Hyperspace Beacon: Three things SWTOR’s Eternal Championship needs

Hello BioWare,

It’s me again, your average Star Wars: The Old Republic fan. You remember when I complained about Chapter 10 of Knights of the Fallen Empire not being entertaining enough for the average MMO player? Yes, well, I’m back again, and I just spent the weekend playing through your latest bit of content on the Public Test Server: the Eternal Championship. And I’m having mixed emotions about this; I’m not sure how to feel. I want to say that you’re on the right track because I see a few things that are spot on, and I don’t think that you could have done them better. But then I look at other parts of the Championship and think that maybe it could have been improved on.

I don’t want to be that guy who complains about everything unless it fits into his little bubble of perfection. I believe that my version of perfection is clearly not the same as everyone else. However, I would like to take a reasonable approach to some of the items that could take the Eternal Championship from good to great. A couple of them would be time consuming to create, and it’s clearly too late to implement them if you’re launching the Championship in a month. However, you might be able to drop these ideas into the content later.

So without further ado, here are my three changes that I believe you should add to the Eternal Championship.

Gear stats

Let’s start with this thread on Reddit. Now, don’t get me wrong; the only place more full of complaints about SWTOR than Reddit is the official forums, and no one wants to comb through that mess. However, one thread specifically asks a question I asked myself: Whom are the gear drops for?

I understand the problem. You can’t have the Eternal Championship drop top raid-level gear, or the few raiders that you have left will complain that you’re complete negating anything that raids have to offer. Although I would argue that would not be the case if some of my other suggestions were put into place, I’ll concede the point in the present situation. But the current gear drops are not beneficial to the player who can actually defeat the boss they drop from.

Many players will complain about the difficulty of the Championship bosses. To those players I ask, “Isn’t it about time there was something challenging in the game?” However, I will point out that the 204 blues that drop from most of the champions will be completely worthless to anyone who is having difficulty beating the bosses in the first place, and there is little to no chance that those same players would be able to complete any of the weeklies to get the Championship Trophies. If they are lucky, they will be able to get two trophies from the Lanos weekly quest, but forget about their being able to get past Nocturno and Drake Raven.

(On a completely unrelated note, I love the Batman and Robin reference in Nocturno and Drake Raven. Raven even drops a utility belt. Good one, BioWare.)

Achievements and leaderboards

I really don’t really have an issue with the achievements in the Eternal Championship. They are logical, and they flow really well with the Eternal Championship itself. But I wonder if there shouldn’t be more.

Disregarding any achievements that might be hidden — although the points don’t suggest that there are hidden achievements — I can see there are the basic achievements for killing each of the bosses, then there are achievements for killing all the bosses on each class, and then there two extreme achievements: killing all the bosses in under 15 minutes and killing all the bosses without dying. And I love all of them. There is a clear progression for each. They build off each other.

However, I’ve seen some people on test center who already had all the achievements. I’m sure that’s an edge case, but 52% of the achievements are gained just by doing the Championship once. I believe you can make some achievements that are possible, but not done easily. For instance, I’d like to see an achievement for killing all the bosses without a companion. Or maybe you can make an achievement for clearing it in a non-DPS class. Here’s a silly one: an achievement for dying to every boss or your companion dying in every fight when you win anyway.

Taking the achievements a step further, I think you also need to add a leaderboard. You can base it on the fastest time per Advanced Class and overall fastest. You can also break that down into the speed for each fight. I’d love to see that, and I think that Bartle’s Killer-type player would love to see that, too.

Hard modes

I think you know this one was coming. I honestly don’t know why you haven’t mentioned them yet. So I’m going to say it for you: The Eternal Championship needs hard modes. As I said, we already have players who have blown through the content. I understand that this is way less than 5% of the overall population, but the truth of the matter is that this 5% is very vocal. And if you have people who are already saying that it’s easy and that no one should subscribe to it, then that ultimately hurts the bottom line more than just the 5%.

Although I’m sure that I would never be able to beat it, I would like to see hard modes that are on the bleeding edge of the DPS race. Of course, you might have to adjust the mechanics slightly for each fight, but they should be extremely tough — so tough that it is frustrating for even the top 5%.

The rewards should not be raid gear, either. In fact, I don’t think that stat gear should be the reward at all. But titles, pets, non-stat gear, and mounts should be the rewards. If you’re still looking for a way to keep the Arbiter’s saber cool and rare, this could be your outlet.

I’ve said my piece, and I appreciate your listening. I do like the Eternal Championship, but if it’s left the way it is, I will forget about it a couple of weeks after it releases. I look forward to seeing yours thoughts. And I also would like to see what other players think about the Eternal Championship.

May the Force be with you,

Larry