Some Rambly First Impressions of 7.7

Patch 7.7 dropped this week! MassivelyOP's post about this fact started with the line "A big Star Wars: The Old Republic game update without a story is kind of like Christmas without the presents", which I found surprisingly poignant... but of course there were still interesting things to discover and look forward to.

First there were the new alien skin colours, which seemed to be thing that had people the most excited on social media from what I could tell, based on the number of screenshots and clips from the very first cut scene that I scrolled past and that were meant to show off the poster's newest character in a brand-new hue.

I myself ultimately didn't end up creating a new character, because I realised I still had a bunch of lowbies that I hadn't actually played that much yet. Also, am I the only one who doesn't necessarily create and start new characters at the same time? Sometimes I'll just feel like playing with the character creator and come up with a new concept that I then end up not actually playing until weeks or months later.

Anyway, this week did not feel right for creation, so I just changed the shade of yellow on my newest already existing Twi'lek. After using the character customisation station, he got teleported onto the roof of my Coruscant stronghold... the last time that happened I thought it was just a one-time glitch, but I might have to upgrade it to bug - then again, it might just get filed away under "weird stuff that happens inside player housing" anyway.

The new dynamic encounters were very fun. I took some lowbies to the starter planets to check them out as I would've felt a bit weird razing all those level 5 mobs on a max-level character in raid gear, though other people clearly had no such reservations. The new events brought a lot of existing players back to the starter worlds to check out the the new content and earn some new achievements, and the experience felt like absolute mayhem. Anyone who just so happens to start playing SWTOR for the first time this week must be wondering what the holy hell is going on once they leave their first story phase. Now, this particular level of craziness obviously won't last, but I do think that in the long run these new encounters will still serve to make things a lot more lively on the starter planets going forward, and I can't help but wonder how that will affect players' first impressions of the game in the future. 

Unlike when the first dynamic encounters were added to Tatooine and Hoth, I didn't check these newest ones out on the PTS this time, so it was all fresh and exciting to me. Even having only checked out the starter planets so far, I thought it was very charming how the new encounters were used to enhance the mood and setting of each area. For example the Jedi training grounds on Tython were always meant to be under attack by flesh raiders when you first arrive there, but it was all fairly tame, with the same couple of NPCs shooting at each other without anything really happening. Now there's an actual dynamic encounter about a flesh raider attack on top of that, during which you'll see way more mobs spawn, as well as a proper flurry of activity from players joining the fight or otherwise defending the area. It's quite cool. Jiguuna on Hutta was another good example, as there's always meant to be a gang war going on there when you arrive, but now that is dialled up to eleven when the associated dynamic encounter is going on.

I have yet to dip my toes into the encounters on the capital worlds and on Ilum, but I don't want to rush to "the end" and reach a point where I've seen it all too quickly. My ops team also wants to check out XR-53 on master mode, and while I'm personally not hopeful that we'll make much progress on it, it's at least another new thing to check out. 

7.7 Dev Stream: More Alien Colours Are Nice, but Still No Story

Yesterday it was time for another dev stream, this time focused on the upcoming patch 7.7. There was some competition for my attention as the new pope had gone live mere moments earlier, but I loaded up Twitch on my laptop and dived right in.

There was a new Twitch drop to be earned (a purple-framed Dromund Kaas poster), for watching one hour of live SWTOR content, but apparently Twitch measures time a bit differently from the rest of the world as it took almost the full one and a half hours of the stream for it to show as earned. Yes, the stream lasted one and a half hours! I wish I could say this was a sign of it being chock-full of exciting updates, but to be honest I get the feeling that they've just got better at fluffing up what they have to make it look bigger. For example there was a whole section about fixing a bug with the sprinter guild perk, which... don't get me wrong, fixing bugs is a good thing, no arguments there! But is a single bug fix of that nature really important enough to warrant a segment with the game producer on your livestream to get players hyped up? Personally I don't think so.

The thing that we of course all wanted to know above all else was whether there was any update on the story content and sadly, the answer was not really. Basically, they've built 7.7, but the voice actors' strike is still going on, so we're still not getting anything. The only thing I noted down here was that they showed the little trailer from Star Wars Celebration again (the one that included [Spoiler?]) and the accompanying slide said it featured "a mysterious figure that has been pulling the strings behind the scenes", which does seem to confirm that this person's role is going to be more than a throwaway cameo.

Anyway, having the second major patch in a row release without story content will be a bummer, but I guess I can't really complain as we know the voice actors' strike is still a thing. I'd just gotten my hopes up a little as a "datamining-adjacent" friend had told me that something had happened and somehow the 7.6 story looked ready for release now. (You know who you are; consider yourself given the side eye!) But that's not the devs' fault, and just goes to illustrate once again why you shouldn't put too much stock in things that are datamined.

Anyway, they still managed to fill a one and a half hour stream, and it wasn't all bug fixes, so there obviously were some other things announced.

Among a number of UI updates to the mission log and map, the one that stood out the most was the addition of the so-called "eras window", a new tab on your mission log. All this does is basically show you the storyline split into "eras" (which mostly align with expansions, but not 100%), to show you where you are and what's coming up. This seems like it could be a major boon to returning players who don't remember where they left off in terms of story. It was also noted that it doesn't "currently" include notes on any decisions you've made, though I guess this is something they could expand on in the future. Either way, it's a good feature but won't do much for me as a "power user". I wrote about how I had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of all my alts' progress almost seven years ago, which is much more detailed and most importantly, let's me see where each character is at without having to log into them in game to check. I still rely on that to this day, but for less hardcore Swtorites this new window will be useful.

In terms of group content, we got the official announcement for master mode XR-53, which is cool for the relevant target audience but I suspect it will be too hard for me and my guildies so I can't muster too much enthusiasm for it right now. I was also a bit disappointed by the clarification that the new augment schematics it will drop will be brand-new gold augments that will outclass the purple ones that people spent the last few months researching and crafting. We don't even know whether you'll be able to reverse-engineer the gold ones by deconstructing the purple ones (it was asked in chat multiple times but not answered). So eh. As a side note to this, they said that PvP weeklies will start rewarding small amounts of corrupted bioprocessors, the (until now) unique crafting material dropped by XR-53, which is nice I guess, though for me personally the bottleneck has actually turned out to be other mats.

Speaking of PvP, PvP Season 8 will launch with 7.7 and in order to align it more with how Galactic Seasons work, it will now also include an option to just buy out levels with Cartel coins. I've got to admit there was a small part of me that bristled at this because isn't PvP about skill? You shouldn't be able to buy that, right? But then, these new PvP seasons have always been just about participation with no particular requirement to succeed, so I guess it's not that big a deal.

They talked about Nar Shaddaa Nightlife returning in July, which just felt weird to think about this early in May, but I guess summer isn't that far away. The main thing that irked me here was that there was no comment about making the various slot machine chips a legacy-wide currency. They talked about this last year and said it was complex and would take time - but then they managed to change the DvL tokens from character- to legacy-bound within a couple of weeks, so I was really hoping we'd be able to start this year's Nightlife with something similar. But nope, nothing. I guess I can still hope that it will be addressed later, but for now I'm just disappointed that the main thing I was curious about in regards to this event was not mentioned at all.

The biggest and most universally accessible bit of gameplay to be added with the patch will be new dynamic encounters on seven planets, which will include all the starter planets, the two faction capitals and Ilum. The starter planets won't have that many encounters due to how small they are, but still. I thought going for these early planets next was an interesting choice when I first heard chatter about it during the previous PTS. I thought Tatooine and Hoth made great sense as first locations for this new feature, and in my mind the best place to use it going forward were going to be other large planets with a lot of empty space, such as Quesh, Belsavis or Voss. Cramming them into the tiny starter planets is kind of the opposite of that, but I can understand the devs wanting to introduce the feature to new players early on in order to get people interested and familiar from the get-go. I'm still a little concerned that it might end up being a bit of a pain to have god knows how many players compete for the same six k'lor'slugs on Korriban (which would not improve the new player experience I reckon), but we'll see how it goes. In general I've really enjoyed dynamic encounters and am looking forward to getting more of them.

One interesting thing they announced closer to the end was "combat updates", which is to say they are going to make some changes to combat styles, such as which discipline is selected for new players by default and what order you get some abilities in. The example they gave was that Guardians/Juggernauts don't really have any AoE other than Force Sweep/Smash for a long time, so they want to pull Cyclone/Sweeping Slash forward and grant it automatically at level 7 instead of making it a level 27 optional choice like it is right now. This sounds like a good idea in principle, though I could have thought of better examples to choose. From what I recall there are currently some utilities that actually give you buffs to certain abilities several levels before you actually get that ability, which is just weird, and I'm hoping that this kind of thing will also be included in this overhaul. (I quickly logged in to find an example and e.g. Deception Shadows have a talent option at level 27 to add functionality to Force Cloak when they don't actually get Force Cloak until level 31.)

I do wonder a little though, as another example they gave about something they want to change was to make the default spec for Shadows Serenity (the dot spec) instead of Deception (the direct damage one). I just wrote down "why?" in my notes here as the latter is much easier to play, so why change to the more difficult one as default? So I have some reservations as well, not fully understanding what they are going for here.

The big surprise at the end of the stream (including one here seems to be a pattern they are settling into) was that they'll be adding lots more skin colours for aliens in the patch, and I do mean lots. Like, Nautolans will go from having 10 colours to 95 different shades. Now, only some of those will be completely new colours, like the (inexplicably, to me) popular purple Twi'leks, but just getting a lot more different shades of say, green, will be cool too. I think this was the most exciting announcement of the stream for many players, and I liked it too. It's just no replacement for actual story content, you know? I continue to wait.

Meanwhile, further info about the patch and stream, should you want it:

• VOD on Twitch
• VOD on YouTube
• Article on the official website
  
• Swtorista summary
• Today in TOR summary
• Vulkk summary

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?

A Livestream About 7.4 and Beyond

Yesterday was livestream day for SWTOR, a day that's quickly becoming a major event to look forward to for me, as we finally find out what's to come in the next big patch while getting to connect with the devs and deriving some entertainment from the process at the same time.

The stream lasted for more than an hour and yet time seemed to be flying by! A lot was said and done, and as usual you can watch a recording on Twitch or find a full written summary of absolutely everything that was revealed on the sites of the usual suspects:

• Swtorista
• Today in TOR
• Vulkk

I have no desire to go into that much detail myself, but will instead comment on the main things that excited me, of which there were still a lot! So let's get into it.

First off, it was interesting that they started the stream with Papa Keith saying hi and showing new studio pride by wearing a branded Broadsword jumper. (By contrast, I noticed that Musco was still wearing a SWTOR shirt with the Bioware logo on it; naughty!) What was really interesting about Keith's intro though was that he immediately started things off by telling us that beyond 7.4, they just reviewed their road map up to 7.6 with Broadsword, content that is meant to come out over the next year.

This was reassuring in the sense that it showed that there are no signs of things slowing down after the studio transition, and it was interesting to note that this planned patch cadence basically confirmed that there isn't another expansion coming soon. I personally didn't think there was, but I'd certainly seen some people speculate that the next patch after 7.4 would be 8.0, so I'm kind of glad to have that misconception dispelled. Obviously I'm not saying I never want another expansion again, but Legacy of the Sith definitely feels like it needs more time to cook at this point so I'm okay with adding more patches to its runtime.

The main announcement was the reveal about 7.4's story content, which will take us to... a new town on Ord Mantell? Can't say I expected us to return to another existing planet immediately after the return to Voss in 7.3, and Ord Mantell wasn't on my personal list favoured destinations, but I can't say I'm unhappy with it either. Actually, it's an interesting callback to the ten-year-anniversary news post from two years ago, when it was teased that as part of this expansion, we might "gain an opportunity to return to where your character’s journey first began so long ago…" My only disappointment was that when there was some talk about how it can be safe for Imperial characters to go to Ord Mantell, nobody thought to mention Lost Island. Come on!

I won't go into any detail about what they said about the story there to keep things as spoiler-free as possible, but unlike the Interpreter's Retreat, the new town Kessan's Landing is going to be a proper daily area and yes, we'll chase after Heta Kol and the Hidden Chain again. No, I don't know whether we'll actually achieve anything this time around. But! We'll interact with both new and returning characters, and I was particularly pleased to hear of the return of Sergeant Captain Blyes and Gizmel Gam. If those names don't mean anything to you, Sergeant Blyes is literally the first NPC troopers and smugglers talk to outside their class story phase, the guy who gives you your very first side mission to blow shit up in the village. And Gizmel Gam is the shady heroic quest giver who wants you to fetch his illegal drugs from Savrip Island (without telling you that it's illegal drugs). I love it when minor characters like that get to reprise their roles.

A story-related announcement that surprised me was the continuation of the Lane Vizla story from Ruhnuk. Now, again, trying to keep it as spoiler-free as possible... the way that story ends on Ruhnuk does sort of imply that there'll be a follow-up, but I honestly figured it would just be a mail or maybe a short conversation. But no, it looks like it's actually turning into a proper side storyline that has you seeking out new characters and places, and I'm here for it.

Next they announced a technical update that probably had me way more excited than it should have: "cinematic lighting". What does that mean? It means older in-game cut scenes will have better lighting, making better use of "natural" light sources and shadows instead of artificial spotlights. They showed a few clips from starter quests for different origins and I just kept thinking how gorgeous the new versions looked.

What can I say: this is a game with a heavy focus on watching your character look cool in cut scenes and it heavily encourages you to play alts. I'm not sure there's any other game where an announcement about improved lighting would make me feel like it's one more reason to make a new alt, but it really does in this instance.

Also, my favourite side story related to this was that when I checked the forums afterwards, I found this thread by someone going by the forum name Jazulfi, posted about a month ago and complaining about how bad the lighting in some of the old story cut scenes was. Needless to say, they were over the moon about this announcement. Just imagine being in that position, making an incredibly niche complaint about something and a few weeks later the devs announce that they are about to release a major technical upgrade addressing your specific issue. The timing just cracked me up. Good for you, Jazulfi!

Also interesting was the demo of the GTN update that had been teased before. At a glance I thought it looked kind of similar to the way things are set up in the modern World of Warcraft auction house - which is not a bad thing, as it's mostly quite convenient. Even better, the new GTN will have a "claim" button so you can grab your stuff directly from the GTN terminal instead of going to your mailbox, which I really appreciate because in WoW I always buy stuff from the auction house and then run off without remembering to actually take it out of my mailbox, so this is a very real problem for me. The only slight concern I have was that there was a brief mention of the deposit now being classified as a fee, which makes me worried that it might no longer be refunded if your item doesn't sell. That would be a shame as this particular bit of generosity of SWTOR's GTN was a really nice feature and meant that I was never shy about re-listing stuff as I didn't have to worry about actively losing money if nobody purchased right away. We'll see I guess. (Edit: This has now been confirmed in a forum post.)

In terms of gear, we were told that 7.4 will bring another gear rating increase. Implants and mods will become upgradeable to 340, and Rakata gear's max rating will increase to 344. There was also a cryptic mention of Rakata gear for everyone, not just ops players. The main takeaway I got from this is that after about a year of R-4 Anomaly on veteran mode being the only source of max-item-rating gear, they're basically dumping that entire idea and nobody will ever go there again. Can't say I'm sad, though the thought of updating gear across my entire stable of alts again is a little tedious, even if it won't be hard to do.

Now, the Cartel Market section of these streams never really interests me that much, but this time they had something that caught my attention... because it was SHINY! Basically, they're adding a new type of dye that doesn't just colour your gear but also gives it a shiny or matte effect, and the example they showed looked amazing.

To be fair, this is a brand-new gear set that has likely been optimised to work well with this new effect, and it might not look as great on older armours, but still... I could definitely see myself picking a couple of these up to see if I can give an old outfit a new shine. This gets a thumbs-up from me.

Finally, they finished the stream with an interesting twist on the Best View in SWTOR contest - they haven't chosen the winners yet, but Jackie wanted to share the five finalists for each planet... and I can see why, as they were all gorgeous. I kept an eye out for any of my own submissions, but while one of the Nar Shaddaa finalists looked kind of like one of mine, it had someone else's name on it so was presumably submitted earlier. However, apparently no fewer than three people I know found themselves featured among the finalists. Yay them! Either way, I loved seeing all those screenshots and they looked like worthy winners regardless of which ones actually end up being the final choices.

Oh, and if you read this before November 1st - they gave out a free deco code again, so you can redeem "LotsVizla" until then for another in-game poster of your (perhaps not) favourite Mandalorian(s).

Either way, the stream clearly did its job for me as it got me properly excited for 7.4. We don't have a release date yet, but based on how they've been handling these recently, it's probably going to be late November or early December.

Warming Up to Combat Styles

I've said since shortly after the launch of Legacy of the Sith that combat styles aren't really for me. I think they're a solid feature that I can see appealing to many, but for me a character's advanced class/combat style is just too big a part of their identity for me to just start changing it willy-nilly. When I decided to add a second combat style to my Commando main back in May in order to be more flexible in harder operations, it was a big deal for me.

I'm happy to say though that as we're approaching eight months of Legacy of the Sith, I'm slowly starting to warm up to the concept. I still have no great desire to make such a big change to the characters I play the most, but I actually went ahead and added a second combat style to two of my lesser played alts the other week. Interestingly, I've actually found it a bit easier to make this choice on characters I'm not quite as invested in, as their identity still feels a bit more malleable you could say.

The first character to take the plunge was my dps Commando whom I created back in the day during the Dark vs. Light event. She's mostly dark side and I've always pictured her as a bit of a brawler who likes to punch people, so Vanguard/Powertech or Scoundrel/Operative all seemed like viable options. In the end I made the final decision somewhat impulsively on a day when I was trying to do some dailies/heroics for Conquest and found myself wishing that I had more suitable alts with stealth to make the process easier. So Zeresa went off to the GSI shop and learned how to be an Operative.

I haven't really done much with this new flexibility other than struggle a bit to get her gear sorted, spend some time trying to find a suitable outfit, and do some of the dailies I made the switch for, but I guess the option is there now.

The other character that acquired a second combat style was my second Sage Tiranea. Interestingly, this one wasn't really inspired by any particular need; I just happened to be reminded of her and it occurred to me that she was uniquely suited to getting a second combat style due to having undergone more changes than most of my characters throughout the years. Plus I also have this vague memory of actually being a bit hesitant when it came to choosing her advanced class originally as I was at least considering Shadow as an option well. Now she can be both.

As this was my first Force user to choose a second combat style and I hadn't looked anything up about how it works, I was kind of surprised to see that they don't get to see any kind of trainer but simply meditate and have a vision that then unlocks their second combat style. Still seems fitting enough though.

I actually have potential combat style ideas for a couple more alts, but we'll see when I get around to them. While the new loadouts feature is very handy for quickly switching specialisation, I'm still not a fan of all the faffing around that's required to get that properly set up in the first place, so I've got to pace myself with those things.

Patchy Goodness Inc.

Considering how many things that were originally meant to be expansion features ended up being cut out of 7.0, I think I'm not the only one who's been keenly waiting for any news about 7.1. Sure, I've been having fun with the new gearing system and all that, but I would like some more new content and gameplay to actually dig my teeth into at max level.

Sadly, we're two months into Legacy of the Sith and still haven't gotten any news about when this might be happening, but! Patch 7.0.2 is supposed to be released "in the coming weeks" and while not what I would call a proper content patch, it does seem to be shaping up to be more than additional bug fixes at least.

It's going to make tweaks to the acquisition of materials for gold augments as mentioned in my previous post, as well as rebalancing and adding some quality of life changes for other endgame currencies. I'm sooo glad there'll be a way to trade in Conquest commendations for tech fragments for example, because the way these are constantly capped with nothing useful to spend them on, all while the game keeps trying to throw more of them at you, has definitely been one of those low-key but still very noticeable annoyances of 7.0.

Another minor-sounding but big impact change is that they'll finally be reverting unranked PvP missions to give progression credit from losses as well as wins; you'll just get more for wins. For those not keeping track, the daily and weekly PvP quests were changed in summer 2020 to only count wins for progress, and I observed back then that this was depressingly backwards, as this was how things used to work at launch and that the devs moved away from that system for a reason. But no, they had to give it another shake, and I'm honestly surprised that it lasted this long.

I'm still pleased to see it being changed back though, as it will make doing the PvP weekly a lot more appealing. My experience these past two months has been that even with the updated version of the quest "only" requiring four wins, that can still require multiple full evenings of PvP (depending on your luck with groups), and with everything being reset on Tuesdays, I find myself unwilling to even start on it whenever I'm not sure that I'll be able to commit enough hours to finishing it too.

The most surprising bit of news however was Jackie announcing on the forums this week that weapons being added to the outfit designer is meant to make it into this patch as well, ahead of 7.1. And I'll admit it, at this point I'm actually looking forward to this feature too. I still don't really get why people have been making quite such a fuss about it (especially if they play a Force user and their lightsaber is barely more than a piece of pixel art during regular gameplay), but us Commandos have pretty big weapons, and I'd kind of forgotten that item modifications actually weren't going to be in for a little while, meaning that we've been having to use whatever weapons actually dropped. I've rarely run into an assault cannon model that I actually disliked, but there are definitely some that I like more than others, such as the three-barrelled Columi style, and I'm quite looking forward to being able to sport that look again when I have the chance (similar to the one displayed in the blog's banner).

Onslaught in Review

As I said previously, we still don't have a launch date for Legacy of the Sith, but it can't be far off now, and I don't expect us to get another major content update before then, so I thought it would be interesting to look back on how Onslaught has gone as a whole. I wasn't sure what conclusion I'd come to when I first started writing this, but honestly, now that I've added it all up, this has been a pretty ace expansion.

Features

After Bioware tried (and failed) to reinvent the wheel for the last two expansions (with the single player focus in KotFE and Galactic Command in KotET), it was nice to see them refocus on simply adding features that players had actually been asking for in one form or another.

• Nautolans as a new playable species: They ended up looking a bit more... weird than most people expected I suppose, but I still think they were a good addition. Based on forum polls and the like, Nautolans were easily the most requested species that wasn't available yet - so much so that after this, I'm not actually sure what playable species they could add next. Sure, there are lots to choose from and you can find people suggesting pretty much all of them on the forums somewhere, but I haven't seen anything else have the same kind of consistent demand as Togruta and Nautolan had before they were added.
  

• Spoils of War: Gearing was a mess towards the end of KotET and needed a revamp desperately. I think the new Spoils of War system worked out well overall! It's not perfect, but what ever is? I'd say its biggest flaws are that a lot of set bonuses and Tacticals they introduced were pretty useless so that there ultimately weren't that many viable choices to make about what to get, and that drop rates for both types of items were pretty poop, meaning that most of the time, you were better off just saving fragments to buy from a vendor, even when all you were doing was gambling at Kai's. Still, overall the ease of gearing up in terms of item levels was amazing, and everything being bound to legacy so that you could gear all your alts in one fell sweep has been super neat.

• Material storage: I liked how they never even advertised this as a feature; it was just suddenly there and amazing, freeing up tons of space in cargo and legacy bays across the land. This is the kind of quality of life improvement we all love to see. Separate but related, they also added all those event currencies to the legacy currency tab.
  

Story

I didn't love the Onslaught base story quite as much as Jedi Under Siege, but it was still excellent overall, making use of the game's large pre-established cast and adding all kinds of great little touches to remind players of their class identity. Over the course of the expansion, we then got three more story installments:

• Echoes of Oblivion: This was a pure love letter to the game and its community, taking all kinds of loose ends that had been left dangling in an unsatisfying manner and tying them into a neat little bow.
  

• Spirit of Vengeance: Probably the least interesting of Onslaught's updates, it still introduced Rass Ordo as a likeable new character and laid the seeds for what's hopefully going to be an interesting arc about the Mandalorians facing off against an intriguing new villain.
  

• Secrets of the Enclave: The expansion's second piece of story that was actually different for both factions (after the Onslaught base story), this again featured a plethora of interesting character moments, even if it didn't advance the plot very much.

If I were to criticise anything, I guess you could point out that there is no clear theme to all of these to tie Onslaught together: a bit of Darth Malgus here, some Mandalorian stuff here. Then again, this is pretty in line with how things used to be in SWTOR's "good old days": After all, Rise of the Hutt Cartel was only really about Hutts for a very short time; all the content added after its launch centred on organisations like Czerka or the Dread Masters.

"MMO Stuff"

It seems to me that after the early years of most content additions being standard MMO content and the wild swing in the opposite direction with KotFE & KotET's story chapters at the expense of all else, Bioware has finally settled into a nice balance between continuously adding engaging story installments while also consistently churning out repeatable content to keep dedicated players busy in the gaps in-between.

• Two new planets: Onderon and Mek-Sha were both smaller than I would have hoped, but they were fully fleshed-out planets with datacrons and everything. The Onderon daily circuit is decent fun. Unfortunately Mek-Sha felt a bit half-baked with its somewhat random selection of side missions in different places, some content being quite buggy initially and none of it ever really becoming very rewarding.

• One new operation: Nature of Progress (or Dxun as most people call it) is a brilliant op in terms of story and undoubtedly the funniest piece of group content Bioware ever released. The fights are mostly good fun as well, except for the last boss, whom I find kind of tedious mechanically to be honest.

• Three new flashpoints: Objective Meridian, Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave. I stand by what I said about Objective Meridian seeming a bit dull at first blush but being interesting to replay. The last boss(es) can be infuriating but in a good way (to me anyway). Spirit of Vengeance was a bit meh - some neat little Easter egg achievements couldn't make up for the fact that it consists of too much boring trash and the environment isn't exactly thrilling to look at either. Secrets of the Enclave is probably my favourite of the three, meaning it's fairly fast-paced, features decent boss fights and includes some beautiful environments to feast your eyes on.
  

• Two new world events and more: We got the Ultimate Swoop Rally on Dantooine and the Feast of Prosperity as a seasonal event in autumn. I liked both of these as creative non-combat additions. I found that swooping gets quite boring quickly if you do it for too long but it is something different. I also enjoyed the little mini-games coming with the Feast and the way it livened up the world boss pugging scene - I'm quite looking forward to doing that again this year actually. Finally, we also got the Alderaan stronghold and Galactic Seasons for what it's worth.
  

Summary

I know people always complain about wanting more from Bioware - and it's not like I'd object to being given more! - but honestly, looking back at all this, it strikes me as a pretty decent tally for a two-year long expansion that came free with the subscription. Especially considering that for a lot of that time, Covid was interfering with the devs' working patterns as well.

I like that there's a clear effort to balance single player story content with MMO features and additions now, and most of it was really good quality as well, with just a couple of not-so-great items on the list but nothing completely awful or boring. If Legacy of the Sith can deliver in a similar way, I'll be one happy camper.

Character Boost

I've never been a fan of level boosts in MMORPGs. I don't have any "moral" objections to them, along the lines of "back in the day we had to go up in levels barefoot and uphill in the snow, so you must too or it won't be authentic", but to me they just feel like they're promising an experience that probably doesn't actually come true for a lot of people, namely that of skipping the supposedly "boring" part and jumping right in where the fun begins.

Obviously I'm biased because I generally enjoy levelling, but my point is more that even if you don't, time to level isn't the only thing standing between you and that mythical fun at endgame: there's also knowing how to play your class, feeling invested in your character and the game, and more, and none of those things are included with the price of that level-up token.

Plus there's also the issue of players who don't even have the slightest idea what their buttons do jumping straight into endgame group content and making life difficult for others, but I'll admit that I haven't experienced this being as much of a problem as I initially expected when WoW first made character boosts mainstream in the run-up to the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Maybe people generally have the sense to not queue for a random dungeon straight away when they can't even tell what they're supposed to do with all those abilities on their bars; I don't know.

Anyway, SWTOR introduced character boosts with Knights of the Fallen Empire and has given out at least two of them for free to subscribers since then, but I never used them because I simply didn't see the appeal.

However, this morning I found myself at the character creation screen to roll up a new Assassin to tank master mode flashpoints for our alt guild on Imperial side, and when I noticed those free tokens still waiting for me I actually paused to think. I didn't really have any particular urge to start on the inquisitor story yet again as I still have two characters that have it in progress, and I wanted this character to be ready for endgame as soon as possible. That... actually seemed like the perfect occasion to use a boost. So off I went.

I felt a bit confused when my newborn Assassin was spat out on Odessen, actually wearing the exact gear set that had been displayed on the character creation screen - that never happens - but I quickly found myself back in my usual new character routine of emptying my mailbox of several dozen promotional items such as titles, speeders, pets etc. - if Bioware ever decides to just auto-grant all these things to any new character I'll be one happy woman.

I also noticed that my new Togruta was dark sided and Deception spec by default - which made sense as it's probably the easiest to play of the three Assassin specialisations, but it meant that I had to be off to the fleet to retrain. I thought it was interesting that the game only plopped a relatively small number of abilities on my bar - I guess someone at Bioware decided that starting someone off with literally all of a level 70's abilities on their bars would be a bit overwhelming and I don't think they are wrong. It does require the player to take an interest into what else is hiding in their ability list though if they want to do more than just bumble their way through the main solo storyline.

Having retrained on the fleet, I wanted to fly back to Odessen and was chagrined to discovered that I had zero credits and therefore couldn't actually afford to do so! (Though I also noticed that I had been given three crew skills that were all trained up to 600, with Synthweaving, Archaeology and Underworld Trading apparently being the defaults for inquisitors.) Fortunately the button to launch the Jedi Under Siege intro took me back to Odessen for free.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by how well Jedi Under Siege works as introduction for a brand new character. Both Lana and Major Anri (on Empire side) spend a fair amount of time expositioning, which I think can feel a bit belaboured if you're playing through the entire proceeding and following story in one go and already know what's going on, but as a starting point for a new character it's not bad. It reminds you of just where you are, and it throws several talking points at you that invite you to think about how your character feels about certain things, such as the big factions, loyalty, slavery, Sith politics etc.

It did feel a bit weird to basically be given the option to go saboteur mere minutes after having created the character to be a specific faction, and I took it out of curiosity more than anything else, but I have to admit that it didn't really feel earned. I don't know if I'll continue down this path on this character or just stick to tanking group content.

Speaking of that, gameplay-wise Jedi Under Siege also makes for a much better tutorial than KotFE or KotET ever did in my opinion, as there is relatively little combat but the mobs are on the slightly tougher side, giving you a chance to practice rotations and cooldown use. The final mission in the library could even be considered a very basic tutorial for group content, because while Malgus is utterly OP compared to a random pug, dealing with a large number of silver and gold mobs that have annoying abilities such as stuns and stealth detection gives you a feel for the sorts of things you're likely to encounter in flashpoints later on. Of course in my particular case it helped that I already know how to play a Shadow tank (for a given value of "know" - I'm not exactly very good at it), so I only had to figure out which Assassin ability mapped to which Shadow one.

All in all, it was a much more pleasant experience than I had expected as someone who's always frowned on character boosts. I guess I managed to find that rare sweet spot where it really does work (experienced player who wants another max-level alt for a very specific purpose).

You are Nautolan, I am here with you

One of Onslaught's big bullet point features was the addition of Nautolans as a new playable species, again something that we hadn't seen in a few years. (Togruta were added in July 2015; how time flies.) While they were ultimately decoupled from the expansion purchase when its launch was delayed, they were released alongside the rest of 6.0, so I still consider them a part of Onslaught.

While I'm always interested in new playable species, the new story and gearing system were way too interesting for me to even think about rolling up a new alt in the first couple of weeks, but now that we're getting close to a full month of Onslaught, I decided to take the plunge and look at what life is like as a "noodlehead" as I've seen some people fondly call them.

As someone who quite likes playing around with the character creator, the first thing I noticed was that the sliders for Nautolans were kind of awkward. For example you have the choice of several different faces and head tentacle options, but instead of giving you a slider for each, there is only one called "head" which makes you scroll through more than seventy (!) permutations of all the different combinations, which makes it very hard to find the one you like best.

The same issue exists with their skin patterns and pattern colour. I really have no idea why they did this because it shouldn't be because they ran out of sliders. I went back to check and cyborgs for example have more sliders already. Going with this setup just makes the whole process a lot more awkward than it needs to be.

My second problem was... that I was kind of disappointed that player-created Nautolans look very different from the NPCs that we've had in the game for the last eight years. I really should have known better, considering that I went through the same cycle of expectation and disappointment with the Cathar. I guess I just hadn't given it any real thought beforehand.

In the case of the Nautolans, I can even kind of see why they had to be changed: the existing NPCs all have absolutely huge eyes and very narrow jaws, which I expect doesn't mesh with all the facial expressions that player characters have to display in cut scenes, so porting those features onto the skeleton of the player character model was always going to distort them a bit. I expect I'll get used to the new look over time.

One thing I definitely hadn't anticipated though was how disturbing I would find my own Nautolan to look at in cut scenes. You see, I have played characters of every single playable species in game at this point, except for one: the Miraluka, because their lack of eyes bugs the crap out of me. Nautolans do have eyes, but they are huge and not very expressive, though NPC Nautolans do at least blink a little occasionally. My little Nautolan Shadow on the other hand just stares into space with the most wide-eyed expression, without ever flinching, and it's actually kind of unsettling.

Let me look into your soul.

What makes it even worse is that for some reason all Nautolans have this little smirk by default, so that even in serious cut scenes in very unhappy circumstances, they always seem to be smiling a little - combined with the bug-eyed stare, this gives them a slightly creepy, doll-eyed expression, and I'm not sure I'll manage to get used to that.

I know you've come to kill me, but as you can see on my face I find this notion vaguely uplifting... apparently.

Looking around the forums and reddit, reactions to this new species also seem to be mixed. Some, like Swtorista, are absolutely in love, while others are more disappointed, for the reasons I listed here and others. I'm honestly still kind of undecided myself. I definitely don't love the Nautolan model, which is a disappointment in so far as this was actually a species I was actively looking forward to (unlike the Torgruta for example, which I didn't particularly care about), but Cathar also weren't everything I had hoped for at launch but definitely grew on me over time (and their hair options, which were very limited initially, did get expanded later on for example).

I don't expect Nautolans to be changed in any major way at this point, but just giving them the ability to blink or even just tugging at the sides of their mouths a little to give them a more neutral default expression would already go a long way in my opinion.

Five Things To Do Before Onslaught

When I implied in my last post that I haven't really got a plan for how to prepare for the expansion yet, I was kind of lying. I do have a plan, I just haven't really been implementing it just yet. After all, the expansion is still five months away... and that's a long time, right? Or maybe not - better get started! Let me share with you my top five ways of getting ready for Onslaught. Advice and top list in one, what more could you ask for?

1. Finish up those hard achievements

If you weren't around / doing endgame content around the release of the last two expansions, you might not be aware that ever since the introduction of level sync, endgame content levels up with us. So nope, you won't get to give Izax an extra hard smackdown once you're level 75 - because he'll be level 75 too.

In fact, what tends to happen is the opposite of players being able to overpower old content: everything suddenly gets harder again. This happens because of gear inflation in the previous expansion; and due to the length of the 5.x cycle, it's currently more pronounced than ever before. When 5.0 launched, getting a full set of 230 gear already took some work, and 242 was as high as it went.

Since then, Bioware has effectively released three(!) more tiers of gear as well as new and improved augments, without re-tuning any of the existing content around this increase in character power. This means that there has never been a better time to let wildly overpowered gear give you a bit of an edge when it comes to beating particularly tough content, so consider working on those achievements before Onslaught launches. Examples of things you might want to work on are:

- Veteran and master mode ops bosses (though that requires you to find like-minded people who are willing to do them with you)
- Veteran and master mode story chapters
- Eternal Championship achievements

It had previously never occurred to me to even attempt the Sprint Champion achievement for example (complete the entire Eternal Championship in less than 15 minutes), but after thinking about it I realised that if I'm ever going to get it, the time is now and I better start working on it. The first time I ran a stopwatch in the background - while doing the Eternal Championship for the first time in ages, on a class I'd never done it on - that run took me 40 minutes! But I wasn't discouraged; there was a lot of room for me to improve. My most recent time was already down to 20 minutes, plus I got an Iknayid pet and the Cybernetic Rancor as drops from the bosses.

2. Take your character(s) up to and through Ossus

Obviously you should have done this already since Ossus is great, but I'll concede that there are always more alts to work on. This way you'll be ready to jump right into the new story content once it comes out, and if Ossus is any indication, it will actually be fun to play through it on multiple characters!

If you really want to, you can skip a lot of the stuff that comes before to jump straight ahead to Ossus and beyond, but even if you're not that big a fan of KotFE/KoTET, I personally think that it's nice to be able to make your own decisions instead of being saddled with default choices that may or may not reflect what you think your character would have done. That said, actually taking characters through all that content also means that it will take more time, so better get cracking!

Image courtesy of the Clone Wars Wiki

3. Prepare for Nautolans

With the announcement of Nautolans joining the fray as next playable species having been the undisputed fan favourite at Star Wars Celebration, chances are high that you, dear reader, are also thinking about making one. There are actually a fair few aspects to this that you can consider well in advance: what colour you think they should be, what class etc. Maybe you even already have an outfit idea and could go shopping for it? Just keep in mind that the species' big heads will mean no helmets or hoods, and chest pieces with any large protrusions such as spikes or backpacks are likely to result in clipping issues.

If that seems a bit too "RP" for your taste, there is still the name to consider. Trust me, you're not the only one considering some sort of Kit Fisto pun! You might want to make sure that nobody else has already thought of it before you, and depending on how attached you are to the idea, you could even go as far as creating a placeholder character to reserve the name.

Speaking of placeholders, do you have enough spare character slots? In fact, the matter of character slots may be a pertinent question for you even if you're not personally interested in creating a Nautolan, as it's likely to result in some business opportunities if you keep an eye out for cheap unlocks on the Cartel Market and the GTN in the months to come. There's bound to be a spike in demand for them once expansion day comes around.

4. Clear out your bank and spend those currencies

At first this may sound like pretty generic advice and to be fair, it is something I tell Mr. Commando all the time just to have him ignore me (I'm pretty sure that man has a fortune carelessly buried in his cargo hold). However, in this case I'm not just referring to general tidiness. For example crafting materials that are relevant at max level right now are likely to experience a steep price drop once the level cap is raised (though we don't know how exactly the new gearing system is going to work out).

Eric Musco also officially confirmed that both Masterwork Data Crystals and Unassembled Components will go the way of the dodo with Onslaught, and any leftovers will simply be converted into credits. As the conversion rate is likely to be unfavourable, you might as well use them to buy something useful now! With goal number one in mind, there may still be value in trying to get the best gear you can get right now for example, to help you beat those tough fights while you can still acquire that extra edge.

5. Complete any long quest chains you're on

This is less about hard content and more about time-consuming items, such as the various Aratech missions, which require you to complete a whole bunch of flashpoints or several operations. The reason I'd advise people to do this is that I remember at least one expansion where the big patch caused quest progression on all existing missions to reset. This doesn't necessarily have to happen again, but let's just say there is a chance, and I'd rather be safe than sorry (or annoyed that I have to re-start the mission from scratch yet again).

Onslaught Expansion Announcement

I bet you that you didn't have the same first thought as me upon hearing the name of the new expansion, because for me it was: "Onslaught, huh? That's going to take some getting used to." The reason for this is that my World of Warcraft guild of five years was called Onslaught, so that's a pretty deep-set primary association with the name that I'll have to change. It's also a break with the previous naming scheme for SWTOR's story expansions, which was more or less "Subject of the object".

Not this Onslaught.

The announcement didn't include a big CGI trailer - in fact there was no trailer at all, but I assume that at least a basic one is still to come. Either way, substance is more important than style in this case, and there was plenty of the former! We got confirmation that we'll be getting pretty much all the big ticket items that people have been asking for in recent months, so yay us! I'm sure more details will be revealed as time goes on but let's have a quick look at the major bullet points and I'll add my initial thoughts on them as they stand.

A new storyline spanning two planets, Onderon and Mek-Sha, that concludes in a new flashpoint on Corellia

Mek-Sha isn't technically a planet in astronomical terms (it's an asteroid) but we're talking about these in terms of gameplay features here and they'll both be big new locations.

Eric and Charles said relatively little about the storyline other than that it's going to continue the Republic vs. Empire thread that we started on Ossus, which makes sense as they usually like to keep the details of these a secret so that they can be a surprise later and to be honest that's how I as a player like it too. The splash art seems to indicate that a big showdown between Tau and Malgus is coming up though.

Onderon seems to have many people excited due to being a planet from KOTOR 2, but since I still haven't played that because they still haven't released a mobile port, it means little to me. (Apparently it also appeared in the Clone Wars, where I still haven't made it past season two.) The only association I had with the name was that C2-D4 repeatedly said that he used to serve the queen of Onderon, so I wonder if that means that he and Jakarro will make a return? Charles Boyd actually asked during the Cantina event whether people would like it if Jakarro was on Onderon, but it was unclear whether that was a hint or him still trying to decide whether to include the Wookiee as a side character or not.

Concept-wise, nothing they said about Onderon or Mek-Sha sounded drastically new and different - Onderon is a place of noble houses so we might get some story vibes similar to Alderaan, while Mek-Sha sounded like another potential haven for smugglers and other shady characters. Mind you, at this point I guess it's hard to come up with a concept for a planet that isn't similar to anything they've done before... I'm sure the devil (aka most interesting stuff) will be in the details.

Going back to Corellia also sounds good to me, because I think it's nice to mix things up by returning to older planets every now and then. I guess I would have preferred it if the main storyline hadn't been tied directly into the new flashpoint, but that seems to be the strategy they are rolling with right now. Oh well.

New operation on Dxun

Dxun is one of Onderon's moons and another KOTOR 2 reference. But hey, new operation, yay! Really glad they took the time to a) actually build another operation and b) do so in full this time after the so-so results of releasing Gods from the Machine piecemeal over the course of an entire year. I don't think it's been stated how many difficulties the new operation will come with - I assume two are a given, but is a third one at least planned, even if it might not be live at launch? No more hardmares please.

Also, the official announcement article says that the operation will feature both something Czerka-related (nice to see they got back on their feet after the whole CZ-198 thing) as well as "a band of fanatical Trandoshan hunters" - return of Kephess confirmed? (I'm not even sure whether I want this joke to be true or not.)

Level cap increase to 75 and a new ability for each class

In case the last two years made you think that Bioware tired of level cap increases, we got confirmation that Onslaught will add another five levels to the game to mix things up again. Plus every class will get at least one new ability! Part of me is like "yes but how many more abilities do we really need", while the other, louder part is like: "I don't care, gimme!" I don't think they've ever added any new abilities to the game that I didn't like; at worst it sometimes took me a little while to figure out what made a new ability good and when / how to use it to the greatest effect. The only thing to watch out for is whether they'll decide to prune any old/existing abilities to balance the scales (which they have done before).

New playable species: Nautolan

I was kind of surprised by the way this seemed to be the single most cheered for announcement at the Cantina, based on the video I watched. Not that it's not a nice thing; I'm just not sure it's nicer than everything else.

It wasn't exactly a surprise to hear them announce Nautolans as the next playable species, as I think everyone had them pegged as the top contender based on popularity and existing assets, but it was a surprise to hear Bioware talk about wanting to tie their release to the expansion, as that's not something that's happened before. The closest we had was Cathar being announced as a tie-in with Makeb, just to be frantically edited out of everything afterwards as they eventually had to be delayed until 2.1. Speaking of that though, weirdly the Nautolan reveal is the one major bullet point they didn't add to the official announcement article either, hmm...

I'm not sure how much use I'll make of this new unlock myself - I do think Nautolans are very cool and I would definitely like to have one, but I also suffer from a certain degree of what you could call alt fatigue at this point, due to already having too many alts that I rarely ever play and feeling like I'm "neglecting" them and that I really shouldn't add any more to the mix (yes, I know that's not rational; that doesn't change the way I feel though).

Big gear and itemisation changes

This one was probably the biggest head-scratcher about the announcement as it was about system changes and slightly vague ones at that, which kind of makes you go: "I guess that sounds good, but I'd have to see it to be able to say how much I like it". The main thing I was hoping for was simplification of the current gearing system, even if I know that something like that wouldn't be very exciting to announce. Not to mention that even if they are planning to do it, they might not have worked out enough details yet to talk about how it will work.

Anyway, that didn't happen - in fact the only thing even vaguely going in that direction was some talk about simplifying the process of moving gear across your legacy, which I have mixed feelings about because personally I've actually avoided doing too much of that anyway as I prefer all my characters to have their own gear sets. However, I guess if this change cuts down on certain guild members (you know who you are) constantly having to log through their entire stable of alts before every operation just to find where they left their trousers this time, I'm all for that.

The bigger issue though was that they talked about wanting to change the way we pursue gear in general, by giving us more different set bonuses to choose from, some of them cross-class and not even combat related. There is also going to be an entirely new gear slot that's meant to allow you to customise your most-used abilities. Eric Musco's made-up example was having a Sorcerer's chain lightning hit more targets vs. turning it into a punchier single target attack. I was instantly reminded of WoW's glyph system ca. Wrath of the Lich King/Cataclysm, which then led to me trying to remember why that didn't really work out, but I couldn't. I don't recall it being an utter disaster, so I guess it's fair enough for Bioware to give their own version a try.

There are two major sticking points that I see, with the first one being balance. SWTOR's player community isn't as obsessed with min-maxing as e.g. World of Warcraft's, so I'm sure there'll be more room for people to play around with different options without being shunned, but it does give the devs more things to worry about when it comes to balancing both PvP and PvE encounters.

The other concern I have can simply be summed up with the words "too much gear". One thing I've really liked about 5.0 was that they did away with separate sets of PvE and PvP gear. However, with all those new set bonuses and new game-changing items we'll suddenly have a lot more to think about than simply those two game modes, because who'll want to stick to just a single set at all times? Just how much of my bag space is going to be taken up by having to lug new alternate gear sets around? Also, and this may sound weird, but on a gut level I'm not sure features that are supposed to heavily customise the way we play should simply be stuck on gear. Shouldn't these things be a bit more inherent to our characters, like our combat specialisations and utilities? These were just the sort of thoughts that immediately came to my mind.

Coming This September

All of this is supposed to come in September, so currently about five months away. I've seen a lot of people say that this is actually less of a wait than they expected, but I don't know why anyone would have expected Bioware to announce this kind of thing much further in advance. Looking back at previous story expansions, they usually announced them around four months before their release. Shadow of Revan even had only a mere two months between its reveal and launch! Which is not me saying that I think five months is short or long, just that it's pretty in line with how they've handled these things previously.

I'm looking forward to learning more about Bioware's plans for this expansion.