Building Your Legacy.
All Settled In.
Now that we have had a few weeks to get used to Patch 1.2 I thought it would be a good time to look at the Legacy System. So what does this new fandangled innovation to the MMO market really offer? Well that really depends on what type of player you are….
The End Game Elitist.
This is the player who only really wants to run Operations and/or Warzones. This is also the player that will gain the least from the Legacy as it stands now. The Legacy system is not really designed to provide to many heavy bonuses that can be used in End Game content. I believe this is actually a wise decision on the part of Bioware, as having Legacy Unlocks that could affect Ops and Warzones on a large scale would screw with game balancing and force guilds/players to focus on unlocking those parts of the Legacy. This type of player is not always into creating and leveling half a dozen characters, so many of the superficial / cosmetic Unlocks are useless to this player. One thing this player should look at doing though, is maxing out the Companion Affection to finish their Personal Missions. The bonuses for doing this are small bonuses to your characters Accuracy, Crit, Surge, Max HP and Healing Received. I believe these are permanent improvements to all characters in a Legacy and they should be achieved by someone who wants to really maximize their potential.
The Soloists and Social Players.
These are the players that like to run their Daily Missions and complete Flashpoints as their main activities in game. Due to the amount of Legacy Unlocks that relate to having your companion with you, these players will gain a lot more from the Legacy System than the End Game Elitist. Soloists and Social Players are also usually more inclined to make multiple characters, and in case you didn’t know, the Accuracy, Crit, Surge, Max HP and Healing Received buffs gained from maxing out a companion are only applied once per companion type. This means that if, for example, you have Malavai Quinn maxed out in your Legacy on your Sith Warrior you will get +10 to your Presence and the Healing Received Bonus. If you then max out Talos Drellik on your Sith Inquisitor you will not get the Healing Received Bonus again, as it only applies once. What you will get however is the +10 to Presence, and you will get that Bonus with every companion that you finish the Personal Conversation Missions with. Also selecting Human as the race for one of your characters will give you a +100 Presence Bonus when that character gets to Level 50, so it is possible to make your companions very powerful, which would be a great asset to the soloist and the social player.
Role Players and Crafters.
There are some Legacy Unlocks that are really quite good for Role Players. Human is available for every Class, but the other Species are only available to a limited number of Classes. Unlocking a Species will allow that Species to be used in the creation of any Class (the Human Species Unlock grants a +100 Presence Bonus instead). This will give Role Players and creators of Machinima a larger range of options to play with. The Valor and Social Unlocks would also give the Role Players and Machinima makers a few more tools to play with, as will the Emote unlocks from finishing the first Chapter of any Class Story. Currently Crafters do not really gain any significant Bonuses from Legacy Unlocks unless you count the Ship – Repair Droid, Mailbox and Galactic Market Kiosk.
The Other Little Perks.
There are a few other small things of note. The Convenience Section grants different Bonuses based on speeding up travel time and there are also Training Dummies that can be bought by people who want to eternally dwell in the confines of there ship. That covers pretty much all of what is currently in the Legacy System.
Coming Soon And Final Thoughts.
There is a Tab of the Legacy System that shows us what is coming up in Patch 1.3. It is split into four sections. The Advancement Section is all about gaining more Experience Points from Flashpoints, Space Combat and Warzones. The Travel Section will provide Bonuses to the Sprint Ability and reduce the Level Requirement for obtaining a Speeder License. The Companion Section is a series of Bonuses that affect your Companion Affection Gains, Their Crafting capabilities and how fast they can sell your grey items. The Convenience Section looks like it will provide some serious “quality of life” features for all players.
Personally I think that the Advancement Section is not that unexpected, as offering Experience Boosts is quite common in the MMO market these days. The Companion Section makes sense and will mainly benefit Crafters above all others, which is something that the system currently needs in my opinion. The Travel Section worries me a little however. The idea of gaining a Speeder at Level 10 is nice, but the idea of speeding up Sprint is concerning. Will the speed increase only apply while the player has an active companion? Will it apply in Warzones and Operations?
The Convenience Section is by far the most interesting though. This is a rather large carrot to dangle in front of all types of players. The Bonuses in this Section are all quite impressive. They will give the Player the ability to drop a Mailbox or a Repair Droid and even Respec “in the field”. There is also a Priority Medevac Bonus that provides “increased health after dying and respawning at a Medical Center, but this pales in comparison to the other Bonuses in this section when you consider the group implications of “in the field” abilities.
There has been a few complaints in the Forums about the cost of various Unlocks, and while I tend to agree that some are ridiculously expensive, MMO games have a tendency to bring out new features at exorbitant prices and then drop those prices once the feature is no longer new. I would not be surprised if that was the case here, and even if it is not there is also the fact that economies change over time and players will just be able to chip away at pieces of their Legacy bit by bit as their credit stash grows.
