A Good Start to the Season

You may find it hard to believe after my outrage at how gutted the Esseles and the Black Talon feel without cut scenes, but I've actually had a pretty good start to Galactic Season 9 in spite of that. Patch day was a bit rough, with my game crashing to desktop something like seven times, but once I learned that this was caused by hovering over one specific UI element, I was once again too amazed by just how weird MMO bugs can be sometimes to really be mad about that. (Plus, once I knew what was causing it, it was easy to avoid. They then patched the issue a couple days later.)

The flashpoint theme has actually felt surprisingly invigorating. I've long said that I'm a big fan of flashpoints, but I'm not immune to incentives, and the fact that there's literally been nothing to earn for me in flashpoints for a couple of years now has admittedly discouraged me from running them. I would rarely go for the seasons objectives that required you to run two specific flashpoints because they were just too time-consuming and felt inefficient. The dedicated weekly objective for this season only requiring a single quick veteran mode run makes a world of a difference, and I was genuinely surprised that I actually had fun blitzing through Athiss six times this past week.

My favourite run was the one with my husband on our home server, where he actually bothered to go into one of the side alcoves to use his scavenging to repair the broken combat droid there, something I hadn't done in so long that I'd genuinely forgotten that it was even a thing. One of the guildies in our group then kept casting a heal over time on it to keep it alive, to the point that the temporary pet was actually still alive when we got to the last boss. This is where we learned that the living fire debuff can go on non-player characters! The poor droid didn't manage to survive that one, but it was good for a laugh. 

The other weekly objectives for the first two weeks were pretty good too, with some nice softballs that didn't take too much time to complete on multiple servers while also earning me new achievements.

My personal biggest delight last week though was that there was also an objective to run any random master mode flashpoint, which I did on five out of six servers. (Sadly I couldn't get the queue to pop on Shae Vizla even while queueing as a tank.)

Even better, not a single one of them was Hammer Station, even though I had queued for the full selection. I had the expectation that most people would use the new feature that allows you to exclude a few flashpoints without losing your random bonus to primarily veto long or difficult ones, but maybe there are more fellow Spammer Station haters out there than expected who are actually excluding that one instead.

Either way, the random master mode flashpoints I got put into were Assault on Tython (twice), Battle of Rishi, Lost Island and Crisis on Umbara. The latter must have been nerfed a lot since I last did it, as my group completed it successfully without wiping despite feeling pretty mid in terms of skill. I know there's been some gear inflation since 7.0, but the first two bosses barely even seemed to do any damage, and we pulled the bonus boss by accident with a bunch of trash and still killed that successfully too. Not that I'm complaining!

Battle of Rishi had me busting out my Shadow's tank spec on Satele Shan, which I had actually set up some time ago but then never ended up using. I was very pleased with myself for how I guided the rest of the group through the run after someone expressed that it had been a while and they weren't sure they remembered what to do. Trying to model good tank behaviour!

Lost Island was the most memorable one though, as that was what I got on the Leviathan server while queueing on my Sage as a healer. It quickly became obvious that the tank and one of the damage dealers knew basically nothing about the flashpoint, while the other damage dealer gave the vibes of someone who had done it before and generally knew how to play but couldn't fully remember all the tactics properly. It was pretty funny to read the chat and try to make sense of it, as my knowledge of French is very limited. I think I could generally get the vibe/general topic, but not necessarily what exactly people were trying to say.

Unsurprisingly we wiped something like five times on the second boss as everyone but me kept getting knocked off the platform. I tried to use Google Translate to explain where people needed to stand, but either the translation made no sense or they intentionally decided to ignore me because I sounded too weird, as they didn't appear to listen to my advice. Fortunately they eventually seemingly managed to figure it out on their own and we were victorious. The remaining two bosses after that were comparatively easy, but I still felt like I was carrying pretty hard, healing people through some significant amounts of "standing in bad".

I felt properly giddy after we finished, both excited and relieved that we'd succeeded despite our difficulties, but also a bit amused by how ridiculous the whole experience had felt. The dps who'd given me vibes of having some idea of what to do whispered me afterwards to... I don't know, I'm guessing it was something like "we're queueing again" though it might have meant something completely different; I genuinely had no clue. I just logged off because I'd definitely had enough for that evening.

I'm hoping to see that objective pop up more often though.

Ranking the 7.7 Dynamic Encounter Planets

I've been meaning to write more about the dynamic encounters that were added with patch 7.7 for a while, but I struggled to make up my mind about what format I was going to use for the post. I had fun with the top ten lists I made for Hoth and Tatooine, but that format doesn't work so well when you're dealing with a larger number of planets, each of which has a much smaller number of dynamic encounters than those two.

I ultimately decided that I'm just going to rank the planets against each other instead, talking about each planet in more general terms instead of discussing too many individual encounters in detail.

Going from best to worst, I would start with: 

1. Dromund Kaas

If you split the seven planets that had dynamic encounters added in 7.7 into three groups - capital worlds, starter planets and Ilum - I think both of the capital worlds definitely came out on top. With more than twenty unique encounters per planet they offer the most variety of the bunch, as well as offering an easy way to grind Conquest points.

The encounters on Dromund Kaas are thematically very varied, mostly leaning into the different regional "themes" previously established in side missions, such as the spaceport being somewhat in disarray or the lightning spires being under attack. They mostly seem to be set in the same time period as those original exploration missions, though I noticed while dispersing unruly Imperial citizens in Kaas City that one of them yelled "What is Xarion hiding?", which I thought was an interesting detail that would place that one after Onslaught in the timeline.

In general, most of the encounters are quick and fun, and strategically placed in locations where people are bound to come through on their way to some other mission objective, making it very temping to allow yourself to be distracted for a moment to complete an encounter. Prime examples of this are doing "Bad Monkey" just after arriving at the spaceport, or hunting down the rogue bounty hunter while passing through Kaas City.

If I had to cite anything negative, I'd say that there are a couple of encounters with flaws. The Apex Predator in "Shock and Awe" feels way overtuned for levelling players (trying to solo it on a level thirty-something with a healer companion I was chunked to death within only a couple of hits), and the final boss for "Kubaz Incursion" can be a bit annoyingly hard to find. "Powder Keg" actually being possible to fail is a neat idea but the fact that it's the only encounter of this kind and that it's not obvious at all what is going on unless you're already in the know makes it a bit unpleasant in that regard.

Also, I wish they'd fix encounter voice lines sometimes playing when the encounter isn't even up, because every time my speeder rides past the lightning spires I get spammed with yells about multiple encounters that may not actually all be active.

Anyway, all in all it's still a fun romp, and the reason it's edging out Coruscant for first place in my opinion is that the map makes it both cheap and easy to get around if you want to do multiple encounters. Which brings us to...

2. Coruscant 

In general, Coruscant is one of my top three planets in the entire game, and most positive things I said about the dynamic encounters on Dromund Kaas above also apply to Coruscant. The reason I put it in second place is simply the fact that it's a bit of a pain to travel between dynamic encounters due to the planetary layout with the different sectors, which all count as being really far apart, which in turn means that moving between them always requires either a looong taxi ride or paying the maximum price for quick travel. Even if you do opt for quick travel though, the sectors are still laid out in such a way that it can be a pain to just travel from one dynamic encounter within the same sector to the next one.

The said, I adore most of the encounters in the Senate Plaza, which is where I'm always passing through when I exit my stronghold, and I basically never pass on an opportunity to set off some fireworks or to help clean up the party's aftermath.

Negatives are that some of the Black Sun and Justicar encounters don't have nearly enough clickies if there's even more than one person trying to do the encounter at the same time, the way Ugnaught Engineering was horrifically bugged when it first came out and made people get into fights about who was supposedly causing it to bug, stealing kills or whatever (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the one encounter on the Senate Plaza that I don't like, "Understaffed". Like with "Powder Keg", you can tell someone just wanted to try something different there, but the final result is just too undercooked, with a tutorial mode that teaches you to do things the wrong way, and people being able to ruin the encounter for each other - both intentionally and unintentionally - which is never a good thing.

3. Tython 

Next we have the starter planets, which I think are all pretty similar in quality, and I don't feel particularly strongly about the order in which I've ranked them against each other. The main reason I consider them worse than the capital planets it that there are very few encounters, so you'll run out of things to do pretty quickly if you're just trying to grind on a single planet, and that none of the DEs on the starter planets give Conquest points. I can see why the devs decided to have that limitation, but it still means that for someone who's very Conquest-focused like me, they tend to have a lot less replay value.

With that general preamble out of the way, Tython is definitely my favourite of the bunch, since it's my favourite of all the starter planets and I think all its dynamic encounters are very on point, whether you're doing simple chores at the Jedi Temple or beating back the flesh raiders.

The only thing I'll say is that I do wonder a little how having a dynamic encounter pop up the moment you leave your intro phase is going to affect new players' perception of the planet and the game as a whole, and whether it might make things come off as a bit "loud" and overwhelming to less experienced gamers. I would love to have insight into the devs' behavioural metrics on the starter planets for that one... 

4. Hutta

Hutta is actually one of my least favourite planets, generally speaking, but I think in terms of dynamic encounters it works well enough. Again, the themes of the encounters go very well with what's also conveyed via the existing side missions, from dangerous wildlife to rebellious evocii.

The only thing I'm not so sure about is having an encounter that is basically a vehicle quest right outside the spawn phase, because it makes me wonder whether that isn't a bit confusing/overwhelming for new players. Even if seeing a bunch of droids enter the gang wars right outside the Poison Pit does serve to drive home the point that the town is a bit of a mess. 

5. Ord Mantell

Ord Mantell is one of two planets where I actually feel like some of the encounters are slightly off in tone. This may very well be my personal bias speaking, as someone who mains a trooper and was instantly scarred by being blamed for the death of Bellis the informant at the hands of the separatists by multiple people, but I always perceived the whole setting with the separatists as very dark and desperate. Even the smuggler story with all its goofiness has a pretty dark turn here with Corso's parents being dead because of the separatists and him having that one moment where he wants to execute that random sep in cold blood.

With that said, I just feel like some of the encounters involving separatists feel a bit too silly. Like that mad scientist type sending you out to shoot separatists with one of his droids? It's one thing if there's a specific NPC that's bit ridiculous when you talk to them, that's clearly just that one character, but the fact that you hear the dynamic encounter yells repeated endlessly even when you're just driving by gives them a much stronger impact on the mood in my opinion. Might just be me.

6. Korriban

That's also the reason why I rate Korriban last of this batch, because again, several of the encounters just feel a bit too goofy to me personally. Don't get me wrong, both the Sith warrior and inquisitor stories have plenty of humorous moments even on Korriban, but I still always got the vibe that as a setting, the planet is clearly meant to be very grim, with all the racial purity nonsense and dog-eat-dog behaviour encouraged in the acolytes. Stuff like k'lor'slugs running wild around the academy feels more like the kind of hijinx you'd find in a young adult book series about a magic school. (That said, looking at how busy each planet is, this one actually seems to be very popular with people, so again, this might just be me.)

7. Ilum 

Finally, in last place - alas, poor Ilum. I really wanted the addition of dynamic encounters to this planet to feel like a revival for it. I have some fond memories of Ilum from the game's early days, even though it felt somewhat unfinished even then, but over time it's only ever declined in relevance. Sadly I can't say that I feel like dynamic encounters have put it back on people's radar, and based on the small number of other people I see doing encounters there, I get the impression that it didn't really land for the majority of the population either.

Good things first: the theming is once again spot-on on this one. They really leaned into the Republic vs. Empire conflict from the original storyline and even added some encounter achievements that are meant to encourage world PvP. (I'm 99% sure that almost nobody will bother with those, but I appreciate the effort.) On the Western Ice Shelf, they've expanded on the lore of the Tonvarr Pirates that were previously only really relevant during the Gree event. It all works.

The problem is simply that too many of the encounters are just not very fun. Too many of them have multiple stages and feature a large number of mobs - when sometimes mob-killing isn't even part of the main objective, which makes it feel like you're just endlessly wading back and forth through constantly respawning mobs to actually get to the next clicky you need. It just feels tedious to the point that my brain keeps trying to forget that Ilum is another planet that has dynamic encounters now and I very rarely even remember to go there.

All that said, I wanted to also give a shout-out to a change to dynamic encounters in general that came with 7.7 but that I didn't see in the patch notes: When they released these new encounters, they changed it so that on staged DEs, you no longer need to complete every single stage by yourself to get credit, but rather you can join in at any time and still get completion. I feel that this has been a great change and has been most noticeable for me during encounters such as the base attacks on Tatooine and Hoth. It used to be that I felt that there was no point in joining in if people were already fighting the stage two walker, as it wouldn't give me anything and I'd just have to restart the encounter from scratch afterwards anyway. Now I'll gleefully jump in and help out because I'll actually be rewarded for it too, which I think has been a great change.

How many of the new encounters have you done at this point? And do you agree with my ranking of the planets or not? Let me know in the comments. 

Season Launch

Sooo... since I expressed my disappointment about the last dev stream, I've been feeling a little demotivated. However, the actual launch date for the new season followed soon after, and I'm not so disenchanted that I won't take part in it! I might do less if I don't find it that fun, but that's not a foregone conclusion (sometimes things turn out to be more or less fun than I originally expected).

It was certainly interesting to get some more details over the past few days that hadn't been revealed on the stream yet. I was kind of fascinated by how many people I saw going nuts over the thigh high boots reward for example... always makes me feel a bit alienated from the rest of the player base when I'm reminded that I don't care nearly as much about the Space Barbie aspect as a lot of others apparently do. I mean, I like my characters to look nice too, but I really don't have much of an eye for detail in that particular area. There was also a patch note about moving parts on helmets in cinematics that I saw some people get excited about and I didn't even know what they were talking about.

The main thing that caught my eye was that the DvL bosses are making a return for Season 8, both as weekly objectives and for the meta achievement, which made me scream a little on the inside. Don't get me wrong, I was all in favour of bringing them back in GS7, but after months of death zergs on Hoth I'd had more than enough of them. Learning that I'd be back to revisit them every week for this season as well made me wish the meta achievement would've been to just run 40 uprisings instead or whatever, even though I'm not a fan of those either. Just strikes me as a classic case of "be careful what you wish for" - things could get worse!

Yesterday the patch actually dropped, and the first thing I heard about it was a guildie complaining that he wasn't earning any Conquest points. A forum thread on the matter narrowed it down to the affected people being players who still owned multiples of any strongholds from the server merges years ago (such as two copies of the Coruscant apartment). This included me.

It was kind of a mix of funny and sad, as I believe this was the second patch in a row where they tried to fix something Conquest-related and then broke something else instead. At least last time my points were only reduced, not completely zeroed out...

As someone whose gameplay is very much driven by Conquest, I decided to just not play on Darth Malgus that evening and focus on dusting off my legacies on the other servers instead (where I didn't have any duplicate strongholds and therefore wasn't affected by the bug). I'll say that I like the new weekly objective to do dynamic encounters, as that's easy to do on multiple servers without feeling repetitive. Also, since dynamic encounters still count as missions, it also has nice synergy with another objective this week to complete 15 missions as a smuggler or bounty hunter.

I was a bit unsure before going to bed whether I should just go and deactivate my duplicate strongholds as some people had done. It apparently worked as a bug fix, and I hadn't actually used them much in ages, but at the same time they're something unique that you probably can't get back once deactivated. I decided to hedge my bets and hope for a hotfix overnight, and in this instance the devs did not disappoint, as I woke up to the problem having been fixed, meaning I was able to earn some Conquest points and complete the first daily objective of the season the next morning before the reset.

The Best and Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

I've had a lot of fun running dynamic encounters over the Christmas holidays, and after reaching 100% achievement completion on Hoth, I thought it would be fun to rank the different encounters by best and worst (not all of them though, there are too many of them for that).

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

1. The "Ice Kitten Trilogy": Wire You Doing That/Wire Consequences/Wire You So Cute

Could there have been any doubt about this coming in first place? Who'd have thought that Republic power relay in Whiterock Wastes would ever become such a popular destination?

These three encounters loosely tell a story, though you can do them in any order. In the first one, Wire You Doing That, local ice kittens have been chewing on generator wires, leaving you to make repairs and shoo them away. In part two, Wire Consequences, the kittens are still around but grumpy, so your job is to soothe them and put them inside cat carriers. Finally, in Wire You So Cute you assemble some pet supplies and try to get random cantina patrons to adopt the kittens. A noble sentiment, though I'm not sure we're really doing a good thing here considering these are still wild animals and likely to grow a lot bigger... I feel more like someone trying to sell tiger cubs out of a car boot rather than a kind soul taking care of lost pets. Still, as long as you don't think too hard about it, these are very cute missions with virtually no combat (the first one has a chance to summon an "upset momma cat" that needs subduing, but even then there's no killing involved), and of course each one has a chance to reward you with the rare freckled Loth-cat Kitten pet. What's not to love?

2. Imperial/Republic/Pirate Attack

I'm lumping all the different "attack on base" encounters together here, because even though there are slight differences in the tools you're given to help with the defense, the basic concept is the same. I can see why an example of these was how the devs first promoted the concept of dynamic encounters to us, because it does still feel cool to me every time I land at a base and there's an attack happening. Seeing the shared progress counter tick up as an indication that someone else is already working on defending is almost guaranteed to make me want to join in to get credit too and it always feels quite satisfying.

3. Ice Fishing 

After being initially somewhat confused by this encounter on the PTS, now that it makes sense to me I'm really loving it. It's basically the seeker droid mini game with a different name, but the area you have to work in is quite small so it's very quick and pleasant. The fish "death sounds" crack me up and there's no combat involved except for the occasional hungry ice cat making an appearance. The only downside is that it's a bit out of the way for Republic players.

4. Taun Fawn Fun

This one seems to be many people's favourite and I think I would have had a riot on my hands if it wasn't included on this list! (I imagine some players would argue it should be number one.) Another very cute encounter, this one has you carrying taun fawns up a slope so they can slide down. Very simple, and another creative example of a non-combat encounter. The reason I rank it a little lower than e.g. the ice kittens is that it's almost a bit too cutesy for me - with the ice cats, you at least still have the context of looking after Republic infrastructure, but with the taun fawns you're really just pausing to play with some cute animals for no real reason. Also, the fact that only one fawn can be on the slide at a time can cause some annoyance with queue-jumping when multiple people try to do this encounter at once.

5. Fur, Fur Away 

This was one of my favourite encounters on the PTS and I still love it on live because of how simple it is: get three fur samples from non-hostile ice trompers and done! If you're lucky, you can finish in literal seconds, though the animals have a chance to resist by knocking you away. This can get a little annoying if you're suffering from a string of particularly bad RNG and get knocked about for several minutes, but even then I don't mind too much because the animation for being knocked back always amuses me. It makes you fly so high that you'd think you would take fall damage on landing, but the devs were generous in that regard, so you don't take any and can immediately get back into the action to try again. 

6. Under Fire!

This Imperial-only encounter is one of the ones that has a chance of dropping the Everglade Zakkeg mount, and probably the best one at that, as unlike the Loth-cat Kitten, the mount isn't a reward for completing the encounter but a random drop from the Talz mobs you fight. This event has you jumping in to save a beleaguered team of Imperial soldiers from an ambush, so you get a whole bunch of Talz popping out of the snow in easily AoE-able groups, which makes for an encounter that doesn't take a lot of time and also gives you many chances at the mount drop.

7. Snipers!

Another Imperial encounter vs. the Talz, this one can be a bit confusing the first time you try it - and it can also kill you! Once you understand what's going on, it's not hard to avoid dying though, and I find it quite satisfying to flush the snipers out of their hiding spots. If only snipers in PvP were this easy to kill and didn't constantly self-heal and run away...

8. Snow Capped Delicacies

This encounter has you climbing a mountain to pick some flowers for an Ortolan hermit, another pretty creative idea for an encounter in my opinion. It also has a chance to reward a flower decoration (this one still eludes me personally). The slightly lower ranking mostly comes from the fact that the mountain being a "fake exhaustion zone" can be a bit confusing (and you can die if you accidentally cross over into the real exhaustion zone), plus the VFX for the snow storm on the mountain are not easy on the eyes.

9. Trial by Fire

This is a fun little encounter that has you testing an experimental heat resistance suit in the local mini-volcanoes. I was rather amused that when I tried to look up a guide for what the different buttons do, both pages I found were basically like "I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do here, lol" and you can indeed "win" by just mashing random buttons. However, if you do it "right" for a given degree of right, you also complete a bonus mission and get credit for two dynamic encounters in one, which I think is cool. I also feel like there's definitely more to how the suit works that we just haven't quite figured out yet, which intrigues me.

10. Volcanic Rumblings

Speaking of volcanoes, another encounter in the area that I quite like is to take heat readings from volcanic fissures, which is a simple matter of running in circles for two minutes to find some clickies. Very simple and straightforward.

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

Boring disclaimer: I don't actually think that any dynamic encounters we've seen so far are truly "bad". At worst they're not that creative and feel a little generic, but that's still not exactly a huge issue considering their intended purpose as filler content. The main reason some encounters stood out to me as unpleasant was mainly due to bugs, and I expect that these won't seem so bad once said bugs are addressed.

1. Unnecessary Repairs

The simple reason I rate this as the worst encounter on Hoth right now is that it's currently bugged in something like three different ways, with the most important one being that the things you need to click on don't respawn once someone has used them, which means that if you ever want to complete this encounter, you basically need to be there when it spawns so you can get it done before anyone else arrives. That one was quite a nuisance to get credit for.

2. Pirate Problem

This is another encounter that suffers from a very annoying bug. This encounter is a shared one with three stages: kill lots of mobs, click on some stuff, then kill two named mobs. The problem is that one of the named mobs doesn't respawn right now (it can be either of the two, it's like the game just can't allow more than one of them to be alive at any given point after the encounter spawns). This means once again that you can only complete this encounter if you're there to take part in stage one right after it spawns - if you arrive any later, the whole thing will inevitably get stuck on stage three, since that one can't be completed without the missing mob, and you'll feel like you just wasted your time.

3. Snow Grift

This encounter has no bugs that I'm aware of, but is just a bit annoying in my opinion. An NPC sells you a treasure finding device which you then use to find the treasure/complete the encounter. There's no rhyme or reason to the treasure finding, you just have to keep spending credits until you get lucky. Other players can also "steal" the snow mounds you spawned with the device you paid for, leaving you with nothing. Very quick to do if you're lucky and don't mind spending the credits, but very annoying if you're unlucky and/or other players keep sniping your snow mounds before you can loot them yourself.

4. Wampa Hunt

This should be an easy and fun enough encounter on the surface, as you just need to kill three wampas in the area. The annoyance comes from the fact that the area has both a top level and a bottom level, and for some reason the bottom level doesn't count as part of the encounter area, meaning you're limited to a very small number of wampas on the top level, which can be annoying when there are multiple people hunting.

5. Lost Inventory

This is another encounter that is relatively inoffensive on the surface, but it has three stages, which can be a bit of an unpleasant surprise if you don't know what's coming up and can cause you to kill a lot of unnecessary extra mobs if you're fighting your way in the wrong direction compared to where the later stages want you to go. Also, it takes place in what used to be a heroic area, and while that has been nerfed a lot compared to how it was at launch, it feels like you still end up with a higher density of strong and gold mobs than in most encounters.

Character Modernisation Panic on the PTS

I mentioned in my post about the 7.6 livestream that the devs revealed that they're also working on updating NPCs and player characters with new textures, shaders and more. They emphasised that they were aware of how important it was that your character still felt like your character afterwards, and the examples they showed in their previews looked very good.

I didn't expect them to also push this update onto the PTS immediately afterwards, but they did... and I found out about it because there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about it. Well, actually, the first time I heard about it was when Intisar showed me a before and after screenshot of his main and commented that his Jedi suddenly looked old enough to be her own mother, which just made me laugh. However, as I heard more reports and saw a couple of honestly kind of appalling-looking screenshots, I got curious - something was clearly wrong here.

So I updated the PTS myself to have a look and... honestly, at first I didn't get what the fuss was about, as both my Republic and Imperial main (who are a body type four cyborg/human respectively) pretty much looked fine to me. But then I loaded up some alts and yeah, I could see that things looked rough. Doing my own before and after shots for my Chiss agent and Mirialan smuggler, they both appeared to have aged about twenty years each.

I figured that obviously couldn't be right, considering that it went completely against what had been said and shown on the livestream, so I was still more amused than worried. I posted some feedback on the PTS forums, but in what I thought was a kind of playful tone - you might want to review some settings on these, guys! I also took further heart from seeing posts like this one from someone who has some knowledge about 3D models and textures and showed that a lot of the issues people were seeing could indeed feasibly just be caused by one slider basically being set to the wrong number.

However, the SWTOR community loves a good freak-out and I still saw many posts that weren't just pointing out that something was wrong, but whose authors were seriously upset, threatening to unsubscribe forever over this, and so on and so forth. As someone who's 41 in real life, I was honestly a bit offended by some of the comments that claimed that the changes made their characters look 70 years old. Have you ever seen a 70-year-old in real life, kiddo?! I'll admit that some of the memes people came up with were amusing, but all in all I found the whole thing a bit tiring, considering that it seemed so obvious to me that it was simply a bug on the PTS, which exists specifically so people can find bugs before go-live.

Fortunately the latest PTS update has improved things and the worst of the panic seems to have subsided... though I'm still seeing some criticisms in the new PTS feedback thread, the most poignant of which to me was the one pointing out that the new faces look a lot worse on low graphics settings than the old faces, which I agree is definitely something that should be looked into.

I also had a kind of strange experience when checking out the new update myself, as I basically logged into the PTS, clicked through my characters on the character selection screen one by one and thought "yep, these all look great". However, after I took a few more screenshots for comparison purposes, I lined them up next to the "buggy" faces and they... actually didn't look all that different? As in, there are still some pretty noticeable differences compared to the old faces, and I can still see more wrinkles than I'd necessarily like to on my idealised video game heroines, but at the same time - it didn't bother me at all while in game, only when staring intensely at the close-up shots, which is not something I would usually do while playing.

Bugged PTS vs. updated PTS

Live vs. updated PTS

Bugged PTS vs. updated PTS

Live vs. updated PTS

My conclusion for now is that I'll be fine and will be happy with my characters getting updated, but I also feel like I have no clue how the majority of players will react to these changes. As mentioned, there are still plenty of complaints being raised in the feedback thread, some of which I can kind of see, but others just make me feel like Pam from The Office, going "They're the same picture" (meaning I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about).

And maybe that makes you think that my eyesight is lacking and obviously everyone will still hate this update, to which I'd respond: Will they though? Because I've also spoken to people who saw that very first, bugged update and genuinely thought it was fine too, going "sure, my character looks a bit older than before, but so what". My hunch is that most players will probably be fine, because even if you do notice differences between old and new that you don't like in the direct comparison shots, I reckon most players don't actually spend that much time staring intently at their character's nostrils in everyday play if you get what I mean. I don't think the differences will be as noticeable when you're actually playing the game normally and not glaring at your character like they're about to have their police mugshot taken.

All in all, I guess this goes to prove once again that player character updates in MMOs are a tricky thing. I remember when I briefly resubbed to World of Warcraft in late 2013 after having been away from the game for more than a year, the low-resolution old character models that I'd always liked before suddenly appalled me, as I'd gotten too used to SWTOR's much better-looking avatars. When WoW then updated its models in 2014, I logged in once just to check out my characters' new looks, and while I thought Blizzard did a decent job with the upgrades overall, I also noted at the time that many characters looked older and angrier than before, and ten years later I'm still not over what they did to female tauren. So this kind of thing is always a bit of a gamble, but remembering my own reaction to WoW's old character models in 2013, it's probably also a necessary one if the game is supposed to continue attracting new players.

If you have any doubts about this update yourself, I can only recommend downloading the PTS, copying over some of your characters, and giving feedback in the relevant forum thread. If you've already seen your characters' updated looks, how do you feel about them?

Impressions from the 7.6 PTS

A combination of PTS incentives and curiosity about the new dynamic encounter system got me to spend some time on the public test server this past week.

My aging PC doesn't have enough disk space to support having two versions of SWTOR installed nowadays, so I had to put the PTS on my laptop, but that actually worked out quite well this time around as I was travelling last week and had the laptop with me for evening entertainment anyway.

Only two planets have dynamic encounters on the PTS right now: Hoth and Tatooine. It's currently not clear whether that's all 7.6 will launch with or whether these planets were picked for focused testing and we'll be surprised with some more content once the patch goes live. There were some indicators on the PTS galaxy map hinting at dynamic events on other planets like Alderaan and Belsavis, but with no actual content available there so far.

One thing I originally wondered after seeing the sneak peek trailer was whether dynamic encounters would be more like World of Warcraft's world quests (as in, personal to you) or dynamic events in other MMOs (shared and the same for everyone). Interestingly, the answer turned out to be "both". There are two types of events, designated as either "group shared" or "encounter shared". In the former, your progress is personal, and the encounter continues to exist for other players on the map even after you've completed it. In the latter, everyone doing stuff contributes to the event's progression, and once the encounter completes, everyone gets their reward at the same time and it disappears from the map. The shared encounters are generally rarer and can still be soloed if nobody else is around, but they tend to require killing more mobs and can therefore feel like a bit of a slog if you're the only person in the area. On the other hand it's a lot of fun (in my opinion) if there are other players around and you can see things progress really quickly as everybody does their part.

In general gameplay terms, the encounters are about what you'd expect: a lot of kill x mobs and some clicking on shiny things, though there are some standouts where the devs clearly tried to be creative and come up with more varied activities. 

I don't think dynamic events are intended to be a new "main" gameplay mode, though depending on how many planets will get them when 7.6 launches, I'd be curious to see how much levelling you could get done by just doing dynamic encounters - as an experiment if nothing else! Realistically though, I think they are meant to be similar to side missions, just without all the picking up and handing in required. At max level they currently award a tiny number of tech fragments and Conquest commendations, small enough that they wouldn't make for a great primary source of either currency.

One thing that made me wonder a little was how much focus there is on highlighting these new dynamic encounters on the map. The galaxy map highlights planets that have them active, and on the planetary map they show up as big glowy diamonds. There's nothing wrong with that in principle, but it does seem an odd choice when the devs took multiple steps in the past to hide away exploration missions and/or make them less prominent because they were apparently confusing/distracting people. Surely new levellers will get a lot more distracted by all these big glowy indicators on their maps? I dunno.

I'm still a bit torn on whether to try the new lair boss on the PTS as well or not. On the one hand I prefer not to spoil myself when it comes to content like that and would rather see things for the first time on live, but on the other hand every bit of feedback might help with making the Propagator Core a better raid.

The initial round of forum feedback certainly hasn't looked too good. Players were asked what they thought of the fight's different phases, and everyone basically replied "what phases?" because by all accounts, it was just an extremely long slog against an enemy with a lot of hitpoints while trying to manage some bad stuff dropping on the floor.

There has since been another dev post on the forums that basically admitted that almost nothing about the fight was working correctly and that it will see massive changes with the next PTS update. Which is good in the sense that it means the tedious version people experienced in the first week wasn't at all final, though it also makes you wonder why and how an operations boss ended up being put on the PTS in that state in the first place (since you'd expect the devs to be able to verify that at least the very basics are functioning before asking people to play test). I guess I'll have a few more weeks to see how things develop and whether I want to have a go myself.

Adventures on Oricon

I don't really have anything too deep or meaningful to say this week, but just wanted to ramble a bit about doing dailies on Oricon. The change the devs made to daily areas with the Bessi patch still kind of fascinates me. It was very much a footnote to the actual venture, but dailies used to be one of the few endgame activities that were still largely gated behind a character's story progression, so seeing them get opened up account-wide with so little fuss just surprised me.

And it does seem a bit like... things weren't exactly optimised for this change in some ways, as I found out while questing on Oricon this past week. One of the weekly seasons objectives was to do exploration or repeatable missions in Empire space, and Oricon was one of the eligible planets.

I hadn't unlocked it at all on Shae Vizla yet, so I took my Sith warrior there to start the story. As I arrived in the base, I saw the daily mission terminal all lit up with quests and a little light went on in my head as well.

For those who don't know, the Oricon story requires you to do four simple missions as part of a storyline that eventually cumulates in you being sent into the Dread Fortress operation, and the dailies didn't used to unlock until you'd done the first three of those story missions. These dailies would then also be similar to the original one-time story quests, for example requiring you to destroy three terraforming devices when the storyline originally asked you to destroy five.

So I thought to myself: Wait, if I can pick up the dailies from the start, do I get a two-for-one? I picked up the first story mission to rescue Republic soldiers from escape pods, grabbed the daily mission with the same objective and indeed: every pod I opened gave me credit towards both! I love it when I get to make use of synergies like that.

Unfortunately, the smooth experience didn't last. I first started to run into problems when I got to the quest that requires you to locate a dark energy source by collecting "bioenergy enhancers" from the local mobs (ten for the one-time mission, five for the daily). I collected a whole bunch and then clicked on them to do the locating. One of the quests updated, but the other one didn't. I tried to use the item again, but it wouldn't let me because it kept saying that I'd already done that bit.

Somewhat annoyed, I proceeded into the phase for the quest and completed the one that was on the correct step. When I looked into my bags afterwards to try and use the bioenergy enhancers again for the second quest, they had disappeared, clearly "cleaned up" automatically due to me completing one of the missions. So I had to farm up another set, locate the dark energy source again, and repeat the encounter in the phase. Alright.

Things got worse in the watchtower. I defeated the various droids inside the control room, clicked on the final panel that's supposed to spawn Commander Zaoron and... nothing happened. This was when I noticed that only one of the two missions had updated correctly while the other one wasn't even on the right step. So I exited the phase again, reset the one that had progressed ahead of the other one and went through the whole rigmarole a second time. This time both missions updated successfully.

I watched the cut scene for the one-time mission and then... couldn't click on the holocron to complete the quest. I sighed and went back out once again, but at least one of the missions completed as I did so. I just reset the phase this time (instead of the whole mission) and went back in yet again, hoping that the game would be less confused now with only one quest left, and indeed, the holocron finally became clickable.

All in all, it wasn't the worst thing in the world, and I did get a lot of quests done in one run, but there was also a lot of trial and error with various resets involved. This is unfortunately the kind of thing that makes the game feel somewhat unpolished at times but at the same time isn't likely to get fixed because it's not a hard blocker and you can eventually push through with enough persistence.

Have you had any interesting experiences with the new daily zone unlocks for characters that haven't actually done that planet's story yet?

Flying Robots, Account-Wide Surprises, Decoration Sale

One thing I keep thinking about in regards to my blogging is that I used to be much better at making shorter, more random posts. I do still love writing long and thoughtful treatises on all kinds of topics, but sometimes it's also nice to just... talk about a funny thing I saw for a few paragraphs? It's always really interesting to look back on those posts years later, plus I would guess that they make for an easier entry point for new readers as well.

So without further ado... some random thoughts on a Friday:

Flying Robots

You know how your class companions will sometimes want to chat with you on your ship or in a cantina? The conversations that can be held in a cantina can also take place in a stronghold. The other day I accidentally clicked on a talkative M1-4X while in my Copero Villa on an alt and the view went absolutely wild. I only took a few screenshots of my faithful droid companion floating in space (see below) but there were other crazy views, such as an extreme close-up of his shoulder, a giant rock wall stretching into infinity, and a view of my character from below with nothing but sky above her.

I was like "surely they didn't forget to test the companion conversation feature in this stronghold" and indeed, when I tried to have a conversation with another companion later, the cut scene took place at the entrance normally, with the kinds of views you'd expect. I wonder if M1-4X is buggy in a unique way or whether it was just a random glitch.

Account-Wide Surprises

The introduction of Bessi came with a change to the way daily areas work, as the patch notes stated that each one would now be accessible to all characters within your legacy as long as at least one of them had unlocked the area. The other day while using the activity finder on one of my secondary servers, I was shocked and surprised to see that apparently those patch notes had been slightly incorrect: the new unlock is not legacy-wide, but account-wide. Meaning that my alternative legacies on the other servers, where none of my characters have progressed through a lot of content, now have access to all the daily areas in the game.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this yet. On the one hand, I've kind of liked having to re-earn certain things on the other servers, so this feels a bit like cheating. On the other hand though, it's going to make certain weekly objectives so much easier when the next Galactic Season comes around. (Doing the weekly on Ossus once is so much faster than doing the Oricon weekly twice for example.)

Decoration Sale

After the big summer mount sale ended, the sale section in the Cartel Market transitioned straight into another big sale, this time for decorations, though I haven't seen any official announcement or even much community conversation about it. I guess because decorating is a bit more of a niche hobby compared to mounts, which are something everyone uses?

I considered making another "tips" post about it but didn't really have that much to say that was different. Stuff like "check the price on the GTN before committing to spending real money" applies to decorations just as much as mounts. But since at least one person mentioned finding it helpful that I gave the mount sale a shout-out last time, I wanted to bring up the decorations sale at least briefly as well.

Since there's been no official word about this particular sale, I don't know for how much longer it'll be going on, but I would expect the "stock" to switch over again on Tuesday the 30th. Personally I went for the Copero utility bundle to match the new stronghold, since it's available for 50% off in the sale for the first time. Also, ever since I found out about the fact that many "light" decorations don't actually emit light, I've felt quite vexed by it and there are several bundles in the sale that contain either standing or hanging lights that actually do illuminate a room. Look up the Corporate Retreat, Distant Worlds, Restored Jedi Enclave and Security Bureau decoration bundles (though again, check the GTN for the items you want first!) or see Swtorista's full list of proper lighting decorations here.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 7

This is being published a bit late since I wanted to get my April round-up and the dev stream highlights out on time, but I didn't forget! To clarify, this is about the period from 23rd to 30th of April.

I'd been pretty excited about doing Galactic Seasons objectives for the first six weeks, but week 7 was the first one where I looked at the weekly objectives and kind of thought "meh". I think this was mainly due to the fact that repetition was starting to become noticeable to me for the first time. Here's what I thought about each weekly objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, I'd do that one.
  
• Complete the GSI weekly mission: Somewhat time-consuming so I definitely wasn't going to do this everywhere, but I do like me a bit of GSI action every now and then, so I figured I was going to do this on some servers as least.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Will get done automatically, so yes.
  
• Blow up enemies with destructible barrels and the like: I was probably going to do this one one way or another because of how easy it is to complete.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: This was the first objective that made me sigh a little. Didn't we just have this one? Oh, apparently that was five weeks ago. Didn't feel that long ago, somehow.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Hutt Space planets Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, Makeb, Darvannis or Ossus: This one also felt like I'd done it before, but I triple-checked and it hadn't been featured yet this season. I can only guess it felt that way since I'd done a fair bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa while working on other objectives in previous weeks. Still, this wasn't too bad and I was definitely going to do it.
  
• Craft invasion forces and dark projects: As usual, yay for crafting on Darth Malgus but nowhere else.
  
• Complete four uprisings on veteran or master mode: Still not a huge fan of uprisings and I could still feel the after-effects of spamming them for Total Galactic War. I figured maybe I'd do this on Darth Malgus, but surely nowhere else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now this one was definitely repetitive because these exact same flashpoints were featured only two weeks ago. I appreciated them then, but going through the exact same routine only two weeks later was definitely going to be a no from me.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: And the more annoying one of the two GSF objectives again... I figured I probably wasn't going to bother with this one, except maybe on Darth Malgus.
  
• Karagga's Palace on story mode: Now this was one objective that made me happy, as I was pleased to see that like the vet mode ops objective in week two, it had been reduced to requiring only one run - instead of previously four! I was hopeful that I'd be able to get this done on multiple servers since I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find pugs for it.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I got home very late that day as I attended a memorial for the recently deceased co-worker after my shift at the office. I didn't really feel like playing games after getting home, so I just logged into each server briefly to collect my daily login reward and achieve my daily allotment of Conquest point via various clicky objectives.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I had a lot more free time that day but still didn't really feel much like playing SWTOR for most of the day. I did eventually log in late in the evening to do the rounds again. On Darth Malgus I just did some crafting, followed by some GSI dailies on Leviathan.

I've settled into a routine when it comes to doing the GSI weekly, which involves doing Buried in Time on Tatooine, followed by two of the missions on Alderaan, digging up ancient weapons near House Teral and toxic waste barrels near Outpost Luurdes just a short ride over. This is very quick and easy, and I just do it several days in a row. This time, I also did the heroic on Tatooine (since you need to do one for the weekly) and blew up the womp rats near the barrel in Anchorhead a couple of times while I was there.

I then logged over to Star Forge to see whether any ops pugs were advertising for KP story mode in general chat. It took a little while, but eventually I saw a group form on Imp side. It was a nice and smooth run that also got me some achievements, as I'd never done KP SM on Star Forge before.

On Shae Vizla, I did a bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa until I'd earned enough Conquest for the daily objective. By that point it was late though and I was tired, so I decided to leave the remaining two servers for the next day.

Day 3 - Thursday

In the morning, I logged into Satele Shan and did a round of GSI dailies mirroring what I'd done on Leviathan the night before.

After that, I logged into Tulak Hord and did the Nar Shaddaa bonus series, since I couldn't remember whether I'd completed it on that server before, just that I had all these issues with false starts and bugs. It's a shame that you pretty much have to do them in a single day now to make sure they don't bug out, and with that in mind I've found it best to be laser-focused on only the missions actually part of the chain, while making a note to come back for any heroics or unrelated exploration missions in the area another time. Either way, this completed my Hutt Space missions weekly.

In the evening, I spent some time on Darth Malgus doing stuff not strictly related to seasons, such as PvP, ops with my guild and a bit of questing (though this did also get my daily objective done).

When I visited the other servers afterwards, I did another "round" of GSI dailies (meaning the eggs on Tatooine and the two dailies on Alderaan) on both Leviathan and Tulak Hord, followed by a round of the Black Hole on Satele Shan (since that's the only server where my main's a stealther) and a round of Ossus on Star Forge (the only secondary server where I have access to that planet). Finally, I continued doing non-class missions on Nar Shaddaa on Shae Vizla until my daily was done there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I didn't log in until the evening again. Starting on Darth Malgus, I did a variety of activities there, including a GSF weekly. I'd originally planned to skip that particular objective, but our Imperial alt guild was a bit low on Conquest points, so doing the GSF weekly a couple of times seemed like a good way to boost our score. Winning two matches only got me to 7/25 medals however.

On Leviathan, I went out to Nar Shaddaa - I knew that I'd completed the bonus series before, but I could've sworn I had some other side missions left to do in the area. This turned out to be wrong as I couldn't find a single one - clearly my spreadsheets to track progression across different alts aren't detailed enough for this. I instead started questing on Quesh until I hit my daily Conquest.

On Tulak Hord, I did some more GSI dailies, after which I logged over to Shae Vizla since I thought a KP guild run might be about to start. However, when I double-checked the time it turned out that I was wrong and the actual start time was something like 2.30 am my time, so I went and did some more quests on Nar Shaddaa instead. (I was clearly not having the best day in terms of knowing WTF was going on.) It didn't take long for me to complete my Hutt Space objective, so I went and started another GSI weekly mission. The Imperial version of the heroic on Tatooine has a bugged spot so you always need to check there first to make sure RNG hasn't assigned it to you, else you need to come back the next day (some say resetting the mission can also work but I've had no success with that personally). Fortunately I was lucky that day and the bugged spawn was not included in my objectives. On Alderaan, I realised I'd forgotten how much more of a pain the Killik weapons are to dig up on Imp side, as the nearest location for Imperials requires going up a long and winding mountain path with lots of bugs in your way. I eventually got there, but I vaguely seemed to remember actually preferring a more distant location with less of a hassle to get there...

On Satele Shan I did another round of Black Hole, and on Star Forge a round of Onderon for the daily area objective.

Day 5 - Saturday

I only played for a couple of hours in the evening, and only on Darth Malgus. Not everything I did was about seasons either, though I did do Karagga's Palace on story mode with my guild, and another GSF weekly. I got it in two wins again, though this time they yielded ten medals, getting me to 17/25.

Day 6 - Sunday

I got up late but with enough time left before the reset to do the rounds on the other servers. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, I completed my GSI weeklies, and on Star Forge I figured I had it in me to do one more of these this week, so I started it on my trooper (including the heroic on Tatooine and blowing up some womp rats). On Satele Shan, I did some side questing on Nar Shaddaa.

When it came to Shae Vizla, I only had twenty minutes left before reset, but I figured that should be enough for a quick round of the Black Hole, right? Even on a character that is a healer (my level 75 consular)? Even if their highest-level companion is only influence level 12? (I hope you can tell where this is going...) I started but quickly realised that things weren't going fast enough. I decided to skip ahead to the heroic, since I figured I could at least finish that, but it was going so. Slow. Just as I was starting to wonder what would happen to someone inside a mission phase if the reset happened while you were doing the quest, I actually managed to die on a pull and just gave up. I quickly relogged my warrior to get my last few Conquest points for the daily objective before reset, but even that took too long and reset arrived with me being only 150 Conquest points off the daily objective. I was so annoyed I just logged off.

I logged back in later in the evening, completed the partially done Black Hole weekly on my consular and then did some GSI dailies on my warrior again (opting to take a taxi to the more distant but less awkward location for Killik weapons this time), followed by some more of those on my trooper on Star Forge.

By then it was time for ops with my guild, which took up a good chunk of the evening. Afterwards I did another GSF weekly, which was done within two wins again, and yet I was still only on 23/25 medals after that. This is what makes this weekly so frustrating. It doesn't even matter if you play well/win, whether you get any medal credit feels like a complete roll of the dice. Like, how many weekly missions should a single seasons objective require? It's ridiculous. After that, it took two more matches to get those last two medals. Yes, two matches for just two more medals.

After a couple more warzones, I switched to the remaining servers where I hadn't done the daily yet and got my daily Conquest allocation done with some questing on all three.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I logged in on Darth Malgus and quickly knocked out two more weekly objectives by doing a round of Onderon dailies and blowing up some womp rats. I'd held off on my last two objectives until close to the end in case Mr Commando felt like doing flashpoints or uprisings over the weekend, but that didn't happen, so I had to get to 7/7 by myself.

I then logged in again in the evening to finish off my personal Conquest on a couple of alts and get my daily objective done that way. On Leviathan, I completed my bounty hunter's personal Conquest on Quesh (a good Hutt Space planet to jump ahead to, and I was kind Nar Shaddaa-ed out).

On Star Forge I did two heroics on Makeb to get some more Hutt Space kills - the Ossus dailies on Thursday had taken care of the mission part of that objective but I had barely killed any mobs. Makeb was good for achieving the opposite.

On Satele Shan, I'd left things off with several Conquest objectives partially completed so that I only had to do a single mission hand-in on my agent to be done for the day.

Finally, I finished my SWTOR week on Shae Vizla by doing one more round of Black Hole and completing my GSI weekly.

Week 7 Thoughts 

I started this season with a promise to myself that I wasn't going to burn myself out doing objectives I didn't enjoy, but then I was so excited that I did 7/7 weeklies on all servers for several weeks anyway. This week though, I could definitely feel my enthusiasm wane for the first time, with several days where I just didn't feel like playing much at all. I was still going to get 7/7 on Darth Malgus, but I quickly resigned myself to probably only getting three or four weeklies done on the other servers. In the end I still did a bit better than that, achieving 6/7 on Star Forge and Shae Vizla, and 5/7 on all the others.

I didn't even think that the objectives were particularly bad, but there was definitely little to no synergy, and the feeling of repetition got me more than anything else. This was the first time this season where I really felt the conflict between "wanting to do the thing because I want to have the thing completed" and just not feeling the actual gameplay in that moment. It's a pretty normal thing to feel, but also something I personally like to keep an eye on, as I'm quite capable of making things un-fun for myself by being too determined to get things done no matter what. With that in mind, I was glad that I was able to recognise that I was not really feeling it this week and say "oh well, not gonna go all out this week then" pretty easily and early on.

Persistent Pet Pals At Last!

I threw a bit of shade at the devs in my last post for failing to communicate what felt like some pretty important changes that weren't entirely well-received in the patch notes ... but 7.4.1 also contained a very good change that they forgot to include in the patch notes. Intisar was the first to point it out to me on Discord, but I haven't really seen anyone else mention it so far, so I wanted to give a shout-out to it here:

Pets now persist through loading screens and relogging.

Pets disappearing every time you zoned had been an issue for literally over a decade. There was a thread on the bug report forums for it, created in June 2013, that people bumped every so often, but it was clearly not a priority for the devs to fix. And to some degree I could understand that, but on the other hand... they sell pets on the Cartel Market! Pets disappearing all the time has got to have hurt sales of the little critters, surely.

I'm not exactly a pet fanatic myself, but I do like them and have some fond memories attached to more than a few of them. Just check the pets tag on this blog. Remember my grophet phase? Those were the days.

However, the constant need to re-summon them was just too annoying. Even if you put them on your quick bar for easy access... this game has a LOT of loading screens. I'd usually get a new pet, get it out and go "aw, how cute"... but it'd be gone within five minutes of me doing anything and at most I'd remember to re-summon it a couple of times before getting bored and giving up/just forgetting about it. Which is a shame!

I also put this piece of feedback into one of my responses to the survey Broadsword sent out back in November, so I've been absolutely delighted to finally see this bug get fixed. I think my guildies were rather bemused when I told them to all get their favourite pets out during Friday night's ops.

After a bit of testing, I can confirm:

• That pets do now persist through general loading screens/area transitions.
  
• The game does remember which pet you had out when you last logged out.
• They do go away if you are defeated - the little toggle on the icon stays on as if your pet was still there, but you need to un- and re-summon it after dying. I can live with that one; just means I have to remember to re-summon the little buggers after wiping in progression ops.
• They won't follow you into PvP, but they'll re-appear by your side when you come out of the match, even if you died during the fighting.
  

I'm excited every time I log into an alt now, thinking about which little critter they should have by their side... because I know the game will finally remember and I won't have to think it through all over again the next time I log in. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the little buggers around the fleet!

So if you have any pets you like and you just kind of gave up on getting them out in the past because they'd just disappear - now is the time to get them back.

Just remember to un-summon your pets if you're doing the Coratanni fight in Ravagers. As far as I'm aware she still has that bug where someone having a pet out can cause the encounter to reset (I'm guessing because some boss ability targets the pet and causes things to go wonky).

Patch 7.4.1 Is Here!

It is here, patch 7.4.1, and with it several new features:

• Galactic Season 6
• The first four Date Night missions
• Server transfers to Shae Vizla

I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about all of these in a couple of days, but for today, I'd just like to highlight a few other patch notes that I enjoyed:

A new Character Convenience unlock has been added to Legacy Perks! Once unlocked, players will be able to reach the GTN at any time without needing to travel to the Fleet, their personal ship, various planets or Strongholds!

I can't say that I recall ever wishing for a portable GTN myself, but I think this is a good addition. More legacy perks are always welcome! I could see this being useful to raiders who realise that they don't have a stim on them just as they're about to pull a boss in an operation for example.

Ancient Armaments Added To Daily Login Rewards: Ancient Armaments contain various armor appearances including ones that could not previously be acquired or traded. These armor pieces do not contain stats or mod slots and are intended solely for Outfitter. These armor pieces do have dye slots and can be traded and bought / sold on the GTN. The armor pieces that are available inside of Ancient Armaments are now also available as random world drops.

Now this is probably the biggest patch feature that came as a complete surprise. Joe Stragmalia expanded on the subject on the forums to clarify that this includes hundreds of weapons and over 2000 armor pieces. I'm very curious to see how this addition will shape up in practice.

More outfit choices that you can acquire through gameplay are always a good thing, and I know that there was demand for at least some of these world drops (the reason they were rare was that they would only drop while your character was in a specific level range, and with how fast levelling is nowadays, it was very easy to outlevel even the chance of having them drop). On the other hand though, I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these old pieces will actually be considered quite ugly by most players, and since they have no stats and can't be vendored, I wouldn't be surprised if the GTN ended up being a bit flooded with them in short order. Again though, more cheap cosmetic options available for credits is not a bad thing.

What I'm curious to see is whether these are all based on world drops or whether other looks that are no longer available otherwise are included as well. I'm thinking of things like old flashpoint armours that I still own on some of my oldest characters, such as the Black Talon Hunter's Body Armor or the Cademimu Sharpshooter set.

Outfits will now be included when characters are transferred between servers.

This is great news but amused me since I just pointed out in February's community round-up post that outfits not transferring was an important thing to consider before transferring to Shae Vizla. As someone who's not planning to do any transfers any time soon, I'm still pleased that next time I'll make a character copy to the PTS, the first thing to do upon logging in won't be staring in horror at my outfit-less character displaying whatever hodgepodge of armour they were actually wearing underneath.

Fixed the Unread Mail UI icon so that it once again properly updates when new Mail is received.

Oh yes please, that only snuck in recently and was quite annoying.

The Mantellian Flutterplume’s name is now spelled correctly.

But... how was it spelled before then? 🤔

Removed a random floating bottle on Dantooine.

Glad to see we're focusing on the important things!

Several Nova Blade pirates on Rishi who were hostile in previously-neutral areas have been asked to calm down a bit.

I think I know which mobs this refers to... I think they were originally added for the Feast of Prosperity story chain? They lurk on the west side of Raider's Cove and I've unintentionally aggroed them (always feeling a bit surprised to be attacked in town) quite a few times.

Added the following to the appropriate mission terminals: [DAILY] Grateful Grazers (Republic), [DAILY] Panther Training (Imperial), [DAILY] Turn the Lights On (Both), [DAILY] Unstable Readings (Both) 

This one surprised me because as I mentioned in my post about Kessan's Landing, I figured placing these missions outside of town was an intentional design choice reminiscent of Yavin IV and Ziost. Did people find these too hard to find?

The Galaxy Map icon will no longer be highlighted for newly created characters that can't access it.

Not that this isn't a good thing... but wasn't this supposed to have been fixed in 7.3.1?

Regeneration Toys will correctly regenerate resources for all origin story and combat style combinations.

Once again, I just wonder which toy/origin story/combat style combination was bugged here. Let me know in the comments if you know!

Anyway, lots of other stuff to look at in game, so I'll get to that for now!

Chains in the Dark Story Review

It is here! My big 7.4 story review. I'm always surprised by just how much I have to say about new story updates, as this post once again clocks in at close to four thousand words.

However, before we get into the actual meat of the story, let's talk about a certain "technicality": the KOTOR-style cut scenes. In 7.3, it was slightly startling when the conversation interface switched to that style at the Interpreter's Retreat, but I rationalised it as that section being a secondary story within the primary story and ultimately didn't mind it too much. However, this time around, the devs inserted silent protagonist cut scenes into the story seemingly at random, and I was less of a fan of that.

Don't get me wrong, I get that this format saves a lot of money and I don't mind it being used for anything that's not the main story, but to have a scene with an NPC with "proper" cut scenes and then in the next conversation with that very same NPC it's black bars and silence from our character - that's just jarring and confusing. I'd love to know what Broadsword's criteria were for creating some scenes in that style and not others. As a player, I'd really like to be able to manage my expectations, and the way things were done in this update was not helpful in that regard.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get to what actually happens in the story. Full spoilers ahead!

We start with a visit to Heta Kol's fleet, where we see Heta surrounded by Hidden Chain Mandalorians when Ri'kan walks up to her and tells her that they're "ready" for something, leading to her ordering everyone to their stations. Sa'har looks uncomfortable in the background and when Heta leaves, she expresses doubt to Ri'kan whether they're doing the right thing, but her concerns fall on deaf ears.

Next we see Jekiah Ordo giving orders on what I can only guess is Shae's new flagship, when suddenly a bunch of red dots start popping up on his galaxy map to indicate Hidden Chain activity. He contacts Shae to ask for advice on what he should focus on but doesn't seem to get a response.

We switch scenes to a cantina in an unspecified location that is later revealed to be Port Nowhere. The player character is having drinks with Rass Ordo and you have an option to flirt with him while waiting to see a Harido Wald contact. Suddenly there's an explosion and the Hidden Chain attacks! It's not called out in the dialogue, but it was noteworthy to me that these attackers are all from clans that we haven't seen fight for Heta previously, such as Bralor, Farr (like Ceta Farr, the Revanite from Dromund Kaas), Rodarch, Werda and Sharratt of Nar Shaddaa heroic fame, which seems to indicate that despite her defeat on Ruhnuk, her support has actually been growing.

You fight off the boarding party and blow up the tether they've attached to the station, but a group of them has already taken hostages. You can play it safe by using what you see through the security cameras to take out the hostage takers with a remote surprise attack, or you can opt to just charge in and leave the hostages to scramble in the crossfire, which leads to some injuries. They are grateful for the rescue either way.

After defeating the Mandalorian boss (who has some pretty interesting fight mechanics for a story encounter by the way), Rass gets a call from Jekiah telling him about the Hidden Chain attacking, to which you're like "no duh"! He says he's lacking resources and needs someone to check on the situation on Ord Mantell. One of the former hostages overhears this and chimes in with some advice on how to best get a foot in there.

Now, here the devs did something interesting as the hostage in question is different based on your background:

• For Republic Force users, it's Master Cedral Gend, who's the quest giver for the Republic-side seeker droid/Seeds of Rage quest chain.
• For Republic tech users, it's former(?) agent Folaris, who gives the exploration mission "Partial Eclipse" in Coruscant's Black Sun sector.
• For Imperial Force users, it's former assistant overseer Markan, who instructs young Sith inquisitors on Korriban to see their class trainer.
• For Imperial tech users, it's Thera Markon, daughter of Crysta Markon, whom bounty hunters meet and help out in their class mission on Rishi.

Now, usually I love recurring minor NPC appearances like that, but here it didn't work as well for me because some of these NPCs were so obscure that I didn't even recognise them, and when I did, there wasn't always a dialogue option to indicate recognition when there probably should have been.

On my trooper, who did the first run through, I at first mistook the hostage for Beryl Thorne from the smuggler story (who does look similar, but has a different hair colour), but then I looked at her name in the chat log and figured it wasn't anyone I knew. There was no dialogue option to indicate recognition, even though my trooper did do her quest back in the day.

On my warrior, I once again had no idea who the hostage was, but there was an option to ask "Do I know you?" (which does make sense in context since warriors don't get a quest from him but might have seen him around the academy) and after his reply I had to google him to confirm that he was indeed an existing character.

On my consular, who has done the seeker droid chain and obviously would have recognised Master Gend, I had the option to ask "Do I know you?" as well, but in that context I obviously didn't want to pick it as I did know him. I guess you could play it as they so obviously recognised each other that there was no need to comment on it, but it's been so long that it still felt a bit odd.

Either way, you agree to check on the Hidden Chain activity on Ord Mantell while Rass gets recalled by his brother. This is where the story splits for Republic and Imperial players.

On Republic side, you travel to Fort Garnik to seek out Captain Blyes, who once probably gave your trooper or smuggler their very first side mission. (I actually got a bit confused by this because I went straight to the new area Kessan's Landing and ran around aimlessly for a bit, only later realising that this bit of the story actually takes place on "old" Ord Mantell. In hindsight I think making you go there was a pretty clever move on the devs' side, as I think it's good for an MMO from a social point of view for new players to also see higher-level players near the starting zone - as long as they're not competing for the same resources.)

Captain Blyes is not in his office, and his nervous protocol droid eventually admits that he's several hours overdue. You find him getting smacked in the face by Black Sun smugglers in a hangar in Oradam Village and rescue him. He's grateful but has no idea about any Hidden Chain activity - though he promises to look into it if you can deliver a few supplies around the area first.

You meet up again in the frontier town of Kessan's Landing, and when you arrive there you also run into Arn. Apparently Blyes inquired about more reinforcements, and Arn is all he got - can't say I entirely blame him for being disappointed! One of Blyes' scouts has a lead on potential Hidden Chain activity in the geothermal power plant, so this is where you're off to.

Meanwhile, on Imperial side...

You go straight to Kessan's Landing, to see Ord Mantell heroic quest giver Gizmel Gam, who's apparently become known since then as the type of scoundrel who'll work for anyone. You don't immediately find him in his office either, but instead it contains a couple of disgruntled people who are clearly not happy with something he's been doing and are also looking for him to complain. You can talk to them or just sneak off to search the other locations you overhear them mention as his potential hideouts.

As you search around town, you find more people that are similarly annoyed with Gizmel about something or other. (I've got to admit I chuckled at the droid in the cantina that's called ME-3P and says nothing but "Meep. Meep.") You eventually find him in the so-called Legate Lounge (which features an Ortolan playing the organ Max Rebo style) and he promises to help you if you first take care of his most urgent problem, some SIS agents that are on his case.

You find the SGS agents posing as mechanics in a local shop. There's supposed to be a saboteur option here, but it launched buggy and shows for loyalists instead, and only for them, which makes no sense of course. Might want to hold off on taking any Imperial saboteurs through this bit until they patch it. Either way, you have the option to resolve things peacefully or violently.

When you return to Gizmel's office, you're surprised to find Darth Krovos and her retinue there. Turns out that she's got assets on Ord Mantell to help stir unrest, and Gizmel contacted one of those people in an attempt to sell you out. She knows about the Mandalorian in-fighting as well and thinks that it's in everyone's best interest to get rid of them here, so she's planning to assist you. Gizmel is still deemed useful enough to provide more intel, and advises you to check on a drop-off the separatists expect at the geothermal power plant to find out what's going on between the separatists and the Hidden Chain.

As you sneak inside the power station, the stories of the two factions converge again. You run into Hidden Chain and separatists working together, and eventually encounter a Cathar woman fighting some of them off with a blaster and some minor Force powers. She introduces herself as Petra and explains that she was looking for her sister Mina, who used to work in the station but has recently gone missing. She also explains that she saw the Hidden Chain remove vital cooling rods from the power plant, without which it will explode sooner or later. As you can see signs of a meltdown being imminent already, you agree to help her with cooling things down at least temporarily by redirecting some water from a reservoir. Arn or Krovos hang back to first flip a vital switch and then to provide remote assistance/intel afterwards.

After you save the power station from immediate doom, Rass Ordo calls you on holo to share something he deems very important: Shae Vizla hasn't been responding to Jekiah's calls for help and is effectively missing. Petra is somewhat alarmed by the whole conversation (presumably because she's just been fighting Mandalorians) and questions whether she should even trust you, but you agree to track down the Hidden Chain together to retrieve the cooling rods, both to foil their plans and to assure that the power station can be repaired.

Your search leads you to a crashed tram car (the opening of which involves a brief sequence with an adorable Gonk droid), in which you find cages and what looks like some deceased prisoners, one of whom Petra recognises. She gets very upset and angry, and her worry about her sister intensifies. She reckons that the enemy must've continued to the nearby supply depot of Fort Ronnig and that you should go there.

Republic players have to fight their way into the enemy base while taking out a whole lot of defences, while Imperials get intelligence about a secret back door that bypasses a lot of that. Either way you eventually find a separatist leader guarding the cooling rods. You defeat her, but she gets one more message off to tell her associates to "get the assets off-world" and activates explosives around the room. You now have the choice to insist on disarming them, or to make a run for it to try and capture the "assets"/prisoners.

I found this to be a very interesting story choice, as it's not clearly light or dark or even necessarily a moral question, but more a matter of having to make decisions with limited information. If you just wanted the Hidden Chain to not have the cooling rods, letting them blow up seems fine, but if you wanted to return them to the power plant, it's potentially very bad for the population of Kessan's Landing to let them get destroyed. You prevented the power station from blowing up on the spot, but what will happen without the cooling rods in the long run is anyone's guess. On the other hand, running after the prisoners might end up being a completely futile endeavour as they might already be dead anyway, like the ones in the tram car - who knows what the Hidden Chain even wanted with them.

If you go for the prisoners, you find Mina in one of the prison cells and the two sisters are delighted to be reunited, but Mina says that some people have already been taken away. Mina then takes charge of the remaining prisoners and vows to lead them home. Outside, you and Petra see a shuttle take a few more cooling rods aboard and take off. If you save the first set of cooling rods by disarming the bombs instead, you arrive just in time to see Mina and the last few prisoners get taken away on the same shuttle, much to Petra's distress.

Almost immediately afterwards, a different shuttle arrives and lands, spitting out more Hidden Chain mooks and the leader of Clan Varad, Tyrus Brokenblade. It's interesting to note here that Petra asks who he is, and your character replies with "I don't know" - because of course they don't, it's only you as a player who's seen him multiple times in the "meanwhile, at Heta Kol's" cut scenes. That clear dissonance between what I knew and what my character knew felt a bit jarring to me to be honest... then again, you could also see it as a clever way of making the player invested in an encounter that would otherwise just be a random mook to you. Interestingly enough, Tyrus tries to convert you to Heta's side, framing it as someone with your power being wasted on Shae. Eventually you come to blows (if you don't start the fight, Petra will) and he's another pretty interesting boss fight for a story encounter! Though you still win of course.

Unfortunately, Petra gets too close after Tyrus has been forced to his knees, and he manages to impale her on his techblade. I honestly thought she was gonna die there, but it turns out she joins the Outlander and Sabine Wren in the "walks away from being stabbed in the chest" club. In fact, she's more than fine because the latter two at least needed medical attention, but Petra literally just walks off and appears completely fine when you talk to her later. I don't know, maybe the injury isn't meant to be as severe as it looks in the cut scene?

Anyway, just as Tyrus is about to strike a second time, delivering what definitely would have been killing blow, a pink light saber blocks the attack. It's Sa'har! He calls her a traitor and claims that Ri'kan will enjoy killing her, which gets her riled up and the two start fighting again. Eventually you team up with Sa'har and beat him down for good. Sa'har tells you about how she gave the holocron to Heta, who is now using it to build some sort of machine (which is what all the raiding is about) but that she feels it's all wrong and wants to stop it but can't do it by herself.

It turns out that Tyrus still isn't completely down, and he crawls forward to reach for his holocommunicator and call Heta. Sa'har responds instinctively and cuts his hand off to prevent him from doing so... on screen! I mean, there's no blood or anything of course, but we actually get a close-up of his disembodied hand, which is I think the "goriest" this game has ever gotten visually (at least the bounty hunter's head deliveries were always in sacks...).

Sa'har panics and you can now decide to either take Tyrus prisoner (in which case your ally will comment to tell you more about his identity on your return to town) or kill him (Sa'har refuses to deal the killing blow herself). She tells you that she needs to return to Heta and cover her tracks, but that she's still planning to sabotage her and that she'll contact you for help when the time comes. Her last comment is "your friend is gone", which is meant to indicate the (severely?) injured Petra having just walked off, but for extra confusion she was still lying there for me visually, seemingly half dead, but apparently none of my characters cared enough to even check on her. I'm pretty sure that's a bug.

You return to town, which is once again different for Republic and Imperial players.

As a Republic character, you re-unite with Arn in town and tell him about what happened with Sa'har. Petra shows up to complain to Blyes about everything that happened and to accuse everyone of not caring about the population of Ord Mantell. Blyes is somewhat dejected in response and admits that the people have indeed been neglected... he comments that he'd be appreciative of any help you can provide (do dailies please).

On Imp side, you get a call from Petra when you return to Gizmel Gam's office. She doesn't trust the Sith enough to show up in person, but she wants you to know that after everything that happened, people are finally starting to ask questions, and she feels a certain degree of gratitude. She also says that she's willing to do anything, take help from anyone to either save her sister or improve Kessan's Landing's lot in general.

Krovos gives you the rundown of your mission's after-effects. If you saved the cooling rods, she's particularly pleased as this gives her leverage she's planning to use. Gizmel says the incident with the power station caused a lot of chaos, even if it can be repaired eventually. He also tries to wriggle out of working for the Empire again, which gives you the option to kill him. Finally, you tell Krovos about what happened with Sa'har, and she's not impressed.

We get one more shot of Sa'har getting called by Ri'kan, who asks where she's been, to which she replies that she was just tracking something for Heta and ran into a dead end.

Overall, I think this is a story that definitely benefits from being played through more than once, not just to see the differences between Republic and Empire, but also to see more of the small variations that occur based on your origin story and various choices. The difference between saving Petra's sister vs. not saving her is definitely worth seeing as well. Plus there were a lot of small details that I honestly just missed the first time around.

As for the core of the main storyline... I did enjoy it, and I thought the showdown with Tyrus and Sa'har was great (leaving aside the oddness around just what happens to Petra there). I thought it was interesting that Tyrus was still interested in turning you to their side after everything that's happened, and I was genuinely surprised to see Sa'har show up (though the game did spoil itself a little by the systems message that said "Sa'har Kateen has joined you as a companion." earlier on, but that came at such a random moment that I actually thought it was just another bug, hah).

It's been clear through all the cut scenes we've seen her in that she's been unhappy with what Heta and her gang are doing, but she just seemed too consumed by guilt and a desire to make nice with her brother to do anything about it. I mean, I always figured that she was going to "snap" at some point, but I didn't expect it to happen like this, with her just showing up to ask for help and outright turning against one of Heta's followers. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Shae going missing was also interesting, especially after how angry and obsessive she was when we last saw her in 7.3. I can't see that going anywhere good for her...

Seeing Arn and Krovos again was nice, though they didn't really get to do that much, and I've got to admit I did wonder a bit whether they were really the best people to have along for this particular ride, e.g. wouldn't hidden Imperial operations to stoke unrest on Ord Mantell be more in the wheelhouse of someone like Xarion or Rivix?

The character I had the most issues with to be honest was Petra, which is a bit of a shame because I don't think she's a bad character. In fact I thought it made for quite an interesting dynamic that she's both mad at the separatists and the Republic. Her voice actress also does a good job - if you don't manage to rescue Mina and you watch the shuttle fly away with her, Petra's repeated cries of "She was right there!" are absolutely heart-wrenching. The problem I had was just that... Petra simply wasn't a very fun person to have around and she's your companion for most of this story.

She's (justifiably) distrustful and angry and yells a lot, and to be honest that just made me feel the same way I feel about angry people in real life: I just wanted to be done with her and get away. Like, stop yelling at me, lady, I've got other things to worry about. I didn't dislike her or wanted to harm her, I just wanted her to go away and leave me alone, haha. Ironically, the one moment when I found myself really caring about her, when she got stabbed and I wanted to check on whether she was going to make it, that was not an option the game gave me.

Finally, who the hell is that Rodian in the key art? He wasn't actually a character anywhere as far as I could tell.

Did I miss anything important? Or do you just think anything I said is way off? What did you think of this story update in general? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.