Onslaught in Review

As I said previously, we still don't have a launch date for Legacy of the Sith, but it can't be far off now, and I don't expect us to get another major content update before then, so I thought it would be interesting to look back on how Onslaught has gone as a whole. I wasn't sure what conclusion I'd come to when I first started writing this, but honestly, now that I've added it all up, this has been a pretty ace expansion.

Features

After Bioware tried (and failed) to reinvent the wheel for the last two expansions (with the single player focus in KotFE and Galactic Command in KotET), it was nice to see them refocus on simply adding features that players had actually been asking for in one form or another.

• Nautolans as a new playable species: They ended up looking a bit more... weird than most people expected I suppose, but I still think they were a good addition. Based on forum polls and the like, Nautolans were easily the most requested species that wasn't available yet - so much so that after this, I'm not actually sure what playable species they could add next. Sure, there are lots to choose from and you can find people suggesting pretty much all of them on the forums somewhere, but I haven't seen anything else have the same kind of consistent demand as Togruta and Nautolan had before they were added.
  

• Spoils of War: Gearing was a mess towards the end of KotET and needed a revamp desperately. I think the new Spoils of War system worked out well overall! It's not perfect, but what ever is? I'd say its biggest flaws are that a lot of set bonuses and Tacticals they introduced were pretty useless so that there ultimately weren't that many viable choices to make about what to get, and that drop rates for both types of items were pretty poop, meaning that most of the time, you were better off just saving fragments to buy from a vendor, even when all you were doing was gambling at Kai's. Still, overall the ease of gearing up in terms of item levels was amazing, and everything being bound to legacy so that you could gear all your alts in one fell sweep has been super neat.

• Material storage: I liked how they never even advertised this as a feature; it was just suddenly there and amazing, freeing up tons of space in cargo and legacy bays across the land. This is the kind of quality of life improvement we all love to see. Separate but related, they also added all those event currencies to the legacy currency tab.
  

Story

I didn't love the Onslaught base story quite as much as Jedi Under Siege, but it was still excellent overall, making use of the game's large pre-established cast and adding all kinds of great little touches to remind players of their class identity. Over the course of the expansion, we then got three more story installments:

• Echoes of Oblivion: This was a pure love letter to the game and its community, taking all kinds of loose ends that had been left dangling in an unsatisfying manner and tying them into a neat little bow.
  

• Spirit of Vengeance: Probably the least interesting of Onslaught's updates, it still introduced Rass Ordo as a likeable new character and laid the seeds for what's hopefully going to be an interesting arc about the Mandalorians facing off against an intriguing new villain.
  

• Secrets of the Enclave: The expansion's second piece of story that was actually different for both factions (after the Onslaught base story), this again featured a plethora of interesting character moments, even if it didn't advance the plot very much.

If I were to criticise anything, I guess you could point out that there is no clear theme to all of these to tie Onslaught together: a bit of Darth Malgus here, some Mandalorian stuff here. Then again, this is pretty in line with how things used to be in SWTOR's "good old days": After all, Rise of the Hutt Cartel was only really about Hutts for a very short time; all the content added after its launch centred on organisations like Czerka or the Dread Masters.

"MMO Stuff"

It seems to me that after the early years of most content additions being standard MMO content and the wild swing in the opposite direction with KotFE & KotET's story chapters at the expense of all else, Bioware has finally settled into a nice balance between continuously adding engaging story installments while also consistently churning out repeatable content to keep dedicated players busy in the gaps in-between.

• Two new planets: Onderon and Mek-Sha were both smaller than I would have hoped, but they were fully fleshed-out planets with datacrons and everything. The Onderon daily circuit is decent fun. Unfortunately Mek-Sha felt a bit half-baked with its somewhat random selection of side missions in different places, some content being quite buggy initially and none of it ever really becoming very rewarding.

• One new operation: Nature of Progress (or Dxun as most people call it) is a brilliant op in terms of story and undoubtedly the funniest piece of group content Bioware ever released. The fights are mostly good fun as well, except for the last boss, whom I find kind of tedious mechanically to be honest.

• Three new flashpoints: Objective Meridian, Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave. I stand by what I said about Objective Meridian seeming a bit dull at first blush but being interesting to replay. The last boss(es) can be infuriating but in a good way (to me anyway). Spirit of Vengeance was a bit meh - some neat little Easter egg achievements couldn't make up for the fact that it consists of too much boring trash and the environment isn't exactly thrilling to look at either. Secrets of the Enclave is probably my favourite of the three, meaning it's fairly fast-paced, features decent boss fights and includes some beautiful environments to feast your eyes on.
  

• Two new world events and more: We got the Ultimate Swoop Rally on Dantooine and the Feast of Prosperity as a seasonal event in autumn. I liked both of these as creative non-combat additions. I found that swooping gets quite boring quickly if you do it for too long but it is something different. I also enjoyed the little mini-games coming with the Feast and the way it livened up the world boss pugging scene - I'm quite looking forward to doing that again this year actually. Finally, we also got the Alderaan stronghold and Galactic Seasons for what it's worth.
  

Summary

I know people always complain about wanting more from Bioware - and it's not like I'd object to being given more! - but honestly, looking back at all this, it strikes me as a pretty decent tally for a two-year long expansion that came free with the subscription. Especially considering that for a lot of that time, Covid was interfering with the devs' working patterns as well.

I like that there's a clear effort to balance single player story content with MMO features and additions now, and most of it was really good quality as well, with just a couple of not-so-great items on the list but nothing completely awful or boring. If Legacy of the Sith can deliver in a similar way, I'll be one happy camper.

Spirit of Vengeance as a Flashpoint

When I wrote about the second part of 6.2's story update, I said that I would make a separate post about what I think of Spirit of Vengeance as a flashpoint and in terms of mechanics. It took me a bit longer than expected to write this post because I wanted to make sure that I replayed it enough times first to form a well-rounded opinion.

For a lot of people, I think it made a very bad first impression because despite of having been on the PTS for testing beforehand, it launched in a ridiculously buggy state. People falling through the floor, mobs shooting through the walls... apparently some people's story progression got stuck entirely for a while. I was shocked when the ever-positive Swtorista actually made a tweet telling people not to bother with the flashpoint on launch day as it was just too buggy. (Though I can't link it now as she ended up deleting it later.)

Personally I was relatively lucky as I only had to deal with some mob pathing issues, a slightly buggy cut scene, and of course the first boss being horribly mistuned on story mode and having master mode health values at first. You better believe that he took me bloody long to kill, especially as a healer, but that's about as bad as it got.

Still, leaving aside any bugs and despite of the fact that I enjoyed the story, something about SoV left me feeling a bit meh. I always think back to the gorgeous environments we got in the flashpoints released as part of the traitor arc, and spending half an hour running through grey ship corridors just can't compare nowadays, even if a lot of the game's launch flashpoints used a similar setup. The trash mobs are also mostly just damage sponges with lots of health and no really interesting abilities. During a run with guildies, about the most interesting thing we observed was that some of the Mandos cast a crit buff on each other and perform a sort of "woohoo" emote whenever they do so, which we thought was kind of funny, but that was pretty much it.

The bosses aren't particularly great either. Aside from Heta Kol, they all have at least one mechanic that is somewhat confusing or it's unclear how you're supposed to deal with it. In one particularly memorable master mode run, the first boss, Gorga Brak, wiped us about ten times and we weren't quite sure why. We checked the guide on Vulkk but the mechanics we saw didn't entirely align with what was described there and we just couldn't figure out what was going wrong. Yet on other runs we one-shot him with no problems whatsoever.

Similarly, I remember Bask Sunn using some sort of mechanic that tethers two players together and us wondering whether we were supposed to be close to each other or run away from each other, but ultimately it didn't seem to matter. Troya Ajak also has this long cast called Songbird Volley that - again - makes you think that you're probably supposed to do something with it, but nothing really seems to make a difference to its damage output. That sort of thing just doesn't make for the most satisfying experience.

That said, I don't want to sound like I'm all down on this flashpoint. I did quite like many of the small ways in which the devs tried to make things a bit more interesting. There are lore clickies and hidden achievements to chase for example. On the second ship, there is an easy jumping puzzle that is quite fun to race across when playing in a group. (Though in my first run on story mode, I just ran straight through the "wall of fire" that's supposed to be blocking the way and forces you into the jumping puzzle... I wonder if me being able to do that was a bug too!) And on the Ash'ad ship, they set this little trap for you where you fall through the floor into a garbage collector and get attacked by a tentacle monster, which was a genuine surprise to me the first time and quite amusing. (Though it's a really rubbish trap, considering they don't follow up on it.)

Also, similarly to Objective Meridian, I found that Spirit of Vengeance actually got more fun on repeat runs. Weird hiccups with Gorga Brak aside, you can breeze through it pretty quickly and it doesn't have any of those mechanics that seem impressive or cute the first time around but then get more and more annoying as time goes on. Which is... fine, I guess. I still think Objective Meridian did it a bit better though by having more interesting and memorable boss fights to go along with it.

6.2 Story Time - Spirit of Vengeance

As mentioned in my last post, Echoes of Oblivion segues straight into the beginning of a new story arc, starting with a mission called Spirit of Vengeance. Once again, this post will contain full spoilers, so consider yourself warned.

In the last patch, Shae Vizla made a point of briefly introducing you to her advisor Jekiah Ordo, and we soon see her talking to him again about what sounds like internal unrest brewing among the Mandalorians. After you return from your showdown with the Emperor, it turns out that things have indeed come to a head and an as of yet unidentified rebel faction has attempted to seize Shae's flagship, the Spirit of Vengeance II. You agree to help her re-take it. What follows takes place in the new flashpoint of the same name, and I'll probably make a separate post about things like boss fights/mechanics there, so I'll mostly leave them out of this one and focus on what happens in the story.

You find the Spirit tethered to three smaller Mandalorian ships and it falls on you to board each ship in turn to detach the tethers from the inside. Your entire support consists of a Mandalorian called Rass Ordo, who's also Jekiah's younger brother.

On the first ship, the Champion's Glory, you find Mandalorians of Clan Varad of Mandalorian Raiders fame. The second ship, the Fortune's Folly, is crewed by Mandalorian outcasts (Dar'manda) such as you've met on Mek-sha. Besides the name there doesn't appear to be an obvious affiliation between this group and Indigo's crew on Mek-sha though, as they seem to be led by a rather smuggler-like Mando with the very punny name Bask Sunn. Finally the third ship, the Seeker's Vigil, belongs to the Ash'ad, a clan of Mandalorians who are apparently also the guys active on Onderon (I have to admit I'd missed that memo).

With the last restraint removed, you move on to the Spirit of Vengeance II itself, where Jekiah and his remaining loyalists find themselves desperately retreating to the bridge. You intervene and encounter the leader of the revolt, the self-styled Field Marshal Heta Kol. You fight but she gets away, though apparently her raiders captured a banner belonging to Clan Cadera and she seems quite content with that. Everyone's quite confused by this, considering that Torian's old clan has long been wiped out (he's there to comment on this if he's still alive in your version of the story by the way), though they acknowledge that it could be seen as a symbol of rebellion. Shae can't quite shake the feeling that Heta Kol must be driven by something more personal though.

As players, we're treated to a sort of epilogue cut scene that shows Heta "debriefing" her bickering lieutenants: Tyrus Brokenblade of the Varad, Bask Sunn of the Dar'manda (who was the only one of the first three bosses in the flashpoint that made it out alive due to begging to trade intel for his life), and Durn Wynnward of the Ash'ad. Clan Varad is blamed for failing to "contain the situation" when their ship was first boarded, and Heta Kol ends up throwing a thermal detonator at Tyrus. He catches it, but she then walks up to him and stabs him repeatedly in the side while going on about how they all need to be able to rely on each other more and as the rest of the room watches on anxiously to see whether Tyrus will drop the detonator or not. He seems to pass the "test" though and the Field Marshal deactivates the detonator before sending everyone away again, telling them that they should already be aware of their next mission. She takes off her helmet while looking up at the banner behind her and mutters "a Mandalorian never forgets" in Mando'a. (No, I didn't know that when I heard it; I had to look it up.)

I've stated in the past that I'm not the biggest fan of the Mandalorians, but this mission seemed like a good opening chapter to something new, as it featured interesting characters and lots of intrigue.

Rass Ordo, who gives off vibes of being meant to be a recurring NPC/companion later on, doesn't really do a lot other than simply help you along with the mission, but I agree with my friend Cal who said that it was nice to deal with a Mandalorian for once who just seemed like a "normal guy" - without speaking in tongues or wanting to start a fight every five seconds. Mostly he shows an ability to roll with the punches as he's not fazed by your character crashing a shuttle into the Champion's Glory, nor by you blowing up a console he's working on if you get impatient with him. He also clearly cares a lot about his older brother as he gets quite agitated when you get close to the cornered Jekiah. I look forward to seeing him again.

Heta Kol, the new big bad, is shrouded in a lot of intrigue. Who is she and why is she so mad at Shae? My favourite theory I've seen so far is that she could be the sister of the previous Mandalore (the Vindicated), whose regular name was "Artus Lok" - and Kol is Lok backwards, get it?! But I'm not too invested in any such theories either way, as I'm quite happy to accept the character on her own merits to be honest.

She makes it clear that at least one of the reasons she hates Shae is that she feels Mandalore the Avenger has taken the Mandalorians into a bad direction, working with the Alliance like mercenaries when they should be fighting for their own causes instead. With that in mind, it's confusing that she works with Dar'manda of all people, who are apparently only in it for the credits, which seems like a bad match on both sides. I'm hoping that this will be touched upon in a future update, whether through some sort of reveal or maybe Bask Sunn betraying her - I know Mandalorians like it rough, but the whole "threatening to blow up the room while repeatedly stabbing the guy preventing it" thing seemed a bit over the top to me even by their standards, so I'd like to know how her little faction has managed to hold it together so far (or watch them fail to hold it together - either would work).

Personally I also thought it was interesting that during the final showdown on the bridge, Shae opted to charge off and hold off the reinforcements instead of fighting Heta Kol herself. Now, obviously this kind of had to happen so we as players had a boss fight, but it seemed uncharacteristic for her to dodge the opportunity of a personal duel there and then. Is it because she still wanted to avoid making too big a deal out of the whole situation and in order to let you have the "honour" of potentially dispatching her enemy for her?

Lots of questions and not many answers, but that's fine for the beginning of a new storyline and I enjoyed it for what it was. Let's just hope there'll be an appropriate pay-off later.