A Farewell to Pug Cut Scenes

I said in my post about the dev live stream last month that the most impactful announcement to me was that patch 7.1.1 was going to remove all cut scenes and group conversations from group finder flashpoints. While this was widely welcomed, I'm personally not convinced that it's the right decision for the devs to give in to the worst impulses of people who are always in a hurry, but we'll see how things play out. The patch went live this week, and either way it's done for now.

I just wanted to pay my own little tribute to all these cut scenes that I will no longer get to see, because I used to love taking screenshots of those group moments in pugs, so I dug through my screenshot folder archive and compiled some for this post. 

I was kind of surprised that the oldest screenshot of this kind I could find was the above scene from Battle of Ilum from 2016, but then I remembered that I was mostly unable to take screenshots during cut scenes for the game's first two years (not sure they ever fixed that bug) and yeah, I guess that checks out. You can tell that it's an older screenshot because everyone's outfits are relatively old school, with the Jedi in Thexan's robes being the most "modern" looking.

This shot on the other hand was from 2020, when I documented levelling a character purely through flashpoints for the second time and found that Battle of Ilum was a surprisingly common one to get randomly (if you excluded Hammer Station like I did). Gotta love the Twi'lek barely covering her privates on the ice planet. (No, I don't. I mostly dislike those kinds of outfits and in the cut scenes I found them quite immersion-breaking to be honest.)

The flashpoint I loved the most for group cut scenes was, ironically, one that only had a single one: Czerka Corporate Labs. However, it does have this brief moment at the end where your group enters the final boss room in this really cinematic looking way and I always loved capturing that one. I'm not kidding, I have so many shots of this scene. Here, have some more:

If you want to play a little game, you can try to pick out which character is mine in each shot! Or just generally let me know which character out of all the ones pictured you think looks the best. Or which group looks the most cohesive as a team. There are just so many things to ogle.

I almost forgot that Czerka Core Meltdown has a similar cut scene because it just doesn't work nearly as well. The above screenshot is cropped to focus more on the characters, because the camera is quite zoomed out if you look at the whole screen.

After Corporate Labs, I remember I kind of waited for Bioware to recreate that group cut scene magic in any of the flashpoints that followed but they never quite got there. The above shot from the end of Battle of Rishi is about as close as it got, and that, too required some cropping/zooming in.

A shot from Korriban Incursion. "Everyone with their weapons drawn" is another classic in terms of moments that looked great in screenshots.

Ah, Directive 7, one of the most interesting side stories from the base game that was never ever mentioned again anywhere. And another flashpoint with lots of little cut scenes (and even more trash mobs) that many hated for taking too long. But again, I quite enjoyed seeing my pug groups look cool and kick ass while facing off against Mentor.

Let's finish up with another screenshot from Battle of Ilum that stands for something else I'll miss: the dark side/light side choices. The image doesn't actually show the choice, but I saved it under the name "light side pug" - so the fact that I had ended up in a group of all light side characters on Imperial side stood out to me. I loved it when I found my people! And when someone disagreed about what the "right" choice was in a certain scenario, there was usually some friendly banter to be had. No more.

(Just as a disclaimer so nobody gets the wrong idea: I didn't "force" any of these pugs to wait for me while I was watching cut scenes. My attitude was always to skip if people wanted to skip, and watch if people wanted to watch, but you could easily get some great shots of certain moments even while space-barring through most of the conversation.)

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 5

Day 1:

For the first time since the start of the Season, neither of my weeklies involved PvP, as they were for flashpoints and operations. Ops were good again as I was planning to run Gods from the Machine with the guild on Friday, and as for the flashpoints... well, looking at the flashpoint list for the week I decided that I was going to do it this time, also because it was the fifth time in a row that I got the flashpoint weekly and I'd never actually done it. Yes, re-rolling it to GSF or warzones would have been more convenient for sure as I was bound to do those things for dailiy POs anyway, but I was craving some variety.

However, dailies first. One of them was to kill 75 enemies in unknown or wild space, meaning Ilum, CZ-198 or Iokath. I decided to go for kills on Ilum via a character that was on the Ilum storyline anyway, and was surprised to find that I only had one, my dps Sage. I seem to remember that there was a time when loads of my alts had yet to do Ilum... I guess I burned through them all back when Conquest actually required some work and questing on Ilum was a frequently reoccurring objective.

The other daily was a warzone again, which I played on my lowbie Merc. I was glad to see some map variety once again, as I got put into Yavin Ruins for the first time in ages. My team won - somewhat to my surprise, considering that they were not very responsive to my calls for help and multiple people were off to skirmish at the third turret when we already owned two, but I guess we just overpowered the enemy so much that it didn't matter.

For the flashpoints I decided to pick characters that had story missions tied to one of the flashpoints from the selection, so I started by queueing my original Sorc for Legacy of the Rakata. I got into a group with two stealthers, which allowed us to skip a few extra pulls, but nobody was obnoxious if we did end up pulling something after all. The other non-stealther, a bounty hunter, got stuck in the terrain at one point and I had to rescue him, but other than that it was a pretty nice and smooth run. I ended up involuntarily tanking the last boss and rotating through the kolto stations to keep myself alive, as we were a full dps team.

I then decided to go on another run, this time to Directive 7 on my DvL Commando. I did have slight regrets when I was reminded of all the annoying skips that many pugs insist on in this flashpoint as I got myself stuck inside a wall while running along one of the pipes. After I'd untangled myself with /stuck, I went and just killed the lone weak mob that we had so painstakingly avoided.

On Bulwark I ended up tanking once again, and actually died - much to my embarrassment - as I was surprised by how much damage I took and didn't click on a kolto station quickly enough. I felt a little sheepish for about a minute, but then the rest of the group actually wiped (!). After that, the rest of the run went okay, and the only other noteworthy thing that happened was that we tried to skip the boss with the two turrets near the end but someone aggroed him anyway, which made our main skipper quite annoyed, based on their "wtf" and "omg" comments in party chat.

After that I decided to leave the third flashpoint for another day. It felt strange to realise that I hadn't actually done a veteran mode flashpoint in many months and how everything felt slightly unfamiliar.

Day 2:

I logged on quite late in the evening, hoping for something quick, so when I saw the insectoid killing objective, I immediately re-rolled it and got CZ-198 dailies instead. The other PO was a warzone, which was fine.

I played another PvP match on my lowbie Merc and got into a Huttball, which my team won 6-0. Our opponents were dead set on killing, with me being a favoured target due to my low-ish level, but I can't say I'm upset about being killed if it leaves my team unimpeded to win more easily!

For the dailies I picked up my DvL Assassin, wanting to minimise mob killing since that wasn't part of the objective. Despite the late hour, there was a veritable crowd in the CZ-198 landing zone when I arrived, so I immediately switched to the PvP instance. I was surprised to see two people by the shuttle there as well, but once I went into the actual quest area I didn't see another soul during my entire round, which was pretty much what I had hoped for.

Day 3:

Another late night, I logged on to find more CZ-198 dailies and insectoid killing. I re-rolled the insects again and got generic mob killing instead... perfect combo, yes!

This time I took my Sniper to do the dailies and stayed in the PvE instance, since I suck at PvPing as Sniper. It was busy despite the late hour, but there were still enough mobs to go around. Only the champion droid for the heroic took some time to secure a tag on. Finishing the quests and my kills ended up lining up quite nicely.

Day 4:

This time I logged on earlier in the evening to get my daily objectives done before ops time. I had to do a GSF match, which popped almost instantly, and the match ended up being pretty close but ultimately a loss, sadly. The most interesting thing about it was the guy on my team who kept trying to give pretty detailed instructions, like "They have three slicer ships, get the slicers!" and I was just kind of baffled that he apparently expected the rest of us to actually know and understand what he was asking of us.

I also got CZ-198 dailies for the third day in row and briefly considered re-rolling them but then was like "nah". They are after all really fast and easy. This time I went on my Operative on Imp side and again switched to the PvP instance the moment I arrived and saw how busy it was. Unfortunately there were other Imps in the PvP instance as well... but I had the sense to not try to fight them over the droid crates (where I encountered them) but instead move on to the next area and complete the quests there first, including the heroic. That worked out well as the other floor was pretty quiet and by the time the others arrived, I was ready to go back and quickly finish off the crate quest.

Story mode Gods from the Machine with the guild was smooth and fairly unremarkable. In conversation I came up with the idea of maybe creating a YouTube video called "The Gods from the Machine story explained", which would then just be me saying: "Don't worry, it's not just you; it simply doesn't make any sense."

Finally I decided to finish off the evening by doing my last flashpoint for the other weekly. I decided to go for Czerka Corporate Labs on my DvL Juggernaut. I was actually kind of slow to notice that the Czerka flashpoints were on the list too; to be honest if I'd seen that earlier I probably would have done Core Meltdown instead of D7, but oh well. You live and learn. This run was super fast and smooth, with people who clearly all knew what they were doing. On our way to the second boss someone even said "remember not to pull the second boss until everyone's in the room" - that right there is a sign of someone who's pugged that place a lot. At the end someone commented that we had been so fast, it had probably been even more efficient than a Hammer Station run. Damning praise, but I'll take it!

Day 5:

Got generic mob killing and insecticide as my objectives again. Re-rolled the insects and ended up with CZ-198 dailies for the fourth day in a row. Could be worse I guess... (I said that last bit out loud, to which Mr Commando replied from across the table: "Yes, you could be doing this instead!" He was doing an archaeology quest in WoW.)

I hopped onto CZ and into the PvP instance on my dps Powertech, and actually encountered an enemy player for the first time! They were fighting the champion droid when I saw them and I briefly thought about attacking but then decided not to and disappeared around a corner instead. A couple minutes later I went for the droid myself, and as soon as I was done, what I suspect was the same person suddenly attacked me instead and killed me (I was in combat, not expecting it, and am not that great at death match PvP anyway). I suppose it was a small mercy that they at least waited until I was done with the droid too or just didn't see me any earlier. As it was, that death was barely a bump in the road and I quickly resumed my questing, to finish both the weekly mission and my two objectives a few minutes later.

Day 6:

Generic mob killing and insectoids AGAIN. I re-rolled the latter and got CZ-198 AGAIN. My guildies were complaining about GSF and Iokath dailies - how I wished I could have gotten some of those instead! Still, not the worst thing on the world, so I went to that little moon yet again, this time on the Sorc on which I had done Legacy of the Rakata on day one, since she still needed some Conquest points.

Once again I opted for the PvP instance, though it was surprisingly busy, at least with other Imps. I didn't see another Republic character until I spotted a guildie on one of their Republic alts, so I jumped him and killed him (admittedly with another random Imp joining in). We were both on voice chat so I also teased him about it there. However, he managed to revive quickly and then killed me in return, so fair play. We had a good laugh about it.

Day 7:

Generic mob killing again, but at least this time it was paired with doing a warzone. I decided to return to Ilum with my dps Sage and continued the storyline some more. As much fun as it is to give Lord Loyat a dressing-down, it did occur to me that I might have done that particular storyline a bit too many times (especially compared to other planetary arcs).

The warzone was once again done by my lowbie Merc - can I still say lowbie now that she's level 40? - and I got into an arena. I got a little excited to see that I wasn't the lowest level in the match when I noticed that there was also a level 18 Vanguard on my team. However, when I tried to seize up the opposition, I noticed that the only person whose level I could see was a level 60+ Sage... the other three were all stealth dps. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on how that went, but at least it got the objective done quickly.

Week 5 thoughts:

We've now completed the last of the five weeks that were posted on Bioware's blog about Seasons - which means that after the reset we'll be back to week one and its focus on core worlds. Hopefully the worst bugs will be fixed by now, and if you ever found yourself annoyed in previous weeks by having made bad re-roll decisions based on that week's objectives, you'll get another chance at those.

I've definitely fallen into a routine of doing the warzone and PvP objectives every day, ops for the weekly if I get it, and always re-rolling insectoid killing. Dailies, heroics and generic mob killing are usually fine for me too but get tiresome if they repeat too many days in a row - then again, I've had to learn from experience that re-rolling them risks making things even worse.

I really wish there was a daily objective for flashpoints of some kind - it could be any difficulty to satisfy both soloers and socialisers - just to mix things up a bit I guess.

Harder Better Stronger?

When I first tried this whole flashpoint levelling thing four years ago, it took my Mercenary one day and a bit less than nine hours of /played time to hit the then-level cap of 65. My newest Shadow has now passed this milestone, though with this being 2020, she has another ten levels left to go of course.

Still, I was curious how my levelling speed so far would compare, considering that things had felt considerably slower to me this time around... so I did a /played after hitting level 65, and was shocked to find that despite of the levelling feeling slower to me, Nautalie had actually hit 65 in seven hours less (or 20% faster) than it took my Merc back in the day. I'm curious what my final stats at the end of this whole experiment will look like.

In the meantime...

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-63

Having trimmed down my list of desirable targets to only five flashpoints for the time being, I still got an almost instant pop, this time for Assault on Tython. I got all excited because this actually happened to be the instance I needed to continue the Forged Alliances storyline.

However, after I walked up to the first pull in stealth, one guy ran away, apparently expecting me to handle it stealthily or something? I said that I didn't know how to do that here, and me and the two others killed it the old-fashioned way, after which the first guy just left without a word.

We queued for a replacement and walked up to the next pull, but then another player left without saying anything. Me and the one remaining person eventually realised that this had bugged the group finder (I had this happen before when someone leaves while the system's already trying to replace a previous quitter). Whenever I was group leader it claimed that we were already in the queue (but with no option to leave), and with the other person as leader it said that we were not in the queue and they weren't able to queue us either. Somewhat disappointed, we both left. I had to relog entirely before my group finder unbugged and I was able to queue again.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 63-64

As it happened I got put right back into Assault on Tython though, just with three different people this time. I was a bit worried when someone died on the very first pull, considering that the previous group has fallen apart over less (just slowness with the pulls as far as I could tell?), but the defeated person simply dusted themselves off and got back up, and after that everything proceeded normally and we finished the flashpoint just fine.

Czerka Corporate Labs
I levelled: 64-64

This run featured a healer, a female Miraluka Guardian in a bikini, and a Nautolan Sentinel. I don't know why I still get so excited every time I see another Nautolan. I guess with them being the newest species, not free for everyone and quite alien-looking, I still view them as somewhat rare. Sadly my fellow squidhead left the group after only a few pulls and without ever having said a word.

That aside, the run was perfectly smooth once again, and I was pleased to once again complete the weekly mission to run five veteran flashpoints. It may sound silly, but I think that having unlocked that quest has also helped to motivate me somewhat, because having that extra incentive of wanting to complete it each week really works for me.

Unfortunately the extra XP wasn't enough to actually get Nautalie to level up after this run.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 64-65

Once again I started a new week with a stab at the full random selection, and once again I didn't actually mind ending up in Hammer Station for this particular run as I was playing early in the morning before work and only had limited time to spare anyway. I got grouped with three competent level 75 damage dealers and everything went very smoothly.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 65-65

That evening I decided to queue for ten selected flashpoints and got Battle of Ilum again. Once again we had a total of three stealthers and killed almost nothing, which made for a very fast run but also gave me very little XP (and no level-up).

An evil Gunslinger called Facey McFaceshot or something lived up to her name and shot Talsa-ko in the face at the end, which was shocking as it almost never happens.

Directive 7
I levelled: 65-66

The first thing I noticed about this run was that it had two Togruta in it, which is not something I see often. We had a tank and three dps, ranging from levels 53 to 75, but only one 75 and she wasn't geared.

We started off by having a near-wipe on the very first trash pull, with only one person surviving and just finishing off the last mob before they would have died too. Then our tank declared that she wasn't really a tank. Not that it matters in vet mode, but it was still good to know. This declaration and the near-wipe struck me as one of those inflection points where the impatient usually leave, but in this group nobody seemed particularly fazed by anything that had happened.

That was a good thing - however, what was less good was the general level of fail we displayed as we continued. I didn't even think about bonuses this time around, because it was obvious that it was going to be enough of a challenge to get this group through the flashpoint as it was, what with people focusing on the single gold mob in each pull while a whole pack of weak ones was shooting them and similar shenanigans.

We did the most common bits of trash skipping, and there is this one section where you run/ride along a pipe where I've seen people get stuck in the terrain before, so of course that happened to someone in this group as well. This didn't prevent another person from pulling a big group of trash while we were a man down though, resulting in a wipe. Then while we were running back, another person got stuck on the same pipe!

I don't know if they did a /stuck or died from aggro, but either way they pulled another group of mobs that then came running for the rest of us after that person had died. Fortunately we managed to dispatch them without another wipe.

It's worth noting though that we wasted so much time on people getting stuck and wiping for the sake of skipping one trash pull, we probably could have killed every single mob in the instance up to that point in the same amount of time. I couldn't make this sort of stuff up if I tried.

When people made a beeline for the infamous tents I commented to Mr Commando "I wonder how we're going to fail on this one" and someone did indeed fall off.

We continued to bumble our way through the various boss fights. On the assassin droids I was the only one to switch targets as the shields rotated. On the Replicator only me and the Sage killed adds, while the other two kept hitting the boss throughout his immunity for the entire fight. On Bulwark it was once again down to just me and the Sage to kill adds as they spawned - one of them nearly got a repair off too.

On Mentor himself I actually did see one of the overheated cores get repaired before we could blow it up, something I hadn't seen happen in literal years. But eventually he died and we were done, after what had felt like an eternity to me but had apparently only been forty minutes or so. But hey, at least I could go and tell Director Rigel that we'd saved the galaxy from the droid apocalypse.

Day 7: Team #IntPiPoMo

My 10 themed days of SWTOR screenshots in celebration of International Picture Posting Month continue. If you want to see a list of all the themes I'm using, you can find it here.

In my guild's operations I have a comical reputation for wanting to loot everything, and since I'm a bioanalyst on my main that includes hoovering up dead lobels and the like. I'm not alone though! We have a whole "team bioanalyst", but for some reason I still get most of the blame for slowing things down.

I think I mentioned before that I love this cut scene from Czerka Corporate Labs because it can make even pugs look cool. This is my Operative (second from the left) in a random group. (I also posted this one on Twitter before, but I already established that Twitter doesn't count in my mind.)

I seriously have so many screenshots of this scene, haha. Here's my Vanguard tank (far right) in a guild group.

There's a similar scene in Battle of Rishi, but unfortunately it's nowhere near as good as it's too zoomed out and goes on for too long, with the characters walking around and looking kind of confused for no reason. Still, I kept this one because it reminds me of an epic run where I (on my Juggernaut tank, second from the left) had roped a guildie on his newly dinged Operative into healing me through a random master mode. We got Battle of Rishi and it didn't go so well! I think I kept the poor guy up way past his bedtime as we wiped on the last boss over and over again... though we did get him down in the end.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: me and some guildies goofing off between pulls during an ops run.

IntPiPoMo count: 44

Pugging with Shintar: July Update

I know it's August now but this is mostly about videos recorded in July. I thought I would give another update on how my Pugging with Shintar series is progressing for those who aren't subscribed to my YouTube channel (and at this rate, I really need to give these posts their own tag).

Episode 7: Defying the Randomiser - After getting Hammer Station for the third time in six episodes, I decided that while repetition had been fine while I was simply writing about adventures like these, in the video format redoing the same flashpoint over and over again was simply boring and rubbish. As a result, I cut down the run to a few key scenes in the video and then queued again with every flashpoint I'd already done unselected from the group finder list. This time I got Athiss, which was at least something new.

Episode 8: Sneaking Through Red Reaper - I decided to start doing the intros on Nar Shaddaa while the Nightlife Event is running and after a commenter reminded me that I could use the heroic quick travel to get there even without a ship. Forcing the group finder to always give me something new from now on, I ended up in Red Reaper, a place known for its nightmarish trash pulls at the start. Of course since I knew and talked about those, I ended up with a rock-solid group that had no trouble with anything whatsoever and managed to skip even more pulls than usual. In Red Reaper I've never minded because there is no bonus anyway.

Episode 9: Cheerful Musings in Korriban Incursion - After the previous episode I realised that out of sheer habit, I had been uploading these in a lower resolution than I actually use to record, so this episode brought an improvement in video quality as I finally made some adjustments. Korriban Incursion made me particularly talkative because there are so many connections to the Sith starter quests - though I wasn't beyond making mistakes when trying to recall them from memory. I oddly enjoy correcting myself via text overlays while editing the footage later.

Episode 10: An Unlucky Gunslinger in KDY - Finally I got the story quest for Kuat Drive Yards out of my log, after having had it there since level 15 or so. A gunslinger asked early on whether he could do the "rescue ten prisoners" achievement if we got the prison cell scenario, and everyone enthusiastically agreed... but this is a pug, you can already guess how it went.

Episode 11: Sentinel Silliness in Battle of Rishi - I was late with recording this episode due to real life distractions and recorded it on a weekday after work, feeling like I was going to fall asleep at any moment. Oddly enough, this made me even chattier than usual, and I ended up in a group with three sentinels, which I considered very humorous. Also, I enjoyed ranting about Battle of Rishi's wasted potential like I already did in a blog post once here.

Episode 12: Businesslike in Czerka Corporate Labs - After a slightly chaotic start, this flashpoint became quickly dominated by a scantily-clad Commando who was eager to push forward no matter what, clearly thinking that she didn't need the rest of the group. I couldn't fault her ability, but I also couldn't help highlighting it as another type of behaviour that I'm personally not super fond of in my pug groups.

Flashpoint Friday: Czerka Corporate Labs

Today I'd like to talk about Czerka Corporate Labs, the first of the two Czerka flashpoints that were released in patch 2.3 (August 2013).

General Facts

Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown were the first new flashpoints to be added to the game after the release of Makeb and the second set of new flashpoints to be added after launch (with the first one being Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island). They are located on the moon CZ-198, which was added in the same patch as a new daily area.

They were the first flashpoints to come with a tactical mode, though Bioware hadn't come up with the term "tactical" yet and they were only referred to as role-neutral at the time (you still had to be level 55 to do them). Hardmodes with a regular trinity requirement were also included at release.

Initially running both of these was part of the CZ-198 weekly quest, which meant that people ran them all the time. However, in 3.2 this requirement was taken away, so that the weekly now only requires an easy [Heroic 2+] mission instead.

There is still a one-time story quest that ties the two flashpoints together, called Titans of Industry for both factions.

Fights

You can tell that this flashpoint was designed as a tactical from the ground up, as the trash consists pretty much exclusively of weak and silver mobs on "normal" mode, which are pretty much pushovers and allow you to proceed swiftly and without too many breaks to heal up even in a sub-optimal group.

There is a slightly interesting mechanic in the run-up to the first boss when you have to find three security key cards, which can simply be achieved by running around and looking for the glowing, clickable things, but the process can also be sped up by whipping out your Macrobinoculars to highlight the correct location. 

For most of the flashpoint you just fight security guards and droids, until close to the end when some "experiments" come into the mix, which look like flesh raiders from Tython. These have an interesting mechanic as they come in a red and blue version, which attract each other until they self-destruct. So if you enter a room with two red ones in it, your best course of action is to free two blue ones nearby, so they'll just annihilate each other without doing too much damage to your group.

The first boss is a droid that sits in a pool of water and likes to pull people into it to electrocute them. After every other pull he also summons adds. I actually think that this fight is pretty well designed for a role-neutral group, it can just get annoying if people spend too much time running about and dps is low, as the boss has a good amount of health.

The second boss, the security chief, follows a similar design of not requiring a tank but keeping people on their feet with ground effects and the occasional add spawn.

Finally, the last boss is in a room full of imprisoned experiments, which he will release one at a time if you'll let him - people quickly found out however that it's much easier to just release them all yourself and let them annihilate each other quickly so you only have the boss to worry about afterwards.

Story

The story is that the Republic has finally decided that Czerka (a company of questionable moral standing that you encounter repeatedly while levelling and that is responsible for The Thing Czerka Found among other things) is too corrupt and wants to seize the company's assets - except that a certain chief executive called Rasmus Blys in a research facility on a moon called CZ-198 refuses to surrender and threatens to unleash a certain "Vigilant" security system upon any intruders. Republic players want to bring him to heel, and Imperials basically want to get in there before the Republic does (being urged on by another Czerka employee that wants to escape the purge).

The first flashpoint is about fighting your way through what seems to be both a laboratory as well as a corporate/show-off area until you face Rasmus himself. When you finally get to him, he activates the Vigilant system but you don't yet get to find out what it is; that part is revealed in the second flashpoint.

Conclusion

When the two Czerka flashpoints were released, my intial reaction was one of slight disappointment, as they were the first SWTOR flashpoints without a single interactive cut scene. There is a non-interactive monologue by the boss at the end, which features the cut scene pictured above (which I'll never get tired of screenshotting), but it's not quite the same.

This makes Corporate Labs a particularly quick and easy romp in a pug (no worries about people moaning to skip cut scenes), but it also means that it doesn't capitalise on Bioware's greatest strength and feels a lot like a generic dungeon that might as well be part of any other MMO. I'm always quite pleased when I get it as my random because I know that I'll get a fast and hassle-free run, but at the same time I never have the urge to actively seek it out to re-experience its story. The fact that beating up a fat CEO doesn't feel that epic after all the things players have encountered in previous flashpoints probably doesn't help.

It seems that even Bioware realised this though, as they backed away from this nearly cut-scene-free direction again after Czerka, and all the flashpoints that were released afterwards contained at least a little bit more story again.

Flashpoint Levelling: Russians and Reruns

I'm enjoying this whole experiment more than I thought I would. I run about one flashpoint a day, usually in the evenings after work, once everything else in the house has been taken care of. Most of the time the runs are smooth and the groups chill. It's been a long time since I spent this much time pugging... and it's actually nice.

Czerka Corporate Labs
I levelled: 35-36

I should mention at this point that I tend to decline groups in which the system tries to pair me up with another healer. Not that I have anything against them, but experience has taught me that you gain little from having more than one healer in a four-man group and it just makes everything sooo much slower. In the evenings the pops are near-instant anyway, so you don't really lose anything by declining a group. You'll get a different one two minutes later anyway.

With that said, this was the first run on this character where I did end up with another healer (and two dps), because after I had declined initially, the system tried to put me into the exact same group again when I requeued a few minutes later - and I figured: whatever. The other three players were probably getting tired of people declining or timing out.

I zoned into Czerka Corporate Labs and was immediately in combat. Turns out that the other three were already fighting the first boss. I tried to run down and join them but got insta-killed on the way somehow - it looked like the boss was trying to pull me in and the game decided to one-shot me since I was still upstairs, in a place from which I couldn't be pulled. I resed and tried again. Apparently other people in the group were dying and running back as well! It was a dumb zerg, and even once we finally had everyone alive and in one place, there was still a lot of pointless running back and forth. The boss actually enraged on us, something which I hadn't seen in quite a while.

On the second try we got our act together and killed him, but everything still felt incredibly slow with two healers (plus neither of the dps seemed to be particularly good either). After the second boss, the other healer suddenly piped up with "w8 - banan needs toilet", and it took me a moment to realise that she was talking about one of the dps. I asked if they were all one group of friends, and she explained that it was just her and that one dps, that they were Russians and always skipping all the cut scenes. I asked why, since her English seemed fine, and she explained that the other guy didn't speak any at all. One wonders why they chose to play SWTOR of all things then... they must really like Star Wars.

After we had successfully completed the flashpoint, the Russians initiated a vote kick on me because I wasn't leaving "their" group quickly enough, which amused me. I never knew that you actually get a notification in SWTOR when someone tries to kick you, because you don't in WoW.

This run also seemed to provide pretty strong evidence against my earlier theory that level 65s in the group reduce your XP, as everyone in this run was in their thirties and yet I only gained a single level. I think I've simply got to the point where the XP gains from flashpoints slow down somewhat compared to the levelling insanity of the low levels.

Kuat Drive Yards
I levelled: 36-38

Kuat again? Well, at least I had the story quest for it this time. This time we got the scenario with the cannons and the armoury, as well as Station Guardian One as the end boss. It was a smooth run overall, but during the initial intro conversation two group members went into a veritable "spacebar" frenzy. I screenshotted it so I would be able to reproduce it verbatim (names changed to protect the guilty):

[Dude1]: skip
[Dude1]: SKIP
[Dude2]: S TO K TO I TO P
[Dude2]: spacebar
[Dude1]: space bar
[Dude2]: spacebar

I think this really highlighted for me why I find spacebar warriors so annoying, and it's not because I often do like to watch the cut scenes: it's because they are always so freaking imperious and rude. Have you ever seen anyone say: "Could we skip the cut scenes please?" Me neither. They always have to be bossy douches about it. You are not the boss of me, Mr Random Pug, and if you start like that you are unlikely to get me to do anything for you.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 38-39

Pug separation in Hammer Station - that ryhmes!

Another re-run of a flashpoint I'd only done a few days ago. I got really excited when I saw that one of our group members was a tank. My first run with a proper tank! Of course, the moment we zoned in he said that he was confused about why he had ended up queued as tank, as he was actually a dps. Hah.

It was a really smooth and pleasant run though. Now that I had a cleanse, the tunneler droid was a piece of cake to heal. I also maxed out my scavenging skill in this run. (For comparison, my bioanalysis only sits at 169.) 

Directive 7
I levelled: 39-41

OK, I partially retract what I said about people who want to skip the cut scenes above. In this run we had one who said "skip pl". Two letters of the word "please" have got to count for something, right?

This being D7 and us having a level 65 in the group, this was another run where people just wanted to get to the end as quickly as possible while skipping everything else. We jumped across the tents again, and again the lowest level in the group didn't manage it and pulled anyway. I actually died on Mentor and got a combat res! So there are some people that are aware of having that ability.

I think mostly this run annoyed me because it was another repeat of a flashpoint that I'd only done a couple of days before. There are 19 tactical flashpoints in the queue now, and at this point I had queued for a total of 12 runs. However, these only resulted in me seeing 8 different instances, as 4 were repeats. I guess that is proper randomness, but it's still a bit annoying.

Cademimu
I levelled: 41-42

Yay, a flashpoint I hadn't done before, and one I quite like at that! I had the feeling that two of the people in the group must have been quite new to the game, as they seemed very hesitant and I could see in the group log that they both had the "Introduction to Group Finder" mission in their log still, even though they were in the high thirties. The third dps was a "legendary" player like me.

I had a blast knocking probe droids to their death and was kind of surprised that the encounter in the cantina appears to have been removed entirely - you know the one, where people would come down from the ceiling and all the patrons would scream and cower. Was that actually an issue?

At the taxi point I sliced access to the police car for the shortcut, but the two newbies didn't follow and we got split up. We reunited soon though. Having got somewhat off track because of this, I was delighted to find a cage from which I could free a temporary hound pet! Four years and there are still crew skill nodes in some of these flashpoints that I've never seen... Sadly my doggie died on the lift to the Wookiee boss, but we actually got XP for its death, which amused me.

About halfway through the run I found that Kolto Shell had appeared on my bar, which made me happy because I'd been missing having that ability. Constantly wanting to rebuff the entire group every three minutes is a habit that's hard to break. The only downside was that I find its sound effect a bit annoying compared to the Republic version.

As we approached the last boss, the other legendary player asked if everyone knew how to do this fight, but the newbies shrouded themselves in silence. Unsurprisingly, they both got burnt to cinders pretty early, and me and the other guy ended up finishing the rest of the fight with just the two of us.

I think Bioware were really proud of their "lekku physics" at launch, but in practice they can get super awkward at times.

Cademimu
I levelled: 42-44 (that included the weekly quest)

Yay, Cademimu again! I'm not even sure whether I'm being sarcastic here or not.

Now this was my actual first random flashpoint that I completed with a genuine tank! Only took 14 runs to find one... To be perfectly honest, it didn't seem to make that much of a difference in this instance, though it was nice to have someone who was happy to jump in and have all the mobs whale on him, instead of the awkward shuffle you get with some of the full dps groups where nobody wants to be the one to go first and get all the aggro.

We had three deaths by falling, which brought back fond memories for me.

Towards the end, one of the dps asked "who chaine for one more dj?" and I couldn't figure out what DJ was supposed to stand for. Disc jockeys in Cademimu? It was only at the end that I realised that he had meant dungeon and wanted to know if we could re-queue together. As I was happy to have completed my one run for the night however, I had to politely decline.

Cademimu
I levelled: 44-45

Cademimu hat-trick! Who would have thought?

This one included only one death by falling and one person dying to Ortol's fire, though it also featured the first time that I saw a player get caught in a trap on the first boss. I also noted down: "Does this flashpoint think I'm a trooper?" Until now the last boss in each run always seemed to drop useful loot for my class, but in the previous run I got a generator off-hand, and this time Ortol dropped an assault cannon.

Ten levels from seven flashpoints definitely prove that things are slowing down.

When did that happen? (Czerka)

I've said before that I'm not a huge fan of dailies. I'm happy enough to do them occasionally if they benefit me in some way, but I don't really do them just to pass the time, nor do I like it if a game makes them feel mandatory.

Nonetheless the Czerka weekly was one mission that I often picked up on alts before doing a random flashpoint, because it was the one weekly quest associated with dailies that also required two flashpoint runs, and there was always a chance that my random flashpoint might end up being one of the required ones, which would then allow me to kill two birds with one stone if I did the dailies as well. I didn't want that opportunity to go to waste. It was therefore with some surprise that I noticed yesterday, when I logged on one of said alts with the Czerka weekly in her log, that it had been changed to not require runs of Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown anymore.

Instead, both were replaced by a single new [Heroic 2+] quest to kill a newly placed champion droid. I went to check it out and found that at level sixty I could solo said droid with ease. I reckon that it should be possible for lower levels as well, though class and gear will probably matter somewhat in that case.

I also tried to find out when this change actually happened and Reddit quickly educated me that it was apparently made with 3.2: "[WEEKLY] Czerka Dissolution and [WEEKLY] Czerka Takeover no longer require completion of the two Czerka flashpoints. Instead, a new daily Heroic 2+ mission has been added to the mission terminal on CZ-198."

I wonder what Bioware's thought process behind this change was. My own guess would be time. When CZ-198 first came out, I actually applauded the step to connect the "group" portion of the weekly to flashpoints instead of heroic quests, as you have reasons to run those other than their connection to dailies, which introduced a new dynamic to getting the weekly done. Plus with the group finder it's always been easier to find a group for a flashpoint than for a heroic quest (as its functionality for finding heroic groups remains woefully inadequate to this day).

However, looking at it now, the end result was obviously that doing the Czerka weekly took quite a bit more time than any of the other planetary weekly quests. Even assuming instant pops and a good group, running through both Czerka Corporate Labs and Core Meltdown would probably take you at least thirty minutes, if not longer. For comparison, most heroic quests associated with weeklies can be done in about five to ten minutes these days. I wouldn't be surprised if this put people off doing the Czerka weekly, even if they did the regular dailies. So I suppose in the interest of keeping things equal this change makes sense.

Did you know about this change?

The Czerka Flashpoints in Review

So I've had a chance to try Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown (the two new flashpoints) on both difficulties since my last post. I have to admit - and I hate to say this because in general I really love what Bioware does with flashpoints - that I initially felt a teeny weeny bit disappointed by the experience.

Why? Because both flashpoints are quite thin on story. In fact, I believe that they are the first flashpoints in the game that do not contain a single interactive cut scene. There are some voice-overs as you progress through the building, and a little non-interactive cut scene as you approach the last boss in each instance, but that's it. Previously even the more "dungeon crawl like" flashpoints at least contained a little bit of non-combat player interaction, even if it was just to make a simple light/dark side choice at a console.

I can only hazard a guess as to why Bioware decided to go down this road, and I bet that endgame players who routinely chain-run instances for commendations will love this more streamlined experience with no "space-barring", but to me it feels like an essential part of what makes SWTOR's flashpoints unique has gone missing here. That makes me a bit sad. I liked the intro mission to the whole thing well enough, but then it was just a matter of going in, killing everything in the way and coming out again. That just felt a bit... lacking to me.

There were good things about the experience too of course.

The new model for story modes not requiring a proper trinity group seems to work well. On the longer/tougher boss fights there are "kolto stations" spread around the room which you can click on if your group doesn't have a healer for example. As a side effect the whole thing feels ridiculously easy if you actually do happen to have a tank and healer, but... it's story mode. It doesn't really matter.

As for hardmode, there's the usual debate about whether it is correctly tuned. This forum thread says it's not; supposedly it's too hard. When one of my guild's tanks came out of the hardmodes for the first time, he immediately commented that he found them too easy - but he's also used to tanking nightmare operations. If flashpoints that are supposed to be on par with hardmode Hammer Station and Athiss were challenging to him (keep in mind that unlike Lost Island back in the day, this is not supposed to be a new "tier"), I'd actually be worried.

Myself, I also went in with a guild group in full 72 gear and we had an easy time, unsurprisingly. I did notice however that there were parts, especially on some boss fights, where the incoming damage seemed quite considerable. I can see those being very hard on lesser geared groups.

In regards to trash, I loved the mechanic with the red and blue mobs in Corporate Labs. Silly but fun, even if the red ones do pretty harsh amounts of AoE damage on hard.

On the visual front, Core Meltdown in particular offers some gorgeous environments. I loved all the different habitats. And as one of my guildies commented, the sound effects are pretty atmospheric as well. I'll have to take some more screenshots there next time I get a chance (and assuming the game decides to cooperate with my print screen button, which it didn't tonight).