SWTOR 4.0 Fallen Empire Requirements, Limits, Features

The Knights of the Fallen Empire Digital Expansion is only a few days away from us and now is the best time to take a look at what limits players should expect regarding their status of F2P, Preferred or Subscriber. Also I’ll share with you some of the boundaries I know of, such as levels, gear, progression, multiplayer in main story and more. The same material is available in video format on my YouTube channel, also linked below.

Don’t forget to check the Table of Contents if you are looking for a specific sub-topic. I am certain I will not cover absolutely all questions and basics. If you need to know something, ask :)

A few related guides that you might find useful:

The Video

F2P vs Subscriber

The standards for F2P are remaining the same. Nothing will be lifted for players with this status. Their level cap will remain 50, they will still have limited UI options, limited credit cap, limited crew skills… EVERYTHING is limited. D’OH! Bioware!

The Preferred status will also not see any serious changes or additions. The difference between being F2P and Preferred in Fallen Empire will be the same. You wont have access to many features, available to subscribers, but you will have A LOT better experience than F2P. I always suggest to people, who are asking me about it, to just spend $5 on In-Game Store. This way they will forever unlock the Preferred status and even though it’s still annoyingly limiting your freedom, it’s a lot better than F2P. Important to note, you will be angry at the F2P and Preferred modes ONLY if you have previously been a Subscriber. If you just started the game, you may have no clue what is not available to you, so Preferred will feel like God-Mode.
The Subscriber status gives you the total freedom this game offers. I am very thankful that Bioware really kept their word and for these years since F2P launched, they still value their subscriber base. A lot! We always complaining about the more things we want and need, but that doesn’t mean we are not thankful for the stuff we have.

Subscriber gets All Expansions for Free

That’s right! If you subscribe after 27th of October, you will receive all expansions for free. This includes the previously paid-for:

Fallen Empire will be FREE TO SUBSCRIBERS and is for level 60 or above only! The original release from October 2015 contains 9 episodic chapters with solo game-play epic story. It will be the same content for all classes, with the typical different one-liners here and there. We will meet old faces (some of our companions will return for the story), but also encounter many new heroes and villains. If you need more information and details about the changes coming to SWTOR Patch 4.0 KOTFE, check out my video series. The videos are focusing on various topics, such as Crafting Changes, Class Changes, End-Game Content Changes, Achievements and other topics.
Your one month subscription will forever unlock the expansions to your account. This means if you do not subscribe next month, you will not lose access to the already unlocked story content. With Fallen Empire being episodic, however, if you do not subscribe monthly, you will not get access to the new episodes. This is Bioware’s plan to make players stay subscribed. The new episodes will be released monthly, or at least this is the original plan/promise. It’s very likely that it will be possible to Subscribe once in the end of the 2016 and receive all content cheaper, but this has not been confirmed yet. However, any other way would cost Bioware additional work to implement various locks and mechanisms to prevent players from skipping on subscriptions and still getting the content they want. I firmly believe they wont do it, so if you cannot afford to pay every month, save your money. Unlock the original content of Fallen Empire, bring as many alts as you wish through it, when you get bored, subscribe again and unlock the new (however many they are at the time) episodes/chapters.

Another note I’d like to add (from João Cardoso’s comment) is that there is absolutely no way to get the new expansion unless you Subscribe for a Month to the game. You cannot purchase it as a standalone item. The previous 2 expansions were available for both pre-order and standalone purchase. Fallen Empire is not. Maybe in the future Bioware will allow F2P and Preferred to purchase it without subscribing, but for now, there is no such option.

One more limitation – you will never be allowed to go back and do the previous stories (the origin ones) of your characters that have decided to continue forward. Before you jump with your favorite class into Fallen Empire, make sure this toon has finished all older story content before it gets locked for them. Dailies and daily areas are never going to be locked. For example, you can visit the Section X and do its dailies, but will never again be able to do the Belsavis Story on this character.

Bioware’s plans for Fallen Empire and 2016

With the original release of the expansion in October 2015 we receive 9 solo story chapters and all the other gameplay and mechanics changes. BTW, Mechanics and Class changes are for all, regardless if you are a F2P or Subscriber. The only locked content is the story.
After their break for the Holidays – Battlefront release, Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens and Christmas, the developers will be back in end of January or beginning of February with Chapter 10. There is little point for Bioware to bring us the rest of the episodes earlier anyway. In 2016 we will see the remaining chapters from 10 to 16, which will form Season 1. In the later half of the year, Bioware expects to begin delivering the Season 2 story content of Fallen Empire.

End-Game in Fallen Empire

There is nothing new in terms of content. The good news, however, is that at least absolutely everything old is being reworked and re-scaled. All relevant to the story Flashpoints will be scaled for both solo mode at low level and hard mode at level 65. Same goes for all available operations. Every single ops will be scaled for the new level cap. Story Modes will be available on the Group Finder for players level 50 to 65, where lower levels will be bolstered. The hard modes will deliver new challenges, however, no new mechanics are expected. The NiM Mode for EV and KP is being removed (more info in the linked videos to the left).

Early Access to Fallen Empire

This section is all the way down here, because I expect the material will be also visited long after this one week has passed and didn’t want to begin with an irrelevant content.
The Early Access will begin on Tuesday 20th of October 2015 and will last until the expansion becomes accessible to every Subscriber on 27th of October 2015. To qualify for it, you need to have been an active subscriber without missing months between August 10th and October 19th. If you subscribed later than August 10, you will still be qualified for the monthly rewards as per Bioware’s program (explained in the video linked to the picture). All these items will be rewarded to us when the expansion launches via an In-Game email – just like any other In-Game reward is delivered. These things will be bound to Legacy, so if you have missed to get Nico (he joins you in the story anyway, with the Sub perk you just get to use him earlier), his Coat and Blasters are transferable between all the characters in your Legacy.

Fallen Empire Requirements for our PC

Pff. The game’s engine is as buggy as it has always been. Starting with Patch 3.3.2 and moving onto Fallen Empire, Bioware introduced a lot of aesthetically pleasing features to the game as well as some very desperately needed improvements, including:

Better and shorter loading times
More and properly working Anti-Aliasing settings
Better and more flexible Shadows Settings
Less FPS issues with a newly implemented “crowd control” automatic feature
New and better cinematic effects and camera behavior

If you want to learn more about all these and see how the game behaves on my system (quite a strong hardware-wise PC, in fact), check out the videos linked down below:

The first video linked to the left shows and explains real In-Game results of performance after Patch 3.3.2 for solo players. I tested loading times, FPS metrics on specific planets, known to cause issues as well as on the Fleet.

I have noticed some weird behavior regarding the character detail in crowded areas, such as the Fleet. The character does stand out from the background, though. As promised in the patch notes.

The second video linked to the left is about SWTOR’s performance in Operations. I tested several instances and compared the results with previous runs from before Patch 3.3.2.

Pretty much no big improvements. In the Colossal Monolith instance the problems with “leaking FPS” are still present. In the S&V, the 3rd boss is just as problematic as “she” has always been. And I don’t mean mechanics wise :P

Level Sync Celebrations and Curses

This new mechanic is for absolutely everybody. All F2P and Subscribers, Lowbies and 65s, everyone will be affected the same way. This new feature is both a curse and a blessing for the community and wars are already raging around the internet attempting to prove the use of this or send it straight to hell for forcing our overpowered farming characters to be scaled down. How this works and its effects are described in a lot more details in my video overview of Bioware’s Developer blogs about Combat Changes and Core World Changes in SWTOR 4.0 and . In short, Level sync will bring our characters to 2 levels above the maximum recommended for the planet we visit. No passive or active skills will be removed from our tool-bars, their power will just be sifted down. We will still be able to power through all kinds of Heroics (all of them are now H2+, no more H4’s, D’OH, Bioware!) and quests. However, those gold farming lower level instances will likely become a lot more time consuming now as players wont be able to pull 30 mobs and AoE them down in 15 seconds. The bright side of Level Sync is that it will likely inspire a lot more grouping and team-play within the more casual part of the community. The new H2-Terminals, located in very convenient places will help players engage and revisit the old group quests more often. To spice it up even more, the quest rewards will scale with the character level now and will grant proper XP.

Level 60 Token and the New Player Experience

So far I cannot share much, because the official and real information is limited. What I can tell you is that the content after lvl 60 is (for now) only solo and made easy enough for new players. Bioware stated it multiple times. Chapter 1 in KOTFE and to some extend Chapter 2 will serve as an introduction to the game. It should help new players get familiar with the way quests are layered, how the conversations and dialogues work in SWTOR. For experienced or returning players, it will… erm… bring new story and eventually remind them of some core features they may have overlooked or never seen (if they left too long ago). Jumping straight into the action with a new lvl 60 will be totally possible. All you have to to is be a Subscriber to receive the token for 1 free level 60 (it can only be used on a new character, not to boost an existing low level one) or purchase additional tokens from the Cartel Store at a pretty steep price. They come with decent for leveling gear (old sets, that are in most cases not available in the game any more – Rakata token armor set and Champion PvP armor set are two examples I have seen so far. I cannot confirm what amount of money this character will come with, but in any case, rest assured, Bioware will take care of you to grant you enough for repairs as you progress through the levels.

Well, that was actually all I could think about at this moment. Do you have to add something or ask a question?

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Thanks for reading and watching all these. I hope they were useful to you and helped you find the missing information. Have fun in Fallen Empire and…

May The Lag (NOT) Be With You!