Game Review - Throne and Liberty

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Score: FAIL

There's actually lots to like about Throne and Liberty, and a lot of the pros and cons (which we touch on at the very end) will be commonplace and somewhat subjective. So instead, I'm going to start this review with what I feel basically gives the game a failing score:
You have to play around someone else's schedule.
You probably won't realize this as you are going through the main story chapters (which is necessary to unlock various systems in the game) as all that can be easily done solo. And there are a lot of events that can be attended solo; but most of them are unimportant time-wasters compared to what you need to do to actually improve your character.

Nowadays live service games try to monopolize your time, mostly with FOMO -- Fear of Missing Out. If you don't log in, don't grind, don't keep up, you will miss out, fall behind, etcetera.
Throne and Liberty is no exception, but their late-game content is such that you basically have to not just party up, but sometimes you will have to get a party at the right time.
Play the game. Don't let the game play you.
When a game starts to make you work around its schedule, it's playing you instead. For this reason, we scored Throne and Liberty a FAIL.

Here are some examples of how you will end up playing around someone else's schedule.

Using Abyssal Contract Tokens

  • Abyssal Contract Tokens are a type of currency used to "pay" for materials and loot you get in special areas.
    • For example, Syleus's Abyss. This area has six floors, rated for parties:
      • Floors 1-2: Level 20-24, party of 2
      • Floors 3-4: Level 44-48, party of 2
      • Floors 5-6: Level 50 (current level cap on international servers), party of 4
    • Some other Abyssal Contract Token areas are even harder, such as Shadowed Crypt, which is immediately level 50 and rated for parties of 4.
  • If you follow the main story you'll probably end up at level 50 by the time you finish Chapter 10 and be reasonably geared so you could potentially handle Floors 1-2 of Syleus's Abyss on your own. The rest however will be too tedious solo once you start trying to go deeper.
  • Abyssal Contract Tokens are a fundamental aspect of gearing.
    • You get most of the materials you need to craft upgrade materials from grinding these areas over and over.
    • You can get gear drops and the duplicates can be used to add and upgrade traits so even a piece of blue gear can become very good with multiple carefully chosen traits.
    • You might get a nice piece of gear from some other content, but to upgrade that, you will need a lot of materials and this is where you get most of it.
    • It is so important that they limit how you can get Tokens (from doing other content) and how many you can have at any one time.
  • These are public areas, so you could potentially get help from other players. However this is highly deceptive:
    • Players are actually always in competition with each other. You can help each other kill monsters, but you will get nothing if the monster's nameplate is grey, which basically happens when someone else hits them first.
    • Even players in a party are in competition as loot is determined by performance, not simply multiplied for everyone in the group to get loot. This is probably by design to avoid bot trains where one player kills and the rest are just following along for loot drops.
    • Not clear how loot distribution is handled in the case where some players or party members are tanking or healing for difficult encounters.
  • To explore the deeper levels or harder areas you really need to party up, so unless you just want to lock yourself out of most of the max-level party-rated content, this is what you will have to do -- work around someone else's availability or do something else instead.
  • Assuming that you can reliably get a party of people who actually coordinate instead of just running around doing their own thing anyway, you will still have to deal with the schedule.
  • Time is divided into 3.5 hours of Day and 30 minutes of Night.
    • During Night, all the Abyssal Contract Token areas become open world PvP (player-versus-player) zones. So if you actually want to get anything done in terms of grinding for materials or trying to get quests done in these areas, you really want to only go there during the day.
    • So, when you are trying to get a useful group together, did you happen to start when it's about to be Night? If so you'll probably end up disbanding to go do other things for at least a half hour to wait out the Night.
      • Unlike overland events which occur on a schedule flipping between PvP and non-PvP modes, every Abyssal Contract Zone is affected at the same time so you can't just leave one and go to farm another instead.
  • Even if you do enter during Daytime, at any point any guild officer could summon an Eclipse. For 10 minutes, all these zones become PvP zones, as if it were nighttime. So mid-run your team could just end up teleporting out and twiddling their thumbs for ten minutes.

Dungeons

  • The dungeons can be quite difficult, especially once you start the level 50 dungeons.
    • Although the mechanics are not that complex, even if you do all the right things you can still end up dead and when too many players die, the encounter fails.
    • A team of players that have a gear score much higher than the minimum can still repeatedly wipe (fail) several times, and there is no incremental reward for making it to the last boss but being unable to complete the dungeon.
  • This causes people to form parties to ask for overpowered players instead of relying on the automated matchmaker.
    • Even then there is no guarantee of success after multiple attempts.
    • This is typical when the player base is frustrated by wasting time failing. They just want to get a carry, or they are tired of carrying weaker or less competent players. Either way, they feel held back and are losing time, the most precious commodity.
  • And as usual in MMORPGs, there is a shortage of healers and not that many more tanks. These dedicated builds generally do not function as well in other content, so it is a significant use of already scarce progression resources to diversity meaningfully into more than one role.
  • So there are two ways to go about this:
    • Try matchmaker and hope your time won't be wasted.
    • Try making a party and basically hope to get carried.
    • Try getting into a progression group with a well-populated guild, and fitting into their schedule.
  • Again, there is a lot of dependence on the schedules of others:
    • Your best chances of matchmaker or party-maker are when the server is busiest.
    • You need to be in a very active guild and with competent players that are doing the same content.
    • You can collect Dungeon rewards only if you have enough Dimensional Contract Tokens. So if the other group members don't have enough tokens or they are saving those tokens for another Dungeon to get into a different loot lottery for rewards, there is little incentive for them to assist.
  • This situation isn't as severe in other games because the content isn't that that hard.
    • Certainly there are harder modes of the same dungeon (e.g., SWTOR's Master Mode Flashpoints) but those are essentially optional because you can essentially get the rewards in some other way, albeit much more slowly. They are challenging for the sake of being challenging to appeal to that particular demographic of players.
    • Many games have a solo / "story" mode so you can do it whenever you like, even if you are not playing during peak hours.
    • Most instanced content in other games are tuned for success instead of failure, at least once players understand the mechanics of a particular fight.
      • The expectation is success rather than failure. This greatly impacts player experience as well as player attitudes toward each other.
      • Repeatedly failing a half dozen times over an hour until people start quitting is not the norm nor a good game experience.
      • More success means less wasted time for players when they have to use the matchmaker.
  • Once upon a time maybe players were more willing to learn mechanics, ask about mechanics to learn, or teach mechanics to others in chat. Nowadays (in any MMO) you are more likely to encounter players to disparage others, stay silent when they don't know mechanics, or just rage quit. That's just the predominant demographic, and when content is hard even when you perform the mechanics properly, the result is frustration and wasted time for all involved.
The issue of being too dependent on someone else's time shows up differently in different games. This is not a Throne and Liberty specific failing, but Throne and Liberty has a lot more group-mandatory content.
For example, the SWTOR Galactic Seasons (battle pass) typically has weekly kill-world-boss objectives. If you look for a group during the start of the week and during the busy server periods, you have a good chance of getting into a group. But any other time, you are generally out of luck and you cannot tackle these enemies solo or even in a small group (unless it is a very, very, good group and it is highly dependent on which enemy you are facing).
Fortunately with SWTOR's Galactic Seasons, there are a lot of solo-friendly objectives and a lot of time for the battle pass. Even if you never do the big-group content (which awards more battle pass progress), you can complete the battle pass with time to spare even if you don't get all the related Achievements.

Other Pros and Cons

  • PRO The battle pass is actually one of the most convenient to complete compared to other games as you don't have to be very advanced in the game to complete the tasks, and daily tasks don't expire but instead accumulate.
  • PRO Incredible vistas and view ranges even on "Medium" graphics settings.
  • PRO Lots of overland events so theoretically there is "always" something to do, as long as you can schedule around the events that are PvP.
  • CON Too much competition for drops from killing mobs. Even in a party you are in competition with each other, so the game encourages you to go solo. Only events award some individual loot regardless of whether you are in a party or not but even then you are typically in competition with everyone else for a better standing and better rewards. Being in a party just lets you benefit from healing by other party members.
    • CON Defeating tougher enemies typically gets you nothing at all, and when you do get something it's nothing special. This happens even when you solo an overland area boss (the red skulls on the map that periodically respawn) or Abyssal Contract Token area bosses.
      • CON The stories are generally really boring.
        • It's off to a good and exciting start at the intro but after that it feels like the story loses the personal connection to you.
        • The main story quest Chapters are more like what in other games would be stories about a zone or region. Really no reason to have to progress them in a particular order.
        • Doesn't seem to be an overarching campaign goal.
        • Generally the plots are straightforward and predictable.
      • CON When you first enter a zone or area, it can take an extraordinary amount of time to load the assets.
      • CON A lot of overland events are actually pointless to do as most players will get really lacklustre rewards.

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