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Heroic 4 quests should be redesigned


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While I am enjoying the SWTOR game, I am thinking that it is possibly stifling its own community. Currently it is pretty difficult and/or time consuming to form a group for pretty much anything. Even as a tank, I sometimes leave fleet being unable to form a group for a flashpoint.

 

Anyway, this thread is about the heroic quests. I think it's good that they are in here; in an MMORPG people should be forced to socialise. If they didn't want to, why are they playing an MMORPG? However, it is getting difficult to get groups, let alone good groups, for the 4/5 heroic 4 quests per planet.

 

My idea is to have only 1 or 2 long and engaging heroic 4 per planet, and to downgrade the others to heroic 2. This way you still get the option of doing really great difficult quests, and since they'll be quite long chains, able to keep your group, but still be able to get some of the other smaller ones done without having to wait 30 minutes to get a group, or, worse still, find that you've done the entire planet and still not done your heroic 4's, and have to abandon them and leave (which has happened to me already a few times).

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I personally have been having a very hard time finding players to participate in the +4 group quests.

 

When I ask in general chat, usually the response i get is something like "dude, they're just dailies, skip them and move to the next planet"

 

I'm level 43 and have completed 2 +4 quests to date. :(

Edited by Drusillus
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Aye, it makes me sad that if I want to continue leveling at a decent pace, I have to skip some potentially interesting quests, story, and social interaction. I was lucky enough to find a group that persisted through all the Taris heroics yesterday and I had a blast. Even if I could socialise with just 1 extra person to do these quests would be really nice.
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The reason you are having such a hard time finding group for heroic quests is simple - you were in Early Access and now you are too far ahead of the majority of the leveling crowd.

 

Do a /who on your level range, then a /who on Coruscant, Taris or Nar Shaddaa. The numbers themselves should tell a clear story.

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I never have a problem. I spam general while I quest and it works well. I don't always get groups instantly, but I dont just stand around waiting with a stopwatch so I'm not sure how long it takes.

 

Also, if you're having problems getting groups for flashpoints you should try spamming on the planet thats the same lvl as the flashpoint. Again, its not instant but if you continue questing, explore, craft, check out vendors- you won't even notice.

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I personally have been having a very hard time finding players to participate in the +4 group quests.

 

Wen I ask in general chat, usually the response i get is something like "dude, they're just dailies, skip them and move to the next planet"

 

I'm level 43 and have completed 2 +4 quests to date. :(

 

This ^

 

No point doing them, they take awhile todo and getting 4 people takes a while.

 

Personally I think forcing people to group is a stupid mechanic and just makes people skip the content (look at aion, you had to group to finish a area which meant if noone was around you had to grind....look where the game is now.)

 

I watched a guy last night asking in /1 for over an hour for people to join him in a 4+ quest....he eventually gave up.

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The reason you are having such a hard time finding group for heroic quests is simple - you were in Early Access and now you are too far ahead of the majority of the leveling crowd.

 

Do a /who on your level range, then a /who on Coruscant, Taris or Nar Shaddaa. The numbers themselves should tell a clear story.

 

You aren't speaking for me my good sir.

 

I'm talking about going back to the previous few planets when the quests are green.

 

Its very easy to see how many people are on planet. It is not a matter of not having the numbers on planet to do the quests, its a lack of interest from the community.

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OP raises a good point. In the areas where the bulk of the population is, grouping is pretty easy, but if you are slightly behind or slightly ahead of the main curve, grouping is much tougher.

 

The main issue of course is that any newer players that join will probably have to skip many of the heroic 4 quests because of a lack of people to do them with.

 

WoW used to have Elite quests in most zones, and the only way for newer players to get them done was to either get a higher level friend to help them (if they have any) or skip them and come back later.

 

It also reminds me of the PQ's in Warhammer. A great addition to the game all the while the masses are there taking part, but once the bulk of players have left the areas, they are more or less impossible to complete.

 

WoW solved the issue by removing the 'Elite' status of the quest so they just ended up normal quests. WAR solved it by converting some of the PQ's so that they could be done solo or with one extra person.

 

BioWare will have to do something themselves because this will become an issue.

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You aren't speaking for me my good sir.

 

I'm talking about going back to the previous few planets when the quests are green.

 

Its very easy to see how many people are on planet. It is not a matter of not having the numbers on planet to do the quests, its a lack of interest from the community.

 

Did you try only the General chat? Most players have it turned off, or at least pay very little attention to it.

 

I never had any problem finding groups for Heroic quests, and since I'm quite ahead of the curve on the planets I leveled through I usually only see 5-10 players around at one time. Solution? Talk to them via whisper instead of spamming General in vain.

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This ^

 

No point doing them, they take awhile todo and getting 4 people takes a while.

 

Personally I think forcing people to group is a stupid mechanic and just makes people skip the content (look at aion, you had to group to finish a area which meant if noone was around you had to grind....look where the game is now.)

 

I watched a guy last night asking in /1 for over an hour for people to join him in a 4+ quest....he eventually gave up.

 

Why didn't you help him? You complain that its so hard to find groups, but you do nothing to help other people find groups? Any complaint about this from you is now invalid.

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He might not have been able to help him. What I see over and over again in general chats as regards to heroic-4s is "LF1M (heroic quest here) - Need healer!". Based on this I would infer a general lack of healers which is either due to an inability for tanks to sufficiently hold all of the aggro in a fight or because not enough people find levelling as a healer "doable".

 

I play a tank and my plan is to make use of my ship droid (its a healer - just needs to be equipped as it starts with nothing) and do those quests with a couple of DPS when I am a couple levels over them if I can't find a player-healer to do them before that.

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I have absolutely no problem getting a group for any heroic 2-4+ quests. I just type in General and within 15 seconds I have at least 3 whispers, and the group is formed and we mow down the quest objectives with ease.

 

This comment is pretty useless without you specifying what planet you're on. Starting from Alderaan just grabbing 4 random people wasn't exactly enough to be able to do heroic 4 quests. You really needed a tank, a healer and 2 dps which is and was a real pain to find, as dps I generally don't even bother making groups, if I see one I'll jump in, if I don't I move on to the next planet.

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Skrim is thataway. This is an MMO. You might want to look up what that means.

 

Actually it is an MMORPG where the RP means Role-playing, so if you want to insist that the "MMO" portion has to equate with "group or play something else" you open yourself up to the "RP" portion equating with "if you aren't going to role-play go play something else".

 

The MMO portion of MMORPG just means that it has a lot of people playing in the same game world at the same time - it says no more about "you must be forced to group" than the RP portion says "you must be forced to role-play".

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The biggest problem I've had with the heroic 4 quests is getting a new player in, if someone disconnected and didn't come back. Let me give you an example from last night:

 

We were doing the first Heroic 4 quest on Taris yesterday around midnight GMT, me and my quest-buddy had been in the zone for a couple of hours and had been placed on Taris 2 when we zoned in. We took with us one guildee and one random healer into the quest-zone, and it went well, right until our healer disconnected in the middle of the quest-update-dialogue. She was gone for almost ten minutes, during which we decided to kick and replace (because well, if people don't come back within that amount of time, they're usually not coming back) but we were wrong, and she did 4 minutes after her kick, log back on and whispered us upon where we -tried- to re-invite her, but we had conflicting group phases apparently (even though she disconnected inside of our group phase, it wasn't where she appeared when she got back in) which we solved with that little button-thing the game has for it.

.. The second problem is that now, she couldn't get to Taris 2 because it was depopulating, and we were stood in the middle of this thing not having so many viable for running out without a massive case of sudden death. She did try to get into our phase from Taris 1 but it was impossible, and so she gave up trying and we had to look for a replacement and we decide that since there's the problems with Taris 2 depopulating, we should move to Taris 1 - which we run outside the instance to do.

By the time we found a replacement, the whole thing had reset -.-

So all in all it ended up taking ages instead of being a smooth run, and it really bugs me that it seemed we couldn't be re-united with our returning healer :/

 

So atop of the fact that it's hard enough to get a group for some, in my eyes you're also dependant on people not disconnecting, which unfortunately happens now and then.

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Bunch of crybabies really...

 

I am lvl 32 Trooper Vanguard and i did every single heroic 2 and heroic 4 quest.... either by joining groups or making them myself...

 

Never took me longer than 5 min to create or find a group for the quest...

 

And i got the game the day it officially started so 20th...

 

Dont complain about quests since you have enough to skip anyway and come back for story later

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yeah! It's unheard of that in an MMO, playing with literally over a million people, I should be forced to interact with other people and be challenged by the game! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! I should just be able to hit Auto-Attack and go ask my mom to make me mac & cheese while the fight is finishing.

 

What is BioWare thinking? This is game breaking and if they keep this up, this game will die!!

 

/am I doing it right?

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This comment is pretty useless without you specifying what planet you're on. Starting from Alderaan just grabbing 4 random people wasn't exactly enough to be able to do heroic 4 quests. You really needed a tank, a healer and 2 dps which is and was a real pain to find, as dps I generally don't even bother making groups, if I see one I'll jump in, if I don't I move on to the next planet.

You are higher level than probably 80% of the playerbase, and that is why. I am rolling each toon and getting them all to at least 15-20, and that is what most people are doing, because the game is about the story right now, because the concept is new and exciting. Give it a couple months and there will be plenty of people in the 30-50 range, but right now most are under 25 because they are switching between 4+ characters.

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I never had an issue finding groups. I've done +4 with 2 companions and it worked out fine.

 

Yeah doing +4s with two people with a companion each works out just fine.

 

I think part of the issue is that there no way to summon party members. Some of the planets are just so large that people don't want to join groups for quests if it will take them 15 minutes to get there and 15 minutes to get back to where they were.

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These quests are entirely optional. Either its worth it for you to take the time to do them, or it's not.

 

As many other people have said, it's just a matter of zone population right now. In Coruscant where there are 200+ people doing all the quests right now, groups form for the 4+ quests left and right. Then you jump to Taris/Nar Shadda and there's 40 people there; it takes some time but it's doable. But then you get to Tattooine and beyond and you see 18 people in the whole zone. Not so easy to find 4 of those people all on the same quests and with the time to do them, and of the right role to make a proper group.

 

Bioware isn't doing anything to "stifle" the community. All they could do is add a real LFG window where you could flag yourself properly and search for people easier. Which I would hope would be coming sooner or later. But for the zone dailies that wouldn't help populate the server with more people your level with the proper role to suit your needs.

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bigger issue is that in origin worlds is a miss balance of heroic areas...

 

Korriban: 2 heroics

Tython: 1 heroic(maybe 2? i forget)

Ord Mantell: 3 heroics but all in same spot so really 1 heoric area

Hutta: 3-5 heroic areas...

 

worse part is devs baically demand you to do these areas, if you don't do them come up short of lvl 10 at end of the zone... which is infuriating for a new player after everyone has lvl 50 and aren't many people doing starter areas.

 

I don't mind heroics but the devs always need to assume that players aren't doing them when comes to exp curve otherwise players hit walls and cant get past them as far as exp goes. Now once your on next planet your fine, and heroics become mostly optional.

 

To OP's questions though... Heroics are a great idea i don't think need redesigned i do however think that should buff up companions to fill in for gaps in a party. Right now a dps companion works fairly well, and is a great addition but, real issue comes with healing and tanking companions... epsecially tanking ones becuase while can hold threat super well... have NO tanking buff! means take stupid damage later on...that said i managed to tank all 4 man areas up til alerraan when enemies were hitting to hard for a HEAL spec'd SI to heal through the damage being delt.

 

If just buff companions up a little so could fill in as a tank/healer i think problem would be alleviated...because while requires alot more micro managting to use companion to do this stuff it was fairly fun to do.

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