Thanks for Ziost.

[TGaP_Andrey]

I don't know why is there so much hate of Ziost. In fact it is the only really good planet in the game (maybe with Korriban on pair), especially the first phase. Such an atmosphere of death and despair 10/10 IGN, such design! And a nice story in addition without stupidly childish plot twists like "woo-hoo I've just killed Vitiate solo and saved the whole world and beauty princess!". The only sad thing was a very annoying bug with "Monolithic" quest, a shame, but it's still broken.

 

And that daily area nice too. It's not stupidly big like Hoth, it's not filled with countless astoundingly strong mobs like Corellia, in fact daily-Ziost is just fine for comfortable farming and admiring of dead horizonts of this dark planet.:

[Luinthoron]

Honestly, I love the Ziost daily area. I keep saying how much it reminds me of the Normandy crash site in the Mass Effect series. Quite a different atmosphere from the rest of the game and definitely a welcome change, similarly to the Theoretika.

[Mathiasstewart]

The cutscene between the phase change is amazing I really hope they keep going this route with KOTFE.

[CarpeSangrea]

I didn't realize there were people who didn't like it. It is currently my favorite zone in the game.

[Bobs_YourUncle]

Loved the story, hated the hype that there would be more to it later only to find out it was a cutscene. The dailies are boring. Too much travel and click, not enough hack and slash. I think ziost would have went over a lot better had they just released the whole thing at once even if they waited until may 4th.

[Icestar]

The dailies are boring

 

I have to agree Ziost daily zone is not what I expected, they can do so much more.

 

The story leading up to the dailys is good, but the daily area I can not find much motivation to do.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Icestar

[-Healius-]

I like Ziost but the quests are a bit rubbish, the speeder one is the worst one ever if you ask me :-)

[Elracor]

Well it's been a while since I was there and don't really intend to go back there:

 

1. Dailies on Ziost are rubbish
   
2. Even on PvP servers there's no PvP there
   
3. About 95% the same missions and dialogue for both factions
   
4. Took what, an hour to complete and is the only story content between April and October
   
5. None of the fights had any interesting mechanics
   
6. For some reason Bioware thinks the Colossal Monolith counts as a raid cluster and the fight itself is just another clusterf*ck of circle mechanics.
   
7. In SoR they finally bothered to collapse Classic + Basic comms into one currency for simplicity and versatility and then Ziost introduces another gear currency...
   
8. As Max_Killjoy mentions below, the permanent phase jump is annoying. Storywise it makes sense, but gameplay wise you're stopping players from accessing a lot of the small amount of daily content Ziost has, and makes it a lot more annoying to access Colossal Monolith on alts.
   

 

The story and atmosphere is good and all that but not to the point where I want to go back on a regular basis with alts.

Edited July 28, 2015 by MFollin

[Max_Killjoy]

My problem was that they threw away one of the most storied and important planets of Sith history on a quicky set of missions and then the permanent phase jump.

[Jerba]

I enjoy the daily area because the tasks are different from the other daily areas - kill 30 enemies, destroy 10 crates just gets old; the Ziost dailies feel much more enjoyable.

However, I don't like that Ziost is not on the priority transport terminal and there's no legacy perk for it. Considering how much time it takes to travel with the spaceship to Ziost, then go through the orbital station and skip the cutscenes, there's just too much time spent on traveling. Then there's the RNG on scanning the body ashes and competing for probe spawns.

If it would drop comparatively more credits to make up for that, than I would do the dailies more often but as it stands, we already have more than enough ways to farm credits in a more accessible way that the only reason to do Ziost would be for the decorations, and occasionally to enjoy those types of quests, but not to make credits.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Jerba

[Celise]

in an errie way the ziost area post emperor is actually more interesting then before. more quieter which is what i like anyways, it has a sense of impending doom about it as well. all those warnings from scourge proved to be completely relevant; the emperor would come back and cause a scene. how this ties up to the zakuul empire would be interesting to find out about.

[TGaP_Andrey]

Permanent phase jump was justified by the story as the only real logical way to proceed — deal with itl. I hope they will do the same with KotFE story. It will be obviously dumb if the only remnants of the Empire will be able running on DK along with Lord Zash's countless apprentices for example.

[TheSeventhJedi]

Wait - the OP isn't trolling? I'll never set foot on Ziost again. It was painfully bad.

[GrimAce]

I kinda like Ziost. It's handy as a sort of relaxing break mid-weekly run. I can run around, scan a few things, jump over a Monolith and go back to the other, more annoying weeklies (Makeb, I'm looking at you) feeling a bit refreshed.

[ForceWelder]

I like Ziost.

 

Quick, simple, and strait to the point.

 

All the solo quests can be done is less than 15 mins. It doesn't matter if you are a tank, healer, or DPS. And the number of mobs you need to kill can be counted on one hand and you might even have a few fingers to spare depending on your luck with the droids.

 

Also, if I have a choice between sticking through Yavin 4 to get a full set of 192 non-modified gear for a companion or running Ziost several times to get slight less better 190 (but modifiable gear) for my companions, I'll take the Ziost trips regardless. I'll take 15 mins a day, every day, over spending an hour on Yavin 4 each week.

 

With my gaming schedule, squeezing in 15 mins is easy. Squeezing in a solid hour of uninterrupted play is another - especially on a planet where my Repub toons are a minority faction on a PVP server (PoT5) all but dominated by Imps. Trying to do the dailies there is difficult at best when you have zero support and the land is crawling with Imps in full augmented DR sets.

 

But please ... don't take this as a complaint of the OWPVP on Yavin 4. It isn't. I am just stating that it is almost impossible for Repub players to get dailies done there ... that is all. It is a good place to do OWPVP currently, but playing Repub, it isn't were I would go to even try to complete dailies for companion gear.

 

As to why the Devs did this ...

 

I think there was supposed to be more to Ziost than what we got but this story line came to an end due to the expansion coming up. The devs simply went into a different direction. Ziost is just a casualty of that choice.

 

And who is to say that Ziost won't be one of the destinations in the new expansion?

 

We see the world now has a chard husk of its former self. But let several years advance and we may get a planet that is being terraformed to support life once again. The bio scans and the fissure probes give us a subtle hint that something is brewing.

[PavSalco]

Ziost's story was amazing. I loved the cutscenes with the emperor and how he trashed Lana and Theron. I felt his power. I hope the quality of cutscenes will be the same if not even better in KotFE. This planet gets hate just because how stupid it was to delay a cutscene to the next week. It got overhyped. People thought it would be new content with an additional hour to play and what we got was just a cutscene and daily hub.

[Darth_Wicked]

Ziost was underused. Simple as that.

 

When a new planet is featured in the game, you come to expect a certain wealth of content and scale that simply wasn't there. Ziost was the Gateway to the Empire, the crown jewel of Ajunta Pall's empire, which included the old Sith Citadel, not to mention it housed the HQ for the Ministry of Logistics.

 

And NOT a single one of those things was viewable or even mentioned throughout the experience.

 

For me, it would be like going to Yavin 4 and not getting to see the structures built by the Massassi, though said place is NOT exactly better either.

 

TL;DR: They like to feature lore-rich settings, yet they pretty much FAIL to capitalize on them. Yavin 4 and Ziost reveal as much.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Darth_Wicked

[ForceWelder]

My take on the dailies ...

 

Illum are too spread out. If they were all in the same area I would consider doing them. But unless you got a toon pushing close to 50 and can use some mods, there isn't even a reason to farm the Heroic area. Payout around $40k.

 

CZ-198 is a 15 min run as a DPS. Might take a little longer as a healer. But even the Heroic should be soloable by a 60 in good gear. Payout around $50k.

 

The Black Hole is a 30 - 40 min run (doing everything including trying to reach the other faction's loot chests). But beyond easy to do as a 60. Zero challenge. Also a nice payout of about $125k for everything.

 

Ziost is stupid and quick. 15 mins tops. Haven't crunched the numbers on the payout yet but over $50k. Not on the priority terminal yet though. (I put in a request for it, ticket doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere.)

 

Oricron is an hour long ordeal if you do everything including activating the pyramid. Light PVP zone (on my server). But payout is over $100k.

 

Yavin 4 takes over an hour if you include the Raven weekly as well. Heavy PVP zone. Great rewards for companions. Payout around $100k. Great place for level 11 resources as well. Harvesting there is some crafters' wet dream come true.

 

The other dailies ... don't do at all for one reason or another.

[RavenscarX]

I like Ziost. With the 6th Line and Walker elites I get 5-9k from each fight. Occasionally a Comm and/or a Holo Token...

I can rack up several hundred thousand in a short time,and it's fun (for me) to watch them fall (walkers).

Even the 190 gear drops,though not terribly important,are nice. They're usually greens but I do get blue earpieces,which beats buying them...

I just hate that finishing the last quest takes a calm place to farm from me,as I have never encountered any other place where elites drop so much...

[Amadahy]

I'm not much of a dailies person, but what I do remember of them I enjoyed.

 

As for the story on Ziost, it took a couple of play throughs (before the finale reveal) for me to really enjoy it. I think that final cut scene of Ziost is amazing and haunting. Additionally, it allowed us to really see what Vitiate is capable of. Which could lead in to something for KotFE like another "Forged Alliances" prelude to the expansion or even the first chapter or two.

[Lionflash]

I really like Ziost.

 

Great storytelling and cinematics. Some great scenes.

 

 

The monologue Vitiate has with you after your holocall to Marr or Saresh is absolutely awesome. The whole Ziost story is great because you fail.

 

Some great choices as well, The Lana / Theron at the end was a great one for my DS Consular who didn't like or trust Lana but giving Surro to the Lana could reveal valuable info, whereas Theron is someone who I trust but healing her mind seemed like it wouldn't yield much besides an anycdote.

 

Saresh's Agent was an interesting character / choice. The only issue I have is that my defector Agent couldn't say anything about him or to him.

 

But the fact that there was so many outcomes to his fate.

 

- Say nothing.

- Make him confess, let him escape

- Make him confess, kill him yourself

- Make him confess, let Lana force choke him over holocall (nice nod to Vader)

- Say nothing, kill him yourself, give Lana no explanation why, then tell her at the end that she let a double agent get close to her and get her to leave Sith Intelligence.

 

 

 

 

I think visually, Ziost is great aswell. If anyone takes the time to stop and look around at how well crafted every inch of it is. You can even spot details like a poor man god impaled by an undetonated missile against a wall. You see a group of civilians hidding behind rubble in a corner who seems to be trying to figure out what to do as one of them lies dead inside their circle. All of Vitiates pawns setting fire to the whole city... attacking citizens... destroying buildings...

 

It's short, but a great planet and bit of story.

[Monumenta]

When a new planet is featured in the game, you come to expect a certain wealth of content and scale that simply wasn't there.

 

Like Oricon, CZ, and Yavin IV? I'd say Ziost is right up there with those 3, maybe a little light on content but Ziost has the Monoliths.

 

Aren't Makeb and Rishi the only whole planets weve had added ever?

[Rafaman]

Ziost was fun. The story was fair at the beginning but ramped up nicely. The quest were ok, although they did try a few new things which I liked ie. the speeder the grapple etc. But the best part was the atmosphere on the planet after all was said and done. The lighting is off as in not quite right, everything is dead, and you can hear the decay. Great stuff.

 

The dailies are, meh. Better then kill 40 now kill 50 I guess, but there could be more to them. Monolith and the WB are good fun.

 

All in all? I give it 6/10. Good enough for what it is, a bit of story with some quest filler. Not quite Oricon though but worth the effort.

[Darth_Wicked]

Like Oricon, CZ, and Yavin IV? I'd say Ziost is right up there with those 3, maybe a little light on content but Ziost has the Monoliths.

 

Aren't Makeb and Rishi the only whole planets weve had added ever?

 

Those are moons. Ziost is a planet.

 

Until Ziost, Bioware ALWAYS made an effort -- a conscious one I believe -- to feature moons as daily areas and planets as EXACTLY that: full-fledged planets, the latter featuring quite a wealth of content.

 

Ziost broke the mold.

 

At the end of the day, exploration was non-existent, and the story was poorly spread out throughout small and secluded areas. NOT only that but as mentioned earlier, none of the planet's hallmarks, such as the Sith Citadel, made an appearance at all.

 

It should also be noted we get to see a Dark Temple-like structure in the distance, serving no purpose whatsoever, together with its neighboring siblings. Appaling.

[Jerba]

Those are moons. Ziost is a planet.

 

Until Ziost, Bioware ALWAYS made an effort -- a conscious one I believe -- to feature moons as daily areas and planets as EXACTLY that: full-fledged planets, the latter featuring quite a wealth of content.

Except that Nar Shaddaa is also a moon. I don't think there's any pattern to whether something is a moon or a planet.