Broadsword, Part 2

I haven't really posted about my thoughts on SWTOR's rumoured move to Broadsword since my last post on the matter, and that's mainly because... well... what was there to say? It's all so unknown, whether it actually would move at all, whether it would go to somebody else, and what sort of impacts that will have. I will happily theorise about in-universe stuff until kingdom come, but something like this, which is actually meaningful?

No, there's just no point getting caught up in "what this will really mean!!!" for the game and the community. What will happen will happen.

However, earlier today after a couple of posts by Keith Kanneg acknowledging the rumour and answering some general questions about it as best he could - I mean, he's never going to convince those who've already decided this is the game's final death knell, is he? - we finally have official confirmation that Broadsword is indeed taking over the reins of SWTOR.

These posts echo a general feeling I have seen from ex-SWTOR developers and those more in the know about BioWare and such things; that Broadsword is better-handled to carry an MMO forward than BioWare is. I mean, BioWare are not a bad game studio, nor are they a bad studio when it comes to crafting stories, but an MMO is not a game that BioWare is traditionally best at running. 

With a game series like Mass Effect, mechanics and gameplay are on the whole secondary to the story. That's not to say that they aren't important, but you tend to remember characters and dynamic moments in the storyline more than you do how a particular class plays. Doubly so for Knights of the Old Republic, the gameplay of which has aged horrifically while the story still holds up well. An MMO, on the other hand, often ends up being far more about the gameplay than the story, as people spend so much more time just doing stuff once they've done all the story, whether that be daily zones, PvP, raiding, etc., etc. 

The point is, unlike a traditional single-player game like Mass Effect or Dragon Age which is one-and-done, with DLC as an additional extra thing to invest in if they're asked to or want to, with an MMO you've got to do a lot more stuff on a regular basis. Sure, BioWare have proved capable of doing this; the 2.0 patch-cycle stands out as a prominent example of what the company could do for the game at its strongest, and since then no expansion or patch-cycle has ever really come close to repeating its sheer volume of content in a similar length of time.

I'm not envisaging for a second that Broadsword will be able to instantly turn things around and make every subsequent expansion like 2.0. However, if certain rumours are correct and BioWare were using the income from SWTOR to bump up other projects more than they were to improve SWTOR itself, then not having this drain will be immensely beneficial somewhere along the line. After all, everything costs money, and if BioWare weren't investing nearly as much money into SWTOR as it needed... honestly, I don't see how things can't improve.

Truth be told, I'm honestly more scared for BioWare's future than I am SWTOR's. They haven't had a lot of big successes recently, with Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda both being disappointments financially. Sure, they had Mass Effect Legendary Edition, but that was just a remaster; impressive, yes, but if you've already played the full trilogy several times over there's nothing really new there that you couldn't experience second-hand.

Point is, with the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect games still being worked on and nowhere near release, that suddenly puts a shedton of pressure on BioWare to get them right. After all, they won't have SWTOR to keep them afloat anymore, so if either of these games fails in EA's eyes... I honestly don't see BioWare surviving.

I really hope it does continue to persist, however. It's had some wonderful games throughout its time, and it would be sorely missed.

For SWTOR, however, I am very much looking forward to seeing what this move will result in. Even if it takes a while for things to manifest, it's nice to think that things are looking relatively positive now it can actually flourish without anything holding its investment opportunities back. I wish everyone with the current team well, both those moving to Broadsword and those who are sadly being left behind and needing to find their way. I'm really hoping those folks can find new work in good time.

Until the future, then. Let's see what it holds.

Oh, and we also have news that the next Galactic Season is coming with the next patch, which was previously stated as being towards the end of Summer. Another instance of a Galactic Season starting roughly a month after the previous one ends. Joy.

Thoughts on 7.3: The Good, the Bad, and the Eeehhhhhs

A new story patch is out, and of course I have to offer my thoughts on it.

7.3: Old Wounds follows immediately on from Ruhnuk, and both us and Shae Vizla are seeking answers about Nul and her datacron from Darth Malgus before it potentially gets too late. We're also invited to Voss, as Sana-Rae and Arcann finally have answers from the expedition we sent them on towards the end of 6.0.

There's a fair bit to cover, so let's get started!

Contemplating 7.3, Galactic Season 4, and Gaming Apathy

After all the recent hubbub about SWTOR's future, the news that Old Wounds would be launching on the 13th of June is very welcome. It's roughly when I expected it to be, as when the PTS went down towards the end of May I stated that I could maybe see it due a fortnight later (in other words, the 6th), so a week later is still pretty close to my original estimations.

In the meanwhile, I'm just chugging along with the latest Galactic Season, and am almost at the end point now. Certainly, I no longer need to worry about maintaining a consistent income of Notes of Reflection each week, as once I hand in those which I accrued this past week I'll only need a couple of hundred more reputation to hit the cap. Yes, I could always pop the reputation boost tokens and get it done on Tuesday, but I know from experience that the persistent nature of the 24-hour long buff (i.e., it cannot be clicked off, and it doesn't tick down when logged out) bugged me the last time I tried it so am not keen to repeat that again.

Besides, I'd only use it to boost one token. All that, when just waiting seven days would do just fine?

Regardless, once that's done it's just focusing on the last 23 objectives then that's this season done and dusted at last.

At that point, I don't really know what my plan is. I have noticed a growing sense of apathy towards not just MMOs but video games in general these past couple of months. Notably, when Jedi: Survivor was on the horizon, I just felt... nothing. Sure, I watched a few of the gameplay fluff videos explaining what was what, but I honestly felt no real pull. As a subscriber to EA Play Pro, it is a game I would get access to through that, so I acknowledged I would at least give it a go, but I had no real desire to actually buy the thing.

And indeed, it didn't stick the landing as far as I'm concerned. The original game, Fallen Order, was okay, but as the sequel got nearer and nearer I honestly just felt I didn't need to see the crew in action again. I was quite happy with the open ending of the original, and I have to say I just didn't feel much excitement for a sequel even back then.

I'm finding the same sort of thing about the new game that's just been announced, Outlaws. I mean, it looks pretty, don't get me wrong, but I'm just not feeling much excitement about it. It doesn't help either that it's an open-world game, and those are extremely personal taste. I have to say that my experiences with the tedious design of Mass Effect: Andromeda's open world environments really haven't endeared me to the concept, although to be fair MEA has a fair number of annoying RNG quests where you have to hunt certain items in enemy camps, and there is every chance that you can scour the entire map and come back to the camp you cleared first and find the item has spawned there again.

So... I don't know about anything game-related at the moment. I'm still keeping going with SWTOR and WoW, because I have some very good friends who I'm enjoying playing that content with, but beyond that... I'm just not feeling very much excitement about games. I don't know quite what's responsible for this, but something in my brain this year has flipped. Maybe it'll be temporary, maybe it's the start of a more long-term thing, I don't know.

What I think I'm trying to say about all this with relation to SWTOR is that I'm glad that 7.3 is coming next week, because it falls in the window where I'm still actively wanting to engage with it. I'm sure I would have come back to it were it to launch after I'd finished seasons, or at least prolong my probable post-seasons game break until after I'd seen all I wanted to see with the newer update, but it being imminent works very well indeed as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, I still have three-and-a-bit weeks to go until I reach the end of Galactic Season 4. Anything can happen during that time, so I'm not committing to anything until that point. In the meanwhile, my plan is to take things as they come and go from there. What will happen will happen.

Broadsword

7.3 is being launched in "the next couple weeks", but in the meanwhile IGN has completely upstaged the announcement by prematurely revealing that SWTOR may soon be moving to a new developer: Broadsword Online Games.

I must admit, I had never even heard of this company before this news broke. I believe I had heard of Ultima Online, but I certainly couldn't have told anyone whether it was an MMO or an online fighting game like Mortal Kombat. Regardless, neither this nor its fellow Broadsword game, Dark Age of Camelot, seem to match SWTOR in terms of philosophy. Notably, both games have more emphasis on PvP.

As for what this means for SWTOR, it's far too early to say for sure. Needless to say, the news was met with doomsaying on the subreddit (but what else is new there?), and the IGN article was quick to say that the move would include more than half of the team currently working on SWTOR.

It's the nitty-gritty details which are the unknown quantity. Things like voice-acting deals, exactly where the story team are in developing the rest of 7.0, philosophy regarding difficulty and types of group-content, and how future crafting updates may be handled; all of that is quite unknown how a new studio will manage things compared to BioWare, and as a result it's also unknown how much that could potentially change. Granted, with half the current team and a former BW employee who worked on SWTOR as the head of Broadsword if it moves there, there is always the likelihood that several changes will not be any more significant than they would usually be.

I mean, how many times has BW itself shaken up the formulae for gearing, content difficulty, and all that? They seem to have shaken things up to a drastic degree for the past four expansions, and it is quite possible that whatever the BW team might potentially have been planning already for the inevitable 8.0 will still come to pass under new ownership. One thing you can guarantee is that even if what a new developer produces is actually something that BW came up with before the move that the former will get the blame if it goes wrong.

It's an interesting piece of news nonetheless. If a move does go ahead, I'm curious to see exactly what comes of it later down the line, especially the closer we get to a new expansion. I for one find it rather a strange concept to move a game to a different studio when the team is possibly only halfway through a current expansion, so I wonder now more than ever just when 7.0 is meant to be drawing to a close (we do at least know that 7.4 is still planned to go ahead, however!).

BioWare's Revised Flashpoint Philosophy

Shrine of Silence, coming with 7.3, brings with it a shift in how BW have been delivering flashpoint content in recent years. Ever since the Shadow of Revan prelude, Forged Alliances, every flashpoint released has been a part of the "critical path" of the story. That means that in order to continue or outright conclude a given story, a flashpoint must be done to advance it.

This in turn resulted in flashpoints having much more of a scripted element than they did before. Sure, there was the odd cutscene here and there in the original bunch, and a few thereafter, but the bigger cutscenes were almost always at the end. Starting with 5.0's Crisis on Umbara, solo-story flashpoints had various decent-length cutscenes present at various points throughout the entire thing to convey plot updates.

Well, with 7.3's newest flashpoint, that philosophy is reverting back to how a lot of flashpoints used to be; Shrine of Silence has its own story, completely independent of anything else going on in the Interpreter's Retreat, and it does not need to be completed in order to conclude the rest of the story which is coming with the patch. This seems to be BW's goal going forward for the immediate future, and I am curious to see where it leads.

The biggest question I have to ask is; is this going to be their new philosophy for all flashpoints going forward, or just a select few? 

I certainly wouldn't mind more flashpoints dealing with 'extra' threats, as it makes the story on whichever planet we're visiting larger than just what we're asked to deal with in the moment. A flashpoint being more of an "oh, by the way, while you're here..." thing also feels much more 'old-school' than the more recent method of using them as a story vessel, which in my view is welcome.

But at the same time, I also wouldn't like to see flashpoints be removed from the crit-path entirely. Much in the same way as they can expand a story with 'extra' stuff, they can also be used quite effectively to show off the power of a story-critical character in a way that can be seen again after the solo-experience in an expanded and more dangerous format. The alternative, of course, is the development of more chapter-like environments as seen in 6.2's Echoes of Oblivion, and... yeah, I'll take more flashpoints over those!

That said, with certain characters already being recurring antagonists and some being set up as new recurring antagonists, continuing to add flashpoints as a crucial part of a given storyline will inevitably lead to certain bosses being defeated in group content time and time again. I mean, Republic characters already face a certain Sith Lord as the final boss of three flashpoints!

I guess ultimately my main curiosity about what this means for the immediate future of SWTOR's story is what format Malgus's inevitable break-out will be delivered in. I have always been hopeful that we would see that in flashpoint form (just... maybe with one of the rescuer's inner circle as a boss rather than Malgus again...), and this news doesn't entirely derail my hopes that we will see it as such. I still feel that a flashpoint set on either fleet would be really interesting and fun after almost twelve years of just knowing them as passive hubs, and I really wouldn't like this potential to be squandered by them instead resorting to a solo-only phase.

Unless that was always to be the plan, of course, but then that's a wasted opportunity if ever there was one!

Moving away from a solo-story instance of course brings in extra problems; for players who aren't interested in group content and have neither the skill nor the gear to complete a 'proper' story-mode instance, this will most definitely not be an ideal move even with healing pods and the return of the Jesus Droid in Shrine. It's of course not my place to comment on whether I believe Shrine is particularly complicated, given my exposure to harder content, so I'll say nothing more and move on.

I have to say that all this reminds me of what they've recently been doing for the operations. Issues with flashpoints being a part of the critical story were eventually addressed by the introduction of solo-mode flashpoints, but other than the Temple of Sacrifice instance there is no such workaround available for operations. This was particularly problematic for Dread Fortress and Dread Palace, which were needed to complete the Oricon story in-full.

So, arguably starting with Ravagers and coming back in force with Nature of Progress and R-4 Anomaly, BW just decided to make the operations an 'extra' thing to do on their planets as well rather than an actual conclusion for their storylines. Gods from the Machine kinda went backwards a bit on this point; while it is not required to go in and kill the six gods to conclude the Iokath storyline, completing the operation is the only way to gain full closure for what happens, especially given that just finding TYTH alone was a big deal for all three factions in play.

So we're now potentially entering a time when BW are treating both of their main PvE group-content instances as somewhat separate entities from the ongoing storyline. It's going to be rather difficult to adjust to if it does become a major thing rather than every once in a while, but I can't deny that I am curious to see the results!

~~~

My major concern with their new philosophy, regardless of how many flashpoints it is due to apply to, is that they don't end up making these 'extra' flashpoints like the uprisings in terms of how really forgettable they were. Granted, the uprisings themselves don't really make an awful lot of sense, as they were just a bunch of instances created for the sake of giving players some group content in the vein of star fortresses before they got back to focusing on flashpoints with 5.4, so their stories weren't that well-established on the whole.

I suppose that is one major advantage of appending them to something already going on and just expanding it slightly. It doesn't need to make sense in the grand scheme of things; it just has to make sense within the instance itself, and that arguably is why the uprisings feel like they failed. They tried to make sense in the wider picture, but in so doing didn't make an awful lot of sense within the instances themselves, and we also don't really know if they were meant to tie into the Order of Zildrog or not!

I am definitely curious to see what BW does for its future flashpoints. I hope that we will continue to see them be a part of the crit-path, but I can also appreciate that this will be something of a breath of fresh air.

The planets I would love most to be updated with new areas

With the news that 7.3 would be taking us to a brand-new area on Voss, the fourth planet after Corellia, Belsavis, and most recently Manaan to receive an extra landing zone, one has to wonder what other planets would make for good secondary areas if BW were to add them. 

There are a handful of benefits to returning to a planet rather than always being shunted off to new ones. Primarily, you can have a new story that continues or perhaps even concludes elements of stories from the base-game, allowing players to see how that planet has moved on in the years since we left it behind without needing to change things on the original planet instance itself.

I still remember a lot of the changes made to the game to improve its flow in 4.0. Imperial Alderaan got chopped and changed quite a bit!

A new area also opens itself up to more exciting opportunities that would be very difficult to fit into an existing area, especially for universal faction-neutral entrances. A flashpoint or perhaps even a raid instance springs to mind; something that a single player or a group can pop along to that's tailor-made for that area. Then you have the bog-standard of weekly missions and potentially a reputation track, just to give people some reason to keep coming back to explore.

So, with this in mind, here are my picks for planets I'd like to have the opportunity to revisit at some point in the future:

Leaving an MMO Behind: Putting Personal Issues with Galactic Seasons into context with leaving 'The Elder Scrolls Online'

A few weeks ago, I made the point that I still wasn't entirely happy with SWTOR in terms of its continuing to find ways to introduce grinds, and that I was worried about how that would impact my love for it. I know for a fact that I am a long way away from saying "no, I'm done" with the game, but it is still really interesting to put my issues into context with another MMO I've been playing.

For the past five-and-a-bit years, I have been involved with The Elder Scrolls Online. It's been a fun experience, and the game is hands-down one of the most gorgeous games I have ever played. Yet it's also proving to be more and more difficult to really say I "enjoy" it.

I've always found its combat clunky, which is a fairly damning thing to say about any game, but I keep on being drawn back to it by its aesthetics and just how 'alive' the in-game world feels. However, the past couple of years within ESO have highlighted to me that, while I am okay with some changes that will happen, I'm only okay with them up to a certain point. Case in point, abilities.

Abilities in ESO tend to adhere to one of two resources; stamina and magicka. It used to be that an ability that cost magicka would deal more damage and / or healing based on not only your maximum magicka but your spell damage as well, and vice versa for stamina abilities with stamina and weapon damage. All abilities require XP to be pumped into them, and can be 'morphed' into one of two different forms at a certain point.

At which point, more XP is required until the new version of that ability reaches its maximum level.

A little over a year ago, ESO introduced hybridisation. This made it so that your abilities' damage or healing scaled from your highest resources and damage values, not just the one which adhered to their cost. Suddenly, any character could use any ability and weapon type effectively, and the meta shifted to a very restrictive set of recommended builds.

So, if your magicka-based ability was now dealing less damage than its stamina cousin, you would have reason to completely respec and thus need to grind out more XP to level your new ability. Multiply that by as many abilities as were affected by this, including entire skill trees like weapons you may not have had reason to use before!

I'm really glad that I never really got into raiding properly in ESO. I remember trying it last year, and I really disliked how the options I 'had' to spec my character with clashed with how I had characterised her, and that goes a long way in terms of turning me off from this sort of thing. That's also not mentioning the impact different set bonuses have on things, and the efforts and grinds required to acquire those...

Ultimately, these changes have really tarnished my former love of the game. Sure, you can still play your way, but if you want to actively get involved with raiding or endgame dungeons, that environment is now much less forgiving for non-hybrid builds, and you'll always get the sense that you could be doing this little bit more to help your group clear this difficult fight if you'd spec a certain way. While that feeling may have been prevalent before, it certainly feels much more invasive from a casual perspective than it did, and is one reason why I've long abandoned any interest in doing group content.

Due to its comparative simplicity, it doesn't take nearly as much time to readjust to changes in SWTOR. At least in this game, an ability doesn't need to have its own XP pumped into it to raise its damage or healing, thus necessitating extra work if that ability suddenly becomes 'obsolete' for whatever reason. That's not to say that it doesn't take time to readjust; it just isn't nearly as much.

It also helps my case that I genuinely do feel a love for the combat and general gameplay of SWTOR. You know what you're getting with your class in this game, and while there is some variance within a given spec, you're not going to lose any sense of combat style identity. The general gameplay is just much more my thing, and something I don't think I'll ever really lose appreciation of.

The end-result is... I've felt like I've been done with ESO for quite a few months. I still do log in nowadays, just for doing the daily for the new card game, but I really don't see myself continuing to have it installed for much longer. It's a shame to walk away from it, but... I don't see there being any real point to keeping playing. It's been a fun ride, but it's time to go.

~~~

I don't know what sort of changes would have to happen in SWTOR for that same feeling to really apply in the same way as it has in ESO. I may dislike seasonal systems and the intensive work that is all but required if wanting to complete everything, but it's not like that is how the game itself is. You can pace yourself with everything else, and I believe the ability to do so more with seasons would solve a fair amount of my ill-feelings. As things are right now, I don't feel comfortable even taking a week off from engaging in seasons until I've done all I can.

Of course, in SWTOR, things do tend to come and go, so it's entirely possible that this time next year I will have zero misgivings about things. ESO tends to be much more static in terms of how things 'are' with its systems, so it's more difficult to see something changing drastically for the better if they're not in a fantastic state. 

That's not to say that things don't improve, but the differences are nowhere near as drastic as they tend to be in SWTOR.

While I feel my time with ESO is coming to a close at last, its decline has really made me realise that the issues I have with SWTOR are, on the whole, minor. Sure, they feel big to me, but putting galactic seasons into context... it's just a side thing. It's frustrating how much "fear of missing out" applies for the extras like reputation and the other meta achievements, and it also doesn't help that GS4 has come so soon after GS3 which no doubt is inflating the issues.

However, it's not like GS4 is the game. It's just something else to do, with just some very frustrating elements. Hopefully, they get toned down eventually, but for now... I just have to grin and bear it.