18/03/2024

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 1

It's been a while since I last posted a detailed diary of my Galactic Seasons exploits - in fact, the last time I did so was almost exactly two years ago in Season 2. I basically stopped writing these posts because I found that the changes to the system after Season 1 made it so much easier to get both the daily and weekly objectives done that I didn't really think it was worth going into detail about how exactly I completed them each day/week.

This was quite a contrast to Season 1, when my blog basically turned into nothing but my Galactic Seasons diary for three months. This was because the first Galactic Season used a very different model that relied a lot on randomised daily objectives and was a lot more demanding of your time. It fills me with a certain degree of amusement now to look back at the time I fretted about whether I could get two rounds of dailies done before having to shoot off to an emergency dental appointment. I mean, that toothache sucked ass, but the circumstances seem funny in hindsight.

Anyway, the reason I decided to give this diary thing another shot this season was that, now that I'm effectively doing seasons on five six servers, it's actually somewhat demanding again, and it's only going to be more so this season with the nerf to the reputation Conquest objective for easy points! I thought it would be interesting to document my journey as it happened once again, and maybe approaching the whole endeavour with more awareness might also help me with not going too crazy pushing myself through too many objectives every week.

I think for clarity it would be good to start by listing all the available weekly objectives for week one as well as my thoughts on them, as my descriptions of my daily play sessions might seem incredibly random otherwise.

  • Earn 200k Conquest points: This is one that kind of takes care of itself while you work on other objectives, so pretty much a freebie on all servers.
  • Earn the seasonal currency: Same for this one.
  • Kill 100 mobs with a tank companion: An easy filler that can be done in a variety of content and stacks well with other objectives; I figured I'd do this one on several servers.
  • Kill four named champion mobs on Quesh (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Not one of my favourites since you have to do a lot of driving around for not much action and minimal Conquest points, plus if you're unlucky there can be quite a bit of wait time for respawns, but it's an objective that's easy enough to do as long as you have a high enough character on both sides of the faction divide.
  • Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: Wanting to be able to complete these origin story-based objectives is why I have at least four alts on every server now, and it's almost guaranteed to be one of my picks on each of the secondary servers.
  • Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Outer Rim planets Tatooine, Hoth, Belsavis or Rishi: Another one I choose often as it can be completed easily and in so many different ways, which counters repetition while playing across multiple servers.
  • Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I like flashpoints but this objective can be kind of time-consuming compared to others. I'll always pick it on Darth Malgus as an opportunity to play with Mr Commando, but I'll want to limit myself to only doing it on one or two of the other servers.
  • Kill the Quesh and Nar Shaddaa world bosses: Very easy and rewarding if a group can be found within a reasonable amount of time. Camping them by myself while waiting for a raid to come by gets boring however.
  • Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double): Like the flashpoints, this one's a bit time-consuming, so probably something I'd choose to do on a few servers but not on all of them.
  • KotFE chapter 14 on veteran mode or higher: The only objective of the week that I knew I definitely wasn't going to bother with anywhere as I don't enjoy replaying chapters on characters that have already done them.
  • Kill the Kessan's Landing world boss: Another quick and easy one if a group is available but that "if" does matter.

Day 1 - Tuesday

Patch day was an office day for me, which meant that I didn't come home until late, and as soon I had the game patched up it was time to jump into a scheduled operation with my guild. After that I didn't have a lot of time or energy left to work on seasons objectives. I just did a bit of puttering around on alts to earn enough Conquest points to complete the daily seasons objective, such as raising a companion's influence level here and doing a bit of crafting there.

I thought it was interesting that the preview of the first four weeks of seasons objectives didn't include a single one that could be completed in PvP (not counting GSF), which means no overlap between the two seasons for at least a month. In order not to neglect my PvP ambitions right away, I did three warzones on my level 80 dps Juggernaut and won all three. I wish I could just be happy about good luck like that, but since it's so random whether I end up on the winning side or not I always just feel like I'll "pay" for the lucky streak later (by having an equal or worse losing streak).

A male Cathar Sith inquisitor kneeling down and wreathed in lightning, with a pained expression on his face

Since it was late, I wanted to limit my efforts on the other servers to quickly grabbing the daily seasons objective. On Leviathan I did some quests on Korriban on the lowbie Sith inquisitor I created last season, which got me there quite quickly, but I also knew that I didn't actually feel like questing this much on every server that late at night. In the past I would've just popped a reputation token everywhere else to get it over with, but of course that was no longer an option. Through a bit of trial and error I found out that I could still get to the required 25k points on Tulak Hord, Satele Shan and Star Forge with (relatively) minimal effort by using a reputation item, raising a companion's influence, levelling up a crew skill, doing five crew skill missions (they can be low level to make it quick) and placing five stronghold decorations - give or take one or two of the smaller objectives depending on my stronghold bonus on each server and on whether the character is in a guild with any additional bonuses.

On Shae Vizla, I put myself in the queue for warzones and GSF just to see whether the transfers had already made a difference (even though it wasn't prime time for the Aussies) but I had only been in the queue for a few minutes when I saw someone looking for dps for the two weekly world boss objectives. This was too convenient to pass up, so I ended up completing three weekly objectives in quick succession (the two world boss ones plus the one to find blueprint fragments). Ironically, this meant that I unlocked the Copero stronghold on Shae before I did so on Darth Malgus, though it was 1 a.m. for me at that point and I was too tired to even look at it; I just wanted to go to bed.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I tried queueing for warzones and GSF on Shae Vizla again for a bit before the daily reset (which happens at noon in my time zone) since that's closer to APAC prime time and I actually got into a level 80 warzone... though that just ended up being a reminder of why doing PvP with a higher ping can be frustrating, as I jumped out of the starting zone into the pit in Huttball, and then watched - while down there - as an Operative holotraversed up to where I had stood before and scored.

I continued queueing past the reset and got into another warzone and two GSF matches. I won both of the latter, which completed my first GSF weekly mission since Galactic Season 5 and also got me two thirds of the way to the GSF weekly seasons objective. The matches themselves were a bit weird though. In the first one I was top damage, which never happens, and in the second one we had more than twenty self-destructs before either team even had time to capture the first satellite. I actually asked in chat what was going on and someone responded that they were "cycling through ships for Conquest points". (I later saw this behaviour to a lesser degree even in a death match. Just... ow.) Sooo... when the devs inevitably nerf that Conquest objective or change it to require more interaction to get credit for flying a given ship, you'll know whose behaviour is to blame.

In the evening I started my game time by doing some PvP on Darth Malgus. It may surprise some, but in a way I'm actually the least focused on seasons on my home server, because I spend so much time there that objectives will basically get done one way or another. It's the other servers where I really have to work on it to achieve the desired progress. Either way, doing this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly so that I could finally unlock the new stronghold on Darth Malgus.

After also completing one GSF weekly mission, I decided that it was time to do the rounds on the other servers again. I played two GSF matches on Tulak Hord that were horrible losses and decided that was enough GSF for me for the day. I saw someone talking about world bosses in general chat so asked whether there was a group going and got a whisper in reply that there wasn't one "but why don't we make one?" Turns out that "us" making one meant that the other person sent me a group invite, made me leader and then just sat there expecting me to do the work of getting more people. I tried to LFM a few times but got literally zero responses so just excused myself after a few minutes.

On Leviathan I continued my baby inquisitor's journey across Korriban, and on Satele Shan I did some side questing on Belsavis, since my level 80 consular was already there for his class story anyway. On Star Forge I kept things quick by just doing two dailies on Rishi (which also gave reputation!) using my boosted inquisitor, and then doing a few more clicky things to make up the difference for the daily objective. (This would generally become my MO throughout the week if I didn't quite hit the required number of daily Conquest points with my initial choice of activity, and I didn't always mention it anymore.)

Day 3 - Thursday

Another day at the office meant limited play time once again. Once home, I decided to log into Tulak Hord first this time and arrived just in time for the formation of a world boss group. However, they didn't want to do FR3-D0M for some reason, so I hopped over to Ord Mantell by myself just to check whether anyone was doing the boss there at all. One (1) guy from the previous world boss group showed up too and decided to pull. I'd heard that FR3-D0M was technically soloable, but technically and practically are two very different things, so I was unsure how we would do with just the two of us, but we killed the boss just fine.

I logged into Leviathan to keep an eye on fleet chat there while eating dinner in case I could catch another world boss group. However, there wasn't much going on there, so I eventually relocated to Quesh to see whether I could leech off any passing guild groups that were there to kill the world boss, but had no luck on that front either. I just learned that like Gargath, the Rogue Cartel Warbot doesn't move until you get too close to him. His personal cut-off between caring and not caring about your presence is at 70m.

I decided to leave Leviathan for now and played a GSF match and two warzones on Darth Malgus before returning to doing the rounds on the rest of the other servers. On Star Forge I did another two Rishi dailies, and on Satele Shan my consular did some more side-questing on Belsavis. Back on Leviathan, I decided to return to my little inquisitor, who only killed like five mobs on Korriban before triggering the "gain five levels" Conquest objective - I was happy to take the easy win for the day and moved on to Shae Vizla for the evening.

I unlocked the stronghold there and put my warrior in the queue for GSF, warzones and flashpoints, but got impatient when nothing popped within ten minutes, so I ended up swapping to my consular to do some side-questing on Tatooine instead.

Day 4 - Friday

Since there was a login reward of eight seasons points for four consecutive days of logins this week, this meant that after the daily reset on Friday I was able to unlock the Copero stronghold on all servers that day, even where I hadn't completed many objectives yet.

I tried queueing for some activities on Shae Vizla around lunch time again (mostly keeping the game in the background while doing something else) but only got one warzone pop in over an hour of waiting. After the daily reset I saw someone put together a group for the Dromund Kaas world boss, which I decided to join for easy daily objective completion (plus I had the weekly world boss quest on 3/4). Just as I was thinking about logging off again, I got a GSF pop though, which allowed me to complete the GSF seasons objective and another weekly mission.

In the evening I did some PvP and a couple more GSF matches on Darth Malgus before it was time for ops with my guild team again. Afterwards I did some more PvP before finally switching to Star Forge. There was a world boss group forming in general chat there, so I jumped right in and was able to tick those two weekly objectives off on this server too. I then just hopped over onto my inquisitor to do two more dailies on Rishi.

After that I returned to the Leviathan and finished off the last few quests on Korriban to get credit for my 15 missions done as an inquisitor, before switching to my level 80 knight and killing the two named Imperial champion mobs on Quesh.

It wasn't that late for a Friday, but I was tired so decided to leave the dailies on Satele Shan and Tulak Hord for the next morning.

Day 5 - Saturday

Ah, the weekend! I logged into Satele Shan in the morning and first checked general chat on the fleet to see whether there were any world boss groups going on, but there was just some paragraphs-long discussion about philosophy and science, so I continued my consular's questing on Belsavis once more. Within a matter of minutes, I ticked off four weekly objectives in a row: Outer Rim missions, questing as a consular, playing with a companion set to tank, and finding currency. I love it when things line up like that, and this also sorted my Conquest for the day with ease.

After that I hopped over to Tulak Hord and did a GSF match there, which completed my trooper's GSF weekly mission and the daily seasons objective. Having achieved my goals much quicker than expected, I logged into Shae Vizla to queue for some PvP and was happy to complete a warzone weekly mission there for the first time since PvP Season 4 ended.

Later in the afternoon, after the daily reset had happened, I logged into my knight on Leviathan and started doing some exploration missions on Tatooine while also putting myself into the queue for all four flashpoints eligible for the seasons objective. I got a pop for veteran mode Cademimu after a while, which pushed me over the number of Conquest points needed for the daily objective.

Next I went to Tulak Hord and put myself in the GSF queue on my trooper while getting started on the Tatooine bonus series. I got a pop about halfway through it and won the match, which completed that seasons objective and my Conquest for the day, however due to the bonus series being known to bug out if you pause halfway through, I pushed on to complete it the same afternoon anyway. This completed the Outer Rim missions and questing with a tank companion objectives, making Tulak Hord the first server on which I was on 7/7 weeklies completed for the week.

Checking in on Star Forge, I did two more Rishi dailies on my inquisitor and completed her weekly Conquest target, but I noted that this hadn't really advanced me all that much throughout the Outer Rim objective since while I had done eight missions, they'd been so easy that I'd only killed less than thirty mobs. Since I don't like just grinding mobs without a purpose, I made a note to myself to tackle the requirements for the remaining, only partially completed objectives on other characters over the next two days.

On Satele Shan, I consulted my missions spreadsheet and realised that my consular had never done the Directive 7 story, so I decided to do that flashpoint on story mode for a triple whammy of story, seasons and progression of the first quest you get in the Copero villa (more on that another time).

In the evening it was time for my guild's social night on Darth Malgus, which helped me tick off the two world boss objectives there before we launched ourselves into an operation. Afterwards Mr Commando and I conscripted two damage dealers to run D7 and Spirit of Vengeance on master mode for another seasons objective. After that I was properly conked out and went off to enjoy an early night.

Day 6 - Sunday

I started my Sunday morning by logging into Shae Vizla and continuing my side-questing on my consular on Tatooine. She was effectively working on three objectives at once that way, but I only needed two more for the week. The Outer Rim and companion tank ones completed way before I would have hit 15 missions as a consular, which made Shae Vizla the second server on which I completed 7/7 objectives for the week.

As this meant that I was caught up with daily objectives for the current reset, I decided to return to Star Forge and do some work on the consular missions objective on my newest baby alt there. Being only level 2, she wasn't going to contribute to Conquest anyway. Breezing through the early Tython quests, she hit the 15 missions completed (keeping in mind my boosted inquisitor had already done 8 missions on Rishi as well) by level 7.

A female Mirialan Jedi consular on Tython, calling Master Yuon on the holo

I returned to the game in the late afternoon/early evening. Starting on Leviathan, I logged into my level 34 bounty hunter and travelled to Quesh to kill the two named Republic champions there. At 34, he was a bit low for the planet, but my experiences on Taris last season taught me that this wasn't really a problem. I did however arrive just in time to see someone quick travel away from the first champion's corpse, so that I had to wait for him to respawn. On my way to the second one, I saw a level 80 zoom past me as I got dismounted by a group of weak mobs and quietly went "nooo" in my head as I figured that he'd also kill the second champion just before I could get there, but I managed to catch up in time to get a few hits for credit in. After that I continued to putter around a bit longer for Conquest purposes, which pushed me over the 200k weekly objective.

On Tulak Hord, there wasn't much to do since I was done with the weekly objectives, but since I had invaded small yield with the two-person guild again, I had incentive to still fill that bar up as well. Fortunately I had a half-finished GSF weekly mission in my log, so one GSF win later I was done with my daily Conquest and the guild's Conquest target was most of the way there as well.

On Darth Malgus, I played two warzone matches to complete another character's warzone weekly and knocked out all four champion mobs on Quesh to get myself to 7/7 seasons objectives on my home server at last.

I continued on to Star Forge, where after some contemplation in regards to what I could do to complete my remaining weekly objectives while minimising boring repetition, I decided to do the Hoth bonus series on my trooper. It had been so many years since I'd last done it, I literally couldn't remember a thing about it at first, though some bits started to sound familiar once I got going. When I got to the mission about the Onderonian beast-lord I literally shouted "oh snap" out loud, much to the consternation of Mr Commando, since I had never realised that the blackmail you can use on Akoru as an Imperial during Onslaught isn't just made up, but based on this actual quest chain. Ahh, this game is still so good, you guys! Anyway, that finished my companion questing and Outer Rim missions objectives, leaving me with just a smidge more Conquest points to gain for both my personal target and the 200k Conquest points objective, but I decided to leave that for Monday.

On Satele Shan, I decided that after playing nothing but my consular there all week, I should give some love to my level 62 knight instead, so I had her kill the Imperial Quesh champions and put her in the queue for vet mode Cademimu and Mandalorian Raiders. She quickly got into a run for the former, which was fast and smooth. I then sent my level 38 agent to kill the Republic targets on Quesh, and with that Satele Shan was on 7/7 weeklies completed too.

Shae Vizla was already done as per my earlier paragraph about questing in the morning, and I had the Taskmaster Conquest objective for sub-80 characters sitting at a partial completion of 9/10, so I basically just had to make my Jedi do a companion mission for Qyzen to tick it over and that was that done for the day as well.

Day 7 - Monday

With four out of six servers sitting on 7/7 and the other two being as good as done too, there fortunately wasn't too much left to do. On Darth Malgus, Star Forge and Tulak Hord I completed my daily objective with some clickies and a bit of puttering around. On Star Forge this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly objective for me, and on Tulak Hord it achieved my guild's small yield Conquest target.

Leviathan was where I had the most work left to do, as I needed one more flashpoint plus a bit more questing on Tatooine to wrap up my last three weekly objectives, plus my bounty hunter had (unintentionally) gotten really close to reaching his personal Conquest target the previous day, so I wanted to make that tick over as well. The latter was easily achieved by having him do a bit of story questing on Balmorra. After that, I got back on my knight and queued for all seasonal flashpoints on both difficulties again, which got me into veteran mode Mandalorian Raiders this time. It was another uneventful run, except that someone asked to "focus boss" on the last encounter, which is not usually a good idea... as it turns out, you can indeed burn him down before the turrets kill you nowadays, but I still didn't see the benefit as the turrets don't despawn and you can't exit in combat, so you need to run around and still kill them all afterwards anyway. A few more Tatooine exploration missions later, another personal Conquest target was achieved, as well as 7/7 season weeklies.

This just left the daily objective on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla, and I took care of that on both servers by completing Conquest on an alt each.

Week 1 Thoughts

Well, that whole "not going too crazy with the playing on multiple servers" thing didn't quite work out, did it? Seeing how I pushed myself to completing 7/7 weeklies on all six of them once again. In fairness, this week had a lot of very easy objectives, several of which could be completed in multiple ways, so it was honestly just pretty fun. I do think that based on the information we've been given, I'll want to take it easier in week two since the objectives on offer will be different.

16/03/2024

Persistent Pet Pals At Last!

I threw a bit of shade at the devs in my last post for failing to communicate what felt like some pretty important changes that weren't entirely well-received in the patch notes ... but 7.4.1 also contained a very good change that they forgot to include in the patch notes. Intisar was the first to point it out to me on Discord, but I haven't really seen anyone else mention it so far, so I wanted to give a shout-out to it here:

Pets now persist through loading screens and relogging.

Pets disappearing every time you zoned had been an issue for literally over a decade. There was a thread on the bug report forums for it, created in June 2013, that people bumped every so often, but it was clearly not a priority for the devs to fix. And to some degree I could understand that, but on the other hand... they sell pets on the Cartel Market! Pets disappearing all the time has got to have hurt sales of the little critters, surely.

I'm not exactly a pet fanatic myself, but I do like them and have some fond memories attached to more than a few of them. Just check the pets tag on this blog. Remember my grophet phase? Those were the days.

However, the constant need to re-summon them was just too annoying. Even if you put them on your quick bar for easy access... this game has a LOT of loading screens. I'd usually get a new pet, get it out and go "aw, how cute"... but it'd be gone within five minutes of me doing anything and at most I'd remember to re-summon it a couple of times before getting bored and giving up/just forgetting about it. Which is a shame!

I also put this piece of feedback into one of my responses to the survey Broadsword sent out back in November, so I've been absolutely delighted to finally see this bug get fixed. I think my guildies were rather bemused when I told them to all get their favourite pets out during Friday night's ops.

Loth kittens following their owners around on the Dread Master Brontes fight in Dread Fortress

After a bit of testing, I can confirm:

  • That pets do now persist through general loading screens/area transitions.
  • The game does remember which pet you had out when you last logged out.
  • They do go away if you are defeated - the little toggle on the icon stays on as if your pet was still there, but you need to un- and re-summon it after dying. I can live with that one; just means I have to remember to re-summon the little buggers after wiping in progression ops.
  • They won't follow you into PvP, but they'll re-appear by your side when you come out of the match, even if you died during the fighting.

I'm excited every time I log into an alt now, thinking about which little critter they should have by their side... because I know the game will finally remember and I won't have to think it through all over again the next time I log in. I'm also looking forward to seeing more of the little buggers around the fleet!

So if you have any pets you like and you just kind of gave up on getting them out in the past because they'd just disappear - now is the time to get them back.

Just remember to un-summon your pets if you're doing the Coratanni fight in Ravagers. As far as I'm aware she still has that bug where someone having a pet out can cause the encounter to reset (I'm guessing because some boss ability targets the pet and causes things to go wonky).

14/03/2024

Galactic Season 6 & Reputation

Galactic Season 6 is here and we can all get a shiny new villa! Everyone is happy! Or are they?

Shintar the trooper with Amity by her side, performing the /stretch emote on the stairs of the Copero stronghold

As it turns out, GS6 launched with an unexpected amount of grumbling and confusion. In all their excitement about date nights, and in their eagerness to provide details about the new stronghold, it seems the devs forgot to mention a fairly important change coming with GS6: that for the first time since Season 2, there isn't a new reputation track to be filled out throughout the season.

Now, by itself, I don't think that would've been a huge deal, even if it came as a surprise. I've had conversations with quite a few people over the last couple of years where we basically agreed that the seasonal reputations were a bit weird, both from a narrative point of view (gaining reputation with a faction you never really interact with aside from your seasonal companion where applicable) and from a practical point of view (what good is a reputation that doesn't grant you access to anything other than an achievement).

However, while the devs removed the reputation, they left in the seasonal currency that was previously used to gain it, which is now not actually a currency anymore but literally just a grey item whose acquisition counts towards an achievement tracker. You can't really blame people for being confused by the fact that level two of the seasons reward track was effectively prompting players to claim nothing but a bunch of vendor trash. Musco actually took to the forums today to add a bit of context to all of this, and among other things he explained that they ended up at this awkward halfway point because while they did want to get rid of the seasonal reputation, they were also a bit worried about taking away too much at once - however, he admits that the end result ended up being unnecessarily confusing.

I will say that personally, I liked the seasonal reputation track because as someone who's been playing the game since launch, I've maxed out literally every other reputation in game on my main server, and each season adding a new one was handy for Conquest, as "gain reputation with a faction" is a Conquest objective that awards a ton of points and that was otherwise inaccessible to me.

However, that Conquest objective has in fact been the third point of contention, because it also received a stealth nerf with the patch that reduced its points value to a small fraction of what it used to be. On my main server that's no skin off my back, considering that I have no more ways to gain reputation until they add another daily area or something anyway.

On the other servers however... that daily Conquest point boost from clicking a reputation token was a godsend during seasons, especially on days when I was tired and only really looking to get credit for the daily objective on each server. Log in, press a button, done. I don't think I relied on it too much, since I do actually enjoy playing on all servers, but I know others that leaned into it quite heavily. Today in TOR had a whole guide on how to reach Galactic Season level 100 "without playing any content", just by pressing reputation tokens, and I think ultimately that's the kind of thing that's considered clever as long as only a few people do it but that turns into degenerate gameplay as it becomes more widespread and accepted as the "best" way to do things.

So I think that nerf was completely deserved and understandable. It didn't really make sense for a single button click to grant more Conquest points than completion of one or even multiple daily areas. I do think the devs are going to back-pedal a little bit after the amount of pushback there's been on the forums but I don't think we'll go back to the old numbers. Either way, there are still other low-effort ways of earning Conquest points for when you're starved for time - they'll just require more than one button push.

12/03/2024

Patch 7.4.1 Is Here!

It is here, patch 7.4.1, and with it several new features:

I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about all of these in a couple of days, but for today, I'd just like to highlight a few other patch notes that I enjoyed:

A new Character Convenience unlock has been added to Legacy Perks! Once unlocked, players will be able to reach the GTN at any time without needing to travel to the Fleet, their personal ship, various planets or Strongholds!

I can't say that I recall ever wishing for a portable GTN myself, but I think this is a good addition. More legacy perks are always welcome! I could see this being useful to raiders who realise that they don't have a stim on them just as they're about to pull a boss in an operation for example.

Ancient Armaments Added To Daily Login Rewards: Ancient Armaments contain various armor appearances including ones that could not previously be acquired or traded. These armor pieces do not contain stats or mod slots and are intended solely for Outfitter. These armor pieces do have dye slots and can be traded and bought / sold on the GTN. The armor pieces that are available inside of Ancient Armaments are now also available as random world drops.

Now this is probably the biggest patch feature that came as a complete surprise. Joe Stragmalia expanded on the subject on the forums to clarify that this includes hundreds of weapons and over 2000 armor pieces. I'm very curious to see how this addition will shape up in practice.

More outfit choices that you can acquire through gameplay are always a good thing, and I know that there was demand for at least some of these world drops (the reason they were rare was that they would only drop while your character was in a specific level range, and with how fast levelling is nowadays, it was very easy to outlevel even the chance of having them drop). On the other hand though, I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these old pieces will actually be considered quite ugly by most players, and since they have no stats and can't be vendored, I wouldn't be surprised if the GTN ended up being a bit flooded with them in short order. Again though, more cheap cosmetic options available for credits is not a bad thing.

What I'm curious to see is whether these are all based on world drops or whether other looks that are no longer available otherwise are included as well. I'm thinking of things like old flashpoint armours that I still own on some of my oldest characters, such as the Black Talon Hunter's Body Armor or the Cademimu Sharpshooter set.

Outfits will now be included when characters are transferred between servers.

This is great news but amused me since I just pointed out in February's community round-up post that outfits not transferring was an important thing to consider before transferring to Shae Vizla. As someone who's not planning to do any transfers any time soon, I'm still pleased that next time I'll make a character copy to the PTS, the first thing to do upon logging in won't be staring in horror at my outfit-less character displaying whatever hodgepodge of armour they were actually wearing underneath.

Fixed the Unread Mail UI icon so that it once again properly updates when new Mail is received.

Oh yes please, that only snuck in recently and was quite annoying.

The Mantellian Flutterplume’s name is now spelled correctly.

But... how was it spelled before then? 🤔

Removed a random floating bottle on Dantooine.

Glad to see we're focusing on the important things!

Several Nova Blade pirates on Rishi who were hostile in previously-neutral areas have been asked to calm down a bit.

I think I know which mobs this refers to... I think they were originally added for the Feast of Prosperity story chain? They lurk on the west side of Raider's Cove and I've unintentionally aggroed them (always feeling a bit surprised to be attacked in town) quite a few times.

Added the following to the appropriate mission terminals: [DAILY] Grateful Grazers (Republic), [DAILY] Panther Training (Imperial), [DAILY] Turn the Lights On (Both), [DAILY] Unstable Readings (Both) 

This one surprised me because as I mentioned in my post about Kessan's Landing, I figured placing these missions outside of town was an intentional design choice reminiscent of Yavin IV and Ziost. Did people find these too hard to find?

The Galaxy Map icon will no longer be highlighted for newly created characters that can't access it.

Not that this isn't a good thing... but wasn't this supposed to have been fixed in 7.3.1?

Regeneration Toys will correctly regenerate resources for all origin story and combat style combinations.

Once again, I just wonder which toy/origin story/combat style combination was bugged here. Let me know in the comments if you know!

Anyway, lots of other stuff to look at in game, so I'll get to that for now!

10/03/2024

What Have We Lost?

Conquest is a big factor in how I play the game, and my favourite Conquest event is Total Galactic War, something about which I've written many times. I know I'm not alone in this, and it seemed like Bioware recognised the event's potential as something that drives activity as well, as they tended to cleverly schedule it for times that were otherwise "lull periods" over the last couple of years - such as between seasons, or during the months when Legacy of the Sith ended up being delayed.

With that in mind, me and many of my guildies were certain that we'd get a Total Galactic War some time in February, before the start of Galactic Season 6. Every week after reset, we'd check to see what the next week's Conquest event was supposed to be, and every time we were a little disappointed that it wasn't TGW - but we figured it was going to come around soon. Except... it didn't. GS6 launches this Tuesday and it seems unlikely that the devs would insert an event like TGW right at a time when people are already busy with seasons anyway.

In the comments on my post about Kessan's Landing, someone asked whether I expected any big changes in what kind of content we're going to get in future updates, now that SWTOR's development has fully moved to Broadsword. I responded that I didn't expect any drastic changes since it's effectively still the same people making the game, but with that train of thought on my mind, the "missing" Total Galactic War gave me pause.

I think the transition to Broadsword has mostly gone well from a player perspective. New content delivery hasn't slowed down, and if anything, the devs seem a bit more relaxed/happier in their public communications. But as another commenter said, there were a lot of lay-offs in the transition, right? That's got to have had an effect, no? We don't know the exact numbers, but based on the official statement at the time, the team could've lost up to slightly less than half of its members.

Honestly though, even if we assume a worst case scenario in terms of numbers, that doesn't necessarily mean that future content updates will suddenly be half the size. There are job roles that are valued internally and that do help to improve quality and processes but that don't have an obvious impact on the size of the final product. Plus past word through the grapevine indicated that Bioware was quite liberal with re-assigning SWTOR devs to other projects if it suited them, meaning it's possible that some of those people who were sadly laid off during the transition hadn't been doing that much work on SWTOR in practice recently. All speculation of course, but my point is that it's probably not as simple as "x% of the team not making the move means x% less content from 7.5 onwards".

I don't work in games or development, but in online retail, and a bit over a year ago a situation arose in my small team where literally everyone but me handed in their resignation within a relatively short period of time. This was scary for me personally because it meant that I suddenly had to cover the work of three people, though fortunately management was very supportive and we eventually got replacements for those who had left. However, what was really interesting to me during that time was how effectively I was able to keep our basic output going. Everyone else just agreed to temporarily slash everything that wasn't absolutely essential to keeping operations going, from optimisations to reporting to countless meetings. And it worked! So from a customer's perspective, there was probably no noticeable difference at all, even while we were very aware that we were doing things "sub-optimally" behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if the SWTOR devs had to do some of that immediately after the move to Broadsword, but at this point they've probably settled into some different processes anyway.

What does all of this have to do with Conquest again? Well, it made me wonder whether "making sure certain things happen with Conquest" was one of those small things that actually did get lost in the transition. The last Total Galactic War happened in early September, which was technically two months after the move, but based on past datamining I read about, the Conquest schedule actually seems to get locked in several months in advance, so that event could've been a leftover from before the move. I also noticed that both 7.3's Interpreter's Retreat and 7.4's Kessan's Landing didn't come with any "kill enemies" Conquest objectives like they exist for pretty much every other planet in the game. So it might well be that there was a specific dev who tended to look after that stuff and who no longer has time to do that or is no longer there at all. It's a small thing, and if this is the worst side effect to come out of the Broadsword transition, I'll be a happy camper; it's just something that stood out to me as a Conquest enjoyer.

Have you noticed anything in the new content releases since last July that struck you as unusual and that you think could be attributed to the move?

06/03/2024

Jumping into PvP Season 5

I've grumbled in the past when I felt that seasons were too close together and that there wasn't enough of a break between them to "recover" from the intense investment they spark in me, but right now it's been one and a half months since the end of Galactic Season 5 and PvP season 4, and I've got to admit I'm feeling more than ready for something new.

As a result, I hurled myself into PvP season 5 with previously unknown enthusiasm when it started a week ago. It's really quite interesting, considering that I was decidedly "whelmed" when the new PvP seasons were first introduced and continued to feel that way for the next two seasons after that. It was only last season that everything changed all of a sudden, and I found myself craving more of that feeling.

A cathar Jedi shadow surrounded by other players in the Voidstar starting area for attackers

Darth Malgus

My focus was obviously going to be on my home server Darth Malgus again, where I set myself the goal of completing all the seasonal achievements like in season 4. The only thing I wasn't too fond of last season was that due to how late I pivoted towards completionism, I found myself having to grind more arenas than I was really comfortable with towards the end of the season, and for extra medals as well. Obviously the way to avoid that this season was to start strong so that I'll be able to slack off closer to the end instead (and also keeping in mind that there'll be overlap with Galactic Season 6 again). I'm happy to say that I've been very pleased with my week one efforts, as I already earned more than 400 medals and completed six PvP weeklies. I know I won't have the energy to keep going like that as the season progresses, so I'm trying to build as much of a buffer as I can.

Shae Vizla

I knew I wasn't going to repeat the absolute mayhem of last season, but I was hopeful that the launch of the new season would reinvigorate the PvP queues on Shae Vizla - alas, this has not been the case. The waiting for transfers continues. However, some people who do want to achieve seasonal progress over there have started taking things into their own hands, which I was happy to see. Someone in my guild specifically invited people to queue for lowbie PvP at what was close to midnight on Saturday for me, and since I missed the PvP vibes on Shae Vizla, I thought I'd check it out. There were only five or six of us from the guild, but that was enough to at least get arenas popping, and after some advertising on the server Discord a few more people from other guilds joined in, and we were able to alternate between warzones and arenas almost non-stop for three hours. The power of community! I'll try to join them again this week, even if it means staying up late for me. I just appreciate these kinds of community efforts.

Star Forge

Wait, since when do I care about PvP on Star Forge? Well, it was my first "secondary" server and several of my American friends and acquaintances play there. Still, I wasn't really planning to give it special attention between seasons, but then luck would have it that I ended up joining Swtorista's raid team for a few of their runs, and I started to feel a bit embarrassed about my lack of gear over there. It didn't really matter, and it was still better than the 324 gear with which we all had to start raiding when Legacy of the Sith first came out, but it just bugged me a bit, so I vouched to work on upgrading my gear via a bit of casual PvP at least, while seeing where this gets me on the seasonal PvP track as well.

You can tell how huge Star Forge is because even though I'm in a different time zone, pops are always really quick, regardless of what time of day I queue up. It's such a contrast to the situation on Shae Vizla in particular... I've never minded the lack of cross-server functionality in SWTOR, but I've got to admit that seeing the stark differences between these three PvP ecosystems has definitely made me think.

03/03/2024

Back in My Day: Datacrons

 "Back in My Day" is a (very) irregular series in which I muse about how certain aspects and features of Star Wars: The Old Republic have changed over time. After writing my post about Kessan's Landing last month, I really wanted to talk a bit more about datacrons.

Datacrons are a funny subject to consider for this series, because in some fundamental ways they haven't changed at all. That +2 presence datacron you might stumble upon on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas is still in exactly the same place it was in 2011, and you still interact with it in the same way: click on it and you'll get a stat boost. However, some things have changed:

Most notably, credit for datacrons wasn't legacy-wide until Knights of the Fallen Empire, so if you wanted certain stat boosts, you had to pick them up on every single one of your characters. However, the degree to which datacrons affected your character's power level was also somewhat different. Last but not least, as the devs added more datacrons to the game, their approach to what kind of experience players hunting for those new datacrons should have clearly changed.

Shintar the trooper waiting for the Jawa balloon next to a random bounty hunter. You can tell it's early in the game as she's wearing the original Columi gear

The Power of the 'cron

I think it's safe to say that datacrons were always considered optional content, but what that meant at launch was a bit different compared to what it means now. +2 endurance grants you about 20-26 extra points of health from what I understand (my own quick testing in game showed about 10 HP per stat point but I saw claims on the forums that it was 13), which was never a huge number... but relatively speaking, it was worth more when your total health pool at max level was 20k as opposed to the 400k or so we're seeing nowadays. I never heard anyone say that it was mandatory to get all datacrons relevant to your class to get into raiding... but it was certainly recommended, especially if you were planning to push into higher difficulties.

There was also the matter of matrix shards. At launch, getting gear for your relic slots was not a trivial matter, and one way to get a really good one was to assemble a "matrix cube" out of three matrix shards, which would form a basic relic with some useful stats on it. The first time I took an active interest in datacrons back in the day was precisely for that reason. As far as I'm aware, this functionality is actually still in the game, it's just that nobody bothers with it anymore because the devs never made an update that would've allowed you to build better matrix cubes than those original level 50 ones.

Hope you like jumping

Because credit for datacrons was character-specific and you needed to physically collect matrix shards on each one, you had to revisit some of them a lot. It is worth noting though that you didn't need all datacrons on every character. Before KotFE introduced the mastery stat, each advanced class had a proprietary stat to themselves (aim for troopers/bounty hunters, cunning for smugglers and agents, strength for knights and warriors, and willpower for consulars and inquisitors), so anything that granted a stat that didn't really do anything for you could safely be ignored.

I actually didn't bother with datacrons for the most part while levelling up my first few characters, and I didn't find more than a couple organically, but the longer I played, the more often I found myself grouping with other people who felt the urge to share their knowledge about datacrons close to our position, so I started to learn more about them over time in a pretty organic way. Things kind of reached a peak when I started regular questing with my pet tank, as he knew all of their locations and wanted to pick all of them up as part of the levelling journey on every character.

Two smugglers tumbling through the air while trying to land next to the blue mastery datacron on Corellia

When Bioware first announced that datacrons were going to become legacy-wide, I actually wasn't that thrilled, because they were a form of content to me that made playing alts more entertaining, and I didn't like the thought of that going away. I will say that nearly a decade and several dozen alts later, I feel that it was probably the right decision... though part of my enjoyment of playing on other servers has definitely been having a reason to revisit some of those datacrons for the first time in many years.

Datacron gameplay

Unless I miscounted, the game offered 90 datacrons to collect at launch. I would say the ways to acquire them fell into four basic categories (with some overlap between them): simply finding them in hidden locations somewhat out of the way, requiring completion of a jumping puzzle, requiring some sort of item interaction (e.g. picking up the MGGS from the vendor and taking it to the right place), or riding some sort of lift or floating device to a specific location. God knows how many hours in total I spent riding the Jawa balloon on Tatooine... but in hindsight, none of these were overly demanding. If you set out on a fresh character to pick up all of them, it would take several hours of your time, but considering how many of them there are, it wasn't unreasonable (unless you were really bad at jumping I guess).

However, once the devs started adding new datacrons with expansions and patches... they started to get more inventive. The Makeb presence datacron was still in line with what had come before, but the endurance one was an insanely long jumping puzzle that would send you all the way back to the start every time you failed. And then the Rishi one involved an item farm that required a silly amount of grinding - not something you would reasonably want to do on every character. Though at least both of those datacrons were shareable, so that one person who completed the whole journey was then able to summon others to get credit without them having to go through the whole ordeal themselves.

Shintar the trooper recovers some health standing next to a friendly Sage while on her way to the endurance datacron on Makeb

After KotFE we didn't get any datacrons for a while, but once we got to Ossus, I thought it became quite clear that the devs had decided to take a different approach now that datacrons were legacy-wide. If you weren't expected to get to a datacron more than once, they could make it pretty hard and time-consuming the first time around without that feeling entirely unreasonable. Two of the three Ossus datacrons were still pretty "old-school" in the amount of effort required, but the third required you to both jump and puzzle in a personal phase where you couldn't get any help.

We saw a similar pattern with Onslaught, where the Mek-Sha datacrons and one of the ones on Onderon were pretty standard jump or ride puzzles (though I thought the jumping ones were fiendishly hard, if not punishingly long like the Makeb Endurance one) and then the Onderon Mastery datacron was a brutal combo of jumping and puzzling on a timer, making it one of the hardest datacrons in the game so far. Ruhnuk and Kessan's Landing haven't been as harsh in terms of skill requirements, but once again involve a personal phase and completion of a long quest chain beforehand, which to me makes it pretty clear that the devs are trying to make each datacron more of an experience now, knowing that you probably won't be visiting it more than once.

I have no particularly strong feelings about this. I think it makes sense with the way the game has evolved, but it does also mean that datacrons have changed from being more of a collectible power-up that usually supported and sometimes even required grouping in the early days to having more of a solo skill challenge focus now.

29/02/2024

Around the SWTOR-sphere: February 2024

February is the shortest month of the year (even with the extra day we get this year) and it was a fairly quiet month in SWTOR as well, though we did get some news about what's coming next in the 7.4.1. dev stream. This post however isn't meant to be about official news, but rather about random community content I came across throughout the month and that I wanted to share.

  • First off, Swtorista did a thing again (shocking how she keeps doing that, isn't it) and released her updated "Ultimate Guide of Guides" for 2024. This is a massive list of resources covering pretty much every possible aspect of the game that she and her right-hand Admiral Zahk (is that his proper title?) have been maintaining for several years now. I'm flattered by the number of useful posts they found on this blog, considering that being useful is not my primary goal. I can only recommend checking this guide out, even if you don't have a particular question right now... the links are sorted by topic, so maybe just have a quick look at an area you're interested in, and who knows, maybe you'll find a link to a page or even another content creator that you didn't even know existed. I had no idea that Swtorista had name generators for every single species you can play as for example. (Also, fun fact, before this year I never realised that she actually kept a copy of this guide on her website, as I only ever came across the version maintained in a sticky thread on the official forums.)
  • Ted from the SOTOR Podcast lived up to his promise of not going quiet for quite so long again and released not one but two new episodes this month. I'd like to particularly recommend the one about server transfers to Shae Vizla, especially if you're planning to make use of the free transfers coming in March. I've never actually done a server transfer in SWTOR myself (not counting character copies to the PTS), and there are actually quite a lot of things to keep in mind in terms of what will come with you and what won't. Outfits not getting copied over and needing to be recreated on the new server is a big one for example!
  • On the subject of the Shae Vizla server and transfers, I came across a video by small YouTuber Thomas Midena called "How not to launch Australian servers (a Star Wars: The Old Republic story)". As the title suggests, he hasn't been too happy with how things have gone so far, but I thought it was interesting to hear from another player in the APAC region and I really liked his measured approach and the way he articulated his thoughts.
  • In happier video news, another small YouTuber I came across this month was HomeMade SWTOR. Specifically I watched his video "The Mandalorian: StarWars story Episode 15 || The Shameful Hunt ||", which is basically... the bounty hunter story on Corellia? I'm not usually one for SWTOR story playthrough videos because let's be honest, I can and prefer to do the playing myself, but I thought it was interesting how HomeMade tried to edit things together in a unique way, with bits of different music added and by interspersing snippets of footage of movement and combat between the in-game cut scenes to make things flow better.
  • Aaand, one more video about something completely different - an operations boss kill! A video called "SWTOR Master Mode Styrak With No Knocks 7.4" by Draxzim caught my attention due to its title. I wrote a whole long-ass post about my own "history" with Dread Master Styrak a few years ago, but to summarise in a nutshell what intrigued me about this video title: on master mode, this fight has a mechanic that usually requires several people in the group to have a knockback, so I immediately wondered how this group achieved a kill without ticking that box. My first reaction was to theorise that 344 gear had allowed dps numbers to get so high that it simply wasn't needed anymore (since the main purpose of the knockback is to buy you time to kill an add). Spoiler: not exactly. Instead, what this group did was bring a party that consisted of nothing but Powertechs (except for the healers obviously), and they all specced into the Sonic Rebounder utility, which causes their AoE taunt/aggro drop to put a ring around everyone in range that reflects the next attack done to them back at the attacker. Then, when it came to the phase where you'd usually use the knockbacks, they didn't interrupt the big add's AoE damage channel but instead rotated through all their rebounders to reflect its own damage back at it for a massive damage boost. This is, frankly, incredibly cheesy and bizarre, but it clearly took no less effort than organising knockbacks would've done, so I totally respect it. I'm always fascinated by people coming up with alternate solutions to gameplay challenges.
  • Finally, my favourite post from the SWTOR subreddit in February was one that only got a moderate number of upvotes but which I personally thought was amazing, called "What is your favorite / least favorite noise made by your toon when being attacked?" Why did I love it? Because it's an extremely random question that I never would've thought of asking myself, and the way people described their characters' groans and shouts in writing in the responses was very funny to me. "HEEUUURRRGGHHH!" (That's someone describing a male Sith warrior, and I bet if you've ever played or spent time around one, you'll know exactly what it refers to.)

27/02/2024

Republic Saboteur, Part 3

It's been a while and a half since I last wrote about my Republic saboteur character. I think I put her on ice for a bit since she's a smuggler and at the time I felt that I should prioritise getting my "main" smuggler fully caught up with the story first before taking this one any further. Also, she'd just hit Echoes of Oblivion, which is an excellent piece of story content but not the most appealing in terms of replayability

A pink twi'lek smuggler and Arn Peralun watch an Imperial fighter get away in the Manaan night sky

Anyway, to mirror my series about my Imperial saboteur, I still wanted to write a third post about her journey through the rest of the Onslaught story after Objective Meridian, up to the Legacy of the Sith launch content. There've been a few additional saboteur choices in the updates that have been released since then, but I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about those, if anything at all. Maybe I'll make a sort of summary post at some point to talk about how 7.2 and beyond have treated both Imperial and Republic saboteurs.

Anyway, I'd actually like to start with a comment on the Dantooine pirate event, whose little story tidbit strictly speaking takes place before Onslaught, but which I often do whenever, since it's not really important to the main storyline and only accessible once every couple of months. I didn't mention it at all when writing about my Imperial saboteur, so I was quite surprised and perplexed when I did the Dantooine dailies on my Republic saboteur and noticed differences! For example the mission to "take back" supplies from Imperial Pillagers has you delivering them right back to the Imps at the end, which I thought was hilarious but also kind of blatant? And the one with the Republic traitor has you warning him so that he can get away instead of being killed. So much detail for saboteurs in a daily area that isn't even active most of the time! I was most pleasantly surprised. In hindsight I do seem to vaguely remember that for Imperial saboteurs, at least the mission where you sabotage the farms also may have had some sort of choice and I simply forgot to write about it? I'd have to go back and double-check some time when the event is active again.

Anyway, to get back to the main storyline, in "The Task at Hand", the immediate follow-up to Objective Meridian, saboteurs are told that things are not going well for the Republic. There's a conversation choice where you can recommend fighting Hutts that are demanding bribes.

When Lana brings up Balmorra and Zenith, the saboteur option is once again to ask her to not even bother. I just find it kind of amusing that regardless of which faction you're on, "don't bother with weapon shipments on Balmorra" is sabotage either way.

When I started Secrets of the Enclave, I was surprised by dialogue that had Arn stating in an insecure tone that Tau was away on another assignment on Balmorra that he didn't know the details of, something I didn't remember encountering in any of my other playthroughs, but I'm not sure whether that was actually related to being a saboteur, as I seem to remember reading that there are some conversation choices - regardless of your overall loyalties - that drive Tau and Arn apart somewhat? It's not something I've researched in great detail.

Like on Imperial side, I had the option after the initial briefing to tip off the opposite faction in regards to our impending Dantooine trip, and I was amused that NR-02 thanks you but tells you that Imperial Intelligence already knew about it anyway. I thought that was an interesting touch and shows them being a step ahead of the SIS. After landing on the planet and seeing the Empire there, you can further complain to your companions about how the Republic is always too slow and therfore frequently loses to the Empire's ruthlessness.

A pink twi'lek smuggler offers kolto to an injured Lord Ziliss in the Secrets of the Enclave flashpoint

The big thing that caught me by surprise in this flashpoint though was that after the fight with Lord Ziliss, I had the option to send the others away, implying that I was going to "take care" of her by killing her, just to then hand her a kolto pack and send her on her way. That was another delightfully overt act of sabotage that I hadn't expected - I guess because Imperials get no such option due to Rivix always killing the Republic Captain, even if you want to spare him.

Finally, while doing Manaan, the main thing that struck me was that it was funny how unimpressed I found myself by Gallo's rants about the Republic as a saboteur. It's not as if I'm here to work for them either, you know! When it comes to blowing up the ion cannon, the saboteur option was to weaken the blast so that some ships would be able to escape, which I didn't think was too impressive.

However, what I didn't anticipate that when it comes to choosing between saving Gallo or the kolto, the saboteur option is to save neither! For all the scummy things I've done in the name of sabotage (still haunted by shooting Narlock in the back), this one was a bit too much for me. It just had too much of a "watching the whole world burn" vibe, which I didn't think suited my smuggler, so I just decided to sacrifice Gallo in order to save the kolto. I don't think this is saboteur-specific, but I was surprised to hear Admiral Rava actually reveal why Gallo had beef with him at the end, something I'd always wondered about. Did I really never choose the kolto over her before? Huh.

Anyway, I was still curious how that saboteur option of saving neither would have played out and specifically how you'd justify such an action to Arn, so I looked it up on YouTube and was surprised to find that if you choose that option, your character pretends to save Gallo and her men but then sabotages the pod so that they die anyway? Cold, man.

Once everything's said and done, Darth Xarion himself gives you a holo call to congratulate you on your good work, and like on Imp side I wasn't really convinced. Sure, I did some sabotage, but more than anything I still helped the Republic drive the Empire off, which seems like it should've been the bigger deal...

A pink twi'lek smuggler stands at the edge of the ocean on Manaan while talking to Darth Xarion via her holo communicator

And that's it for Republic saboteur options up to 7.1 - oh, except for one more bit that doesn't really have anything to do with the main story but that I noticed when I picked up the one-time story mission for R-4 Anomaly: I thought it was very odd that it's given by Jonas Balkar even if you're a Republic saboteur, because as a smuggler my character had never actually met him! And he doesn't introduce himself either. That seems like an oversight to me (and a problem that Imp side doesn't have, because while Imperial saboteurs don't really interact with Darth Xarion, they've at least met him during Onslaught so getting a call from him doesn't seem completely random).

Still, all in all I've got to say these saboteur playthroughts have only increased my appreciation of the Onslaught story content - I think that short of the original class stories, Ossus to Manaan is probably the series of updates with the most complexities and variations influencing different outcomes in the game. It's not entirely bug-free and there are some bits and pieces where certain choices feel like a bit of a stretch, but still, it must've been a humongous piece of work to script all of that, and in a manner that still mostly makes sense for so many different choices.

18/02/2024

Three Months of APAC Life & Waiting for Transfers

The situation on SWTOR's newest server Shae Vizla remains fascinating to me, and I feel compelled to keep writing about it.

I've continued to play my characters on there even after the end of seasons. With no seasons objectives to chase, I've dialled down my time investment, but I basically made it my goal to at least still reach my personal Conquest target on all four of my characters every week. It may sound silly, but even though I'm not in the APAC region myself, I really want this server to succeed, and I kind of feel like I'm helping at least a little by adding four encryptions to the guild bank every week to help with further expansion of the guild ship.

A Togruta trooper looking out at the Coruscant skyline

At the moment it certainly does feel like the server needs every bit of help it can get. I'd love to be able to say that everything is going great, but to be honest things are a bit down in the doldrums right now. I fully expected activity levels to decrease after the end of seasons (after all, it happens on all servers), but I wasn't quite prepared for how drastic a change it was going to be.

During the last week of PvP Season 4, I was still spamming level 80 warzones on my warrior to get the 2000 medals achievement. The next week, after the season ended, I spent several mornings (which is evening prime time in Australia) questing while in the warzone queue, and on most of those days, I didn't manage to get into even a single match. There was one single day on which I managed to get pops for two games where both teams were only partially filled. I eventually gave up on queueing, since it was clear that I didn't stand much of a chance of getting any more PvP weeklies done in that environment.

The server is not "dead" exactly; there are still plenty of people questing and guilds organising group content, and looking at the guild Conquest boards as a measure of activity, Shae Vizla still seems to have more active players than the French server for example. However, content you have to queue for has definitely taken a hit, and I'm sure those who were still trying to get into e.g. warzones like I did, were only further discouraged by queues dying out so suddenly.

I already mentioned last month that the devs told us that transfers were incoming, and while I feel that's good and even needed at this point, it probably didn't help with keeping the server lively in the short term either. I'm sure more than a few people took the transfer announcement as their cue to go back to their main legacies on other servers for now, knowing they'd soon be able to transfer them over anyway.

We have more details about the server transfers as well now, though we're still lacking an exact launch date - we just know they'll open with patch 7.4.1, coming at some point in March. The details of how everything will work as per the forums are:

  • If you're a subscriber and have been subscribed since the 2nd of January, you'll have 30 days to claim up to 16 free character transfers to Shae Vizla. You don't actually need to live in the APAC region to get these; subscription status is all that matters.
  • If you're a subscriber but not since Jan 2nd, or if you used up all your free transfers and want to buy even more, they'll be available at a discounted price of 500 Cartel Coins (which is roughly 5 USD).
  • Free or preferred players have to pay 1000 CC per character, which is the normal price for character transfers. It will also be the normal price for everyone once 90 days have passed.
  • To be eligible for transfer, characters need to be at least level 20 and can only carry 15 million credits.

This was originally announced about ten days ago, originally with stricter requirements to be eligible for free transfers and a lower credit cap per character, but there was a lot of pushback against those two items in particular, so I wasn't surprised to see the devs listen to the feedback and make adjustments.

How "fair" all this is, I don't know, and opinions seem to vary wildly based on people's backgrounds. I've seen some comment that when you're opening a new regional server, obviously everyone from that region should get limitless free transfers. To me, as someone whose first exposure to MMOs was World of Warcraft charging an arm and a leg for character transfers and making big bank from players struggling to find the right server for them, this seems pretty generous. Either way, it's not really relevant to me personally in the sense that I'm not planning to move any characters as I'm quite happy to keep all my legacies separate.

I am curious however to see what the influx of credits will do to the GTN. 15 million credits may not sound like much, but if you make full use of the free transfers, you could bring up to 240 million over. And again, to some people that may not sound like much, but I can't emphasise enough how different the economy on Shae Vizla is right now compared to any of the other servers.

After three months of casual play, I have less than 10 million credits in the bank (though I've also spent a few million on unlocking legacy perks). The GTN doesn't let you see all the items on sale at once, but after a quick search through various categories, the most expensive item I could find for sale was one of the new shiny dyes for 50 million, so whoever gets in there first after the transfers open will get to have a field day snapping up some bargains I guess.

As Xam Xam mentioned in her recent post though, worrying about the economy is one thing; ultimately the server needs active players more than anything though. I'm curious to see whether the launch of the new PvP season in ten days will make a difference (I will certainly try queueing again myself), but the new Galactic Season and the opening of transfers in March will be the real litmus test. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will give Shae Vizla the desired injection of activity. Whatever happens though, I'll be writing about it!