A Farewell to Pug Cut Scenes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 5

Day 1:

For the first time since the start of the Season, neither of my weeklies involved PvP, as they were for flashpoints and operations. Ops were good again as I was planning to run Gods from the Machine with the guild on Friday, and as for the flashpoints... well, looking at the flashpoint list for the week I decided that I was going to do it this time, also because it was the fifth time in a row that I got the flashpoint weekly and I'd never actually done it. Yes, re-rolling it to GSF or warzones would have been more convenient for sure as I was bound to do those things for dailiy POs anyway, but I was craving some variety.

However, dailies first. One of them was to kill 75 enemies in unknown or wild space, meaning Ilum, CZ-198 or Iokath. I decided to go for kills on Ilum via a character that was on the Ilum storyline anyway, and was surprised to find that I only had one, my dps Sage. I seem to remember that there was a time when loads of my alts had yet to do Ilum... I guess I burned through them all back when Conquest actually required some work and questing on Ilum was a frequently reoccurring objective.

The other daily was a warzone again, which I played on my lowbie Merc. I was glad to see some map variety once again, as I got put into Yavin Ruins for the first time in ages. My team won - somewhat to my surprise, considering that they were not very responsive to my calls for help and multiple people were off to skirmish at the third turret when we already owned two, but I guess we just overpowered the enemy so much that it didn't matter.

For the flashpoints I decided to pick characters that had story missions tied to one of the flashpoints from the selection, so I started by queueing my original Sorc for Legacy of the Rakata. I got into a group with two stealthers, which allowed us to skip a few extra pulls, but nobody was obnoxious if we did end up pulling something after all. The other non-stealther, a bounty hunter, got stuck in the terrain at one point and I had to rescue him, but other than that it was a pretty nice and smooth run. I ended up involuntarily tanking the last boss and rotating through the kolto stations to keep myself alive, as we were a full dps team.

I then decided to go on another run, this time to Directive 7 on my DvL Commando. I did have slight regrets when I was reminded of all the annoying skips that many pugs insist on in this flashpoint as I got myself stuck inside a wall while running along one of the pipes. After I'd untangled myself with /stuck, I went and just killed the lone weak mob that we had so painstakingly avoided.

On Bulwark I ended up tanking once again, and actually died - much to my embarrassment - as I was surprised by how much damage I took and didn't click on a kolto station quickly enough. I felt a little sheepish for about a minute, but then the rest of the group actually wiped (!). After that, the rest of the run went okay, and the only other noteworthy thing that happened was that we tried to skip the boss with the two turrets near the end but someone aggroed him anyway, which made our main skipper quite annoyed, based on their "wtf" and "omg" comments in party chat.

After that I decided to leave the third flashpoint for another day. It felt strange to realise that I hadn't actually done a veteran mode flashpoint in many months and how everything felt slightly unfamiliar.

Day 2:

I logged on quite late in the evening, hoping for something quick, so when I saw the insectoid killing objective, I immediately re-rolled it and got CZ-198 dailies instead. The other PO was a warzone, which was fine.

I played another PvP match on my lowbie Merc and got into a Huttball, which my team won 6-0. Our opponents were dead set on killing, with me being a favoured target due to my low-ish level, but I can't say I'm upset about being killed if it leaves my team unimpeded to win more easily!

For the dailies I picked up my DvL Assassin, wanting to minimise mob killing since that wasn't part of the objective. Despite the late hour, there was a veritable crowd in the CZ-198 landing zone when I arrived, so I immediately switched to the PvP instance. I was surprised to see two people by the shuttle there as well, but once I went into the actual quest area I didn't see another soul during my entire round, which was pretty much what I had hoped for.

Day 3:

Another late night, I logged on to find more CZ-198 dailies and insectoid killing. I re-rolled the insects again and got generic mob killing instead... perfect combo, yes!

This time I took my Sniper to do the dailies and stayed in the PvE instance, since I suck at PvPing as Sniper. It was busy despite the late hour, but there were still enough mobs to go around. Only the champion droid for the heroic took some time to secure a tag on. Finishing the quests and my kills ended up lining up quite nicely.

Day 4:

This time I logged on earlier in the evening to get my daily objectives done before ops time. I had to do a GSF match, which popped almost instantly, and the match ended up being pretty close but ultimately a loss, sadly. The most interesting thing about it was the guy on my team who kept trying to give pretty detailed instructions, like "They have three slicer ships, get the slicers!" and I was just kind of baffled that he apparently expected the rest of us to actually know and understand what he was asking of us.

I also got CZ-198 dailies for the third day in row and briefly considered re-rolling them but then was like "nah". They are after all really fast and easy. This time I went on my Operative on Imp side and again switched to the PvP instance the moment I arrived and saw how busy it was. Unfortunately there were other Imps in the PvP instance as well... but I had the sense to not try to fight them over the droid crates (where I encountered them) but instead move on to the next area and complete the quests there first, including the heroic. That worked out well as the other floor was pretty quiet and by the time the others arrived, I was ready to go back and quickly finish off the crate quest.

Story mode Gods from the Machine with the guild was smooth and fairly unremarkable. In conversation I came up with the idea of maybe creating a YouTube video called "The Gods from the Machine story explained", which would then just be me saying: "Don't worry, it's not just you; it simply doesn't make any sense."

Finally I decided to finish off the evening by doing my last flashpoint for the other weekly. I decided to go for Czerka Corporate Labs on my DvL Juggernaut. I was actually kind of slow to notice that the Czerka flashpoints were on the list too; to be honest if I'd seen that earlier I probably would have done Core Meltdown instead of D7, but oh well. You live and learn. This run was super fast and smooth, with people who clearly all knew what they were doing. On our way to the second boss someone even said "remember not to pull the second boss until everyone's in the room" - that right there is a sign of someone who's pugged that place a lot. At the end someone commented that we had been so fast, it had probably been even more efficient than a Hammer Station run. Damning praise, but I'll take it!

Day 5:

Got generic mob killing and insecticide as my objectives again. Re-rolled the insects and ended up with CZ-198 dailies for the fourth day in a row. Could be worse I guess... (I said that last bit out loud, to which Mr Commando replied from across the table: "Yes, you could be doing this instead!" He was doing an archaeology quest in WoW.)

I hopped onto CZ and into the PvP instance on my dps Powertech, and actually encountered an enemy player for the first time! They were fighting the champion droid when I saw them and I briefly thought about attacking but then decided not to and disappeared around a corner instead. A couple minutes later I went for the droid myself, and as soon as I was done, what I suspect was the same person suddenly attacked me instead and killed me (I was in combat, not expecting it, and am not that great at death match PvP anyway). I suppose it was a small mercy that they at least waited until I was done with the droid too or just didn't see me any earlier. As it was, that death was barely a bump in the road and I quickly resumed my questing, to finish both the weekly mission and my two objectives a few minutes later.

Day 6:

Generic mob killing and insectoids AGAIN. I re-rolled the latter and got CZ-198 AGAIN. My guildies were complaining about GSF and Iokath dailies - how I wished I could have gotten some of those instead! Still, not the worst thing on the world, so I went to that little moon yet again, this time on the Sorc on which I had done Legacy of the Rakata on day one, since she still needed some Conquest points.

Once again I opted for the PvP instance, though it was surprisingly busy, at least with other Imps. I didn't see another Republic character until I spotted a guildie on one of their Republic alts, so I jumped him and killed him (admittedly with another random Imp joining in). We were both on voice chat so I also teased him about it there. However, he managed to revive quickly and then killed me in return, so fair play. We had a good laugh about it.

Day 7:

Generic mob killing again, but at least this time it was paired with doing a warzone. I decided to return to Ilum with my dps Sage and continued the storyline some more. As much fun as it is to give Lord Loyat a dressing-down, it did occur to me that I might have done that particular storyline a bit too many times (especially compared to other planetary arcs).

The warzone was once again done by my lowbie Merc - can I still say lowbie now that she's level 40? - and I got into an arena. I got a little excited to see that I wasn't the lowest level in the match when I noticed that there was also a level 18 Vanguard on my team. However, when I tried to seize up the opposition, I noticed that the only person whose level I could see was a level 60+ Sage... the other three were all stealth dps. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on how that went, but at least it got the objective done quickly.

Week 5 thoughts:

We've now completed the last of the five weeks that were posted on Bioware's blog about Seasons - which means that after the reset we'll be back to week one and its focus on core worlds. Hopefully the worst bugs will be fixed by now, and if you ever found yourself annoyed in previous weeks by having made bad re-roll decisions based on that week's objectives, you'll get another chance at those.

I've definitely fallen into a routine of doing the warzone and PvP objectives every day, ops for the weekly if I get it, and always re-rolling insectoid killing. Dailies, heroics and generic mob killing are usually fine for me too but get tiresome if they repeat too many days in a row - then again, I've had to learn from experience that re-rolling them risks making things even worse.

I really wish there was a daily objective for flashpoints of some kind - it could be any difficulty to satisfy both soloers and socialisers - just to mix things up a bit I guess.

Harder Better Stronger?

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

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

In the meantime...

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-63

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

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

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

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-64

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

Czerka Corporate Labs
I levelled: 64-64

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

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

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

Hammer Station
I levelled: 64-65

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

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 65-65

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

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

Directive 7
I levelled: 65-66

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pugette's Journey Is Nearing Its End

Pugette, my Commando alt who's levelling through flashpoints and whose adventures I've been recording on video, has reached level 64 today, so she only has only six more levels to go! I expect that my next post about this series will be my last one. I will probably have some more things to say about the project as a whole at that point, but for now, here is once again a summary of the last six weeks/episodes:

Episode 19: Getting Nostalgic in Directive 7 - As I continue to queue for both master modes and a diminishing number of veteran modes, I mostly keep getting instant queue pops for the former but every now and then also still for the latter. This run was part of the second category. Directive 7 is one of those places that always makes me super nostalgic for the game's early days because I associate so many funny stories with it, some of which I shared in the video. The way the run progressed also gave me reason to detour into some adventures I used to have during my time pugging in WoW.

Episode 20: Testing the Puggability of Crisis on Umbara - I was so excited to get the new flashpoint as my random! I had only done it with guildies before and therefore had zero idea what it would be like with a pug. My main impression at the start was that there was a lot of damage flying around and I couldn't imagine doing it without a healer. But when we got to the bonus boss, things got really interesting... I won't spoil the rest!

Episode 21: Unexpected Developments in MM Czerka Core Meltdown - This flashpoint defied my expectations because I remembered the desert boss being very hard to heal while having no issues whatsoever with the jungle boss. Apparently this has been reversed at some point! Also, a 15-minute wait for a new tank after our first one abandoned us led to some interesting experimentation with companion tanking.

Episode 22: Killing ALL THE THINGS in Taral V - At last, Pugette was able to advance her Jedi Prisoner quest line through Taral V, veteran mode this time. I was endlessly amused by the fact that after I explained at the start (and in previous videos) that most people just want to skip most of the trash in this instance, I of course ended up in a group that actually wanted to do both bonuses. The group's zeal for killing absolutely everything was actually pretty comical.

Episode 23: Getting chatted up outside MM Depths of Manaan - Just as I started recording this episode, I got whispers from some random person who started with some innocuous but pointless questions, causing me to predict that he was going to ask if I was a real girl next... and he promptly obliged, allowing me to nicely capture the awkwardness that comes with playing a female character online at times on screen. The instance itself went very well, especially considering that it's one of the tougher master modes. In fact my team seemed to engage in a game of one-upmanship with achievements, trying to convince each other that they were the one who knew the flashpoint best.

Episode 24: Inconsiderate Tanking in MM Esseles - This was a fairly uneventful run, except that our tank seemed to think that "tanking" means constantly charging ahead to solo things and ignoring what's going on with the rest of the group. Fortunately it wasn't much of an issue considering the low difficulty of the flashpoint, and at first I even laughed about it, but after a while it did get a bit annoying.

Flashpoint Levelling: Russians and Reruns

I'm enjoying this whole experiment more than I thought I would. I run about one flashpoint a day, usually in the evenings after work, once everything else in the house has been taken care of. Most of the time the runs are smooth and the groups chill. It's been a long time since I spent this much time pugging... and it's actually nice.

Czerka Corporate Labs
I levelled: 35-36

I should mention at this point that I tend to decline groups in which the system tries to pair me up with another healer. Not that I have anything against them, but experience has taught me that you gain little from having more than one healer in a four-man group and it just makes everything sooo much slower. In the evenings the pops are near-instant anyway, so you don't really lose anything by declining a group. You'll get a different one two minutes later anyway.

With that said, this was the first run on this character where I did end up with another healer (and two dps), because after I had declined initially, the system tried to put me into the exact same group again when I requeued a few minutes later - and I figured: whatever. The other three players were probably getting tired of people declining or timing out.

I zoned into Czerka Corporate Labs and was immediately in combat. Turns out that the other three were already fighting the first boss. I tried to run down and join them but got insta-killed on the way somehow - it looked like the boss was trying to pull me in and the game decided to one-shot me since I was still upstairs, in a place from which I couldn't be pulled. I resed and tried again. Apparently other people in the group were dying and running back as well! It was a dumb zerg, and even once we finally had everyone alive and in one place, there was still a lot of pointless running back and forth. The boss actually enraged on us, something which I hadn't seen in quite a while.

On the second try we got our act together and killed him, but everything still felt incredibly slow with two healers (plus neither of the dps seemed to be particularly good either). After the second boss, the other healer suddenly piped up with "w8 - banan needs toilet", and it took me a moment to realise that she was talking about one of the dps. I asked if they were all one group of friends, and she explained that it was just her and that one dps, that they were Russians and always skipping all the cut scenes. I asked why, since her English seemed fine, and she explained that the other guy didn't speak any at all. One wonders why they chose to play SWTOR of all things then... they must really like Star Wars.

After we had successfully completed the flashpoint, the Russians initiated a vote kick on me because I wasn't leaving "their" group quickly enough, which amused me. I never knew that you actually get a notification in SWTOR when someone tries to kick you, because you don't in WoW.

This run also seemed to provide pretty strong evidence against my earlier theory that level 65s in the group reduce your XP, as everyone in this run was in their thirties and yet I only gained a single level. I think I've simply got to the point where the XP gains from flashpoints slow down somewhat compared to the levelling insanity of the low levels.

Kuat Drive Yards
I levelled: 36-38

Kuat again? Well, at least I had the story quest for it this time. This time we got the scenario with the cannons and the armoury, as well as Station Guardian One as the end boss. It was a smooth run overall, but during the initial intro conversation two group members went into a veritable "spacebar" frenzy. I screenshotted it so I would be able to reproduce it verbatim (names changed to protect the guilty):

[Dude1]: skip
[Dude1]: SKIP
[Dude2]: S TO K TO I TO P
[Dude2]: spacebar
[Dude1]: space bar
[Dude2]: spacebar

I think this really highlighted for me why I find spacebar warriors so annoying, and it's not because I often do like to watch the cut scenes: it's because they are always so freaking imperious and rude. Have you ever seen anyone say: "Could we skip the cut scenes please?" Me neither. They always have to be bossy douches about it. You are not the boss of me, Mr Random Pug, and if you start like that you are unlikely to get me to do anything for you.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 38-39

Pug separation in Hammer Station - that ryhmes!

Another re-run of a flashpoint I'd only done a few days ago. I got really excited when I saw that one of our group members was a tank. My first run with a proper tank! Of course, the moment we zoned in he said that he was confused about why he had ended up queued as tank, as he was actually a dps. Hah.

It was a really smooth and pleasant run though. Now that I had a cleanse, the tunneler droid was a piece of cake to heal. I also maxed out my scavenging skill in this run. (For comparison, my bioanalysis only sits at 169.) 

Directive 7
I levelled: 39-41

OK, I partially retract what I said about people who want to skip the cut scenes above. In this run we had one who said "skip pl". Two letters of the word "please" have got to count for something, right?

This being D7 and us having a level 65 in the group, this was another run where people just wanted to get to the end as quickly as possible while skipping everything else. We jumped across the tents again, and again the lowest level in the group didn't manage it and pulled anyway. I actually died on Mentor and got a combat res! So there are some people that are aware of having that ability.

I think mostly this run annoyed me because it was another repeat of a flashpoint that I'd only done a couple of days before. There are 19 tactical flashpoints in the queue now, and at this point I had queued for a total of 12 runs. However, these only resulted in me seeing 8 different instances, as 4 were repeats. I guess that is proper randomness, but it's still a bit annoying.

Cademimu
I levelled: 41-42

Yay, a flashpoint I hadn't done before, and one I quite like at that! I had the feeling that two of the people in the group must have been quite new to the game, as they seemed very hesitant and I could see in the group log that they both had the "Introduction to Group Finder" mission in their log still, even though they were in the high thirties. The third dps was a "legendary" player like me.

I had a blast knocking probe droids to their death and was kind of surprised that the encounter in the cantina appears to have been removed entirely - you know the one, where people would come down from the ceiling and all the patrons would scream and cower. Was that actually an issue?

At the taxi point I sliced access to the police car for the shortcut, but the two newbies didn't follow and we got split up. We reunited soon though. Having got somewhat off track because of this, I was delighted to find a cage from which I could free a temporary hound pet! Four years and there are still crew skill nodes in some of these flashpoints that I've never seen... Sadly my doggie died on the lift to the Wookiee boss, but we actually got XP for its death, which amused me.

About halfway through the run I found that Kolto Shell had appeared on my bar, which made me happy because I'd been missing having that ability. Constantly wanting to rebuff the entire group every three minutes is a habit that's hard to break. The only downside was that I find its sound effect a bit annoying compared to the Republic version.

As we approached the last boss, the other legendary player asked if everyone knew how to do this fight, but the newbies shrouded themselves in silence. Unsurprisingly, they both got burnt to cinders pretty early, and me and the other guy ended up finishing the rest of the fight with just the two of us.

I think Bioware were really proud of their "lekku physics" at launch, but in practice they can get super awkward at times.

Cademimu
I levelled: 42-44 (that included the weekly quest)

Yay, Cademimu again! I'm not even sure whether I'm being sarcastic here or not.

Now this was my actual first random flashpoint that I completed with a genuine tank! Only took 14 runs to find one... To be perfectly honest, it didn't seem to make that much of a difference in this instance, though it was nice to have someone who was happy to jump in and have all the mobs whale on him, instead of the awkward shuffle you get with some of the full dps groups where nobody wants to be the one to go first and get all the aggro.

We had three deaths by falling, which brought back fond memories for me.

Towards the end, one of the dps asked "who chaine for one more dj?" and I couldn't figure out what DJ was supposed to stand for. Disc jockeys in Cademimu? It was only at the end that I realised that he had meant dungeon and wanted to know if we could re-queue together. As I was happy to have completed my one run for the night however, I had to politely decline.

Cademimu
I levelled: 44-45

Cademimu hat-trick! Who would have thought?

This one included only one death by falling and one person dying to Ortol's fire, though it also featured the first time that I saw a player get caught in a trap on the first boss. I also noted down: "Does this flashpoint think I'm a trooper?" Until now the last boss in each run always seemed to drop useful loot for my class, but in the previous run I got a generator off-hand, and this time Ortol dropped an assault cannon.

Ten levels from seven flashpoints definitely prove that things are slowing down.

The Flashpoint Diaries: Blood Hunt Wants My Blood

If you thought that my little bounty hunter's first bunch of levelling flashpoints sounded like I was getting way too easy a ride, you should enjoy this entry.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 29-29 (that already says it all)

The time had finally come: The group finder had randomly thrown me into a flashpoint that was originally designed for level 60. I had heard bad things about the new tactical version and remembered the hardmode being waaay overtuned. But well, you'll never know until you try, right?

On the first boss I was happily distracted by the fact that he was surrounded by "healing spores" instead of kolto stations... how did I never notice that before? We had one death on that fight but did OK otherwise. Likewise, the three challenges fell before us with no issues. But then came the moment of truth: facing Jos and Valk Beroya.

We actually had a pretty good first attempt, during which we made it into the second half of the fight, but then... I'm not entirely sure what happened. I remember seeing people take lots of damage, me trying to run to a kolto station, being yanked back before I could click it, and then people were dead.

We got up and tried again, but this time our first death actually occurred even earlier, due to the vicious knockback. The guy who died went into a rant about how that knockback was "BS" and rage-quit. We hadn't even finished wiping before everyone else dropped group as well.

I felt a mix of annoyance and relief: I was annoyed that people gave up so easily and relieved that I had an excuse to move on to something else.

Kuat Drive Yards
I levelled: 29-31 (this included the weekly quest, which didn't give a crazy amount of XP anymore. I don't know if they fixed it or if I'm just high enough level by now that it doesn't have as much of an impact anymore).

As soon as I saw where I had landed this time, I wanted to slap my foreheard for forgetting to pick up the story quest for this. After all, this is the one flashpoint quest that can already be picked up as early as level 15! I made a point of picking it up afterwards, just in case RNG brings me back to Kuat later on.

After the Blood Hunt debacle I was glad to be back on more forgiving ground, even if my group consisted of three twitchy Marauders. First we got the starship assembly and someone asked if anybody knew how to solve the puzzle. I wanted to give it a try, but someone else clicked on the consoles at random and our prototype blew up. Not that it really mattered.

Second we got the hangar defense scenario, which also went smoothly enough. The final boss turned out to be Major Benes and apparently nobody else had done him before, as I was the only one who ran to cleanse her grenade and we wiped. One guy immediately went into "blame the healer" mode, but I countered by calmly explaining that people needed to get rid of the grenades. We tried again, and while people still blew up a couple of times, we managed to muddle through and by the end of it everyone seemed to have understood the tactics. The guy who had got mad at first said with a smiley that he got it now... and we lived happily ever after.

I was just disappointed that there was no loot other than the little reputation commendations. Now that all flashpoints are tactical, Kuat looks kind of silly for giving lesser loot for basically no reason.

After this flashpoint I also upgraded my armour's mods for the first time in fifteen levels, but I couldn't really see it making much of a difference to how I was getting bolstered. I shall resist the urge to queue up naked though, just to see how powerful bolster really is...

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 31-33

My heart sank as soon as I saw where I was going. Blood Hunt again? Whelp, once more into the fray then...

Our start was very similar to my last run: one death at the first boss, then no further issues with the challenges. All the other group members were dps (as usual), of levels 27, 64 and 65 respectively.

Once again we wiped twice before the quitting started, but fortunately it wasn't a full disband this time. It was just the 65 who left, to be replaced by a level 34 Sniper. She really impressed me on the next try, doing an excellent job at staying alive, but unfortunately we wiped again anyway.

Another member of the original group left, just to be replaced by a level 50, who was coming in just as me and the Sniper were talking about how this flashpoint was really hard. "It's not so hard," crowed the level 50 the moment he entered. "You can save us then," the Sniper joked in response.

Alas, we still weren't quite there, and wiped again, though it definitely felt like we were doing better with each attempt. At this point the last dps from the original group dropped, to be replaced by a level 65 Merc. We all greeted her enthusiastically. Her response as she realised where she had ended up: "Oh -.-." What can I say, this flashpoint clearly has a reputation! However, with her help we were finally victorious. I actually felt the urge to take a victory screenshot at the end, because it had been such a challenge. Shout-out to Lhoola, Vi'kk and Yelisa of the Red Eclipse for being awesome!

Here are some tips that I felt helped to make the difference in the end:

It's counter-intuitive, but during the red circle phase... don't run. Just stand there and eat your circle, just make sure you're not standing on top of anyone else. I found that when I originally tried to run out of them, it pretty much always led to bad things, as I didn't have the abilities and more importantly the mobility talents yet to remain useful while running around. The damage isn't actually that high, so it's better to just stand there and to continue giving it your best.

The knockback is a huge pain, so try to stay near the centre as much as possible (unless there's fire there or something - that fire actually hurts). I somehow managed to get knocked down once or twice without dying - instead I simply got teleported back up again. I couldn't tell whether that was a feature or a glitch though, so I wouldn't rely on it.

Most importantly however, everyone needs to spam those healing consoles. At my level I just didn't have the AoE or burst healing to deal with the damage output, not to mention that sometimes I would simply get stunned - who's supposed to be healing then? Fortunately my final party members were all good at doing their part to survive and clicked consoles as much as they could (while minimising their stays near the edge of the platform).

Finally, if someone does die, use your combat res if you have one! I'm astounded by the amount of high level players I've already seen who do not seem to be aware that they even have this skill.

Oh, and Torch? She was easy mode after all this; we got her on the first try.

Directive 7
I levelled: 33-35

This was the first flashpoint I've done in a while where the group didn't want to do the bonus, but then two of the dps were max level and it was D7. They went for all the annoying trash skipping moves in the book, including that stupid tent jump - though at least it wasn't me who failed on that one and aggroed half the area this time.

They also weren't very good players, as they would do things like run to break the crowd control I had applied to a gold mob while multiple weak turrets were still up and shooting (... me, due to healing aggro). That made the whole exercise a bit tedious, but other than one grumbly comment about me and the other lowbie pulling too many things it was a decent run. At least there was no griping about cut scenes.

Flashpoint Friday: Directive 7

I was surprised to see that Directive 7 had received a purple "main storyline" marker after 4.0, since its story is completely self-contained and other story-heavy flashpoints like Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island didn't receive the same distinction. This also means that D7 now has a solo mode. To activate it, just talk to the droid at the flashpoint entrance on your faction's fleet vanguard vessel. If you have another difficulty mode active in your mission log, such as [Tactical] Flashpoint: Directive 7 or [Hard] Flashpoint: Directive 7, you will have to abandon that first and then talk to the droid again.

General Facts

Directive 7 was originally designed for levels 47-50 and was therefore the first of the original endgame flashpoints that you were able to enter while levelling up (the next two opened up at level 48). Nowadays it's accessible as a tactical flashpoint from level 15 onwards, as hardmode from level 50, and - as already mentioned - it features a solo mode option as well.

There is a story quest associated with this flashpoint that starts at the main level of your faction's space station and still requires at least level 45 as far as I can tell, called Violent Uprising for Republic players and Immediate Vengeance for Imperial ones. Completing this flashpoint for the first time also awards a title: "the Deprogrammer". It's a bit of a clue: you're going to quell a droid uprising.

Fights

Directive 7 is filled with droids, with a couple of cyborgs thrown into the mix for fun. Another flashpoint that's a scavenger's dream! However, there really are a lot of mobs in D7, making it one of the longest flashpoints there is (or if it isn't, at least it feels that way). None of the trash pulls pose any real challenge either, there are just... so... many droids taking up space. For this reason D7 is one of the flashpoints where I've frequently seen people drop out as soon as they saw where the group finder had decided to put them, simply because they don't want to cope with the length of it. Others press on but urge everyone in the group to skip as much trash as possible, which can include crazy antics such as leaping over the rooftops of tents. I was never very good at those and appreciate groups who are willing to do things the "proper" way. There's also a bonus boss that requires you to kill lots of extra trash to be able to click on certain items. People rarely want to do him.

The lesser-known D7 bonus boss.

I suspect that the droid theme is at least partially responsible for the lack of variety among the bosses, who are all droids with one or two gimmicks and generally no personality. There's the first boss, who is a tank and spank with the occasional interrupt to stop him repairing himself and some weak turret add spawns. There's Interrogator, the boss that tries to "replicate" members of your party occasionally, which sounds super cool in theory, except that the "copies" he makes look nothing like your character and are just generic cyborgs. (It was funny though when he bugged shortly after launch and just kept creating endless clones of certain party members.) There's Bulwark, "the one with the buttons (consoles)". There's the one who is similar to the first boss, only that his turret adds are large and dangerous.

The one shining beacon in this sea of mediocrity is Mentor, the leader of the renegades himself, who oozes supervillain personality. When you first encounter him in the form of three assassin droids, he rotates shields around their bodies so that you have to keep switching targets, which is not difficult but can certainly keep a pug on their toes. I also encountered a funny bug on this fight once where the shield on the last droid never really fell off and it would only become vulnerable to attacks for about five seconds once every minute. It took my party a looong time to kill it.

The final fight against Mentor's processing core is pure mayhem, with a giant claw from the ceiling chasing people, big and little turrets shooting the players from all corners of the room, add spawns, and a desperate struggle to destroy parts of Mentor whenever they become vulnerable. Essentially you're fighting the whole room and it feels pretty epic. At lauch I used to find this fight highly challenging to heal due to the high mobility requirements, but these days that should be much less of an issue for most characters.

Awe-inspiring.

My impression of the solo mode version was that all the fights are severely toned down, to the point where you could hardly even recognise what some of the mechanics were supposed to do anymore. During a test run on my level 50 Vanguard to see what it was like, I killed the first boss without even realising that I had no healer and that my GSI droid had despawned three pulls ago.

Story (spoilers)

Both Empire and Republic have heard of horrible massacres happening in various places, with thousands of people getting killed by their droids. A group of renegades that calls itself Directive 7 (thus the name of the flashpoint) is threatening to take it even further and wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. Slightly drastic, perhaps? Fortunately at least one of their kind agrees that it is all a bit of an overreaction and has tipped you off that their centre of operations is located on a moon called Zadd. You travel there and meet with your mysterious tipster, a droid called C5-M3 who kind of looks like your standard protocol droid but it's implied that he actually used to be of the medical persuasion. He has no love for the "organics" either but thinks that no good will come of "sinking to your level" by trying to wipe out your kind completely.

You encounter Mentor, the leader of Directive 7, as he controls the bodies of three assassin droids and later find out that he experimented on "organics" by turning them into cyborgs in hopes of "fixing their flaws". After defeating the assassin droids, you fight your way through to Mentor's processing core and destroy it before he can unleash a signal upon the galaxy that would cause millions of droids to turn on their masters.

At the debrief with your faction contact which is part of the associated story quest, it is suggested that C5-M3, who escaped with you, should either be destroyed (Empire) or pressed back into service (Republic). C5-M3 thinks that this is ridiculous of course, as he is a free being and not beholden to anyone, however it is you who gets to make the final call on his fate. I think this is one story where I've actually never picked the dark side option of destroying or enslaving C5 because... this is the guy who just prevented a galaxy-wide massacre and you want to punish him for it!? Are you for real?!

Conclusion

Directive 7 is a great example of how you can use group content to tell a compelling story without making anyone feel like they are missing out if they don't do it, as its narrative is completely self-contained. While the premise of a droid rebellion wanting to kill everyone is slightly reminiscent of cheesy sixties sci-fi ("Killer Robots from Zadd!"), it does play out in an interesting manner, and it does make you wonder about the issue of droid rights. After all, if they are sentient beings, why should they have to be slaves? It's a no-brainer for the Empire of course, where actual slavery is accepted as well, but in the Republic it's at least been a matter of discussion (according to the associated codex entry anyway). The sheer size of the issue does kind of make you wonder however just how the story manages to be this self-contained, and how nobody else in the entire game seems to have heard of these droids that supposedly came close to wiping out the entire known galaxy.

On the other hand, D7 also goes to show once again that long and story-heavy flashpoints don't mesh well with groups of strangers running content through a randomised group finder system. I haven't quite seen it inspire Esseles HM levels of hatred from people who just want a quick run, but it's certainly come close.

Lessons of the day

Heroic pugs, hand in together!

Generally my pugs for heroic quests tend to disband pretty quickly once the quest is done, and I'm okay with that - however, I do wish people wouldn't all leave before we've even had a chance to actually hand in the quest. If they just stayed in the party for two more minutes, we'd all get a massive experience bonus and maybe some social points too! I reckon that a lot of people simply aren't aware of it because they haven't done enough grouping yet, but if you are one of those early leavers, be aware and spread the word!

Same faction PvP is weird

It seems that the Empire dominates on my server after all, because I did some warzones on Empire side last night and it turns out that they do in fact spend a lot of time playing Huttball against each other.

Being pitted against people of your own faction has some strange consequences. Specifically, I noticed that a Sith did a /spit emote on me as she killed me, something that annoys me somewhat because for all the casual ways in which some players use this gesture, it projects a mental image of an action that would be very offensive in real life.

I contemplated whether it would be overreacting to whisper her about it (since we were on the same side and all), when the next match actually threw us onto the same team. Seeing the offender right next to me, I couldn't resist whispering her. "Funny, last match you spat on me and now we're on the same team." "Terrible, isn't it? I'll love you now though." And then she did a /love emote on me repeatedly, which made me chuckle and any leftover annoyance dissipated immediately. It's an interesting situation though, fighting people who could end up in your team on the next match, and something to keep in mind before you get too much into the spirit of hating the enemy.

Directive 7 is bugged

The latest flashpoint we attempted was Directive 7, and I say attempted because we ran into a bug that prevented us from completing it. Specifically, there is a boss that creates a copy of a party member every now and then, but apparently there is a bug with it which can cause it to spawn near endless copies of certain party members, and it mostly affects Mercenaries and Commandos (gulp). So yeah, we got quite close to killing it once, but eventually we always got overrun by an army of evil Shintars.

Supposedly there is a way to skip him via use of a combat res or stealth, but in the end we were too tired to even bother. Bugs that affect gameplay as badly as this remain a nuisance, but I have to admit that there was at least a certain element of humour to dying to an army of evil mes.