It's clear to me after playing for a couple of weeks again, that a hybrid of focusing on the characters who are almost done (relatively speaking) and taking a break from them and spreading out my attention amongst at least a couple of other characters is the way to go. You just get kind of tired of playing one character, especially on some of these later planets that are both big and the enemies take a little longer and are more tedious to fight, in general. After finishing Belsavis, including the bonus series, with Taul Kajak, he's level 79—very close to max of 80, but I haven't been in the mood to play him at all for the better part of a week since finishing that planet. I can't remember if he has a little mini-mission to do before starting Voss, almost certainly he does, because that's how they do it in the second half of the story, but Voss kind of intimidates me because I know it's quite big, fighting lots of gormak and the crazy wildlife is tedious, and the graphics are a bit on the tough side for my rig, where I couldn't get my graphics card to work, so I get a little bit of graphical lag on that planet and other really grassy and leafy ones like Alderaan, etc. I like Voss a lot from a scenery perspective, but I'm not really looking forward to the planetary series or the bonus series; I'm mostly going to be doing them from a sense of duty to do them again after as long as its been since I have. Because nobody else is very close to reaching Voss or Corellia on the Republic side, if I wait and try them with someone else instead, I'll be waiting a long time. I think that the goal is to do both planetary series and the Voss bonus series (Corellia doesn't have one, although it does have The Black Hole, which kind of qualifies as a boosted bonus series, if you like).
Because of this sense of needing to take a break from one character to go do another, I've played back and forth between two others most of this week; Anstal Tane, a Scoundrel who's on Alderaan (I just finished both planetary and character stories; but I'll hang around and finish the bonus series before running off to Tatooine to rescue Risha's alien friends and kind of wrap up Act 1 of the story) and Vant Galaide, a Mercenary on Balmorra. My only thought here is that a lot of my Imperial characters are on Balmorra, and even Anstal Tane is about ready to do Balmorra on the Republic side. That's... a lot of Balmorra. I like that planet well enough, or I would if it didn't have a lot of bug hunt missions, that doesn't mean that I would want to literally play a lot of the same missions with different characters back to back and think that that's providing me enough variety to not get worn out of doing it. Sadly, since I finished Hutran Thanatos already as my first big task when I got back into this, I don't have much in the way of higher level variety. I've got a couple of lower level characters that aren't on Balmorra, but I think I need to do a bit of a Hutran Thanatos-like thing and get someone a little bit further ahead, so I can go back to them on Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine or Taris after grinding a lot of Imperial characters on Balmorra. What's also likely, quite frankly, is that I'll let some of the characters languish a bit so that they can spread out. Having so many characters all on literally the same planet for the same faction isn't great, and even when I thought that they'd all be within a 2-3 planet band of each other, it wasn't my thought that they'd all be that close.
So here's my thought. I've got three characters who are all quite different from each other, that I've played in the last couple of weeks enough to kind of advance them. Taul Kajak finished Hoth and Belsavis, Anstal Tane is fnishing up Alderaan (both Republic side) and Vant Galaide isn't all that far from finishing Balmorra (Imperial side.) Flipping through my list of characters, all of my Imperials that aren't either finished with the story or just starting the story are also due to start Balmorra. I think I'll focus on just those three characters, and maybe tinker with some post-endgame stuff with Hutran Thanatos to give myself a bit more of a break. He's got the two back to back flashpoints that will finish Ilum to do, then he's off to Section X and The Black Hole.
I actually have a fair number of max level and story finished characters that can do stuff here and there. Mat Thew is ready to go to Ziost if I really want to take a huge leap, Maark is wrapping up the Manaan stuff from the early Legacy of the Sith release, and has other Legacy of the Sith content to do. Luukke is still working on Makeb, etc. I think between those three characters plus dabbling on late game content with characters like Maark in particular, who are uncovering new content still that I haven't ever seen (but which is admittedly also pretty listless and uninspiring) I'll be good for a while. Then I can go back and start to raise a few more Imperial characters past Balmorra, like Phovos Maledict and Revecca Arden, my two force-using Imperial characters.
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| Phovos Maledict, showing off my favorite of his rigs |
Of course, that will leave me with several agents and bounty hunters that are all at a relatively low level position; Saxon Hettar, Wulf Hengest, Embric Stane, Vash Galaide, Beorn Hengest; as well as three troopers and a couple of smugglers, and otherwise only one additional Jedi of each type; one of which I literally haven't started at all, and one of which just finished Taris and is good to run off to Nar Shaddaa as soon as I pick him up again.
I'm kind of in a bind that I created myself by having all of these characters and then advancing them just a planet or two, so that they're all in the same place. I now think that having a smaller group traveling in a "band" of planets isn't a bad idea, but the rest of my characters kind of need to be in a different band. I think I'm going to keep my four newest characters unplayed (other than maybe a weekly run of starting planet Heroics; give them a leveling headstart so I don't have to do so much planetary story stuff with them later): Saxon Hettar, an agent still on Hutta, Beorn Hengest, a bounty hunter on Hutta, Gael Heckett, a smuggler on the Fleet, and Karr Tanus a trooper on Ord Mantell. I'll add Gandalf Greyhame to that list, even though he's not as new, because he's at the same point; just barely landed on his starting planet.
Then I'll try and advance Anstal Tane and Vant Galaide to about the same place that Taul Kajak is, and finish them off close to each other. Then, I need to go advance at least some of my characters that all are more or less at the same point; probably Mirabeau Tane, Vash Galaide, Phovos Maledict and maybe Revecca Arden.
And then, when I've got them a good two to three planets up, I can come back to the rest of the characters that are stuck in the same place; Codon Veile, Haul Romund, Embric Stane and maybe Elemer Kell, even though he's technically a planet ahead of the rest of that pack.
And then, I can finally get the "youngest" group of characters up to where the big bottleneck is right now, and they can wait at the bottleneck themselves. Sigh. Honestly, the chances that I'll finish all of these characters before getting tired and letting my subscription lapse for a few months again is probably a bit low. I have too many of them. On the other hand, when I do inevitably come back after letting it lapse, I'll have something to do with characters who aren't at either the very beginning of their career, nor at the end. That leaves me free to not really have to consider the deletion of any of them anytime soon to make room for soneone else too, although presumably I'll get to that point too.
Whenever I make these long-range high level plans, though, I find that I have various reasons to change my mind before I get there, so this is probably more rambling about what I think I'll do in game that even my own subconscious thinks is useful.
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