Break

I've been online on the Old Republic off and on today, but I haven't really done any story missions at all. Rather, I've been exploring the Conquests systems, a system that I've otherwise kind of ignored, and it's given me a chance to explore Ossus a little bit (even though I haven't done the two Chiss/Nathema flashpoints with my Jedi Guardian, who's the farthest along. Once I do those two flashpoints, I'll "officially" be on Ossus with a character rather than just poking around with characters who I'm not interested in playing the expansions with.) Ossus is a pretty planet. In general, I often find that the planets that are supposed to be "wastelands" as the result of some kind of ecological catastrophe are the ones that I think have the prettiest scenery. But I'm a confirmed fan of the deserts of the Southwest, so that's maybe not terribly surprising. 

Anyway, I've enjoyed more than I expected "grinding" the conquests, in part, because the conquests are a little bit more varied than just grinding heroics or reputation, like I normally have done when I've gone on grinding sprees. I wish, however, that grinding wasn't a requirement. I feel like all of the MMO stuff that's grafted on the game is poorly done and poorly thought out. Then again, it's possible that I just don't really like MMOs very much. Open worlds where you can group up and stuff, like Red Dead Online and GTA Online, or something like that, is fine. I kind of enjoy the fact that I see other people running around while I'm playing, even if I'm not actually interested in playing with them for the most part. But even then, I'd probably rather than Old Republic was just an offline game that I could play by myself without being on a server at all.

What would have to be done to accomplish this, assuming BioWare were to make that a goal someday? Probably not a lot. A bunch of Flashpoints were converted into a single player mode by dialing down the difficulty just a tad and making it possible to get a robot extra companion to fight (fairly effectively) with you. The rest of the Flashpoints and other Flashpoint-like stuff, like Uprisings or Heroic 4s could probably be handled the same way. Operations are bigger, badder, and more complex, and are highly difficult Flashpoints for 4 or even 8 players. These would require a bit more reworking to be rejiggered as solo flashpoint-like experiences. A handful of other small areas are also for grouping; you can't fight world bosses solo, for instance, because your companion will just run away, leaving you to die fairly quickly. The times I've gotten the attention of a world boss by myself, it only took one or two hits before I was dead.

There's also a lot of assets in the game that you would need to be able to get somehow. The cartel market is for "real live" money microtransactions, usually for cosmetic things. and there is a resale market called the GTN. Presumably, what would need to happen is that these would be combined somehow, an economy that makes some sense using credits (not dollars) would be applied to all of these assets, and then they'd be purchasable through whatever offline market replaces the cartel market and GTN.

I dunno; it's all wishful thinking, I suppose. It'd be nice if this offline version of the game, if it existed, still allowed you to direct-link via the internet to someone else, without having to connect through a game server, but again, it's all wishful thinking anyway.

UPDATE: Well, I played Traitor Among the Chiss. Now, I need to blast through the Nathema Conspiracy and I'm on to the Ossus material. I also got the tech fragments I needed and bought the Concentrated Fire chestplate with my older bounty hunter where I accidentally locked off the story by flying to Onderon after finishing chapter 1. Of course, I was already at level 75 and had maxed out the Armormech skill, so I kind of had to keep him. I'm not sure what I'll do with him, but he's nice to use for dailies for reputation, events, and of course crafting and credit farming. And because I'm basically level 60 while starting Alderaan with both my trooper and new bounty hunter, and I'm doing more exploration and planetary story missions than I initially intended to, I'll have a goo run of being level 75 with both of those two. They'll be able to use that (cosmetically) eventually too. (I continue, despite significant farming efforts, to be completely unable to find a Remnant Underworld Trooper chestplate, which is a color swap of it. It's the only crate piece of armor that I don't have that I actually care about getting.) I was a little bit surprised to find that my old bounty hunter was somehow max lightside. He didn't have a ton of light side tokens, but my Jedi Guardian went and bought him the light side blaster pistol, so he's got a much cooler looking weapon now. With the lightside pistol and the Concentrated Fire chest-plate, he's a cool looking dude.

It's been interesting using him after organically playing almost 60 levels of my new bounty hunter. I don't recall how or why I did my key mapping and toolbar set-up on the old one, but I'm slowly moving him into having the same set-up as my new one (both of these characters are Powertechs, neither is a Mercenary. I'll still have that to play at some point later.)

In any case, I'm curious what rewards there will be for the upcoming 10th anniversary for subscribers and active accounts. Presumably some pets—every May the 4th we get a little pet R2 droid; maybe a companion and some other cosmetics. I presume they're going to step it up compared to what they normally do and offer something a bit bigger. We'll see, though, won't we?

I'm also feeling like because of my timing I missed out on some pretty cool cosmetics and rewards for Galactic Seasons 1; I'm likely to be interested in pursuing the grind a little for season 2. 

UPDATE 2: Although I've never taken advantage of the big money exploits, and so I never have big money, I do have decent money after I've grinded Heroics or something for a couple of hours. I had a three or more characters sitting around with about a million credits, and nothing really important to spend them on (other than the million I just spend on the chest piece mentioned above.) I noticed (or was reminded) that you can spend credits (as opposed to cartel coins, which more or less translate to "real money") on race unlocks. I hadn't ever done this before, because 1) it was my intention to eventually play all of the races up to level 50 on some class, which would have unlocked them for free, albeit after a major investment in many, many, many man-hours of playing, and 2) and I tend to prefer American heroes for my characters, i.e., human, white and male. But, there's a chance that I'll want to mix it up with my next wave of recorded play-throughs, and have at least some characters that aren't human, white or male. I'm even thinking of live-streaming my character creation with my oldest son, who lives out of state, but who loves the two Knights of the Old Republic games and will appreciate and like watching the playthroughs, I think. If I give him some feedback on the character choices, I may well want to pick different races. I also am thinking back to the idea that I've mentioned briefly in other posts that I get a little squicked out by guys making out with alien girls; when the romance partner is an alien, maybe I'll make the main character an alien too. They don't have to be the same race; I don't mind a zabrak or a chiss making out with a twi-lek, or whatever. But I don't like handsome, white guys who've got better options making out with weird aliens, because... they've got better options.