Pulling Back (Again)

Five weeks ago, I logged back into SWTOR for a "trial week", to see if I could break back into it in some form again.

Five weeks on, I am on the verge of taking another extended break (once TGW has been and gone).

I have mentioned previously that I had made it my goal to reduce the amount of time I was spending on playing games. I am normally not very good at sticking to goals that I set myself, as I have the mental fortitude of a plate of jelly when it comes to actually committing to a lot of things, so I was perfectly well aware that I would make this bold statement about how I was definitely going to stop wasting as much time on this game, only to keep on playing it all year and beyond with as much gusto as ever.

Turns out, it's actually been much, much easier to stick to this plan than I first thought.

~~~

Okay, so to break down how my thoughts have evolved over the past five weeks:

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1) Raiding.

I mentioned a couple of posts back that it was probably "best" that I stick to more casual stuff rather than anything serious, since if there was any risk that the serious raiding would continue to contribute to my ill feelings about this game it was wisest to avoid it as much as possible.

Unfortunately... that wasn't quite possible.

Story modes are in a bizarre place for a lot of people. The old legacy SMs, with the sole exception of Gods from the Machine which is still very hectic, are very easy to complete and are often described by several guildies as "boring" and a "complete faceroll". I have to step in every single time this comment comes up, reminding them that - as experienced players in fully-augmented 330 gear - that's kinda what story modes should be to them. 

That said, I do acknowledge that as 340 gear eventually becomes more accessible, it's going to get even more insane than it already is...

In terms of challenge, how I like to view things in group content is thus:

Story mode: accessible to everyone, irrespective of skill level or class.

Veteran mode: requires more experience than story, but not providing too much of an additional challenge.

Master mode: requires a high level of experience with classes and mechanics, but should still be more than accessible after gearing up from veteran modes.

At the moment, story mode (on the whole) is pretty much the only operation tier which sits bang on the money with my ideas of how it should be. I remember doing a Dxun SM run (after the recent nerfs) where one of the healers opined that story modes should present some form of a challenge, and while I do get that view I also have to ask; why? If players want a challenge, there are more modes accessible to them for that - as the baseline tier that anyone can access via activity finder, why force players to encounter a challenge that might put them off this content altogether?

Granted, said player (at the moment) is only taking part in our casual social Saturday raid nights, which do tend to be story mode more often than not, so I can understand why he'd be asking for more of a challenge when he's not likely to see much more than veteran EV / KP anytime soon.

So, now that I've laid the groundwork for how I feel story modes should be, many people who have been raiding since 7.1 will know exactly where this leads.

R-4 Anomaly.

A couple of weeks before R-4 launched, a fellow officer stated that it was his intent to take the social team into the new op the very first week, once the progression teams had cut their teeth on it a bit. Having read a little bit about the feedback for the first two bosses from the PTS, I immediately stepped in to say "no, that's too soon". The small handful of social-only players we have are not bad players by any means, and our social runs are often peppered with progression-tier players, but it was evident from this feedback that even our full progression teams would struggle a bit with the first two bosses.

Indeed, it took our progression teams a good part of their first evenings to get those two bosses down, and it was only on the following evenings that they were able to get past boss 3 and up to boss 4.

And it's boss 4 where things really kick off. 

It took two weeks for all three progression teams to kill her. On story mode. 

This is entirely down to two phases which are far too punitive for story mode.

Firstly, Recursive Blast. This is a chain knockback that links four players together and knocks them directionally proportional from the previous target. The first player gets knocked back from Dominique herself, then the next player gets knocked back from that player, and so on. This can get really hectic, as a bad angle can catapult one player in the chain off the gantry, and that in turn can result in the next player being knocked into thin air and glitching out. Additionally, anyone within the accompanying yellow circle also gets knocked back, even if they don't have Recursive Blast!

Additionally, if anyone gets the annoying bug where they see a character is stuck face down on the floor, it takes about two seconds for the yellow circle of Recursive to update whenever they move. I saw that on our sage healer on Sunday night, and we seemingly kept standing on each other with our circles as I legitimately could not tell where or even when he was moving until his circle jumped.

Fun.

Recursive Blast is also immediately followed by a mechanic called Force Blast. This is easily avoidable, provided you know how - you just have to have someone standing directly next to her. So if you have a team of melee DPS with one healer up top next to Dominique and you're too slow killing the attractor and the healer gets knocked off the gantry by Recursive Blast... you're getting hit by Force Blast.

This is basically a one-shot, as it hits you with four to five successive blasts of high damage. I had been pulled in to help the first team that got up to Dominique, and Force Blast was what wiped us for the majority of that evening. I twigged that nobody was up top next to her during that time, so suggested maybe sticking the tank up there since they're not necessary for the attractors and maybe she needs to have her attention directed on someone specific, but we didn't have time to investigate that as an option.

Perhaps we should have done, as the raid leader then spent the next couple of days calculating all sorts of ways to counter Force Blast. Shield at this time, take this passive, do this, do that. I should state at this juncture that in new story modes, we go in blind for the first week, so if a mechanic happens that requires a specific thing to be done, it won't be the sort of thing a team will be aware of until they've experimented a bit. 

This led to a marvellous moment with the third of our teams to reach Dominique, as on their very first pull they managed to work out the ARIA positional mechanic after accidentally failing it twice, and they still managed to get through to the Recursive Blast phase in what was easily the best first pull any team of ours had. It was wonderful to watch that on stream having seen that first-hand, since my heart was absolutely racing - would they get through it before Dominique powers up? They did, and they managed to get her down to almost 30% before the Recursive phase killed them.

However, it's the burn phase which is the absolute killer. If you have high DPS, you're going to be fine, as you can burn Dominique down before the bigger adds show up, and those adds play a significant factor in what sort of things can and will go wrong. The Reapers, for example, slow their target to a crawl - and Recursive Blast is still going out during this phase. Imagine it, a melee DPS gets Recursive, is stuck under the boss at a bad angle and is shunted far away, so the next player gets punted off, and so on and so forth.

If the big adds do show up, it's a massive race against time for your group to be able to burn Dominique down before those adds kill you. If your DPS isn't high enough - let's say one of your DPS is stuck floating below the gantry - you're dead. I should also state, before some wise-arse "helpfully" points this out in the comments, that our teams do take in five DPS. 

This is story mode. It's in activity finder. If a seasoned capable-of-making-good-progress-in-master-mode raid team struggles to complete it, how the heck can a random hodge-podge group of strangers, whose members may be able to pull 14k DPS at best stand a chance?

That's not even beginning to think about veteran mode. IP-CPT, the first boss, is so insanely difficult with the DPS check that teams are taking in six DPS and no tanks. And if you think the DPS check is the most difficult thing in that fight, oh-hoh, you've got another thing coming. That floor pattern is crucial to learn for veteran. In story, it's a nuisance, but you can afford to build up stacks if you're too slow in moving or get trapped by a giant red circle.

In veteran, you die the moment you get 5 stacks. You need to know where to move, when to move, where's safe, where's not safe, where to take your giant grenade - there are two of these in veteran now - and so on, all to avoid taking any stacks for as long as possible. This is arguably the closest SWTOR has ever been to an action-oriented MMO like ESO or Neverwinter, where red circles and other positional mechanics are even more abundant, and due to de-sync and various other issues in this game, it's horrific.

And yet... there aren't any other options remaining, at least not if you want to get better gear. Sure, they reduced the health pool of legacy ops bosses' health by at least 10%, but that's not going to make that much difference on a fight which was previously insurmountable for whatever reason. Even if it did, you'd just be going in for the sake of doing something rather than because you'd get something from it other than a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Until further notice, all gear higher than 330 is tied to VM R-4A. We've always known that R-4A would bring in higher gear, and previous concerns about content difficulty have been assuaged (or at least attempted to have been assuaged) by promises that "better gear is coming". It took five-and-a-half months to get here, it's insanely difficult to even make good headway into getting that better gear, and if you can't get past that first boss or guarantee getting a lockout from another team for boss two... that promise is meaningless. I myself tried to replicate that assuaging when someone mentioned how difficult IP-CPT looked, and in retrospect that was a massive misreading of the entire situation.

I wish I could say I was a stranger to that particular tendency.

Now, yes, eventually they will add crafting, and hopefully that will start to provide a means independent of R-4A to start getting 332+ gear if they keep Rakata and the rest at 330 from here on out. At the same time... sure, that'll make the legacy master modes more accessible, and it'll help a bit with the DPS check on IP-CPT, but we're talking two, three, maybe four or more months down the line on top of the five-and-a-half month wait for this patch for the promise of "better gear" to start trickling down in some meaningful capacity to players like me and the majority of those in my guild who aren't going to reliably benefit from Watchdog lockouts.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I do firmly believe that higher difficulty content should not be kept exclusive to the top-top % of players, as eventually... that'll just make the pool of available players smaller and smaller until there's nothing left. This is also one of the downsides of the PTS, as, sure, people can go and test R-4, but... what sort of players, what sort of teams, are doing that? Not the casuals who are the ones most likely to suffer it in activity finder. No, it'll be the hardcore progression players who do SM once, if at all, and then immediately begin work on VM.

Yet... if these are the only people actively going to test this stuff, what else can BW really do? They won't have any other feedback before it launches beyond "this is too easy, make it more challenging", and so that's the only thing they have to go on. Who cares if the forums are now full of people complaining about the difficulty? BW listened to the testing feedback, so they clearly know exactly what their player-base wanted all the time!

That's fairly cruel by my standards, but honestly, I have just had enough of dealing with the stresses of progression and all that entails with where things are right now. And, unfortunately, it's had a negative impact on how I feel about the rest of SWTOR, and it's made me want to avoid even our social nights for the time being. Will I get over it? I'm sure I will, but it still hurts knowing that something that I have enjoyed for the past few years is... not as welcoming as it once was. 

I have enjoyed seeing master mode raids, clearing them, laughing about silly moments with the team and members I have got to know and love... and at the moment, the game is dangling that content above my head, saying "it's not for you anymore!". I hope this is just a blip in how BW are going about things, because I really don't want to believe this is how they'll be going about things from now on. I'm hoping that all the feedback they've had about how even veteran modes are now so much more difficult than they were before will have opened their eyes to the fact that the hardcore raiders aren't the only raiders in the game looking to have a meaningful raiding experience.

I'm not too hopeful, however, given that this patch cycle of difficulty comes after 6.0, where they had a knee-jerk reaction to the top-top % disliking Veteran's Edge in master modes and removed it. It took a full expansion for them to rectify the changes they had made, and I fully anticipate them repeating that again this time.

I do hope they at least nerf R-4 SM before 8.0, however.

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2) Story.

Digging Deeper was a nice little story quest, and I am intrigued to see where certain elements go, but on the whole I am still not at all invested in Malgus. We at least now know that he's looking into the Children of the Emperor, perhaps suggesting that he wants to make an army of thralls (imagine the results of that if he gets hold of members of the Alliance!), but there's no guarantee that's actually what he's planning on doing.

Additionally, dangit, Tenebrae, you're dead. Stop having even an indirect presence in this game already!

The Mandalorian stuff was never really of interest to me as, y'know, Mandalorians definitely aren't over-saturated in Star Wars at the moment, but linking Sa'har's story to them was something I didn't see coming. Shin and I have previously discussed that we'd find it fun if Carrick or Vaiken stations were to be attacked in a Flashpoint while Malgus gets freed, and at this point it seems likely that Sa'har could encourage Heta Kol to send a force of Mandalorians to free Malgus to help unlock the secrets of Nul's holocron - he sure seems like a trustworthy guy, I'm sure nothing could go wrong!

In general, I've always been kinda surprised that neither of the hub fleets have been under threat for the past eleven years, not even during the Zakuul invasion where everything else seemed to change. Well, now that the big-bad of the game himself, Tenebrae Malgus is imprisoned there... golden opportunity, I feel!

...in about a year's time.

Sorry, cruel comment again. 

In all honesty, though, I really don't like how this expansion is shaping up to be all bits and pieces of vague information, especially as (something that I didn't realise until Shin pointed it out) our characters have had very little agency with the current events. Malgus is here, go do this, come to Elom, be told this, go ask Malgus this, blah, blah, blah. Sure, we're off to Ruhnuk next, but if we end up being more than just tools in the Mando civil war I'll be very surprised. I'm certainly not expecting us to have any meaningful interaction with Sa'har just yet, although if we do more than catch a brief glimpse of her and call to her, I'll be happy.

And since this is now all shifting back to Alliance-centric stuff, it's mostly all going to be the same. SWTOR had done this even before 4.0, but they at least knew to create noticeably different contexts in every cutscene between factions even if the overall result was the same. On Oricon, the Empire might still free the Republic survivors, but it's done because Lord Hargrev feels they'll be useful assets in the fight rather than because "we must save our soldiers!" as it could easily have been by having Imperial players see Imperial soldiers.

Yet because we're dealing with the same characters like Kira, Lana, Scourge, everything they say is largely going to be the same regardless of which character you're on. Sure, the little bits with Gnost-Dural, Tau, Rivix, etc. are going to be different, but these are sadly few and far between in the grand scheme of things. Everything else must eventually coalesce into dealing with the same significant players.

I have never really gotten over the fact that each of our characters is essentially living in an alternate timeline once they get past Fallen Empire. It's one thing for companion characters, people who are personal to us, to be different within the Alliance. It's another thing for entire planetary and even galactic storylines to be different, since of course if you're playing an Imperial Alliance Commander... the Republic Commander and all they do can't exist. Lord Tarnux dies on Mek-Sha at the hands of the Republic Commander, but to an Imperial Commander he's alive and well and even holding Arn and Gallo hostage at the end of the Manaan storyline, as their scheme has failed in this version of events.

Nothing quite tops the whole Acina / Malcom situation, which can completely change who sits at the head of the Empire. If Acina dies on Iokath, as Republic loyalists and Imperial saboteurs will see, then Vowrawn sits on the throne. If Malcom dies, then Acina still reigns. Incidentally, we no longer have any tangible consequences to Malcom's death (it originally led to Jebevel Madon standing down as Supreme Chancellor in favour of Galena Rans, but now that's happened irrespective of your choice on Iokath!), so this entire situation feels very one-sided.

So... yeah. There are certainly things I am looking forward to exploring more of from what we've seen, but it has to be said that, much like with 4.0 and most of 5.0, my interests lie beyond the story BW are telling. Manaan was short, but it was very nice to get a reminder of the actually interesting stuff going on in the wider galaxy...

I am still pissed off that we didn't even get to see Madon once before he was replaced by Rans.

~

3) Other stuff.

I mentioned earlier that I had made it my goal to cut back on the amount of time I was spending playing games. This is because I am, at long last, trying to expand my horizons and explore things that I have had an interest or passion in, alongside trying to find employment.

To get the last bit out of the way, still no luck. Flinging out applications to various retail stores, but no bites yet. I imagine there are quite a lot of people trying their luck at the same time, to be honest...

In terms of the other stuff, I showed off artwork I had produced in a previous post of BB-8 and a (very surprised) Darth Vader, and I have been enjoying keeping going with that. I'm quite pleased with where my skill level currently is, but I do of course have more to learn. Nothing to show off this time, however. 

In general, however, the thing that I'm most proud to say is that I haven't directly spent money on cartel coins or crowns or anything like that for an entire month. I have often flippantly commented that I have a spending problem with MMOs, and while I'm not in a bad place financially, I have come very close to being overdrawn with my debit account on some months.

I should state at this juncture that I'm currently 'living' on a £450 / month income - that's allowance from family combined with Universal Credit. Just so people don't think I'm spending thousands and thousands - I'm not, but with occasional food purchases, subscriptions, and other direct debits, it's easy enough to burn through at least £200 of that a month before any luxury purchases are considered. I really need a job.

So... yeah. I'm happy with that. Sure, I can justify spending some money on a game each month, but (while it won't matter all that much once we get to October) it's still nice to cut back on the sheer amount of expenditure on unnecessary 'stuff' that I was racking up relative to my 'income'. 

Yeah, October's going to be... expensive...

~~~

As much as I don't feel aligned with SWTOR at the moment, I still feel a considerable amount of attachment to it, largely due to the community I am part of and the friends I have come to know through it. I doubt I'll be walking away entirely anytime soon, but it's not great that I'm going to be taking a second break so soon after my last. I don't want to guess if this one will be longer or shorter than the previous one, as anything can and likely will happen. I'm giving myself this last week, to help where I can with my guild's efforts with TGW, and maybe just freeing myself from the concerns of progression-related nonsense for even a fortnight will be enough.

I don't really know where I would like things to go from here, realistically. It's unlikely that we'll get 7.2 much before November at this rate, and even if that does bring in better gear with crafting I for one am unlikely to want to focus on it. If all I want to do is log on to do social night each week, I certainly won't ever need more than I have, and full 330 is plenty already for that.

That's assuming I don't suddenly feel the urge to jump back into progression content. That's... that's unlikely to happen before 8.0, I would say, based on my current feelings towards the currently inescapable meta that the difficulty of the higher-end content is presently lending itself towards.

But you never know.