Taylir Gra'tua/Ruhnuk: The introduction of grinding and a sign of regression for SWTOR?

[Kabires]

Hi mates,

I have played SWTOR since 2013, with a pause for a year and so. I always loved the stories, the attention to detail, the fact that you had voices in the dialogue, etc. The grinding part didn't seem that bad. Now I am catching up with the Showdown on Ruhnuk and I must say that if the first part is excellent, the part where I have to catch Kur is grinding as hell. Literally, I have for a mission, objectives located on the four corners of the map. Once I complete those, the next mission has objectives in similar areas. Once that is completed, the next mission, guess what? Same thing. How many times should I do the same four or five locations for different objectives without a player feeling that this is only implemented to 'inflate' the gameplay?  It's the only expansion pack that I couldn't finish after one or two gameplays. It is so boring and repetitive that I can't finish it with fun. This is a clear example that the devs wanted to extend the gameplay at the cost of quality. Maybe they have a lower budget, or they got lazy but this is not the SWTOR I got used to. Not to mention that this expansion lacks a voice for our main character.
Sadly, even if I am a huge Star Wars fan, if I will see that this is the path they are taking on, I will cancel my subscription and uninstall the game. I will not support something that regresses in quality which  I hope isn't a sign that the game is dying slowly.

[Ardrossan]

57 minutes ago, Kabires said:

Hi mates,

I have played SWTOR since 2013, with a pause for a year and so. I always loved the stories, the attention to detail, the fact that you had voices in the dialogue, etc. The grinding part didn't seem that bad. Now I am catching up with the Showdown on Ruhnuk and I must say that if the first part is excellent, the part where I have to catch Kur is grinding as hell. Literally, I have for a mission, objectives located on the four corners of the map. Once I complete those, the next mission has objectives in similar areas. Once that is completed, the next mission, guess what? Same thing. How many times should I do the same four or five locations for different objectives without a player feeling that this is only implemented to 'inflate' the gameplay?  It's the only expansion pack that I couldn't finish after one or two gameplays. It is so boring and repetitive that I can't finish it with fun. This is a clear example that the devs wanted to extend the gameplay at the cost of quality. Maybe they have a lower budget, or they got lazy but this is not the SWTOR I got used to. Not to mention that this expansion lacks a voice for our main character.
Sadly, even if I am a huge Star Wars fan, if I will see that this is the path they are taking on, I will cancel my subscription and uninstall the game. I will not support something that regresses in quality which  I hope isn't a sign that the game is dying slowly.

I disliked the entire aspect of the Kur story. I was particularly annoyed that the mission immediately prior to the showdown has players going into an area crawling with gold and silver mobs just to get to the instance--it was easier to just die a couple times and respawn closer to the entrance than try to fight through them.

imo the entirety of Ruhnuk is set up to pad the gameplay with Makeb-style mob density. And that's the one area where I disagree with your post, because to me this is a mistake that bioware has made before and was forced to change due to massive player reaction, and here they are a decade later doing it again. If Ruhnuk goes the same way Makeb did, then in a few years--assuming the game survives that long--it will remove most of its overly complicated dailies too.  

The storyline for these dailies are also really dumb. Very few of my characters, even the most lightsided or friendly to mandalorians, give a crap about the 'feelings' of basilisk droids, much less have any desire for one. I wanted one in K2 when it was cool and integral to the plot, not in swtor when it's just going to be a crappy pet or mount. It's just the latest example of bioware profoundly misunderstanding why players loved the kotor games. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Eckrond]

My hope is that this is an attempt at adding longevity to the expansion that was just misplaced and hopefully will be met with a little bit more consideration in the future.  It is a fine line though, you want to create new areas, new environments, new dailies, but you walk a fine line of not falling into a cookie cutter template layout of a daily area.  Ruhnuk is a slog, and while that is not necessarily "fun" in and of itself, it gives it some semblance of identity, some terrains and environments simply will be more punishing.  It's a delicate thing when you demand the player's time for anything though.

I think more chase items would help diffuse player frustrations in grinding through all the mobs - loot drops with rare chance from the Ruhnuk mobs. As it stands, decos seem to drop here more than they did in Manaan, so that is a step in the right direction in my opinion at least, I wonder what the loot table for deco drops actually is tho, if we can get the higher tiered rep items as well, them still being tied to the reputation is a little disappointing though.

[StrikePrice]

The developer mindset seems to be twofold:

1. Slow the player down as much as possible
2. Re-use as much content as possible as many times as possible
3. Use slows, stuns, pushes, pulls, mezzes and any type of cc to slow combats down
4. Make bullet sponge enemies in large groups 

I guess they think they are fooling us into thinking there is more content than there actually is? There is no explanation for the design of Ruhnuk than to be intentionally confusing. It's grindy as heck and such a slog.

I agree -- it was fun up until that point. 

Edited April 28, 2023 by StrikePrice

[Strathkin]

On 4/26/2023 at 2:18 PM, Ardrossan said:

I disliked the entire aspect of the Kur story. I was particularly annoyed that the mission immediately prior to the showdown has players going into an area crawling with gold and silver mobs just to get to the instance--it was easier to just die a couple times and respawn closer to the entrance than try to fight through them.

...

The storyline for these dailies are also really dumb. Very few of my characters, even the most lightsided or friendly to mandalorians, give a crap about the 'feelings' of basilisk droids, much less have any desire for one. I wanted one in K2 when it was cool and integral to the plot, not in swtor when it's just going to be a crappy pet or mount. It's just the latest example of bioware profoundly misunderstanding why players loved the kotor games. 

I'd honestly love to abandon this mission for Taylir Gra'tua.  I also have zero interest in a Basilisk Droid, to me they are just a slightly oversized & large mount when I saw one at Fleet.  I originally started doing the quests on several characters, as I first thought it be a little ugly yet cute droid Companion. 

Well I was mostly greatly disappointed, when I discovered it was a big droid mount.  This mission should have always been an optional choice, so you could abandon it, and later pickup if & when you desired to do so.  They did that with HK-51 at Belsavis Section X requiring you to speak to the Droid in the Republic or Imperial Base there; and this is how they should have handled this as well.

The mission for the Basilisk Droid, may never be completed on a single Character!  

• I'd honestly love to abandon the mission, and you could if they gave a means to pick it up later!  Sadly they don't even allow you to do that. 
• I later chose not to save the droids, yet even after letting them all blow up...
• Lane Vizla still manages to save one.  *thumbs down* 
• I should opening a customer service ticket to tell them to DROP this quest please, yet they likely won't.  It should have been an Optional Mission! 

Now the mission will sit forever just using up one precious Journal Mission slot!    *sigh* 

Edited January 9 by Strathkin

[TziganeNZ]

3 hours ago, Strathkin said:

Now the mission will sit forever just using up one precious Journal Mission slot!  *sigh*

Along with the companion alerts for 4X and Pierce for those of us who detest PvP and refuse that playstyle, the companion alert for Bowdaar (Eternal Champion fights) (while they can be abandoned, the alert comes back into your list - give us the option to can it all completely), and the Ilum mission quest that you cannot abandon at all (the vanilla game ends at Corellia for me as I can't stand Ilum and avoid it as much as possible).

[ThanderSnB]

58 minutes ago, TziganeNZ said:

Along with the companion alerts for 4X and Pierce for those of us who detest PvP and refuse that playstyle, the companion alert for Bowdaar (Eternal Champion fights) (while they can be abandoned, the alert comes back into your list - give us the option to can it all completely), and the Ilum mission quest that you cannot abandon at all (the vanilla game ends at Corellia for me as I can't stand Ilum and avoid it as much as possible).

I do like some of the stuff after Corellia, but yeah, it would be nice to squelch the alerts somehow. Maybe a right-click option that moves it to the very bottom of the window? It would still there if you wanted to do it later, but you wouldn't have to see it every time you opened the window. Also, it would remove the flashing mission icon on the top menu. Right now, I have to use up mission slots to stop the flashing icon. I usually stop my characters after Shadows of Revan or Ziost. That way I still have my class companions and no flashing icon.

[Strathkin]

The Companion Alert's don't so much trouble me, as those can sit forever, and they don't count to you maximum Mission log I believe. 

The Mission (for the Basilisk Droids) does actually fill an available Mission Log quest, a good Developer should have chosen an optional Datapad to pickup; or smaller Droid similar to Section X (for optional Basilisk Droid Mount) just outside Lane Vizla's Quarter's.  Then by that token you could have actually dropped the Mission or Abandon it if you so desired; and could later pick it up, if and when you were ready to do this.  

Lane Vizla: "Get Ready to make something Special" -- if it were so special, it should have been given a choice, then you'd also know how many character's who've progressed that far and actually desire it.

    *pout*

 

Edited January 9 by Strathkin

[Lord_Malganus]

On 4/28/2023 at 12:44 PM, StrikePrice said:

The developer mindset seems to be twofold:

1. Slow the player down as much as possible
2. Re-use as much content as possible as many times as possible
3. Use slows, stuns, pushes, pulls, mezzes and any type of cc to slow combats down
4. Make bullet sponge enemies in large groups 

I guess they think they are fooling us into thinking there is more content than there actually is? There is no explanation for the design of Ruhnuk than to be intentionally confusing. It's grindy as heck and such a slog.

 

Copying and pasting is easy to do. 

[MaximusRex]

Sadly, with LOTS they started to turn this game into a mob grinder.  Too many packs of mobs you have to grind through with high health damage sponge mobs with annoying abilities, circular maps so that quest tracking points you in every direction all the time, quests that have multiple steps that wind up having you keep grinding through these mob packs in the same places over and over again.  And most of the places are narrow making it hard to impossible to avoid mob groups at all.

This is the expansion I have left the most alts behind on, and even the ones I have leveled I only played the new content long enough to get to 80 and then gave up on it.  The MAlgus encounter on Nul being broken for months didn't help that either.

[Goemoe]

I am currently that annoyed with the Ruhnuk stuff, that I searched for it and found this threat. I have less and less fun in playing endlevel characters. I even enjoy the vanilla stories for the 3rd time more than those lvl 80 characters. The higher I get the less powerful the character feels. I don't think the devs are still enjoying their job

[Whykara]

For what it's worth, Ruhnuk is an exception. No daily area before nor after it is that grindy. Personally I enjoyed Ruhnuk - great design and music - and got to max reputation fairly quickly, but only because I did it with a stealth character. Without stealth I'd probably never run a single daily. 

[DeannaVoyager]

7 hours ago, Whykara said:

For what it's worth, Ruhnuk is an exception. No daily area before nor after it is that grindy. Personally I enjoyed Ruhnuk - great design and music - and got to max reputation fairly quickly, but only because I did it with a stealth character. Without stealth I'd probably never run a single daily. 

I only play the story with 2 stealth characters now (one imp, one rep). Everyone else is waiting for a new skip point in Onderon or Mek-Sha. 

[eabevella]

On 4/27/2023 at 4:21 AM, Kabires said:

It's the only expansion pack that I couldn't finish after one or two gameplays.

They didn't call it "year long celebration (of the 10th year anniversary)" for nothing.

The art design of Duhnuk is cool, especially the environment, love the plants, but I won't bother it with a non-stealth character. The quests are just a big grinding hell and the routes and pointers are confusing.