5.0: Another Year Later

So here we are. The 5.0 patch cycle has now started its third and hopefully final year of life. This is the only expansion in SWtOR's nigh-seven-year history to have completed two full years, and it's certainly been an interesting ride.

As some of you may recall exactly one year ago I published an article looking over 5.0's then-present history. As I described, the first year of 5.0 resulted in nearly every single game activity or function receiving something new. Has the second year managed to accomplish a similar feat or does it feel severely lacking in comparison?

Let's find out!

5.5: The Cosmetic Touch-Up Patch

There seems to be a common trend in several of the 5.5 changes. Outside of Class Balance changes and the GSF changes in particular, the majority of the changes made relate to cosmetic changes. The Cartel Market and Inventory got a visual update, more Companion Customisations were made available, and of course the server list got its new truncated look a few weeks too early.

Just in general, there's a lot of changes to talk about with 5.5, so let's get started.

Satele Shan's Vent of Defiance: A Look at Recent Cartel Trends

Time to talk about that Cartel Market thing again.

Everyone knows about in-game cash shops and the various issues that come with them. SWtOR's is of course infamous for the Cartel Packs chock-full of different items of varying rarity which subject anyone who invests in them to dealing with the harsh mistress which is RNG.

Over the last couple of years, some of these exclusive and rare items have slowly but surely trickled their way out of the Packs, with the only really unique example being the Tythian Lightsaber Pike, which is a very rare drop from its owner himself. The more... interesting... examples involve items which are put up for direct sale.

Items in the past which have seen this treatment have included the Temple Guardian and XoXaan armour sets, the Ziost Guardian's Lightsaber, the Eliminator's Dual-Edge Vibrosword, and the Dune Sea Bantha.

Regardless of the appeal for some of these items, it can't be denied that they pale so very hard in comparison to three of the more-recent direct-sale transferees.

A couple of months ago the Unstable Arbiter's Lightsaber - which eventually became the first Platinum rarity item - was put up for the whopping price of 7,600 Cartel Coins, while in the last fortnight we've seen the Defiant Vented Lightsaber (initially 5,700 CC before rising to 7,600 CC) and Satele Shan's armour (2,132 CC before rising to 2,600 CC) be added.

No matter your opinion on this behaviour or their reasoning behind it (can't get enough money, be so skint from lack of Subscriptions that they need the Cartel Market, or just because they run an internal betting market based on how many people give in and purchase these items; you know the sorta stuff the internet can come up with), you can't deny that this is the sort of thing which would captivate people's attention.

In particular, the initial discounts on the Defiant Vented and Satele Shan items seems to apply some form of psychological pressure beyond the fact that these items were only meant to last a week before being taken down; it's first a case of buying it before it's 'too late' and the price rises, and then it's just 'too late' in general. Psychological trickery is a key part of parting people with disposable income of their money, after all. NeverWinter Online does something similar with its "20% off Companions" (etc.) vouchers for the Zen Market.

Especially when the Satele Shan set - one of the most sought-after armour sets of all time for some reason (hint: thigh-high boots) - is the unexpectedly 'fair' price that it was, particularly compared to the very high price of the arguably less popular Defiant Vented lightsaber the week prior. Heck, even its non-discounted price of 2,600 CC isn't as bad as it could have been!

The main question I ask of such practice is who the 'main audience' is. There are those - like myself, I must admit - who just want to say that they have the item in-hand for any eventual possibilities, there are those who just want to collect everything even if they never find a use it, and then there are those who feverishly purchase everything they can and compulsively unlock them for their various Characters and Companions to use.

The 'true' answer is subjective, but you know they've won people over when you see a Trooper run by wearing Satele's armour accompanied by their Vette who is also donned thus.

~~~

Regardless of your views on the practice of putting once-rare items on the Cartel Market, a weapon of a similar design to that wielded by the main villain in a Star Wars main-Saga film did make sense as a direct-purchase item for Star Wars Day week. The choice of Satele Shan's garb is pretty much open to interpretation more than anything else since, of course, no movie connections can be made.

This move is undoubtedly proving popular in certain circles. I'm curious to know how many people purchased both that set and the lightsaber.

On a similar note, it's fascinating to see BioWare returning to the ill-fated "no more bronze items" policy regarding the aforementioned Cartel Packs. This move proved unpopular due to the higher price of unlocking silvers compared to bronze so they swiftly retreated from it, but now they've returned to it. On-paper this 'promises' better chances at getting rare items (especially since Chance Cubes are now guaranteed items rather than a part of the overall draw), but I don't think this return will prove awfully wise.

Time will tell, of course. It does make a habit of doing so.

A Hairy Situation

It's been a while since I made a post with a pun for its title, and I'm sure that you've instantly worked out what this post will be about.

We last received new hairstyles as drip-feeds throughout 3.0, with the results being the quite-decent specimens of Pigtails, Double-Braided, and Shaggy, the bizarre specimens of Pompadour and whatever that unnamed short female hairstyle is, and the "what-the..." specimens of Afro, Dreadlocks, and... shudder... Undercut.

Now, for the first time since the first hairstyle bundle was released immediately after the Appearance Designer made its long-awaited arrival, an entirely new hairstyle bundle has been added to the Cartel Market. Compared to the previous one, this one offers a slightly more disappointing range of additions, since whilst the previous one included four hairstyles (two female, one male, and one unisex), this one offers only three (I know, one fewer, how will we cope?), two of which are unisex whilst the third is a female-only style.

The Companion Comparison: The 'Bog Standard' vs. The Cartel Beasts

Of all the Companions we can get in 4.0, very few are as infamous as the Cartel Companions. These are unique creatures and droids which are for most intents and purposes standard Companions; they can Tank, they can DPS, and they can Heal. They can't be sent out on Crew Skills, but otherwise there's nothing that should be standing out.

I was helping a guildie with their Legacy of the Rakata HM requirement for Dark vs. Light the other day when we turned to discussing Companion Tanks. A third guildie who suggested this Flashpoint as the first was using their Vette to Tank (a crime almost as heinous as making T7 and Scourge Heal) rather than my dedicated Tank Bowdaar.

For those who don't know, when Vette tanks she doesn't 'animate' properly; when leaping she stays frozen in place for a few seconds and then magically teleports. Unfortunately, this also results in grouping-up being much harder since mobs will rush to her previous 'reported' position first and then follow her back.

One such pull led to us commenting on how Bowdaar would have made the pull more convenient, and the first guildie opined that the K'lor'slug would also be a viable option.

According to them, at Influence 50, their K'lor'slug Companion would outperform their own Influence 50 Bowdaar as a Tank. This piqued my interest because unlike the vast majority of Companions, some of the Cartel Companions have no weapon slot whatsoever. While equipment is largely no factor for Companions, a different grade of barrel or hilt will still increase damage readouts in the tooltips (and thus actual damage output as well).

Being the proud owner of an Influence 50 Nexu - I'm quite fond of felines in general - I decided to investigate this further.

Long story short, he's (mostly) absolutely correct.

"Crate Opening is Serious Business" - BioWare

The Cartel Market has nearly always been a difficult beast to tackle in a blog post. The majority of items have been fairly harmless cosmetics - barring the temporary inclusion of the Heroic Grade 7 Ship Components - and none have ever been more publicised than the infamous Cartel Packs.

Whilst these have functioned largely the same over the last four years, BioWare recently announced that they will be augmenting this system on Tuesday in Patch 4.7.

Basically, Cartel Packs and items will now have their own separate inventory system, from which packs can be opened and items reclaimed.

Instead of simply having the Cartel Pack land at your character's feet whilst they wave their arms in rigid gun-held-to-the-head jubilation, now a big black screen will superimpose itself over your game whilst a fancy little animation plays over opening the crates and four holocronesque cubes which then yield a picture of the armour set (even if it's just the supplementary box you receive) or vehicle or a simple diagram representing Decorations, Jawa scrap, or Companion Gifts.

We don't yet know what form Chance Cubes will take in this system, as the animation in the blog was almost certainly rigged to make it so that they didn't appear.

This having been done, the items will then go into an "Item Stash", from which any Character from your Legacy can retrieve the items. Got a Defiant Vented Lightsaber on your Gunslinger and don't want to wait for two days or spend 400 Cartel Coins so that your cherished Sage/Guardian/Commando's Lana Beniko can use it? Now you can just have them retrieve the Lightsaber from the stash, and nobody will be ever the wiser!

For people participating in the Dark vs. Light Event, this will also affect the special Bound packs that are given, meaning that rare items such as Satele Shan's Supplementary Armour Box (and its sole occupant, the belt) won't get locked on one character whilst another has the Upper and Lower Boxes anymore.

Indeed, this is clearly the catalyst for this system as it completely solves the issues that people were having if they completed it on different characters. Granted, this is something which could have been a non-issue if a lot of pre-planning had gone into things, but it's nice to see them tackling the issue nonetheless.

Unfortunately, this still leaves people who were treated 'unfairly' by this system high-and-dry with no way of 'fixing' the pieces of loot which they had received.

~~~

I rarely ever comment on Cartel stuff because it hasn't ever really been that interesting (for lack of a better word) to talk about, barring specific decorations which I have loved, but the changes to this system do have a smatter of potential. I love the idea of the Item Stash, particularly as it negates useless clutter and solves a fairly big problem with the Bound DvL Packs, something which I currently view as the biggest thing this new system has going for it even if this isn't a permanent affair.

On the other hand, it is surreal to see the Cartel Market receive such a massive overhaul at a time when people are complaining more and more about lack of content and other such concerns. To see the cash shop receive a fairly sizeable and actually potentially well-received quality-of-life change ahead of the aforementioned gripes and bug-fixes isn't exactly something that people want to see.

Of course, it doesn't help that this was announced on the same day that Conquest and the Priority Operation broke at the same time. This Conquest Week - which I believe was meant to be Emergency Operations - apparently also broke back in February, meaning that it hasn't worked once since 4.0. Not good timing for revealing this system, considering!

To summarise: It's a nice change, but perhaps wholly unnecessary outside of solving the issues with rare items from the DvL packs which could have been mostly negated by pre-planning anyway. I can't deny that resources could have been spent better elsewhere, but at this point it's clear that we can't predict what BioWare will come up with next at all.

Temples and Vrakes: Thoughts from the Deep Core

I haven't ever touched on the Cartel Market properly on this blog yet, and that's mainly because there hasn't yet been all that much which I have found particularly interesting to actually talk about. That is, until these last two weeks. The first thing which of course has impacted the Market and drastically increased its worth/value has been the Outfit Designer, but I'll refrain from talking about that yet again.

The second thing which happened is the release of the first of a hopefully very promising series of packs; the Deep Core Explorer's. I won't be reviewing the armour, weapons, or the majority of the mounts as I must admit that I don't think all that much of them, but there is a lot of future promise from what remains.