I like the small graphical tweaks after the most recent PTS update like the steam rising from the water hole where you pick up your missions and the rain becoming invisible at eye level unless you look up.

 

I'm not as big of a fan of the change to the Amateur Archaeology mission to where the Selkath Artifacts are more physicalized now. I get why you made the change, but it is more tedious to have to wait for your character to click on and then wait for the loot to pop up, even with autoloot enabled compared to just clicking and the mission would increment as soon as the cast was finished. Perhaps the mission could be tweaked to have Empire players destroy the artifacts instead? Not sure if the Republic has the same mission.

I've thought more about the visuals on the Imperial Kolto Refining Platform and Public Arrivals Port, particularly the weather, the kolto refining towers, and lights.

 

The rain needs to have a more seamless transition to invisibility. I can tell you guys are concerned about visibility, but right now the rain just flat out disappears at certain camera angles. I think it would help if the rain effect's opacity transitioned to being fully transparent as it gets closer to the player and/or camera instead of just getting turned off completely. It would also be fantastic if you combined it with a vignette or screen effect like some of the newer Mario games have.This video shows the effect on the title screen:

 

The ripple effects on the ground should are good, but something felt a little off and I think it's that there's no water flowing into the drainage grates. Consider adding the effect of the flowing water from the largest fountain from the Public Arrivals Port to the edges of the drainage grates and maybe even put an extremely thin layer of water on the ground.

 

The lightning could definitely use some improvement. The flashes of light in the sky should be synchronized with the flashes of lightning and lightning should actually strike the lightning rod towers, perhaps by using the lightning flash effect recolored to white.

 

Regarding the kolto refining towers, I think it would help immensely if the brown components like the smoke stacks (?), pipes, and upper part of the tower were recolored to be a uniform imperial black/gray color, perhaps matching the central column with the red lights. The overall structure looks good, it's just the mismatched colors make it look super obvious that it's reused assets and it feels pretty jarring especially next to the newer areas (nice job milking those Nathema assets btw).

 

The Public Arrivals Port could use a bit more work too. The water ripple effect should be a tad stronger here, especially on the water in the fountains. The green carpets look pretty, but they don't make a whole lot of sense. They would be sopping wet at this point. The original Manaan area notably lacks carpets outside. It would be cool if you could increase the luster or shininess of the plants here too since they'd be wet.

 

Fire placement also needs more consideration. The fire would not persist in the rain, so it should only exist next to the flamethrower adds or under a roof. There is a particular instance right near the Imperial QT point where there's fire on the ground and no adds.

 

Finally, it's a bit jarring that the little yellow lantern lights on the bridges aren't emitting light when every other light source seems to. They even cast shadows!

This thread says to travel to the invasion zone using your map.... buuuuut that area is not accessible that way. And before you ask: YES, I have completed the main story up to this point. Zooming in on the planet in the galaxy map did nothing, nor did suicide into the water. Edited June 16, 2022 by Meshla_Naast

I noticed that the only rewards for these are Manaan rep tokens. I hope that is just a PTS thing. I won't be doing these if they don't drop your 7.0 East Asian Grinder currencies as well.

I found the are really immersive and enjoyable to wonder around. I soloed all missions that were available, including the H4. Lots of people here didnt seem to be able to. I could not either as concealment but as lethality I kept dots on the boss and then just cleaved the adds with Toxic Haze dot spread and aoe Lethal Strike (330 + purple augs). It was little slow. The fun gimmick there was to let the boss cast hit the adds so I didnt take damage from it and I did not have to interrupt it.

 

I dont really have much complaints. Maybe the mob density would annoy if I was a non-stealther combat but as operative I just walked past anything I didnt feel like killing.