Some 3.2 feedback....

[Bachannal]

I wanted to take some time and offer some feedback about my initial feelings of the 3.2 update.

 

The good:

 

Overall, I'm actually fairly pleased. I have only taken one toon through Ziost thus far, and I enjoyed the storyline. I hope however, that more quests are added to the areas I went through above what I have done thus far, because it seems like there are some under-utilized areas, and you can more or less breeze through the mobs if you're in decent gear, which I am guessing a lot of us are at this point.

 

I *love* outfit designer. I'm an OCD gear changer, so the ability to craft looks that I can switch back and forth between without incurring the ungodly costs of mod removal is fantastic. I found the prices to unlock what I have thus far (only 5 outfits) to be pretty reasonable as well. I am sure it gets way pricier the more you unlock, but even *I'm* not that OCD, lol.

 

The travel unlock stuff...couldn't be happier about that.

 

 

The bad:

 

Holding back an entire area of Ziost until May 4th? Really? That's kind of lame.

 

I actually think the mobs are wussy this time around...they could stand to be a bit tougher imo. The bosses are likewise pretty much easy to kill. I might get through one rotation before one is downed.

 

I actually like the maps after running through them in terms of look - but so many areas feel cramped, are oddly laid out, and lend themselves to people tripping all over each other trying to do quests - which - is a PITA when you have so many people in such tight quarters. This goes to my earlier point of some of the under-utilized areas. Add more stuff to do so perhaps peoples quests won't overlap quite as much, or at least kind of force people to spread out away from each other a bit. I daresay it's worse than the Yavin temple areas for being overfarmed.

 

 

Anyway...until I can get other classes/factions through Ziost, and until I have seen what awaits May 4th, I can't really say much more. I think it's a solid effort overall. I like that they give us something that feels slightly more substantive in terms of story.

 

7/10

Edited April 28, 2015 by Bachannal

[DreadtechSavant]

Nice review!

 

Nothing to add. Except like the new basic commendation costs for armour and item boxes from venders.

Edited April 28, 2015 by DreadtechSavant

[BrianDavion]

I actually think the mobs are wussy this time around...they could stand to be a bit tougher imo. The bosses are likewise pretty much easy to kill. I might get through one rotation before one is downed.

 

I'm curious what gear you're sporting. as I'm assuming BW's wanting this to be usable by someone with a set of unaugmented rishi gear so if you're in say... full 192s, like I am, they should be reasonably easy

[DreadtechSavant]

On the test sever I was in 186 gear with a few augments added but not on all items. it was doable. Which I might add was ok for me as I am a solo player, so was thankful and am not complaining but agree with the OP that there could be slightly more powerful boss's, but no need to go overboard if you (bioware) do make changes.

[Infernixx]

I'll throw in a few of my own thoughts here, rather than make my own thread.

 

The flow is decent and the cut scenes, especially the space ones, continue to improve and they're lightyears beyond what we saw at launch.

 

I generally got the feeling that the quest rewards are geared toward fresh 60s. Which is nice and all, but there's nothing but 190 gear on the Ziost vendor. No mounts, no pets, no decos, no armor sets, nothing but gear that experienced players will not need.

 

I wanted to go romp and stomp on some monoliths or my Rockcrusher title, but apparently they're locked behind the May 4th wall.

 

I enjoy seeing the 55 Operations having a purpose again. It was a terrible idea to remove Ultimate comms from their drops to try and slow the player base's over all gear progression by limiting the amount of Ultimates they could farm per week.

 

I enjoy seeing GF being back to 8mans. I just feel like that's the best size for pick up groups of strangers.

 

I'm glad to see that Blood Hunt HM was tweaked to be a bit easier on healers. It's discouraging seeing groups silently disband rather than try the first boss.

 

Little disappointed in the Grand Nightlife Pack. Clearly, it's designed to try and get people to buy a 1,000cc pack that 'might' have a Rancor in it.

 

I do appreciate the change to crafting menus.

 

Of course, the changes to the Traveling options are most welcome.

 

If I had anything to suggest, it'd be to come up with a list of non-gear related items to grind for on Ziost, especially if we're expected to spend more than a week there before forgetting about it.

[Bachannal]

I'll throw in a few of my own thoughts here, rather than make my own thread.

 

The flow is decent and the cut scenes, especially the space ones, continue to improve and they're lightyears beyond what we saw at launch.

 

I generally got the feeling that the quest rewards are geared toward fresh 60s. Which is nice and all, but there's nothing but 190 gear on the Ziost vendor. No mounts, no pets, no decos, no armor sets, nothing but gear that experienced players will not need.

 

I wanted to go romp and stomp on some monoliths or my Rockcrusher title, but apparently they're locked behind the May 4th wall.

 

I enjoy seeing the 55 Operations having a purpose again. It was a terrible idea to remove Ultimate comms from their drops to try and slow the player base's over all gear progression by limiting the amount of Ultimates they could farm per week.

 

I enjoy seeing GF being back to 8mans. I just feel like that's the best size for pick up groups of strangers.

 

I'm glad to see that Blood Hunt HM was tweaked to be a bit easier on healers. It's discouraging seeing groups silently disband rather than try the first boss.

 

Little disappointed in the Grand Nightlife Pack. Clearly, it's designed to try and get people to buy a 1,000cc pack that 'might' have a Rancor in it.

 

I do appreciate the change to crafting menus.

 

Of course, the changes to the Traveling options are most welcome.

 

If I had anything to suggest, it'd be to come up with a list of non-gear related items to grind for on Ziost, especially if we're expected to spend more than a week there before forgetting about it.

 

 

I didn't even know about/notice a couple of the things you mentioned, like the new crafting menu - which is WAY better! Wow.

 

I think I like this update.

[narasiltwo]

I haven't been to Ziost yet, but I'm not happy that they removed basic comms from any flaspoint you can do at level 60. Leaves those of us not fully in 186 at a disadvantage and having to jump from178 directly to 192...which is frankly stupid.

[PLynkes]

The bosses are likewise pretty much easy to kill.

 

At least one person on the Red Eclipse last night didn't think so. He was spamming "Pleeeeeeaaaase help me kill Master Surro!" in chat for ages.

 

Light Side choice would I guess have been to help him, either by actually aiding him in the fight or giving him some advice. Dark Side would be to ridicule him in General Chat. But I was tired so I picked the neutral option of switching off the computer and going to bed.

Edited April 29, 2015 by PLynkes

[t-darko]

Holding back an entire area of Ziost until May 4th? Really? That's kind of lame.

 

[Aries_cz]

I'm curious what gear you're sporting. as I'm assuming BW's wanting this to be usable by someone with a set of unaugmented rishi gear so if you're in say... full 192s, like I am, they should be reasonably easy

 

Probably this. I guess that if one was in the blue drops from SoR story, it might be a bit more difficult

[Gonalius]

I actually think the mobs are wussy this time around...they could stand to be a bit tougher imo. The bosses are likewise pretty much easy to kill. I might get through one rotation before one is downed.

 

The problem with adding new areas to the game, is that they have to be new-player friendly, so balanced for a new character who's just played through the content just the once, and not stopped to farm the best equipment... Or at least that's the logic behind it.

[Zoidrinali]

A shame there's not a mob bolster to boost them up accordingly depending on the level of your charcter's gear. I was just using my pvp gear and was far too easy. I could probably complete this on my imperial agent with ease and he's got worse gear than my sniper.

[xxBRALIKxx]

Agreed that the mobs on Ziost are cake but i like the story. My 192 shadow tank breezed it. When i take my geared sin in there I will prob just run right through these mobs, stopping only to loot lol. I was expecting more. It feels like some of the mobs on Oricon are even a bit stronger.

 

And i hate the new craft menu. I'd hardly call it new either. All they did was auto collapse the trees. It sucked before the change but at least it would remember the last item i was crafting. Now it resets, fully collapsed on each open, forcing me to dig through the list every single time. If they wanna help, go back to how it was and make the default sort "level" or at least "Alphabetical". Sorting by "Difficulty" is useless, imo

 

LOVE the travel options! The 8 man GF is now as it should be - breathing much needed life into allies chat. All the additional comms all around will alleviate a lot of my end game frustration. I think this will also attract more players to the Qs and give us faster pops overall. One hour waits on the GF as a tank is just obscene. See, BW CAN get some things right

[ZionHalcyon]

I haven't yet been to Ziost yet. However, can I say I LOVE, LOVE LOVE the travel options?

 

It makes the original game far less a pain in the ***. Having polished off Hoth last night too, I LOVE the new Comm rewards from class quests. I wish they would extend those to the side quests as well. Picking up 8-12 comms for completing a quest actually allows for gear and to "level up".

 

 

To be honest, those are the 2 biggest QOL changes for me.

 

Although I love the costume designer - I can pick my outfit and not incur costs for modswapping other than weapons - VERY nice. Although this is a bit of a pain to collect gear for my toons and move their primary outfit to the display outfit.

 

I don't know if its a technical limitation, but I'd prefer for the display tab to have a "bleed through" effect - as in, lets say you want to move your display chest to the display tab to keep the appearance but stock better gear on your toon. If you do that, then the other items you haven't replaced yet can no longer color-bind to that chest piece. That's my next minor QoL gripe. Although, this is mostly an issue with existing toons. New rolls that have outfits pre-planned should have no such issues.

 

On the whole, I really do find myself wanting even more basic comms - unless the one side quest I took on hoth last night (yielding only 1 basic com) was just an outlier, and they did address quests not of the main story with more comms.

[GadgetDon]

I've been negative on the content decisions, but let me start by saying I love the new QoL changes, very nice. Appreciate the changes to comms and 8 person GF, should make ops at level 60 much more common.

 

As for the content:

 

Mainline story that we got isn't bad, but I didn't find it particularly great. No disputing taste. Didn't run into any noticeable bugs and all until the apparent bug that wasn't bug but sure looked like it (more later)

 

The side missions for evacuation landing zone are way out of the area where you're doing at least the empire mainline story. Moving the mission granters closer to the main action would've been useful.

 

The split: I've ranted in other theads about how I don't like the split. I don't. This sort of staggered release doesn't really do anything for the game or the players, particularly when it's just one week. If they had done, say, a four part story, each part released every two weeks with a new patch, that could be useful. But what they did is just a stunt.

 

But if they're going to split stories, they did it in the worst way possible.

 

(1) Tell the players what you're going to do. Some people have pointed to a comment at the cantina that might sorta been a way to talk about what's happening, but that's not telling the players. Make it clear. Part 1 unlocks on this day, Part 2 unlocks on this day.

 

(2) Put the split in the content. Some sort of "to be continued..." line. Make it clear, when you hit the stopping point, you know you've hit a stopping point. Don't give us the first mission of part 2 with an error message that looks like "bug" instead of "come back next week"

 

(3) The split needs to end on an accomplishment, a win for the player. Or, if your story telling is wanting to go dark, a major loss for the player, everything's gone wrong and the universe is going to end. Give Part 1 an ending, not the final ending but a sense that things have stopped.

[DawnAskham]

I'm curious what gear you're sporting. as I'm assuming BW's wanting this to be usable by someone with a set of unaugmented rishi gear so if you're in say... full 192s, like I am, they should be reasonably easy

 

I did Ziost on a fresh 60 (first character on a new server) wearing the 178 gear from Rishi / Yavin (whatever I got as a mission reward - never bought any mods directly), and never felt in danger. Took about an hour and a half, most watching cut scenes.

 

It was certainly a far cry from the challenge of doing Oricon on a fresh 55, though I wouldn't complain as it is gearing / story content - if I want a real challenge, there are content with that purpose such as HM 60s and Ops.