You preach the following 'It is about controlling other players' but you do the same.... 'Oh you want harder content, just take off your gear'

 

SM, flashpoints, open world, is accesible, and should be, to everyone

 

HM raids should start to introduce mechanics or dps/heal checks, depending on fights (which not everyone can nor should be able to clear, it's called hardmode for a reason, and should be to challendge a group at a decent to average skill level, with medium to high gear)

 

and NiM should just be the hardest content in the game. and should challendge the people who know their class in and out, with high to BiS gear.

 

that;'s not trying to control your game experience. you have SM, if HM and NiM are to hard for you, and NiM raiders shouldn't have to make artificial dificulty by removing gear, that's stupid.

If you're the only one thats cold, you dont crank up the heater and force everyone else to start sweating when all YOU needed to do was put on more clothes or a blanket.

Because what they want is to control OTHER PEOPLES difficulty. Making your own experience more challenging is blindingly easy. Only laziness can explain someones inability to tone down their companion or their own gear level. Making others experience more tedious or difficult is what these people want, the ability to dictate others game experience.

If I can stand in the middle of combat, doing nothing, with healing companion on, go make a beverage, and come back to finished fight (or two, because the mobs respawned), there is something wrong with the difficulty. You should at least do something to you know, PLAY the GAME, use the abilities, do not stand in stupid, etc, not do nothing/just press basic attack.

Nobody wants story to be training grounds for NiM, but when you can use one of these to play the game for you, something is wrong.

If I can stand in the middle of combat, doing nothing, with healing companion on, go make a beverage, and come back to finished fight (or two, because the mobs respawned), there is something wrong with the difficulty. You should at least do something to you know, PLAY the GAME, use the abilities, do not stand in stupid, etc, not do nothing/just press basic attack.

 

Nobody wants story to be training grounds for NiM, but when you can use one of these to play the game for you, something is wrong.

Exactly.

Guys at BW still believe people want to see how their companions play the game for them, not play for real.

This is one of the main reasons why the game is in its current state (dead).

solo focused players )

There should be no such thing as solo players in an MMO, to begin with.

If i want solo content i go play Mass Effect.

Again, this is MMO, you supposed to group with other players.

If you are playing solo you are part of the problem.

There should be no such thing as solo players in an MMO, to begin with.

If i want solo content i go play Mass Effect.

Again, this is MMO, you supposed to group with other players.

If you are playing solo you are part of the problem.

I disagree with this. You are assuming that everyone has someone to play with the entire time they are logged in. You should understand that there are way to many uncontrollable variables in MMOs to limit the player from doing something that will make them log in repeatedly. Even when populations were booming, Ive played during primetime hours, and its essy to find groups. Ive also played during non-prime time hours and its hard to even find someone in a specific zone at times. Ive also logged into the game knowing i only had 15 minutes to play, and have accomplished tasks towards my gearing goal.

Activities for solo play MUST be part of the game or you will alienate and push away a significant part of the player base.

There should be no such thing as solo players in an MMO, to begin with.

If i want solo content i go play Mass Effect.

Again, this is MMO, you supposed to group with other players.

If you are playing solo you are part of the problem.

Coming from someone that does do group content. This is nonsense. There is no problem with being able to be a solo player in an MMO. There are many days I choose to do Solo gameplay because I do not feel like grouping. Those days I do heroics/dailies etc. Nothing wrong with choices for both solo and group play styles. Even in WoW you can be a solo player. The days of old school sandbox MMO's where they force everyone to group for everything are long dead.

With that being said, I do feel like they have made the 1-50 storyline to much of a joke when they implemented Level Sync (One of the biggest mistakes done with this game). I wouldn't mind a toggle switch to allow us to increase the difficulty of the 1-50 class storyline. I'd only expect it to work in phased area's.

 

I am not arguing for easier HM/MM Operations but I am convinced that Story/Vet Operations needs to be made harder otherwise the person progressing into hard mode is in for a rather rude awakening.

No. Simple. While you are absolutely right that easier SM Ops don't prepare players for HM/NiM and they're in for a very rude aweakening, increasing difficulty of Story mode ops leads to disastrous results with larger casual playerbase abandoning SM Ops content that proves itself to be unpuggable. Case in point - original TOS and Underlurker which the devs THEMSELVES admitted was ran by a fraction of the playerbase. The rest dropped it as soon as they realized it was mostly a waste of time to try and pug it. Another case in point (this time still actual) - Monolith. No one does it because it's still overtuned. Compare it to frequently ran Queen or Toborro back in 2.0 days.

Ops production & budget starts at mass casual Opsing playerbase pool. Not the HM/NiM players sorry. Wasted content will do nothing but hard HM/NiM players.

Longtime lurker here and yes i completely agree with this!

The 2.0 or 3.0 had a way to set our characters PVP with companions without going into different instance and walk into warzone near outlaw den will auto go PVP. Gear modify bonus status for companions. Game came out 2011 year. Between those year 2011 to 2014 with Enteral Empire meets the compliance with all strongholds. I'm curious if there where radical resistance from Star Wars Galaxies had discover this game and turn the game toward the left and rig down to low end with weak characters with weak companions while all areas inside the game set hard mode set to high and no one wants to go in the flash missions is difficulty up to high with max level rate gear. We our probably going to see this happen again. Radical resistance will never learn or never make up their mind. Over neglected the game away from compliance is just like probably a cyborg crime. Add radical resistance for targets in the new content in the game in the future after we win our game back again.

Coming from someone that does do group content. This is nonsense. There is no problem with being able to be a solo player in an MMO. There are many days I choose to do Solo gameplay because I do not feel like grouping. Those days I do heroics/dailies etc. Nothing wrong with choices for both solo and group play styles. Even in WoW you can be a solo player. The days of old school sandbox MMO's where they force everyone to group for everything are long dead.

 

With that being said, I do feel like they have made the 1-50 storyline to much of a joke when they implemented Level Sync (One of the biggest mistakes done with this game). I wouldn't mind a toggle switch to allow us to increase the difficulty of the 1-50 class storyline. I'd only expect it to work in phased area's.

If you wanted it hard and take your gear off and see you lose. Your character and companion will lose for not having a gear. If you win without gear and you are a hack full of lies telling DEV make it more difficulty. I think DEV needs to play for test for our needs. I don't trust players on wanted it worse difficulty. I trust the DEV.

TLDR

What's the point of this post anyway?

Assumptions, speculations and insults aside, of course.

If you wanted it hard and take your gear off and see you lose. Your character and companion will lose for not having a gear. If you win without gear and you are a hack full of lies telling DEV make it more difficulty. I think DEV needs to play for test for our needs. I don't trust players on wanted it worse difficulty. I trust the DEV.

Honestly I only wear empty shells, with the DvL armorings, and MH/OH ever. So stripping gear really doesn't add challenge. I never level using any mods/enhancements or any Left side pieces. you still slaughter your class bosses like they are a joke.

Not to mention I did say a TOGGLE switch so each person could decide what difficulty they want. Not the same as saying everyone should have the content difficulty harder.

Also Companions don't get better or worse from you (and the companion) having gear on. Companions performance is SOLELY on what influence rank it is at. So a rank 50 companion will still be strong regardless, and a rank 1 companion will be less effective.

I'd like to add something about difficulty as well.

When I personally want a "harder" experience. What I'm looking for isn't an increased DPS check or a higher health pool. What I'm looking for is more engaging mechanics.

Once upon a time swtor had a mechanics called "interrupts" which, if not used, would frequently result in character death, dismemberment, stuns, or excessive hp depletion. Nowadays no-one cares about interrupts in anything except hard mode and NiM encounters because the penalty for missing an interrupt is too minor.

This is one example of a mechanics which increased difficulty and made the game 'harder' that I'd like to see return. Not an inflation of health pools or a dramatic increase in baseline dtps, but a return of "you screwed up so now take damage" mechanics.

I'd like to add something about difficulty as well.

 

When I personally want a "harder" experience. What I'm looking for isn't an increased DPS check or a higher health pool. What I'm looking for is more engaging mechanics.

 

Once upon a time swtor had a mechanics called "interrupts" which, if not used, would frequently result in character death, dismemberment, stuns, or excessive hp depletion. Nowadays no-one cares about interrupts in anything except hard mode and NiM encounters because the penalty for missing an interrupt is too minor.

 

This is one example of a mechanics which increased difficulty and made the game 'harder' that I'd like to see return. Not an inflation of health pools or a dramatic increase in baseline dtps, but a return of "you screwed up so now take damage" mechanics.

Yes they should make interuppts useful again while leveling. They made fights much harder just by needing to interuppt one ability on a boss, or that ability would kill you outright, or do severe damage, which your companion might not recover from even if it was a healer.

If I can stand in the middle of combat, doing nothing, with healing companion on, go make a beverage, and come back to finished fight (or two, because the mobs respawned), there is something wrong with the difficulty. You should at least do something to you know, PLAY the GAME, use the abilities, do not stand in stupid, etc, not do nothing/just press basic attack.

 

Nobody wants story to be training grounds for NiM, but when you can use one of these to play the game for you, something is wrong.

Try an account without all the holocron bonuses, all the buffs and perks. See if it is so easy. Do in not leveled to the max of the levelsync. People buff themselves to the eyeballs, use every method they can come up with to make themselves killing machines, then complain that they are too powerful. They pop xp boosters then complain that they level too fast. show some self restraint and dont use all those advantages and you wont have to come to the forums and post hyperbole filled messages about how things are too easy. If you want spicy food, add hot sauce on your own, dont insist that the kitchen cook everyones food to your taste.

Yes they should make interuppts useful again while leveling. They made fights much harder just by needing to interuppt one ability on a boss, or that ability would kill you outright, or do severe damage, which your companion might not recover from even if it was a healer.

They have a lot of those mechanics in kotet/kotfe, even in SM. We all know the reactions of many people (not me) regarding kotet/kotfe, as a whole.

BW relying on casuals already ruined this game.

Casual founder with uninterrupted sub since 11/24/11 here. I've been ruining this game for a while.

The reality of "harder" is almost nothing to do with healing. You have tons of damage reduction even as a DPS in the game. The system works the same way it did at launch. When you achieve a level ~10 "levels" above the level of the opponent (which is based on your defense rating and class bonuses to defense like absorb, defense, and shield), they have a hard time hitting you, just like in the original game you had a hard time hitting opponents many levels above you. Level Sync only affects your offensive statistics and your health pool (it does not change the difference in levels defense mechanic since you are still your real level - its not really a level sync but a damage/health cap). If you are not taking damage because of your defense, the size of your health pool and the healing your comp is doing is meaningless.

The best experiment to prove this to yourself is to run the same heroic (or other fixed difficulty content) with different defense levels (by changing gear out for lower gear or simply removing armor (including armoring mods)) and parse the damage taken. You will also want to be within 6 levels of the opponent to avoid the additional damage resistance that is based on the level differences (if you note the DR is listed as against an opponent of the same level). Damage taken will go up as your defense score goes down while the healing rate will stay the same. This should balance somewhere around the defense score you have if you equip the class/planet story gear you got on the planet before the one you are on. Tython gear on Coruscant, Coruscant gear on Taris, etc. You will probably want to disable your companion's CC ability as well since that leads to a lot of variation in damage in small groups.

I fist played when companions had a set role and we had to gear them, when things were more difficult and lvling was way slower, and it took forever to kill trash, and i didn't stay very long as i found the game incredibly boring as i was constently underleveled and always had to do some lvling before continuing the story, that was absoluteny not fun. AT ALL.

I came back after the changes were made and stayed since then as it became much more fun to me. If things were to go back to how they were at the begining, i'd just leave again.

Like you, I was here in the early days when trying to solo the game was next to impossible. It was so frustrating that I left. When the changes came down, I came back and stayed. If things go back to what they were I'll be gone again, and I think an awful lot of people will go with me.

There should be no such thing as solo players in an MMO, to begin with.

If i want solo content i go play Mass Effect.

Again, this is MMO, you supposed to group with other players.

If you are playing solo you are part of the problem.

Nonsense. MMO is just an indicator that a server can handle many people on-line at once. (Fun fact, 'many' = ~100 ppl. during the time this term have been introduced. ) Nothing more.

And nothing said the one should interact with the other players at any level.

SWtOR always was and is a single-player game, brought on-line by mistake. The developers did everything to make grouping the worst gaming experience you could ever have. You can't start on the same planet. You'll have to constantly drop-and-reform a group if you need to take/turn in quests (or repeat it several times for every member of the group while monitoring who was the first to enter the instanced area — because only the owner would be able to get/turi in quests), run to the different areas with the different clases, etc, etc, etc. It's a nightmare !

No wonder there are a lot of solo-players around. You can't force us to group, the game itself is agains it.

I'm a casual player. Haven't been around for years like some, so I can't speak for their experience. I kind of like the game as it is. I fits well with spending a little time each evening playing an interesting game. If BW decides to go in a different direction and doesn't want my sub fee, I'll respect that and I'll find something else to sub instead. Maybe the game's last 6 months will be very peaceful

Having said that, the story missions are easy. No other way to say it. It doesn't really bother me.