An Appeal to Bioware Regarding Operations Difficulty and Design

This, news flash it's a game no one cares about your special snowflake syndrome, it won't help you with the girls.

I'd also like to add that even though I'm part of the demographic who could easily get that kind of content done, its nothing short of retar---- to want developers of a new game to spend time on 0.1% or less of the player base (its not even "you are the 1%!". At that point its a fraction of that).

When the game is bug free, there's 20+ raids available, and we're going crazy thinking what we'll do next because there's so much to do, then yeah, sure, spend time fine tuning content for the 50 or so people per server who want the devs to cater specifically to them. Until then, its a waste of resource. Its the kind of content that makes a great game into an amazing game. Not the kindda thing that will bring an average game like this one to good or great.

Very well put, sir. I think Bioware is off to a good start though and I'll use a brief example to show why that is the case. I have played in quite a few pen and paper games over the years and enjoyed some and hated others much like MMOs. There were certain aspects I liked about combat and others that I didn't and certain Dungeon masters that did it right and others that did everything wrong.

Awhile ago I took on the challenge of DMing my own game and creating a world and encouters from scratch. My first few games the combat was sub par. It had the creatures it did the things I liked about some of the other combats I played it, but what it lacked was experience. Something that you can only gain through doing and hearing feedback from the players. Eventually I got better and my players really enjoyed the challenge of the fights that were catered to them.

Basically what I am saying is your post is needed and hopefully Bioware reads it and takes it into account. We'll see how things improve in the 1.2 Operation. If they are static than it may be time to be worried, but even if only a small portion of your thoughts and others are added than we are off to a great start. That is the optimist in me though I suppose.

Just chiming in to say - very nice post, good balance of criticism and constructive feedback, hope BioWare actually takes note.

The game should not focus on hardcore raiders, that would only drive away the casual players, which are the real lifeblood of the game.

Yeah, the times of 24 hours plane of air raids with 80 + people are gone - and good riddance.

/agreed too all of it.
Well put.

You're carrying things to extremes. No one is asking for that kind of time-sink like a lot of EQ raids were. With that said we are looking to be challenged in these games and this is totally reasonable given that they have the difficulty system in place to accommodate this.

Nor am I or many of the others in this thread asking for this game to focus upon hardcore raiders - at least not more so than the casual player.

On a separate note thanks to others for a lot of the recent input. It makes me glad to see that I am far from the only person feeling this way about the current state of SW:TOR raiding.

+2 for complete truth, I as a semi-hard core raider and PvPer completley agree on every point you stated.

Lets hope Bioware actually read this thread and respond to their costumers reactions and thoughts about the game. That they take this opportunity to step into WoW's previous shoes as the biggest MMO, instead of just trying to make it a temporary profit.

The key to profit within MMO's is listening to the community, and this post pretty much sums the thought of thousands.

Yours sincerely

I agree with tje OP that the content is way too easy. My guild yesterday did the first normal mode. We got to Soa easily. Why? So normal is supposed to be easy. Well, its puggable. So ops are basically for Swtor what UBRS was to WoW.

I am an experienced mmo player, never really hardcore, but EV is a cake walk in normal.

When thinking about difficulty, i have to think about Guitar Hero III. You had all the same songs, but the jump from easy to middle to hard to pro was significant. With easy you just played once. With middle no more than twice. For hard you really had to train those solos, and for pro you had to train even more, sometimes not even succeeding, because you figured that this is above your abilities.

How did they do that? They started out with the hard content, then dumbed it down. This Is way easier than the other way around.

I just wanted to chime in, I agree with a lot of the OP's analysis. I am a member of a casual guild. I am a casual player. I have a wife and kids and a day job. I also enjoy the heck out of mmo's, and raiding. My guild raids 2 nights a week for for a total of 7 hours. We transferred over from that other MMO, where we were also a casual guild. We raided normal mode raids there, and found them challenging. It typically took us at least a month of raiding to down a full normal mode raid. Last night we downed all of EV on normal in an hour, and proceeded to one shot everything up to SOA on HARD mode. That is simply not challenging enough, even for a casual player.

As a casual player, I completely agree with the above. I put in 2 nights a week of raiding, and I don't want to eat the carrot. Judging from the fact that we 1 shot this content on HM without really gearing up, I foresee us eating the carrot in the near future. My guild should NEVER be able to eat the carrot. We aren't trying to do that! It is important to us that there be a level of raiding that we simply cannot do. Even if we deluded ourselves into thinking we had the skills, just not the time, we still need to see that it takes other guilds 4 or 5 nights a week to down the hardest content. That fuels us, and renders our casual accomplishments all the more meaningful. Hard core end game raiding guilds are great for MMO's on the whole. Not for their epeen, but these guys make the news. Its great for exposure, and without that kind of commitment this MMO simply won't go anywhere. Its not farmville, its a hack and slash MMO that fits squarely into an established genre. While this genre caters to casual players, like me, it is important to have people playing the game that are better and more dedicated to it. Look at Blizz Con 2010 for instance, where top guild Paragon is lined up doing insane encounters. I want to see stuff like that. I play softball on Thursday nights, and I love watching Major League Baseball. I am not of a caliber sufficient to play there, but that display makes my beer league softball more enjoyable!

This argument just makes no sense to me. Again, this is an established genre. SWTOR is not some brand new game design. End game involves loot acquisition. Take a step back and look at it! PVP model: Warzones and Ilum reward loot and valor. You acquire more loot, you kill more of the opposite faction, you get more valor which opens a gateway to better loot. Time, effort and skill in, better loot out. Dailies, you grind out daily commendations which you can turn in for some epic armor mods. You can grind a ton of dailies, and get rakata implants/ears. Effort and time in, better loot out. This paradigm exists throughout the entire game, why in the heck would it not apply to PVE endgame!

In summation, I am a casual player who wants the existence of content which is simply too hard for me to do. This stuff is just too easy, plain and simple. And we play end game for loot. Harder content that takes more time deserves better loot.