Day 7: Team #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the seventh of ten screenshot posts I'm making as part of a series for this, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is "team", which is about the people I play with.

A lot of my enjoyment of the game revolves around operations with my guild. I don't think I would do them much if I wasn't in a guild, but as it is they just provide this social activity for us to do multiple times a week, and it doesn't matter if the content stays basically the same, the people always make it a little different. Pictured here is my Scoundrel dancing up close with one of the other officers during a break on one of our "social" (read: easy mode) nights in TfB.

When it comes to harder content we have to be a bit more selective in terms of who to bring and when, but that only forges closer bonds. Here's my ops team sitting in front of Izax before we were getting ready to pull.

Operations aren't the only thing that my guild makes more fun though, running flashpoints with guildies is great too. This shows me healing Kaon Under Siege on my Operative on Imp side, standing on a bunch of pipes where a guildie had shown me that you could get away with not getting pounced on by the mobs as much.

There's also a small but dedicated group of us that really loves doing the Shroud and Dread Seed heroics at the end of their respective quest chains. We've all done them on so many alts by now but are always happy to do them again! Here's a shot of one such run (I'm the second one from the right, the Zabrak Sorceror in the red and black robe).

Finally, we also do casual PvP together sometimes, though I personally partake in that less often than the other activities. To be honest I sometimes prefer to fully pug my PvP because I don't want to feel angry at my guildies if they mess up. Here my lowbie Merc was teamed up with a guildie's Powertech though, waiting for a Corellia Square arena to start.

Finally, here I am with the same guildie on different characters, and my poor Squid Sorc ended up being the only non-stealther on her team. As if I needed even more of a target painted on my head... (I thought it was amusing though.)

IntPiPoMo count: 51

It's obvious at this point that I won't finish my "ten days" series by the end of November - I could have pushed harder but I had other things on my mind throughout the month and didn't want to force it. After all, the whole "ten days" theme is something of my own making, so there's no need to fret about completing it within a certain timeframe. I still managed to squeeze enough posts in to hit my IntPiPo count, and I'll simply post the remaining days throughout early December.

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the sixth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is environments, which is honestly always the easiest one to find images for (though it can be hard to choose my favourites) as pretty environments are something I love taking screenshots of!

First off some more views from the original set of planets... I've said before that I don't tend to think of Taris as pretty, but look at it in the right light and from the right angle and it absolutely can be!

My Mercenary speeding across the dunes on Tatooine looking snazzy.

Another shot of a speeder ride, though this one is my Marauder on Ossus. Being one of the newer planets, it's perhaps somewhat less iconic, but I do like the increased graphical detail.

Alderaan is one of those classically beautiful places, but I hadn't really taken many screenshots of just the scenery until recently, when Swtorista asked for some submissions for a screenshot contest, which is when I took this (though it wasn't my submission).

Swtorista's contest was inspired by the official Best View in SWTOR screenshot contest, whose winners were announced today. Some amazing shots there! I did not win anything myself, but I did go around taking some pictures to submit at the time that made me appreciate the landscape in whole new ways, like the above two shots of Mek-Sha, a planet of which I don't traditionally think as good-looking. Loved those bizzare container building towers and the reflections on the tepid pool!

On the subject of strangely mesmerising environments, here we have the lair of the Mountain Queen on Ossus, a place not many people visit with any regularity or have seen at all I reckon, and yet the artists worked hard on nailing that alien feel of a giant insect hive.

Another indoor location, a simple Ilum crystal cave... but what's ever simple if you've got crystals that are glowing like lightbulbs spicing up the scenery?

IntPiPoMo count: 45

Day 5: NPCs #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fifth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is NPCs.

Let's start with Attros Finn, a character that features early in the Jedi consular story and who - to me - embodies a lot of a consular's good qualities. He's a healer, and I've always liked the humble Jedi outfit he wears - plus Mirialan is a great species for Jedi in general.

From the series "Twi'leks I really like", we first have Juda from the bounty hunter story and of course, one of the game's more recent but no less fabulous additions, Major Anri. I have this short clip of her on my YouTube channel (warning: Onslaught spoilers) and it gets a lot of love.

The fact that Shadow of Revan's side missions didn't include cut scenes made the NPCs in them somewhat less memorable I think, but I still loved "The Slayers Three" and their odd love for hunting. I always thought those three siblings in intimidating outfits could have an interesting story behind their adventures!

I've mentioned previously how the little detail of which character appears as an extra antagonist at the end of the Nathema Conspiracy based on your character's class and alignment has a fascinating amount of permutations, though I avoided spoiling myself for the full list. Pictured above, we see my light-side loyalist agent being addressed by Marcus Trant, formerly head of the SIS and Theron Shan's boss, and below we have Master Sumalee hating on my poor smuggler. Why, Master Sumalee? I was light side all the way!

A shout-out to various nameless Sith and Jedi NPCs that go out looking cool in various cut scenes. (This is from some Imperial class story on Alderaan... Sith warrior I think?)

This guy on Balmorra might have had a name, but if so I didn't note it down. I do remember that he's one of those characters where the dialogue teases the option of getting him to back down without a fight but regardless of your choices you can never succeed.

IntPiPoMo count: 38

Day 4: Missions & Conversations #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fourth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... missions and conversations, which means everything surrounding story content and the sorts of cut scenes we get to experience while playing through it.

I think I've said it before, but the Makeb storyline is one of those pieces of content that I've come to appreciate more and more over time. When it came out it seemed like a downgrade from the unique class stories, but from where we are now I see it as a good example of a planetary story that is unique for both factions, with both halves coming together to form something greater.

One thing I like about the Imperial storyline in particular is that the Imps are effectively doing good for selfish reasons, like in this scene where they end up rescuing some civilian scientists from evil mercenaries... because they need them for their own ends of course.

Another thing I've mentioned before is that thanks to the quick travel between planets I don't see the "planetary ship approach" cut scenes very often anymore, so when I do come across a shot like this one of the Jedi knight ship landing on Voss it honestly takes my breath away.

Beautiful scenery and framing are another thing I loved about the Ossus storyline, such as this series of shots of Darth Malgus and the player character coming out of the Jedi library.

Speaking of framing, I like this shot of my group coming up to Lord Tagriss to claim the last Dread Seed. I've done this infamous group quest more than a dozen times, but I hadn't really taken in the sights of the corrupted Jedi temple properly until this time.

Another thing I enjoy taking screenshots of: good action scenes! Above we first have a Sith warrior facing off against Nomen Karr during their chapter one finale, and below we have Senator Nebet fighting Beast Lord Akoru on Onderon.

Of Akoru I also have this fun shot of my bounty hunter whispering to him... I think it's to blackmail him? But the gestures and expressions make it look more like she's making a pass at him or something, hehe.

IntPiPoMo count: 30

Day 3: Companions & Pets #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the third of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... companions and pets!

This first shot is of me doing the hidden achievement to get the nerf calf pets... I recall that I didn't do this when it first came out and the spawns were quite contested but rather much later when I could go through the whole process in relative in peace and quiet. I also seem to remember that at the time I thought about writing a blog post about the whole experience, but as these things go, I got distracted writing about other things and then forgot about it. All that remains is a brief reference to it in this post.

When I came across this screenshot from the Jedi knight class story, I went: Oh yeah, remember when Doc also had character traits like being a kind guy who took his oath seriously and was happy to take care of wounded Imperials? Somehow all anyone ever thinks about when he's brought up is his boundless horniness...

I really liked the way Bioware handled companion returns on Ossus and beyond. Here my Marauder is shown getting rid of dark side Jaesa, a moment I rather enjoyed.

The reunion with Khem Val was pretty cool too. Though I had to quickly abort the mission on my first Sith inquisitor to reach Ossus, as she had sided with Zash and thus the Khem return showing was a bug... I did later go through without encountering Khem once it was fixed, and my boosted Assassin was the one who got to see the return dialogue instead, as siding with Khem is assumed to be the default choice for boosted characters.

While it was a bit disappointing that we didn't get to see Holiday again when Tharan returned, I did find the idea that he got... this guy as his new assistant quite amusing. Plus if he really does love Holiday, it does make sense that he'd get someone else to run his more basic errands after a while.

I really appreciated that Bioware added these little pieces of dialogue on Odessen that troopers get with Elara and agents with Vector respectively, just because someone thought it would be nice/make sense to have them.

IntPiPoMo count: 23

Limitless

I'm making good progress on my pre-expansion goals: My pacifist character hit level 75 a couple of weeks ago, and on Halloween night, a full month ahead of my original schedule, my main hit Renown rank 999 and earned the Limitless achievement. It was pretty well timed as well, as it happened in the middle of a Dread Guards 16-man master mode kill (you get Renown each time one of the bosses dies), which made it extra memorable.

Also, I'm very glad now that I made it a personal goal for myself to get this done before the expansion, as another one of last week's bombshell announcements included the bit of news that Renown will be completely removed in Legacy of the Sith. Several of my guildies have been scrambling to also quickly get the achievement now before it goes away forever, but depending on their current progress there might not be enough time left to grind out the remaining ranks on a sane schedule. I think most people expected that Renown ranks would be reset with the expansion, but not a complete removal of the system.

I can't claim to be hugely upset by this move - Galactic Command as the sole source of endgame gear was a nightmare, but once Bioware rebalanced it to be more supplementary than anything else, getting reward boxes for a sort of infinite levelling was kind of nice. When GC turned into Renown with Onslaught, it was nerfed so heavily though that the reward crates became only another piece of junk to deconstruct every so often; I don't recall getting a single interesting thing from them all expansion. If anything, I'll miss the concept of endless levelling more than anything else. I first saw and learned to appreciate it in Neverwinter, but they eventually got rid of it too...

Other systems on the chopping block are social points in their current form and the dark vs. light system as introduced in Knights of the Eternal Throne (not to be confused with the original character alignment system).

There's still going to be a social system of sorts, but instead it's going to count how many runs you've done in the group finder, similar to World of Warcraft, which is... meh. I always liked the idea of social points being awarded for more than just taking part in group conversations (and you did use to also get them for things like handing in quests as a group), but tying the system to the group finder leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, as it just limits it in a different way. Now you'll be able to level up doing quests with a friend without being considered social, and I'm not sure that's an improvement!

I don't mind the group finder and I understand Bioware wanting to incentivise it, but from what I remember in WoW, the people who were flaunting their group finder achievements were usually the most impatient and obnoxious players of all to get in a pug because they were only after the achievement and nothing else. Let's hope that SWTOR's community is different enough to withstand that kind of pressure.

Finally, the galaxy-wide dark vs. light system... I guess it had a good run. I did kind of like the way I could use the state of the galaxy as the tie-breaker for which alt to play when I was unsure, and I had my fun hunting down all the dark vs. light world bosses with my guild last year, but I never liked the forced personal toggle and how it made it impossible to have a neutral/grey character anymore unless you constantly flip-flopped between both sides. Still, it doesn't sit quite right with me to see something like that just get removed with no replacement. The forum post said they're planning to reintroduce the world bosses at some point, but who knows when that will be...

I do feel Bioware has been holding out on us a bit, waiting until so shortly before the expansion launch to tell us all this stuff. I mean, I guess it's still better than not finding out until it actually goes live, but still. I wouldn't go so far as to call something like the removal of Renown "bad news", but it's not really good news either, and at least to me it just feels like an unnecessary dampener on everyone's expansion hype.

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the second of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... class stories!

The last time I made a post on this theme three years ago I noted that I have a very haphazard way of playing through the original stories nowadays. Many still consider them SWTOR's most compelling content ten years later, and while I don't exactly disagree, I'm clearly not as compelled to stick with them as most! Where others might start a new character and play through their story from beginning to end, I regularly hop between different characters while only progressing them by one or two missions at a time, meaning that without my spreadsheet I'd be hopelessly lost when it comes to remembering where each of my alts sits in terms of story.

Accordingly, when I gathered screenshots for this post, I ended up with an eclectic mix of images from different classes at very random points in their personal narrative.

This may well be the earliest moment I screenshotted in any class story ever, as this happens when your bounty hunter is like... level two? Historically I don't tend to take a lot of pictures on the starter planets except maybe on Tython due to how pretty it is.

This is Zilek, my Jedi Shadow on the Satele Shan server, solving his primary task on Taris the violent way. He's actually an absolutely ancient character - I think I first created him around the time free-to-play came out, but I don't actually tend to spend much time on servers other than Darth Malgus. One thing that makes him interesting though is that he's the only male character in my giant stable of alts - for some reason I've always struggled to bond with characters of the opposite sex in MMOs. I still dream of actually making some progress with him one day though.

Here we have another one of my consulars, my dps Sage, meeting with a child of the Emperor called Stark, like the ill-fated family from Game of Thrones. I always kind of liked this guy in the sense that despite of his very brief appearance, the voice actor manages to imbue him with a lot of character and he comes across as quite a tortured soul.

And one more shot of yet another consular, this one my DvL Shadow. It's a bit hard to make out in this static image, but the giant statue on the right was being smashed dramatically at the moment I took this. I've always liked these rare, more wide-angled scenes from the early game, considering that a lot of the earliest cut scenes were just basic shot/reverse shots.

Another nice wide-angled shot, this time from the Sith inquisitor's class story, when Darth Andru's Force ghost tries to kill you on Dromund Kaas, just before old Lord Kallig steps in to intervene. Who says Sith can't make great parents? Having a ghostly ancestor come in to save your hide on more than one occasion is definitely a perk.

Another shot of another inquisitor of mine, this time taking part in the iconic activity of shooting lightning! On second thought, I'm not 100% sure this was actually from a class story mission and not just a planetary quest, but there are enough similar moments of this type either way.

What else is iconic for Force users? Flinging/smashing things with the Force! Modelled here by my DvL Juggernaut.

And finally, here's the same character striking another one of my favourite iconic poses, lightsaber raised with determined expression on her face.

IntPiPoMo count: 15

Day 1: Bugs #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the first of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... bugs!

One thing I noticed while compiling these was that the vast majority of them fell into one of two categories: issues with terrain or character display oddities. I don't know if it's a sign of a mature MMO that its bugs tend to be less random or whether it's just that those two types of bugs are most likely to be visually striking enough for me to bother screenshotting them.

From the first category, we have the classic "stuck in falling pose". This one was kind of impressive to me because there wasn't even any obviously problematic terrain around, my character's foot just touched a nearby holo sign or something?

Fortunately SWTOR's /stuck command is good at helping you extract yourself from most situations of this kind, though it does have a cooldown and I've definitely been in positions where it took me several minutes to escape my predicament. I suppose this is the kind of thing no MMO can ever be 100% foolproof against, but it does seem to me that I get stuck in SWTOR's terrain a lot more often than in other games.

Here a guildie appeared to have sunk into the floor visually, though I don't remember whether he was actually stuck too or our game clients were just confused about his position.

Something that has only happened to me very rarely but always amused me to no end is falling through the terrain. Here a leap by my Guardian during a Novare Coast match had somehow resulted in her crashing straight through the ground and disappearing into the aether... hang on, I even have an animated gif of this one somewhere for the full effect:

The final item from the terrain category is visually broken ground:

Here we found a very noticeable gap in the floor of the Huntmaster's room in Nature of Progress. I only saw it on that one day though, I submitted a bug report form for it and the next time I checked it was already gone again.

For the character display oddities category, we have this shot of us fighting the last boss in the Divided We Fall uprising. The issue may not be immediately obvious, but if you look at the enemy targeting window, you can see that Commander Kallin was the invisible man and had no face! And it wasn't just in that window either, we did look at him up close over the course of the fight and he was invisible "in person" too, so to speak.

This one on the other hand may have been an issue with just the targeting window, but I still thought it was funny. Was this Sage too short to reach all the way up to the camera? I'm not sure where exactly this was, but I'm thinking it was probably the Boarding Party flashpoint.

Finally, one bug that was slightly unusual but for which I like the story associated with it: Basically, at the end of the Kaon Under Siege flashpoint you need to have a group conversation with an NPC called Melarra, and as per the way group conversations work, everyone needs to stand within a green circle around the NPC. The problem was that people didn't always see Melarra in the same place - she was supposed to be on a raised platform as visible in the screenshot, but for some players she would appear on ground level, making it impossible to initiate the conversation properly. It wasn't a huge deal as there was a simple workaround that worked almost all the time, which was to have the player who saw her in the wrong place leave the instance and come back in, but considering that you spawn back in quite far away from the conversation location, it always wasted a lot of time.

Well, my guildies once set themselves the target to figure out just what was causing this bug and were soon able to reproduce it reliably: Melarra starts running up to her spot once you reach a certain checkpoint yourself, and if anyone was still on the ground floor at that time, that's when Melarra would spawn on the ground floor for that person too. Basically, it was a lesson in not running ahead and leaving people behind! This bug was fixed in patch 6.3.

IntPiPoMo count: 7