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Why Endgame is lackluster, and what Bioware should do.


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Hello guys. I think most of us can agree that the current operations system isn't perfect. As a long time MMO player. I think I've thought of a solution for the next raiding tier, with Bioware's mission in mind.

Wall of text incoming. There is no TLDR. If you don't want to read it, don't, and please don't comment.

 

The Problems

 

Bioware obviously wants normal mode to be easy and very casual-friendly. That's fine by me. It seems they want NM to be eventually puggable, and something most players can do without a hardcore raiding guild. The problem is that the gear is the exact same as HM flashpoints. The casual player wearing HM flashpoint gear will only gain benefit from pugging HM ops, and if they can pug HM ops, then NM is irrelevant.

 

Judging by Bioware's intent for NM to be very casual, it seems to me that HM should be the progression tier of typical, non-hardcore guilds, if you know what I'm getting at. Average raiding guilds should be progressing in HMs, maybe progressing one or two bosses per week (granted that Bioware wants NM to be puggable). The gear seems to be in a good place for this mode. Rakata gear can drop, giving guilds incentive to raid and progress. The problem is the difficulty. Casual guilds should be progressing on HM, not blowing through it.

 

Before I move onto Nightmare Mode, I need to address an issue I have with both HM and NMM. Raiding is like solving a puzzle (a real one, not the undertuned EV boss). When progression starts, the fight is chaos. As you learn the mechanics, the fight gets easier and easier to deal with, until everything falls into place. Killing the boss is like solving the puzzle. You learn all the mechanics of the fight, and put it all together to kill the bad guy. Surprisingly, the next time the ops group tries the boss, it usually dies relatively easily, because the strategy is in their heads already. The fun part of raiding (opsing?) is the problem solving aspect - the sense of accomplishment. By not adding new mechanics for HM and NMM, the puzzle is already solved, since everyone knows the fight and knows what to do. It effectively becomes a boring gear check. This is bad.

 

Now onto NMM. I have two problems here. First, the gear is the exact same as HM. That's not so good. This mode is supposed to be the hardcore progression mode, and right now there is so incentive to do it. Second, it isn't nearly hard enough. No where near hard enough. Bioware seems to underestimate top tier guilds. If this mode is their "tier", it's gotta be hard. I don't mean tuning up damage and HP, I mean adding new, difficult mechanics. To have a NMM bosses as fundamentally simple as some of those in the game currently (council, pylons, robot..) will not keep a competitive raiding crowd.

 

 

The Solutions

 

NM is tuned pretty well for its purpose. All it needs is a little incentive for casual players, besides the experience. Adding a rakata-level piece or two to the last boss solves the problem. Gives casuals incentive, keeps the environment casual, and gives incentive to join a guild and move onto HM (if you so desire, of course).

 

HM is too easy. Like I said, this should and will be the progression tier for average raiding guilds. Bioware needs to bump up damage and HP, but also add mechanics to make the fights more complicated. They don't have to be too confusing. Honestly, if they added one or two more mechanics, and maybe tuned the bosses up about 5-10%, i think HM would be in a good place. If the average raiding guild spends a night on a boss, and at the end of the night either kills it, or gets close, that would already be a much better raiding system, based on actually learning new fights.

They could also add a higher level item to the last boss of HM. There's already incentive to run HM, but adding a higher level item to the last boss would stick to the pattern imposed by NM, and in my experience, make the last boss more epic.

 

Now onto NMM, the mode that's currently farthest from where it should be. This mode should be HARD. They need to add even more mechanics than they need to add for HM. The first attempt on a NMM boss should be chaos, even in the appropriate gear. If Bioware wants hardcore raiding guilds, the fights have to be difficult to master, (3-4 more mechanics then they have now), and tuned up 10-15% from where they are now.

NMM should have its own tier of gear. NMM dropping the same gear as HM is madness. NMM needs an entire tier of gear to itself, not only to incentivize it, but to create distinction between the hardcore guys that do NMM, and the casuals who don't. I'm not being elitist, but more work should ALWAYS yield a higher result. I like WoW's system of adding the words "heroic" before the items stats to clarify the difference.

 

 

One Miscelaneous Point

 

Itemization is pretty bad. There is essentially no choice of gear for each class. This is bad because it goes against the whole goal of modding. Everyone raiding at a high level runs around in full "rakata"-there is hardly any choice of stats that the player can partake in. This is even more true, considering modding is the only way to alter gear (anything like enchanting from WoW is absent), and honestly, modding hasn't done its job at all, considering the highest level mods are already in the Rakata gear.

 

The solution should be something like this:

Make other items besides tier items drop in ops, and give them diverse mods. Diverse mods are essential to this game, because currently, all kinds of gear custemizatoln are absent.

Bioware could also do something better with Augments. Maybe add more augment slots, and make augments more fun. Maybe give weapons a special augment slot, which can accept "fun" augments, which gives the weapon a cool proc or something. Bioware has a lot of options here, but the current system leaves no room for customization, optimization, or anything else really. If Bioware wanted gear to be more flexible, theyve failed.

 

 

Conclusion

 

That's basically it. There are my criticisms and suggestions for the endgame, regarding ops and gear. If you read it, I'd love to hear your opinions. Bioware: even if you don't like the suggestions, something must be done to make endgame better, and fast. Maybe just release a statement, and tell us what you're thinking. Many raiders' attentions are waning, so this is very high priority.

Edited by The_Pro
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I agree. In its current state this game is awful. I've tried to look past the boredom and the bugs, and the lack of "open world" whether it be travelling around or pvp.

 

Its just so bad. At this point they would almost have to re-work the entire game.

 

Good thing diablo 3 is in may (?!)

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I haven't even reached endgame yet, but I do understand why these are problems based on other MMO experience. I really want to have that same diverse gameplay to look forward to when I get there.

 

Well written and thought out, OP.

Edited by Stenrik
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I like the fights, I can see your issues however. Not many mmos launch with working raids. WoW's were rough at first, Aion's are bad, War isn't even in the same ball park, AoC was all manner of broken and pointless due to no RPG elements or stats working, Rift was just horrendously bad, Swtor's is broken, Vanguard didn't even launch with end game!

 

Welcome to MMO launch raiding. Sucks, but as time has shown with most if not all of these games, it gets better. Patience young padawan!

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i dont want rakata gear droping in normals, cause i dont wanna farm normals if i can clear nightmare.

 

considering your "rakata gear already has the highest mods"... those enhancements are crap cause they all just have accuracy + x in it. thats why u have to get random drops in nightmare mode to get another enhancement and to get rid of this stat.

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Might sound crazy but One mode for everyone, and hard encounters would make this game way better. Like in rift, it didnt have much going for it but if you raided you got a good run. Hammerknell took around a month for the top guild to clear and even the first two raids were difficult to do without the right gear/tactics. I remember going into Hammerknell and the newer raiders still having a little trouble on the easier raids 6months down the road.

 

I have yet to raid, but SWTOR is a themepark and from what i heard over mummble and seen. When the ride ends it really does end. New raid took 1 day to clear? lol Great for the more casual crowd for sure.

Edited by FuzzyMuffins
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Our guild still has a couple nightmare kills left to get in our 8-man mode and many of our members are already getting bored, including the other half of our 16-man who are still gearing up for Hard and Nightmare gear checks.

 

The content is simply too easy. We've never had to try very hard to get a boss down. At least not by most peoples standards. The only reason we haven't full cleared everything is because we only do progression 2 nights a week. Coming from games where I spent weeks, or even months to get a new raid on farm, this is pretty disappointing.

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Our guild still has a couple nightmare kills left to get in our 8-man mode and many of our members are already getting bored, including the other half of our 16-man who are still gearing up for Hard and Nightmare gear checks.

 

The content is simply too easy. We've never had to try very hard to get a boss down. At least not by most peoples standards. The only reason we haven't full cleared everything is because we only do progression 2 nights a week. Coming from games where I spent weeks, or even months to get a new raid on farm, this is pretty disappointing.

 

i understand thats how i fill right now i dont even wanna play no more.. my 8man guild has alrdy cleared basicly all nightmare content + gear wise there is no point to do nightmare besides knowing u did it in nightmare hard mode is just as good for gear... this game with the countless bugs is geting worse and worse... bioware cant simply say they messed up. there raids are horrible and yes WAY to easy first day 1.1 came out and nightmare mode is cleared..... come on thats just dumb it should take like 1-2 months atleast not 1 night... im not happy bout the gear just cause its all the same crap rakata nightmare mode should have like SUPER rakata gear or something

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I detest modes. Raids should be difficult, but not extremely hard.

 

One mode, for everyone.

 

I agree - it would simplify everything whilst at the same time giving the entire server a universal touchstone to measure progression.

 

Have one or two entry level raids set at 8 man (with lower level reward epics) to get people used to larger group sizes, and then upper tiers kick off at 16 man raids with progressively harder group mechanics in each tiered encounter.

 

Basically how WoW was pre WotLK.

 

Karazhan > Gruul > Magtheridon's Lair > SSC > TK > MH > BT > SW was the best progression flow of any MMO I have played and the difficulty tuning was spot on.

Edited by JamieM
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While we are still doing normal stuff because of gearing issues of some members, we already tried and almost did the first EV boss on hard. I have to agree it's too easy because it's a copy-paste of normal mode with more HP/damage.

 

I like the usage of additional mechanics to make an encounter harder.

 

That said, it did take Blizzard a while to make good raiding instances, I'm sure Bioware will realise the same and make more challenging instances.

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I agree - it would simplify everything whilst at the same time giving the entire server a universal touchstone to measure progression.

 

Have one or two entry level raids set at 8 man (with lower level reward epics) to get people used to larger group sizes, and then upper tiers kick off at 16 man raids with progressively harder group mechanics in each tiered encounter.

 

Basically how WoW was pre WotLK.

 

Karazhan > Gruul > Magtheridon's Lair > SSC > TK > MH > BT > SW was the best progression flow of any MMO I have played and the difficulty tuning was spot on.

 

I like multi-tier raiding. It has its problems though. Since whatever is the highest tier at the time will be very hard, even with proper gear, basically the content has to be nerfed when the next tier gets released to maintain the difficulty "latter", which makes proper balancing pretty difficult. You also have to consider that players trying to get into raiding a little late have to go through multiple raids, instead of just getting boosted to the normal mode of the current raid.

Casual players also complain about not being able to fight the last boss of the game, before the expansion, ie. Kil'Jaeden or Kel Thuzad.

 

There are pros with the system too though. Everyone gets to witness all of the content, early stuff included, even if they start raiding a few months late. I think the system gives motivation to casuals as well. They see someone in Fleet with a lightsaber drop from Darth Maul (just an example), and there is a sense of wonder, because they don't even dream of ever getting that far, instead of "Lol no big deal, I just pugged him on NM".

 

Like I said, I like the system, but I doubt Bioware will implement it. I think there's a more realistic chance of my suggestions getting implemented.

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i dont want rakata gear droping in normals, cause i dont wanna farm normals if i can clear nightmare.

 

considering your "rakata gear already has the highest mods"... those enhancements are crap cause they all just have accuracy + x in it. thats why u have to get random drops in nightmare mode to get another enhancement and to get rid of this stat.

 

1) One or two Rakata pieces shouldn't gear someone up for NMM alone, especially with the NMM buffs that I'm recommending.

 

2) Yeah that is exactly my point. I'm an assassin tank. I have a couple Rakata pieces, and I'm forced to swap the augments out for the Columi ones with shield instead of accuracy. There needs to be more choice and customization. In my post, I meant that there should be more top-tier mods so this issue goes away.

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TBH the "hardcore" raiders are a small precentage of an MMO population. I am not sure if Bioware cares about investing time in this since there are more important things for casuals and less hardcore players to add/fix.

 

I think ridiculous hard "raids" are an MMO idea of the 90s. Nobody seems to be doing it anymore. You might have to look for other games :)

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TBH the "hardcore" raiders are a small precentage of an MMO population. I am not sure if Bioware cares about investing time in this since there are more important things for casuals and less hardcore players to add/fix.

 

I think ridiculous hard "raids" are an MMO idea of the 90s. Nobody seems to be doing it anymore. You might have to look for other games :)

 

The casual, leveling game is just fine right now whereas the endgame is crappy.

 

I am also getting bored and going to give this game another 1 month may be before I unsubscribe. Not only the content is boring and easy (we are doing NMMs) lots of things are also buggy. Cant deal with this stuff for long time.

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I agree with a lot of points in your post. Good read.

 

To answer an issue you had with gear customization, a Bioware rep recently talked about their future plans for gear customization. You can read the dev post about that here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1398252#edit1398252

 

Also, I want to add a couple comments regarding raid difficulty. My guild just finished clearing Hardmode EV and KP last night. We are a weekend raiding guild (raid 2 nights a week), so we are a little behind but that's okay. We haven't really had much trouble on Hardmode anything, and actually killed most everything with very little wiping.

 

Now, the reason I say all this is because there were clearly some "omg fail" moments during our hardmode boss encounters last night, and we were still able to down the bosses. I'm not saying that I think absolute perfect execution should be needed to down bosses in hardmode, because that's what nightmare mode is for. But seriously, some of the stuff we messed up on the boss fights should have caused us to wipe and it didn't. I'm a little disappointed in the challenge thus far.

 

Next weekend we are going to attempt Nightmare modes, so maybe there will be more of a challenge there... I'm hoping for it.

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Problem is that endgame is the same skinner box that WoW was. Group up, run raids for purples.

 

Same basic design with nothing else. No innovation in that regard. I would personally like to see SOME basic sandbox content at endgame. Nothing crazy. Keep raiding in the game, it's fun but even ice cream tastes nasty when you don't eat anything else.

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I agree. In its current state this game is awful. I've tried to look past the boredom and the bugs, and the lack of "open world" whether it be travelling around or pvp.

 

Its just so bad. At this point they would almost have to re-work the entire game.

 

Good thing diablo 3 is in may (?!)

 

You clearly didn't read what he said. He never once said the game in its current state is awful. Please go away and start trolling somewhere else.

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I agree - it would simplify everything whilst at the same time giving the entire server a universal touchstone to measure progression.

 

Have one or two entry level raids set at 8 man (with lower level reward epics) to get people used to larger group sizes, and then upper tiers kick off at 16 man raids with progressively harder group mechanics in each tiered encounter.

 

Basically how WoW was pre WotLK.

 

Karazhan > Gruul > Magtheridon's Lair > SSC > TK > MH > BT > SW was the best progression flow of any MMO I have played and the difficulty tuning was spot on.

 

The problem with your progression chart is that not all of those instances came into the game at the same time, so comparing all of BC to the first month or so of a new MMO isn't quite fair. Just consider the fact that in the future there will be further operations that you can compare on a similar level to WoW. Don't try and compare it a month after the game came out. Consider the fact that it was basically trying to find 40 people for Molten Core right after the game came out and even if you are talking about BC, the raiding still came out gradually.

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The raiding came out slowly, I never raided much in WoW, but i assume it was good raiding Otherwise why would all the guilds stick around to do so?

 

I hate the argument, the game just came out, because it is 2012. Companies know what we as consumers want and they need to deliver. Instead of scamming us and being held up by people saying it will get better.

 

The first raids were easy and bugged, wait till 1.1.. 1.1 came out finished in one night. It was in development for almost a year.

 

Even rift had a hard raid instance and 3 weeks later made another raid instance just as hard. None of it was cleared the first week or two and only the hardcore guilds, 5 days a week raiding, were clearing the content at a steady pace. I use rift as an example because it was the most recent MMO launch.

Edited by FuzzyMuffins
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