More Repeating of the Repetitive Grind

On yesterday's Stream, BioWare delved more into one of the slightly more interesting points of Eternal Throne: Chapter Difficulties.

Basically, each Chapter now has two difficulty modes: Story and Veteran (although a third, Master, will come out at a later date of course). Veteran Mode is designed to be done with mid-tier endgame gear and an Influence 20 Companion (apparently having been tested with a DPS character and a Healer Companion), and scales to your Level, suggesting that it can also be done on the first playthrough of a Chapter to provide more of a challenge.

Each Chapter will also be repeatable, allowing you to experience the same story content over and over again if you so desire.

The ability to replay story content, as well as a more difficult version thereof, is something which several voices have called out for in the past, with one particular request for us to do our entire Class Story at relevant 'endgame' level for therapeutic and challenging reasons.

To see it happen with KotFE and KotET is interesting, but at the same time quite disheartening. A lot of people refer to playing KotFE time and time again on different alts as an absolute chore, and now we have the ability to do so on characters who have already experienced the story.

Choices we've already made stick the course, so making different choices this time around only serves to allow you to see what could have gone differently for that character (but only in the moment; you can't 'fake' a playthrough which results in a romanced Koth if in your actual playthrough he was driven away from your side).

On the plus side, for completionists (such as myself) who missed out on either map completion or Codex entries (like that one in the Asylum alleyway, grrr), this provides the perfect opportunity to go back and pick them up just because.

I do have to say, I am slightly disappointed that the HK Chapter won't be available in either Veteran or Master mode. It's probably the most 'fair' Chapter given that everyone has the same skill set and there can't be any real class bias, but at the same time playing as HK isn't exactly something which many people are willing to learn a proper rotation for, so it perhaps would be harder to align this Chapter with its fellows based on this fact alone.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Veteran (and later, Master) mode brings to the table. I have a nasty feeling that it's purely going to be increased damage with no new mechanics, but then again it could be that increased health results in more mechanics coming forward that people were just able to blitz past before now.

We'll have to wait and see.

I am curious to know how Healer players in particular will cope with this. Companions can be fairly squishy and a low-Influence DPS Companion doesn't have nearly anywhere near enough DPS output to kill things quickly, so while Veteran Mode may still be fairly simple, Master Mode (assuming that this difficulty will be at Level 70 and requiring gear, that is, which would explain why it's being delayed) could well be absolutely brutal for them.

The End of the Alliance Alert?

The Alliance Alert has so far been the most useful means of recruiting former Companions to our side and get them to serve the Alliance.

I have a post planned for the KotFE Retrospective series which will look back over the various Alerts and state which ones were my favourite or least favourite, but this will need to wait of course until the final one for the season. Whichever one this may be, because with Zenith's mission having been lost in the pipeline momentarily this may or may not reappear before Eternal Throne.

Something which I brought up in my most recent post made me think seriously about the future of this system. With the sole exceptions of Khem Val, Lord Scourge, and Tharan Cedrax, all of the returning Companions are Romance options, which means that there is a greater precedent - if not an outright guarantee - for their appearance in the overall 'main' story.

Certainly, given that the Alerts are disliked by several people due to us becoming the Revan-esque silent protagonist after hearing their voices for so long, the reaction to encountering a potential sweetheart and hearing nothing coming from our characters' mouths will not be pleasant, so it's 'safer' for the powers-that-be to eliminate this as a possibility.

Which then leaves us with the quandary; with only three non-Romanceable Companions left, is there much future for the Alliance Alert?

Thoughts on 4.4 [Spoiler-Free]

Another update, another month.

4.4 brings quite a few things of interest; Chapter XIII, the Eternal Championship, and returning unique gear-sets now made BoL. It's quite a slim update, but there's still quite a bit to talk about.

Thoughts on 4.3 [Spoiler-Free]

Another month, another update.

4.3 brings with it many changes and new features, including quality-of-life changes to Guilds and Strongholds, and the first new 8-player Warzone since Patch 1.6 in 2012 brought us Ancient Hypergates. Oh, and it also provided perhaps the most interesting Fallen Empire chapter yet.

There's a lot to dive into, so let's get started!

Thoughts on 4.1 [Spoiler-Free]

After a lot of hassle, 4.1 and Chapter X finally launched earlier this week, setting in motion the final 'half' of the first season of Fallen Empire. It also brought with it a few other things, including two Alliance Alerts, and some very welcome Quality of Life change. I already touched on the crafting changes when they were first announced and there is no reason to touch upon them once again.

Without any significant spoilers, how do these hold up?

4.0 Impressions: The Characters

One of the strongest anchor points of any BioWare RPG, alongside the story, is the cast of characters thrown into the mix. The character list of Fallen Empire is no exception to this, providing a slew of decent, entertaining, and interesting characters onto the already quite sizeable pile of characters one can encounter in this game.

Before I begin, this list is only looking at the main characters/followers and villians in order of appearance; the various Alliance Specialists and related Companions will get their own post next week.

4.0 Impressions: Universal System Changes

So 4.0 has finally hit and whilst not everyone has access to the story, which I shall cover next week, or Level 65, everyone has access to the changed systems such as Companions and Level-Sync. This is just to look over what has changed and what my feelings are on the matter.

The Imminent Falling Empire

So, here we are, just a few short days away from Knights of the Fallen Empire. 3.0 still feels like it hit only relatively recently and yet already we're preparing to embark on yet another expansion, and one that's changing so much more about this game than any update that came before it.

At this late stage I've been keeping myself busy by acquiring various bits of armour and armaments for Companions, mostly from the GTN and Cartel Market; I would write a blog-post about that, but it would be an incredibly boring read even with pictures. No reason to do anything more than that as far as I'm concerned since I like to get a feel for the new systems on one geared character long before worrying about managing the gear of other characters for their inevitable playthrough.

I'm looking forward to it. The story promises to be one of the most compelling and captivating "universal" stories done in an MMO - at least on the first run-through but much like Shadow of Revan people would likely only be able to tolerate a few repeats at most - and the level-sync system should hopefully pave the way for reasons to return to former planets in the story and complete aid missions to add more context to the galaxy's turmoil under Zakuul. At least, I hope they make use of it for that and it won't only be a feature just for the sake of it being a feature.

Other than that, I'm curious to see how the new Companion system is realised and exactly what difference higher levels of Influence will have on their performance, especially when coupled with maximum Presence which is, admittedly, likely to pale somewhat in comparison to the Influence "bolster". I'll also be keeping an eye on the new Hard Mode for Red Reaper, something which a lot of people - myself included - have been requesting for a long time.

I likely won't be making much or any use of the updated Crafting system outside of training some of the new BioChem stuff, but that's because I'm not particularly big on it to begin with. Hopefully certain changes won't prove too problematic in practice for those that are, since I'm aware that there's already some controversy surrounding some of the decisions made, notably the decision to take away Enhancements and Armorings from Artificers and Cybertechs, respectively. Not my scene, though, so I'll leave it at that.

Knights of the Fallen Empire is going to be an interesting expansion, that's for sure. Exactly how successful it is going to be depends entirely on whether the story is as captivating as BioWare has promised it is going to be. I don't have any doubts about that myself, but considering that this is the only new content in a game with otherwise re-relevant "old" content, this is doubtless going to be the main keystone holding everything together for quite a few months to come.

The Companions, They Are a-Changin'

The PAX Prime Livestream has recently shed light on numerous factors. First, actual gameplay - and some "interesting" story developments - of Fallen Empire, set in Chapter 3, and second, various changes coming to one of the most long-standing functions of the game: Companions.

Companions are a big thing in many of BioWare's games, so obviously these changes have attracted a lot of interest. There are still questions to be answered, but from what we know so far here is my own analysis of the changes which are being introduced.