Star Wars: The Old Republic Archives - Page 3 of 16

Two Years Behind

May 12, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday I had zero intent to sit down in the morning and start writing about level scaling systems. Sometimes posts just happen. However after writing it one of my friends mentioned a key point. There should functionally be a way to flip off level scaling if you absolutely positively want to just go wreck things. The prime example of this would be if you just want to farm up a bunch of low level materials quickly. I remember when I was leveling any of my various tailors up in World of Warcraft, I would simply find a dungeon in the level range and mercilessly wreck it for the sole purpose of getting as much cloth in as short of a time as I could. This would have been completely maddening were I not greatly over leveling the content. Once again I think we can look to Final Fantasy XIV as a good example here because some time ago they added in the ability to queue for content “undersized”, which functionally turns off the level synchronization process allowing you to just wreck the content if you so choose. However I still think I would prefer it if MMO worlds scaled by default, and then simply allowed folks to disable that option if they so choose.

I’ve said recently that I really love returning to an MMO after some time has passed and be confronted with potentially years of content to go off and experience. The thing is this also has an extremely negative side to it. Right now I am in this weird place where I am super into content that happened two years ago. There is something to be said about experiencing things at the same time as your friends, because it allows you to have conversations about what is going on. This has been one of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIV is that each time they give us a slow drip of story content we all consume it then can talk about the revelations that are contained within. This allows us to have moments of theory crafting and speculation… knowing that at some point in the future we will be able to resolve what is actually going on. With Star Wars the Old Republic and the Knights of the Fallen Empire content… generally speaking either folks played through this content two years ago when it released… or will likely never play through it.

That puts me in such a weird places because I have all these thoughts and feelings about the game and what it is doing… but I don’t exactly feel right talking about them on my blog. Knights of the Fallen Empire has some pretty big revelations that would be better experienced than told about. This is one of those times when everything about it is extremely heavy on the spoiler front. Each time new revelations come to light… I wish there was a group of people that I could talk through them with. Basically this is one of those times when I wish I had played through the chapter based content as it was being released rather than this current Netflix style binge sequence that I am going through. I have a feeling that Guild Wars 2 and its living story content is much the same… likely best experienced as it is being released a little bit at a time. This also makes me really want to get caught up so that I can at least join the discussion happening with the Eternal Throne content. However I am also extremely cautious of looking up too much information for fear of getting these plot twists completely ruined for me.

On the positive front I have stumbled across a really awesome YouTube channel that has helped me get back into the game and the modern concepts. Swtorista has this awesome Star Wars the Academy series that breaks down a bunch of topics like “What to do at Level 70” or how the Galactic Command system works. The best videos though are a sequence on the best looking craftable armors for each class, since we all know the true end game of an MMO is looking awesome. Through her videos thought I have been able to catch up pretty easily without risking spoilers too badly. Side note… there is a special place in hell for folks who put obvious spoilers in YouTube video titles… as I already have apparently one of the Iokath revelations spoiled because of this. For those interested I am largely playing Belghast my Jedi Knight on Ebon Hawk at least while I do all of the chapter based content. I have a large stable of character spread between the two factions and they are either in House Stalwart on Sith side, or Einherjar on Republic side. If you are also playing feel free to ping me and say hi.

Empires Fall

May 10, 2017 by Belghast

This is going to be one of those “Bel is very late to the party” sort of posts but bear with me. Additional upfront warnings… I am entering a territory with this post that might have some minor spoilers. For a long while I have avoided Knights of the Fallen Empire because I knew it made some significant changes that you simply could not step back. As a result in my best Mass Effect fashion… I attempted to wring as much joy from the “old world” as I could and made sure that I saw all of the story content before moving forward. Last night however I finally reached that point where I was at least reasonably comfortable taking the plunge and moving forward into the modern era of SWTOR. Having said that… there are a bunch of things I am extremely glad that I completed before doing so. Firstly I am happy that I managed to see the main story arc for each of the classes. Secondly I am happy that I took the time to progress every single companion and see all of their personal story before moving forward. Additionally as far as I am concerned it is extremely important to do both Shadows of Revan and Rise of the Emperor (Ziost) before starting the Fallen Empire content. I mean in theory you can just jump ahead to the modern era at any point you like, but if you want to have completed all of your story elements… you need to do class story to completion, Revan and Ziost.

Functionally Shadows of Revan and Rise of the Emperor are the unlabeled opening acts of the Fallen Empire campaign, and as a result I am extremely glad that I completed both of them. Now the other big piece of warning that I had been given was that anything you want to do with your companions… you need to do before entering “chapters” mode. This is because in truth you may or may not ever see them again. I personally don’t have a list of which companions are findable in the game, and which are just gone indefinitely… but I have heard that some fan favorites are absolutely missing in action. Once you enter Chapters the game is functionally changed, and you are sort of along for the ride. It was that point that really concerned me and kept me from taking the leap for a very long time. I had built up this comfortable stable of characters that I liked using, and enjoyed my jetting around the galaxy life style. Once I started Chapter 1… literally all of that changed and I began playing a very different game. That said… I think it might be a better game.

If Star Wars the Old Republic was functionally World of Warcraft in space… then Fallen Empire is Knights of the Old Republic 3. The game feels like it shifts from being a traditional check all of the boxes MMORPG… to being a much more story focused RPG that just happens to have other people playing it at the same time. At this point I am still wrapping things up in Chapter VI and hope to keep moving forward tonight, but I’ve found myself in a situation that feels very familiar to anyone who has played KOTOR 1 or 2. In that fashion I think its best to think of Fallen Empire and I assumed Eternal Throne as a sequel to Star Wars the Old Republic. You are playing the same character, and you have all of the items you have built up along your first journey, but you are functionally playing a completely different game. Maybe it is more of a new game plus mode than anything, as you shift your focus from the traditional tropes of an MMO, to starting over again. It feels much the same as Mass Effect 2 did after the original, where you are set down in a world that is familiar, but the cast of characters has changed slightly… and you have to rebuild your legacy.

I will likely continue to report in as I travel through the new content, but so far I have to say I am hooked. There are a lot of events that happen in rapid succession, but functionally when you regain full control of your character five years have passed and the future is uncertain. You are presented with a new cast of characters… some of which are familiar and others brand new. That said the cast of characters are interesting and I immediately felt right at home… in spite of no longer having my original team of companions. I can see the potential for setting forth in a matter that cuts across the various class stories and potentially introduces me to characters from them all. The other weird thing about this setting is that I am finding myself turning from pure Jedi… to more of a balanced user. I am giving myself permission to take more dark side choices when I feel like it suits my purpose better. I am going to save the people that need saving… and I am absolutely going to take a lightsaber to the folks who deserve killing. I am no longer the Jedi Battlemaster and am now instead known as the Outlander, and with that comes a change in focus. Belghast is going to be a lot darker than before… and that is going to be okay. I feel like this character is the vanguard of all of the characters I have played, and as a result sort of adopting my favorite traits from each of the class storylines. In wild space, Sith and Jedi don’t matter anymore… but instead what matters is freeing the galaxy of this new threat.

Legacy Complete

May 8, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend was yet another almost entirely devoted to playing Star Wars the Old Republic. I tend to exist in one of two modes, either I am playing a bunch of different games casually or in “maintenance mode” or I imprint super hard on a single game and I clamp down on it until I run out of stuff that I want to be doing. SWTOR seems to be in one of those clamp down modes, because I am playing it with an almost single minded focus. I set out with a goal of finishing off the eight original storylines, and this weekend I managed to push the agent across the finish line. As you can see I now have all eight icons lit up on the left side of the character select screen. What is interesting is just how much overlap there are between the different classes. You might hear a name mentioned in one class briefly that ends up being a central focus character in another. With the Agent especially it felt like we were getting the secret story of the world being played out through our actions, and it was all the more real when I slid from that story into Shadows of Revan. This is a minor spoiler but functionally the events foretold in the Agent sequence are coming to fruition by the Revanites… which makes me feel like the Star Cabal was just one of so many other puppets in the setting.

Makeb was largely interesting content, but it also felt like content added in a minor story patch in other games. It was this side mission that didn’t really move the overall story forward by much. Sure it was another chance to dust off your team mates and go on one more adventure… but it largely felt like one completely disconnected to everything else in the game. While enjoyable I stalled out in part because I had the other goal to worry about and lots of class storylines to play before that twelve times bonus went away. I wish however two years ago I had stuck around long enough to play through the Shadow of Revan campaign because I think the game as a whole would have had a good deal more traction for me. Shadow of Revan and now Ziost feels more like what I had been wanting. While it is taking part in a corner of the Galaxy and involves a brand new cast of characters… there is continuity happening and all of my actions seem to actually matter once again. Again you can absolutely see that it was design in a way so that it is stand alone DLC, but it feels like it integrates into the theme considerably better.

I am wondering if I might be attached to Star Wars the Old Republic until the release of Stormblood at this point. I have all of Ziost, which I am assuming is a fairly small addendum to the Revanite story. Then I have the entire Fallen Empire campaign and finally the Eternal Throne campaign to keep me tied up for awhile. I am figuring one of two things is going to happen when I start Fallen Empire, and in part that is why I have been avoiding actually starting it. Either I am going to love it and tear through it hungrily until I catch up completely. The other option is that I am going to bounce hard in Galaxy 2.0. Either case I can only delay the inevitably so long, but I will be doing like I did in Mass Effect Andromeda… and trying to finish everything up completely before flipping the switch. Side note… while staring at the above image I never noticed that my starship looks like it has a bubble level on the front. Mostly I want to experience the world as it exists… before changing it completely.

Some other side notes from the weekend. The experience boost is absolutely insane because I was roughly 1/3rd of the way through Shadows of Revan when I hit the modern level cap of 70. That means I have been getting functionally end game gear as I level through the content. With Knights of the Eternal Throne they added in a new Galactic Command system… that in truth I don’t fully understand. However it appears to be an alternate leveling system, and each time you kill something or complete a quest… you earn command points. Every so often you go up a level, and this process includes earning a command chest. These so far have been an excellent source of orange mod gear, and also occasionally a blue or purple item that blows away anything I have been capable of getting thusfar. Another thing that I am digging heavily is that it seems like I can enter every flashpoint in “story mode” which allows me to complete the flashpoint solo with the help of an extremely overpowered robot buddy. These flashpoints however also seem to drop current gear instead of the level of the encounter which surprised me just a little bit. Whatever the case it feels like I am getting to chase down all these story bits, and at the same time be rewarded with lots and lots of gear. Thusfar I am pretty happy with the way the systems all seem to be working.

Secret Story of the Galaxy

May 4, 2017 by Belghast

This morning is one of those days. I just literally got out of the bathroom where I held my hands under the tap to wash them… and then could not figure out why the tap was not turning on automatically. Moments later I realized I was in fact at home… and that we don’t have the same sort of magical faucets that the rest of the world does. This week has been a bit of a challenge because I am just straight up exhausted all of the time. No amount of caffeine seems to be able to break me out of whatever haze I seem to be in. It does not help that it has been cold and rainy… in May. By this time last year we already had the pool open and I had a yard full of flowers. This year however it just hasn’t been warm enough for either, and the yard is so water logged that before long I will have a grand primal swamp. My evenings have been spent watching various things on Netflix and working my way through the Agent storyline in Star Wars the Old Republic.

In a way I am glad that I left this storyline for the last, because it seems to be making a bunch of callbacks to the other stories that I never would have gotten had I not already played the other seven classes. There are constantly folks being mentioned…. and I am like “I know that person” or in some cases “I killed that person in another life”. For years I have thought that the Jedi Knight main story arc ultimately was the most “canon” of them all… but in truth I feel like maybe Imperial Agent is also deeply canon because it shows the underside of the world and all of the pieces shifting slowly into place. While Jedi Knight is the “big damned hero” tale, Agent seems to be the “truth” that happened while the hero tale was playing out. The story behind the story is always interesting, and I continue to be intrigued at just how much I am getting into this. I think it is a testament to just how good the game really is that it can plop me down in a role I would never actually play…. and make me love it. I also deeply dig Kaliyo and my dark side murdery nature seems to play well to her brand of violent sarcasm.

However after all of this skulking about and subterfuge… I am really looking forward to switching back to my Jedi Knight main and continuing through the rest of the story that I never got around to playing the last time. When we played December 2015, I got caught up in the 12 times story bonus that allowed me to play through all of the classic stories without having to worry about any additional questing. Once I finish the Agent that particular mission is complete, and it will allow me to pick back up where I left off… which is the beginning of the Shadow of Revan content. I really want to see how that storyline goes, and I also want to see how exactly the transition to being “The Outlander” happens as well. I love the original game, and in part I am wanting to see just how the game changes once it shifts to the Fallen Empire model. I mean I realize I have plenty of boosts available and could just catapult a character to near maximum level. However most of my enjoyment in SWTOR comes from actually playing through the content, much like the same is true with Elder Scrolls Online. So while it feels like both games are taking forever… I don’t really want to rob myself of the experience.