Make an optional difficulty setting so that vanilla content can be harder to play. I came back to this game after years to experience some Star Wars story and content, only to find out that questing is boring and dull because, even if you set your companion on passive, all you need to kill someone is using the standard attack. Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

As you are aware the companion revamp was mainly for KOTFE and KOTET since the content of those expansions are a bit tougher. You also out level the content really fast and max out the cap for level sync for a particular area which is really set to high in my opinion . It would be nice to have a setting to raise the difficulty level for the vanilla portion of the game since it is rather simplistic now, but I sure something like that is not even on their radar. Edited December 30, 2017 by Bakgrind

Don't use a companion and don't wear any armor - that might make it a bit harder.

The companion is on passive mode so I'm not using it. About the armour idea, I thought of that already but I haven't tried it: you mean using only your weapons while questing on planets, right? Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

Don't use a weapon either.

 

Only use whatever it takes to make it hard enough for you.

Edited December 30, 2017 by JediQuaker

Will I be able to use all abilities then? I think some of them require a certain weapon or 2 equipped. The game is so easy at the moment I can't learn abilities, how and when to use them effectively.

Keep yourself 4 levels below enemies level. That is the bottom line for some difficulty. Then you can disable all your companion abilities, but keep him active with his basic attack, so you can listen to his comments while fighting (and keep the flavour of a companion at your side, not an embedded journalist).

 

Two ways to keep you underleveled:

· skipping all content that is not your class story missions

· go to fleet, buy the White Acute Module at vendor at Combat area and use it to get rid of any extra experience boost you get from the game. This is my recommendation, so you can pick exploration missions or other content while being underleveled (slower leveling do that possible).

If you start a planet at or above the level of the planet (for example DK is lvl 10-16 and you are lvl 17, which is not hard to do with the rate xp is gained) it will be very easy. Level sync doesn't take away abilities and some of the ones you get are too powerful for the planet you are questing on if you are too far above the planet's level. About the only way the could "increase" the difficulty would be to add a health multiplier and that doesn't really make the battles more difficult, they just take longer. Increasing difficulty like they do in flashpoints (Story, Veteran, Master) takes coding changes which would be hard to implement in very old content due to the layers of code that have built up over the years. Trying to make it harder by coding would likely break lots of things.

Considering that it wasn't this easy at release (I don't know exactly what patch and expansion made the vanilla game like this) and you couldn't gain experience this quickly, it shouldn't be hard too program the game as it was back then. I understand there are people who want to experience class quests only and get to 50 ASAP, but there should be an option for people like me who want to take it easy and experience all content with some sort of challenge, as it was before. Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

Vanilla was hard? When? Edited December 30, 2017 by Diefenbaker

Vanilla was hard? When?

 

Come on, you get the point, it was definitely harder than this. It wasn't "hard" in the general meaning, but surely not as easy as it is now.

Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

It is the leveling that makes it easy. When you outlevel the content by as much as you do now the combats become easy. They didn't really nerf the NPCs in the vanilla content but you have so many more abilities now (and they are optimized for you) that what was once "challenging" (and keep in mind that the legacy buffs you pick up along the way make a big difference too) is now easy. The best solution would be to provide some way to limit xp gain for those who want to be more challenged. That would be like going back to the "original" game.

Come on, you get the point, it was definitely harder than this. It wasn't "hard" in the general meaning, but surely not as easy as it is now.

 

You're correct, it was significantly harder than this. It wasn't difficult though outside of a few glitched class story ending on Corellia at launch.

 

I just recently leveled a Sith Assasin from 0. No cartel boosts, none of the leveling gear from DvL and I skipped every non class story from DK on. He was still level 65 or so by the time I finished Corellia. While I don't miss the absurd problems in the Jedi Consular story we had at launch .. this is almost as bad in the opposite direction.

 

I had completely forgotten about the white acute module vendor. That's a terrific idea.

Make an optional difficulty setting so that vanilla content can be harder to play. I came back to this game after years to experience some Star Wars story and content, only to find out that questing is boring and dull because, even if you set your companion on passive, all you need to kill someone is using the standard attack.

 

You realize this is during double xp (that ends in a few days)? You're over-leveling the content substantially right now. Yes, we sync to the level of the planet but augments and additional skills don't go away.

 

You DO need a weapon for many skills. It doesn't have to be a good one. Find a cheap and low level one. Take off your armor. Dismiss the companion (then you don't have to worry about the passive thing.)

Make an optional difficulty setting so that vanilla content can be harder to play. I came back to this game after years to experience some Star Wars story and content, only to find out that questing is boring and dull because, even if you set your companion on passive, all you need to kill someone is using the standard attack.

 

PvP. That'll be hard enough to let you 'learn your abilities'.

You realize this is during double xp (that ends in a few days)? You're over-leveling the content substantially right now. Yes, we sync to the level of the planet but augments and additional skills don't go away.

 

You DO need a weapon for many skills. It doesn't have to be a good one. Find a cheap and low level one. Take off your armor. Dismiss the companion (then you don't have to worry about the passive thing.)

 

I've been using the White Acute Module since I created this character by mailing the item from another one I had. At the end of Tython I was like... level 16 or 17. Anyway, I'm gonna start playing again now and try to fight without armor, only with the lightsabers on and see how it goes.

 

PvP. That'll be hard enough to let you 'learn your abilities'.

 

Not interested in PvP at the moment, I came back for story and content as I said.

Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

Try a new character on a different server with 0 Legacy. Makes it harder, too.

They addressed that by saying the code for the original stories is different than the code they have used for the newer stuff so they can't do variable difficulty for it. What that really means is there is no one left who knows how the original code was done so they aren't going to risk touching it for fear they'd break what little of the game is still worth playing.

Try a new character on a different server with 0 Legacy. Makes it harder, too.

I actually made an f2p account a while ago just for fun. No legacy, no sub, no other class buffs. It was still easy.

 

The truth is that it has been made very easy to appeal to a certain demographic, presumably the story crowd. They're not going to change that.

I've been using the White Acute Module since I created this character by mailing the item from another one I had. At the end of Tython I was like... level 16 or 17. Anyway, I'm gonna start playing again now and try to fight without armor, only with the lightsabers on and see how it goes.

 

 

 

Not interested in PvP at the moment, I came back for story and content as I said.

 

16 is the level they originally intended you to be when you left Tython. Sounds like you were on track there.

16 is the level they originally intended you to be when you left Tython. Sounds like you were on track there.

Actually initially it was level 10. The intent was that you leave a planet at the minimum level for the next planet in sequence (Coruscant is 10-16). Back before the accelerated xp rates, it was sometimes difficult to even reach that level without having to farm npcs

Edited December 30, 2017 by DWho

I think the main take-away I get from this thread, is they need to take another look at Level Sync.

 

It should probably be synced to the region, not the planet... like, if you go to Ord Mantel you're capped to 12, but there are regions of the planet that are level 2. How your stats and your companion stats are determined also needs to be checked as well... in some instances (not sure if this is still true) abilities were broken because they temporarily changed your stats, and your stats were already at a hard cap.

 

but, in general, what's being observed is true. I'm still leveling my new lowbie on Coruscant... and making no effort to reduce XP gained (and, in fact using my XP boosts I get as mission rewards) I'm already level 35 (ish). I had a lot of creds, so I popped back to fleet and picked myself up level 30 mods a little while back.

The real trick with level sync is trying to balance new players that don't have any of the legacy perks and datacrons with old timers that have them all. That creates a really big disparity in power levels especially when it comes to companions whose performance is entirely based on presence now. The original design was good where you didn't get xp if the target was far enough below your level but it made leveling alts take a long time which was where the complaints came in. In a way, a lot of the people complaining leveling is too fast and people aren't learning their classes now are why it is that way in the first place. They complained leveling alts was too slow so Bioware "fixed" that by boosting xp rates which lead to level sync to try to keep people from overwhelming the content because they were so overleveled. It's a tough balance to strike.

The real trick with level sync is trying to balance new players that don't have any of the legacy perks and datacrons with old timers that have them all. That creates a really big disparity in power levels especially when it comes to companions whose performance is entirely based on presence now. The original design was good where you didn't get xp if the target was far enough below your level but it made leveling alts take a long time which was where the complaints came in. In a way, a lot of the people complaining leveling is too fast and people aren't learning their classes now are why it is that way in the first place. They complained leveling alts was too slow so Bioware "fixed" that by boosting xp rates which lead to level sync to try to keep people from overwhelming the content because they were so overleveled. It's a tough balance to strike.

 

Yeah, from a bad end to the other. Not very smart.

 

Anyway, it looks like I've found a good compromise to make the game harder. I'm still on Coruscant, I went to the cantina and bought orange gear for credits, then I removed all the mods from it. I'm now using all my abilities to defeat enemies and still use my companion on passive mode. It's challenging, and I even died once, some minutes ago. I feel like I'm still getting bored somehow, but at least I solved this difficulty problem, kind of.

Edited January 2, 2018 by _Tarkus_

game was never hard . And I mean really really Hard like say 'The secret World' Hard where you die so many timeOMG!...

 

*ahem*..

 

Anyway , I doubt they will change the Level Sync . I personally would be happy if they could at least Tweak the final Boss of your main Story . They are behind an instance for pete sake . It's Laaaaaaame that you can sneeze and defeat them so easy and fast...kinda a let down .