Galactic Season 6 in Review

We've got less than a month left of Galactic Season 6, and usually I would've been done with and written about the whole thing weeks ago. The reason I'm still at it this time is the Fragments Found achievement, which is grindy and horrible and which, at my current rate, will keep me busy until the very last week of the season. Still, that last stretch seems pretty predictable at this point, so I thought I might as well share my thoughts on the season as a whole.

GS5 was a slam dunk for me last year, so it pains me to say that GS6 was a bit more of a mixed bag. Let's get into the whys and hows.

Theme & Rewards

I expressed at the end of Season 5 that all the free decorations handed out as part of the seasons reward track had rekindled my interest in housing in an unexpected way, so I loved that the main reward for Season 6 was a stronghold. The Copero Villa is beautiful, and with its smaller rooms it fills a niche that wasn't previously catered to, offering a housing option for those who aren't so fond of the giant vaulted ceilings that are present pretty much everywhere else in the game.

The matching decorations on the reward track were also absolutely beautiful, and I can say with confidence that I finally stopped fretting about what to do with my season tokens whenever I get close to the cap again - I can always use a few more of those beautiful decos from the vendor. There were some other solid pieces on the reward track as well.

Objectives

The objectives were... okay. I definitely appreciated that the devs took the feedback about the ops objective from last season on board and changed it so it only required completion of a single story or veteran mode operation instead of two to four within a single week. Otherwise it was mostly the same old, except that they seemed to want to mix things up a bit by doubling up on certain objectives, like in that one week when all three "kill 100 mobs with your companion" objectives were active at the same time, which was kind of strange in a way that I can't really rate as good or bad.

I did think the seasonal objective to visit another person's stronghold was genius in its simplicity and I had a lot of fun looking at other people's strongholds across all servers. The posts I wrote about this were also quite popular with at least a certain subset of my readers, somewhat to my surprise.

Story

The story is where the disappointment starts to set in, because after how much I enjoyed Galactic Season 5's story, I had high hopes for this one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Season 5 was a narrative masterpiece, but it was an actual piece of story content where I didn't expect it, with a fun little mystery and three missions that actually offered you choices that changed the experience a little. I really liked that.

Unfortunately Season 6's story was nothing like it. It still came with three missions that you unlocked as you progressed along the reward track, but they didn't feel like part of a coherent whole, offered no choices and didn't come to any kind of real conclusion.

There was a little Easter Egg for those who brought Amity along again though, solidifying his position as best boy in my mind.

I actually thought the first mission was quite interesting at first, and the idea of "run this flashpoint" being framed as an act of studying history struck me as very clever. Unfortunately the three flashpoints you were required to run are all on the long side if you don't have stealth, and it made the mission a bit of a drag to do more than once. Most annoyingly though, you kind of go into it with the expectation of learning more about your mysterious Chiss benefactors at the end, but you don't get to meet any of them, and Vagol Oss' information about House Inrokini's goals remains vague all the way to the end.

In the second mission you meet a Jedi researcher called Cay Teenu who has also come to help you out with your studies. She's interested in biology and has a strained relationship with a former padawan who was expelled from the Jedi order. I thought this was actually the most coherent of the three missions, because at least it comes to somewhat of a conclusion with the Jedi thanking you for your help at the end.

The final part introduces yet another character who wants you to run errands for her, a disgraced Sith named Juna Helos. However, once you complete her mission, nothing happens. I initially thought I'd missed something - both her and Vagol offer some more conversation options after their missions, but they didn't yield any more information. I even went all conspiracy theorist for a little while, wondering whether there was some deeper meaning to each NPC making recommendations about what kind of decorations you could put into the house, whether you needed to decorate the villa in a certain way to unlock the last part of the story. But no, doing additional research on this just yielded other people being confused by the sudden cut-off as well. Season 6's story consists of nothing but running some errands in the name of mysterious benefactors that you don't get to meet and that's... it. No pay-off. With Juna Helos also appearing in the Spring Abundance storyline, another option I considered was whether there could be a continuation next season, but I think that would be a bit odd and seems unlikely to me.

Blueprint Fragments

I wrote about how the removal of the seasonal reputation track caused some confusion at the start of the season, and the way the devs kept the seasonal currency in as nothing but vendor trash. This definitely seemed like a strange setup, but once I understood what was happening, I didn't mind it too much.

The problems started once I realised how stupidly grindy the final achievement was that replaced the old reputation track. With the seasonal reputations, I'd never had any issues with maxing them out well before the end of the season. Acquiring the reputation tokens took no special effort beyond doing my weekly objectives every week, I just had to remember to actually pop them in order to max out my weekly reputation allocation in a timely manner. In fact, last season I commented on how I didn't see the point of the "Brrazz's Gift" booster items since I never needed to boost the item drop rate for the reputation currency anyway.

In hindsight it feels like that comment of mine made the monkey paw curl... I was hoping for a nicer and more useful type of reward when I wrote that, but the devs apparently took it to mean that they needed to make the boosters more useful by turning the seasonal currency into a horrible grind that will make you yearn for anything to alleviate the pain.

Don't get me wrong, I get that this is the "top tier" achievement that requires extra effort, but the degree of extra effort required this season was ridiculous. I don't know anyone who aimed for that achievement and wasn't fretting about it pretty much throughout the whole season. The thing that got me was that I spend so much time in this game and yet still only just scraped by because of how incredibly grindy it is.

It doesn't sound so bad on paper; after all you earn fragments for completing pretty much any kind of PvE group content, plus while simply fighting things with your companion. In practice though, you can (and I have) spend hours playing the game without making any progress towards this achievement whatsoever. Doing PvP? Nada. GSF? Nope. Killing some ops bosses with your guild but you don't fully clear because you're still progressing? Nothing. Killing things with your companion in areas that don't count for some reason? This has to be the worst one because you just can't tell what kind of area will or won't count and why. I killed hundreds of mobs in the Minboosa District while playing through the 7.5 story repeatedly, and those didn't drop a single fragment. Other areas do seem to be eligible but still offer only a crap drop rate. I did Kessan's Landing dailies (as a non-stealther) with the Brrazz buff on, just to end up with two fragments in my inventory at the end. Out of 1500 needed. It just felt ridiculous.

When someone who plays as many hours as I do a week still struggles, something seems wrong to me. I've heard people say that you can earn a decent amount of fragments by applying the buff and then just slaughtering flesh raiders on Tython for an hour or two... which may be true but also sounds like absolutely awful gameplay. It shouldn't be like that!

And that's without even starting on the fact that the buff items, for what little good they did, were bind on pickup instead of bind to legacy, and the buff didn't stop running once you logged off, so if you couldn't play for the full hour of the buff duration in a single play session - tough luck, the rest was wasted.

I hope that whatever they end up doing for the next season doesn't include anything like this. If they don't want to do a reputation track anymore, that's fine, but collecting 1500 pieces of vendor trash that only drops under certain (unclear) circumstances, and with a low drop rate at that, was just a horrible replacement all around.

Drop In: Yavin 4

Now that I'm pretty much done with my seasons goals on the other servers, I'm not sure whether I'll continue the "drop in" series... but last week, I still visited Yavin 4 strongholds on three different servers, which is enough material for a post.

Like Alderaan, Yavin 4 is huge and personally I just bought it when it first came out without actually doing much with it. As a result, my first visit to a Yavin stronghold last week was primarily spent doing a lot of running/driving around to figure out where all the extensions even were. You won't believe how long it took me just to find my way out of the first building the first time...

The first Yavin 4 stronghold I visited was Leeha's Pursuit of Peace on Darth Malgus. I always thought of Yavin as a very "Sithy" planet, so I was intrigued by how someone might convert it to a more Jedi theme (which is what the name seemed to imply).

I didn't think the entrance area looked particularly peaceful. I see some massassi there, an underwalker, statues of Revan and Darth Marr, and I forget who the guy posing for the statue at the top was, but I know he's also a Sith.

However, the first indoor area seemed a bit more on brand, with potted plants, datacrons and various crystals - which can also be Sithy to some degree I guess, but they didn't give that vibe here. It felt kind of colourful and friendly, as far as that's possible in a dank ruin like this.

Exiting onto the bridge leading to the biggest chunk of the stronghold, I found myself confronted with this giant Jedi statue, more crystals and an avenue of trees, which also seemed appropriate enough. Apparently I forgot to take pictures of this same spot elsewhere, but I generally felt that this view you have immediately after exiting the first building was well suited to creating striking vistas.

In one of the side buildings I found what I can only call a "Rakata room", which I thought was an interesting idea. There are a lot of Rakata-themed decos but while they were an evil Empire, I never got the impression that their use of the Force fit as neatly into the light-dark dichotomy of the Jedi and Sith (the casters in the Legacy of the Rakata flashpoint all use Sage abilities for example).

Now this staging ground was amazingly well done in my opinion. I like the neat lining up of soldiers and vehicles, and while many of the named NPCs came up as holograms for me, you could still tell that there was thought put into their placement. I like how C2-N2 and T7 are right next to each other as if they're roleplaying as C-3PO and R2-D2 for example.

On Leviathan I went to "Tyriuna's Temple of Darkness" because I figured why not see how it looks when someone goes all in on the Sith theme this time? The first building certainly looked very different, with hanging vines, gloomy-looking statues and Imperial flags.

This deco caught my eye because it looked like an ancient graveyard and I had not seen that before:

The cave at the far end of the stronghold housed a Kell Dragon, which I guess is the appropriate environment for one of these beasts!

And once again, the bad guys kept prisoners. Poor Choza.

 

Finally, I visited Mercwiththemouth's Stronghold on Satele Shan, just because I thought the character name was funny. It was listed as being at 99% completion, so I immediately had an uneasy feeling when I zoned in and the entire entrance area was empty. Deco spam incoming?

 

 

 

I started to wonder what was going on when I found more and more empty rooms, yet at the same time everything was super laggy. Had the game bugged out on me in some way? How could I be lagging if all these rooms were indeed empty? I got my answer when I got to the top of the first building and found that the owner had spammed his stronghold with small animated turrets... all their movements were what was making the whole thing lag.

 

Ultimately I was still surprised by how much empty space I saw at 99% completion though. I wonder if some of it was Yavin 4 plants which I kind of overlooked as part of the scenery, because otherwise I don't know how else you could get to 99% completion with so much empty space, even if one did fill a bunch of rooms with lots of small decos.

Drop In: Copero

This week's Galactic Seasons objectives included a visit to another person's stronghold again, and this week the stronghold of choice was none other than Copero - the new one handed out as the current season's main reward. I thought this was interesting because I had little idea what to expect from this stronghold. Obviously a lot of current players had access to it, but I wasn't sure how many would've bothered to list theirs publicly at this point. I hadn't even unlocked all the rooms in my own yet.

Fortunately I didn't have any issues with finding public listings, but it was definitely noticeable that there were fewer of them than there had been for most other strongholds, and only three of the six I visited sported 100% completion.

On Darth Malgus, the highest percentage I could find at the time I did the rounds belonged to Caij Vanda's Restful Resort at 71% completion. Nothing about this one really stood out to me, other than that a lot of the decorations seemed a bit random, giving off that "I'll just use everything I have without outright spamming" vibe that I've come to know well. I wouldn't have thought that the entrance hall would be the best place for a dance floor for example.

I did like how they filled the water in the underground docks with (mostly) appropriate plants though; I thought that was an interesting choice.

My next destination was probably my favourite of this lot, called Shayana-ténèbra's Stronghold on Leviathan. Most of the strongholds I've really liked while working on this series were thematically very consistent and usually a little understated, but this one was... not that. I still thought it had a lot of character though, starting with this weird abomination of different large decos mashed together at the zone-in spot.

Everything about this stronghold seemed to say "I like playing this game a lot and I want to use my stronghold to show that off", starting with the group of ops boss trophies near the landing area.

However, I recognised a lot of the other decorations as the result of "hard work" as well, from season rewards to flashpoint drops to decos that can only be acquired through grinding dailies. I just thought that was interesting. Also, whatever they did with this hallway actually broke the environment a bit - I'm pretty sure it's because of the decos anyway, as I didn't encounter this glitch anywhere else.

In Thahil's Stronghold on Tulak Hord (53% completion), the first thing that struck me was this library-like area in the front room, mostly because it's similar to how I've decorated that room in my own Copero Villa. I think it lends itself to that theme if you want to take the presence of the quest NPC into consideration, since he's interested in historical research.

However, the truly unique thing about this stronghold was how many of those square Gree lights it used. You can see six of the orange ones in the screenshot above, and eighteen of the blue ones in the one of the underground docks below (which had a lot else going on too). There were a lot more than that still, and this was noteworthy to me since they require Gree reputation currency to buy. I can kind of see why this person went for it though, because there's so little room on the walls that your options for lighting and the like are quite limited, and who wants to fill everything with basic junker's lights?

The main balcony looked pretty relaxing and also gave me similar vibes to how I've been trying to make mine look. Again, I think it's just a natural fit.

Apostle Lightwalker's Restful Resort on Star Forge was probably the busiest-looking of the Copero strongholds I visited, with a bunch of utilities crammed into the space where you load in and fireworks going off around you in more than one location - I didn't even know that was a thing.

I took a screenshot of the front room because I liked the use of Voss decos - I think they generally fit this stronghold really well stylistically, though scale is definitely a problem at times, as you can see from the hanging lanterns nearly touching the floor.

I'd also never seen this deco before that looked like a giant version of the weed flowers you can buy from the prefab vendor.

The underground docks revealed that the owner had kind of run out of ideas at some point and did just spam light side signs to get full completion.

Løch-ness Mønster's Luxury Villa on Satele Shan shed further light (pun intended) on the seeming challenge of getting enough variety in terms of lighting into the small indoor spaces, as it had both a green and a red-lit hallway.

It also had what I thought was an absolutely genius underground docks area, with walls used to create something that looked a bit like an airlock and a submarine surrounded by kelp.

Finally, on Shae Vizla there was only a single public stronghold listed when I checked, which was only partially unlocked and only at 27% completion. I don't have a lot to say about Terah's Stronghold because they were clearly somewhat limited in what they had to work with - there were quite a lot of life day decorations inside for example - but I still appreciated the opportunity to visit.

Have you visited other people's Copero strongholds yet? If so, did you see anything interesting?

Drop In: Tatooine

Being on holiday doesn't mean that I was going to skip writing about week eight's tour of Tatooine strongholds I did for seasons.

Like Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine was among the first batch of strongholds added to the game, and I have a particular fondness for it because out of that first set of four, it was originally my favourite. Unfortunately, it being old and from a time when strongholds served a slightly different purpose than they do now, I also saw some more evidence of old-fashioned deco spam, though not as much as I did on Nar Shaddaa.

I visited a Tatooine stronghold on all six servers this time, starting with Tlaocetl's Vacation Retreat on Darth Malgus. The first thing that struck me about this stronghold was that the decos were a pretty contradictory mix in terms of themes, with the room where you load in containing a bar, a serene fountain and an altar covered with skulls all in close proximity of each other.

As I looked around the other rooms, I initially got the impression that it was all a collection of personal trophies, but then I also found a room that was completely empty and a couple more that had obviously just been "spammed" to get to 100% completion.

On Leviathan, I visited Karen Himeki's Syndicate Nerver Center, hoping that perhaps the name was hinting at an underworld theme, but in practice this stronghold was probably one of the most competently done yet unexciting strongholds I've ever seen. Imperial flags and guardsmen indicated a clear faction preference, and several rooms contained setups with tables and comfy-looking couches that looked like nice places to hang out, but I didn't get much of a sense of purpose from the place. Unless the purpose was really just to make a comfortable place for Imps to spend their free time, in which case the owner succeeded at that.

My favourite stronghold of this lot was the one I visited on Tulak Hord, called Vermächtnishändler's Black Market (the character name is German for "legacy trader" by the way, implying that it's a bank/GTN alt, which somehow made it sound even more fitting).

What I liked about this one was that a lot of the rooms were very strongly themed and at least loosely fit the overall theme as well, starting with this very striking view when you first load in:

There were also multiple cantinas.

A detail I particularly loved was this outdoor bantha enclosure consisting of fencing and sun roofs and which used last season's depository of dark wisdom to create what looks like a sort of feeding trough for the animals.

The owner was also clearly proud of their PvP prowess, as they had a whole room dedicated to their various trophies.

Then there was what I could only call a "droid room"...

... and a Hutt room, though I'm not entirely sure what's going in the little scene that's set up in it. It looks like one guy is threatening the Hutt and the other one is defending him? Maybe?

On Star Forge, I visited Monsieur Fancypants' Hideout at 99% completion, which amused me with its name. I was surprised that this was the only Tat stronghold I visited that actually featured the Sarlacc pit deco (from what I saw).

 

 

Other rooms once again revealed a strong Imperial focus, with dark side relics and Sithy NPCs front and centre.

The room that really surprised me in here though was an unassuming hallway. You don't expect hallways to be interesting, as they're usually just connectors between different rooms, but this one was absolutely stuffed with carbonite trophies and flashing red lights, which just made me go "WTF", haha.

On Satele Shan, Kaómi's Republic Sanctuary finally offered a bit of reprieve from all the Imp lovers, with a stronghold filled with Republic guardsmen and featuring a briefing room that I liked.

The thing that really stood out to me in this stronghold though was its use of desert flora. You don't often see these cactus plants from Ruhnuk used for example, but this player really selected the right plant decorations to create scenery that looked appropriate for Tatooine, instead of simply assuming that an endless water supply could create an oasis where everything and anything can grow anyway.

Finally, on Shae Vizla I was once again somewhat limited in terms of choice and ended up visiting Ralyne's Marketplace Cantina at only 39% completion. One funny thing here was that I soon realised that it belonged to a guildie and they were actually inside while I was roaming around, browsing the GTN or something.

The owner once again did what they could with a limited number of decos, with a pretty "standard" selection of items as well as a dedicated relic room and med bay.

The funniest and most interesting thing to me was a small room containing only two decos: an animated metal/rubbish conveyor belt and a floor tile that's meant to look like there's a beast pit underneath, and they had been positioned in such a way that it looked like the conveyor belt's contents were being spilled into the pit. I don't know why, but that just tickled me.

Do you have any thoughts on these Tatooine strongholds or the ones you visited yourself for last week's season objective?

Drop In: Rishi

Last weeks' season objective to visit a Rishi stronghold had me a little worried in the sense that like Alderaan, the Rishi stronghold is huge, and I was wondering whether it would get a bit boring again to look at how the chairs had been arranged in every single room. There was definitely a bit of that, but I somehow felt it less on Rishi because it has less of a focus on those small rooms (though there are a few) and it was easier to quickly get the general lay of the land when comparing the different outdoor environments.

Like in previous weeks, I visited a stronghold on all servers except Darth Malgus. The first one was once again Shae Vizla, where there isn't that much going on (yet) in the stronghold scene and the most "filled up" stronghold I could find was Zenna Dusk's stronghold at 16%. This percentage sounds very low, but the owner did the best they could by placing at least a few decorations in every major location. Since this was also my first Rishi stronghold of the week and I couldn't even remember all the different sub-zones anymore, this felt a bit like a game of hide and seek, trying to find the most interesting spots. I didn't take any screenshots of it since I only noticed it towards the very end, but the Overlook seemed to be their main base of operations as thats where they had actually put their utilities and more "regular" furniture like a bed.

On Satele Shan, I visited Senséi's Pirate Roost at 100%, which was immediately a dramatic contrast because of how full it was. The most striking thing about this stronghold was that the owner was clearly a big Republic supporter as Republic guardsmen were everywhere. I was so impressed by how many there were, I ended up looking up the source of that deco and was reminded that it's accessible for cheap from a vendor, something I'd completely forgotten about myself even though I'd unlocked some myself in the past.

Oh, and dancing twi'leks, there were quite a few of those too.

On Leviathan, I ended up visiting Alita Darkangel's Marketplace Cantina at 96% completion, and was immediately delighted when I zoned in right next to the giant cat droid from Nathema Conspiracy (a decoration I use in one of my own strongholds too). I generally noticed that whatever I found at the default zone-in spot usually made quite a strong first impression, and it was annoying that it was hard to get good screenshots of everything on that slightly elevated platform.

Exploring the stronghold further, I saw more of the holo Christmas Life Day trees and indicators that unlike the last place I visited, this one was owned by a staunch Imperial. I actually giggled when I found that they had used one of the rooms on the patrol carrier to construct a prison, with Republic troops in a cage guarded by Imperial soldiers. Pretty inventive!

On Tulak Hord, I visited Ghost Leathercoat's Jedi Academy at 99% completion, because I hadn't seen a Rishi stronghold with a Jedi theme yet and was wondering whether this one would deliver. The answer was: partially - they definitely made use of a lot of Jedi shrines, but there wasn't much of an academy vibe, more of a general stronghold since there were also a lot of Republic guardsmen around again.

I haven't mentioned the PvP areas yet, which are unique to Rishi - in the free-for-all zone at the arrival point, it was interesting to see most players place different kinds of obstacles while seemingly still preserving its general purpose, while this person seemed to be like "screw it, I don't care about PvP" and just filled it up with mounts, trophies and plants as if it was any other space. I never looked too closely at the Huttball area on the patrol carrier in any stronghold since I figured it has limited customisation options, though this person had plopped a tree in there too.

Inside the patrol carrier there was also this giant root, which had me a bit baffled - is "giant root that sticks from floor to ceiling" an actual decoration (in which case this seems quite out of place) or is something clipping in a weird way there?

I also had a funny experience in the Overlook in this stronghold as one of the rooms in it contained a bar and a few NPCs. I turned around to run into the next room and... was wondering whether I'd accidentally turned myself around completely since I saw the exact same room again. It took me a few moments of of running back and forth to confirm that no, they had actually decorated two adjacent rooms in exactly the same way for some reason.

My final destination for the week was Akiara's Black Market on Star Forge, which also sat at 100%. I liked that this one had some very strongly themed areas, such as a "junk shop" with droids in various stages of (dis)repair and housing the jawa vendors.

I also liked these barracks on the patrol carrier. 

This med bay impressed me as well, except that something clearly went wrong in that tank on the right, ew!

I did find this one corner though that felt like they had just placed down random small items to get to full completion, never mind the visual result.

What do you think of the Rishi Hideout? Did you encounter anything particularly interesting while visiting other players' version of this stronghold?