SWTOR 7.3 Announced: New Story, New Flashpoint, PvP, and Economy Changes

Community Manager Jackie Ko and Lead Game Producer Eric Musco hosted the livestream for SWTOR Game Update 7.3 called “Old Wounds”. It will come with a new story chapter on Voss along with a related, but separate Flashpoint and small mission area also on Voss as well as additional changes to the credit economy, PvP medals, and more!

Free Livestream Reward Deco Code

As with all livestreams, there’s a code for a new reward. This time, the reward is a poster deco featuring the Twi’lek with 4k UHD skin textures, Sa’har Kateen. The code is LotsSahar as in Legacy of the Sith Sahar. There are 2 S’s and capitalization does not matter. This code will only work until May 18th.

“Old Wounds” Solo Story

Ashley Ruhl, Narrative Director, and Caitling Sullivan Kelly, Lead Writer, talked us through the story for the Old Wounds chapter-ish thing and Shrine of Silence Flashpoint, both of which take place in a new area on Voss.

I get the impression that they’re building out a single taxi region on Voss that is analogous to something like the stories on Ziost or Rishi where you have the singular main storyline (Old Wounds) and a few simple side-quests along the way.

The focus of the story will return to Malgus with cameos from the Mandalorians as well as the Twi’leks, Sa’har and Ri’kan Kateen. It seems almost like the inverse of the last update’s story, Showdown on Ruhnuk, where we had the opposite.

The Alliance / Task Force Nova / The Hand of the Empire are investigating Darth Nul, the Sith responsible for the Children of the Emperor and the machine from the CGI trailer on Elom.

Returning Characters

Malgus is still in prison, but you’ll get a chance to interrogate him again. Darth Rivix and Tau Idair have discovered a new Relic of Nul and get into a fight. Knowledge of this other Relic may help with your interrogation.

Shae Vizla is reeling from the aftermath of the Showdown on Ruhnuk with Heta Kol, who managed to escape.

If applicable, you’ll have a conversation with Torian Cadera. Since Heta burned the Clan Cadera banner, he’s been doing some soul-searching about what it means to be Mandalorian.

Sana-Rae, has returned from her Nul investigation in Wild Space and has been summoned to Voss by The Three, which are the Mystics that lead the Voss.

Arcann will also be back from his Wild Space mission, assuming he’s still alive and you sent him in the first place.

Interpreter’s Retreat

The Interpreter’s Retreat is the new area for the Old Wounds story and Flashpoint on Voss. It’s not as big as a daily area, but there will be quests, side missions, achievements, decos, and armor sets.

Notably, they didn’t mention a Reputation, which led me to my conclusion earlier that the Interpreter’s Retreat will be more reminiscent of the stories on Rishi and Ziost or a taxi region like you’d find on an older planet.

The Interpreter’s Retreat houses an organization called the Shrine Restoration Initiative which features the Voss and Gormak working together to rebuild the destruction caused by Vaylin and the Eternal Fleet in Chapter 1 of KotET.

They released a teaser trailer that shows off the new area, it’s more dense and detailed with higher-resolution textures like we saw on Ruhnuk. BioWare appears to be doing more visual storytelling like they have with recent planets. It’s interesting to see compared directly to Vanilla and it’s good that BioWare is finally returning to those planets.

Shrine Restoration Initiative

The sworn enemies, the Voss and Gormak are working together out of necessity. The choices you’ll be making on Voss will be structured around strengthening or weakening this new bond. There are new characters.

Kodom is a Gormak that is still pro-Gormak, but prioritizes characteristics like candor and integrity honesty more than others of his race.

Maton-Ja is a Voss Mystic that’s had a long career of helping people on pilgrimages and preserves traditions of old. It would seem that Kodom is the progressive to Maton-Ja’s conservative in this new story.

Voss Armor Sets and Decorations Preview

There are 16 Voss-themed armor sets, one for each Combat Style. They clearly have less detail than Cartel Market Sets, but feature higher-resolution textures than most of the Vanilla planetary sets like you’ll find for sale from the Specialty Goods vendors. Hopefully we’ll see other planets get the reforged treatment going forward!

Parts of these armor sets will be available for purchase, but some will only drop from the Flashpoint. It’s unclear how that will work exactly.

New Voss Decorations

We’ll also be able to obtain some new deocrations from Voss. It’s unclear if these will be available for purchase from a vendor or drops from the world.

Voss Flashpoint “Shrine of Silence”

There’s a new Flashpoint coming with 7.3. It will take place on Voss, but it’s not essential to the story; instead, it’s an enhancement that offers more context to what’s happening with Voss. BioWare is shifting back toward the old-style FPs from Vanilla where the FP isn’t pulling double-duty as part of the main (critical path) story while also being a piece of group content.

Shrine of Silence Story

The Flashpoint takes place in the Shrine of Silence, a place that has fallen into disrepair because all the Voss believe it to be cursed, except for “two plucky young Mystics” that have gone missing.

Shrine of Silence FP Boss Designs

We got to hear from two Encounter Designers, Daniel Cefaratti and Victoria McCreery, about a couple of the bosses you’ll be fighting in the new Flashpoint.

Corrupted Vorantikus

Daniel walked us through some details about the Corrupted (possibly Savannah) Vorantikus. He’s not chatty like the one from the Voss story, but he has been empowered thanks to his proximity to the curse.

He features a “donut targeting” mechanic on his Tantrum attack where you’ll take damage unless you’re in a safe ring in the room.

The Curse

Victoria gave us some details about The Curse, a boss created by Sith Experimentation centuries ago. It taps into the Spirit World (where everything is yellow) and corrupts its victims. In MM, it sounds like he’ll one-shot you if your health gets too low and the recommend bringing along a capable healer.

It appears that the Curse will be using the same rig as the Gree and Terror From Beyond, but the art style is pretty different as he has roots and vines instead of tentacles. His look is inspired by old gods from people like H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulu and all that.

PvP

Upcoming Changes

Eric Musco, again Lead Game Producer, and Shabir Dhillon, Gameplay Designer, have announced further updates coming to PvP related to earning Medals. They emphasized that these adjustments were primarily coming to Attacker and Defender Points as they did for Alderaan Civil War.

The goal of such a change is so that players who aren’t as interested in playing objectives can still be rewarded if they just want to press buttons at other people. The compromise is that you will be rewarded so long as you’re fighting where it’s relevant, so most maps will offer additional points if your digital violence is at least contributing to your team.

Here are the changes coming to Warzones with 7.3:

Voidstar

In Voidstar, players will gain increased Attacker or Defender Points for defeating players near doors. They’ll also receive increased Defender points for guarding near doors.

Notably, nothing has been done to improve the map itself, which suffers from issues where it can often be impossible to progress unless you get ahead of the enemy team’s respawn point and snowball into a victory. Snipers and Gunslingers can also camp in areas on the second point and provide a defense that largely prevents the team from capping while being much easier to execute than it is to counter.

Novare Coast

Novare Coast will give players more Attacker and Defender Points for defeating players near objectives. They’ll also award double the points to the player who actually channels the final tick that captures the objective. Everyone else attackiing the objective will get points too.

It’s unclear how this will work if multiple people are channeling at the same time to speed up the process. Hopefully all players that channeled for at least 1 segment of the bar will get those extra points as well since they are making it cap faster and are risking not defending the channeler.

Huttball

Huttball is getting the most extensive changes:

• Defeating players near endzones or specific parts of the map will earn Attacker points
• Defeating ball carrier will award Defender Points with a bonus if you defeat them in the endzone
• The entire team is rewarded with Attacker Points when your team gets a point.

I am actually a bit concerned about these changes as I think they will incentivize unintended consequences without actually properly solving the problems with point generation. The most notable is now there will be an incentive for farming the enemy team as they respawn in the endzone.

I think it would be smarter to just award points for fighting people nearby the ball carrier and have those scale with proximity to the correct endzone but not award points after the ball has been gone for like 10s or something.

Points for ball passing should also be weighted to where you get maybe 25% from the initial pass and then the other 75% when your team actually scores so players are again being productive with passing. A productive pass should be given the same amount of points as the player scoring the goal, though I think this will be accomplished by the entire team being rewarded with Attacker Points.

It needs to be easier to actually pass the ball too. It’s often hard to click on a specific player, and forget about trying to find some rando’s gibberish name in the raid frame in a timely manner. A lot of players don’t seem to understand what to do in the first place either.

Ability activations of friendly gap closers involving the ball carrier like Extrication / Rescue, Intercede / Guardian Leap, Predation / Transcendence, and Translocate / Transpose also either need to be treated like a pass in terms of points or be unusable on the ball carrier. They’re too impactful to be ignored as they have been for the past decade. The same thing goes for hiding in stealth in the endzone.

Hopefully BioWare will listen to player feedback and encourage testing specifically with Huttball on the PTS or be willing to make further adjustments after the changes go live.

PvP Season 3

PvP Season 3 will start on July 18th and run for 12 weeks. They plan to go over the rewards in greater detail at a later date, but teased the armor set called Sandstorm Soldier.

The set seems to be an even heavier armor version of what we’ve gotten for the past 2 seasons with this one having some samurai-style shoulders. The golden laurel wreath feels out of place, though Season 2’s mask should still match well.

Combat Style Balance Changes

During his segment, Shabir Dhillon mentioned a response to player feedback regarding the combat style balance changes he announced recently on the forums. That post was not up during the livestream, but is up now. Here are the listed changes:

First, he offered clarifications to several of the more vague changes announced with 7.3 with all of the effects and abilities behaving as I predicted in my analysis.

Mercenaries and Commandos

Here is the full effect of the abilities replacing Stealth Scan for Mercenaries / Commandos:

Hunter Killer Droid (Mercenary) / Advanced Recon Droid (Commando)
Fires off probes that scan the area for stealth opponents for 15 seconds and grants Droid Overwatch which increases your damage reduction while stunned by 30%. Revealed targets are immobilized for 3s and all enemies within the field are slowed by 30%. 20s cooldown.

In addition, the Overcharged Cells implant that’s replacing Random Charge for Mercenaries and Commandos will grant its Supercharge stacks upon dealing the damage or healing and the rate limit will be synchronized to the ability cooldown (for the DPS abilities) so there won’t be any alacrity shenanigans.

This is somewhat notable for IO/AS because there is a variable delay on the damage dealt by Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique. Normally, there is a 3s delay, but it can and usually does detonate early.

Shabir offered the following explanation for the change to Stealth Scan specifically for Mercs / Commandos:

The next question I wanted to address in relation to the Mercenary/Commando is their new version of Stealth Scan “Hunter Killer Droid.” The damage reduction while stunned is designed to have a lengthy uptime for the following reasons:

• The other options it is competing with are all also strong.
• We wanted this mod to be a anti-stealth choice for players and provide some additional benefits beyond revealing a stealth player and a slow that does not apply any hindrance to the target.
• The immobilization effect only occurs if the Mercenary / Commando reveals the target.

This change is also targeted at making Stealth Scan less of a niche option and have more application in more scenarios in PVP.

Powertechs and Vanguards

Here is the full effect of the abilities replacing Stealth Scan for Powertechs / Vanguards:

Terminator Droid (Powertech) / Suppression Droid (Vanguard)
Fires off a droid to scan the area for 15 seconds, revealing stealthed opponents and immobilizing (rooting) them for 3 seconds. In addition, all enemies inside the Droid’s field have their accuracy reduced by 20% and are slowed by 30%. Does not apply to Operation Bosses. 20s cooldown.

In other words, the previous utility effects have been removed, including “PT Pred”.

Shabir offered the following explanation for the change to Stealth Scan specifically for PTs / VGs:

This change is also targeted at making Stealth Scan less of a niche option and have more application in more scenarios in PVP.

Similarly the Powertech/Vanguards effects are also being applied with the same goal of making Stealth Scan less niche and provide more benefits in a wider variety of scenarios. Powertech/Vanguards lean more toward a support buff with the reduced accuracy because of their class identity as a tank. In addition, “Terminator Droid” is competing with fairly strong defensive and offensive choices across the skill trees for the Powertech/Vanguard. The accuracy reduction will not apply to Operation Bosses.

Snipers and Gunslingers

BioWare also clarified that Vital Regulators / Cool Under Pressure will retain its effect from previous expansions and heal for 3% of your max health every 2s, making it comparable to the HPS provided by other disciplines.

Also, the knockback effect previously on Reestablish Range / Reset Engagment is getting moved to Ruthless Efficiency / Efficient Ammo (the damage buff to Suppressive Fire / Sweeping Gunfire), which is just out of the frying pan into the fire.

It’s almost laughable how ridiculous this decision is because you take Ruthless Efficiency / Efficient Ammo whenever you want to deal more damage with your channeled AoE ability because there are a lot of targets that typically aren’t immune to knockbacks, which is the exact worst time that you’d want to have one enemy get knocked back.

BioWare should put the knockback effect on Pillbox Sniper / Lay Low (level 51 choice) since it’s usually not taken for PvE and has other related effects while helping to make that a more clearly viable choice in PvP.

Additional Token Buffs

BioWare is offering new minuscule buffs to Lightning Flash / Telekinetic Gust and Blazing Bolts / Boltstorm. These feel like nothing more than token buffs to appease the masses. Ranged Burst should have the capacity to do as much single-target sustained DPS in PvE as melee DPS, at least in PvE.

Lightning / TK might be on track with the upcoming changes, but I think Arsenal / Gunnery will still be lagging behind, though testing is needed to confirm, but Marksmanship / Sharpshooter is gonna get left in the dust since they haven’t gotten a sustained DPS buff at all.

Credit Economy and Inflation

Joe Stramaglio, a Systems Designer for SWTOR, recorded a message that played during the stream going over BioWare’s efforts and initiatives to improve the credit economy and reduce inflation. He reiterated that they want to improve the economy, but are being very careful, it’s an ongoing initiative. This will not be the end of the changes to the economy.

So far, they’ve made adjustments to credit inflow and some credit sinks like adding travel costs and rebalancing item durability, and while these changes seem minor, they have already had a noticeable impact including slight trends back down in inflation.

After the segment, Eric Musco said he was excited to see inflation already coming down as some items are already coming back onto the GTN that were previously over the price limit.

More significant changes will be coming with 7.3 including new taxes for Secure Trade, Mail, and CoD with the objective to align the credit sink tax with that of the GTN so there isn’t a benefit to trading any other way as there is now.

To be clear, part of the reason we’re experiencing hyperinflation is because items are becoming worth a lot more than the GTN cap, so when those items get sold via trade, there’s no current tax like there would be otherwise, so those credits aren’t getting removed from the system. If you think about the enconomy like a roller coaster, once items stopped being sold on the GTN, that was like the car coming off of the tracks.

BioWare wants the GTN to be the premiere place for trade.

After 7.3, BioWare plans to release an overhaul to the GTN with added capabilities like offering market data to players and shifting to a commodity markit where players can create Buy Orders (you’ll be able to post WTB X item(s) for Y price on the GTN).

They’re also planning to increase something called the Buyout Price Limit. I interpreted this as raising the current 1 billion credit price cap on listing something, but I’m not certain that this is what Joe was referring to.

Joe also mentioned plans to shift the GTN tax to a progressive tax instead of the existing flat one so that a more expensive item will get a higher tax. Hopefully this tax is applied to the unit price of the item rather than final price of the sale so that players aren’t penalized just for selling in bulk. That will just make transactions less convenient for everyone as players won’t sell items in high quantities.

Make sure to leave feedback on the forums about this as BioWare is treating it as a conversation. They are responding to feedback and data. They want to improve the whole in-game economy.

Other Odds and Ends

Jackie and Eric wanted to offer a few sneak peaks of upcoming cosmetics and touch on a few other topics.

Cartel Market Items

We got previews for 2 blasters inspired by recent Star Wars TV shows.

This is the Hermit’s Vigil, inspired by a blaster used by Obi-Wan Kenobi in his show.

This is the CP-2 Bryar Pistol inspired by the one Cassian Andor used in Andor. We can see it comes with a holster that will likely only work sometimes.

Nar Shaddaa Nightlife 2023

Nar Shaddaa Nightlife 2023 will be starting on July 11th and run for 6 weeks, so it will end on August 22nd. Musco mentioned he uses the optimal strategy of sitting in between 4 machines, camera down, get the buff, run over to the other one, use the buff, come back after you’ve won. They also showed a preview of the new mount called the High Roller Skiff.

It has the same model as Pearlescent Cruiser, but this time with purple and gold flairs to match the weapons and glasses. Check out our guide on last year’s iteration of the Nightlife event that introduced new weapons.

Community Updates

The current community mount, the Opal Vulptilla, is getting retired, but there will be a new community mount coming soon. They didn’t have a picture, but it will probably be a jetpack. The community mount can be granted by the SWTOR Community Team, Official Content Creators (like Vulkk), or through marketing initiatives.

In celebration of May the Fourth, here will be a new droid pet called BX-23, a floating green cube available to players that log in between May 4th-May 18th will get the pet in the mail soon.

There will also be a Double XP event and 50% off Collections Unlock sale going from May 4th to May 18th. The PTS for 7.3 will be coming this week (hopefully) with everything discussed today except for the story, of course.

Recap

Coming with 7.3, we’ll be getting the following:

• “Old Wounds” Solo Storyline on Voss
• Shrine of Silence FP
• PvP Changes
• Balance Changes
• Credit Economy Changes with more planned for the future
• New CM items

It’s unclear when 7.3 will be coming, though we’re probably getting close consider the PTS is going up with most of the content. I also wanted to share a few screencaps of Jackie whipping out a fan to cool herself off after referring to Darth Rivix as her husband:

Everyone in the studio burst out with laughter, Musco couldn’t process how Jackie just pulled a fan out of nowhere.

If you want more up-to-date information, check regularly the SWTOR Update 7.3 Coverage Archives here on VULKK.com. The best place to start is the SWTOR 7.3 Changes Overview article we have for you.