An Appeal to Bioware Regarding Operations Difficulty and Design

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.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Baconmonster
It's about that carrot on a string, the best way to retain subs is to keep us chasing that carrot. Creating difficult content at end game with reward about equal to our risk keeps raiders, both hardcore and casual, chasing that carrot. Right now people, again both casual and hardcore, are catching and eating the carrot, that's not a good game design.

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!


Quote:
Originally Posted by El_Chino
"Hardcore Raiding" shouldn't reward anything more than a feeling of accomplishment from getting the content itself done. Nothing Extra. There should not be any "Risk vs Reward" factor. You either do the raids on hard mode because you like to or you don't.

If your argument is that there is no incentive to do so, than the want for challenge in raiding is not enough to outweigh the lust for loot and exclusivity.

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.

Scaling a game for the tiny minority of hardocre raiders or wannabes is poisonous. The average casual gamer is driven off when it becomes clear that he or she can never reach the "endgame" without giving up their life.