A Farewell to Pug Cut Scenes

I said in my post about the dev live stream last month that the most impactful announcement to me was that patch 7.1.1 was going to remove all cut scenes and group conversations from group finder flashpoints. While this was widely welcomed, I'm personally not convinced that it's the right decision for the devs to give in to the worst impulses of people who are always in a hurry, but we'll see how things play out. The patch went live this week, and either way it's done for now.

I just wanted to pay my own little tribute to all these cut scenes that I will no longer get to see, because I used to love taking screenshots of those group moments in pugs, so I dug through my screenshot folder archive and compiled some for this post. 

I was kind of surprised that the oldest screenshot of this kind I could find was the above scene from Battle of Ilum from 2016, but then I remembered that I was mostly unable to take screenshots during cut scenes for the game's first two years (not sure they ever fixed that bug) and yeah, I guess that checks out. You can tell that it's an older screenshot because everyone's outfits are relatively old school, with the Jedi in Thexan's robes being the most "modern" looking.

This shot on the other hand was from 2020, when I documented levelling a character purely through flashpoints for the second time and found that Battle of Ilum was a surprisingly common one to get randomly (if you excluded Hammer Station like I did). Gotta love the Twi'lek barely covering her privates on the ice planet. (No, I don't. I mostly dislike those kinds of outfits and in the cut scenes I found them quite immersion-breaking to be honest.)

The flashpoint I loved the most for group cut scenes was, ironically, one that only had a single one: Czerka Corporate Labs. However, it does have this brief moment at the end where your group enters the final boss room in this really cinematic looking way and I always loved capturing that one. I'm not kidding, I have so many shots of this scene. Here, have some more:

If you want to play a little game, you can try to pick out which character is mine in each shot! Or just generally let me know which character out of all the ones pictured you think looks the best. Or which group looks the most cohesive as a team. There are just so many things to ogle.

I almost forgot that Czerka Core Meltdown has a similar cut scene because it just doesn't work nearly as well. The above screenshot is cropped to focus more on the characters, because the camera is quite zoomed out if you look at the whole screen.

After Corporate Labs, I remember I kind of waited for Bioware to recreate that group cut scene magic in any of the flashpoints that followed but they never quite got there. The above shot from the end of Battle of Rishi is about as close as it got, and that, too required some cropping/zooming in.

A shot from Korriban Incursion. "Everyone with their weapons drawn" is another classic in terms of moments that looked great in screenshots.

Ah, Directive 7, one of the most interesting side stories from the base game that was never ever mentioned again anywhere. And another flashpoint with lots of little cut scenes (and even more trash mobs) that many hated for taking too long. But again, I quite enjoyed seeing my pug groups look cool and kick ass while facing off against Mentor.

Let's finish up with another screenshot from Battle of Ilum that stands for something else I'll miss: the dark side/light side choices. The image doesn't actually show the choice, but I saved it under the name "light side pug" - so the fact that I had ended up in a group of all light side characters on Imperial side stood out to me. I loved it when I found my people! And when someone disagreed about what the "right" choice was in a certain scenario, there was usually some friendly banter to be had. No more.

(Just as a disclaimer so nobody gets the wrong idea: I didn't "force" any of these pugs to wait for me while I was watching cut scenes. My attitude was always to skip if people wanted to skip, and watch if people wanted to watch, but you could easily get some great shots of certain moments even while space-barring through most of the conversation.)

Battle of Ilum really IS Hammer Station version 2

I am now genuinely convinced that Battle of Ilum is a sort of Hammer Station for more confident players. I haven't timed it, but I'm pretty sure that when everything goes smoothly and you skip as much trash as possible, you can probably finish it even more quickly than Hammer Station. There is a bigger risk of something going wrong though, which I assume is enough to put off a large portion of the audience that isn't interested in anything other than a guaranteed fast and easy run.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 66-67

This run was the one that made me reconsider having Battle of Ilum in my rotation as it became clear that it seemed to pop a lot more often than any of the other 50+ flashpoints. It's not quite as bad as Hammer Station, but still...

This run also put me into a philosophical mood after the two Sentinels and the dps Sage who made up the rest of the group hesitantly started trying to drive past the first pull... on the wrong side. It gave me the impression that they'd all been here before, but probably without fully taking in what was happening, just tagging along behind someone else's lead.

So I felt compelled to take over... and guided them through all the stealthy shortcuts I remembered. I'm becoming the very sort of person that always annoys me by skipping everything! To be fair, I wouldn't have minded if anyone had shown any indication or desire to kill more mobs, doing the bonuses or whatever, but finding myself in a leadership position with three innocent pugs looking up at me I took the easy way out. /me hangs head in shame.

When you ding at just the right time... (my health was in trouble before the boss died)

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 67-67

With Ilum removed from my selection, I ended up on Tython once again. By the way, in case you're wondering about my criteria for which boxes to tick now beyond "not Hammer Station", I'm mostly going for ones where I don't have the "run this 25 times on veteran mode" achievement yet and that I rarely get to run on veteran mode since they are fairly high level already and I often find myself going straight for master mode.

Once again I ended up with three level 75s looking for leadership - unfortunately for them, I'm really bad at remembering the skips for Assault on Tython despite of having run it a fair number of times, so we ran around pretty inefficiently, fighting more mobs than required (gasp).

One guy suddenly went AFK without a word, and since he hadn't returned by the time we were getting close to the first boss, someone initiated a vote kick, which seemed fair enough to me at that point - I just wish they hadn't done it just as I initiated a big pull, as this meant that the other two were now busy with vote-kicking over killing mobs (priorities, people) and we almost wiped. One guy (not me) barely survived with a sliver of health.

The replacement we got was a Shadow tank who did know all the skips and quickly took over, though it was kind of funny to me how he immediately ran up to the side where people often climb some boxes to skip a trash pull, while we had already killed said pull and were in fact standing in its usual location, right in front of the boss.

Also, later on there was this bit where we climbed over a rock to skip - I think - a group of mobs that spawns as you run past, but the healer in the group just couldn't get up. Once again I stood there watching him flail helplessly against the rock, thinking about how much quicker it would have been to just deal with the mob spawn. The tank and other dps decided to simply run ahead and abandon the healer. I stayed with him and eventually just directed him back down to the regular path, where no mobs spawned anyway (ahaha). Oh pugs.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 67-68

Starting the new in-game week with another early morning, fully randomised run, I was neither surprised nor unhappy to be given a Hammer Station quickie. I was a little surprised that we couldn't take the elevator shortcut for once, as it seems quite rare not to have a slicer in the group these days.

When we reached the turrets by the bridge, the Scoundrel in our party actually moved us past them and across the bridge using Smuggle, the temporary group stealth ability, which did earn my respect because it's not something I see used well very often.

By the end of the run I realised that Nautalie's scavenging had bumped up against the 600 skill cap and sent her to train Onslaught-level scavenging on the fleet. Fortunately she had earned enough money while levelling to be able to afford it without having to draw from the legacy bank.

Legacy of the Rakata
I levelled: 68-69

Limiting myself to nine flashpoints once again, I nevertheless got an instant pop once more and ended up in Legacy of the Rakata, one Nautalie hadn't done yet. Nice!

During the intro cut scene, someone hit escape and then started running off. I said that you couldn't skip a cut scene by aborting it and he said people should be hitting space bar then. Another person said that their UI had been bugging out and that was why they hadn't been able to skip. The second time around everyone dutifully space-barred through the whole thing.

"Dude, why did you hit escape? That's not helping us go any faster."

Legacy of the Rakata is one of those flashpoints that I've done comparatively rarely in pugs, so observing our self-appointed leader guide us along various trash-skipping lines was educational. I can never remember the tricks for this flashpoint though, because my brain just files them under "climb up this rock by that one group of Rakata" and the pulls in the first half of the instance all look the same to me.

During several of the boss fights I found myself thinking that all the bosses in this flashpoint have way too much health on veteran mode. The mechanics aren't hard; it just takes half an eternity to kill them - or maybe our dps was just low, though we had two level 75 damage dealers in full 306 gear.

We also had someone who was nominally a healer but didn't seem to do much healing, so that we ultimately always relied on the kolto stations on the boss fights.

At one point I noticed that two people in the group had the same legacy name (Stormrider or something like that), so I asked whether they were related. They didn't humour me with an answer.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 69-69

Well, in this one there was no doubt that someone wanted to skip as much as possible, as the dps Vanguard set off like a bat out of hell to lead the way past as many things as possible, including the first boss. As we once again also had a second Shadow in the group, we were able to do the extra skips as well.

I do wonder if the second Shadow, who was a tank, didn't like skipping the bosses though, because on the next optional boss he ran right in and pulled before anyone had a chance to try and run past it. It's like the question whether to pull something or not is decided in a weird kind of race to be the first one to either pull or run past certain mobs and then the rest of the group is compelled to follow along with that decision.

Unsurprisingly, XP was once again thin on the ground, and I only gained three bars or so.

I'm getting a lot of variations of this shot.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 69-70

Another quick run with a second Shadow in the group. I noticed that this one, being level 75, also had the Tactical that allows you to Mind Maze two targets at the same time, which I think is pretty neat for runs like these.

When it looked like people were going to skip Pork Pie Gark the Indomitable yet again I got a bit too close and pulled him. I swear, it really was an accident; I think I was just too keen. Seriously though, my achievement counter for that one is so behind all the other bosses.

We actually had a wipe on Krel Thak - I'm still not entirely sure what happened, one moment everything seemed fine and the next everyone but me just exploded. Proximity probe or something? I vanished out and ran back to re-unite with the group as they were coming back in. They also pulled the two droid mini-bosses which we had initially walked past, presumably also by accident.

With his two cronies dead, it now would have been possible to simply walk past Krel Thak if we had wanted to and I did find myself wondering, but we did actually go ahead and kill him after all.

In the end our lone dark sider once again won the roll and executed Talsa-ko - this time it was a Jedi doing it no less!

Having hit level 70, Nautalie has now unlocked the remaining four veteran flashpoints and only has five more levels to go. I'll try to use those to actually target the flashpoints I haven't done yet or ones I still need for a story quest. Then it'll be time for a reckoning!

Harder Better Stronger?

When I first tried this whole flashpoint levelling thing four years ago, it took my Mercenary one day and a bit less than nine hours of /played time to hit the then-level cap of 65. My newest Shadow has now passed this milestone, though with this being 2020, she has another ten levels left to go of course.

Still, I was curious how my levelling speed so far would compare, considering that things had felt considerably slower to me this time around... so I did a /played after hitting level 65, and was shocked to find that despite of the levelling feeling slower to me, Nautalie had actually hit 65 in seven hours less (or 20% faster) than it took my Merc back in the day. I'm curious what my final stats at the end of this whole experiment will look like.

In the meantime...

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-63

Having trimmed down my list of desirable targets to only five flashpoints for the time being, I still got an almost instant pop, this time for Assault on Tython. I got all excited because this actually happened to be the instance I needed to continue the Forged Alliances storyline.

However, after I walked up to the first pull in stealth, one guy ran away, apparently expecting me to handle it stealthily or something? I said that I didn't know how to do that here, and me and the two others killed it the old-fashioned way, after which the first guy just left without a word.

We queued for a replacement and walked up to the next pull, but then another player left without saying anything. Me and the one remaining person eventually realised that this had bugged the group finder (I had this happen before when someone leaves while the system's already trying to replace a previous quitter). Whenever I was group leader it claimed that we were already in the queue (but with no option to leave), and with the other person as leader it said that we were not in the queue and they weren't able to queue us either. Somewhat disappointed, we both left. I had to relog entirely before my group finder unbugged and I was able to queue again.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-64

As it happened I got put right back into Assault on Tython though, just with three different people this time. I was a bit worried when someone died on the very first pull, considering that the previous group has fallen apart over less (just slowness with the pulls as far as I could tell?), but the defeated person simply dusted themselves off and got back up, and after that everything proceeded normally and we finished the flashpoint just fine.

Czerka Corporate Labs
I levelled: 64-64

This run featured a healer, a female Miraluka Guardian in a bikini, and a Nautolan Sentinel. I don't know why I still get so excited every time I see another Nautolan. I guess with them being the newest species, not free for everyone and quite alien-looking, I still view them as somewhat rare. Sadly my fellow squidhead left the group after only a few pulls and without ever having said a word.

That aside, the run was perfectly smooth once again, and I was pleased to once again complete the weekly mission to run five veteran flashpoints. It may sound silly, but I think that having unlocked that quest has also helped to motivate me somewhat, because having that extra incentive of wanting to complete it each week really works for me.

Unfortunately the extra XP wasn't enough to actually get Nautalie to level up after this run.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 64-65

Once again I started a new week with a stab at the full random selection, and once again I didn't actually mind ending up in Hammer Station for this particular run as I was playing early in the morning before work and only had limited time to spare anyway. I got grouped with three competent level 75 damage dealers and everything went very smoothly.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 65-65

That evening I decided to queue for ten selected flashpoints and got Battle of Ilum again. Once again we had a total of three stealthers and killed almost nothing, which made for a very fast run but also gave me very little XP (and no level-up).

An evil Gunslinger called Facey McFaceshot or something lived up to her name and shot Talsa-ko in the face at the end, which was shocking as it almost never happens.

Directive 7
I levelled: 65-66

The first thing I noticed about this run was that it had two Togruta in it, which is not something I see often. We had a tank and three dps, ranging from levels 53 to 75, but only one 75 and she wasn't geared.

We started off by having a near-wipe on the very first trash pull, with only one person surviving and just finishing off the last mob before they would have died too. Then our tank declared that she wasn't really a tank. Not that it matters in vet mode, but it was still good to know. This declaration and the near-wipe struck me as one of those inflection points where the impatient usually leave, but in this group nobody seemed particularly fazed by anything that had happened.

That was a good thing - however, what was less good was the general level of fail we displayed as we continued. I didn't even think about bonuses this time around, because it was obvious that it was going to be enough of a challenge to get this group through the flashpoint as it was, what with people focusing on the single gold mob in each pull while a whole pack of weak ones was shooting them and similar shenanigans.

We did the most common bits of trash skipping, and there is this one section where you run/ride along a pipe where I've seen people get stuck in the terrain before, so of course that happened to someone in this group as well. This didn't prevent another person from pulling a big group of trash while we were a man down though, resulting in a wipe. Then while we were running back, another person got stuck on the same pipe!

I don't know if they did a /stuck or died from aggro, but either way they pulled another group of mobs that then came running for the rest of us after that person had died. Fortunately we managed to dispatch them without another wipe.

It's worth noting though that we wasted so much time on people getting stuck and wiping for the sake of skipping one trash pull, we probably could have killed every single mob in the instance up to that point in the same amount of time. I couldn't make this sort of stuff up if I tried.

When people made a beeline for the infamous tents I commented to Mr Commando "I wonder how we're going to fail on this one" and someone did indeed fall off.

We continued to bumble our way through the various boss fights. On the assassin droids I was the only one to switch targets as the shields rotated. On the Replicator only me and the Sage killed adds, while the other two kept hitting the boss throughout his immunity for the entire fight. On Bulwark it was once again down to just me and the Sage to kill adds as they spawned - one of them nearly got a repair off too.

On Mentor himself I actually did see one of the overheated cores get repaired before we could blow it up, something I hadn't seen happen in literal years. But eventually he died and we were done, after what had felt like an eternity to me but had apparently only been forty minutes or so. But hey, at least I could go and tell Director Rigel that we'd saved the galaxy from the droid apocalypse.

Finding My Fun

I won't lie: For a while there, I wasn't having the best of times with this whole flashpoint levelling thing. I'm not someone to keep engaging in in-game activities that I don't enjoy, but after my initial enthusiasm had worn off, I only really kept going because of my interest in the project as a whole, with the moment-to-moment experience of being put into Hammer Station over and over again not being the height of fun to me.

This has changed dramatically since I unlocked more flashpoints and decided to take charge of my little Shadow's fate by simply unticking all the ones that I didn't want to deal with anymore.

Korriban Incursion
I levelled: 58-58

While I was pleased to see this flashpoint pop, especially as I also had the Forged Alliances story quest that required me to run it, this was the first run Nautalie completed that didn't level her up even once, and it wasn't a close thing either. I suppose it didn't help that I'd run out of restedness for the first time in a while, but still. I suspect those last 17 levels are going to feel quite long.

Funnily enough the group composition was the exact same one as in the Battle of Ilum from the day before: a Vanguard tank and three Shadows. Why is it that everyone always complains when Mandos/Mercs are even a little bit "flavour of the month" but one of the Jedi or Sith classes filling 75% of all group finder slots barely raises an eyebrow? People are hugely biased in favour of Force users I say.

Anyway, with three stealthers we did a whole bunch of trash skipping again, though Korriban Incursion doesn't really have that much optional trash to begin with. On the bit with the four overseers, I figured that since we were doing well we could split up to get things done faster, but was then surprised to find - after soloing two of them - that the rest of the group had stuck together and only just killed the third one with the three of them. (Gosh, I'm so awesome etc.)

On the last boss I saw Nautalie's first ever shared endgame drop, a tactical item for Vanguard tanks. One of my eyes may have twitched a little when I saw one of the other Shadows roll need on it, but fortunately the Vanguard won the roll anyway.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 58-59

This was my third Battle of Ilum in four runs... could this be the level 50+ version of Hammer Station? Though as commenter Diana pointed out in a comment on my last post in this series, pops can also be driven by Conquest events, and it was Relics of the Gree that week, which included running BoI as one of its objectives.

Our group composition consisted once again of three Jedi damage dealers and a Vanguard tank, though one of the dps was a Sentinel this time. Also, I recognised the Vanguard's name from my last run... yay for same-server group finders!

At the very beginning, one of the dps tried to climb out of the trench instead of taking the speeder and died. I asked if it was their first time and they said no, they'd only confused the flashpoint for False Emperor. I'm not sure how that explained anything...

We did a moderate amount of trash skipping again (though also again, not as much as we could have done with two stealthers) and killed all the bosses. Also, someone put a star marker over my head for some reason.

Completing the flashpoint also completed Nautalie's very first Conquest, what with BoI having been an objective that week.

Red Reaper
I levelled: 59-60

Another one Nautalie hadn't done before! Red Reaper is one of those flashpoints that can be super smooth and fast, especially if you have a stealther, but there is also lots of potential for things to go wrong.

There was no better demonstration of this duality than this all-dps pug, where a clearly experienced level 75 Gunslinger took the lead and tried to coax us past trash we could skip and made sure to round up otherwise annoying pulls in the most efficient manner, while our level 75 Guardian was the very incarnation of a bumbling oaf, stumbling right into every mob the rest of the group had carefully avoided.

To her credit, the Gunslinger didn't have a go at him beyond a single "oh, come on!" in party chat, but at some point she seemed to make the decision to simply not care about our clumsy laggard anymore, so when the Guardian got so confused that he got himself stuck behind some crates she and the third group member, a level 40 Commando, simply moved on.

I felt bad for the guy though, and after he'd died by aggroing yet another bunch of mobs, I revived him and slowly tried to guide him back to the others. I thought we were back in business once we reached the Eradicator droid, but once again the Guardian managed to run off and pull the nearby turrets instead. We ended up fighting them with the two of us while the other two actually killed the boss. At that point the Gunslinger decided that she'd had enough and left.

We queued for a replacement and got another, slightly lower-level Gunslinger with whom we finished the rest of the flashpoint just fine, even if the last boss took a while as several people didn't seem to know the mechanics, meaning that it took some time to get Darth Ikoral to zap his chosen Sith.

Depths of Manaan
I levelled: 60-61

At the start of a new (in-game) week, I re-ticked everything for that random bonus, braced myself for Hammer Station... and got another flashpoint I hadn't done yet, Depths of Manaan - yay! I was grouped with three level 75s, two of them dps, one a tank. All of us were melee Jedi.

They were quiet except for a brief "hi" at the start of the run, but everything went very smoothly, with people executing tactics correctly, clicking kolto stations when needed and so on. Happy days!

False Emperor
I levelled: 61-62

Not wanting to push my luck, I limited my selection for this evening to only seven of the higher level flashpoints that I actually felt like doing that night. My queue time wasn't affected and I got into a False Emperor run almost immediately.

The group composition was similar to the run I had before that, with three other saber-swinging Jedi, one of whom was a tank and the others dps. One of them was also a female Nautolan Shadow who was only two levels below me, which tickled my fancy.

And it was another beautiful run! The only small stain marring the perfection was that I was the only one who cared about the minor bonus and since I missed a console at the start we failed to complete it. We did do the bonus boss however, and the group was generally rolling along in a highly fun way. Even Jindo Krey with his perpetually bugged turrets posed no challenge to us as we managed to interrupt nearly every one of his casts so that he barely had a chance to do any damage.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 62-63

Encouraged by my last run, I took False Emperor off the list too so that I was only queuing for the six highest level flashpoints that I hadn't done yet. Again I didn't have to wait long and got into Blood Hunt! I never thought that I'd feel delighted to end up there, but I genuinely was. The rest of the group seemed in surprisingly good spirits as well, with one guy leading with: "Hoping for a nice and quick run!"

For the first time in a while (for me), we even had a healer too. I'd almost forgotten how nice it was to have someone watching your health and not having to worry about dying all the time. Since we didn't have a proper tank, I did my best to taunt things off her whenever she got aggro on anything.

Once again, everything went smoothly, even Jos and Valk (mostly thanks to the healer). After having done this flashpoint a few times since 6.0, I have to say that I'm not sure they're the hardest fight in there anymore - it feels to me like Torch actually hurts more now.

Anyway...

We'll see if it holds up, but I'm definitely getting the impression that with the rewards for queuing for the full random selection being pretty meaningless these days, there's a certain self-selection going on inside the group finder population. There definitely seems to be a number of people who don't necessarily care much for flashpoints and just want to do the easiest ones as quickly and with as little fuss as possible to maximise their gear drops per hour or however these things are measured these days.

However, this doesn't match my own approach to flashpoints at all. Sure, every now and then a quick and easy Hammer Station can feel like a treat, but repeating the same flashpoint multiple times gets boring to me really quickly. I'd rather face more of a challenge, be slowed down and maybe wipe a couple of times for the sake of variety, as well as killing extra mobs for bonuses and such.

Ironically though, queuing with a preference for the longer/harder flashpoints has only resulted in increased enjoyment and smoother runs for me so far, maybe because people with similar preferences are more likely to know their stuff and also queue for the higher-level flashpoints with confidence. It'll be interesting to tally up the numbers for comparison once Nautalie hits 75.

Flashpoint Levelling: Light at the end of the tunnel?

My Nautolan Shadow who's solely levelling through the group finder is getting close to level 60. Here's how her last five runs went.

Maelstrom Prison
I levelled: 52-54

Braving the full selection of flashpoints available to me once again for the sake of the weekly quest, I was pleasantly surprised to not get put into Hammer Station but Maelstrom Prison, which Nautalie had only done once before and for which she also had the story quest this time around. Once again the group consisted of nothing but damage dealers of a variety of levels.

The lowest among them, a level 40 Scoundrel, immediately expressed a dislike of the flashpoint, to which I felt the need to reply that I quite liked it. She responded that the "dude with laser eyes is one of the most tedious in the game IMO". I didn't actually say it, but all I could think on reading that was: "You've clearly never been to Copero, dear woman!"

At this point I felt the need to inspect her achievements and she had indeed never set foot into any of the Traitor flashpoints. I quietly amused myself trying to imagine what she was going to think of bosses like Syndic Zenta if she already hated Colonel Daksh.

Lest I give a negative impression of this person, she also suggested that we do the bonus, which instantly raised my opinion of her. We would have done both of them too if we hadn't missed one of the consoles somewhere, and by the time we realised that, even I couldn't be bothered to go back to search for it.

Just before we got to the first boss, one person who hadn't said a single word left the group seemingly at random. I queued us for a replacement and got a Scoundrel whose name was the term for the edges of a woman's underwear showing through her clothes, because why wouldn't you want to name your character something like that?

Colonel Daksh lived up to his reputation by the way and wiped us on the first attempt, with pretty much everyone in the group except me trying to face-tank him when they really shouldn't have. (I just died from all the other damage, clearly having overestimated my survivability at level 52.) During the run back I made sure everyone was now aware that they should hide if they got aggro during the laser phase, and on the next try we were victorious - though not without more deaths. Fortunately the Sage in the group knew where her combat revive was and with the reduced cooldown of thirty seconds she must have used it at least three times during that one fight. Beginner's Luck indeed.

Athiss
I levelled: 54-55

Queuing late at night and with Hammer Station deselected again, my wait time lasted several whole minutes! Then I got a group which included a tank for a change, which was nice as it at least established who should be making the pulls.

On the first boss someone did that weird ledge jump again and I had a moment of unpleasant memories, but at least this person actually waited for everyone to follow (except me, who preferred to just stealth past the mobs on the ground).

A guy whose name was the name of an Italian city written three times in a row revealed himself as new to the place by running off into a random direction at one point and pulling some completely out-of-the-way mobs, and he also tried to fight the Prophet of Vodal's flames for a bit - fortunately for him, neither event led to his death.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 55-56

Another weekly reset, another shot at the full selection of flashpoints (up to 19 at this point), and I got taken to Hammer Station once again. With a level 75 tank and two damage dealers of levels 75 and 65, I figured it should be fast and painless, just to have the tank stop the whole group dead after literally the first pull because she was annoyed with the Gunslinger not regenerating their health.

Now, to be clear, people not using their regen abilities can be annoying, especially when you're struggling to stay alive from pull to pull, but this was veteran mode Hammer Station after literally the first pull and nobody other than the Gunslinger had lost any health at all. It just seemed like a very bizarre thing to get upset about, though it was equally weird that the Gunslinger kept standing there acting confused instead of simply hitting their regen ability for five seconds. We did continue eventually regardless of the Gunslinger's health.

On the Tunneler the Vanguard tank and the 'slinger kept trading aggro, which seemed to annoy the tank even more. After that I was unsure for a bit whether she had decided to troll us out of annoyance, since she started pulling extra trash that wasn't needed and ran Vorgan the Volcano in constant circles, which made it very hard to dps him as a melee.

At the bridge someone actually asked whether we should fight the turrets or run, to which I replied that I preferred to kill them. This prompted the Vanguard to burst out with something in all caps which Google Translate rendered for me as Spanish for "it's the same for me" - I wasn't sure whether that was meant to signal agreement or indifference.

Anyway, we killed the turrets and the last boss just fine. Once again I just found someone's (in this case the tank's) behaviour quite weird at times.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 56-57

After taking another look at the 19 available flashpoints on my group finder list, I realised that I hadn't done 12 of them even once yet and made the executive decision that in the future I will untick all seven flashpoints below level 40 whenever I'm not aiming to get credit for the weekly quest to do a random. As it stands I've done all the lower-level flashpoints at least once and most of them multiple times.

I braced myself for a potentially longer wait... but got an instant pop for Battle of Ilum instead, with three people who were all in the same guild, no less! Some people might find that sort of setup uncomfortable, maybe for fear of being ganged up on, but I'm always happy to group with a partial premade as it ensures a minimum amount of co-operation and greatly reduces the risk of in-fighting or rage-quitting. Based on the guild name they were Polish, but they did speak English in chat and acted perfectly friendly towards me.

And the best thing? We watched the cut scenes, did all the bosses and both bonuses. I don't think I've ever gotten all of that done in my first run of BoI on a new character while pugging. I seriously felt like it was my lucky day.

As an additional bonus it was a pretty fun run in terms of gameplay too. The three guildies were all level 75, though not all of them were well-geared, and nobody played a class that could heal, so there were some pulls where things got a bit tight and got the adrenaline pumping, but in the end we always succeeded.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 57-58

Queuing for the same 12 level 40+ flashpoints again, I was surprised to end up in Battle of Ilum again. This run was closer to my usual experiences with the place, involving lots of trash skipping, but considering that I'd just had the run of my life literally the day before, I didn't mind. We did kill all the bosses, even the optional ones, and the extent to which we skipped the trash was actually kind of amusing because our group consisted of a Vanguard tank and three Shadows, so we essentially had one person running around with a stealth escort that was mezzing everything around them as they went.

By the end of the flashpoint we'd killed less than forty mobs, and it would have been even fewer if not for a couple of accidental/lazy body pulls. I don't think I would have levelled up if flashpoint completion hadn't also granted me the Socialite I Conquest objective, which resulted in a bit of bonus XP.

I fear I'm going to jinx it by even saying this, but I can't help but wonder if unticking all the easy low-level flashpoints that people like to farm is going to make things more fun for me going forward. At least the first two runs using this new strategy were very successful, and I don't find it hard to imagine that players who are happy to queue for these are more interested in actually doing the content and having a good time than those who just want to run Hammer Station a hundred times in as short a time as possible to maximise their rewards.

I'll find out I guess.

More Pugging with Shintar

It's been over a month since I wrote about my idea to start a video series to detail my new Commando's levelling progress through random flashpoints, and I wanted to give a bit of an update on the series for everyone who doesn't keep a close eye on my YouTube channel.

I was pleasantly surprised that my pet tank didn't mind giving me the quiet time required to do the recording on a regular basis, so that I've been able to release a new episode every week so far - there just won't be one next week as I'll be on holiday.

I finally learned that the best place to sync video and voice recording is the moment when I say hello in chat at the start of each run, as the sound of me hitting the enter key and the line of text appearing in chat make for about as reliable a match-up point as I'm going to get.

Pugette is up to level 32 and the series is up to episode 6! Here are links to and summaries of all the videos I recorded last month:

Episode 2: Buggy Adds in Hammer Station - I was a bit worried about what sort of experience I would have being thrown into the big pool of "proper" tactical flashpoints at level 17, but as it happened I got Hammer Station, which is both level appropriate and quite a softball. (Incidentally, that's the exact same thing that happened to my Mercenary back in 2015.) Unsurprisingly, it ended up being a pretty smooth run. Also, I actually ran into the person who tanked that run on Twitter the next day. Small world.

Episode 3: Weekday Wipes in Maelstrom Prison - This was my first run with a group that had not just one but multiple wipes, but I didn't feel too bad about it as both Colonel Daksh and Grand Moff Kilran are pretty tough. Either way we picked ourselves back up again every time and eventually powered through. Also, I learned that they finally added kolto stations for the bonus boss in Maelstrom Prison. Holy crap!

Episode 4: Ranting about Trash Skipping in Battle of Ilum - When I levelled my Merc through random flashpoints, one of my posts about it was called "Battle of Ilum Makes Me Mad" because I hate people's obsession with skipping both trash and bosses in that one, and unsurprisingly that was the case in Pugette's first run of the place as well. I actually fell a bit behind at the start and struggled to catch up with the rest of my group weaving through as many packs as possible, which immediately reminded me of why I hate that practice so much. We even ended up skipping bosses I had never skipped before. And the final encounter was interesting, though for a different reason.

Episode 5: Hammer Station Again - RNG reared its ugly head by already giving me a re-run in episode five even though I'd only seen three of the 19 flashpoints available through the group finder so far. At least I can note that being ten levels higher already made a huge difference to how challenging I found it to heal this instance. Also, at this point it has become a bit of a running gag that the group finder always tries to put me into groups with stupid group compositions at first (such as two tanks and two healers), which I repeatedly decline.

Episode 6: Slightly Rude in Depths of Manaan - I noted at the start of this one that it could end up being a toughie, but I happened to get a competent group that tackled every fight with aplomb. However, I also ended up with my first truly impatient group mate - in previous runs I had been asked to "skip please" too, but here someone immediately exploded into "FFS" while I was watching the first cut scene, with me unthinkingly adding profanity to the video by reading her comment out loud. Oops.

Flashpoint Friday: Battle of Ilum

Today I decided to talk about the last flashpoint that my Mercenary had a "streak" of while levelling, Battle of Ilum.

General Facts

Battle of Ilum was in game at launch and was originally designed for levels 48-50, meant to finish off Ilum's main storyline, together with its follow-up, The False Emperor. Since 4.0 it's available as a tactical from level 15-65 and has a solo mode option as well.

Story (spoilers)

The flashpoint starts off with your party talking to their personal pilot, the Corellian Cole Cantarus for Republic players or General Hesker of the Imperial Guard for the Empire. Ilum's planetary storyline just ended with Darth Malgus - a repeat quest giver for Imperials but known to Republic characters as well - unexpectedly seceding from the Empire and attacking both Republic and Empire at once. A plan has been hatched to steal one of his new stealth ships and use it to find the old Emperor's cloaked space station, which has become Malgus' new base of operations. In order to do this, you need to succeed at a ground assault on Fort Barrow on Ilum, where a lot of Malgus' troops are stationed.

You get dropped off in a seemingly random spot and immediately have to take a taxi to actually get anywhere near where you're supposed to be (the trenches). You run into a lot of aliens fighting for Malgus, as a big part of his "New Empire" is embracing the diversity of different species that the old Empire has always dismissed as inferior.

After lots of fighting through trenches and mines you eventually make it to Fort Barrow, just as Malgus' right-hand man arrives: Darth Serevin, whom Imperial players may remember as the quest giver for the main Imperial storyline on Voss. (Personally I was quite gutted that he turned out to be a traitor as he had been one of the more likeable Sith that you meet throughout the game. You just can't trust a Sith that seems likeable.) As it turns out, he has brought some Voss with him as well. After you defeat him, you can either execute them or spare them - they promise to join your side if you do so.

Both factions also receive a set of initially somewhat unpleasant news near the end: General Hesker gets shot down by the enemy (though he survives) and Republic characters get told by Serevin that an assassin has been sent to kill Supreme Commander Rans. (Though as it turns out, he survives that attack as well.)

Fights

Battle of Ilum has the dubious honour of probably being the flashpoint with the largest amount of skippable fights in game. I already talked about this problem to some extent when I discussed Directive 7. If you want to, you can go around killing a lot of enemies and complete two bonus missions in the process. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of encounters you can skip just to get to the end quickly if that's what you prefer. The problem lies in pug groups bringing together people who might have different preferences. I don't know if it's still the done thing or even possible, but I remember a time when people even used to skip the first two bosses, which drove me absolutely nuts.

You spend the entire flashpoint fighting Darth Malgus' troops as well as some miners that work for him. Some are human, but a vast majority are aliens. Most trash pulls are not very exciting, but watch out for the groups with the ice cats, those critters hit quite hard.

The bosses are largely in line with this, as three encounters feature alien leaders fighting for Malgus and they all emphasise some variety of the golden rule of "kill the adds". Then there are two mining droids which are a matter of tank and spank. And finally, at the end, a Sith: Darth Serevin. He throws crystals at people and is meant to teach the lesson that long casts with ominous names like "Force Explosion" are best interrupted. (It used to wipe you on hardmode if you allowed it to go through, but even on regular difficulty it does quite a lot of damage.)

Conclusion

Battle of Ilum is a gorgeous-looking flashpoint with beautiful environments if you care to look, as Ilum's skies are as wondrous as ever and its designers clearly put a lot of love into placing everything. Who else knows that "secret" cave that's not on the map and which has several crates for the bonus mission in it as well as a dead tauntaun with a frozen body next to it (which is probably an Empire Strikes Back reference)?

Sadly, a lot of people really don't like spending time there though, and just like in other potentially long flashpoints, that rush-rush attitude can be a pain in the backside if you actually enjoy taking your time and doing the bonuses.

The storyline of Malgus' betrayal is interesting in principle, but somewhat awkwardly put together. It's very questionable whether it was a good idea to tie a main planetary storyline and two flashpoints together, as many people do one without the other and end up confused. Actually, the really sad thing is that even if you do run everything in order, the planetary storyline on either faction and the Malgus arc seem to have little to do with each other except that they both take place on Ilum. It can get particularly awkward if you're an Empire player, where you get the option to support Malgus and his ideas repeatedly, and then he's suddenly betrayed everyone including you with no warning whatsoever. The events of the planetary storyline and the the two flashpoints just don't feel very well connected.

Also, Battle of Ilum is definitely the weaker of the two flashpoints involved in this storyline, as stealing a spaceship via a ground attack is not very intuitive and you end up feeling kind of removed from the whole mission. Republic players also get the shaft a bit at the end since they have never met Darth Serevin before, while Imperial players likely have a history with him that makes the encounter a lot more meaningful (see my comment above about feeling betrayed).

The ending with the Voss is also a bit unsatisfying, because after all the fuss that is made about their neutrality the idea that your faction might get some Voss based on a simple flashpoint choice - which will of course never be mentioned anywhere ever again - feels like a bit of a letdown if you were really hoping for a more meaningful resolution to their situation.

Flashpoint Levelling: Battle of Ilum Makes Me Mad

While I've been away from the internet for a week, I still have an update about my Mercenary's flashpoint levelling progress simply because it's been a whole two weeks since I posted the last one. These runs all took place before the start of the current double XP event.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 53-54

This was another of those rare flashpoints that started with a tank, though he didn't seem particularly competent and eventually suffered a mysterious DC, which seems to be a common issue with tanks for some reason... We also had a level 43 dps who randomly ported back to Hoth after a few pulls and left the group without a word.

The thing that really ticked me off about this run was that we had started off killing extra trash for both bonuses and then randomly started skipping things once we were at five out of six laser batteries destroyed. Argh! I have a long history of getting annoyed with people not wanting to do the bonus in Battle of Ilum, but I do understand their reasons for doing so... what ticked me off in this case was that it was such a random bait and switch, especially with just one more pull needed to at least complete one of the bonuses...

On a positive note, people were very good at clicking the healing consoles on the last boss and pretty much saved my life when I got stunned by him while on very low health. After this run I was also high enough level to pick up the Forged Alliances story arc.

You can tell it's Life Day season when two minutes on the fleet are enough to get you doused in snowflakes.

False Emperor
I levelled: 54-54

This was another group of super lowbies, three dps of level 15, 19 and 26 respectively. Just before the first boss the level 15 (by now 16) disconnected and was replaced by a 65 who instantly quit as well. The next replacement asked if this was the boss that's bugged and I replied that I didn't know anything about any bugs. Of course then Jindo Krey's ship had to act funny just to make a point, but we got the boss down just fine anyway.

As it turned out it was the second boss encounter, the two prototype droids, who were truly bugged, as they kept one-shotting us with 75k hits. (For reference, bolstered players usually have a bit above 50k health.) Two people left immediately while me and one other guy gave it another try with companions out, but the results were the same. People on the forums say that it's fine if everyone stands in the blue circle, including the tank, but this has never been a requirement before and even if it was supposed to be, a one-shot if you take one wrong step strikes me as excessive. Bugged, basically. Group disband.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 54-55

This group reminded me that at three years old, my PC is apparently quite dated already by gamer standards, as they had killed the first pull before I'd even loaded in. They were a very rushy group, but I couldn't really complain as they all seemed to be pretty competent and our dps was actually relatively high for a change. One guy was max level already and both of the lowbies in the group had the legendary tag. I know that by itself, legendary status doesn't really guarantee competence since it's theoretically possible to play through all the class stories without ever talking to another person, but it seems to me that on average, people who have bothered to do so also know their group content. On a side note, this was also the first run in which I noticed another character having bioanalysis and competing with me for harvesting the hounds' bodies.

After this run I went to pick up the Czerka storyline and was stoked to find that it "remembered" that I'd already done Corporate Labs back at level 35 and immediately updated to the step where you have to complete Core Meltdown. I really wish they made all the flashpoint quests smart enough to recognise if you've already done any of the required flashpoints. Sadly the only other story of which I know that it currently does this is the Rise of the Rakghouls storyline (Kaon Under Siege/Lost Island).

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 55-56 (this included completion of my first tactical flashpoint weekly and earned my Merc her first glowing and radiant crystals)

Battle of Ilum again. After how annoyed I got last time, I decided to ask straight away whether people were up for doing the bonus so that I could manage my expectations. Result? People said yes and then skipped everything. Arrrgh! The two higher-level players weaved around a lot of the trash to progress as quickly as possible, while the lowest character, a level 28, got left behind immediately. He didn't seem to know where to go, pulled something, died, and then left the group. I felt bad for him and like I should have stayed closer to him. If he was a new player, he must have felt completely lost.

One of the other guys summoned a companion and just kept going. After a few pulls I asked why we weren't requeuing for a replacement and was told that companions are better than people. I moaned a bit about XP and social points and eventually the group leader did requeue us for a fourth.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 56-57 (this included the random flashpoint weekly)

I felt a little cursed at this point. Why do you keep putting me into this flashpoint where you know people's behaviour will upset me, Bioware? I decided to ask about the bonus at the start again and got an evasive reply that it takes too long but we could do it, whatever. Of course we didn't.

On the last encounter I decided to keep a close eye on the boss for once and interrupted his Force Explosion myself, which made me realise that the reason he'd done so much damage during my previous runs was that people obviously hadn't interrupted it consistently.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 57-58

Another run with a group of lowbie dps, this time two level 20s and one 26. As was to be expected, things were slow and we suffered quite a few deaths, but we progressed relatively smoothly anyway. For example we suffered three deaths on the first boss (one guy died once, ran all the way back in and then died again almost immediately) but we did get him down on the first attempt. Master Liam already got bored of his droid summoning when he was still at 60 percent health.

On the plus side, this group was chattier than most of my pugs, everyone said hello and we talked a bit about this and that. Hilariously, one of the guys who died on the first boss made a snarky comment about how I clearly hadn't perfected my healing yet (my first "blame the healer" moment, yay), to which I replied that it was fine as long as people didn't stand in giant orbital strikes - somewhat to my surprise he actually apologised after that.

At level 58 I also got Progressive Scan, which finally completed my arsenal of healing abilities.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 58-58

This was my first full run that didn't even cause me to level up once, which made me very sad. The instance itself was smooth enough, though after two Tythons in a row I was starting to wonder whether they made some sort of change to the way the artillery works as I kept having to dodge strikes throughout trash pulls all the way to the first boss, while I'm pretty sure that they only used to bother you in the wide open area in the middle... but maybe I'm misremembering.

We had a level 20 Juggernaught who was officially queued as dps but switched to tanking stance early on - I couldn't help but wonder whether he was a "real" tank or had just decided to play one for the duration of this run.

Next time: Double XP arrives!

Solo Flashpoints - Good or Bad Idea?

I have to admit I felt a bit uneasy when I first heard that Bioware was going to include a solo option for flashpoints in Shadow of Revan. I spend a fair amount of time soloing of course, but group content is what keeps me coming back to the game, and since soloing is by default more convenient than doing things in a group and having to be considerate of other people, I know that it's all too easy to make grouping unattractive.

Based on the fact that Bioware has always treated group content with respect, I decided to have faith in them. Yet when I first stepped foot into a solo mode flashpoint, I was taken aback. I was with my pet tank at the time and we had just discovered that we could enter the same solo instance together. If you think that one GSI droid to assist you is OP, just wait until you see multiple copies of it mowing down flashpoint bosses like nobody's business. Not being forced to do things solo is a good thing, but I couldn't help but wonder: If you can do this in a group on easy mode, why would you ever do it in a group on normal mode, if the game doesn't differentiate between the two in any way? (I've since heard that solo mode isn't supposed to give any loot other than basic comms, but I have seen some pieces of gear drop in solo mode so... I don't know about that.)

Of course, then I found out that you can only ever do each solo mode once. At first this struck me as reasonable - let people see the story once and then make them move on, but then I thought: if it's not supposed to drop any gear, what does it matter? If someone wants to repeat the Battle of Rishi solo over and over again, why would this be a problem? I know that I wouldn't want to do this personally, because I find solo mode pretty damn dull. It's okay that it exists, especially where a flashpoint is supposed to advance the story, so you don't have to wait for a group to get going to progress. But in terms of gameplay it's terribly dull. The "Jesus droid" makes it pretty much impossible to die unless you fall off a cliff, as he'll heal you even through continuous standing in fire, so everything just comes down to slowly reducing mob hitpoints at no actual risk to yourself. It's a bit like regular questing, only extremely boring.

Eventually I couldn't help but wonder what exactly the point of flashpoints is supposed to be these days. How did we get to the point where this is the way Bioware wants them to be played? Looking back at the game's launch, the devs have always been a bit schizophrenic about the purpose of group content. Most of it was set up to simply offer gameplay for groups, with stories that were of little to no consequence to the rest of the game. That's why the friendly NPC tells you before your first trip to Coruscant/Dromund Kaas that you can take the shuttle to get on with your class mission right away, or take the Esseles/Black Talon with some friends if you fancy a diversion.

But there were always odd outliers, like the Revan story arc. It's true that at release this storyline wasn't referred to anywhere else in the game, but considering what an iconic character Revan is, it always felt a bit wrong to hide him away in a series of flashpoints like that. Now that Revan has a whole expansion focused on him, it feels outright unacceptable that players might be thrown into that story possibly without ever having learned his backstory in the game if they didn't happen to do the right group content at the right time.

Darth Malgus is another character whose story remains unfinished if you only complete Ilum's planetary story arc - and he's a character that players actually can and do encounter solo. Yet to find out what really happens to him, you have to do the two flashpoints located on Ilum. It seems that there has always been someone at Bioware who adhered to the old school mantra that particularly important/epic boss encounters should require a group to emphasise their epicness. (You know those bosses are badasses if they actually take more than one person to kill!)

As a fan of group content I didn't mind this attitude in the past, but it has always led to backlash from people complaining that they suddenly need a group just to see the ending of what was previously a solo story, and I can understand that. Not to mention that there are disadvantages to handling story this way even if you are happy to group up. Having a story change from solo to group play means that you want to do the group content exactly when you hit that transition point, not later but also not earlier. I'm sure I'm not the only who's ever ended up in Battle of Ilum on an alt, cursing the fact that you haven't advanced the planetary story to the point yet where it actually leads into the flashpoint. Finding yourself in that kind of situation means that a) the flashpoint story is potentially confusing because you're missing vital information and b) you'll have to come back again later purely to finish the associated mission at the "right" time. For this reason I've come to appreciate the approach of making the stories of group content separate and unimportant to the overarching plot, precisely to avoid these kinds of issues. Nobody misses out on anything important if they never go to Athiss. Yet at the same time you can go there any time you like (as far as your level permits it anyway) without being confused.

Looking at the post-launch flashpoints however, there has actually been a move away from this design, which I find both sad and a bit backwards. Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island were the last regular flashpoints with clearly defined side stories in my opinion. Kuat Drive Yards was separate from the rest of the game as well, but I feel that this was only done because it was the only way to make it level neutral (to ensure its story could be played and make sense at any point in the game). The Czerka flashpoints were obviously supposed to be the epic finale to the story of CZ-198... even if beating up a fat businessman and his pet project isn't exactly the height of epic. The Forged Alliances story arc turned everything on its head a little by starting the story in a number of flashpoints, which then cumulated in a solo storyline. Blood Hunt and the Battle of Rishi are neither an introduction nor an epic finale - they hardly feel different from other tasks you complete while on Rishi - however, they are mandatory for storyline progression and you can't continue until you've completed both of them.

A very cinematic scene - but as just one step in a multi-part story, why is this a flashpoint while other things aren't? 

Now, with how integral these latter flashpoints are to the storyline, it makes sense to make them soloable, but I have to admit that at this point I'm wondering why they are flashpoints in the first place. They don't even feature particularly epic enemies. (I like Shae Vizla a lot, but she's just a random Mandalorian. I can't even remember the name of any of the bosses in Battle of Rishi.) If you think that the story is too important to be locked behind a "grouping wall" (and flashpoints are by definition group content), why not just make this stuff the subject of a normal quest? Makeb and Oricon have shown that Bioware can design interesting encounters even for the solo player and outside of instances. I see no reason why Torch's compound and the Revanite base with the signal jammer couldn't have been part of the Rishi map - other than that it probably would have been more work, taking into consideration things like the Mandalorian compound needing a proper exterior instead of being limited to only having an inside.

It feels to me that solo flashpoints are a band-aid applied to a design problem of Bioware's own making, and as so often with band-aids, the end result is a lot less neat than if they had just fixed the core issue. If you just want to tell a story that people can play solo as well as in a group, you can do that through a dedicated quest chain like you've done throughout most of the game. Turning parts of the story into flashpoints seemingly at random just feels clumsy, and leads to all the disadvantages already brought up above. Solo mode leads to tedious "hitpoint grinding" during which it's impossible to die. People who prefer to group are once again faced with the problem of having to get their grouping done at exactly the right time or they can't even move on with the storyline. (But you mustn't go in too early either, or you'll be faced with a lot of dialogue that makes no sense.)

I've done Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi less than half a dozen times and I'm already tired of them because whether solo or in a group, I have to do them on all of my characters, always at the exact same point, if I want to unlock Yavin 4. This has actually made me resent them somewhat, and unlike at level 55, where I was happy to run any of the offered tacticals for the weekly (and knew that I was free to do so whenever I felt like it), the idea of doing the same at level 60 seems highly unappealing right now.

I'm guessing that Bioware has more plans for solo flashpoints in the future, but personally I hope that they'll reconsider what purpose they actually want flashpoints to serve, and that the answer won't simply be "instanced story quests with scaled up hitpoints". In my opinion designing flashpoints like that degenerates the story experience for both solo players and groups.

Levelling Hipster

So this weekend has been the first one of several "double XP weekends" leading up to the launch of the expansion. From what I've seen, people have been going absolutely bonkers about it. I couldn't read Twitter or participate in any conversation in guild without multiple people piping up about OMG how many levels they already gained today, how much XP they just got for a single quest or how far ahead of the levelling curve they already were.

Personally, I've once again been living up to the tradition of being a grinch in regards to whatever the newest thing is that everybody else seems to love. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone their fun. You like levelling super-fast? Good for you.

However.

I have to admit that personally, I just couldn't fight the feeling that this whole thing is just all wrong. I understand why Bioware is doing it, to push players towards the point where the expansion content will be relevant to them, and I've heard all the arguments from people about why levelling at the speed of light is great. Yes, I enjoy playing different classes at max level as well, and I do have eight fifties myself, so I've gone through the non-class story arcs multiple times already. Still, the point remains that SWTOR's levelling content is the best part of the game. If you find levelling so boring and tedious, why are you playing this game instead of a MMO that is more focused on max-level content?

(Also, the constant gushing about people's levelling speed made me realise that I'm a levelling hipster, which is what inspired the title of this post. I liked levelling before it was super-fast! And I was overlevelled for Quesh before it was cool, damn it!)

I only dipped my own toes into the accelerated levelling waters very briefly, by rolling a new consular to see what kind of effect the double XP had on the starter planet experience. I can't comment on how it affects the speed of levelling, since I tend to bimble around, get distracted, and idle while chatting regardless of how much XP I get for each task, but it was certainly unusual to be level thirteen by the time I left Tython.

Other than that I didn't feel much motivation to do a lot of levelling this weekend though. I just don't see the fun in skipping ahead quite that much; it's fast enough at normal rates of experience gain (for subscribers) and I pretty much always end up picking and choosing different bits of content to play through anyway. Fortunately I had other things to do.

Our barely a month old Sith inquisitor duo hit fifty for one thing. I took my worst ding shot ever, as the bonus boss of Battle of Ilum landed on my head right on cue.

Also, obligatory embarrassing screenshot of our newly max-level Sith in their complimentary Tionese gear:

"Remember how cool we looked while levelling?"

"Don't remind me, those were the days..."

The Sith inquisitor story write-up will have to wait however, as we only just finished Belsavis in terms of quest progression.

Speaking of finishing levelling before finishing your class story, I also took the opportunity to finally complete my Scoundrel's class story (she dinged fifty in January if you remember). In her case I hadn't been that fussed about seeing it through to the end quickly, as she was already my second smuggler and I had seen it all before. Still, in the end it was interesting that the very final bit of my class story led to a completely different conversation for a dark side aligned character, compared to what my light side gunslinger had experienced.

Also, getting all the datacrons on Corellia (something that I hadn't done before) was pretty hilarious.

Flight fail.

Fun experiences > fast experience, I say!