Everybody who's played Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) long enough knows that in fact the story arcs are solo. When you need to go into a flashpoint to continue the story, there's a Solo Mode.
BUT...
Everybody who's played SWTOR in-depth long enough also knows that some of the older content does not in fact have a proper Solo Mode. In particular, the pain points here are:
[HEROIC 4] The Shroud's Last Stand / The Shroud Revealed
BUT...
Everybody who's played SWTOR in-depth long enough also knows that some of the older content does not in fact have a proper Solo Mode. In particular, the pain points here are:
- Seeker Droid story arc
- Macrobinoculars story arc
- Dread Masters story arc
The fact that players have these missions in their quest logs for literally years shows that forcing players to group is a mistake and fails to recognize play patterns in basically every MMO. Because it doesn't take into account WHY people group.
Players group because there's no other way to get a reward or if it would get them a better reward faster (e.g., skipping all cutscenes and fast-forwarding through all conversations in flashpoints). They don't actually want to group with other players because of the content or to do anything social. No one actually wants Group-mandatory content because it is a barrier to them getting the most for their time.
If there's nothing in it for them -- and especially if it will cost them a lot of time just to help others -- very few people will do it.
People who just say "it's an MMO so it's meant to be group content" -- they are just trolls who clearly don't look at play patterns in basically every MMO. The fact that players spend hours trying to get a group for the Seeker Droid and Macrobinoculars group-mandatory missions, and still can't find anyone for years, is proof of the play pattern.
SWTOR shifted away from Story-related group-mandatory content with their Story Mode and Solo Mode flashpoints. This is a brilliant move that added quality of life to players who are here for the choices-matter gameplay. They need to go back and tweak the missions below to help new players entering the system because established players clearly have no interest in helping anyone through them.
Seeker Droid Story Arc
The story arc is in fact not very hard. The problem is finding people to do the final mission [HEROIC 4] The Alchemy of Evil / Uprooting the Last Seed it with you -- and this even though the mechanics and scripted events in the instance are among the best in the history of the game. Some people literally have this mission in their journal for years.
The main problem is people don't really care to help, especially when they will basically have nothing to show for their time if they are not on the mission themselves.
Most of it can be done solo although the mechanics make it really rough, so our recommendation will not strictly look at only what cannot be done solo.
How to tweak it:
- First "boss" encounter: Recharging the turrets
- The easiest fix to make this encounter solo-able is to greatly slow down the decay rate on the force fields, by a generous factor, say x3.
- Second boss: Corrupted Sithspawn Experiment
- The main obstacle here is a single player typically does not have enough interrupts to prevent the boss from healing repeatedly.
- The easiest fix is to increase the cooldown on the boss's abilities so that it cannot use them as frequently. A generous increase of x3 the normal cooldown should be more than enough for a solo player.
- Final boss: Lord Tagriss
- Usually players end up here with at least one other player and both companions available, so it's harder to say what would be needed to help solo it, but the main issue would probably be how to not be interrupted while trying to get the crystals with the Seeker Droid.
- The easiest fix would probably be to protect the player from interruption when they are trying to get the crystal to advance the fight stage. Once they player clicks on the crystal to deploy the seeker droid, grant them total immunity until the crystal is in possession and they can head for the altar.
Macrobinoculars Story Arc
Like the Seeker Droid Story Arc, the missions are generally not exceptionally hard in theory. The two that people have trouble with are the final two:
[HEROIC 4] All The Pieces / Dark Design
- The fights with the large mobs on the way to the final boss are probably harder than the final boss itself. So for Solo mode, halving damage or halving the mob count should do it.
- This entire Heroic is actually quite solo-able but players who don't have a higher gear score, strong companions, or experience with the instance still have quite a hard time.
There are two obstacles here, the first one being obviously that a full party of four persons are required for the puzzles. This is probably the main reason that this quest sits unfinished for many players -- simply trying to find four people willing to help. The time commitment, especially if any of them have not done the mission before, is really excessive in just teaching them what to do.
How to tweak it:
- Halve mob damage or reduce mob count.
- Remove the time window in which various buttons need to be pressed simultaneously or channeled and change them into toggles -- state is "pressed" or "not yet pressed".
- The final boss, The Shroud, has to be periodically made vulnerable by disabling various panels. Increase the time between repair droid and additional droid spawns when there are fewer players, and do not spawn any at all if the player is solo.
Dread Masters story arc
There are various issues with the Dread Masters story arc for players who want to do the intro/outro missions for the related Operations and actually make their own decisions -- in a game where "choices matter" -- or even just watch the scripted scenes and hear the dialogues without being pressured by the rest of the ops to hurry it up or get kicked. No one else wants to waste their time waiting for you -- and you really don't want to waste their time having them wait for you either.
And some of the decisions are really baffling, such as putting the intro quest not only inside the instance (e.g., Karagga's Palace) so that you cannot do it before joining an operation; but also starting the operation away from that quest starter so that you actually have to double back to talk to them. And at the end you are rushing through the outro dialogue because the rest of the ops group is leaving and if you are the only one left in the instance you will be kicked out after a short timer.
Finally, the story arc involves several operations, and for players who are taking new toons through SWTOR's now very, very, long story arc, trying to line up all the operations in the proper sequence (and spend hours and hours doing them) can be extremely tedious.
Finally, the story arc involves several operations, and for players who are taking new toons through SWTOR's now very, very, long story arc, trying to line up all the operations in the proper sequence (and spend hours and hours doing them) can be extremely tedious.
How to tweak it:
- Move all intro/outro quest start/turn-in points out of the operations instance. Some operations already have this feature, such as Terror from Beyond.
- Instead of having every toon re-do the entire sequence of operations in the correct order just so they can see the story properly and make their own dialog choices, instead have the quest check the player's Achievements. If they have done the operation before on any toon, allow them to immediately skip to the outro quest.
- There is already precedent for this in the CZ-198 story arc: If you have done the required flashpoint, the story arc will just skip you right to the next step instead of requiring you to complete the flashpoint.
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