Greetings everyone. I played the new flashpoint on the PTS when it first popped up and started running it a few times with a guildie. I will have to say overall I enjoy this flashpoint, FOR WHAT IT IS. What I mean when I state it like that is, the pros of the flashpoint are very solid and good while the cons of it are very glaring. I will go over my assessment of the pros and cons and give feedback on what Bioware should do for future “Tactical Flashpoints”

Cons: Lets just get the bad stuff out the way.

1. Only 1 boss:

a. The instance feels very long especially that there is only one boss in the entire instance and that is at the end. The “Elite Defenders” bonus bosses are no more than tougher trash mobs. Having only one true instance boss in the entire flashpoint makes this feel more like a Heroic than a actual Flashpoint. The heroic 4 quests of the macrobinoculars and the seeker droids felt more like flashpoints than Kuat Drive Yards.

2. No Real Use for well geared 55s

a. Unless you want to kill some time, or a reputation and achievement lover, there really isn’t use of Kuat Drive Yards once you hit 55. There’s no gear drops of any kind, there’s no Hard Mode version and its pretty much no challenge for level 55s. Even though I plan to run it with some of my 55s, I can’t see anything with Kuat that I can persuade others 55s who are in 69+ gear to run this.

Pros: Now that I got the cons out of the way lets get to the good reasons of Kuat Drive Yards

1. Great for leveling dps

a. If you been like me who has been wanting to level a dps toon through flashpoints but don’t like standing in 4 hours worth of queue time just to hope that a tank and healer of your level wants to queue as well, this is the flashpoint for you. I have done this flashpoint on 3 lower level dps toons just today, and I didn’t spend more 1 minute in queue before a queue popped.

b. The experience you get from doing Kuat Drive Yards on lower toons is now one of the best ways to level in game. You have a larger pool to pull characters in, and the fact that your bolstered to lvl 55 makes the

2. Challenging Bosses >55

a. For players who have characters under level 55, the bosses are actually quite a bit of fun and quite challenging. The Mechanics of each boss, especially the ranged faction bosses provide a lot of movement and forces players to pay attention to the fight.

3. Different Objectives/Scenario

a. The biggest draw of the instance is the fact that the objective changes each time you enter. And some are quite enjoyable the hanger and the Ship Assembly Scenarios have to be my favorite so far.

4. Faction Bosses

a. Its glad to see Bioware is really making a push of focusing on the war between the Republic and the Empire. Having faction bosses, even if their mechanically the same gives it a bit of different feel when fighting. No longer does it feel like everyone is fighting the same boss over and over, instead you feel like your actually attacking the republic’s strong hold, or defending the drive yards from Imperial invading forces.

5. Role Players

a. Something not mentioned by many is that the new flashpoint is a great opportunity for those that enjoy role playing especially those who always wanted a quest where it was a master apprentice rp style quest, the now have one. The Instance can easily be 2 manned but not recommended since companions won’t bolster like your characters to 55.

Feedback for Future Content:

1. Have More challenging opponents: If Bioware is going to go the route of having role neutral flashpoints, they should make it more heavy on the mechanics and provide more bosses than mere champ trash mobs. Or at the very least provide a hard mode version of the flashpoint so those at level 55 can experience some challenge with endgame gear.

2. More Level-Neutral Flashpoints: I think this is a great idea and provides more opportunities for people who are leveling low level alts to experience something different with a larger group of people and brings the community as well as guilds together.

3. More Faction Based Instances: I think Bioware has discovered a diamond in the rough with these faction based instances. It makes it feel more like Star Wars and reminds everyone that there is a war going on. It would be great if Operation Bosses were Faction based bosses even if the mechanics of said bosses are the same. Keep the story of the war with the Republic and the Empire going forward, don’t have the 1 big bad boss we all must face like the Dread Masters.

4. More Randomized Objections and Bosses: Arguably the best aspect of the new flashpoint is the randomization of objectives and bosses. I think this can also carry into other areas. It could be a great tool for operations, where the Bosses are different and raid groups have no idea which boss they will get each with their own unique mechanics.

This is my assessment. The flashpoint is great for what it is, and people should understand what it is and what purpose does the flashpoint really serves. As long as people understand that, then I think this will be very popular and hope to see more of it as well as improved upon.

Last boss takes way too long to kill even with bolster. It is not a difficult fight once you figure out what you need to do. Adding a mountain of HP on the boss does not make him harder, only more tedious.

its not about the HP, it does require a bit of coordination nothing compared to operatiosn but there have been a few times today where I was 1 or 2 players left standing because 2 of the other players missed getting out of the bosses damage radius

1) Buggy.

1a) Latency. There is something going on server-side that causes characters to hang up for 1-5 seconds.

1b) Freeing the prisoners is buggy. Just had a group that had to disband after freeing 7/10 prisoners. Got a message "security protocols still active". Nothing was up in either prison area.

2) Cheap. On a 55 depending on how much you get hit you actually lose money on this FP

3) What's the point of the cut scene with the group fixing the droid?

What do you all think of the new flashpoint

useless.

I tend to agree with OP. I like the overall idea.

Just wanted to emphasize on the ENORMOUS lag that many players experienced.

Last night while I played my tank I had literally tens of seconds of abilities "not firing". That was expecially painful on the boss who pushes you around like jumping rabbit and even if i used the counter abilites they did not work. I only saw decreasing boss HP, (hopefully others did not have that horrible lag), so my input was far less than I expected. As for tank, you know, it might be substantial for a group

Secondly, it is not clear what you need to do AFTER you killed the boss. You exit the instance and actaully can start again. So i did, and it seemed my quest was bit different, so I approached the quest giver again - got purple rep token an dthe whole story started again.

Also, it seems that 55es can enter the FP without the group. Intentionally?

Just my 2 cents

Not sure about the lag, I did not notice it, the only thing close to it was a really long load time (but that might have been cause by everybody running it yesterday).

As for the feedback

The Good

• The environment looks good
  
• Some of the modules (like the assembly of the starfighter) are pretty cool
  
• Rewarding daily comms is nice for gearing low level alts, much better than basic comms that I cannot use for that
  

The Bad

• I think that the Elite defenders and some bosses could be a bit harder (tactics wise)
  
• i think that on level 55 version the mobs could be a bit stronger, as they die during half the cast time of Forcequake.
  

However, I think it fulfills the reason it was created in the first place, and that is quick clearing of GF queue.

I thought this "FP" was terrible.

I ran it with a level 55 group and it was nothing more than a glorified daily, The trash and the boss were unbelievably easy.

I enjoy the CZ FPs and they work fine, as they have a HM too but this just felt too easy. It was way too simple and I don't really care for role neutral FPs as we all spec to roles we like for a reason!

Generally, the rewards are useless unless you want that cool looking speeder!

Not even elite comms??

Will a HM be made?

I ran it once and will struggle to bother running it again

Here's my take on the new FP. Overall I enjoyed it for what it is. A story to link the ground game and GSF. But as a decently geared 55 (with 7 other 55 alts) I can't see myself running it as often as I used to run the previous FP's. I'll run it till I hit the rep ceiling and till I get all the achievement's, but outside of that it serves no real purpose. So below I'll list some changes that I hope will make it into a future update.

1. Fixing the bugginess. Every single time I played it everything froze for about 1-3 seconds. The animations stopped, the sound stopped, everything stopped. And then BAM, everything that was lagging behind all caught up at once. At first I thought I was getting kicked, but I looked at how many bars I had and that was fine. Then I thought it was my connection to the internet, but again that was fine. Then I asked my group members if they had experienced the same thing and funny enough we all did at the same time. It's almost as if the server was lagging and needed a minute to catch it's breath. This would happen 1-4 times throughout the FP.

2. Credits. Why doesn't the 55 tier drop more money? I understand we are just fighting trash mobs, but I think they should drop the amount of credits that you get from 55hms. So please raise the amount.

3. Planetary comms? I mean they aren't totally useless for me as once I earn 100 I go to the fleet and buy cases of stuff from the Corellia vendor and then sell it back for a quick 50k(?) or so.....but would really love to see basic comms drop at the least.

4. And finally we come to my last thing I would like to see changed. Now I realize that this is the least likely thing to happen, but I'll list it anyways. Would of loved to of seen more than one boss. Maybe throw in a secret boss? You have to do x,y, and z in a certain scenario and if done correctly then he spawns.

Like I said, overall I did like the FP, but I wasn't overly impressed with it. I understand what you were trying to do and for that I applaud the team. I guess I'm just used to the previous FP's having 3 or 4 or 5 bosses. That's what I want to see more of. Anyways keep up the great work and I'm very much looking forward to 2014 here in swtor. (BTW loving the new addition to GSF)

Felt more appropriate doing it on my <55 toons than it did at max level. It's extremely easy, although there's only so much you can do with a role-neutral instance if you aren't going to have the kolto stations littered throughout the entire place. On my leveling characters, it was good for a lot of xp and the planetary commendations, which is nice. On my 55...it's fine for gearing alts, but gearing alts isn't really all that difficult on their own.

As for the FP itself...I found it pretty boring. The story was limited, and the actual game play was more akin to an extended planetary quest/bonus, running around to kill x mobs or click y objects, than anything 'tactical'. The actual bosses were mildly interesting, but the other mobs generally just fell over (I guess the Jedi/Sith at the control console up top do something different but that's basically "push you off" and not much else). Again, not sure how much you can do. I don't know, I just never felt particularly engaged by running around mindlessly killing things.

It's fine for what it is, I guess, but it's so limited that that isn't saying a whole lot.

EDIT: The lag - everyone in the groups I was in was experiencing it too. I'm not sure if it's just a product of everyone trying it out, but it was horribly (Especially healing the place on a gunnery commando! )

I enjoyed the "war" aspect of it, reminding us who are enemies are as previous posters have touched upon. To me it felt like a heroic as opposed to a FP, but the random objective thing is a great idea, and I think that once all combinations of objectives have been done that a secret new area should be unlocked with a new boss ( a jedi rapid response team rush to defend the yards or an elite sith trooper squad perhaps).

I am just pleased that they are TRYING.. we're getting new content, but it isn't simply re-hash of what we already have, like it or hate it, they are trying to come up with changes in gameplay that can only be a positive thing.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20140127?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+swtorfeed+%28SWTOR+Community+Feed%29

"Kuat Drive Yards is a new type of instance that we’re calling a Tactical Flashpoint. The main thing that distinguishes Tactical Flashpoints is that they are role-neutral – in other words, they are balanced for a combination of any four classes. This means Group Finder will match the first four players it finds, which translates into drastically shorter queue times, especially for DPS classes. If you’re level 55, you’ve probably seen this in action with the story mode versions of Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown, which are now also classified as Tactical Flashpoints."

Role neutral? The one thing they failed to accomplish was exactly that. You really do need a healer and players are seeing it. I was a healer in one yesterday and healed a lot to keep people up. Anytime I tried to dps people got upset and started being childish about not getting healed. If you are going to keep this new Tactical FP you need to figure out a better way to make the roles truly neutral.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20140127?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+swtorfeed+%28SWTOR+Community+Feed%29

 

"Kuat Drive Yards is a new type of instance that we’re calling a Tactical Flashpoint. The main thing that distinguishes Tactical Flashpoints is that they are role-neutral – in other words, they are balanced for a combination of any four classes. This means Group Finder will match the first four players it finds, which translates into drastically shorter queue times, especially for DPS classes. If you’re level 55, you’ve probably seen this in action with the story mode versions of Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown, which are now also classified as Tactical Flashpoints."

 

 

Role neutral? The one thing they failed to accomplish was exactly that. You really do need a healer and players are seeing it. I was a healer in one yesterday and healed a lot to keep people up. Anytime I tried to dps people got upset and started being childish about not getting healed. If you are going to keep this new Tactical FP you need to figure out a better way to make the roles truly neutral.

Seriously? I ran around on my 55 Merc BH healer and other than popping the odd heal off because no one stopped to use their out of combat heal (since I was there), it was leave Kolto Shell on everyone. It worked really well. I was majorly disappointed when taking on Major Benes. After realizing that there is a way to remove the bombs after we won and explored the room, I healed through it and one heal easily topped everyone up. Sorry you felt this way, but I just didn't see it.

In fact, you can see one of my runs in the flashpoint on my youtube channel within the next hour as it's being uploaded as I type this.

Just to reiterate, I found that this flashpoint only allowed the DPS to be more reckless during trash mobs and the boss because a healer allowed them to ignore healing up out of combat and allowed them to rush through without worrying about mechanics.

POSITIVES

* Role Neutral

I really like the role neutral Flashpoints. It' still goes smoothest doing them with a traditional tank, healer, dps setup, but it provides some flexibility and allows people to participate with hybrid and levelling builds. I also like the bolstering for sub 55s. This does throw up a few issues to do with available skills, but overall the bolstering seems to work.

* Visuals and layout

It looks good and moving around between the objectives seemed pretty logical (there needs to be some kind of visual indicator regarding waiting for everyone to click on the elevator though).

* Boss fights

Not done them all yet, but the ones I've encountered seemed challenging enough.

NEGATIVES

* Lag.

Lots of it. Big huge spikes suspending combat for a few seconds regularly. All four players in my group were reporting this, not just me. Seems from this thread others are getting this too, so it needs fixing.

* Too much trash

The Flashpoint feels overly long. The trash to boss ratio is too high. The trash fights started to get really tedious for just one boss (the mini bosses don't count, they are just long trash fights). The CZ-198 role neutral FPs have a much much better balance of trash to bosses.

* Crew Skills don't scale

Crew skills don't scale for sub 55s properly. For example, all scavenging in the FP needs 450 even for sub 55 groups.

* Rewards

The rewards just aren't good enough for the time invested. It's perhaps ok when levelling as the xps are quite good (if you do it as a daily) and you get a decent amount of Planetary Comms. But at 55 I can't see much point in it for Planetary Comms. The reputation items are pretty weak too (apart from the mount).

I tend to agree with OP. I like the overall idea.

 

Just wanted to emphasize on the ENORMOUS lag that many players experienced.

 

Last night while I played my tank I had literally tens of seconds of abilities "not firing". That was expecially painful on the boss who pushes you around like jumping rabbit and even if i used the counter abilites they did not work. I only saw decreasing boss HP, (hopefully others did not have that horrible lag), so my input was far less than I expected. As for tank, you know, it might be substantial for a group

 

Secondly, it is not clear what you need to do AFTER you killed the boss. You exit the instance and actaully can start again. So i did, and it seemed my quest was bit different, so I approached the quest giver again - got purple rep token an dthe whole story started again.

 

Also, it seems that 55es can enter the FP without the group. Intentionally?

 

Just my 2 cents

Yeah it was intended that way. My guess is because if 55s want to solo or 2 man they can. anybody 53 and below are going to have more trouble 2 maninging it if not impossible because companions don't bolster like players

I thought this "FP" was terrible.

I ran it with a level 55 group and it was nothing more than a glorified daily, The trash and the boss were unbelievably easy.

I enjoy the CZ FPs and they work fine, as they have a HM too but this just felt too easy. It was way too simple and I don't really care for role neutral FPs as we all spec to roles we like for a reason!

 

Generally, the rewards are useless unless you want that cool looking speeder!

 

Not even elite comms??

 

Will a HM be made?

 

I ran it once and will struggle to bother running it again

as I pointed out this Flashpoint wasn't made for geared 55s. It was made for leveling characters particularly the dps

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20140127?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+swtorfeed+%28SWTOR+Community+Feed%29

 

"Kuat Drive Yards is a new type of instance that we’re calling a Tactical Flashpoint. The main thing that distinguishes Tactical Flashpoints is that they are role-neutral – in other words, they are balanced for a combination of any four classes. This means Group Finder will match the first four players it finds, which translates into drastically shorter queue times, especially for DPS classes. If you’re level 55, you’ve probably seen this in action with the story mode versions of Czerka Corporate Labs and Czerka Core Meltdown, which are now also classified as Tactical Flashpoints."

 

 

Role neutral? The one thing they failed to accomplish was exactly that. You really do need a healer and players are seeing it. I was a healer in one yesterday and healed a lot to keep people up. Anytime I tried to dps people got upset and started being childish about not getting healed. If you are going to keep this new Tactical FP you need to figure out a better way to make the roles truly neutral.

You really don't need a healer for this flashpoint. I ran with 4 dps and had little trouble clearling it. The only time heals maybe necessary is the final boss but even then Kolto tanks are all over the place.

If you can't clear it without a healer that just means your group kinda sucked and didn't know what they were doing.

POSITIVES

* Role Neutral

I really like the role neutral Flashpoints. It' still goes smoothest doing them with a traditional tank, healer, dps setup, but it provides some flexibility and allows people to participate with hybrid and levelling builds. I also like the bolstering for sub 55s. This does throw up a few issues to do with available skills, but overall the bolstering seems to work.

 

* Visuals and layout

It looks good and moving around between the objectives seemed pretty logical (there needs to be some kind of visual indicator regarding waiting for everyone to click on the elevator though).

 

* Boss fights

Not done them all yet, but the ones I've encountered seemed challenging enough.

 

NEGATIVES

* Lag.

Lots of it. Big huge spikes suspending combat for a few seconds regularly. All four players in my group were reporting this, not just me. Seems from this thread others are getting this too, so it needs fixing.

 

* Too much trash

The Flashpoint feels overly long. The trash to boss ratio is too high. The trash fights started to get really tedious for just one boss (the mini bosses don't count, they are just long trash fights). The CZ-198 role neutral FPs have a much much better balance of trash to bosses.

 

* Crew Skills don't scale

Crew skills don't scale for sub 55s properly. For example, all scavenging in the FP needs 450 even for sub 55 groups.

 

* Rewards

The rewards just aren't good enough for the time invested. It's perhaps ok when levelling as the xps are quite good (if you do it as a daily) and you get a decent amount of Planetary Comms. But at 55 I can't see much point in it for Planetary Comms. The reputation items are pretty weak too (apart from the mount).

The lag is due to huge spike in player population on patch release day it happens everytime they release a major patch. it will die down again in about a week.

Does every FP really have to be tailor made for the lvl 55's?

This is a great FP to do while leveling up.

Not everything has to be about endgame you know.

Seriously? I ran around on my 55 Merc BH healer and other than popping the odd heal off because no one stopped to use their out of combat heal (since I was there), it was leave Kolto Shell on everyone. It worked really well. I was majorly disappointed when taking on Major Benes. After realizing that there is a way to remove the bombs after we won and explored the room, I healed through it and one heal easily topped everyone up. Sorry you felt this way, but I just didn't see it.

 

In fact, you can see one of my runs in the flashpoint on my youtube channel within the next hour as it's being uploaded as I type this.

 

Just to reiterate, I found that this flashpoint only allowed the DPS to be more reckless during trash mobs and the boss because a healer allowed them to ignore healing up out of combat and allowed them to rush through without worrying about mechanics.

Keep in mind you are 55 and the place is a face roll for a 55. My groups highest was 43. So obviously there is a disconnect with the FP.

Keep in mind you are 55 and the place is a face roll for a 55. My groups highest was 43. So obviously there is a disconnect with the FP.

Sorry, but you didn't specify that in your original post.

I enjoy the new flashpoint for what it is. It's great for leveling and it's fun.

My only real criticism is that I feel it should drop more credits. I'm not sure why it's dropping 10-20 credits per loot... that's of no use to anyone lol. Credits/loot for the 55 version at least should be more in line with the Czerka tactical flashpoints. Other than that, it's all good for me.