On May 30 BioWare did a live stream, featuring SWTOR Community Manager Eric Musco, Crative Director Charles Boyd and Lead Producer Keith Kanneg. The topic was one of the most interesting new features coming with the September 6.0 Expansion “Onslaught” – The Spoils of War. This is more than just a new feature. It’s a whole new system that will affect how you gear up your character and to some extend how you play the game even. It’s a long one, so sit comfortably and prepare for a long post! Full video archive is available at the bottom if you want to watch all of it (~85 minutes).
LESSONS LEARNED AND FUTURE COMMUNICATIONS PLANS
For the first part of the stream (after the usual silly jokes and laughs) Musco sat down with Keith to talk about what the studio has learned from past experience and what is the plan for future communication to us – the players.
Keith acknowledged that it took them nearly an year to fix the horrible state Galactic Command launched in with the KOTET expansion. He also noted on the mistake with the Ossus gearing process, which he himself called too complex and slow. He even used the term “kinda crappy” to describe the launch version of Galactic Command. The studio is still not happy with this system even today, after so many iterations and changes. Galactic Conquest is getting several updates, starting with Update 5.10.3. More on that later.
If you never knew Keith, you would probably already start feeling good about him based on this statement alone. His major issue as a Producer (in my opinion!) is that he is not showing himself and communicating directly with the players often enough. It’s not in his job description after all, but would be nice to hear more often from him.
What you see on the image above is BioWare’s plan for how communication will be held in the months leading up to Onslaught’s release and, of course, after it.
Stage 1 – There will be more blogs and news articles, describing and over-viewing different aspects of the development of the expansion. Most if not all of them will be written by the new community coordinator – Daniel. In Stage 2 Musco will be creating forum posts asking for player feedback and participating in AMA events. Stage 3 will consist of more and frequent discussions. The final stage, which will start some time in June, is PTS. It will feature participation rewards, a robust schedule of things to test and provide feedback on, surveys and so on. More on that later (D’OH, again!).
THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND SPOILS OF WAR
Charles took the seat from Keith and Musco started up the real and most important part of the stream – revealing and discussing the upcoming changes to how you will be gearing up in the new expansion this Fall.
Based on the negative feedback and reactions from the community regarding the aforementioned Ossus gearing and the 5.0 Galactic Command, BioWare is planning yet another major overhaul of how gearing in SWTOR will work after 6.0. This time it will be more enjoyable… or so we are to believe. The original Onslaught announcement described the Spoils of War like this:
“Our philosophy for this expansion is, play your way. Items have always been an important part of your character’s identity, but for the first time we are offering true depth and choice with exciting new items that let you decide how to play in the upcoming battle.
One of the ways that we’re adding this depth is with an entirely new type of gear slot – Tactical items. These build-defining items directly alter your abilities and playstyle. Taking these new items, players will be able to pair them with numerous new set bonuses to choose from, including general sets that can be used by everyone.
These item sets can be acquired through multiple paths. Acquire your gear no matter how you choose to play: Player vs Environment, Player vs Player, Galactic Command, and Crafting are all viable. New set items, Tactical items, and more open a pathway to limitless depth allowing you to play your character exactly how you want!”
The main idea with Spoils of War is to “Play your Way”. And a huge step to achieve that is to finally bring back gear drops from enemies (bosses)! In 6.0 everything and anything you do will eventually reward you with gear and… some new currencies, but you know – more on that later…
After many attempts the Galactic Command even today is not perfect. The ideal state BioWare wants to see it in for 6.0 is as a “supplementary system”.
No matter how much we all want RNG to go away, it will always be present in an MMORPG like SWTOR. A new mechanic, for now called “RNG Protection”, will be applied in relation to how you get your gear pieces in Onslaught. To put it simply – you will not get all bad luck all the time. The system will track your loot and start pushing up your “luck” if it finds you are have fallen in a ditch.
Legacy items are not going anywhere. In fact, Legacy gear is getting improved! Moving your items through Legacy will be fully supported in 6.0. You will be able to transfer absolutely everything across your characters. That includes the left side of your gear window, yeah.
The new gearing system is intended to allow all types and kinds of players to get their desired items in the way they want to. The new gear will be accessible to both casual players and hard-core veterans.
NEW SET BONUSES AND TACTICAL ITEMS
I can’t even remember how long it’s been since we have been playing with the same set bonuses. This ends with 6.0. Completely new set bonuses will be available this September and with a lot of variety on the perks they provide too. There will be bonuses for the base class that apply to both advanced classes, but also specific advanced class bonuses.
The new gear slot you have been hearing about lately is real. It is called Tactical Items and the items you will be able to place in it are, as BioWare describes them “playstyle defining”.
These items will apply to different abilities of your character and can boost, modify or alter them in various ways. The Tacticals are planned as rare, so you wont get them thrown at you all the time. Charles added that they will likely drop from Ops Bosses, rather than from random world mobs and quests, for example.
The items are built specifically for a certain discipline of a certain class. One item does not apply to two base classes. However… some general options will be available as well. Things that may grant you more XP, for example. They can be used by all classes and will therefore be less rare and less useful in EndGame. The full details on the customization and itemization are still early work in progress.
At the end of this segment, we got to see a few examples for the Sorcerer. Fun fact – back in 3.0 when BioWare first revealed the Disciplines that were going to replace the classic skill trees, they used Sorc again. You can check out the examples below. Some of them may sound and look ridiculous, but it is up to us to help the devs bring balance into all of this.
The Set Bonuses in 6.0 will be attached to the shell of the gear, not to the armoring mods. This means that once you get the item with the Set Bonus you desire, you can focus on only swapping the mods until you are happy with your build. The downside is that you may have to spend a lot more credits juggling with various items and set bonuses and transferring mods from one to another as you test and decide which to keep. Credits sink, anyone?
WHAT ARE THE AMPLIFIERS AND HOW WILL THEY WORK
The Amplifiers are an additional bonus stat that may appear on the item’s shell as well as on all the various mods that you put into the slots of that shell. They do not replace Augments. Augments are still a thing in Onslaught.
Charles specifically explained that these stats are bonus in terms that they do not fall in the PvE balance that the devs are doing for each new gear release. This means that if you do not have these, you will in no way be gimped or handy-capped. These boosts are available to allow you to chase and min-max a specific build.
The Amplifiers are tied to the slot they appear on. This means that on an Armoring mod you will only be able to get certain types of Amplifiers.
Here comes RNG. The specific Amplifier you get is drawn randomly from the pool of all Amplifiers associated with the specific slot. If you want to play against the RNG Gods, you will need credits!
The Amplifiers can be re-rolled by paying Credits (just the in-game currency). The more you re-roll, the more expensive next roll will be. However, there will be a limit to that. After certain period of time the counter will reset and you will once again be able to re-roll the same amplifiers on the same item/slot for the cheapest price. Pricing is still not finalized, so we don’t know how much rolling will cost us. There is no limit to how many times you re-roll an Amplifier, but there will be a limit to how much its highest price will be capped at before it resets.
BOLSTER IN 6.0 AND EFFECT OF YOUR GEAR IN PVP
In Onslaught Bolster will take you straight to the highest item rating gear. The regular stats of your armor mean nothing to you or your performance.
The real balancing and power of your performance in combat will depend on what Set Bonuses, Tactical Items and Amplifiers you have. You will be able to get Tactical Items and Amplifiers from Unranged Warzones. These items, however, cannot be of the highest item rating. This means that you will still be able to build your character to your liking, but to get the absolutely best ratings, you will still need to do Ranked PvP. Ranked will give you access to everything.
HOW DO YOU GET THE NEW TACTICAL ITEMS AND AMPLIFIERS
As I mentioned in the beginning and Musco mentioned it several times during the live stream as well – the goal with Spoils of War is to provide you with a way to earn your gear the way you want – by playing the content you like.
All content is going to once again give you gear. Even Flashpoints. Of course, the harder the content (type and difficulty level both), the better your drops will be. The drops you get will always be matched to your character, discipline and item rating, to a certain degree.
The same RNG protection that applies to Amplifiers re-rolling, applies to the drop rate of both the Tacticals and Amplifiers that you get as loot.
GALACTIC COMMAND BECOMES GALACTIC RENOWN
Galactic Command (which is getting renamed to Galactic Renown) and the Conquest – the two supplemental systems – will also allow you to get gear by participating in them.
The Galactic Renown system gets a revamp too. It will have a flat progression system in Onslaught. You will always get items that are relative to your current item rating, not based on the Galactic Renown rank. The Ranks are now purely cosmetic… for Renown, as Charles said it himself.
Renown will be seasonal! There will be a reset of your Galactic Renown rank once in a while to keep you motivated to grind through it. Since this is purely cosmetic now, this wont be a big issue, except that at the beginning of each season you will have to start all the way down from Rank 1 again. All of the achievements that you have earned from Galactic Command prior to the expansion and the changes, will forever remain yours, but you will never again be able to earn them after 6.0. What this means is that you have to get them now if you want to keep them.
CXP is going to be tied directly to XP and become a flat percentage of the XP you earn as you play the game. CXP is also getting renamed – to Renown XP. Pretty much everywhere we now have “Command”, it will be replaced with “Renown”.
CONQUEST SYSTEM ALSO RECEIVES AN OVERHAUL
The Conquest XP is getting tied to your XP – same as RXP. The difference is that the change to Conquest XP is happening much sooner – with the release of The Dantooine Incursion on June 4th.
The Conquest also becomes supplementary gearing system in 6.0. Completing your Personal and Guild weekly tasks will give you gear.
DECONSTRUCTING AND CRAFTING GEAR
The new expansion will shower you with gear (more or less) and most of these items you will not want nor need. Here comes the option to Deconstruct them. Every class can deconstruct, but Reverse Engineering would be useful and provide some bonuses, apparently.
The gear items you deconstruct will break down into Crafting Materials or Scrap and a brand new currency.
There is still a questionmark on the possibility of you deconstructing older items. Deconstruct for Materials/Scrap and the new currency (still unnamed) will 100% be available to all new items you get after the release of Onslaught. The team is trying to make it happen so this would work on all items in the game, but it is still not sure if, how and when this might be.
All of the crafting materials will be going to a special new Legacy-shared container. This should free up a ton of free space and make management a lot easier.
CRAFTING YOUR NEW GEAR
Yes, Crew skills will be a factor and allow you to craft your new gear. The crafted items will be on par with the in-game drops, but they will require significant effort on your part to be able to craft them (most likely the required crafting materials will be a pain to collect or very expensive to buy/make). Also some draw-backs have been teased to the crafted items’ stats compared to the in-game drops. You will be able to craft the same thing, but not the Exact same identical item.
To compensate for that, BioWare will add unique Tactical items that can only be crafted, never found in the open world and as loot drops.
THE NEW VENDORS
Two new vendors will be added where you will be able to purchase gear with the new currency. This new currency, by the way, is not only available through Deconstructing items. It will be given to you literally everywhere and from (almost) everything you do.
One of the vendors will be always present and will sell you directly items for specific slots. The second vendor will appear on a schedule and offer you specific set items and Tacticals for all classes.
OPTIMIZATIONS
This is likely going to be the real credit and time sink I have been fearing the new gearing system will introduce. The amount and diversity of gear pieces and bonuses available in Onslaught may be overwhelming at first (and not only). It will take us all some time to find the perfect builds for your playstyles and this will involve a lot of testing and transferring mods and items left and right.
Neither Musco nor Charles were able to answer the burning question “Is the new currency Legacy bound”, but the answer is more likely to be yes rather than now.
SWTOR 6.0 ONSLAUGHT IS COMING TO PTS
PTS (Public Test Server) will be available for the Expansion. As always there will likely be minimal or no story spoilers available on it. The server will have robust stages planned with each one focusing on different aspects and parts of Onslaught.
The PTS participation rewards will return as well, plus a few new ones might make their way to those who help out with tests and feedback of the new expansion and its different features and content.
The first PTS is expected some time in June. Wipes are going to be frequent between stages. Updates will be deployed often as well.
This topic is far from over. What you have been reading so far are the very first details that we have been shown and told about the new Onslaught 6.0 Spoils of War System. The Expansion is set to arrive in September with an exact date still not available. It is going to be free for all Subscribers and will add five new levels to the current 70 cap.
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If you found this article useful and interesting, share it with your friends and help them get up to speed with Spoils of War. Leave a comment below to let me know how do you find all of these changes? Awesome? Overwhelming? Pointless? Something in-between?
If you have ~85 minutes to spare, check out the full video archive of the live stream from May 30th, 2019:
