Ranking the 7.7 Dynamic Encounter Planets

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

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

Going from best to worst, I would start with: 

1. Dromund Kaas

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Coruscant 

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

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

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

3. Tython 

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

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

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

4. Hutta

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

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

5. Ord Mantell

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

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

6. Korriban

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

7. Ilum 

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

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

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

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

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

Planets I'd like to revisit

With 7.3's return to Voss, it's natural to wonder what other existing planets might be interesting to revisit as part of the ongoing storyline. Calphy shared his thoughts on this back in May, and in this reddit discussion thread on the subject people were offering up a lot of differing opinions a few months ago. Doesn't mean that I don't still want to add my own thoughts on the matter though! So without further ado, my personal top picks for planets I hope we'll get to revisit in the story at some point:

1. Alderaan

This was Calphy's first choice and the second most upvoted option on reddit, and it's my first pick as well. Now, it obviously helps that Alderaan is already my second favourite planet in the entire game, but it's not just about that. The lore surrounding the different houses in the base game is pretty complex, and I was not best pleased with the way the Star Fortress dialogue for Alderaan seemed to want to mostly brush that under the rug. I want to know how all those different nobles that we worked with in the class stories fared over the years! What happened after Bouris Ulgo was brought down in the planetary storyline?

I don't necessarily expect to get an update on every single story thread here, but I don't think it would be unreasonably complicated to have us visit a new house on a small new map (assuming a similar approach as was taken with the Interpreter's Retreat) and have some people there chat with us about at least some of the things that have been happening on Alderaan in the last few years.

2. Taris and Balmorra

I'm putting these two together because I want to return to both of them for the same reason, though I think the case for Taris is somewhat stronger than for Balmorra. Basically, what both of these planets have in common is that in the base game, they are in the unique position of existing in two different states at different points in time.

Republic players help with the reconstruction of Taris around level 20 and things seem to be going well, but then the Empire invades the planet and Imperial players get to beat the Republic back around level 40. For Balmorra it's the opposite, with Imperials seeing it firmly under Imperial control around level 20 (though they have to fight off rebels), until Republic players show up around level 40 and push the Imps back off the planet.

I always thought this was an interesting concept as it allows territory to change hands without making either side feel like a loser... though it is a bit weird that there's basically a whole story there that you wouldn't know anything about if you didn't play both factions. If you only ever played Empire for example, you might well think that your faction still owns Balmorra, because you're never told that it's been lost.

So the reason I think either of these planets would be interesting to revisit is that it would give us a chance to "canonically" get caught up with the current state of affairs, with Republic players having to deal with the loss of Taris and Imperials having to stomach being pushed off Balmorra. The reason I think Taris would be slightly more interesting is that we don't really know what happened there after the Imperial victory - how much did the Imps care about rebuilding there, and did they even have the resources after Fallen Empire? With Balmorra, we at least have a vague notion that it continued to support the Republic later.

3. Korriban and Tython

It's easy to see why there's a certain appeal to going back to the old starter worlds. I think most players have pretty fond memories of these (less so of Ord Mantell and Hutta, I suppose) and we know that they've been razed both during the prelude to Shadow of Revan and then again when the Fallen Empire invaded. We want to see them rebuilt and know how things have changed since our own Jedi and Sith were little! Have the Sith changed in any way in terms of the cruelty of their training? Whatever happened to those Twi'lek settlers on Tython?

I do think those are interesting questions, but the main reason I rank these two planets somewhat lower is that in practical terms, I can't see us going back to a fully rebuilt version of the exact same area of Tython and Korriban that we already know (as in, the Jedi Temple and the Sith Academy respectively). Assuming we'd follow the Interpreter's Retreat model of going to a different part of the planet that's set further in the future, it's just hard to image that being quite as interesting here. Still, I guess it would be nostalgic if nothing else.

How do you feel about revisiting older planets in new storylines?

KOTOR Adventures: Korriban Confusion

So: One planet left to go in my quest for the Star Forge, and it's Korriban. I intentionally left that one for last because the home of the Sith didn't strike me as the most welcoming place to visit as a freshly minted Jedi Padawan. Plus there was also that guy who warned me about Terantateks on Korriban and that they were very deadly.

Korriban was immediately both fascinating and confusing to me because it just felt so different. I get that KOTOR is meant to take place about three hundred years before the events of SWTOR, but in the Star Wars universe changes generally seem to happen at a glacial pace, and at least the Jedi seemed largely the same in their ways, except for the rank of Padawan being a bit more prestigious than I'm used to.

But the Sith were confusing to me from the start, because the first "Sith soldiers" you run into on the Endar Spire are clad in full metal body suits with faceless masks that make them look like metallic ninjas - quite scary to behold to be honest, but apparently none of them were actual Sith - they were simply regular ground troops. The Sith at the Academy on the other hand all appeared to be wearing what looked to me like ordinary Imperial uniforms, which is a complete inversion of what I'm used to from SWTOR.

The whole atmosphere is different as well - while the Sith code gets recited, there are actually people crowding the Academy, trying to get in as if it was some kind of elite university, and it's stated repeatedly that people are free to leave if they don't like it. Everything's almost... normal, which is what makes it so strange. The Sith Academy in SWTOR is a place where everyone wears dark robes, and an elderly overseer casually asks you to slay some monster around the corner, extract its skull and bathe it in blood to have your future divined (yes, this is an actual quest). In the Sith Academy in KOTOR, a tatooed purple Twi'lek calmly lectures you about the ways in which the Sith are superior to the Jedi, and your fellow trainees come across as spoilt frat boys more often than not, which is a stark contrast to the desperate souls fighting for their very lives every step of the way on SWTOR's Korriban.

Either way I was off to a great start when I ran into a young Sith tormenting failed applicants in public, asking me to choose one nasty "punishment" for them over the other. I asked him to let them go, and explained that he should listen to me because I'm Darth Revan. This resulted in him having a laughing fit and letting me have my way because I was so hilarious. Hmm.

On this planet, getting to the star map fragment involves passing through the Sith Academy, so you have to sign yourself up as a fallen Jedi. (There is, again, the option to just say that you're Revan and they should let you get on with it, but I'm not sure if that ever works - maybe if you're sufficiently dark side.) Inside, the Academy does evoke the same familiar feelings of an uncomfortable environment that I'm used to - a training room is dedicated to killing slaves and in an interrogation room you can torment a captured Mandalorian. I decided to pass on both. While there was also an option to try to help/free them, that didn't strike me as the best idea when I'd only just started trying to pass as a Sith.

Fortunately there were some more inoffensive options to gain some respect and XP: I killed a beastie in some nearby caves and helped a group of runaway students escape, then went on to plunder several Sith tombs. I'm surprised they had anything left in there to plunder by the time the events of SWTOR take place! I loved running into the crazed former head of the Academy there, who apparently decided to set up shop in one of the tombs and captured students for his insane amusement. Now that's what I consider proper Sith behaviour. Meeting the ghost of Ajunta Pall was interesting as well - I'd only ever read his name in context of all the evil he did, but his spirit was - unlike any of the spirits I met in SWTOR - very sad and full of regret.

Once you've gained enough prestige to have earned the head of the Academy's respect, he will get you ready for your final trial, which lies in the tomb of Naga Sadow. That place was no joke! It even made me play a round of Towers of Hanoi, and the system there was so unforgiving that two mistakes in a row would cause the ceiling to collapse and kill you. There was also a room with not one but two Terentateks in it, and I was super proud that I managed to best them on my first try, though it was touch and go and I was certainly on the edge of my seat throughout.

Once you've passed your trial and found the star map hidden in the tomb, the head and your overseer both show up to congratulate you, just to immediately get into an amusing game of trying to betray each other at the same time. You get to choose who you want to side with (if at all), and I chose to help the purple Twi'lek lady who had been training me, though as soon as we were done she wanted to kill me too. This is the Sith Empire's biggest problem: Survival of the fittest sounds nice in theory, but they just never know when to stop. I decided to be merciful, let her go, and then got the hell out of there.

All in all, Korriban was another planet that I really enjoyed. My only major disappointment with it was that I had stumbled across a mention of Carth having a companion quest there, in which it turns out that his son isn't really dead but has joined the Sith. Since I quite like Carth I wanted to do that of course, so I explored every nook and cranny of the area but found neither hide nor hair of the boy. So I checked a guide... and unfortunately, this quest only becomes available if you previously had Carth out at a certain time and in the right location back on Kashyyyk, which of course I hadn't, and you can't go back to unlock it later either. Siiigh. Either way, it should be time for the big showdown soon.

"But why is this dark side? This shouldn't be dark side!"

The ability to make choices, specifically choices that are associated with a moral alignment, is something new for an MMO, even if it was previously tried and tested in Bioware's single player games. Unsurprisingly, it's a feature that's encouraged a lot of discussion... however, I continue to be disappointed by how extremely superficial many of these discussions are.

"What the hell, Bioware? Everyone can obviously tell that you got the light and dark side options in this quest completely the wrong way round. How dare you give me dark side points for doing what is totally and obviously the right thing to do? My reputation as a good human being is forever tarnished just because you can't tell right from wrong. Seriously, your game sucks."

(As an aside, I don't think I've ever seen a dark side player complain about "unfairly" being given light side points for something they did.)

This is pretty much the general tone of many forum and blog posts that I've seen on the subject of light and dark side choices. Personally I feel that they are missing three important points.

First off, light and dark side points are not srz bsns. It's not going to be a black mark on your CV that you got 300 dark side points while levelling. In fact, did you know that once you hit Light V, all your previously acquired dark side points are erased? (I would assume that it's the same for Dark V and light side.) I was actually kind of disappointed by that because I felt that the dark side points that I had gathered while levelling up my otherwise very light side trooper were part of my character's history so to speak, and I didn't particularly appreciate having that history erased. That aside, you can still nudge your alignment back the other way at any time by doing repeatable quests, flashpoints or using the diplomacy crew skill, so getting a few points in the "wrong" column because you preferred the other story outcome certainly isn't a big deal in the long run.

Actually, your light/dark side points are something that has very little effect on gameplay anyway. I mean, they already took out the colour crystal restrictions based on alignment, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same for relics eventually. In fact, you could completely remove the entire light/dark side system and it would hardly change the game at all. You could still make all the same choices; the game just wouldn't keep a running tally of how many people you've rescued vs. how many you've killed. It's really not much more than a measuring stick that allows you to easily compare the totality of different characters' roleplaying experiences. Definitely not something over which anyone should fly into a rage.

Secondly, as far as comments about what's "obviously the right thing" go, I'd like to point out that even real life philosophers don't agree on how exactly to define good and evil. That doesn't mean that we can't have discussions about it, but it does mean that automatically dismissing a moral judgement because you know best and everyone else obviously couldn't do anything but agree is at best very narrow-minded.

And thirdly... it isn't even entirely about good and evil, it's about the Jedi code vs. the Sith code. Yes, the Jedi are the good guys and the Sith the bad guys, but it's not entirely black and white. "Being a good person is not enough to be a good Jedi." For example the Jedi disapprove of romantic relationships, which is why smooching people as a Jedi sometimes yields dark side points, even though few people would consider this an act of evil. So before you dismiss a dark side choice as incorrectly labelled because you don't consider it evil, ask yourself whether it isn't instead a question of what a Jedi considers appropriate.

Now, this... this is where I personally think things get interesting. Are the light and dark side gains consistent with the Jedi code? For reference, the Jedi code, as Satele Shan lectures you on it:

There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.

If you read the Wookieepedia page I linked above, it also has a lot of additional tidbits about what it means to be a Jedi, such as the whole thing about avoiding romantic attachments or defending the weak. To be fair, I do think that most of the decisions in the game align very well with this code. Calmly capture the bad guy or chop his head off in anger? I don't think I need to explain in detail why the former option does fit the light side and the latter is firmly dark side.

However, sometimes you come across a quest that makes you raise your eyebrows because something seems off - and that's something I absolutely agree on with the forum complainers! My personal favourite example of this is a quest from the Sith starting planet Korriban. You find the body of a failed aspirant and return it to his father, who is a temple guard. He's kind of down about the death of his son (unsurprisingly), but not exactly surprised. He then asks you where exactly you found the body, or in other words, how close his son did come to succeeding before ultimately failing. The truth is that the poor sod died almost as soon as he crossed the doorstep of the tomb you found him in. However, you are given the option to lie and make it sound as if he did a lot better than that.

Personally I thought that it was very obvious that the light side choice would be to tell the truth. Jedi aren't supposed to lie, and it's not like there were any excruciating circumstances at work here where lying would save someone's life or anything like that. So I chose to be truthful... and received dark side points. Huh?

On Republic side there is another good example of this on Ord Mantell. An elderly couple asks you to keep your eyes open for their missing son, though he is presumed dead. You find him alive, though he's been brainwashed and turned into a child soldier. You would think that the harmonic, truthful thing to do would be to send him home to his parents, who will be happy to see him alive and make it all better. Nope, you get dark side points for that, and he runs away anyway. I wouldn't swear by it now, but I might have received more dark side points for truthfully telling his parents about his fate as well instead of lying about it. What's going on here? Why is trying to help and being honest a dark side thing?

As I encountered more and more of these quests however, I began to spot a pattern, and one that can be summed up in a single word: compassion. Strangely, this is something that seems to be completely absent even from expanded descriptions of the Jedi code. Yes, Jedi are supposed to help the weak, but the main drive behind this appears to be a desire to "serve the greater good". There's nothing wrong with that in principle, but if there's no compassion involved, you can end up with people reciting "the greater good" in zombie-like voices while disposing of dissenters in most gruesome ways. No, Jedi can't be like that. Jedi have to be compassionate, even if they aren't supposed to be emotional. The game drives this home with lines such as: "Jedi save people, not buildings." It's okay to have some "quirky" rules in regards to relationships, but you can't be completely disinterested in other people's feelings if you want to be seen as the good guys.

However, this does conflict with the whole "being calm and placing the greater good above all else" thing... and suddenly I had my explanation for pretty much every confusing light/dark side choice ever.

Why is it a light side choice to lie to the guard about how his son died? Because it makes him feel better about his son's death, like the little fellow achieved at least something. The lie doesn't harm anyone because it doesn't make a difference to anything else. Personally, I still don't agree that this is more Jedi-like than being truthful, but I can at least see where they are coming from.

Letting the kid on Ord Mantell run away is light side because it means you respect his feelings about wanting to be left alone after all the horror he's had to endure, as opposed to trying to impose your (or his parents') will on him. Again, I still don't agree, because how much can you really trust the opinion of someone whose brain was completely addled only five minutes ago? He's hardly in a state to make well thought-out choices about his future at this point. However, I can see how it becomes more a matter of where you draw the line between doing someone a kindness and doing something that would lead to a bigger benefit in the long term, rather than simply seeing completely clear-cut opposing choices.

At the end of the day, we can discuss what would be the right thing to do all day, but Bioware had to pick one and stick with it. I absolutely do think that some of the choices they went for are debatable and even inconsistent in where they draw the line, but I still believe that its worth trying to understand why Bioware made these choices when they did. It might not officially be part of the Jedi code, but I do agree that light side characters are better off being portrayed as compassionate than not.