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Which set of mechanics is considered canon for ops' lore purposes?


Townowi

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We all know that some ops bosses had mechanics removed from SM well after the release of the ops they were in, such as Calphayus and the Underlurker. However, these mechanics mostly remained in HM.

 

Which set of mechanics is considered canon for an op boss then, the mechanics at release or the current mechanics?

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I would say ~90% of the abilities bosses use in the game don't matter one way or another wrt "canon."

 

The last ~10% may prove decisive in determining the answer to my question, but I feel the answer is op-dependent. And not just because some of them have no NiM, either.

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The last ~10% may prove decisive in determining the answer to my question, but I feel the answer is op-dependent. And not just because some of them have no NiM, either.

Returning to your original question:

Which set of mechanics is considered canon for an op boss then, the mechanics at release or the current mechanics?

I would say that the question is largely meaningless. From a point of view of someone trying to run the Op, only the current mechanics at the chosen difficulty can possibly matter, but that is inevitably down to a question of gameplay rather than lore.

 

What about from a lore point of view, then? Ultimately all the history books would say is "there was a big fight and the intruders defeated the Dread Masters" or whatever, even without the variability (across different versions and different difficulties) of the mechanics. What is "the lore" if it is not just an unusually elaborate and detailed history book?

 

And I advise strongly against introducing any kind of debate about "canon" regarding SWTOR. Consider the mention of someone called Revan in Rise of Skywalker. People were all "whoo!! Revan is canon!" except that:

* It was a reference to *someone* called Revan. That doesn't mean it was the Old Republic (whether KOTOR or KOTOR2 or SWTOR) person of that name.

* It confirmed merely the existence of someone sufficiently Sithy to be the namesake of a legion, and provided no other details.

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Returning to your original question:

 

I would say that the question is largely meaningless. From a point of view of someone trying to run the Op, only the current mechanics at the chosen difficulty can possibly matter, but that is inevitably down to a question of gameplay rather than lore.

 

Gameplay can, and sometimes, do dictate lore. And more often than people think.

 

Case in point: for 3.0-era and earlier FPs, MM is considered canon because bonus bosses, some of which are available only in MM, are, canonically speaking, killed.

 

If the same logic applied to TfB and SnV, then TfB was canonically run in 16-man HM because the Dreadful Entity is assumed killed, and SnV, in 16-man NiM because the Hateful Entity is assumed killed. If we accept these two bosses as dead for canon purposes, that is.

 

And then, if recurring bosses were fought in the same difficulty from an op to another for canonicity purposes, then DF/DP would both have been run in NiM for canon purposes, and EC, in HM.

 

But I have some reservations with the above analysis, which does not address EV, KP, ToS, Rav, Gods, Dxun, nor the one-boss ops.

 

What about from a lore point of view, then? Ultimately all the history books would say is "there was a big fight and the intruders defeated the Dread Masters" or whatever, even without the variability (across different versions and different difficulties) of the mechanics. What is "the lore" if it is not just an unusually elaborate and detailed history book?

 

Maybe detailed and elaborate enough for the actual abilities of the antagonists to be described in some detail (whether lore is detailed enough about abilities to reach the level of detail of a proper intelligence report or not is another issue) in which case mechanics do matter from a lore perspective.

Edited by Townowi
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Maybe detailed and elaborate enough for the actual abilities of the antagonists to be described in some detail (whether lore is detailed enough about abilities to reach the level of detail of a proper intelligence report or not is another issue) in which case mechanics do matter from a lore perspective.

That's a fair point, although in a wider version of the thing, the lore's likely to describe the effects rather than the abilities (yeah, fussy, I know), and the lore as found on sources like Wookieepedia frequently describes even fairly important fights (SW/Baras, JC/FirstSon, etc.) in fairly vague terms.

 

Either way, it's an interesting thing, although the factors you've described speak strongly against there really being any sort of definitive/canon "what the lore says" version of the fight. Not to mention that the composition of the group of intruders cannot possibly form part of that canon version, which would be strange if, say, the players were 100% gun classes in Dread Palace. *Any* historical record of that fight would remark on the absence of Force users, while I see no game-mechanical reason that a group of two tank Vanguards, four DPS troopers/smugglers and two heal troopers/smugglers (or four/eight/four for 16-man) couldn't beat that fight.

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