The problem that everyone is over looking is that Normal Mode Ops are suppose to be done prior to doing HM FP's as per the Devs designs. Now we can debate if this is a good idea or not but that was the intent of the current tier system.

 

Show me a dev post or dev blog that states that is true. "Hardmode" Flashpoints are nothing more than Level 50 versions of those Flashpoints.

Edited January 31, 2012 by SageH

One of the very best posts I've seen on these forums. You lay out your issues and actually suggest solutions. Rather than just ranting and QQing, you gave fantastic feedback.

 

BW, these are the kinds of posts you should be drooling over.

 

V

Edited January 31, 2012 by Voorshwa

I agree with most of this, particularly regarding the distributions of gear between the different modes. I'm actually fine with 16 man and 8 man versions dropping the same loot, but am increasingly frustrated that the only differences between the difficulties and the numbers of players are increased health and damage and tighter enrage timers.

 

I hope BioWare will take another look at this area of the game because honestly, right now, it's very poorly implemented (though the actual content is a great start and really deserves a better system).

If you have completed NM 16 mans then you have won the game. Nothing else to do at that point but move on to the next game. I dont understand why you would need any better gear than what you have, or better than what drops in the NM16s.

This post is spot on.

 

Here's my question, why does tier gear even drop from flashpoints? I say you need to run normal mode FP's to get gear to be able to handle HM-FP's. At this point you'll be ready to head into NM-EV and NM-KP and that's when tier gear starts to drop. I understand Bioware is new to the whole MMO scene, but they do need to increase the difficulty. They're allowing people to reach complete end-game in a few weeks after launch. Unless they'll be releasing new content (Major patches) every couple of weeks, they need to slow down progression.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Jaspless

Great thread.

 

What many of the dissenters have failed to note is that the key to success in an MMO from a corporate standpoint stems from keeping their players playing.

 

At the high-end operations (raiding) level, people play on because of

 

1) The difficulty and challenge of the hardest content the game has to offer

 

2) The loot rewards and the prestige (they come together!) associated with defeating these challenges.

 

With respect to (1), much more needs to be delivered in terms of boss mechanics at the higher tiers. Although I havent had the chance to go into NmM and so speak from a slightly ignorant standpoint, I have heard the mechanics are the same and they just made the DPS checks harder. Having this be the rule rather than the exception (if true) is a real problem, because it forces the game to be largely gear or composition dependent past a certain point, which is boring (and there isnt even combat logs to support DPS optimisation!)

 

However, this thread is more about (2). There needs to be a rigorous slope of gear progression to encourage players and guilds to test themselves on more cutting-edge content to progress in the game loot-wise. The organisation required to complete HM FE and get Columi tierchests is nothing compared to, say, HM Soa. Right now the loot aspect has been (more or less) eliminated with the ability for players to very easily tier-jump, leaving players with just the prestige aspect, which is insufficient in the long run and puts uneccessary pressure on the developers to keep coming out with new fights and content simply to keep the gear progression aspect active and the raiding playerbase interested.

Pretty sure NM mode heavy fabricator has new abilities from it's normal counterpart.

No one should be clearing nightmare modes yet. If they are, the content is too easy. The fact that guilds cleared nightmare modes in the first 2 weeks of release shows how lame endgame raiding is in this game.

 

I agree with the OP. Fix the gear drops, they are over complicated and increase the difficulty to actualy reflect the title of the raid. When I fight a nightmare boss, I want to be sweating.

Edited January 31, 2012 by namespace

When I fight a nightmare boss, I want to be sweating.

 

That pretty much sums up how I feel about what NM should be. Regardless of the loot - NM should be a personal challenge that hell most guild wont quite beat until a couple of months right before new content comes out.

 

Note I say most, obviously there will be plenty of great guilds who smash the NM bosses relatively early, just it shouldnt be THIS early.

 

Anyways, I have faith that BioWare will listen and sort this out eventually. Naturally they have a lot of stuff that needs fixing, and I'm sure several teams working on individual issues - so it will take time, but they should get there.

 

(My only fear is that it may not be sorted by the next content patch in March, pray that it is - or people may lose patience.)

Well, I agree somewhat, but not completely.

 

Hardmode FPs are in my opinion clearly more difficult than normal mode Ops, so having Columi dropping there isn't really wrong.

 

The other problem with the Tionese-sets is, that they are just to bad to give a damn. No one would do hard mode FPS for these.

 

There should be a Tier 4 of some kind, that only drops in Nightmare (like one token per boss in 8 man and 2 in 16 man ops), while the nightmare modes should become more challenging.

 

Overall should the droprates be more consistent. If I kill a boss in hard mode, there should drop one Rakata Token (8 man) and like two Columi tokens and when I kill the same boss in Nightmare, he should drop 2 rakata tokens, and the whole exotech crap can go to hell or need to get different stats, so that it may make sense to wear the exotech items.

There is a lot of good information and thoughts in this thread. Having read all the posts, however, I cannot be in wholehearted agreement with the OP. Specifically I canot agree that defeating a boss in NM should automatically provide the highest level gear. I certainly think it should be more likely, but automatic and only that highest level gear, no. Perhaps the final boss should always drop the highest level gear, but not previous bosses. I find the idea of always highest level gear to represent too much a sense of entitlement for defeating the conent. Indeed, if, as the OP indicates, the best reason for continuing to run end-game is to gain this highest tier gear, then it certainly should not be generously given out.

 

Regarding difficulty; Yes, for experienced raiders the current content is on the easy side, but not everyone is so experienced. Not everyone is great at playing their class, not everyone is addicted to gear. As a result I believe there neeeds to be end-game content that more casual/inexperienced/poorer players can run with some expectation of success. Should HM and NM be harder? Probably so. But what becomes your definition? Should NM only be beatable by (WoW) guilds like Blood Legion or Stars? As the old saying goes, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

 

Finally there are only 2 end-game raids at this time. I'd say wait until at least one more is released, a raid where Bioware can have taken all the player feedback into account, before coming to too final an opinion.

Edited February 1, 2012 by RickInVA

In my opinion, the Tier Gear should drop in the following manner.

 

Tier 1 - Tionese or Xenotech/Energized (Non Set Bonus Equivalent) Gear (Item Level 126)

 

• 4 Man Hardmode Flashpoints
  

 

Tier 2 - Columi or Exotech (Non Set Bonus Equivalent) Gear (Item Level 136)

 

• 8/16 Man Normal Operations (Exotech with chance for Columi)
  
• 8/16 Man Hard Mode Operations (Columi only)
  

 

Tier 3 - Rakata Gear

 

• 8 Man Nightmare Operations (Rakata Only with reduced drop rates)
  
• 16 Man Nightmare Operations (Rakata Only)
  

 

To me, this is the only way to make the current implemented gear and available difficulty salvageable. The current paradigm does not support the need for Nightmare level Operations outside of bragging rights, which consequently don't exist because the difficulty between Hard and Nightmare is not much at all especially considering the fact that there is little to no learning curve because BioWare uses increased HP, Damage and Shortened Enrage Timers as their primary mechanics for increasing difficulty rather than implementing new mechanics for each tier of difficulty. In addition, in its current state Hard mode provides the same loot at Nightmare and while Nightmare is 'supposed' to drop more loot than Hardmode, it doesn't appear to do so by any reasonable amount.

 

Raiding 16 Man Nightmare content should not be yielding Columi/Exotech gear. Allowing this is just disappointing, disheartening, and lazy design to be honest. If you want players to continue to raid Nightmare difficulty more than once for the ability to say I did it, then you need to adjust the rewards for the effort. I'm perfectly fine allowing 8/16 mans to drop the same loot with adjusted drop rates, but I am not okay with a single tier of loot dropping in four different tiers of content.

 

Like I said in the beginning, I'm not rage quitting. I do however, hope that BioWare will alter course and correct these issues sooner rather than later. As it stands, Fresh 50's can successfully clear EV/KP Normal if they are skilled players without running a single Flashpoint. While I'm not 100% opposed to that, I am opposed to Flashpoint geared players being able to clear the most challenging content in the game without being required to run any Operations to gear up and prepare for what should be extremely challenging.

 

I sincerely hope that by, if not well before the next content patch these problems are addressed. If not, then the state of end game raiding is going to continue to be very underwhelming and that deeply concerns me as raiding is my primary reason for long term commitment to any MMO.

 

And I completely disagree with your opinion.

 

All four man HM's reward the same thing?!?!?

 

Unless they're all the same difficulty, that makes no sense-and making them the same difficulty is just as pointless.

 

IMO, the way it is now works fine. Harder 4 man HM's are as hard as Normal 8 man OPs, I've run plenty of both to be able to say that.

 

Like others have said, your post boils down to "your weak 4 man groups shouldn't get any gear our l33t 8-16 player groups can"

4 man-

 

Tionese and Tionese equivelent off-set from most bosses, Columni equivalent NON-set piece(xenotech or w/e its called) from the last boss. Columni set pieces from this seems silly.

 

8/16 normal: Mostly columni with maybe some Tionese

 

8/16 hard: Columni with a chance at Rakata off most/some bosses

 

8/16 NiM: All Rakata(if you can clear NiM you should be able to get geared quickly)

Edited January 31, 2012 by Liaer

4 man-

 

Tionese and Tionese equivelent off-set from most bosses, Columni equivalent NON-set piece(xenotech or w/e its called) from the last boss. Columni set pieces from this seems silly.

 

8/16 normal: Mostly columni with maybe some Tionese

 

8/16 hard: Columni with a chance at Rakata off most/some bosses

 

8/16 NiM: All Rakata(if you can clear NiM you should be able to get geared quickly)

 

so getting columni from a normal 8/16 but not from a HM 4 man makes sense???

 

guess what, some 4 man HMs are HARDER than normal 8/16s.

 

guess what else, not everyone can get 8/16 people together in the first place!!!

 

harder 4 man HMs should definitely reward columni set pieces consdiering these two points alone....

sup Retribution and all the OP's guildies replying here supporting your homey.

 

Truth is though, the idea of guild elitism died some time into Cata when Blizzard realized they can spoon feed the masses raid content, make it simple, call it hard. Rake in the profits. ALL MMO's are now following suit.

 

The idea of a 'hardcore' player has evolved quite a bit over the years. Nowadays everybody fancies themselves hardcore with purple shineys. oh yeah, and everyone is a genius. and everyone raids. and everyone thinks everyone else is a newb.

 

Cash Rules Everything Around Me.

 

As long as there are benjamins to be made, Blizzard and Bioware will never ever again make

super difficult raid content with exclusive gear.

 

I know some of us on one side of the spectrum are saying HEY!! make content harder!! more exclusive!! but dont fool yourself, we are the vast minority here.

 

I agree with you though. just doesnt make cents.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Eclipsith

If you have completed NM 16 mans then you have won the game. Nothing else to do at that point but move on to the next game. I dont understand why you would need any better gear than what you have, or better than what drops in the NM16s.

 

Because eventually, higher tiered content will come out that will require the gear. MMOs are nothing but progression anyways, regardless of the form its all about progression.

Well, I agree somewhat, but not completely.

 

Hardmode FPs are in my opinion clearly more difficult than normal mode Ops, so having Columi dropping there isn't really wrong.

 

The other problem with the Tionese-sets is, that they are just to bad to give a damn. No one would do hard mode FPS for these.

 

There should be a Tier 4 of some kind, that only drops in Nightmare (like one token per boss in 8 man and 2 in 16 man ops), while the nightmare modes should become more challenging.

 

Overall should the droprates be more consistent. If I kill a boss in hard mode, there should drop one Rakata Token (8 man) and like two Columi tokens and when I kill the same boss in Nightmare, he should drop 2 rakata tokens, and the whole exotech crap can go to hell or need to get different stats, so that it may make sense to wear the exotech items.

 

I don't disagree with you, and my guild has had that discussion about Tionese loot many times. I also agree that 8/16m Nightmare should drop a slightly improved version of Rakata, but as I said in my post it was about salvaging currently implemented gear and difficulty tiers without completing removing existing tier sets and adding in new ones.

 

I don't think BioWare has the time or man power right now to be implementing such changes with the vast amount of Bugs, UI problems, Customization issues, and a pre-planned content patch on the way ect. I mean hell, they can't even get Rakata weapons fixed in a timely manner so I wrote this as more of a hope that they would shuffle content around to make better use of it.

+1 to this thread. I already feel like there are too many tiers of everything gear related and it's hard to make sense of it without alt-tabbing my game and looking it up somewhere else.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me.

 

As long as there are benjamins to be made, Blizzard and Bioware will never ever again make

super difficult raid content with exclusive gear.

 

I know some of us on one side of the spectrum are saying HEY!! make content harder!! more exclusive!! but dont fool yourself, we are the vast minority here.

 

You are absolutely correct. No business model supports the minority, it's just bad business.

 

I'm in the majority that likes easy raids.

You are absolutely correct. No business model supports the minority, it's just bad business.

 

I'm in the majority that likes easy raids.

 

With three difficulty tiers, why can't they support both? You can have Normal/Hard mode and I'll take Nightmare mode. You get 66% of the content, I'll take the remaining 33%. You still get plenty to do, and I get the challenge I want.

 

I have yet to see any argument that says that can't be true, BW is fully capable of supporting both crowds with a 3 tiers difficulty system.

so getting columni from a normal 8/16 but not from a HM 4 man makes sense???

 

guess what, some 4 man HMs are HARDER than normal 8/16s.

 

guess what else, not everyone can get 8/16 people together in the first place!!!

 

harder 4 man HMs should definitely reward columni set pieces consdiering these two points alone....

 

There is not a single HM Flashpoint that is "harder" than any Operation. The bugs in some of them might present them as being so, but iron out all those bugs and no, they aren't.

There is not a single HM Flashpoint that is "harder" than any Operation. The bugs in some of them might present them as being so, but iron out all those bugs and no, they aren't.

 

HM D7 and probably BoI is the same or harder than NORMAL kraggas. only difference is one takes 4 people the other 8.

 

once you know the strats for any normal op or HM, they are all pretty basic....

Good post. I haven't done any of the end game content yet as i am still enjoying the leveling but this as it stands and if it is true and correct, which i have no reason to doubt atm should be addressed and i believe will be.

 

I dont think this stuff got a lot of testing in beta.

Nightmare mode should be harder, and drop various mods and enhancements one level above the default rakata stuff, designed to tune your existing rakata pieces that you get from hardmodes. They should be itemised as such to allow min-maxers to experiment with stacking or balancing various secondary stats in different ways. Currently if you want todo this you have to get rakata or columi tokens for certain pieces in your or someone else's set that have the secondary stats you want and remove them, without wanting the rest of it.

 

Tionese should also probably be buffed slightly so it's not completely worthless and champion gear should be nerfed slightly (or have more stat allocation used for expertise) so it's not hands down better than Tionese for PVE.

 

Slightly less loot should drop from 8 mans and a bit more should drop from 16. Last night a fresh 50 in our guild went to EV8 normal for the first time and in 1 hour clear time got 3 of the main Columi set pieces. If he's also moderatly lucky now in Karaggas this week he can then pretty much go straight to hardmode/nightmare mode and never bother farming anything below that. He hasn't even done a HM flashpoint or really ever need to from a loot perspective.

sup Retribution and all the OP's guildies replying here supporting your homey.

 

Truth is though, the idea of guild elitism died some time into Cata when Blizzard realized they can spoon feed the masses raid content, make it simple, call it hard. Rake in the profits. ALL MMO's are now following suit.

 

The idea of a 'hardcore' player has evolved quite a bit over the years. Nowadays everybody fancies themselves hardcore with purple shineys. oh yeah, and everyone is a genius. and everyone raids. and everyone thinks everyone else is a newb.

 

Cash Rules Everything Around Me.

 

As long as there are benjamins to be made, Blizzard and Bioware will never ever again make

super difficult raid content with exclusive gear.

 

I know some of us on one side of the spectrum are saying HEY!! make content harder!! more exclusive!! but dont fool yourself, we are the vast minority here.

 

I agree with you though. just doesnt make cents.

 

While this post has some truth to it. The thing you arent taking into account is that easy games are boring and once people have cleared all the end game content(which at this point doesnt seem very difficult) they are left with nothing else to do other than PVP or roll an alt and this will lead to people unsubbing the game because there is nothing left to strive for. I agree that making things too difficult is discouraging, but making it this easy will have the same effect. Personally I think normal ops should be easy enough for all and hard mode ops should pose a bit more of a challenge but still allow your average player base to clear with the correct gear. Regarding Nightmare mode, as someone else already posted I should be sweating. Additional mechanics needed to be added at least for nightmare mode instead of just adding more health and damage and reducing enrage timers.