd continued commemorating those milestones.</p><p>I figure there's no point in getting my hopes up that the devs will actually raise the guild level cap some day - after all, they never raised the maximum legacy level from 50 either. Plus the guild levelling/perk system hasn't really received much love over the years in general. I thought it was a really neat new feature when it first came out over five years ago, and <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/873124-guild-leveling-in-510/#comment-9338639">Musco said at the time</a> that they intended to "support [it] for a long time going forward".</p><p>I guess they technically did that in the sense that it's still functional and in the game, but it hasn't really received any more feature updates. They just fixed some small issues and bugs, and not even all of those at that. For example the "previous leaders" column in the Conquest leaders tab remains blank to this day, and we still don't have a way to tell when guild perks are rotating other than by checking <a href="https://swtor.jedipedia.net/en/news/list-of-guild-perks-5-10">the Jedipedia page</a>, because there's still no in-game indicator for that five years later.</p><p>I don't know, it all just makes me feel a little melancholy. I suppose for whatever flaws it may have, SWTOR's guild levelling system remains solid and generally does its job. I certainly feel engaged by helping the guild I'm in on Shae Vizla grow and progress. I'm just a bit sad to see that particular part of the game come to an end for my main guild. I'll try to enjoy the 184 levels we have left on Imp side while I can.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-87892578629966847522024-01-09T23:56:00.002+00:002024-01-25T17:49:38.443+00:00Thoughts on the New Galactic Trade Network<p>In technical terms, patch 7.4's major new gameplay feature was a revamp of the Galactic Trade Network. I've never been an auction house baron in any MMO that I've played, but I do tend to buy and sell small items pretty regularly, so I was very curious to see what this would look like.<br /></p><p>In fact, I was interested enough to download the Public Test Server client and check out the changes before they hit the live servers. I had a little play around and provided a bit of (what I hope was) constructive feedback in the dedicated forum thread on the subject, but I have to admit, my first impression wasn't super positive. It wasn't exactly <i>negative</i> either, it was just... for a revamp of such a major feature, I'd expected much more. The difference between World of Warcraft's classic and current auction house is like night and day for example.</p><p>The updated GTN however didn't seem <i>that</i> different, and while there were a few new features that looked nice, we were told that we were also <i>losing</i> a couple of bits of old functionality. It just didn't feel like more than a sidegrade, and I was honestly left with a slightly uneasy feeling initially.<br /></p><p>Then the patch actually dropped, and fortunately things were fine, though I did see more than a couple of forum threads complaining about the lost features. There wasn't a huge outcry or anything, but I did see a few comments along the lines of "why such a major revamp for so little gain".</p><p>In fact, let's make a list of all the pros and cons of the new GTN that I can think of (feel free to let me know in the comments if I forgot anything).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP2X_IFDFltWKPQgbsLWAD4mbzrWqXFoTpYbn06ySCFa0VORP2viKT4i4cNOFal3hyBTfhyphenhyphens_tUArAC2ZO9TM0HZmfrCgoITxjg0u_Y7CMJ7gJG_66WiXp2dnl9up_NctRa4ZGqRaywqhv6it4iUZU3zv3za-lYrvMV4FoW1OCJatHa85yQyWpTHjG1wc/s674/New%20GTN%20item%20purchase%20window.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Item purchase window for the new Galactic Trade Network" border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="674" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP2X_IFDFltWKPQgbsLWAD4mbzrWqXFoTpYbn06ySCFa0VORP2viKT4i4cNOFal3hyBTfhyphenhyphens_tUArAC2ZO9TM0HZmfrCgoITxjg0u_Y7CMJ7gJG_66WiXp2dnl9up_NctRa4ZGqRaywqhv6it4iUZU3zv3za-lYrvMV4FoW1OCJatHa85yQyWpTHjG1wc/w400-h356/New%20GTN%20item%20purchase%20window.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <b>Pros:</b><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>We get to see information on what price an item has been selling for historically, both in the long and short term. This makes it easier to judge demand and whether something is priced fairly.<br /></li><li>There are new buttons to see the most recent listings, popular searches, or a small selection of favourite searches, for items you like to look up regularly.</li><li>Listings can now be set up to last for up to seven days (up from three).</li><li>There is now only one search result per item, and you simply enter the quantity you want to buy (without having to scroll through pages of one item each or anything like that). <br /></li><li>Filters have been cleaned up, with some outdated categories removed and new ones added (I think?) <br /></li><li>Seller names are no longer shown, which makes it harder to launder money or get up to other shady business.</li><li>Whenever you want to purchase something, it will only ever take the cheapest listing(s). This prevents people from buying overpriced items by accident or getting scammed by intentionally confusing listings.</li><li>Whenever you buy something, you can pick it up right there from the GTN; you no longer need to go to a mailbox.</li></ul><p><b>Cons:</b></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The listing fee is no longer refunded once a listing sells or expires. This can result in a loss when low-priced items fail to sell repeatedly.<br /></li><li>Crafted items with an augmentation slot on them now have that slot removed when put up for sale.</li><li>Most random gear drops from the open world can no longer be listed on the GTN.</li><li><strike>When searching for crafting schematics, ones you already know are no longer greyed out.</strike> <i>Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/medullah">Medullah</a> for pointing out that this one was actually fixed between PTS and go-live.</i><br /></li><li>With every purchase defaulting to the cheapest listing and seller names no longer visible, you can't intentionally purchase from a seller you like, or message someone to make them an alternative offer.</li><li>If you sell something or a listing expires, you get mail about it but also have to go to the GTN to actually pick up the goods; you no longer get them delivered to your mailbox.<br /></li><li>This is probably a bug that might get fixed, but sometimes when you've performed a search and want to perform another immediately afterwards, you have to hit enter/the search button twice before the results update to the new search.<br /></li></ul><p>You can see that the number of pros and cons is almost equal, though of course not every item on either list is of equal importance. Having to hit enter a second time right now is not a big deal, while the new pricing history is a godsend for potential sellers.</p><p>Still, overall I would have expected more. For example, in the aforementioned WoW auction house revamp, they made it so that when you put something up for sale, it immediately shows you the current listings with their prices, which is information you'll definitely want so you know what price to set for your own listing. On the new GTN however, you still need to go to the search tab and perform a search first as if you were looking to buy, and in fact there is now an extra click required to see the full range of existing prices for that item.</p><p>Also, some features are double-edged swords... I was initially pleased to be able to list items for seven days for example, but it turns out that the fee for this is higher per day than for the other options, and with the new system encouraging undercutting like never before (since you literally <i>can't</i> buy anything but the cheapest item), leaving a listing up for that long is likely to just end up being a waste of credits as you're likely to be undercut pretty quickly.<br /></p><p>That said, I'm hopeful that the answer to the question of "why such a major revamp for so little gain" is that there is more to come. I'm not a developer, but I know from my interactions with devs at work that sometimes when you want to update something, it's actually easier to code everything new from scratch than to untangle decades-old spaghetti code written by someone who left the company years ago. I imagine that SWTOR's GTN could have been in a similar situation, and that it was simply easier for the SWTOR devs to rebuild it before doing anything else than to try and bolt new features onto the existing framework. They do still want to add those buy orders after all...<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-87821788446199161092024-01-06T13:09:00.003+00:002024-01-25T17:46:41.085+00:00Struggling with Credits on Shae Vizla<p>I hit level 80 with my first character on <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-apac-region-server-launching-today.html">Shae Vizla</a> shortly before the new year. It's still kind of funny to me that I'm effectively a "warrior main" over there right now, strictly because "complete missions as a Jedi knight or Sith warrior" was a seasons objective during the server's launch week.</p><p>Story-wise, she's only just finished chapter two of her class story, but that's still better than I usually do with story progress before getting distracted by other activities. <br /></p><p>Since I'm currently aiming to do more on this server than just seasons objectives, I thought I'd jump onto the gear treadmill. It was a strange experience to actually run out of Conquest commendations while picking up gear, and I was kind of taken aback when seeing that even buying what I tend to think of the "cheap starter gear set" costs about ~250k credits, with prices increasing for item level upgrades. On any other server, I'd consider that chump change, but on Shae Vizla, credits remain precious. I briefly felt inspired to do a round of Dromund Kaas heroics solely for the purpose of making money but was quickly reminded of why that kind of gameplay bores me.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTRVcUX58zxnyTXH75pqywako0ylVNk9PG8aor-yD01ydqaTxBtih5Ogdy1TB3zXajECES6k7M2j8Dl8JR0_pn91JOyTw5o5zFfe8CGu6mrILuHng5u2pDRqTjtwqf7kS26pVSAihUnsNMYA_FJY5o6U32SEIwvBnyQbIHApv3o8BIYc-29q786m6Zuvo/s1419/Apacella%20seething%20next%20to%20the%20Conquest%20vendors.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="My Sith warrior Apacella seething next to the Conquest gear vendors on the fleet" border="0" data-original-height="872" data-original-width="1419" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTRVcUX58zxnyTXH75pqywako0ylVNk9PG8aor-yD01ydqaTxBtih5Ogdy1TB3zXajECES6k7M2j8Dl8JR0_pn91JOyTw5o5zFfe8CGu6mrILuHng5u2pDRqTjtwqf7kS26pVSAihUnsNMYA_FJY5o6U32SEIwvBnyQbIHApv3o8BIYc-29q786m6Zuvo/w400-h246/Apacella%20seething%20next%20to%20the%20Conquest%20vendors.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>The economic situation in general is really interesting to me though. SWTOR has had <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/09/in-money.html">issues with inflation</a> for a while (even if I personally didn't think it was <i>as much</i> of a problem as some people made it out to be), but the devs have taken measures to combat it in the past year that have actually <a href="https://theoldrepublicerafanblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/16/the-state-of-swtors-economy/">been really effective</a>. My personal measuring stick for this have been the blue flagship encryptions, which I remember selling for about 200-300k credits a pop once upon a time when Conquest was still relatively new. At the peak of inflation, they were going for more than <i>ten million</i> a piece, but now they are down to about one million again - on my home server Darth Malgus, that is. On Shae Vizla they sell for 15-30k each right now (not that I've been selling mine; they've been going towards the guild bank).</p><p>While levelling, I generally felt that I was in a good place in terms of credits. There were some small expenses like quick travel or locking in an outfit in the outfit designer, but none of this was too bad (outfit designer costs scale with level and are cheap when you're a lowbie). However, now that I've hit max level, I feel like there are credit sinks left and right that make it challenging to save up for anything.</p><p>This is an interesting contrast to when the game launched. I found that in <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2012/03/three-month-review.html">this post from March 2012</a>, I noted that credits had been a bit of a struggle while levelling up, as paying for new skill ranks at the trainer was expensive, but once I hit max level, there wasn't really a lot to spend money on, even as a round of Belsavis dailies netted me 100k credits each time. (Though it's interesting to see how that number felt like a lot to me back then. Even on Shae Vizla, a million credits doesn't feel like a lot to have right now, at least not to me.)</p><p>Nowadays you only have small expenses while levelling, but then you hit max level and:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Building outfits becomes expensive, costing 100k+ credits for a full outfit at level 80. Not to mention the cost of purchasing dyes for example.</li><li>As mentioned above, the gear vendors charge considerable fees for every piece of gear you buy or upgrade.</li><li>Unlocking legacy perks is another credit sink running in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. While the legacy system was added very early in the game, it wasn't there yet at launch when I started. </li><li>Death can also get expensive. On my fully-kitted out Commando on Darth Malgus, one death costs 30k+ credits, which doesn't even register with me over there, but on Shae Vizla you may find that kind of cost noticeable. In fact, I found it interesting that there are <a href="https://forums.swtor.com/topic/932015-shae-vizla-launch-updates/?do=findComment&comment=9794821">posts on the forums</a> complaining that progression raiding on SV isn't really viable right now because wiping repeatedly incurs a high cost that requires way too much grinding to compensate for. I'm not really in a position to comment on the validity of that complaint, but it's noteworthy to me that this is even a talking point.</li></ul><p>I was somewhat reminded of something that happened in my guild on Darth Malgus not too long ago, when someone returned to the game after a long absence, made their way to the level cap, and then fizzled out with a bit of a rant about how they found the endgame to be grindy and boring. I responded to them at the time that the game could indeed be like that if you were hell-bent on playing only a single character, but that <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/05/swtors-endgame-is-alts-not-gear.html">it's designed around the idea of making you play alts</a>, which immediately alleviates a lot of those issues.</p><p>I think I basically need to heed my own advice from back then and consider that even if I do want to gear up a bit on Shae Vizla, there's no need to rush it, and that I should keep working on my alts to strengthen my legacy as a whole. My wealth should automatically increase over time that way, without the need to start grinding for cash.</p><p>Either way, it's another interesting aspect of the "fresh start experience". When I started playing on Leviathan and Tulak Hord in Galactic Season 2 and ran into issues with needing credits to finance buying out a few levels on the seasons track, I could <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-season-for-everything.html">"cheat" by buying a dye from the Cartel Market</a> and selling it on the GTN for a billion credits, which meant that I was immediately set for life in terms of any normal gameplay expenses. On Shae Vizla there are no shortcuts like that (at least as of now).<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-41408835791646968542024-01-03T07:39:00.003+00:002024-01-25T17:43:25.110+00:00Is SWTOR Unusually Bottom-Heavy?<p>One feature of the 7.4 patch that wasn't officially announced but got noticed by players on the PTS was a number of <a href="https://todayintor.com/2023/10/30/swtor-74-graphical-update/">small graphical updates to low-level content</a>, the most striking of which was the retexturing of Korriban. I had to take comparison screenshots for myself when I first heard about it, which you can find below.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkPqLMqbdqaItsBX8D0NSyU2DcSiOVSkTCni7xNHQaQ6Rz9L0INitxAHUMHE-huJ0gCsQXTpK6slD2N6cQqXrQZdv2lPNcc3G75e46UNdRnDmB-M5okDOdoW_66nQ5URdPaRTWyexphApaUYWmlZNFk-CzOm2Bz5upVPBZHXGCULCfwlbqd6XdkeSBlc/s1920/Old%20Korriban%20textures.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A Sith standing on Korriban during patch 7.3. The environment looks very orange and sandy." border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkPqLMqbdqaItsBX8D0NSyU2DcSiOVSkTCni7xNHQaQ6Rz9L0INitxAHUMHE-huJ0gCsQXTpK6slD2N6cQqXrQZdv2lPNcc3G75e46UNdRnDmB-M5okDOdoW_66nQ5URdPaRTWyexphApaUYWmlZNFk-CzOm2Bz5upVPBZHXGCULCfwlbqd6XdkeSBlc/w400-h225/Old%20Korriban%20textures.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqCMgp7X6AEhU49FgN-Pz9DBpqp3x_yHIc9dBU-YozSxjmhW0bun75nSkvMfpLoUYWGpVDDuTHLnX68UYMu4KfIZUWg4yG-MUQKjnfepNUa2exs0q_NxIPWGmfD7c97olFHYjp67_RLYy45TYmdXWMiwKB8SFy8An1mIlDJ7Sg2oUjw3p65b7JCyKqlsM/s1920/Updated%20Korriban%20textures%20on%20PTS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A Sith standing on Korriban on the patch 7.4 PTS. Increased texture detail makes the environment look more grainy and brown." border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqCMgp7X6AEhU49FgN-Pz9DBpqp3x_yHIc9dBU-YozSxjmhW0bun75nSkvMfpLoUYWGpVDDuTHLnX68UYMu4KfIZUWg4yG-MUQKjnfepNUa2exs0q_NxIPWGmfD7c97olFHYjp67_RLYy45TYmdXWMiwKB8SFy8An1mIlDJ7Sg2oUjw3p65b7JCyKqlsM/w400-h225/Updated%20Korriban%20textures%20on%20PTS.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I find it quite interesting how the devs continue to subtly improve and tweak the starter planets and other early levelling content (such as when the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkYQV3AjpxE">Black Talon</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m277M77JJr4">Esseles</a> received improved cut scenes a couple of years ago). It's not unusual for older MMOs to drastically revamp their starting experience if they feel that it has become outdated, but these smaller tweaks are fascinating to me.</p><p>Another one I encountered personally and that initially confused me was that the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/18ehfer/tythonian_lore_guardian_changed/">optional champion probe droid at the end of the Chamber of Speech heroic on Tython was turned into a gold assault droid</a> that blocks your path now. Why? Who knows, but somebody at Broadsword clearly thought it was a worthwhile change to make.</p><p>At the same time, they have to be very careful with adjustments like that because SWTOR's early game is still incredibly precious to people. The low levels tend to be a particularly enjoyable experience in many MMOs, but I can't think of any others that I know where many players would outright say that the lower-level game is <i>better</i> than the max-level game, which is a sentiment I see people express about SWTOR quite often. Even if you really enjoy the newer stories (like I do), it's hard to deny that the base game with its eight distinct class stories wins in terms of sheer volume of varied content available.<br /></p><p>The other week I saw a reddit thread (which I unfortunately can't find anymore or I would have linked it too) where someone said that they had a "problem" because all their characters tended to fizzle out around Hoth, at which point they'd just start over. At the same time the poster didn't really sound that unhappy about it though, and like they were actually having a good time going through the starter experience over and over again, and there were quite a few commenters who concurred.</p><p>Even among those who actually finish the class story and reach the level cap, I'm always surprised by the number of people I see on reddit (a place that by definition attracts a more <i>engaged</i> audience) who've never even played through any of the later expansions and don't seem particularly bothered by it. I'm sure that players like this exist in other MMOs as well, but games like WoW for example tend to push you towards endgame quite vehemently, so I can't imagine that play style being hugely popular there. With SWTOR though... I really do wonder just how many <i>dedicated</i> players (not just new ones, who obviously start off at the bottom by default) are happily just puttering away in low-level content for months or years on end.<br /></p><p>I can imagine that this must make for a bit of a conundrum for the devs sometimes, to justify the development of new story content at max level when many players don't even go there (which in turn makes it more understandable why many MMOs try hard to push you into it). Then again, I'm pretty sure that there are still quite a few players like me as well, who are always excited to check out new story releases (and subscribe to check them out).<br /></p><p>What's your experience with this? Do you know anyone who just sticks to the base game by choice? Or maybe you yourself prefer to hang out in low-level content?<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-64519925193441942532023-12-30T11:33:00.005+00:002023-12-30T14:46:52.693+00:00Will We Return to Hutta in 7.5?<p>I'm not usually one for doing much speculating about what the future will bring, as I'm quite happy to just let things come at me as they are, but today I'd like to discuss something that I (surprisingly) haven't seen brought up anywhere else at least - that we might end up going back to Hutta in 7.5, and that the devs have actually been hinting at it too, just without saying it outright.<br /></p><p>At the end of <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/12/chains-in-dark-story-review.html">my review of Chains in the Dark</a>, I asked whether anyone knew who the Rodian on the loading screen was, since I hadn't encountered a character like him anywhere in the story. At the time I just wondered whether there was some story variation or side mission that I'd missed, but the subject ended up sparking some interesting conversations on Discord, during which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/jawaface">Jawaface</a> and <a href="https://todayintor.com/">Kal</a> pointed out that there were actually other things on the splash art that hadn't featured in the story, such as the Hutt Palace on the right side of the screen, and the ring structure that surrounds the logo in front of Heta.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mObGl3QnGDX6SKUqu5XcoXYondEiqf5hNs5phjyOUDfUwg6sXia9mmKiql5LpvATX_YCU7lZsyO1zo2InGLESPoVv8uB8VcNoehmPIgTcLLtsJj_aU7S2lZpqO0ZV9081RhpZf95ZfTL7ehH75tj-fs8FZDBzhDOuzlO28VfUo0RNEbChssMo0P0ggk/s1915/7-4%20key%20art%20with%20Rodian%20and%20Hutt%20palace%20circled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1075" data-original-width="1915" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mObGl3QnGDX6SKUqu5XcoXYondEiqf5hNs5phjyOUDfUwg6sXia9mmKiql5LpvATX_YCU7lZsyO1zo2InGLESPoVv8uB8VcNoehmPIgTcLLtsJj_aU7S2lZpqO0ZV9081RhpZf95ZfTL7ehH75tj-fs8FZDBzhDOuzlO28VfUo0RNEbChssMo0P0ggk/w400-h225/7-4%20key%20art%20with%20Rodian%20and%20Hutt%20palace%20circled.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Now, my first thought was that maybe there had once been a plan to have 7.4's story take place on Hutta for Imperial characters, but on second pass that didn't really make sense as - even if that had <i>ever</i> been the plan - it would have had to be scrapped long ago, leaving them with plenty of time to come up with an updated image.<p></p><p>But what if Hutta wasn't something that was scrapped, but rather something that's still to come? <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-livestream-about-74-and-beyond.html">When 7.4 was first announced</a>, I noted that revisiting Ord Mantell matched something Keith had said for the tenth anniversary, that we'd get to "return to where your character’s journey first began so long ago". This has now come true for Republic (tech-using) characters - going to Hutta next would make for a nice mirror experience for Imperials.</p><p>Using the key art to hint at something that hasn't been revealed yet also isn't something that's entirely unheard of for SWTOR. <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2021/11/legacy-of-sith-expansion-to-launch.html">When the Legacy of the Sith loading screen was first revealed for example</a>, we got a lot of information about the different NPCs we'd be interacting with... with the notable exception of a certain green twi'lek in the middle who would later turn out to be Sa'har.</p><p>In the recent past, they've also given us these new loading screens every other patch - not just for expansion releases - meaning that we got one for 7.0 (which continued to be used throughout 7.1) and then we got a new one for 7.2 (which didn't change for 7.3). Based on that, it's not unreasonable to assume that the 7.4 loading screen might stay with us throughout 7.5 - and maybe the artist(s) at Broadsword decided to reflect that in the art this time, while also gently teasing about future content to come.</p><p>Oh, and that ring structure under Heta? <a href="https://www.generic-hero.com/ThisWeekinAurabesh/">Intisar</a> commented in the same Discord conversation that it could be seen in the Darth Nul flashbacks, but I couldn't verify that when taking an alt through that content again the other day. It does however occur to me that it looks kind of like the machine that Master Orr destroys in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbMAdtp7aE">Disorder trailer</a> (god, I love that cinematic so much). Based on what Malgus said, that machine was meant to find Force sensitives and not a weapon, but you know... he could've been lying, or there simply could've been more to it. It would be interesting if Heta's efforts resulted in a similar device.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UuRMd5gWX4ULBuf0XtkUg-y5TvOm08jzLkdUpw6rDVmaF36BFA0x8GYGRfLc6LEpEwVZVx8gHnXvj21slrET2FC14CcBO2Dvr60pt3SeHjsRP6BUFoIWtAq4hQaojaTMMZ8j-zVNBi2jdNTQXpuXrc9JblOBrLYV6NjMKEViZRHa5IRoRAMZ7FNmdoc/s1918/Machine%20in%20Disorder%20trailer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1918" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UuRMd5gWX4ULBuf0XtkUg-y5TvOm08jzLkdUpw6rDVmaF36BFA0x8GYGRfLc6LEpEwVZVx8gHnXvj21slrET2FC14CcBO2Dvr60pt3SeHjsRP6BUFoIWtAq4hQaojaTMMZ8j-zVNBi2jdNTQXpuXrc9JblOBrLYV6NjMKEViZRHa5IRoRAMZ7FNmdoc/w400-h166/Machine%20in%20Disorder%20trailer.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>(As a side note, there's also something in data mining that supports the idea of Hutta coming in 7.5, but I only mention this to say that I'm aware of it. I don't seek out data-mined information since I'm not actively trying to spoil myself, not to mention that it can also lead to disappointment when it makes people expect content that then never actually comes out, which I've seen happen more than once. I think the hints in the art are on a whole other level though.)<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538233114133115363.post-28486374377214565312023-12-27T23:03:00.002+00:002023-12-28T09:05:28.872+00:00Galactic Season 5 in Review<p>I finished my last GS5 achievement on Darth Malgus the week before Christmas, so it's time for my usual review of the season as a whole.</p><p>Let me start off by saying that overall, I had a <i>really</i> good time with Season 5. I will admit though that I'm not sure about the causality here, which is to say that I don't know whether the season was so good that it made me have more fun with the game as a whole, or whether I was already having a good time anyway and therefore also enjoyed the season more.</p><p>I really liked the way they expanded on the seasonal story, but I'm not going to go through all that again because I already wrote <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/10/galactic-season-5-story-review.html">a dedicated post on the subject</a> two months ago.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlBqaGAEShNXzVszmYN53DbRTEo30vB8Hf3AHE8IRdeXfzAfiSDX9zfsurUZ7hGH1oHPfcDvufy1vlPYtNAqyrxaS7pII1C9J0Jfxye-KzMdbbt_svhL_xweGvrBuWtMj353HMiC5Sfr1qI_7i35YDGnLoEiGRGZ9ZL1MaFiYvPoq-HhpbuaHw7w9PtE/s1528/Shintar%20fighting%203V-2L%20on%20Tatooine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="894" data-original-width="1528" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlBqaGAEShNXzVszmYN53DbRTEo30vB8Hf3AHE8IRdeXfzAfiSDX9zfsurUZ7hGH1oHPfcDvufy1vlPYtNAqyrxaS7pII1C9J0Jfxye-KzMdbbt_svhL_xweGvrBuWtMj353HMiC5Sfr1qI_7i35YDGnLoEiGRGZ9ZL1MaFiYvPoq-HhpbuaHw7w9PtE/w400-h234/Shintar%20fighting%203V-2L%20on%20Tatooine.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>I will say though that the omission of a new companion didn't bother me <i>at all</i>. I can tell from the forums that there were people who did miss getting one, and to be honest there were <i>always</i> going to be some - however, only the devs have the metrics to know what the bigger picture looks like in terms of (dis)approval. All I can say is that to me personally, it felt really liberating to not have to deal with all the extra clutter that usually comes with a new seasonal companion, such as special companion gifts, customisations and companion-only weapons. I really appreciated that it made the reward track feel a lot "cleaner".</p><p>The only thing I didn't like were the "Brrazz's Gift" thingamabobs, which felt useless to me as I always earn more of the seasonal currency than I "need" to max out my rep each week anyway, just from doing the objectives, so I never felt the need to specifically farm them and boost the drop rate. I'm also not sure the buff was even working correctly, as I heard people complaining about it repeatedly and the one time I made a point of popping one of the buffs before an operation just to see how it worked, not a single dark spore dropped during the entire run. Make of that what you will.</p><p>I really liked the inclusion of a few more "high-quality" rewards, such as the white/white dye and the loth kitten pet, but more than anything else, this was the season of stronghold decorations for me. I went back and compared the reward tracks for Seasons 4 and 5, and unless I miscounted, Season 4 gave more random deco packs, but Season 5 gave more decos overall since it included more unique, season-specific ones.</p><p>Either way, I'm usually not much of a stronghold decorator - and I'm still not <i>really</i>, but at one point during the season while I was playing on one of the other servers, I was doing something in my stronghold when it suddenly hit me that I had a dozen of a particularly nice looking couch or something like that, and it gave me pause because I always claim free decos without looking too closely at what they even are. It was only then that it hit me that I'd claimed some very interesting items across different servers throughout the previous seasons, and for the first time I started to actually invest a bit into decorating my strongholds there. My efforts still wouldn't impress anyone who's actually deeply <i>into</i> that aspect of the game, but for me it was actually kind of surprising and a big step. I guess the devs weren't too badly off either as I then ended up buying a few more decos on the other servers with Cartel coins as well.</p><p>I also liked most of the other rewards this season, such as the mounts, dyes and armour sets, and am actually using some of them - which is saying something when most of these types of rewards tend to just get claimed and thrown into the cargo bay/collections with barely a second look. Even as someone who mainly plays Republic side, I liked the strong Imperial theme. As a guildie commented, that theme is another thing we probably wouldn't have gotten if the season had included a companion, because due to the nature of such a companion having to be suitable for both factions, you could never really have one that's strongly entrenched on one side or the other. However, having an Imperial <i>villain</i> instead and theming the rewards around <i>that</i> worked just fine, and I'd love it if they did a similar thing with a Republic focus in a future season.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXMGcRcnE4XQIoOlaOKr11NcoIgpTEfGKgJiuEQcksP9DSfUtTr0nc8axX7zJeK-yKhp5Oyt60pfTZQWAbeaZc_mnuAZCm_M7f_WxQHhSz2axGy94zvA50SXGg8GvomNX6Ys_SjO4at3LTDkdllwQI9n71z6ykFCxuQHcwrI6Odqt3CI4HqXiV4fnQKqw/s1057/Shintar%20with%20Loth%20kittens.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="1057" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXMGcRcnE4XQIoOlaOKr11NcoIgpTEfGKgJiuEQcksP9DSfUtTr0nc8axX7zJeK-yKhp5Oyt60pfTZQWAbeaZc_mnuAZCm_M7f_WxQHhSz2axGy94zvA50SXGg8GvomNX6Ys_SjO4at3LTDkdllwQI9n71z6ykFCxuQHcwrI6Odqt3CI4HqXiV4fnQKqw/w400-h216/Shintar%20with%20Loth%20kittens.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>As for objectives - again, first of all, I appreciate that the devs tried to vary things a bit this season with some changes. I was grateful for the addition of the operations objective, but <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/09/notes-about-galactic-season-5-week-2.html">as I wrote previously</a>, their first implementation of the idea was just waaay too time consuming. As the season went on, we also learned that when the ops objective reappeared, it always asked for the exact same operations, which was kind of sucky. I think in future they should trim this down to requiring no more than two story modes or one vet mode operation, and it also shouldn't require the same one(s) every time.</p><p>I have to admit the changes to the flashpoint objectives that I also discussed in the post linked in the previous paragraph started to wear on me a bit after a while, because it meant running pretty much double the number of flashpoints compared to previous seasons, and with me doing this across multiple servers... it was just too much. I like flashpoints, but some of them can also be quite time-consuming and it just got a bit tiresome, especially as there seemed to be a flashpoint objective pretty much every week. I could've just done something else or not done that many objectives to begin with I guess, but especially on the secondary servers my options are sometimes limited in terms of what I have access to in terms of story progression, queue pops or group content in general.</p><p>I think the secondary servers were perhaps my biggest challenge this season in the sense of reining myself in to not overdo it and spoil my own fun. This isn't a new thing and <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2022/10/finding-my-season-3-groove.html">I've talked about it before</a>, but I think the addition of an eleventh weekly objective to choose from, even if the total you could do was still seven, meant that I often found myself capable of doing <i>exactly</i> seven objectives on the other servers... and so I did them, even if that wasn't necessarily super fun. In a way it was easier when my choices were more obviously limited, because now that I often <i>can</i> complete the maximum number of objectives, it takes an extra bit of willpower to not always push myself into that.<br /></p><p>Oh, and I did almost no chapter objectives this season because <a href="https://swtorcommando.blogspot.com/2023/05/yet-another-smuggler-fights-eternal.html">unlike in Season 4</a>, they were all over the place in terms of story order. I think I did chapters one to three at one point as I pushed a couple more alts into KotFE, but then the objectives jumped all over the storyline again and since I saw no rhyme or reason to it I decided to focus on other objectives instead.</p><p>Still, all in all I thought this was an excellent season and I'm looking forward to seeing what the devs have planned for the next one. I'm kind of hoping they go "companion-less" at least one more time as I'd like to see what else they can come up with when not tied down by the seasonal companion concept.<br /></p>Shintarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.com2