Darth Hater

Woulda preferred a reusable item to fire off fireworks, rather than something consumable, but seems like a nice little item. Wonder how big the affect will be.

I too have always been fond of the Space missions in SWTOR. My Main's Ship is maxed out (Pre-1.6 that is) I have a full Imp Pilot suit, and I've used space missions as a way to level up alts. They're nice distractions, but they have a number of weaknesses: they're single player only, they're more a tacked-on distraction than a full gameplay aspect, they're repetitive and use the same environments, they require grinding, and they test gear more than they do any form of skill.

While I'm fond of space missions, this patch emphasizes the worst parts of space missions. I just tried these missions with my tier-6 equipped ship, and got annihilated. I came to DH to see if I was crazy, but no - apparently I'm not.

I see the following issues with these missions.

1. They skip Tier 6 missions - Up til now the hardest mission have been Tier 5. All these missions are Tier 7 missions, which means there's no progression which utilizes Tier 6 (which is a crafted Tier), which feeds into the next issue.

2. Tier 6 isn't even feasible to start with Tier 7 missions - As a result, you need to get the new gear to run the new missions. The catch is the new gear is so expensive that you need to grind the hell out of the OLD missions to earn the comms. This means that half of why you'd run the new missions (new stuff) can't be obtained by running new missions. Which feeds into my third issue.

3. Rehashing the same old stuff - So I need to re-run the same missions I've run a dozens of times in the past, yet dozens more times again, just to get the gear. Only to then get tier 7 gear to run the SAME MAPS AGAIN with new flight paths. There's ONE new map, and I don't even have access to that apparently. So all this repetitive grinding, all in the hopes that I'll reach a new map. For, what? Black Hole comms that I can get a dozen other different ways?

In summary - I find this to be an expansion that weakens an already weak gameplay aspect - Grinding is not enjoyable progression and space missions have always been a weakpoint for SWTOR. Being the first update to expand on this, it's a travesty to see that they decided to not take any sort of initiative with making even simple expansions on gameplay to address the numerous issues it has. I'm hoping these missions undergo numerous changes before this patch goes live.

Good thing, I mean wookie life day is an homage to what is easily the first terrible piece of Star Wars fiction (the Christmas special) but the fact is I am now playing Guild Wars 2 because their halloween event is fun. Repeating annual holiday always get people to come back for at least a brief instance as an excuse to see what's changed since they last played, and give subscribers a nice break from the daily/weekly types of events you'll repeat.

Here's looking for Ilum's defunct PvP area to be turned into a Giant PvP Snowball fight zone come wookie life day ;)

Playing as an Op in Huttball is tricky. Ops are basically shoehorned into a healer role, and obviously can't run balls well - they have low survivability. As a result, the Juggs/Guardians tend to get a lot of glory, but the Op can be used very tactically. Being a healer is a big deal for keeping the ball runner up obviously, but also their stealth is a major factor. You can sneak into the endzone area to catch the ball from other players, to run it in for that last part - or you can lead your foe into the pit, and hit your emergency stealth, resetting the ball. Either way, I agree maps that have more obstructions etc. would be nice to at least mix things up, as opposed to changing how it is.

The Mini release is fine as long as they realize they can give us good sized content with both adding new stuff and improving existing items without having to devise whole new systems. Examples as follows.

PvP: Bioware needs to learn that not every new map needs a new gameplay mode. A few different Huttball Arenas with different hazards/styles, or Alderaan-like guns where you're on a space station, etc. New gameplay modes are fine too, but if they come out with 1 or 2 of those a year, meanwhile 3-4 new maps a year, that would be awesome.

PvE Flashpoints: Nightmare flashpoints would serve both as new challenges, and ways for people to maybe get Rakata gear to try the newer Tier-2 Flashpoints and Raids. Also adding previous flashpoints to 50-level flashpoints would be great.

Raids: Weeklies, monthlies, etc. which involve COMPLETING raids (not just killing 2nd boss), or completing them in a specified amount of time, which grant Commendations, Pets, Companion skins, or other non-gameplay affecting items (think like the bike-quests that exist)

These simple ways to add more to the game also give them leeway to work on bigger items. New PvP modes, new Raids, new Flashpoints, new Species, World PvP zones. Then they aim for their big items that add new stuff that people hope for - new Planets, multi-player Space games (either Co-Op on-Rails or PvP Open-Space, or just Open-Space in general)

The fact is that a combination of F2P and constant content means that Bioware will be forced to continuously work on and release content players want - both big and small - because if people don't want it, people won't pay for it. F2P does have its upsides, this is undoubtedly one of them.