Season 6

It’s now Thursday morning and I’ve had two days to play around with 7.4.1. Some people on Youtube and elsewhere have made a big deal about the addition of the "Date Night" events. This makes me wonder who the devs are targeting with this update, and who the player base is, or who they think that it is. Maybe I'm the one who's mistaken, and the romance options and stuff is drawing more women to the game than I imagined. I like a good romance as much as the next guy, but if that becomes the main focus of a swashbuckling space adventure game, then something is out of whack, by my account. The perfect amount is John Carter and Dejah Thoris from A Princess of Mars. Sometimes the originals got it so right that nobody else can top them.

That said, I don't really care very much about the expansions. Most of my characters go into semi-retirement after finishing the class story and then very leisurely wander over to Ilum, Section X and The Black Hole… if they actually make it there at all. By semi-retirement, I usually mean that I use them for seasons, events, outfit design for concept art for SOX, and other things like that, rather than that I'm actually playing the story with them. I think it's worth taking a moment to take stock of where my semi-retired characters actually are.

• Maark—the most far along; just finished Ruhnuk with him. Not super motivated to go to whatever is next; the new Voss area, or whatever, so when I play him, I'm very slowly grinding for Ruhnuk reputation. Not that I've done much if anything on that the last two weeks.
• Mat Thew—the second most far along; just finished Yavin IV and the Shadow of Revan stuff; haven’t yet gone to  Ziost, but that would be the next step. Not sure that I want to go on past Ziost and change all of the functional nature of his companions.
• Luukke—somewhere on Makeb. Haven’t gone back to see what’s still to be done, but I think I’m almost finished with it.
• Johhn—still on Ilum; I think I’ve done the Black Hole with him too. Or maybe Section X. I’m not really considering using him for any additional story stuff, though.
• Phillippion—haven’t started any post story stuff with him; I’ve only taken him to Ilum to grind Gree reputation (which is now complete.) Might have grinded some other reputation with him over time, like Oricon or Section X—certainly I did THORN and the BBA, but I’m not doing anything else story-wise with him at all. Don’t care to either.
• Graggory—I might have finished Ilum with him, maybe not. I think I’ve got Makeb on his next mission, but that’s been true for a long time.
• Hutran Thanatos—because he’s the most recent to finish, he’s the only one who I’m actually approaching the post story stuff systematically anymore. He’s finished Ilum (except the two flashpoints) at which point I’ll eventually do The Black Hole and Section X with him, and presumably after that, Makeb.

In general, I don’t much care for the post main story expansion stuff. Some of it is visually pretty, like Odessen or Ossus or Makeb or Onderon, etc. but I only go there for aesthetic reasons or to grind some special event or something like that. I don’t really care what happens to the characters after the main story when there no longer is a unique story for each class, and there’s barely a unique story for each faction. Sorta. None of these characters are advancing very fast, and for the majority of them, I really don’t expect that I’ll ever play past Ziost at the absolute most. I’m especially reluctant to use my crafting characters post Ziost, because they’ll lose access to their companions. Ironically, some of my newer characters might be better positioned to move forward past that, because their companions are just sidekicks along for the ride and the combat support.

The crafting characters, if they do advanced story content, it will probably be because I popped into a flashpoint for some reason. I am still trying to grind for a group achievement, after all, although I haven’t done anything with that since coming back to the game a couple of months ago. Too many other things to do!

So, date night and story advancement; I don’t care. Why do I care about game updates at all, then? Honestly, I don’t really. I find them inconvenient mostly, although I’m glad that they add some new elements, some new environments to visit and go do daily areas on (although lately, you can’t do the dailies without first doing the story, which sucks) and stuff like that. And I like Seasons well enough.  I’m doing season 6, and it’ll be third that I’ve done; the other three taking place while I was away from the game.  I’m not sure that the seasonal armors and weapons are all that cool this time around, but the mounts are nice, and I get extra cartel coins, plus season tokens that I can spend on older season stuff that I missed here and there. (Just added the Rapid Recon Walker to my collections in mounts a day or two ago, for instance.) Two evenings of seasons, and I’ve done all of the weekly stuff that I can. Just the log-on bonus and the dailies will get me another two or three reward track elements before next Tuesday. 

I’ve said before that SWTOR always leads me mentally to Space Opera X, and I’ve had some thoughts on the SOX setting, and how to make it potentially much more useful and fun for me by getting rid of the political alignment of most of the systems, and instead having all major political groups potentially operating on any planet. There’s a reason most planets in SWTOR have both Republic and Imperial stuff going on. Even Ord Mantell and Hutta are notable for their neutrality, and its telling that Ord Mantell for both factions was added to the latest update, and Hutta is coming yet this year too. Voss is maybe the poster-child of the neutral planet where both Empire and Republic have to operate discretely, but that’s just a case of mediocre execution of what is otherwise actually a good idea.

And here's Johhn on Oricon in his Daft Punk outfit.