Hi Everyone,

Methodical recently had the chance to meet with Jesse Sky, Lead Flashpoints and Operations Designer. We were able to gain some great insight into the details and thought-process that goes into designing the content that we enjoy so much.

"Thanks for talking with us Jesse. Can you talk about what you learned from each of the three Operations currently out? How has that influenced future Operations?"

Our first two Operations, Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace, were built without a lot of player data or feedback to use as a frame of reference. By 1.2, we had a lot more data to work with, and a much-improved picture of how our player abilities differentiate SW:TOR’s end game from other MMOs.

Out of all the Operations, Denova had the longest QA / iteration cycle, and that’s become a core part of our development process. I think it really shows. When a mechanic doesn’t work, we do what we can to adjust it, but we’re not afraid to scrap it altogether.

"Can you discuss your design philosophy regarding the relative difficulty of bosses within the same Operation? For example, is it a design goal that each boss in an Operation be tougher than the previous ones? Do you intend for the last boss of an Operation be a large step up from all the other bosses, or do you prefer a more gradual difficulty curve?"

We generally balance bosses to be progressively more difficult over the course of a single Operation. However, our balance sheets are not always the best indicator of difficulty, especially as we increase our focus on mechanics. Some bosses require strict coordination checks, and that may pose a greater challenge to certain players than gear checks. We were surprised, for example, at how long it took players to down Toth and Zorn on PTS.

That said, we do want the final boss in a hard mode Operation to pose a greater challenge than the rest – we want to give progression guilds something to chew on for a while. It’s a delicate balance, because you don’t want ham-fisted gear checks artificially slowing your progression, but on the other hand, any pure coordination check can be overcome with enough practice.

"So far, all of the Operations have been linear in that you have to kill all of the bosses in a precise order. Do you have any plans for Operations with multiple branching paths or "wings" to allow players more control over the order in which they tackle bosses?"

It’s definitely something we’re interested in. Thus far, our Operations have been structured like traditional dungeon crawls in the interest of storytelling and communicating progression. It’s worked well, but at some point, we’ll have to change things up to keep it fresh.

You can read the FULL interview & article (with pretty pictures!) at http://methodical.enjin.com/devfiles

This part made me chuckle:

Sure, I think the main thing we want to encourage is a healthy variety of roles in raid composition. We balance things pretty tightly for the expected configuration, but tanks provide solid enough DPS that I could see an extra being viable, at least in 16-man. I don’t think we would want to punish that.

Tanks do not provide solid DPS. They're doing a third the damage of top DPS, and still less than half come the 1.3 armor debuff stacking nerf. That said, it does open up other options, particularly with regard to an extra tank or hybrid heals (which would add more DPS than an extra tank while also adding extra healing ability for stress phases).

This part made me chuckle:

 

 

 

Tanks do not provide solid DPS. They're doing a third the damage of top DPS, and still less than half come the 1.3 armor debuff stacking nerf. That said, it does open up other options, particularly with regard to an extra tank or hybrid heals (which would add more DPS than an extra tank while also adding extra healing ability for stress phases).

Well, the quote was "solid enough" DPS and what that really means is, you can usually beat the enrage timer just fine with an extra tank. From what we have seen, a competitive tank is usually closer to half the DPS of our average DPS players, and depending on the encounter, can give you a lot more control or flexibility.

Of course, you only want another tank when there is something for them to do, and that's usually the kind of fight where raw DPS is less important. You bring them to pick up adds, add another player in a taunt rotation, etc. If they ever came out with a tightly-tuned DPS check encounter (like Patchwerk or Baleroc) then yeah, you would definitely take the bare minimum numbers of tanks needed to meet the enrage. While I like those kind of fights, I think it's a good sign that most encounters we have seen so far have more interesting mechanics that support multiple strategies and group compositions.

Thanks, the full read was great.

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for checking it out!

Good interview, nice to see some insight on their design etc. It does sound like multi wing Ops are a long way away, and they're something I always liked in WoW:BC raids, where we often struggled against one boss that most guilds killed, but found the other boss that others struggled on to be rather easy.

Although many are anxious to see Nightmare, its true that the majority are still working on HM EC like.myself. I just wonder what kind of changes they will bring besides the extra gear etc, because they're making it sound like there will be some relatively significant changes/differences. Can't wait to see what the future Ops will be like ^^ EC isn't perfect, with some very questionable design (T&Z and over dps), but overall it is really fun and shows some promise for the future

As usual Methodical continues to lead the SWTOR Community in all things Endgame PVE.

Thanks. Keep it up.

Hmm not sure tanks do solid DPS, at least not since they started nerfing them

But I quite like the design of Ops and FPs so far. Unlike wow the instances are not mindless AOE spamfests and raids are actually challenging.

Well when they say solid dps for tanks I assume they mean "they do enough dps to warrant bringing a 3rd f you're not struggling with enrages".

As I tank, I dunno about others but from my logs I seem to average around 650-700 dps on boss fights, and when I really push it 750 is the highest I've seen myself do. I once read some tank saying he averages 1000 dps...not sure how exactly but whatever.

Now I know the best dps can push out some nice numbers, but I'd say average for HM EC groups is around 1400 dps. So yeah a tank does roughly 1/2 the dps of a normal dps. So by bringing a 3rd tank you're just losing 1/2 a dps, which for some fights might make a big difference, for others (such as T&Z) it wont make any difference, but will make the fight less annoying

Seems like you might be able to swap out a healer for an extra tank in 16m, if everyone's well-coordinated with tank swaps the boss would always be beating on someone with defensive cooldowns running.

I appreciate the questions about trash. I *hate* clearing those Denova trenches. Some of the trash pulls are decently fun though (cliffside pulls between Vorgath and Kephess, for instance)

Well when they say solid dps for tanks I assume they mean "they do enough dps to warrant bringing a 3rd f you're not struggling with enrages".

 

As I tank, I dunno about others but from my logs I seem to average around 650-700 dps on boss fights, and when I really push it 750 is the highest I've seen myself do. I once read some tank saying he averages 1000 dps...not sure how exactly but whatever.

 

Now I know the best dps can push out some nice numbers, but I'd say average for HM EC groups is around 1400 dps. So yeah a tank does roughly 1/2 the dps of a normal dps. So by bringing a 3rd tank you're just losing 1/2 a dps, which for some fights might make a big difference, for others (such as T&Z) it wont make any difference, but will make the fight less annoying

In all honesty DPS check for Denova is not as strict as most like to think. The proper execution of mechanics is paramount to everything else. Here is a log of a HM 16 Kephess kill. http://dpsmeter.com/knee0knelt (You need to click on the Kephess tab) This group was made up of many alts, fresh 50's, and trials. It was clean and we did not hit any sort of enrage timer. You can see from this our highest DPS was pulling just over 1,400 and we used two tanks and a DPS taunt in the last phase.

The point I am trying to make here is that execution>DPS by a wide margin in the current SWTOR tier. If you can master the mechanics and keep everyone alive you will succeed.