More Repeating of the Repetitive Grind

On yesterday's Stream, BioWare delved more into one of the slightly more interesting points of Eternal Throne: Chapter Difficulties.

Basically, each Chapter now has two difficulty modes: Story and Veteran (although a third, Master, will come out at a later date of course). Veteran Mode is designed to be done with mid-tier endgame gear and an Influence 20 Companion (apparently having been tested with a DPS character and a Healer Companion), and scales to your Level, suggesting that it can also be done on the first playthrough of a Chapter to provide more of a challenge.

Each Chapter will also be repeatable, allowing you to experience the same story content over and over again if you so desire.

The ability to replay story content, as well as a more difficult version thereof, is something which several voices have called out for in the past, with one particular request for us to do our entire Class Story at relevant 'endgame' level for therapeutic and challenging reasons.

To see it happen with KotFE and KotET is interesting, but at the same time quite disheartening. A lot of people refer to playing KotFE time and time again on different alts as an absolute chore, and now we have the ability to do so on characters who have already experienced the story.

Choices we've already made stick the course, so making different choices this time around only serves to allow you to see what could have gone differently for that character (but only in the moment; you can't 'fake' a playthrough which results in a romanced Koth if in your actual playthrough he was driven away from your side).

On the plus side, for completionists (such as myself) who missed out on either map completion or Codex entries (like that one in the Asylum alleyway, grrr), this provides the perfect opportunity to go back and pick them up just because.

I do have to say, I am slightly disappointed that the HK Chapter won't be available in either Veteran or Master mode. It's probably the most 'fair' Chapter given that everyone has the same skill set and there can't be any real class bias, but at the same time playing as HK isn't exactly something which many people are willing to learn a proper rotation for, so it perhaps would be harder to align this Chapter with its fellows based on this fact alone.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Veteran (and later, Master) mode brings to the table. I have a nasty feeling that it's purely going to be increased damage with no new mechanics, but then again it could be that increased health results in more mechanics coming forward that people were just able to blitz past before now.

We'll have to wait and see.

I am curious to know how Healer players in particular will cope with this. Companions can be fairly squishy and a low-Influence DPS Companion doesn't have nearly anywhere near enough DPS output to kill things quickly, so while Veteran Mode may still be fairly simple, Master Mode (assuming that this difficulty will be at Level 70 and requiring gear, that is, which would explain why it's being delayed) could well be absolutely brutal for them.