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Raiding Problems: A Raiding Guild Leader's Take


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Hey everyone, Forsitel of Davik's Estate here and I hope to provide some perspective to what I deem to be a big problem with Star Wars the Old Republic. This may at times seem like a rant but I assure you there is a point and I do believe my proposal to fix what I deem is a big problem is more than valid.

 

I'd first like to preface this with a brief history about my MMO experience so that all the readers can know the background I am coming from:

 

TL : DR I am very experienced in all WoW endgame content.

 

I started playing World of Warcraft when I was in high school in January of 2005. That is approximately 1 month after the game released (November 24, 2004). After hitting level 60, I proceeded to explore what endgame content was being offered to me. I joined a guild that raided a few times a week and served as the out of combat rezzer :D. After gearing up in full Lightforge and some Lawbringer I eventually graduated to group 1 healer. I stayed in this guild for about a year and a half until I finally decided to create my own guild with a group of my real life friends. We figured it would be a fun new adventure trying to put our leadership skills to the test against some of the games best.

 

After failing miserably in our first few attempts at making a guild we eventually server xferred. At this point we joined up with a group that had been struggling on Gruul in about April of 2007. The majority of our core stuck around with these guys for about a year and were privileged enough to watch it go from a mediocre guild to a top U.S. It is currently ranked in the top 50.

 

Some time after this we decided once again to lead a raiding guild. We transferred off our server and started one up for the beginning of WoTLK. Finally we were successful; we brought our guild to the top of the server successfully running through Naxx with no deaths and grabbing a server first achievement :).

 

Feel free to skip here if you simply don't care!!!

 

On to SW:TOR:

Years later no one from my group plays WoW anymore. Myself and one other friend being huge KOTOR fans saw this game rising while it was in the early stages of development. We decided that we were going to follow it closely and see what it could become.

 

Every Friday we checked the website anxiously awaiting the morning update. I can specifically recall taking my History course in college and spamming refresh on the site at approximately 10 am EST every week. We thought that this would be the next game we'd play. It was Star Wars and an MMO, what could go wrong?

 

I signed up for the beta created a twitter account and followed them. I listened to Stephen Reid call out every single batch of closed beta invites until finally I was invited. I leveled a Bounty Hunter and really thoroughly enjoyed the story.

 

On June 21 I preorded at 1 am. It was after this that my friend and I began to make preparations for leading a top guild. We posted our website and started to actively recruit. On December 13th 2011 I started my SWTOR experience and by December 17th 2011 I was the first lvl 50 on my server. Before the flaming starts I'd like to nip it in the bud. I played through the game during beta as a Bounty Hunter. I had already experienced all that the story had to offer, I felt no reason to listen to it again. Is it true that I dedicated a few days of my life to playing a video game for hours on end? Yes.

 

Now, no doubt I will hear how I played the game wrong and how it wasn't intended for such competitive gaming. This will be the focus of my post. I don't believe an MMO is sustainable if its only concentration is on the leveling experience. Coming from myself I played through KOTOR at least 6 times. But even then there is only so much replayability. In the MMO market there needs to be something else that keeps players hooked and resubbing month after month. Telling a player to level an alt (something that some players are not interested in doing) might not be sufficient.

 

 

On Raiding

 

Right about now you might be asking yourself why this is posted in the Operations section of the forum when I haven't spoken about a darn thing in game. The answer is simple, as I just alluded to in the previous paragraph, the game currently lacks in endgame content. My guild which is composed of some players with 0 endgame experience in any MMO is currently able to clear HM EV and Karragas in under 3 hours. We should be able to get Nightmare EV and Karragas in under 3 hours next week but nevertheless all content has been cleared. We find ourselves incredibly bored, for lack of a better term. I personally find myself logging on less as each day goes by. But as it stands, there really isn't much to do when all the content can be cleared in one night.

 

Was it like this from the first raid? Perhaps not, but I'd venture to say it wasn't because the encounter was difficult. The most trouble we ever had was either the first week of Soa when hitting him with the third pillar wasn't breaking his shield or attempting to do HM Annihilator with a few people in greens that had just hit level 50. The problem wasn't the mechanics it was the fact that his 6 minute enrage timer was simply too much for our new level 50s to handle. This quickly changed as we ran a few 4 man HM's later that night as well as a normal EV and returned the next day with our new level 50s in full epics (go figure). Every boss from there on out dropped like a fly (with the exception of Soa who's floor kept despawning).

 

I personally found it incredibly disturbing that a top guild can contain a bunch of level 50's with no gear and no raiding experience yet still down every boss in the game merely two weeks after reaching maximum level. I searched for why this could be, and came up with the fact that quite simply the mechanics of the bosses aren't thought provoking and lack any challenge. There is really only one engaging encounter (forgetting about the bugs) and even he lacks any real difficulty especially now that he has been nerfed by Bioware. What are we supposed to do now in the game? Roll yet another alt? What happens when we can't possibly make anymore alts? To answer that question myself, thats when I unsubscribe. As much as I love the story of this game, there needs to be something else to hold me here. Its unfortunate that the first four bosses of this game lack any more coordination than a heroic 5 mans or 15 man UBRS runs in WoW. I can personally recall spending many a day on the trash before Drak or figuring out how to use the mounts in Occulus when WOTLK was just released.

 

I can't say I ever really had to think too much about moving out of the red circles on the ground during Annihilator; jumping on the rocks during Gharj; figuring out a puzzle WYBGRP!!!!!; spamming 1 on my mob during Duel of the Fates and healing when I need to. Its really quite sad that in 3 lines I have just written an entire guide to the first four bosses of Eternity Vault. I know that I personally can sit at my desk and think of more engaging encounters then what has been developed.

 

Concessions, Proposals and Conclusion

 

I understand that not every player wants to wipe for hours on a boss trying to figure out the most efficient way to cast a heal or slam dunking a tainted core while dpsing down elementals and being feared / smacked by adds that actually do damage. To each his own I always say and I don't really feel that anything I have said so far has been outrageously unfair.

 

So I'll make this proposal and I hope that it will generate some discussion. Clearly, Bioware intended to create some level of diversity between raiders and casuals. Hence the Nightmare and Normal modes. But instead of just the % increase in health why not throw in some new mechanics that casuals might not otherwise be able to handle? Or if thats too much why not do something similar to what WoW had with Sartharion 3 drakes? Casuals ran pugs for Sartharion all the time but never did they do him with 3 drakes up. Its not so much adding mechanics as it is reserving the difficult ones for the people that actually want to challenge themselves. Then add a half decent achievement system which recognize such accomplishments.

 

If thats too much to ask for then I see little reason for me to stick around and by me I mean any hardcore guild that plays this game. Bioware may very well be appeasing those who are playing this as their first MMO. They might be slowly transitioning the great majority of subscribers into MMO endgame raiding. I understand the rationale behind this. I wouldn't throw someone with 0 endgame raiding experience into a Kil'Jaeden esque fight. But I must say if there isn't a difficulty increase soon the hardcore raiders will not stay. And while this may not yet seem like an abundance of people, I can safely say that once the people who are playing this as their first MMO want to begin challenging themselves they will have a difficult time doing so with the current content. Eventually, the game will fail because it lacks in endgame and replayability does not equal sustainability.

 

Some of you might think this is a whole lot of jib jab with no valid point. While I certainly hope my message doesn't go ignored I respect your opinion.

 

Some of you might say, WoW's Molten Core (first raid) didn't have bosses with challenging mechanics. While this is certainly true, it was much more difficult to coordinate 40 people than 16. In other words, what WoW vanila lacked in challenging mechanics it made up for in getting 40 people together to do the same thing at the same time.

 

Some may say the hardcore raiders opinion doesn't matter, we are just keyboard warriors. HELL WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A SOUL! Well, I hope you can value my opinion just as I value yours. I don't think I've said anything that would be too drastic for someone who plays the game casually to accept. Is it too much to say those who want to play the game more should get a bit more out of it? I certainly don't think so.

 

Finally others may say that this is just the first month or so of the game and the degree of difficulty will be increased. I'll finish by saying that I certainly hope you are right because I want this game to work. I love Star Wars and this game has tons of potential as well as a thriving community with dedicated community leaders in the mod team but I see little reason why these problems couldn't have been addressed in the 5 years of development before launch ><.

Edited by forsitel
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I can't say I ever really had to think too much about moving out of the red circles on the ground during Annihilator; jumping on the rocks during Gharj; figuring out a puzzle WYBGRP!!!!!; spamming 1 on my mob during Duel of the Fates and healing when I need to. Its really quite sad that in 3 lines I have just written an entire guide to the first four bosses of Eternity Vault.

 

Ouch!!

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Summary:

 

"SWTOR does not have any complex endgame content 2 months after release".

 

 

Comment:

 

No surprise there. None of the larger western MMOs released with much more.

 

Is it really that strange to expect this from a game that's been in development for roughly six years? Sure they nailed the leveling process with story and all, but if you have any desire to play the game more than casually, you can get through it in a week or two no problem. There's only so many alts I would like to level while delivering 15 bantha pelts which is disguised as some elaborate plan to crush the Republic.

 

End game raiding is boring and I don't think it's too much to ask for them to include hardmode encounters with mechanics that are more difficult than what's in the game right now. If their story is that they want to transition new MMOers to raid content and then step it up later on, then that's fine. That being said however, there is no reason for anyone who would like to take this game seriously to keep subscribing until they do develop some more challenging mechanics for their raid bosses.

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You really think WOTLK had some challenging end game game play!? Ill give you credit and say Ulduar as a whole was intriguing. However, take a look at ICC most of the fights in general outside of Arthas from a dps view was....AoE move out...OK AoE is done go back in!! Dps dps dps. We have done Hardmode EV and Normal. I can say although not as in depth as let's say WoW the endgame content is :p

 

EV as a whole is a good entry level operation. I was actually pleased going in for the first time and there was the duel of fates.

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It's funny how the OP says he has experience in all end game WoW content but his only real clearing of "Naxx" was the Wrath version that was such a sad copy of the original. Abilities doing the same damage they did in Vanilla while players have 3 times the health.

 

The arguments over what "a game in production for X many years and this expensive" should have at release all fail the basic logic test. No matter how much beta testing you do, until the game is live and being played by everyone will you see how it's working. There's a reason pretty much every mmo end game starts off more basic and ramps up over time. You're not going to start out trying to put out complex fights when you're not even sure how your core mechanics will work, etc. WoW exposed so many people to raiding (especially over it's last 2 expansions when they made the barrier for entry so low) that most everyone coming from there can yawn their way through normal and hard mode. We'll know more about what direction the end game is going after the March content patch.

 

Don't forget as well, both ops zones only have 5 bosses, which is relatively small for a raid zone. Not to mention, while there are some areas in each zone that require clearing trash, there's other areas (think EV from Pylons to Soa) where there is no trash whatsoever. Clears will be fast.

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It's funny how the OP says he has experience in all end game WoW content but his only real clearing of "Naxx" was the Wrath version that was such a sad copy of the original. Abilities doing the same damage they did in Vanilla while players have 3 times the health.

That isn't the extent of my endgame knowledge... As I correctly indicated in the post my guild took off during Naxx, that doesn't mean I have no experience after it. I have raided almost everything up to DS 8/8.

 

I do agree with your point about the game being new as I mentioned in my post. I hope that you are right but I'm not sure why there couldn't be any degree of differentiation. As for the little to no trash, TOC had none either. Its not unheard of for an instance to release content that takes time to do, outside of clearing trash. If I am a new guild I can spend more time with the 6 trash mobs and heroic beth in firelands than with all of ev and kp on Nightmare mode ..

Edited by forsitel
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That isn't the extent of my endgame knowledge... As I correctly indicated in the post my guild took off during Naxx, that doesn't mean I have no experience after it. I have raided almost everything up to DS 8/8

 

Even the WOTLK version of naxx was harder than the current "nightmare" modes of swtor. Seriously for a veteran raider this content is a laughable joke, just look at the pylon "boss". Why not just add a chest with free loot there and get over it, same as the fate encounter. Pathetic to even call these "raid encounters".

 

Soa PRE "fix/nerf" was the ONLY encounter with a real boss feeling, all others are just pushover with mechanics for 7 year olds. Too bad after they fixed him, he also became a joke.

 

Well, there is reason why my guild went from 35 active members to an 8 man only login once per week guild. Utterly boring gameplay and useless raiditems. You can clear the instances with green gear or just buy level 50 epics of the ah and go raiding. There is no USE for the hardmode flashpoints, you can easily skip content already. The whole PVE content is a huge demotivator for any progress raider. We did several empire first kills in nightmare mode, yet it feels like you have accomplished NOTHING at all, since the difficulty is just not there.

 

Its sad.

 

Even rift got it better, atleast rift had a freaking combat log, far LESS buggy raid encounters. And the rift encounters atleast needed a bit of skill, not to mention hammerknell is really hard, but thats the 3rd raid, so its pretty much out of reach for this discussion.

Edited by Jiav
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Hey everyone, Forsitel of Davik's Estate here and I hope to provide some perspective to what I deem to be a big problem with Star Wars the Old Republic. This may at times seem like a rant but I assure you there is a point and I do believe my proposal to fix what I deem is a big problem is more than valid.

 

I'd first like to preface this with a brief history about my MMO experience so that all the readers can know the background I am coming from:

 

TL : DR I am very experienced in all WoW endgame content.

 

I started playing World of Warcraft when I was in high school in January of 2005. That is approximately 1 month after the game released (November 24, 2004). After hitting level 60, I proceeded to explore what endgame content was being offered to me. I joined a guild that raided a few times a week and served as the out of combat rezzer :D. After gearing up in full Lightforge and some Lawbringer I eventually graduated to group 1 healer. I stayed in this guild for about a year and a half until I finally decided to create my own guild with a group of my real life friends. We figured it would be a fun new adventure trying to put our leadership skills to the test against some of the games best.

 

After failing miserably in our first few attempts at making a guild we eventually server xferred. At this point we joined up with a group that had been struggling on Gruul in about April of 2007. The majority of our core stuck around with these guys for about a year and were privileged enough to watch it go from a mediocre guild to a top U.S. It is currently ranked in the top 50.

 

Some time after this we decided once again to lead a raiding guild. We transferred off our server and started one up for the beginning of WoTLK. Finally we were successful; we brought our guild to the top of the server successfully running through Naxx with no deaths and grabbing a server first achievement :).

 

Feel free to skip here if you simply don't care!!!

 

On to SW:TOR:

Years later no one from my group plays WoW anymore. Myself and one other friend being huge KOTOR fans saw this game rising while it was in the early stages of development. We decided that we were going to follow it closely and see what it could become.

 

Every Friday we checked the website anxiously awaiting the morning update. I can specifically recall taking my History course in college and spamming refresh on the site at approximately 10 am EST every week. We thought that this would be the next game we'd play. It was Star Wars and an MMO, what could go wrong?

 

I signed up for the beta created a twitter account and followed them. I listened to Stephen Reid call out every single batch of closed beta invites until finally I was invited. I leveled a Bounty Hunter and really thoroughly enjoyed the story.

 

On June 21 I preorded at 1 am. It was after this that my friend and I began to make preparations for leading a top guild. We posted our website and started to actively recruit. On December 13th 2011 I started my SWTOR experience and by December 15th 2011 I was the first lvl 50 on my server. Before the flaming starts I'd like to nip it in the bud. I played through the game during beta as a Bounty Hunter. I had already experienced all that the story had to offer, I felt no reason to listen to it again. Is it true that I dedicated a few days of my life to playing a video game for hours on end? Yes.

 

Now, no doubt I will hear how I played the game wrong and how it wasn't intended for such competitive gaming. This will be the focus of my post. I don't believe an MMO is sustainable if its only concentration is on the leveling experience. Coming from myself I played through KOTOR at least 6 times. But even then there is only so much replayability. In the MMO market there needs to be something else that keeps players hooked and resubbing month after month. Telling a player to level an alt (something that some players are not interested in doing) might not be sufficient.

 

 

On Raiding

 

Right about now you might be asking yourself why this is posted in the Operations section of the forum when I haven't spoken about a darn thing in game. The answer is simple, as I just alluded to in the previous paragraph, the game currently lacks in endgame content. My guild which is composed of some players with 0 endgame experience in any MMO is currently able to clear HM EV and Karragas in under 3 hours. We should be able to get Nightmare EV and Karragas in under 3 hours next week but nevertheless all content has been cleared. We find ourselves incredibly bored, for lack of a better term. I personally find myself logging on less as each day goes by. But as it stands, there really isn't much to do when all the content can be cleared in one night.

 

Was it like this from the first raid? Perhaps not, but I'd venture to say it wasn't because the encounter was difficult. The most trouble we ever had was either the first week of Soa when hitting him with the third pillar wasn't breaking his shield or attempting to do HM Annihilator with a few people in greens that had just hit level 50. The problem wasn't the mechanics it was the fact that his 6 minute enrage timer was simply too much for our new level 60s to handle. This quickly changed as we ran a few 4 man HM's later that night as well as a normal EV and returned the next day with our new level 50s in full epics (go figure). Every boss from there on out dropped like a fly (with the exception of Soa who's floor kept despawning).

 

I personally found it incredibly disturbing that a top guild can contain a bunch of level 50's with no gear and no raiding experience yet still down every boss in the game merely two weeks after reaching maximum level. I searched for why this could be, and came up with the fact that quite simply the mechanics of the bosses aren't thought provoking and lack any challenge. There is really only one engaging encounter (forgetting about the bugs) and even he lacks any real difficulty especially now that he has been nerfed by Bioware. What are we supposed to do now in the game? Roll yet another alt? What happens when we can't possibly make anymore alts? To answer that question myself, thats when I unsubscribe. As much as I love the story of this game, there needs to be something else to hold me here. Its unfortunate that the first four bosses of this game lack any more coordination that I can say I've had more difficulty doing heroic 5 mans or 15 man UBRS runs in WoW than doing the hardest operation in SWTOR. I can personally recall spending

many a day on the trash before Drak or figuring out how to use the mounts in Occulus when WOTLK was just released.

 

I can't say I ever really had to think too much about moving out of the red circles on the ground during Annihilator; jumping on the rocks during Gharj; figuring out a puzzle WYBGRP!!!!!; spamming 1 on my mob during Duel of the Fates and healing when I need to. Its really quite sad that in 3 lines I have just written an entire guide to the first four bosses of Eternity Vault. I know that I personally can sit at my desk and think of more engaging encounters then what has been developed.

 

Concessions, Proposals and Conclusion

 

I understand that not every player wants to wipe for hours on a boss trying to figure out the most efficient way to cast a heal or slam dunking a tainted core while dpsing down elementals and being feared / smacked by adds that actually do damage. To each his own I always say and I don't really feel that anything I have said so far has been outrageously unfair.

 

So I'll make this proposal and I hope that it will generate some discussion. Clearly, Bioware intended to create some level of diversity between raiders and casuals. Hence the Nightmare and Normal modes. But instead of just the % increase in health why not throw in some new mechanics that casuals might not otherwise be able to handle? Or if thats too much why not do something similar to what WoW had with Sartharion 3 drakes? Casuals ran pugs for Sartharion all the time but never did they do him with 3 drakes up. Its not so much adding mechanics as it is reserving the difficult ones for the people that actually want to challenge themselves. Then add a half decent achievement system which recognize such accomplishments.

 

If thats too much to ask for then I see little reason for me to stick around and by me I mean any hardcore guild that plays this game. Bioware may very well be appeasing those who are playing this as their first MMO. They might be slowly transitioning the great majority of subscribers into MMO endgame raiding. I understand the rationale behind this. I wouldn't throw someone with 0 endgame raiding experience into a Kil'Jaeden esque fight. But I must say if there isn't a difficulty increase soon the hardcore raiders will not stay. And while this may not yet seem like an abundance of people, I can safely say that once the people who are playing this as their first MMO want to begin challenging themselves they will have a difficult time doing so with the current content. Eventually, the game will fail because it lacks in endgame and replayability does not equal sustainability.

 

Some of you might think this is a whole lot of jib jab with no valid point. While I certainly hope my message doesn't go ignored I respect your opinion.

 

Some of you might say, WoW's Molten Core (first raid) didn't have bosses with challenging mechanics. While this is certainly true, it was much more difficult to coordinate 40 people than 16. In other words, what WoW vanila lacked in challenging mechanics it made up for in getting 40 people together to do the same thing at the same time.

 

Some may say the hardcore raiders opinion doesn't matter, we are just keyboard warriors. HELL WE DON'T EVEN HAVE A SOUL! Well, I hope you can value my opinion just as I value yours. I don't think I've said anything that would be too drastic for someone who plays the game casually to accept. Is it too much to say those who want to play the game more should get a bit more out of it? I certainly don't think so.

 

Finally others may say that this is just the first month or so of the game and the degree of difficulty will be increased. I'll finish by saying that I certainly hope you are right because I want this game to work. I love Star Wars and this game has tons of potential as well as a thriving community with dedicated community leaders in the mod team but I see little reason why these problems couldn't have been addressed in the 5 years of development before launch ><.

 

Is this about WoW or SWTOR.. oh nevermind it's about someone telling everyone how uber he is.

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Is this about WoW or SWTOR.. oh nevermind it's about someone telling everyone how uber he is.

 

"Oh no, someone raised valid points on the internet, I MUST ridicule him".

 

The game in its current state is by far too easy, troll all you want but that is the sad truth.

 

- Ecc

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"Oh no, someone raised valid points on the internet, I MUST ridicule him".

 

The game in its current state is by far too easy, troll all you want but that is the sad truth.

 

- Ecc

 

 

I read your post and it seems to be another way of saying "I am Uberz!1!1!11" "I amz bordz."

 

The process for canceling your subscription is easy, I suggest you try it out.

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"Oh no, someone raised valid points on the internet, I MUST ridicule him".

 

The game in its current state is by far too easy, troll all you want but that is the sad truth.

 

- Ecc

 

Yea its a trolling but a pretty funny and accurate one. IMHO people need to calm down. This game is not even two months old...again this game is not even two months old people. Give credit where its due. Where any of you present at WoW's launch? Highly doubt it cause you would not be QQing right now. It has been a great launch for SWTOR. At least we have raids (sorry ops) to complain about. Two full, fully functional raids that each have 3 different difficulties. Yes NM mode is easy, yes there really is not point of doing 16 over 8. But people come on..I for one am glad they have their priorities in order. My server has come down maybe 3 times for unscheduled maintenance. Yes I am on a lower populated server but i have never once sat in a queue. Hardly ever just crash to desktop. IMO people need to have more patience and give the credit where its due. Great job BW/LA because this launch has easily been the smoothest and jammed full of more content then any MMO i have ever played.

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Summary:

 

"SWTOR does not have any complex endgame content 2 months after release".

 

 

Comment:

 

No surprise there. None of the larger western MMOs released with much more.

 

EQ2 launched with 10 raid instances(compared to 2). On top of that they also had 8 story related raid instances. Even more, they had 14 contested raid mobs.

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Even the WOTLK version of naxx was harder than the current "nightmare" modes of swtor. Seriously for a veteran raider this content is a laughable joke, just look at the pylon "boss". Why not just add a chest with free loot there and get over it, same as the fate encounter. Pathetic to even call these "raid encounters".

 

The TOR ops content is very easy for veteran raiders, but the Wrath version of Naxx was probably the easiest raiding I've ever seen. Considering many people had done it the first time around and the mechanics were pretty much the exact same only easier with some stuff removed entirely from the fights...you had people walking in in blue gear and clearing it with zero issues. You're not walking into nightmare and clearing 10/10 in fresh 50 gear or sub 50 flashpoint loot.

 

It was far more pathetic to call that version of the zone "Naxx" still than it is to call the fights in the first tier of raiding in all of TOR "raid encounters".

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The process for canceling your subscription is easy, I suggest you try it out.

 

From a business standpoint I'm sure BioWare is happy with people being encouraged to cancel their sub for raising valid points. I'm sure you'll be happy too when subscription numbers drop, servers are merged and you're left wondering why so many people left.

 

The OP raises valid points. If you're going to copy WoW then copy them, endgame and all. Only reason I'm still around is this is the entry level raid tier, the Naxx of Wrath for example, which was also a faceroll joke and is intended to be so. Let's see what the next tier is like before we go making rash decisions.

 

Another thing we all need to realize is the encounters can only be so complex with no addon support. WoW developers know that addons exist for their game and as a result design encounters realizing this. Try doing Heroic LK or even normal Nefarian at Cata release without addons. The encounters in ToR will always be simpler mechanically than in WoW because they have to be.

 

Rift encounters from a complexity standpoint are a better comparison because they have no addons either. Rift did a fine job making difficult encounters, so there's no reason ToR can't do it too.

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EQ2 launched with 10 raid instances(compared to 2). On top of that they also had 8 story related raid instances. Even more, they had 14 contested raid mobs.

 

eq2 flopped to and didn't get good until after 3 years of the game being out, so using eq2 is a bad example.

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The TOR ops content is very easy for veteran raiders, but the Wrath version of Naxx was probably the easiest raiding I've ever seen. Considering many people had done it the first time around and the mechanics were pretty much the exact same only easier with some stuff removed entirely from the fights...you had people walking in in blue gear and clearing it with zero issues. You're not walking into nightmare and clearing 10/10 in fresh 50 gear or sub 50 flashpoint loot.

 

It was far more pathetic to call that version of the zone "Naxx" still than it is to call the fights in the first tier of raiding in all of TOR "raid encounters".

 

Don't have to tell me, we came from world top 30 sunwell to sartharion, we beat him in one evening with quest gear 6 days after wotlk release. It was joke, after killing malygos and naxx we quitted as a guild, because the content was just a joke. However we came back to ulduar since that was quite hard.

Edited by Jiav
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To be honest, I'm shocked anyone came over thinking this game was going to be "difficult".

 

It was pretty clear from the interviews with the dev's that this game was aimed at the casual market. That it was intended to be played by a significant portion who had never played a MMO before.

 

They could have taken WoW's direction, release it hard, nerf it later.. and they still might, but at launch you want those casuals to feel comfortable raiding.

 

Trust me, its a huge issue for some people even moving out of a glowing red circle on the floor. Sad I know, but it is.

 

TL/DR Wailt till they release the next set of Op's and see if difficulty is up. If it is, then its following the WoW model. Rejoice.

Edited by Ashane
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To be honest, I'm shocked anyone came over thinking this game was going to be "difficult".

 

It was pretty clear from the interviews with the dev's that this game was aimed at the casual market. That it was intended to be played by a significant portion who had never played a MMO before.

 

They could have taken WoW's direction, release it hard, nerf it later.. and they still might, but at launch you want those casuals to feel comfortable raiding.

 

Trust me, its a huge issue for some people even moving out of a glowing red circle on the floor. Sad I know, but it is.

 

TL/DR Wailt till they release the next set of Op's and see if difficulty is up. If it is, then its following the WoW model. Rejoice.

 

Thats what normal mode is for? If they want to explore the instances and check out the story, normal mode is for you. If you are a progress oriented player who likes challenge that is nightmare mode. Problem is just that nightmare mode fails to deliver hard. I dont care for casuals, wow just got LFR tool for casuals. Normal mode should be tuned for casuals.

 

Just tune the nightmare modes for progress raiders and everyone will be ok + combat log.

Edited by Jiav
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To be honest, I'm shocked anyone came over thinking this game was going to be "difficult".

 

It was pretty clear from the interviews with the dev's that this game was aimed at the casual market. That it was intended to be played by a significant portion who had never played a MMO before.

 

They could have taken WoW's direction, release it hard, nerf it later.. and they still might, but at launch you want those casuals to feel comfortable raiding.

 

Trust me, its a huge issue for some people even moving out of a glowing red circle on the floor. Sad I know, but it is.

 

TL/DR Wailt till they release the next set of Op's and see if difficulty is up. If it is, then its following the WoW model. Rejoice.

 

I completely disagree , i think it comes down to just a lack of expierence in content devolpment for MMO's . they have good single player expierence but FP's and end game are very very rudimentary, copared to a game like RIft launch that was ver ychallenging for a moderate, semi challening for the hard core and very challenging for the casual. its since been dumbed down . But the mechanics are there, with very litte enrage timers too wipe groups.

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Is this about WoW or SWTOR.. oh nevermind it's about someone telling everyone how uber he is.

 

I'm not telling you how uber I am. If you truly think that is the point of this post that I'm sorry I came off like that. Its just not the case.

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The TOR ops content is very easy for veteran raiders, but the Wrath version of Naxx was probably the easiest raiding I've ever seen. Considering many people had done it the first time around and the mechanics were pretty much the exact same only easier with some stuff removed entirely from the fights...you had people walking in in blue gear and clearing it with zero issues. You're not walking into nightmare and clearing 10/10 in fresh 50 gear or sub 50 flashpoint loot.

 

It was far more pathetic to call that version of the zone "Naxx" still than it is to call the fights in the first tier of raiding in all of TOR "raid encounters".

 

Maybe if you just did the fights but there were achievements out there to make it challenging for the hardcore raiders. For instance you have the immortal and the undying. There were also protodrakes not available to the casuals because they likely couldn't do the achievement requisites.

Edited by forsitel
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Maybe if you just did the fights but there were achievements out there to make it challenging for the hardcore raiders. For instance you have the immortal and the undying. There were also protodrakes not available to the casuals because they likely couldn't do the achievement requisites.

 

Which aside from the Immortal or the Undying which could be ruined by one idiot in your raid, were mostly trivial very quickly. TOR has titles for completing Nightmare EV and KP within a certain time limit if people need a carrot to try for.

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Which aside from the Immortal or the Undying which could be ruined by one idiot in your raid, were mostly trivial very quickly. TOR has titles for completing Nightmare EV and KP within a certain time limit if people need a carrot to try for.

 

Unfortunately its not much of a carrot to try for when you accomplish this without meaning to :/.

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