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forsitel

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  1. Unfortunately its not much of a carrot to try for when you accomplish this without meaning to :/.
  2. Maybe if you just did the fights but there were achievements out there to make it challenging for the hardcore raiders. For instance you have the immortal and the undying. There were also protodrakes not available to the casuals because they likely couldn't do the achievement requisites.
  3. I'm not telling you how uber I am. If you truly think that is the point of this post that I'm sorry I came off like that. Its just not the case.
  4. That isn't the extent of my endgame knowledge... As I correctly indicated in the post my guild took off during Naxx, that doesn't mean I have no experience after it. I have raided almost everything up to DS 8/8. I do agree with your point about the game being new as I mentioned in my post. I hope that you are right but I'm not sure why there couldn't be any degree of differentiation. As for the little to no trash, TOC had none either. Its not unheard of for an instance to release content that takes time to do, outside of clearing trash. If I am a new guild I can spend more time with the 6 trash mobs and heroic beth in firelands than with all of ev and kp on Nightmare mode ..
  5. Hey everyone, Forsitel of Davik's Estate here and I hope to provide some perspective to what I deem to be a big problem with Star Wars the Old Republic. This may at times seem like a rant but I assure you there is a point and I do believe my proposal to fix what I deem is a big problem is more than valid. I'd first like to preface this with a brief history about my MMO experience so that all the readers can know the background I am coming from: TL : DR I am very experienced in all WoW endgame content. I started playing World of Warcraft when I was in high school in January of 2005. That is approximately 1 month after the game released (November 24, 2004). After hitting level 60, I proceeded to explore what endgame content was being offered to me. I joined a guild that raided a few times a week and served as the out of combat rezzer . After gearing up in full Lightforge and some Lawbringer I eventually graduated to group 1 healer. I stayed in this guild for about a year and a half until I finally decided to create my own guild with a group of my real life friends. We figured it would be a fun new adventure trying to put our leadership skills to the test against some of the games best. After failing miserably in our first few attempts at making a guild we eventually server xferred. At this point we joined up with a group that had been struggling on Gruul in about April of 2007. The majority of our core stuck around with these guys for about a year and were privileged enough to watch it go from a mediocre guild to a top U.S. It is currently ranked in the top 50. Some time after this we decided once again to lead a raiding guild. We transferred off our server and started one up for the beginning of WoTLK. Finally we were successful; we brought our guild to the top of the server successfully running through Naxx with no deaths and grabbing a server first achievement . Feel free to skip here if you simply don't care!!! On to SW:TOR: Years later no one from my group plays WoW anymore. Myself and one other friend being huge KOTOR fans saw this game rising while it was in the early stages of development. We decided that we were going to follow it closely and see what it could become. Every Friday we checked the website anxiously awaiting the morning update. I can specifically recall taking my History course in college and spamming refresh on the site at approximately 10 am EST every week. We thought that this would be the next game we'd play. It was Star Wars and an MMO, what could go wrong? I signed up for the beta created a twitter account and followed them. I listened to Stephen Reid call out every single batch of closed beta invites until finally I was invited. I leveled a Bounty Hunter and really thoroughly enjoyed the story. On June 21 I preorded at 1 am. It was after this that my friend and I began to make preparations for leading a top guild. We posted our website and started to actively recruit. On December 13th 2011 I started my SWTOR experience and by December 17th 2011 I was the first lvl 50 on my server. Before the flaming starts I'd like to nip it in the bud. I played through the game during beta as a Bounty Hunter. I had already experienced all that the story had to offer, I felt no reason to listen to it again. Is it true that I dedicated a few days of my life to playing a video game for hours on end? Yes. Now, no doubt I will hear how I played the game wrong and how it wasn't intended for such competitive gaming. This will be the focus of my post. I don't believe an MMO is sustainable if its only concentration is on the leveling experience. Coming from myself I played through KOTOR at least 6 times. But even then there is only so much replayability. In the MMO market there needs to be something else that keeps players hooked and resubbing month after month. Telling a player to level an alt (something that some players are not interested in doing) might not be sufficient. On Raiding Right about now you might be asking yourself why this is posted in the Operations section of the forum when I haven't spoken about a darn thing in game. The answer is simple, as I just alluded to in the previous paragraph, the game currently lacks in endgame content. My guild which is composed of some players with 0 endgame experience in any MMO is currently able to clear HM EV and Karragas in under 3 hours. We should be able to get Nightmare EV and Karragas in under 3 hours next week but nevertheless all content has been cleared. We find ourselves incredibly bored, for lack of a better term. I personally find myself logging on less as each day goes by. But as it stands, there really isn't much to do when all the content can be cleared in one night. Was it like this from the first raid? Perhaps not, but I'd venture to say it wasn't because the encounter was difficult. The most trouble we ever had was either the first week of Soa when hitting him with the third pillar wasn't breaking his shield or attempting to do HM Annihilator with a few people in greens that had just hit level 50. The problem wasn't the mechanics it was the fact that his 6 minute enrage timer was simply too much for our new level 50s to handle. This quickly changed as we ran a few 4 man HM's later that night as well as a normal EV and returned the next day with our new level 50s in full epics (go figure). Every boss from there on out dropped like a fly (with the exception of Soa who's floor kept despawning). I personally found it incredibly disturbing that a top guild can contain a bunch of level 50's with no gear and no raiding experience yet still down every boss in the game merely two weeks after reaching maximum level. I searched for why this could be, and came up with the fact that quite simply the mechanics of the bosses aren't thought provoking and lack any challenge. There is really only one engaging encounter (forgetting about the bugs) and even he lacks any real difficulty especially now that he has been nerfed by Bioware. What are we supposed to do now in the game? Roll yet another alt? What happens when we can't possibly make anymore alts? To answer that question myself, thats when I unsubscribe. As much as I love the story of this game, there needs to be something else to hold me here. Its unfortunate that the first four bosses of this game lack any more coordination than a heroic 5 mans or 15 man UBRS runs in WoW. I can personally recall spending many a day on the trash before Drak or figuring out how to use the mounts in Occulus when WOTLK was just released. I can't say I ever really had to think too much about moving out of the red circles on the ground during Annihilator; jumping on the rocks during Gharj; figuring out a puzzle WYBGRP!!!!!; spamming 1 on my mob during Duel of the Fates and healing when I need to. Its really quite sad that in 3 lines I have just written an entire guide to the first four bosses of Eternity Vault. I know that I personally can sit at my desk and think of more engaging encounters then what has been developed. Concessions, Proposals and Conclusion I understand that not every player wants to wipe for hours on a boss trying to figure out the most efficient way to cast a heal or slam dunking a tainted core while dpsing down elementals and being feared / smacked by adds that actually do damage. To each his own I always say and I don't really feel that anything I have said so far has been outrageously unfair. So I'll make this proposal and I hope that it will generate some discussion. Clearly, Bioware intended to create some level of diversity between raiders and casuals. Hence the Nightmare and Normal modes. But instead of just the % increase in health why not throw in some new mechanics that casuals might not otherwise be able to handle? Or if thats too much why not do something similar to what WoW had with Sartharion 3 drakes? Casuals ran pugs for Sartharion all the time but never did they do him with 3 drakes up. Its not so much adding mechanics as it is reserving the difficult ones for the people that actually want to challenge themselves. Then add a half decent achievement system which recognize such accomplishments. If thats too much to ask for then I see little reason for me to stick around and by me I mean any hardcore guild that plays this game. Bioware may very well be appeasing those who are playing this as their first MMO. They might be slowly transitioning the great majority of subscribers into MMO endgame raiding. I understand the rationale behind this. I wouldn't throw someone with 0 endgame raiding experience into a Kil'Jaeden esque fight. But I must say if there isn't a difficulty increase soon the hardcore raiders will not stay. And while this may not yet seem like an abundance of people, I can safely say that once the people who are playing this as their first MMO want to begin challenging themselves they will have a difficult time doing so with the current content. Eventually, the game will fail because it lacks in endgame and replayability does not equal sustainability. Some of you might think this is a whole lot of jib jab with no valid point. While I certainly hope my message doesn't go ignored I respect your opinion. Some of you might say, WoW's Molten Core (first raid) didn't have bosses with challenging mechanics. While this is certainly true, it was much more difficult to coordinate 40 people than 16. In other words, what WoW vanila lacked in challenging mechanics it made up for in getting 40 people together to do the same thing at the same time. Some may say the hardcore raiders opinion doesn't matter, we are just keyboard warriors. HELL WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A SOUL! Well, I hope you can value my opinion just as I value yours. I don't think I've said anything that would be too drastic for someone who plays the game casually to accept. Is it too much to say those who want to play the game more should get a bit more out of it? I certainly don't think so. Finally others may say that this is just the first month or so of the game and the degree of difficulty will be increased. I'll finish by saying that I certainly hope you are right because I want this game to work. I love Star Wars and this game has tons of potential as well as a thriving community with dedicated community leaders in the mod team but I see little reason why these problems couldn't have been addressed in the 5 years of development before launch ><.
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