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Concerns about the bridge to Hard Modes


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Coming from WoW like many, leveled a Jedi Sentinel and loved the questing and story experience. I was pretty pumped to dive right into HM flash points and end game content.

 

Then was told by someone that my gear was not good enough. They told me that to run Hard Modes I have to grind Dailies. I am fine with doing this, but it seems kind of....lame.

 

Is the path to end game stuff like Hard Mode Flash Points, seriously playing for an hour everyday through repetitive and less the amazing content? Even if they can be done by fresh 50's, without the tool of a Flash Point Que, it seems the community of players is unwilling to bring anyone that hasn't geared as far as they possibly can without doing the content. So my question is, is this how it is supposed to be and in the future, is this system going to continue to be the bridge to end game content, because in my opinion it's an unfortunate flaw in a game I really like.

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You don't need to farm dailies to get geared up to do HM flashpoints. I would not recommend doing HM FP at all actually, as it is a waste of time for the most part. Unless you like to kill the same bosses over and over and never see any gear, then maybe you will enjoy them. You don't need to gear up for OP anyways as the normal mode is basically free-loot.
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Go on the ah and buy a few things.. If credits is a prob go do dailies.. If you dont want to do normal ilum + d7. Not that hard .. after that you should grab a **** ton of tionese + columi peices from hardmodes.. btw dailies give rakata ear + implant so you should do em :)
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Did you honestly think that you'd be able to run endgame content just because you ding'd 50?

 

Work for it. And dont be a burden for your teammates.

 

Yes, he should be able to do it, because that is exactly what I did and it worked fine. If you need daily comms gear to "not be a burden" to your teammates, I really feel sorry for you. Because HM flashpoints are so hard right?

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My issue is with the system its self. If you think having dailies as a bridge between 50 and hard modes is a good idea, I disagree, strongly. My point is that I should be rewarded for hitting max level with fun and enjoyable content, not days if not weeks of grinding content that is not fun.

 

I know you probably can do them in fresh 50 gear, but as a solo player with no real life friends on the server, it becomes an issue when I can't get a group because the community seems to only accept those who are in as best gear as possible. I'm not refusing to do the dailies and I'm marching through it, but it's an extreme turn off to end game content IMO. You don't have to make HM's do able be ding 50's (but it seems that is the case anyway), but give me something non disheartening to do to "earn" it.

 

Coming from having years and years of raiding normals and heroic raids, I absolutely love the story in flash points and raids, I just really think they are not taking advantage of it by making it accessible to a wider base of their players. Being stuck in the "I know I'm good enough to do this, but people won't take me.", zone is kind of a big annoyance.

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I think the assumption that diving straight into HMs after hitting 50 and finishing the story really is a bit too assuming, and honestly, needing to gear up in regular dungeons and dailies isn't any different from WoW.

 

I played WoW for almost 7 years, and when I hit 85, I wasn't able to walk into Heroics, I had to run normal dungeons first, like Normal Flashpoints here, which shouldn't be disheartening, or a turn off, it's basically just doing the same thing as HMs, just easier.

Edited by slmaril
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If your server has a good PVP population, then I suggest just doing the Daily/Weeklies from PVP. Before the 1.1 patch killed it for my server (we're low pop sadly) most of my guild and myself geared up in nearly full tier 2 PVP gear. We now run ops and replace some pieces of it with the PVE stuff. But ultimately the PVP stuff is pretty decent if you have nothing else, and can be obtained with far less effort than any PVE gear.
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Whoever told you that you need to do dailies to "bridge" hard modes either does not know what he's talking about or needs to be carried to get his gear.

 

I have taken DPS who aren't even in 50 gear and successfully completed hard modes. When I started doing HMs, I (as a tank) was only geared in corellia commendation mods. We didn't have much problem doing it.

 

Completing hard modes are more about individual skill and strategy than gear. You do not need daily gear to do it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is bad and wants to be carried.

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Yep as above, done hardmodes with lvl49s to help them level up. Did my first HM in freshl 50 items (mods from Corelia/Belsavis Commendations).

 

To be honest, the HM are a little underwhelming, and not really all that hard.

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My issue is with the system its self. If you think having dailies as a bridge between 50 and hard modes is a good idea, I disagree, strongly. My point is that I should be rewarded for hitting max level with fun and enjoyable content, not days if not weeks of grinding content that is not fun.

 

I know you probably can do them in fresh 50 gear, but as a solo player with no real life friends on the server, it becomes an issue when I can't get a group because the community seems to only accept those who are in as best gear as possible. I'm not refusing to do the dailies and I'm marching through it, but it's an extreme turn off to end game content IMO. You don't have to make HM's do able be ding 50's (but it seems that is the case anyway), but give me something non disheartening to do to "earn" it.

 

Coming from having years and years of raiding normals and heroic raids, I absolutely love the story in flash points and raids, I just really think they are not taking advantage of it by making it accessible to a wider base of their players. Being stuck in the "I know I'm good enough to do this, but people won't take me.", zone is kind of a big annoyance.

 

My advice would be to find a guild. You don't necessarily need IRL friends in these games, but a friendly guild is a huge help. They don't whine if you don't have a certain gear score and they are willing to help you get to where they are. If you join a guild and the previous sentence isn't true, then find a different one. But PUG groups are always the laziest and worst in MMOs, and while we all have to put up with them, a good guild minimizes the suffering.

Edited by RobNightfall
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really depends how geared you are when you hit 50

 

if you're running around in level 36 greens with no relics and less than 10k hp when you hit 50... true story... then yes. you're nowhere near geared enough for the hard modes or operations.

 

the bridge to hard mode flashpoints is really the level 50 flashpoints on normal, the ilum/belsalvis daily quests (once), and 8 man operations on normal. it's designed fine.

 

grinding isn't required, just don't skip a ton of content

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My issue is with the system its self. If you think having dailies as a bridge between 50 and hard modes is a good idea, I disagree, strongly. My point is that I should be rewarded for hitting max level with fun and enjoyable content, not days if not weeks of grinding content that is not fun.

 

I know you probably can do them in fresh 50 gear, but as a solo player with no real life friends on the server, it becomes an issue when I can't get a group because the community seems to only accept those who are in as best gear as possible. I'm not refusing to do the dailies and I'm marching through it, but it's an extreme turn off to end game content IMO. You don't have to make HM's do able be ding 50's (but it seems that is the case anyway), but give me something non disheartening to do to "earn" it.

 

Coming from having years and years of raiding normals and heroic raids, I absolutely love the story in flash points and raids, I just really think they are not taking advantage of it by making it accessible to a wider base of their players. Being stuck in the "I know I'm good enough to do this, but people won't take me.", zone is kind of a big annoyance.

 

I have to agree with this post to some degree.

 

It's a little dissapointing to have to farm dailies for a while until you are sufficiently geared for HM FP/Operations.

 

Yes, yes, I'm sure some of you (probabaly in PVP gear) will argue that standard 50 blues or equivilent modded oranges is sufficient for HM FP/Operations.

 

But actually it isn't.

 

Aside from Eternity Vault, the HM FP I've tried (Esseles, Maelstrom) and Ops (Hutt Hospitality) are REALLY HARD. Player skill is one thing, but some of the HM fight mechanics are completely unforgiving of error (like one-shot DPS kills from Laser-Eye-Guy in Maelstrom just because the tank got hit).

 

It seems that gear is the only fallback for human errors or not knowing the absolutely precise strategy for a HM boss.

 

My final 2 comments:

 

1) Compared to WoW Heroics, SWTOR HM FPs and Operations cater only to a) skilled, b) well-geared players. The gap between Normal and HM is just too big for the bulk of players.

 

2) The dailies geared grind should be optional. HM FPs should be do-able in L50 blues but curently IMHO they only possible to maybe 10% of players.

 

DISCLAIMER: I realize people are going to say "lern2play" and "it's fine". I'm glad you happy with the difficulty level but if we were to cater only to you then in the long run casual players (which are the bulk of subscriptions) will move away to other MMOs that have more fun and less pain. I'm already seeing a disinterest in HM FPs perpetuating. SO... if you want more content you need more subscribers, and I strongly suggest *we* make "HM" less hard and possibly add "Nightmare" mode to FPs to cater to the hardcore raiding community (who probably account for less than 10% of a server).

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My issue is with the system its self. If you think having dailies as a bridge between 50 and hard modes is a good idea, I disagree, strongly. My point is that I should be rewarded for hitting max level with fun and enjoyable content, not days if not weeks of grinding content that is not fun.

 

I know you probably can do them in fresh 50 gear, but as a solo player with no real life friends on the server, it becomes an issue when I can't get a group because the community seems to only accept those who are in as best gear as possible. I'm not refusing to do the dailies and I'm marching through it, but it's an extreme turn off to end game content IMO. You don't have to make HM's do able be ding 50's (but it seems that is the case anyway), but give me something non disheartening to do to "earn" it.

 

Coming from having years and years of raiding normals and heroic raids, I absolutely love the story in flash points and raids, I just really think they are not taking advantage of it by making it accessible to a wider base of their players. Being stuck in the "I know I'm good enough to do this, but people won't take me.", zone is kind of a big annoyance.

 

i agree with this completely, im also offering a completely different view

 

this is the first mmo ive ever played. ive been a huge sw fan my whole life and some good friends of mine who have been avid mmo players over the years suggested i give it a try.

 

that being said, i have loved every aspect of it thus far. until i hit level fifty a day ago and its like the whole system does a complete 180. instead of the game being enjoyable and people on the sever being friendly, its the exact opposite.

 

i had never had trouble finding a group for a fp whether it was with my guild or just a PUG, and pvp was an enjoyable experience, but now people have absolutely no patience. its ridiculous and discouraging. i wouldnt mind the lvl 50 grind to gear up but honestly, you need people and team mates to make significant progress and no one it seems has the patience to take the time and be helpful and courteous.

 

 

 

in my opinion this is why mmo's may get a bad rep. everyone has to be perfect asap and sucks the fun out of the game

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Coming from WoW like many, leveled a Jedi Sentinel and loved the questing and story experience. I was pretty pumped to dive right into HM flash points and end game content.

 

Then was told by someone that my gear was not good enough. They told me that to run Hard Modes I have to grind Dailies. I am fine with doing this, but it seems kind of....lame.

 

Is the path to end game stuff like Hard Mode Flash Points, seriously playing for an hour everyday through repetitive and less the amazing content? Even if they can be done by fresh 50's, without the tool of a Flash Point Que, it seems the community of players is unwilling to bring anyone that hasn't geared as far as they possibly can without doing the content. So my question is, is this how it is supposed to be and in the future, is this system going to continue to be the bridge to end game content, because in my opinion it's an unfortunate flaw in a game I really like.

 

"coming from wow"

 

if u would have played before wow got casualised (aka lk addon), you wouldnt say that. lets see how it was in bc: u dinged lv70, u went normal mode instances... u crafted some gear and THAN after u grinded enough reputation + gear u could enter heroic instances. after that u had to do a 10man raid to get gear before u could even enter 25 man raid. u had to do quests in hardmode 5man instances to unlock 25 player for your character.

 

now u talk about swtor having a gap?

 

gearing up in swtor is very easy. u can craft some gear, or buy some in the auction house, u can do normal mode flashpoints, u can do dailiys and in hardmode flashpoints u get the SAME set as in normalmode ops.... seriously isnt this easy enough?

Edited by flowqz
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I think you have just found some bad players that want to compensate that by being overgeared. Another example of this is all the people that ask for ranged DPS in General chat, but this is another topic.

I am running Empire, so I can't say specifically for your Flashpoints. Our FPs scale - you need better gear for the last few and you can do the 1st few to get that.

The basic for me is all blue gear from Corellia commendation. You can get that by finishing your story at Ilum and doing all lvl 50 normal FP (some are challenging and you will learn better team play). In the mean time you can do dailies on Belsavis and Ilum. I didn't get any Implant/Earpiece from them, just armoring and Hilt. You need 5 Armoring and 1 Hilt/Barrel. That is 6x8 = 48 commendations, 4 days, not a lot of work and it isn't mandatory. In the meantime watch the GTN for cheap Epic/Blue items/mods to make your life easier. When you finish Normal FP you should have 1/3 Epic and 2/3 Blue gear. This is more then enough to start HM FP and all that say it's not enough are bad at this game and you better stay away from them :p

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i wouldnt mind the lvl 50 grind to gear up but honestly, you need people and team mates to make significant progress and no one it seems has the patience to take the time and be helpful and courteous.

 

 

 

in my opinion this is why mmo's may get a bad rep. everyone has to be perfect asap and sucks the fun out of the game

I would say the keyword here is "significant". MMOs make things slow on purpose, to keep people playing. All the grinding comes from that basic idea, you can't let players finish content too fast or they will become done and move elsewhere with their money. Balancing that without making it too frustrating is not always easy. Don't expect too significant things happening overnight, that just won't happen unless you have guild with experienced people with lots of free time around you since in this game then it can happen.

 

Acquiring gear in this game is quite easy though. Say those dailies, you make nice 200-300k if you do all of the Belsavis and Ilum dailies plus full purple quality modding for one item. There's no reason to sit on that credit pile, 200k nets you several lvl50 purple quality items from GTN. So that's 2-4 items per day just from doing dailies. Then you can choose whether to save up the daily commendations for ear or implant piece or buy the modifications for your other items. Granted these cost bit more but still not overly much and they're of higher quality. All of this for mostly soloable content, even almost all of the heroic ones with some out of the box thinking. So let's say you get 3 items either as purple quality or filled with similar quality mods per day, you're half filled with such items in 2 days. The blue quality items in general are selling at credit amounts worth 1-2 quests so fill in the rest with such if needed.

 

Add on top pvp. 3 warzones wins, you get a bag. Some killing in Ilum, a bag though granted this might be difficult depending on your servers rep/imp ratio and people are very much wanting to group for this since it makes it much easier for everyone. Do these on couple of days and you get several bonus bags from weekly on top of the daily ones. Each bag can have pvp purple which is still very usable on pve. As bonus, you don't even need to do the daily ones in one day but can spread it out on several if you're low on time, you can just turn in one per day.

 

That can all be done if few days just by your own.

 

The thing about people being pain and requiring too much if generally true though and there's hardly anything one can do to change that, that's just what internet and anonymity does to people. And it will get worse as time passes, the expectations will rise since people tend to like being carried and want their group to overgear places. Best way to avoid it is add the friendly ones you meet to your friedlist and join a guild which does your kind of things; if you're new to MMOs don't try to aim too high by trying to get straight to hardcore raiding guild since they do understandably expect people to know their stuff to decent degree.

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Before you run hardmodes do some of the level 50 flashpoints to get a feel for things - and as has been said make sure oyu have at least level 48 items (48 mods) and youll be fine for just about everything.

 

The other alternative is to do your pvp dailies/weeklies to get champion gear and wear that for HM/ops.

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It is about people keeping different set of standards on their groups. Some people will always have a higher gear demand from pugs because they simply don't want to have to tryhard to carry the lowerlevel gear guy through the hardmodes.

 

In reality, any level 50 guy who has got tri-moddable oranges, crafted epics which amount to gear level 126'ish can do hard modes. This is sort of Tionese level, sometimes a bit higher than Tionese. It is good enough for the hard mode flashpoints. But some people will demand the Rakata crafted epics + implants and earpiece, some will also demand you to get some Columi through normal difficulty operations.

 

As I said, it depends on preferences. If I had Columi + Rakata gear I would preferably not want to do hm with a Tionese level gear guy, I'd much rather wait and ask my Columi + Rakata geared guildmate / friend first.

 

That's simply how the system is and this is how it has been in WoW as well.

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My issue is with the system its self. If you think having dailies as a bridge between 50 and hard modes is a good idea, I disagree, strongly. My point is that I should be rewarded for hitting max level with fun and enjoyable content, not days if not weeks of grinding content that is not fun.

 

I know you probably can do them in fresh 50 gear, but as a solo player with no real life friends on the server, it becomes an issue when I can't get a group because the community seems to only accept those who are in as best gear as possible. I'm not refusing to do the dailies and I'm marching through it, but it's an extreme turn off to end game content IMO. You don't have to make HM's do able be ding 50's (but it seems that is the case anyway), but give me something non disheartening to do to "earn" it.

 

You can do hard modes as a fresh 50. Strangers may not want to take you because your low level gear means that they are more likely to fail. The solutions to this are to upgrade your gear (for example, a mix of 49 daily and crafted blue gems), or to find a guild that has an interest in gearing you up. Your premise that strangers who have no vested interest in your success should be helping you, or that the game should somehow make them do so, is foolish.

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I don't see the problem here really, besides the OP being lazy. We're not talking about weeks of farming here. The barrels/hilts and armoring items cost 8 daily commendations each. Say you need 5 armoring items and 2 barrels/hilts, that's 56 commendations.

 

Now you got 13 solo quests giving 1 commendation each. Then you got 2 4man quests and 2 2man quests, giving 3 commendations each, which gives you a total of 25 commendations per day.

 

In addition, there's several of the non-repeatable quests on Ilum and the Belsavis bonus series that gives commendations.

 

So 2 days after hitting 50 you can have 5 armor items and 2 weapons at ilvl126, without spending a single credit. What did you expect, to have an epic set sent to your mailbox upon reaching level 50 ?

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