Flashpoints: Why Are We Here?

I've been having fun with the new season so far and will probably talk about that at some point, but the removal of cut scenes and group conversations from the group finder continues to weigh heavily on my mind. While my initial reaction was skewing towards slightly negative, I was telling myself that this is probably one of those cases where I'm just a weird outlier for liking something (group conversations in pug flashpoints) that many people don't like, and that I'll see the benefits of this change soon enough. I still remember when the Czerka flashpoints first came out back in 2013, I was actually somewhat disappointed at first that they were so streamlined without any interactive cut scenes, but I got over that pretty quickly.

One of the seasons objectives this week was to run either the Black Talon or the Esseles on veteran mode via the group finder, and with me doing Galactic Seasons on all servers I had plenty of opportunity to see the new change in action. For the most part, the experience was... fine. I'm not going to pretend that I would have had so much more fun if I'd gotten the full cut scene experience six times instead of the new fade to black thing. Primarily, it was all just kind of weird, with a lot of running back and forth with no discernible purpose when you don't actually have the story cut scenes to tell you what is happening.

There was one run that really annoyed me though. I got into an Esseles on a level 80 healer, and the other three members of the group were a level 80 dps, a level 10 and a level 14. I don't know if the two lowbies were new players or just alts, but either way they were subject to certain limitations at their low level, such as slower speed and lacking strong AoE abilities or defensives. Yet the level 80 was constantly mounting up and driving ahead, aggroing absolutely everything to pull it into a corner at the end, while the rest of us slowly jogged after them on foot. (I would've been able to keep up more but I felt it was my duty to protect the lowbies, who would've died several times if I hadn't healed them.)

The 80 repeatedly told them off for fighting things and said they should just mount up as well. I got the impression that at least one of them got a bit flustered by that and tried to overcompensate by mounting up and rushing ahead even of the level 80 at one point, just to then be told off because not everyone had made it up the elevator yet when we were put into combat as a result of that (which was technically correct but also must've been confusing in terms of mixed messages).

I got really annoyed with that level 80's attitude but didn't say anything because frankly I was quite busy just keeping up with their constant running myself, as well as just keeping everyone else alive. I simply did what I could to support the lowbies, such as when one of them veered off towards the bonus boss while the 80 was just trying to go straight to the end. I just kept hoping that neither of the little guys were genuinely new players because if I had been a newbie in that situation, I would have been so put off from running flashpoints ever again.

Now, to be clear, all of this technically has nothing to do with the cut scene change, because people could act like that while the group conversations were still a thing. However, at least the cut scenes would put the brakes on things a little bit. They were a reminder that this flashpoint wasn't designed to be rushed like that. And I feel that the removal of the cut scenes does the opposite now, vindicating people like that level 80 in the sense that yes, the devs agree with you that flashpoints are something to get over and done with as quickly as possible. I feel like my opinion was validated by a thread on the SWTOR subreddit posted this week about how this kind of behaviour seemed to be worse than ever since the patch. In a comment thread there, someone who commented that "games are meant to be fun" also received the reply: "It's a season objective. Literally not meant to be fun. Just a way to progress."

I just kept thinking to myself: What are we doing here? Why are we optimising content for people who don't like it? And I realised that I'm worried about SWTOR flashpoints going down the way of World of Warcraft dungeons.

WoW was my first MMO as well as my introduction to doing group content with random players, and I loved it. The first time I did the Deadmines? Amazing. I got yelled at for ninja-looting a chest because I didn't know any better, but I apologised, learned from it and we moved on. For about three or four years, dungeons were easily one of my favourite things to do in the game. However, somewhere along the line, things changed. Blizzard wanted players to run dungeons in greater numbers and more often, so they became increasingly incentivised for endless replay, and people's attitudes changed accordingly.

I still play WoW almost twenty years later, but I rarely do dungeons in its modern incarnation now. Every now and then some reward will lure me into queueing up for a pug dungeon again, just for me to instantly be reminded of why I no longer find them fun. Everything is just an insane rush to the end to pick up the reward and it's a casual or new player's absolute nightmare.

When I started playing SWTOR, I instantly fell in love with the game's flashpoints too. The Esseles and Black Talon are absolutely amazing experiences that have no real equivalent in other games when you play through them in a group for the first time and as intended (which is to say, actually paying attention to the story and listening to the group conversations). They are also clearly not intended to be re-run on a daily basis. Sure, they can be fun to re-play every now and then, to see what different conversation choices do and so on, but it's clearly not something you're supposed to do all the time. The game won't stop you from running it multiple times a day if you want to, but I think it's fair to say that you were effectively "doing it wrong" in that case and couldn't really complain if it wasn't super fun. The idea with SWTOR flashpoints was that they were still meant to be a bit of an adventure every time you entered one, something you can only really consume in moderation.

With this change... I don't really know anymore. I can even defend the removal of cut scenes as a temporary measure for the Galactic Season, mostly because it benefits me personally, but people like me, who do Galactic Seasons on every server, can hardly make up a significant chunk of the player base. Clearly the intent is to get more players into flashpoints that haven't done them before, but I'm not sure this whole exercise is going to show them anything appealing enough to want to come back. Endless running along corridors with no rhyme or reason about what is going on? What's appealing about that?

I also saw someone comment somewhere that Final Fantasy XIV used to have a similar problem with new players having a bad experience in the group finder due to issues with cut scene skipping, and Square Enix's solution to that was to make the cut scenes unskippable for everyone and increase the reward payout to make sure veterans were being suitably compensated for the fact that the run was taking longer to accommodate the newbies. Now, I don't play FFXIV myself, so I can't tell you how well that worked out for everyone, but I think it shows that "whelp, we've got to cater to the people who are in a hurry" is not an inevitability. SWTOR and FF have a lot in common in terms of their focus on story, so it's actually kind of odd to me now to see the SWTOR devs choose speed-running over story in this instance.

At this point, after thinking about it some more, I feel like instead of removing cut scenes all over the place they should've gone back and reconsidered what flashpoints are all about and why people are funnelled into them the way they are. Why do people ask to skip cut scenes? Because they're in a flashpoint they don't really want to be in. Why are they in this flashpoint? Because we give extra rewards for queueing for a random flashpoint. Why do we give rewards for that? So people who want to run specific flashpoints can get groups for them. But why would people run the Esseles in a group these days when there is a solo mode available anyway? Maybe the devs should've just taken it out of the group finder like they did Kuat and Colicoid War Games. Leaving it in but taking out everything that actually made it unique and insteresting just feels like extremely muddled game design to me. It just doesn't make sense in my head.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 4

After the madness of trying to push for a win in Total Galactic War while also doing seasons across all servers at once, week four looked like it was going to be positively chill. There was some oddness in the weekly objectives though, as there were two origin story objectives as well as two flashpoint objectives. Here's how I viewed the lot of them:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, easy, no problem.
  
• Visit another player's Manaan stronghold: Sure, of course.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the capital worlds Coruscant or Dromund Kaas: I was definitely going to do this one, as I had plenty of alts in that level range across all servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi knight or Sith warrior: Another definitive yes.
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: While the doubling up seemed weird to me, I saw no reason not to do both.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: So, I generally like this one and there's a reason I made sure to unlock the seeker droid on at least one character on all servers. It's very chill and can be done while queueing for something else, but it can be kind of time-consuming as well if you're unlucky with your digs, so I figured I was going to do it on some servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected "Underworld" flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I figured I might do this on a couple of servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of the 4 Revan flashpoints (Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, Boarding Party, The Foundry): Now this was super odd to me and I figured I might do either one flashpoint objective or the other, but there was no way I was going to do four flashpoints on each server.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: I'm not a huge fan of this objective as I'm not great at GSF, so this one takes me at least three times as long as the regular "play matches" one. Still, I figured I might maybe do it on Darth Malgus.
  
• KotET chapter 7 on veteran mode or higher: As usual, no.
  
• Colossal Monolith on any difficulty: Like other lair bosses, I figured this was a given with my guild on Darth Malgus, but unlikely (though not impossible) to happen anywhere else.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I slept very little that night, followed by a long day in the office (where I was biting my nails around lunch time waiting for the results of Conquest to come in). As soon as I got home, it was time for our usual Tuesday raid, where we all (somewhat unusually) played like muppets. I had a brief look at the Conquest results that our... "Conquest accountant" sent me but was otherwise happy to go to bed early, not doing anything for seasons that day at all.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I decided to do a quick round of all the servers around lunch time, but before the reset. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, doing few missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitors there got the daily objective done quickly (and offered nice synergy for the weeklies).

On Satele Shan, my knight still had a bunch of completed side missions from Coruscant in her log from god knows how many months ago, so I started by running around and handing all of them in. I was somewhat dismayed to find that only one of them counted as an exploration mission for the Coruscant seasons objective, but nonetheless I picked up some more where I had left off. As Conquest gains for low-level missions were much lower on a higher-level character, I eventually relogged my consular to finish off the seasons daily with a quick companion level-up.

On Star Forge, I logged into my lowbie consular and did some more missions on Tython. I smashed some flesh raiders and levelled up a couple of times until the daily objective was done.

Since it was getting close to reset at this point, I just expanded my Coruscant stronghold on Shae Vizla and ranked up a crew skill. On Darth Malgus I gave a companion gift to push me over the daily requirement (the previous night's ops had earned me some points already).

It was a busy day for me and I didn't get to play more until relatively late in the evening. I started by playing two GSF matches on Darth Malgus, before switching to Leviathan to continue questing on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor. I only had to hand in two missions before hitting the daily objective.

On Tulak Hord, I decided to mix things up a bit by queueing for a random veteran mode flashpoint on my inquisitor. She was only eligible for nine of them, and five were featured seasons objectives, so I figured what were the odds? Of course I then got Black Talon, which was one of the not featured ones. Someone expressed annoyance as soon as we zoned in and quit the group the moment not everyone space-barred on the first cut scene. Ironically it went much faster after that person had left... at least the run completed my daily objective and counted as my inquisitor completing several missions.

On Satele Shan, I did a few more missions with my knight until I hit the Taskmaster Conquest objective and with that also my seasons daily. On Star Forge, I continued on Tython with my baby consular, and it didn't take long until she achieved Taskmaster and the daily objective too.

On Shae Vizla, I was about to continue my consular's class story for the missions as a consular when I realised I'd never done the Coruscant or Dromund Kaas side missions on this server. So I returned to Coruscant, hoovered up all the exploration missions and killed Migrant Merchants Guild members until I saw that lovely "influencing the galaxy" pop-up. I was ready for bed by then.

Day 3 - Thursday

After another long day at the office, I logged into Darth Malgus and just played a GSF match there. We won and this completed my 200k Conquest points objective, but only advanced me towards the 25 medals for GSF by one.

On Leviathan I did some more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided to spin the wheel in the group finder again. This time I got Cademimu and had a smooth enough run. The lowest-level person got a bit lost at one point after dying and having to run back, but I'm happy to say that we backtracked to rescue them and no unfriendly words were said. Apparently this counted as having completed 15 missions as an inquisitor already.

On Star Forge I continued on my baby consular on Tython, until she too hit the 15 missions completed objective. On Satele Shan, my knight handed in one mission on Coruscant, which completed her business there - since I still needed to complete more missions as a knight, however, I then continued with her class story on Alderaan until the daily objective was complete too. My consular on Shae Vizla also finished the objective on Coruscant before getting her daily done.

Day 4 - Friday

I did a bit of PvP on Darth Malgus around lunch time, and got put into four Voidstars in a row, three of which were losses. Thanks, game!

Later, I logged through all the servers to do a bit of tidying up - one side-effect of last week's Conquest mania was that while I had found time for some seasons objectives, I'd neglected to clear out my bags and they were full of junk everywhere. On Leviathan I followed this up with a few more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided that my inqusitor there might as well finish her "Searching for Allies" weekly mission by queueing for one more random flashpoint. I got the Foundry this time, which was also on the list of featured flashpoints. I also liked this run because we actually had a polite conversation about whether to do the bonus or not - we ultimately decided not to, but only after talking about it!

On Star Forge I decided to try my luck with the random queue on my knight, but unfortunately she just got a Hammer Station. At least that completed the daily objective, and somehow counted as no fewer than six missions completed as a Jedi knight. On Satele Shan, I completed my knight's class story on Alderaan, which ticked her over the 15 missions completed there.

On Shae Vizla, I decided to queue for a random veteran flashpoint on my consular. After a few minutes of waiting I realised that since it was still relatively early in the evening for me, most APAC players were probably still asleep, but just as I thought about going to do something else I got a pop after all. After a quick Taral V run with lots of trash skipping, I was halfway towards another flashpoint objective and had 15 missions as a consular ticked off on this server as well.

Later in the evening, I returned to Tulak Hord and did 15 missions on Tython on my littlest Jedi knight who is too low-level to do Conquest as of yet. By the time he completed the objective, he was level 9.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I decided to log into Shae Vizla and queue for all the featured flashpoints on both veteran and master mode on my warrior. I got into a vet mode Boarding Party with a level 80 Sorc healer who used their knockback on cooldown to scatter trash mobs to the four winds. After one particularly egregious example where one of my smashes went into thin air after they'd knocked three mobs away from me a half-second before I would've hit them, I politely asked if they could stop doing that. They didn't respond and continued doing their thing, so I put them on ignore at the end of the run. Kind of petty, I know, but Boarding Party is a long flashpoint, and being trolled on every single trash pull was getting pretty damn aggravating. At some point I don't care anymore whether they were doing it intentionally or just a complete newbie who doesn't know their abilities and doesn't read chat, I just didn't want to get grouped with them again. At least this completed one of my flashpoint seasons objectives, plus it counted as completing five missions on my warrior.

I queued again for the remaining four flashpoints and got Mandalorian Raiders this time. I had a brief sweat drop moment when on the second pull the Sniper in the group catapulted a group of mobs away from me, but he was actually trying to defend himself and it was just a one-time thing. I enjoyed this run otherwise.

In the afternoon I mostly played GSF and did PvP on Darth Malgus. The GSF matches went a bit better than before and got me to 20/25 medals for the seasons objective.

In the evening I used our social night to kill the Colossal Monolith and get both flashpoint objectives done with Mr Commando. We chain-ran master mode Boarding Party, Spirit of Vengeance, the Foundry and Mandalorian Raiders in a single session. It felt long. On the plus side, since I made a point of asking to do this on Imp side (where we usually spend less time), we also got a bunch of achievement progress.

On the other servers I did the following things in the evening:

On Leviathan, I did a couple more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor. The daily was done after only two of them and I was starting to realise that, since I usually switched servers after hitting the 25k Conquest for the daily and for some reason that was happening really quickly while playing my inquisitor, I had completed zero weeklies on Leviathan yet. I made a mental note to push myself a bit more on Sunday.

On Tulak Hord, I did a Dromund Kaas heroic on my inquisitor since I had run out of exploration missions for her to do. Interestingly, when you do this objective via the optional one-time quests, you'll usually get your kills way before you've completed enough missions, but the heroics seemed to be shaping up the opposite, though she did hit the 200k Conquest points earned objective. Logging over to Republic side, I put my trooper into the queue for all the featured flashpoints on master mode, though it was kind of late and nothing popped. I went and did a heroic on Coruscant to pad my kill count on the capital worlds and push myself over the 25k required for the daily objective.

On Satele Shan, I thought I'd queue for some seasonal flashpoints while digging for treasure on my consular, but I got a pop before I even made it to the dig site. I got into a vet mode Taral V that was... stressfully fast. Look, I've resigned myself to people wanting to skip and rush to some degree, and at times I even welcome it! But there are degrees, and the guy who took the lead in this run was just driving on and pulling more while completely ignoring the rest of the group, whether anyone got dismounted or aggroed a group we were trying to skip... the vibe was definitely "I can solo this so the rest of you don't matter to me". We completed the run smoothly enough but I felt unhappy and wished that people weren't like that.

Since I was now halfway done with one flashpoint objective and I wasn't sure I wanted to do both on this server, I queued again for Taral V and Maelstrom Prison only. And I got Taral V again! With the same guy! This time I managed to fall off a bridge at one point, something that hasn't happened to me in ages, though I was fortunate enough to not die... I landed safely further down the path we had originally taken, so just had to loop back around while the rest of the group continued on. To the guy's credit, they did give me a moment to catch up eventually... or maybe they were just slowed down by the unskippable mobs on the bridge... Either way: so not necessary.

On Star Forge I braved the random veteran queue on my Jedi knight again and got a Cademimu run this time, which counted for one of the flashpoint objectives. Nothing remarkable about that one other than that General Ortol almost forgot about his rockets... he only fired a single one towards the end, just before he was about to die.

On Shae Vizla, I queued for the set of four featured flashpoints again and went to visit a Manaan stronghold in the meantime (fortunately a public one was available). This gave me a bunch of Conquest for completing four weekly objectives, so when nothing popped after ten minutes or so, I just used a rep token to push me the last bit of the way to the daily requirement and called it a night.

Day 6 - Sunday

Around lunch time before reset, I logged into Leviathan to play a bit of catch-up. I queued for the featured underworld flashpoints and got into a vet mode Mandalorian Raiders that was interesting in a couple of ways. First off, we killed Braxx before his hounds and the world didn't end... I thought they had an enrage or something! But then on the last boss, most of us were still killing the turrets outside his room when one guy charged in and pulled the boss, and by the time we joined him, the boss was almost dead while only having spawned a single set of turrets? I have no idea how that went down. Anyway, the guy /stucked because of course the remaining turrets kept us in combat and he told us to do the same, but we just killed them instead. Afterwards I dug up some treasure with my seeker droid. While I was still only on one weekly completed at that point, I was partially done with a lot of others and felt like I was in a much better place.

I then logged over to Tulak Hord and queued for all the featured flashpoints on master mode again. I got into a Cademimu run where we even did the bonus boss and I was happy with that.

After reset I logged into Shae Vizla and queued for the underworld flashpoints first and got an instant pop for Mandalorian Raiders vet mode. This run completed both that flashpoint objective plus 15 missions as a Sith warrior, taking me to 7/7 weeklies completed on this server.

A bit later I logged into Leviathan and queued for the underworld flashpoints on my knight again. I got an instant pop and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in Spirit of Vengeance. Having four flashpoints to pick from for variety is less effective when a lot of people specifically avoid certain ones - I was fully expecting to see nothing but Cademimu and Mando Raiders in the public queue all week. It went fine and completed that flashpoint weekly objective for me.

Afterwards I visited a Manaan stronghold and since I was still short a few missions as a knight, I took her to Balmorra (where she's currently in her class story) and cleared out Sobrik to get that done as well. This put me at 5/7 weeklies completed on Leviathan, with two more almost complete and easy to finish off the next day.

I visited Star Forge next and decided to complete my knight's vet mode flashpoint weekly by queueing for one more random. I continued to have bad luck and got into a Hammer Station. The group had a level 80 Sage healer who took point. When we expected them to make the first corner pull, they just kept running... and running... all the way to the drill, where they then stood and spammed heals on themselves. We eventually caught up and AoE-d everything down that they had pulled, but I was glad I wasn't the only one who expressed confusion about this strat in chat. When we got to the retractable bridge, they raced across just before it turned off, and then slowly soloed the next pull on the other side while the rest of us actually killed the turrets. I got the feeling they quietly cursed our "inefficiency" as they didn't say another word the entire run and quit instantly the moment the completion message came up. While I'd now completed 15 missions as a Jedi knight, I was only on 3/7 weeklies otherwise and not too happy about that, but I wasn't sure whether I could be bothered with a push for much more.

I decided to log over to Darth Malgus for the time being, where I did a GSF weekly on one of my Sith warriors, pushing me over the 15 missions completed as a knight or warrior and earning the last medals I needed. Then I visited a Manaan stronghold to take me to 7/7.

I logged into Tulak Hord while eating dinner and put myself in the queue for master mode Taral V and Maelstrom Prison, but nothing popped. I ended up just doing a couple of Coruscant heroics and logging off to do something else for a while.

Late in the evening I hopped onto Satele Shan, dug up some relics, visited a Manaan stronghold and did a few missions on my consular until I hit 200k Conquest points.

Day 7 - Monday

I logged into Star Forge shortly before reset, visited a Manaan stronghold and knocked out a couple of Coruscant heroics on my trooper main. After the reset, I knocked out the last couple of missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor on Leviathan, to get that server to 7/7.

I then put myself in the master mode queue for the Revan flashpoints on Tulak Hord again, even though I knew it was a bad time and ultimately nothing popped, but I was able to also do the seeker droid objective while waiting.

In the evening I logged back into my trooper on Tulak Hord again and put myself back in the queue while questing, but I barely lasted ten minutes before also listing myself for the veteran versions. I just wanted to get that last objective done! I was surprised that it then still took another ten minutes to get a pop, considering this was German prime time. The actual Taral V run then only took another ten minutes too, though this time I was quite grateful for that. Also, the guy leading the skips in this one would instantly turn back and help kill any extra mobs that were aggroed, which I thought made a world of a difference. I guess it's less about skipping or not skipping and more about working together and with the other members of your group. Anyway, this brought me to 7/7 on Tulak Hord as well.

Hopping over to Star Forge, I put my trooper into the master mode flashpoint queue for the underworld flashpoints and did more heroics on Coruscant until the related seasons objective was ticked off. Just as I was about to start digging for treasure, I got a pop for master mode Mandalorian Raiders. This was a smooth and pleasant run that stood out to me for the tank's perfect calculation of number of mobs needed for the bonus boss, as we killed exactly 80 and not one more (and the reason I could tell this was calculated was that he was a Shadow, which allowed us to skip some pulls, but he got just the right number for us to unlock the bonus boss too). Once done, I dug up three treasures on Alderaan and with that, was 7/7 on Star Forge as well.

On Satele Shan I just had to complete a couple more story missions on Belsavis with my consular to go 7/7, which just left me to earn 25k Conquest points for the daily objective done on Darth Malgus and Shae Vizla, which was achieved easily enough. (Incidentally, one of the random master mode flashpoints I decided to run on Darth Malgus ended up being Ruins of Nul, but that has nothing to do with seasons... let's just say it was still a pain but we got there in the end.)

Week 4 - Thoughts

I was kind of surprised by how much effort this week took. By Sunday I was definitely considering forfeiting full credit for the week on some servers, but then I was pretty close already, so giving up so close to the finish line would've been annoying as well. In hindsight I think the problem was that this week was one that greatly benefitted from synergies between different objectives (such as doing the planetary missions or flashpoints on one of the featured origin stories) but I didn't always min-max that aspect and when I didn't, it actually increased the time required by a lot. I also wasted some time on the random queue without getting into the flashpoints I actually needed, clearly overestimating my odds with a total of eight flashpoints eligible for seasons objectives. I need to learn to resist the lure of that, even if it's much easier than trying to find the correct boxes to tick in the unsorted jumble that is the full flashpoint list in the group finder panel nowadays.

Some of the objectives also highlighted to me the differences between the "efficient" way to do them and what I find fun, and again, they didn't always align. Doing four flashpoints on master mode with my guildies, including all the bonuses, was certainly interesting and enjoyable, but it also took us more than two hours. Comparatively, veteran mode Taral V with a pug that just rushes to the end barely takes ten minutes, but is also quite boring. Same with doing exploration missions on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas on a lowbie that's levelling (which includes watching all the cut scenes) vs. just blasting through the heroic circuit on a level 80.

Flashpoint Friday: The Black Talon

For this series, I tend to either pick a specific flashpoint and run it, to make sure I remember everything correctly, or I decide to write about a flashpoint that I just happened to run that week for some other reason. With my flashpoint levelling experiment I've been all over the place, making it hard to focus on any single instance, so I decided to just go for the first one I visited this week: The Black Talon.

Iconic: Captain Orzik and Lieutenant Sylas

General Facts

The Black Talon is the Imperial equivalent of the The Esseles: the optional flashpoint you encounter just after you've finished your starter planet and are about to move on to Dromund Kaas. Both were tacticals before tactical flashpoints were even a thing, and somewhat surprisingly they've undergone nearly no changes with 4.0 - unlike all the other flashpoints, these are still limited to levels 10-15 on the group finder, probably because Bioware was keenly aware of how strongly their stories are tied to you being low-level and new. This means that you get scaled to level 10 instead of up to 65 when you enter. They did however also add a solo mode version for both factions' flashpoints that you can do whenever you like. I tried the one for the Black Talon and having a GSI droid by my side felt like complete overkill, considering that these flashpoints were already easily soloable for a skilled player before 4.0.

Story (spoilers)

Like the Esseles, the Black Talon is all about the story.

Shortly after you've boarded the Black Talon to travel to Dromund Kaas, you're greeted by the ship's second in command, Lieutenant Sylas, who points out that "your" droid is waiting for you with a message in the nearby conference room. You go to investigate and meet NR-02, an innocent enough looking protocol droid, who soon identifies himself as being programmed for much more unpleasant tasks. (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had to look up "calumniation" in the dictionary.) He gets you in touch with Grand Moff Kilran, who wants the Black Talon to intercept the Republic ship Brentaal Star and kill or capture an Imperial traitor on it who is only known as "the General" throughout the entire story. The Black Talon is uniquely positioned to achieve this, but its captain has refused to obey Kilran's orders, which is why the Moff wants you to usurp command and get the job done yourself.

You have to fight your way to the bridge and kill some Imperials on the way. Captain Orzik puts up a brave face as you arrive and threaten him, justifying his decision by saying that what Kilran demands is simply impossible. You have the option to merely relieve him of command or kill him.

Having assumed command one way or the other, you chase down and engage the Brentaal Star, and it spits out some pods in defense. If you let Orzik live, he'll identify them as a threat and have them shot down, which leads to you being boarded by a regular boarding party instead. Once you defeat the Republic boarders, Orzik presents you with a small chest of extra goodies which he had his crew put together, since you're all working together now after all.

If you killed Orzik however, the much less experienced Lieutenant Sylas, now effectively Captain, will tell the crew to ignore the pods, causing the ship to get swarmed by a bunch of sabotage droids. You then have to go and fight those off instead.

Once you've repelled the attack, you fly over to board the Brentaal Star and fight your way inside to kill or capture the general, dispatching of a Mon Calamari war veteran and a Jedi padawan in the process. Eventually you find the General, who is a squat, elderly cyborg and already wounded. He babbles about what terrible plans both factions have already made to prepare for war, a dialogue which is fun to come back to as a max level player as you actually know what he's talking about by then. You have the option of taking him prisoner or outright killing him. Then you return to the Black Talon.

"I had nothing to do with any of this, honest!"

If you left Captain Orzik alive, everything is well and everyone is pleased. If you killed him however, the crew has panicked in your absence and ended up shooting each other, so that the bridge is littered with nothing but corpses. Or that's what NR-02 says happened anyway... considering his earlier declaration of being programmed for manslaughter and calumniation, you may have to take that with a grain of salt. Grand Moff Kilran is happy either way and you can either continue to Dromund Kaas or return to the fleet. (NR-02 assures you that he can pilot the ship even with everyone else dead.)

Fights

You fight mostly Republic soliders and droids, but also some Imperial ones, when you take over the ship at the start. The lesson here is that the Empire does not value the lives of its subjects very highly. NR-02 even comments: "If you are concerned about the loss of life, I assure you - the deaths of all injured crew members will be strategically insignificant."

Like on the Esseles, the boss encounters are all very basic and geared towards players who are new to the game, though I think the ones on the Black Talon are less interesting overall than their Republic counterparts. (I admit that my Republic bias might be playing into this however.) Only Commander Ghulil, the Mon Cal war veteran, is really worth noting because he teaches players not to stand in fire (quite literally, as he drops probes that spit fire).

Like the Esseles with its encounter with Sith apprentice Vokk, the Black Talon tries to make a big deal out of you meeting (what's supposed to be) your first Jedi in the form of Yadira Ban, even if she's only a padawan, but she just doesn't come across as very threatening - maybe because she's a pink twi'lek with a squeaky voice? She has one noteworthy ability where she pulls you in and then does some damage if you don't run away from her quickly enough, but it's only really dangerous on hardmode.

Yadira Ban - just not that threatening.

Speaking of hardmode, while I haven't run the Black Talon on hard since 4.0, it's interesting to note that at level 50 it used to be known for having by far the easiest hardmode of all flashpoints, to the point where you didn't even need a full group to do it. This is an interesting contrast to its Republic equivalent, which originally had one of the hardest of all hardmodes.

Conclusion

I could write a lot of the same stuff here that I said about the Esseles: that it's an amazing narrative experience the first time but can get tedious when you have to re-run it for endgame rewards. However, instead I'd like to focus on the differences between the Black Talon and the Esseles.

Both serve to introduce you to your faction's storyline in a way, and they really highlight the differences between the two factions. While both flashpoints are about a small ship getting into big trouble, their stories are almost complete opposites in other ways. Where the Esseles is operating in pure self-defense, trying to fight off an Imperial attack, the Black Talon is on the offense, hunting down a traitor. On Republic side the main characters of your faction that you interact with are a shrewd diplomat, a somewhat cowardly officer and a fearless security chief. On Imperial side on the other hand you deal with a ruthless droid, a bloodthirsty Moff and an Imperial crew who desperately want to do the right thing but are incredibly frightened by the power plays going on, which is really a pretty good summary of what Imperial life is like! The only thing missing is a capricious Sith bossing everyone around, but effectively the player gets the chance to play that role if they choose to play a Sith character.

It's also worth noting that in terms of narrative and gameplay, the Black Talon has far fewer twists and turns than the Esseles, but manages to make your choices feel quite a bit more meaningful. The singular choice of whether you let Captain Orzik live or not decides not only which boss encounter you will face at the start (either the boarders or the lead sabotage droid) but also the fate of the entire Black Talon's crew. Whether to kill or spare the captain was actually a part of Bioware's early marketing for the game, supposed to highlight the importance of choices. They even gave out badges after demos where people got to try out the Black Talon so they could announce their choice to the world - too bad that kind of thing didn't carry over into more content.

My Flashpoint Levelling Experiment

Like everything else, flashpoints have seen quite a bit of change in 4.0. All the levelling ones are tactical now, and people are complaining that they are too hard. At the same time, they now give crazy amounts of XP to levelling players, as does all group content. It seems that this is due to Bioware's changes to XP distribution in groups - you always used to get bonus experience for other party members completing quests, but now kill experience seems to scale with group size as well, which can lead to some pretty crazy results. I think I've seen one guy gain five levels in a single flashpoint, and I've heard of other players gaining nine levels while running a single storymode operation (though since operations don't become available until level 50, this doesn't have as much of an impact overall).

One of my guildies levelled a couple of his alts through flashpoints pre-4.0, but it wasn't nearly as viable then, as queue times could be long if you weren't a tank or healer, and you would only gain about one level per flashpoint at max. But now...? I decided that dedicating a character to levelling purely through random flashpoints would be an interesting experiment, both to see how long it will take with these accelerated levelling rates and short queues, and to gain more insight into the supposed difficulty of tacticals. And of course since I have a blog, it will provide me with yet another subject to write about! (Just like the Pugging Pally did back in the day...)

I decided to finally pick up the level one bounty hunter that I created months ago and that has been sitting on Hutta ever since. I wasn't really sure what to do with her for a long time - I kind of wanted to finally level a Mercenary... I know, what a shame that I don't have one already - it's my main's Imperial mirror class after all! But at the same time I've already gone through the bounty hunter story twice, and more recently than I've played through several of the other class stories, so I didn't really want to repeat it again too soon. This is of course the perfect solution: I'll finally get to add that Merc to my stable but I can ignore the class story for now without feeling bad about it, plus I'll get to flex my healing muscles while levelling up. Win-win.

I did of course have to level through Hutta first, since you can't queue for your first flashpoint until level ten, but that went super quick. I only did my class story, ignoring everything else including the planetary story arc, and was still up to level ten by the time I arrived at the fleet. (Full disclosure though: I accidentally applied an XP booster while emptying my mailbox of the dozens of starter goodies I get these days, and you can't click those off, so these weren't entirely regular XP numbers I got.)

Somewhat bizarrely, just puttering around the fleet actually got me to level 12, mainly due to the quest to learn about crew skills. It showed up as red difficulty when I picked it up, so I think that Bioware may have accidentally given that mission a higher level than it deserves. (Indeed, if the TORCommunity database is to be believed, the mission is currently classified as being level 55!) I picked up scavenging and bioanalysis, since I might actually be able to level those if I get the right instances.

Then it was time to queue for my first flashpoint... and somewhat ironically, I was off to a terrible start. I got a pop for The Black Talon within a couple of minutes, with one damage dealer and two tanks. (I was queued as healer myself.) However, we had barely started the first conversation when someone initiated a vote kick on one of the tanks. As far as I could tell he was only a bit slow to zone in, but the vote went through anyway and he was removed from the party. The two remaining players then asked for everyone to hit space bar, to which I replied that I'd rather not. We had barely finished the second conversation when both of them rage-quit the group, and I was left standing there alone, unable to re-queue for replacements since I wasn't officially in a group anymore.

Talk about awkward.

For the record, I've said before that I'm not completely anti-spacebarring. Especially in repeatable max-level content it often makes sense. But this was an optional instance for levels 10-15. If you are sick and tired of seeing that content, why even queue for it? Bah.

Anyway, somewhat disheartened for the moment, I put the two quitters on my ignore list so the system wouldn't try to put me into a group with them again and re-queued. Fortunately it only took another couple of minutes to find me a new group, this time consisting of one dps and two more healers. Fortunately group composition really doesn't matter at this level, so we weren't slowed down by our over-abundance of heals. I decided to take the initiative this time and immediately started the run with the words: "Hi, just to warn you: I like watching cut scenes." Nobody commented on that either way, but nobody complained either and it was a pleasant run in the end, something for which I was very grateful after the previous disappointment.

I finished the instance at level 15, but shot up to 17 when I handed in the "Introduction to Group Finder" quest, which seems to have the same "issue" as the crew skill one (not that I'm complaining). Next time the training wheels will come off, because now that I'm past level 15 I could literally land anywhere. You will find out how that goes!

Being a Noob on the Progenitor

I've been wondering whether to do anything with this whole 12x Epic Story XP boost that's going on right now. I've said a hundred times that I'm not a fan of things like double XP weekends, but I think I've made my peace with the fact that they exist and that there is a clear demand for them. At least they are preferable to changing XP requirements across the board and thereby forcing fast levelling on people. This time Bioware also remembered to give people an option to turn the whole thing off, so all is well from my point of view.

Personally I have little incentive to level another alt as quickly as possible. I enjoy levelling in general so I don't really want to rush it, and I've seen all the class stories. There's a certain draw to repeating some of them to see a slightly different outcome, but then I ask myself: "Do I really want add another max-level alt to my stable on The Red Eclipse?" For some reason having too many unplayed alts makes me feel vaguely guilty. No, I don't think that makes sense either - it is what it is.

But then I saw someone make a suggestion for an alternative use of this XP boost (sorry, I forgot who exactly it was): use it to level a character on another server. This has been one of those goals that has been at the back of my mind for ages, wanting to have the ability to visit friends on other servers and play with them, but somehow I've never been very good at this. I've tried in the past, but usually I just faff around on the starter planet for a little while and soon end up logging off and never coming back. I figured that giving myself a bit of a push, so I would quickly get to the point where I could actually found a new legacy, would help me to maintain momentum, and it has.

I started my experiment by creating Agent Shintar the Cathar on the Progenitor, where some old friends reside on Imperial side apparently. (If you're my friend and playing on another server, don't think that I've forgotten you! But this is where I felt like making a start.)

Oddly, I was immediately struck by just how long it's been since I started a character on a new server with zero support. I was kind of surprised when an achievement popped up for killing people in the starting area on Hutta, because on the Red Eclipse I have so many achievements that I rarely see one these days outside of new boss kills in ops. I also realised that I'm terribly ignorant about which features are actually account-wide and which ones only legacy-wide. For example I immediately had three bank tabs unlocked, but barely any inventory space. While my mailbox was full of crap the usual "gifts", I had no stronghold to admire my furniture in, or legacy perks that would have allowed me to fly a speeder early. Bhagpuss wrote about the joy of starting fresh on a new server the other day (in the context of Everquest), and I can definitely recognise myself in that a little. I've become too spoiled by my big, fat legacy. There is fun in being a scrappy noob.

Of course even a scrappy noob feels a bit overpowered in SWTOR these days. I had forgotten that training new skills is now free for subscribers forever, and it feels like cheating. Don't I have to spend money on anything while levelling up? And the XP gains from my class quests on Hutta were utterly ridiculous of course. Sometimes I even gained two levels at once from a single quest hand-in. I feel like levels really start to lose their meaning at that point. I did all the quests anyway and was level fifteen (going on sixteen) by the time I left Hutta. I was too high level to queue for the Black Talon before I even got to it! I decided to solo it for fun, even if it granted me little XP. I was hoping to be able to scavenge some metal, but I forgot that unlike during its Republic equivalent, the Esseles, you hardly fight any droids in this flashpoint. I think I counted a total of five. It was also noticeable that my companion wasn't beefed up by tons of presence bonuses, as things actually took a bit of time to kill.

I also did a lowbie warzone, which seemed pretty flooded with lowbie agents of some flavour or another, and got eleven achievements in a single match. Operative healing feels extremely powerful in lowbie PvP now that they get Kolto Probe so early. Oh yeah, did I mention that I chose Operative over Sniper (again)? Being able to just choose my advanced class from the UI certainly made things more convenient at the end of Hutta, but I did the little "choose your advanced class" quest on the fleet anyway once I got there. I wonder if new players find that confusing.

I remember when ships in flashpoints going into Hyperspace used to crash my game. Good times.

We'll see whether I'll actually be able to progress, get distracted by side activities while ignoring the XP boost, or lose interest if my character levels too quickly (seemingly without me actually doing much of anything).

Early Flashpoint Impressions

Back in WoW, small group instances used to be one of my favourite pastimes in the game for years - until the dungeon finder slowly sucked the fun out of them for me, that is. Unsurprisingly, SWTOR's more old-fashioned flashpoints make me very happy, and I've run all of them up to my current level at least once, some of them multiple times. It's been an interesting ride so far.

Difficulty-wise they seem to hit a pretty sweet spot for me. Trash is mostly very easy, but there are patrols to watch out for, mobs of different strengths to consider, and sometimes enemies surprise you by entering the scene unexpectedly. Personally I feel that this creates a nice atmosphere where most of the dungeon is fairly laid back, but not mindlessly boring, as you still have to watch where you're going and what you're pulling. The bosses tend to be a bit harder, and I've had quite a few deaths and even wipes at the hands of some of them. They all have a couple of mechanics each that you have to pay attention to and that can't be safely ignored, but there is some margin for error so the fights don't exactly feel twitchy either.

Interestingly enough, I've already had two runs where our group failed to complete the flashpoint because we simply couldn't get past a certain encounter. This felt a bit strange and surprising to me initially, as I haven't experienced anything like it since my party found it impossible to kill the last boss in Grim Batol when we ran our very first heroic five-man after WoW's Cataclysm launch. In SWOTR, the two offenders that had us running into a brick wall were Athiss and Taral V. On Athiss, we just couldn't get past what was I believe the last trash pull before the final boss, which contained two elites that both had AoE attacks and were wearing our group down faster than I could heal it up again. Since we were on the lower end of the level range for the place, nobody in the party had their long-duration crowd control abilities yet either. On Taral V, we first died a few times to the bonus boss before giving up on him, and then failed to kill the last boss too as he wiped us out within seconds every time he hit his low-health enrage (which was promptly patched out two days later, which is telling). In both cases we came back with another level or two under our belts and completed the whole thing easily. At the end of the day, the initial failure wasn't actually that terrible, as it just spurred us on to come back and get revenge together, not to mention that it provided some unforgettable memories to bond over.

Another thing that I found noteworthy was that most flashpoints seem to reward both explorers as well as people who've honed their crew skills. The former was particularly evident for me on Taral V, where the way through the instance is fairly straightforward, but there are plenty of hidden nooks and platforms that contain bonus objectives and chests. Both times I've been in there, our group had fun clearing out as much of the place as we could, and one time we even found a purple item in a chest. The runs took a lot longer than strictly necessary, but the whole experience felt very rewarding and fun.

As far as crew skills go, there seem to be a lot of little bits and pieces in many flashpoints that provide you with small bonuses if you take the time to notice them. On Athiss for example you can go into a side room and use scavenging to repair a broken droid, which will then follow you around and act as a combat pet for a bit. On Hammer Station, you can use crew skills to drill a hole through a wall to create a shortcut to the first boss. None of it is even remotely necessary, but it's a little something that feels fun. I was reminded of how I used to be grateful for someone who could pick locks in WoW's Shattered Halls so that we didn't have to go through the local sewer to get to the first boss. Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.

Finally, I found it notable that there's a huge stylistic difference between flashpoints. The first one you get access to on either side (The Esseles / The Black Talon) feels very creative and exciting. Lots of moving around, multiple conversations with NPCs, multiple light/dark side decisions that really make you feel like you're influencing the story. I found it to be quite different from what I usually expect to find inside an instance, but in a good way.

However, after that the next couple of flashpoints honestly felt like a bit of a disappointment. Hammer Station, Athiss, Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu... there's nothing wrong with them, but they don't utilise SWTOR's unique selling points nearly as well and feel a lot more like classic dungeon crawls. Yes, there is a bit of voice work, and at some point there's usually a light/dark side choice for you to make, but it tends to feel a bit tacked on. Hey, there's a room full of innocents over there, want to save them or kill them? At their heart, these four instances can easily be summed up as "go kill some bad guys and then kill their boss", detailed story be damned. Still, this is only a problem when you compare it to what came before. Truth be told, I'm perfectly happy to do a classic dungeon crawl with some friends. I mentioned our fun little adventures in Cademimu before.

Interestingly, just as I was going to accept that the Esseles and the Black Talon were obviously outliers, the game threw Taral V and the Maelstrom Prison at me, two separate flashpoints that are part of one continuous story. They are not quite as interactive as the Esseles, but the story is considerably more involved, and at the end of the Maelstrom Prison we were rewarded with a hugely satisfying boss fight and a massive lore revelation (which might not actually mean much to Republic players without much prior knowledge, but fortunately for me I had just played through Dromund Kaas on Empire side, which had conveniently provided me with some context for events).

At first I was a bit bewildered by the way some flashpoints are so story-heavy while others aren't, but after doing some research on it, I think I understand the reasons for it. Basically, the difference seems to come down to whether a flashpoint is faction-specific or the same for both sides. I remember listening to a developer interview where the guy confessed that originally, they had intended to make all content shared between the factions to save development time, but the resulting stories were pretty dumb because you can't really make a very compelling quest that both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader would find equally engaging (as the dev put it). So maybe those flashpoints are leftovers from early development, or the developers simply decided that they could afford to have at least a couple of group instances with a comparatively weak story, especially considering that they would be repeatable content at endgame, at which point the story fades into the background anyway.

All in all, I've enjoyed myself enough that I'm definitely looking forward to exploring the flashpoints that I haven't seen yet, and so far there hasn't been one that I wouldn't be happy to rerun.