Reviewing the Ruins

I said in my Elom story review that I was planning to write a separate post about what the Ruins of Nul flashpoint is like from a gameplay perspective. I ended up delaying this a bit since Bioware had to temporarily disable the flashpoint's bonus boss due to an exploitable bug shortly afterwards - I'd only had a chance to kill it once on solo mode at that point and didn't want to write a review until I'd had more opportunities to experience every encounter, including the bonus boss, multiple times. Fortunately last week's patch ended up putting the bonus boss back in, so here we are!

Visually, Ruins of Nul is... appealing. It doesn't have the breathtaking beauty of a Traitor Among the Chiss, but neither is it just a row of monotone corridors the way many flashpoints that take place on a starship or space station are. The scenery is mostly grey rock, but some of it is covered with snow, and in general the landscape is dotted with trees with bright red foliage. Not to mention that the skybox is dominated by a seemingly perpetual (partial?) solar eclipse, which makes for some pretty striking views if you take the time to pause and look around.

The overall length and pacing of the flashpoint is very good in my opinion, in that there isn't too much trash between bosses, and individual pulls don't take ages to die. The only slight criticism I might have on that note is that a disproportionate number of trash pulls are of the type that bursts out of the ground or suddenly appears out of nowhere - which is a fun gimmick every now and then, but can get a bit tedious if overdone, as it makes it hard to plan ahead when it comes things like pulling, kill order and crowd control: Stuff just appears and then you might as well AoE since everything's already in your face anyway. One has to wonder whether this was a conscious design choice to avoid the amount of trash skipping some groups like to perform via stealth in older content, where the trash is more predictable.

Another interesting pacing choice is that after the first boss, you have to advance to a locked door and then double back to pick up key stones for it - you can't go to pick up the key stones directly. It's not too much running around, but I still wonder why Bioware did that. There's also a small cliff in this area that's already inspired the usual pug nonsense of wasting ten minutes to try and climb up that one rock wall instead of killing two more easy trash pulls.

The boss fights are honestly... pretty good! (More on the Malgus bug later.) The first boss has a very straightforward strategy (to spread out in a cross-like formation around it), which is nonetheless important so as to avoid overwhelming your healer with swipe damage.

The second encounter has you facing off against a giant AI defense system ("player vs. wall" as I saw someone describe it) in a fight somewhat reminiscent of Directive 7's Mentor, which is a boss I always liked and whose mechanics we haven't really seen Bioware try and take inspiration from before, so I'm here for that too.

The bonus boss is a bit... odd. In multiplayer mode I like the strategic aspect of having different group members pick up different debuffs before the fight according to their role, but the fight itself can be a bit annoying. It basically has you facing off against three droids that have massive damage reduction shields, and the only way to temporarily remove them is to move around so that they hit each other with specific special attacks while trying to attack you. It's not a bad gimmick in theory, but in groups it's been my experience that - since two of the droids appear to have random aggro - it's very easy to end up with one guy being targeted over and over who never aims the attacks correctly, causing the fight to just drag on and on and on.

I will say that I've seen this encounter inspire some pretty funny "yelling at group members" moments though, mostly due to uncertainty about what to call each of the droids due to their awkward numerical names. Most of my guildies seem to have adopted Vulkk's nomenclature of Big Guy, Sword Guy and Floaty, though I think I've also heard Sword Guy get referred to as "skinny dude" or "jumpy one". In one run with Mr Commando we also had this rather Jarg-and-Sorno-esque exchange:

"Kill the Warden Unit!"

"Which one? They're all Warden Units!"

 

 

Before we get to the last boss fight, I guess it's worth calling out the "stairs boss" here, a gauntlet-type challenge between the bonus boss and final encounter. In it, you need to run up a narrow mountain path with some holes in it while adds keep spawning in and attacking you, plus giant red targeting circles appear under your feet every so often.

I kind of wonder what the design meeting for this part of the flashpoint was like: "Red circles are so old hat right now... how about we make players dodge red circles while also giving them minimal room to manoeuvrer and forcing them to fight at the same time?" It sounds like it could be a fun challenge on paper, but I've got to say the reality is... not that.

Fighting adds on a narrow mountain path could be fun if you could knock them to their deaths, but most of the time this doesn't work and they just bug out. Having to run around to kill them all while also dodging holes in the floor and red circles is just a bit much, especially on the higher difficulties, where all four party members will spawn red circles at the same time. Now, Bioware had some mercy on us here and you'll only actually be harmed by your own circles, but with how little space there is to move, it can still be hard to tell where one person's circle starts and another one ends. Bottom line is, I've probably had more wipes and random deaths on this gauntlet than on some of the bosses, and it doesn't feel super fun in my opinion. It's not an awful idea, but at least from my point of view it would benefit from having some aspect of it toned down a bit: make it viable to knock down the adds, make the red circles smaller, less frequent, or easier to tell apart... any of these would help.

Finally, the Malgus fight at the end manages to strike an interesting balance between having Malgus use abilities that we've also seen him use in previous fights and that he is well known for, such as Force lightning and powerful pushes and pulls, while also adding something new to show his increase in power. If anything, I was just slightly disappointed when I realised that the phase where he zooms around the platform at super speed is actually really easy to avoid by simply standing on the outer edge of the area, as he won't follow you there.

Of course, the thing about this fight that has had everyone talking is that a significant number of players were experiencing a hard to reproduce and awkward to squash bug that would cause them to get yanked under the floor or something, followed by insta-death. Having run the flashpoint at least a dozen times, I've never experienced or even witnessed this myself, so it's been rather odd to hear all these complaints about what a complete show-stopper that fight was for some people while trying to progress the story. It was definitely weird how it either seemed to affect people never, ever or all the time. One and a half months in and Bioware hasn't been able to officially state that they've managed to fix it... though the last patch did make some adjustments that apparently did solve the problem for some people at least.

In general, Ruins of Nul has had a rather odd launch period. Considering how everything Bioware adds to the game nowadays is supposed to be evergreen content, I try to primarily look at flashpoints from the perspective of how they'll feel to replay later down the line, but at the same time first impressions matter a lot, and players that have a very bad experience with a new flashpoint the first time they try it might never even want to give it another chance.

From that point of view it was interesting to see that Nul was initially tuned to be quite brutal, while also being one of only seven or so flashpoints available each week for more than a month. Some people quickly learned to fear it after repeated wipes, but because it was so new, my impression was that players were generally a bit more willing to soldier on and persist through difficulties, figuring that it was just a matter of learning the tactics. I've definitely felt that this mandatory crash course of having to deal with Ruins of Nul as your random over and over again, week after week, has served to accelerate the learning curve of the player base as a whole, where in previous expansions it would take people much longer to get the hang of a new flashpoint.

Still, I'll fully admit that I was glad when they opened up the flashpoint selection to the full set again with last week's patch, as well as hitting Nul with a well-deserved nerf bat. Especially the second boss with his bazillion adds was initially extremely demanding in terms of dps and healing required, and is now less so (without having been turned into a complete cakewalk, mind you). I hope that what with the Malgus bug and the harsh initial difficulty, players won't be too turned off from giving Ruins of Nul another try, as I think it's a pretty fun flashpoint overall that gets more things right than not.

Legacy of the Sith Story Review: Elom

Let's talk about the second half of 7.0's story, the flashpoint "Ruins of Nul" set on the newly introduced planet Elom. I won't cover fights or mechanics here; those might become the subject of a separate post eventually. This is all about the story, so be prepared for spoilers and opinions after the screenshot!

The story on Elom is pretty much the same for Republic and Empire again, with some minor variations in terms of how characters react to things. With things wrapped up on Manaan, either Tau (Republic) or Darth Rivix (Empire) show up to tell you that a team that was sent to the planet Elom to learn more about the mysterious Darth Nul has gone silent and that you need to go there to find out what happened, like, now.

This is where I have to immediately go off on a little tangent. The last story update we got before the expansion was one of those Odessen meeting room interludes called "Whispers in the Force", and I actually meant to write about it at some point but just couldn't really muster up the enthusiasm. Vulkk had already done a pretty good write-up of it anyway and he loved it way more than I did!

As part of that small bit of story you send a group of Force sensitives (which can potentially include Arcann) to a mysterious planet to learn more about Darth Nul, the even more mysterious creator of the relic that Darth Malgus stole from Dantooine. The planet is not named, but I always thought that this was meant to be a lead-in to the Elom flashpoint - and I was not the only one! However, for some reason the writers thought it wouldn't be at all confusing to have this whole bit about sending some of your troops to a mysterious planet to search for more information about Darth Nul, just to follow this up with your character also going to a mysterious planet to look for a research team that was looking for information about Darth Nul, but they are not the same planet and team.

So your character, your faction-specific companion and Lana fly to Elom and find that a mysterious (have I used "mysterious" enough times yet) energy shield has been erected around the area you were meant to investigate. There also seems to be other strange technology active, and it's driving the wildlife mad.

Soon you find a bunch of dead people from both factions - but don't worry, it's nobody you know since as I said before, your team went to a different planet! Tau knew a lot of the recently deceased from Ossus though and is quite upset.

You investigate further and soon encounter more crazy tech that you have to fight off before you can deactivate the energy shield around the area. You also encounter living members of the opposite faction... and then the Force users in your group sense it - Malgus is here! I believe that the events of the trailer are meant to take place around this time.

You follow a trail up the mountain, and Malgus bursts out of the temple at the top, presumably after having just finished his cinematic appearance. At last, finally we'll learn what he's been looking f... no wait, he just makes some more vague comments about how he's not the same man he used to be and then you fight.

You emerge victorious of course, and eventually you subdue him. With the shield deactivated, reinforcements come in to help as well, allowing/forcing(?) you to capture him alive.

After this we cut to a shot of Malgus being imprisoned on a throne inside a special force field, surrounded by a chasm, and members of your faction explain to you how this is a special prison just for him. The Republic is excited to get all kinds of valuable intel out of such an infamous prisoner. You can express a preference for just having Malgus killed, and Darth Rivix will even agree with you on Empire side, but otherwise you're outvoted.

Throughout this, Darth Malgus mostly stares at you moodily from his throne, though he eventually speaks up to give a vague warning about how what he's unleashed can't be stopped anymore and is bigger than him now etc. To drive home the point, we cut back to Elom where we see Sa'har from the trailer timidly emerge from the ruins and find the holocron that Malgus dropped. After a brief moment of hesitation she grabs it and runs away.

You regain control of your character next to Malgus' prison, and when you exit the area you find that Malgus' special prison is right on Carrick Station/Vaiken Spacedock for some reason?! That seems incredibly unsafe... though I won't deny that the idea of a follow-up story featuring a Malgus prison breakout and rampage across the fleet has something appealing to it.

So here's what I liked about this part of the story: There's some nice banter between Lana and your other companion again: She verbally spars with Tau about what it means to be a Sith and absolutely mops the floor with her on the subject, and she tells you that in her opinion, Rivix is a snake and not to be trusted. Malgus is still a badass and looks cool, and the scene where he's captured features a number of different characters whom it's nice to see work together. On Empire side, even the Empress/Emperor her/himself shows up to help! Also, the new Sith Lord in charge of Malgus' prison, Lord Eldrid, is intriguing.

Now here's what I didn't like about this part of the story: The confusion about the two different planets and research teams seemed like it could've been avoided very easily. But most importantly... we still haven't got any real answers about Malgus!

You could argue that this is just the beginning of the Legacy of the Sith storyline, but my problem is that it's not the beginning of the Malgus arc! If you need a reminder, Darth Malgus' return now happened more than three years ago in real time - and I freaking loved it back then! Then he broke free in Onslaught and I was like: Cool, I'm so glad we didn't kill him and I can't wait to see what he gets up to next. Then we detoured to other storylines for two updates, and after that the plot still didn't really advance with Secrets of the Enclave but I was willing to forgive that because I saw it as more of a quiet character-building interlude and it worked really well as such. But surely next time, we were going to get something more meaty, right?

Unfortunately the answer is no, we didn't. I didn't exactly expect a conclusion to the Malgus arc at this point, but something about what it is he's trying to do, so that we can act on it and move the story forward! But then we get nothing but another couple of vague lines about how he's been up to something big... presumably for us to tune back in in another six months to maybe find out more, or maybe we'll even forget all about him again for a while to deal with the Mandalorians again.

I'm just kind of frustrated that a storyline that started so strong has been drawn out to the point where it's not nearly as fun anymore. On LotS launch day, the official SWTOR Twitter account tweeted: "It's time to dive in and find out what Darth Malgus has been planning." However, after playing through all the new story content on both factions, I'm still none the wiser on that subject. Instead I just feel vaguely bad for Malgus (yes, really), for being so unceremoniously imprisoned again. On Imperial side, Darth Krovos comments in an unimpressed tone that the Empress/Emperor just wanted their pet back, and yeah, that really doesn't feel like a great thing to have helped with. I thought he was going to be allowed to be a bigger deal, honestly.

And yes, I know there'll be more to come. The new character Sa'har will undoubtedly have a role to play too and I'm sure we will learn more eventually. I just wish we could have gotten there at a better pace, and without all this build-up leading to nothing but a capture scene and no more clarity about Malgus' motivations than we had two years ago.