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. 

Queue Wars Celebration: Redux!

Star Wars Celebration returned to the UK last week for the third time, last being here in 2016 (and before that, 2007). I attended the 2016 convention, and came away with a not-too-positive impression.

This was due to numerous factors, all of which were due to bizarre flaws in the management of the thing.

Firstly, if you wanted to attend a panel and weren't guaranteed a spot unless you had a VIP pass (if that's even how that worked back then), you had to queue up each morning for wristbands. Trouble is, because people literally brought sleeping bags with them to queue overnight, those wristbands were snapped up very quickly. The only thing I was able to attend by way of panels in 2016 was the cosplay competition, as all the "big" things had of course gone already.

Secondly, when it came to photo opportunities, they only had one photo booth and its queue was in between the autograph sections and the special celebration store. This meant one of two things. Firstly, if a celebrity was delayed for whatever reason, even if just getting through "just a few more!", that slowed everything else down. Secondly, the poor staff had to cope with tonnes of ambient noise, and they had no technology like megaphones or "you are x minutes away" boards to help.

Ironically, the celebration store queue did have those boards. Priorities?

Thirdly, and let's be honest here, there really wasn't a lot going on for Star Wars at the time. Yes, The Force Awakens had been released a few months prior, Rogue One was due to come out later that year, and Rebels series 3 was also on the cards. That was pretty much it.

Compare that to 2023. We've had four further films throughout those years, Mandalorian's in full swing, Clone Wars and Rebels have both ended officially, Andor's first series aired to an incredible response with its second series much looked-forward-to, Ahsoka has her own series upcoming, Bad Batch is doing very well, we've had Hayden and Ewan back as Anakin and Obi-Wan in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that's not even mentioning the numerous other projects coming in 2024 and beyond!

Point is, as far as exciting new or recent stuff is confirmed, 2023 had a lot more going for it than 2016 in terms of activity potentials.

Indeed, back in 2016 I actually ended up calling the whole thing quits after the second day despite being eligible to attend through all three. Granted, I had some extra incentive as I had an invitation to attend a friend's birthday meal, but even without that I think I still would have said enough was enough. With limited opportunities to even glimpse a 'big' panel wristband unless it was already attached to someone's wrist, there just was not enough there to justify staying.

Roll on 2023. What's different, and what's stayed the same?

Galactic Season 4 - Further Thoughts

In my last post, I made it clear that I wasn’t factoring in my feelings of burnout in my assessment of the fourth Galactic Season. Instead, I was trying to look at it from as unbiased a perspective as possible, since it cannot be denied that burnout has a very noticeable impact on one’s willingness to engage with certain systems.

Having had a few days to think about things since that post, I wanted to jot down my unfiltered feelings on the season as things stand right now.

~~~

While I finished GS3 in early February, a full month before the actual season itself ended, GS4 has come far too soon for my liking. Even with a gap seven weeks between my finishing the previous season and this current one starting, the break was nowhere near long enough to be properly enjoyable. Granted, some part of that is because even when ‘done’ with seasons you’re still seeing its UI pop up all over the place, so you always get some sense that it’s very much active until the end.

While I do not participate in anything like progression raiding or PvP – truthfully, I entirely avoided making any progress whatsoever on the first PvP season! – which helps eat into the time I have available in a given week, engaging with seasons for 14-and-a-half weeks still takes the wind out of my sails for a bit. Some cooldown time is incredibly important following that time, and whether the downtime was seven weeks or three weeks, the downtime between GS3 and GS4 has just been far too short.

Indeed, largely courtesy of GS3, I was leaning towards taking another extended break from the game. I have quite happily settled into a regime of not playing too much, following on from the numerous posts I made on that subject last year, which I am very happy with, but even with that focusing on just doing a collection of bits and bobs for a good three months is quite some task.

Alas, courtesy of the seasons’ current fondness of introducing some measures of FOMO with its exclusive “do everything!” achievement rewards, taking any form of break is a risky endeavour. Sure, at this point it’s probably fine, it’s still early days after all, but since this season seems to last a good week or two less than prior seasons (most are 150+ - this one started with 139 days to go!), one cannot really enjoy a ‘true’ break for very long.

And, sure, nobody “forces” any of us to complete everything, it’s all optional. It’s still a far more pleasing result doing everything prior to a season’s end than missing out on, say, a reputation faction which is incredibly painful to grind for when relying on mob drops alone. As I’ve got at before, woe betide anyone who comes to any of these seasons “too late” to actually make meaningful progress on a reputation track before the season ends.

Plus, until we know for sure whether or not BioWare actually intend to re-run any seasons, even if just as an add-on of sorts to a future season, we have absolutely no idea whether or not everything that gets missed out on will become available again in future.

So, yes, all this is optional… but it’s a right bloody nuisance if it’s not able to be completed for whatever reason.

I guess that ultimately, my concern is just what all of this seasonal nonsense means for my love of this game. I get that grinding is part of an MMO, of course it is, but there’s a massive difference between running the same daily zone or flashpoint for the hundredth time because it’s a personal favourite and having to run them because it’s one of the things to be ticked off on certain weeks.

Honestly, that was one of the things I really disliked about the early 7.0 days with flashpoints and weekly zone missions all being restricted to a select few. Fortunately, those have been undone – even if the result is admittedly more painful for Galactic Seasons when queuing randomly for flashpoints. Sure, the others were still accessible somehow, but the game was still telling us “no, no – you don’t do what’s fun for you, you do only what we’ve selected for you!”.

I still eagerly await the day when operation missions return to the way they used to be. I get that they’re the way they are now because of how important they were for gearing and BW didn’t want everyone to do the last boss of EV every single week for a crate, so I’m not envisaging a return to the old system while the current gearing systems exist. It would just be nice to have all weeklies accessible again regardless of week.

At the same time, I do acknowledge that certain world bosses being part of the seasonal rota means that they actually get some love, whereas previously they had been completely and utterly ignored outside of the occasional guild event and the Feast of Prosperity.

As you can probably tell, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I really like seasons for reintroducing some stuff to the playerbase, but on the other I really don’t like having several options for what I would choose to do for fun basically ruled out as meaningful activities other than potentially for getting kills with the season companion whenever that objective pops up or for grinding any required Conquest points.

Plus, sometimes you just want to have a quiet week for whatever reason, and having little choice but to fit in with a crowd doing the same activities as you can be very much counter to that mindset.

I’m just glad that GSF isn’t part of the PvP seasonal system, to be honest. I only tend to hop into it whenever I really feel like it, itself something of a rare occurrence, and I think I would stop doing GSF during those twelve weeks altogether if it was.

~~~

As I say, all this is just unfiltered. It’s a confused, jumbled mess, because honestly that just sums up my feelings of seasonal systems at the moment.

I am dubious of BW having much capability of drastically shaking up the core system again, much like how they did with GS2 after GS1 as, disillusionment and the like aside, I feel that the current system is pretty much as good as they can make it. The extra stuff like the reputation tracks etc., those definitely need some reworking now.

Sure, they can reduce the number of available weeklies, but that would only worsen the feelings of restrictiveness that occasionally arise. Sure, they can put more weighting behind the points offered by each weekly, thus being able to both reduce the number required each week and still keep ten open, but that would make it worse for the odd few weeks where there aren’t any “bad” objectives, and it wouldn’t be a good look only having 50% of the available objectives be completable.

So… apart from maybe spicing up some of the available objectives like having a 5 / 5 split between completing both warzones and arenas or introducing more generic objectives like “complete any flashpoints in activity finder”, I don’t really see there being much they can realistically do to shake things up going forward. The system works – it’s just easy to become disillusioned with something the more times one repeats it.

Fortunately, things aren’t as bad as the Knights of the Fallen Empire / Eternal Throne days yet. It would take something truly special to return to how tedious those expansions were in retrospect...

Still, I’m finding myself questioning more and more how much these rather intensive periods are impacting my love of SWTOR. I don’t see Galactic Seasons being a catalyst for quitting altogether anytime soon, but it certainly isn’t great that my first thought upon finishing a season is “great, I can take a much-needed break now…”.

Oh well.