SWTOR Uprisings Playthrough Developer Live Stream: what did we learn

Here are my notes and the most important news from the event

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VIDEOS ARE ATTACHED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE!

The event aired live on Twitch.TV on 10th November 2016. Hosts were community manager Eric Musco and the 2 hosts from The Bad Feeling Podcast show – Chuck and Brian.

The live stream was in a different format than the previous Producer Live Streams in the past few weeks. The main topic was a Live playthrough on a test server of Firefrost – one of the new Uprisings, located on Hoth. We got to watch Brian play a lvl 70 Powertech during the Story Mode run through the instance.

There were not too many major or previously unknown details about upcoming content. So my notes are not so much about “what we learned”, but rather a report from my own perspective of “what happened” during the live stream. Here are some of the more notable lines from the live discussion:

We got to get a sneak peak at one of the new non mod-able 242 item level gear sets and its bonus set.
More uprisings will come after launch of KOTET. Most of them take place in a modified and instances area players know from the planets they have explored previously.
The Uprisings are targeting the more casual part of the players – they are designed to be in the style of “run and smash” instead of having to think about who to stun and what the killing order is for the next pull.
Veteran mode is a big step up in terms of difficulty compared to Story Mode, where players can use even the crappy gear looted from KOTFE and KOTET chapters. All Uprisings are only for lvl 70 players.
The content in the Uprisings is not favoring a class or role. Bioware is trying to balance the instances to be friendly to all classes and not force groups of all Melee or all Ranged DPS, for example.
There is a lot of unavoidable damage throughout the Uprisings. Some of the avoidable damage, though, can one shot players, even in story mode, apparently.
The goal is for Uprisings to last between 15 and 30 minutes max.
At the end of the Uprising, the player received a blue Medium CXP Token for 138 Command XP points.
Bioware finally revealed the redesigned top bar of the UI, containing links to all menus and tabs. It’s now much smaller and ordered in buttons that expand and reveal similar menus grouped together in a drop-down sub-menu.
The run through the Story Mode of the Firefrost Uprising took ~15 minutes and the final boss did make the players sweat a little bit.
The 2nd run was in Veteran Mode and it proved a much better challenge to beat. Thrash was a bit weak, as expected, but the boss encounters were pretty tough – more damage dealing and a larger HP pools. No new mechanics, or at least I didn’t spot one from the live playthrough . The goal is for players NOT to be able to walk into Veteran mode Uprisings in Day 1 of 5.0 and succeed. We shall see about that :)))
There will be semi-hidden things inside the instances to tease players to explore – easter eggs, secret bonus bosses, hints to what might be coming soon, story moments and more.
Bioware targets Uprisings towards smaller groups and teams. These instances are one of the new EndGame activities available for players. World bosses and Dark vs Light event bosses are other EndGame activities for teams of a larger scale.
A little later down the road, it was confiemed – no new mechanics between Story and Veteran Modes for the initial Uprisings launching with KOTET. Scaled DPS and Heals from the bosses instead.
Even though the Uprisings are designed for teams of 4 players, it is possible to enter alone or with a friend and have 2 companions out – just like with Flashpoints. Challenging yourself is always a fun thing to do, right?!
The CXP is heavily balanced to benefit and promote group play for the group content available in Patch 5.0. There’s a thing Bioware calls “Group modifier” – the larger group you do the group content with, the more CXP you receive at the end of the quest/instance/boss.
The Autonomous Walker droid (the final boss) proved to be quite a tough challenge in Veteran mode for the 4 players doing the playthrough. Oh, I forgot to mention – Brian was playing his PT and his team members were Tait, Musco and Keith – all members of the Bioware team.
Bioware devs are fully aware that some of the boss mechanics can be passed by with high enough DPS. In Veteran mode, though, they are enforcing the mechanics onto the players.
After a very long fight and 2 players dead, the team gave up and /stuck on the final boss. 1 wipe!
On their 2nd attempt at the last boss, they killed it with ease.
The loot contained a speeder mount and a large purple CXP token for 184 Command Points. The quest itself rewarded the player with 230 CXP and 17k credits.
Eric Musco promised to show Command Crates opening in the beginning of next live stream next week. They wanted to do it tonight, but the Dev console commands didn’t work and they were unable to buff Brian’s character to reach his new Command Rank and get a Crate.
Each crate will always contain at least one piece of EndGame gear. The tier depends on the player’s Command Rank. Not each piece of gear will have set bonus, though.
The Combat Training area on the Fleet has been redesigned. New terminals have appeared to allow for easy access to group content.
The Powertech’s new abilities have been seen in action a lot during the live stream. Both new AoE skills have nice animations and are a potential reason for more lag :)))