Hello, just came back to subscribing, to scratch my Old Republic itch a bit

Does anybody know if with 6.0 they're gonna change the game difficulty a bit?

The reason I ask is that my main fun in SWTOR are vanilla class stories. I'm one of those players that don't like to do the same content over and over again, so dailies, flashpoints or even KOTFE/KOTET are not enough to keep me playing. It just gets boring and predictable too fast. I mean, I need to take a break after doing a content before I feel it's fresh enough to do it again. Class stories are a bit different because its 8 of them, so each time I take new character through their class story it's a content I haven't done for a long time -and it feels fresh. Just new adventures in Old Republic!

And they are in open world, not instanced, so they feel much more immersive than closed Zakuul or Darvannis chapters of KOTFE.

Sadly, with 4.0 they introduced level sync, super strong companions and much weaker mobs, and since then the gameplay isn't as fun as it used to be. My play style of questing with my crew members on planets got less exciting because too easy fights are just boring. What's more, the final antagonists battles, like Baras fight for example are now synced down to max starting planet level, which results in my companion beating Dark Council member even before I get time to set them on passive.

So when someone mentioned they're changing the game difficulty, I wonder is it really true? Or is it just for the newest content? Can anyone confirm that vanilla content is getting harder to do, preferably to the state it was before 4.0?

TLDR

Can anyone confirm that vanilla content is getting harder to do, preferably to the state it was before 4.0?

thanks and: have fun in game!

When it goes live, many will leave. There are people who do not even accomplish the Story Mode in KOTET....*cough* Vaylin *cough*

I agree. They will. Bioware is making it very clear they only want one type of player here now.

Personally, I didn't ask for harder content, but I am looking forward to it, from the Vanilla Stories to SOR at least.

Personally a lot of players didn't ask for level sync in the first place, but hey. I still miss soloing a slightly harder world boss each time there was a level increase, haven't touched one since level sync was introduced (aside from one which is still able to be done solo).

Just don't see the point in levelling, if you're going to be level synced, may as well just do away with levels altogether. Same for gear if BioWare want to dictate the terms of engagement.

When it goes live, many will leave. There are people who do not even accomplish the Story Mode in KOTET....*cough* Vaylin *cough*

That fight...

I had a trooper character once, i never managed to defeat her with that character no matter how many times i tried...

I got so frustrated i ended up deleting the character and now i go DS on Dramath every single time just to never get frustrated like that ever again...

Clearly, if they intend on making all story content like that in the future, i see no point in playing anymore. I'm clearly not here to spend forever defeating 1 boss, and i don't play to be frustrated, there are far to many thing that can be frustrating irl, to loose time on frustrating things in a game, which is supposed to be fun.

That fight...

I had a trooper character once, i never managed to defeat her with that character no matter how many times i tried...

I got so frustrated i ended up deleting the character and now i go DS on Dramath every single time just to never get frustrated like that ever again...

 

Clearly, if they intend on making all story content like that in the future, i see no point in playing anymore. I'm clearly not here to spend forever defeating 1 boss, and i don't play to be frustrated, there are far to many thing that can be frustrating irl, to loose time on frustrating things in a game, which is supposed to be fun.

The key: Take the Dark Side points (regardless ) .. keep Lord Dramath impressioned .. and the rest is a cake walk. It still takes time... but VERY doable ! Without Dramath … it's still "possible" … but much, much more difficult.

This was proof that ever since the arguments of KotFE / ET player making decisions had little or no affect on the game or it's out come was wrong … and those decisions DID (in fact) affect the outcome of the game !

When it goes live, many will leave. There are people who do not even accomplish the Story Mode in KOTET....*cough* Vaylin *cough*

I’m assuming the one in the cave? It even took me a few deaths and times to work it out. The trick is to interrupt her.

If it’s the last fight, just make sure you pick up all the bonus gear along the way and have Senya and Arcan. When she attacks, stay out of the ring and use all the extras, like the turrents and keep you back to the wall incase she does throw you (that way you won’t go off the edge.

I'm not crazy about this increased mob aggro I've been hearing about. It would be nice if class stories went back to their original difficulty, but even with the level sync increase, the boss fights on korriban and hutta will probably be just as underwhelming as before.

I'm fine with increased difficulty on all the Act 1 planets though. Act 2 and 3, eh. There are a few Hoth heroics that will become much more difficult. Endgame, well. I still find that Illum heroic pretty drat hard, to say nothing of Makeb.

The key: Take the Dark Side points (regardless ) .. keep Lord Dramath impressioned .. and the rest is a cake walk. It still takes time... but VERY doable ! Without Dramath … it's still "possible" … but much, much more difficult.

LoL, yeah, every thing above is spot on

My wife had to tell me about the Dramath part because I never use to choose that option. So I use to do the fight the hard way (without him). Trust us, it’s so much easier with him

The key: Take the Dark Side points (regardless ) .. keep Lord Dramath impressioned .. and the rest is a cake walk. It still takes time... but VERY doable ! Without Dramath … it's still "possible" … but much, much more difficult.

Yep, that's what i do now, no matter if the character i'm currently playing is LS or DS.

But even with Dramath, that fight still takes way too long to end to my taste.

If i want a long and difficult fight, i'd rather go hunt a Deviljho or a Rajang (that one trully is a pain to fight) or any other strong monster on MH where i actually enjoy the fighting style than on this game where it's not really to my taste, and wher i just want to enjoy the story.

I'm not crazy about this increased mob aggro I've been hearing about. It would be nice if class stories went back to their original difficulty, but even with the level sync increase, the boss fights on korriban and hutta will probably be just as underwhelming as before.

 

I'm fine with increased difficulty on all the Act 1 planets though. Act 2 and 3, eh. There are a few Hoth heroics that will become much more difficult. Endgame, well. I still find that Illum heroic pretty drat hard, to say nothing of Makeb.

Mob agro was only a problem on pts 1. It was fixed by pts 2 and still fine on pts 3.

The difficulty lvl people are worried about has more to do with trash mobs having higher health and more damage (most gold mobs are the same and bosses only a little harder).

On pts 3, a bunch of trash mobs could do more damage and kill you faster than a boss fight.

The other issues were things like balance around specific content, ie like walkers in chapters being severely under health compared to the live version and the walker bosses hitting much hard on top of that.

The last issue should be fixed for live because pts 3 was all about balance testing. Myself and others tested those impossible to do SM situations and gave detailed feed back.

One thing that may trip people up is what changes they make to trash mobs. If they lower their health too much, the mobs instant die. If they don’t lower it enough, it’s a grind fest. The same goes with their damage. One or three together isn’t overly taxing on a solo player, but more than that will cause problems if they haven’t lowered it a bit more because the combine damage could seem too OP.

Lastly, healing comps haven’t really been nerfed as such. They still heal the same amount per ability, it just seems the timing is off a little and if you don’t watch your own health and use DCDs, you can die (there is a feeling of threat).

What it comes down to is what feed back Bioware has listened to about the pts 3 balance testing and how much they decide to tweak to put into live.

I think there will probably still be some anomalies that people didn’t find because there was just too much content to check every detail. I would not expect it to be 100% balanced or perfect in every part. But some areas will be good.

As long as Bioware are willing to make more changes if things are missed or don’t turn out as they planned, then the difficulty problem is going to be the least of everyone’s issues.

The things to worry about at the moment are :

* Crafting, crafting, crafting (addon affect, huge inflation on the GTN)

* RNG gearing vendor

* RNG drops not upgrading or horizontal grading

* RNG amplifiers that double in price each roll and the mechanic feels like a big slot machine (and can be addictive like one)

* RNG when deconstructing items to tech fragments

* Abundance of increased obvious credit sinks and many hidden ones. (Costs across the board have increased significantly in some cases).

* Basically, RNG on RNG on RNG and some RNG for good measure.

* Gear grind and the 18 or so variations on every armoring, mod, enhancements, hilt, barrel, ear, implants and relics.

Things that should be good will be, but maybe defunct due to the above problems :

* Story and new areas.

* Crafting mats have their own legacy storage (sadly, it won’t matter if nobody crafts)

* You can open another cargo tab on both legacy and personal (expect it be be super expensive though)

* Tacticals will be interesting in pve and some will probably be game breaking in pvp

* Easier Alt gearing

* All new gear is legacy based

* There are probably other things I can’t think of at the moment.

What’s sad from my perspective is all those good things and ideas are either tainted by the bad things linked to them or will be over shadowed by the other bad things.

There is a lot to like about the expansion, but there is also a hell of a lot “not to like” because Bioware can be too stubborn to the point of stupidity, even when the evidence to change course is staring them in the face.

I genuinely hope what ever goes live is 50% better than pts 2 and 3 or 6.0 will do more damage than good.

Yep, that's what i do now, no matter if the character i'm currently playing is LS or DS.

But even with Dramath, that fight still takes way too long to end to my taste.

 

If i want a long and difficult fight, i'd rather go hunt a Deviljho or a Rajang (that one trully is a pain to fight) or any other strong monster on MH where i actually enjoy the fighting style than on this game where it's not really to my taste, and wher i just want to enjoy the story.

It’s just tedious, more than hard. Which makes you want to just get it over with and you don’t enjoy it,

It’s just tedious, more than hard. Which makes you want to just get it over with and you don’t enjoy it,

Pretty much this yeah.

Like that first droid on Copero, not that hard to defeat in itself, but really long, and annoying.

Pretty much this yeah.

Like that first droid on Copero, not that hard to defeat in itself, but really long, and annoying.

It’s harder now, at least it was on the pts. You will definitely need those health stations.

It’s just tedious, more than hard. Which makes you want to just get it over with and you don’t enjoy it,

Trixx…

YES TEDIOUS is unquestionably the right word (IMO.. ) That is what makes the "fight" (if you want to call it that) with Vaylin so annoying. It drags out the fight .. that and listening to her cackle … (I actually hit the switch on my set of THX speakers and shut them off !! )

At any rate... just one last thought !

Hey all, thanks for responses.

I'm glad they are tuning down level sync a bit, I hope it changes things.

Thanks Trixxie for detailed info and your ongoing struggle to press the devs to see players point of view. I admire your fight, glad you stayed in the game!

Just to ask precisely: is change in mobs strength also on vanilla planets, or just newest content like Ossus or Onderon?

I want to be sure (or I'll just wait and see for myself ) because I find this game very much unbalanced in terms of difficulty.

On one hand you have super easy vanilla content, with ruined final antagonists fights. And then things get much harder, in KOTFE I remember even some skytroopers fights that were surprisingly hard, had to use self heals, defensives, sometimes even line of sight tricks.

I think this is not a good gameplay design, and new players might get confused if they couldn't die in vanilla content, haven't ever needed to use interrupts or defensive abilities and suddenly in some (still story) content they can't progress.

As to Vayilin fight, and several others in KOTFE/KOTET I think they should pay super attention to those unavoidable encounters so that they can be done by everyone.

That being said, I also hate new boss fights. Vayilin,has gazzilion of hp and it takes forever to take her down. Lots of running, which is boring and a bit silly. I remember Baras fight when I first faced him. He had this instant kill abbility and in this fight I learned of interrupts He had high endurance, but you could feel your character also hits hard. Ravage was then the hardest hitting SW ability and it was very cool watching Baras' health go significantly down when my Warrior unleashed the ravage attack. Now with millions of hp on some bosses you dont feel your attacks damage them at all. More often than not I feel it's not me that do the damage, but some mechanics, like flying circles, clickables etc.

Just recently did Copero and Nathema. The worlds were designed so beautifully, I often found myself alt+z the hud and zoom in to first person view just to admire the scenery.

Sadly, the fights were confusing and not fun. Boss fights. I really don't know what the huge guardian droid did in my fight with him, still don't know what killed him -(I was running and shooting some things all the time), don't know what I should've done to avoid some of its attacks, just run to health restores, spammed my rotations until it died. No satisfaction, no sense of my character's power, just run, heal, click something, all things will shake, some explosions and repeat this several times until it's over.

I wish they had the same quality in game/fights designers as they have with visual designers.

Back to vanilla fights, here is an example what I'm talking about:

I really don't wish the game to be too hard for anyone, but the state of vanilla now really needs improving.

I really don't wish the game to be too hard for anyone, but the state of vanilla now really needs improving.

It will be, though. Saying vanilla "needs improving" is very subjective. Based on what people are saying about companions, much lower player HPs on planets like Makeb and experiences in heroics, it will probably be too frustrating and difficult for some players to want to continue.

A toggle so people could set their own mission difficulty would have been better but instead they're just going to up everything. I guess those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way. Congrats. Shame it's at the expense of other players.

It will be, though. Saying vanilla "needs improving" is very subjective. Based on what people are saying about companions, much lower player HPs on planets like Makeb and experiences in heroics, it will probably be too frustrating and difficult for some players to want to continue.

 

A toggle so people could set their own mission difficulty would have been better but instead they're just going to up everything. I guess those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way. Congrats. Shame it's at the expense of other players.

It is always at the expense of other players. The easy vanilla for the last few years since 4.0 was at the expense of players like me, which ultimately drove me away from the game. No group of players will ever be perfectly happy, the key is to leverage different game aspects so they are passable to some people without driving away others groups of players.

In my subjective point of view the vanilla game became to easy. Will they make it to the level I think is perfect? Probably no, passable and still enjoyable -hopefully yes.

As for Heroics, I don't know if you were around when they were really difficult, there were even 4 man Heroics on planets. You could solo most of them while still within relevant level with good gear, good companion and good skills. Otherwise you needed a group to do them. Makeb heroics were among the hardest, as this was the last planet for a long time.

There are dozens of heroics, I'm perfectly fine with Makeb being the most challenging ones. I'm sure there will still be a lot of heroics you can faceroll through.

Or they could introduce another type of content to grind credits xp or whatever that is that people grind with Heroics, and make Heroics, well... heroic again

It will be, though. Saying vanilla "needs improving" is very subjective. Based on what people are saying about companions, much lower player HPs on planets like Makeb and experiences in heroics, it will probably be too frustrating and difficult for some players to want to continue.

 

A toggle so people could set their own mission difficulty would have been better but instead they're just going to up everything. I guess those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way. Congrats. Shame it's at the expense of other players.

That's exactly what happened when everything was nerfed to the ground and made easy as it is now. " Those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way" - yep. At the expense of players who want more challenge and can actually press more than 10 buttons a minute. So back then such changes were ok to you, but now - shame on them? Pretty clear you are heavily biased here.

The game back in the day, was never really difficult to begin with . But the nerf since the level sync happen, made it a joke .

Does that mean, they gonna add cc to the expansions that suffered from 'Plot Armor' disability ?

You know...the 'success' kotfe and Kotet.....will it have some cc ? cose that would be nice .

That's exactly what happened when everything was nerfed to the ground and made easy as it is now. " Those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way" - yep. At the expense of players who want more challenge and can actually press more than 10 buttons a minute. So back then such changes were ok to you, but now - shame on them? Pretty clear you are heavily biased here.

And you're not biased? I wasn't playing way back then, so I don't have an opinion on it or any frame of reference as to how hard or easy it was.

It's far easier for you as a player who wants harder content in vanilla to nerf yourself - take off your gear, put your companion on passive and don't up their influence too much, use a White Acute module to stay level - than it is for a player who wants easier content to contend with something too hard. But that would require you to take responsibility for your own game instead of expecting every single player to want to tackle difficult and long fights when they're just trying to enjoy the story.

It doesn't matter, though, does it? You all got your way. The argument's won. Yay for you. Bioware's made it clear that all they want is raiders, and the hell with everyone else. Hope you "serious gamerz" are enough to keep the lights on.

It is always at the expense of other players. The easy vanilla for the last few years since 4.0 was at the expense of players like me, which ultimately drove me away from the game. No group of players will ever be perfectly happy, the key is to leverage different game aspects so they are passable to some people without driving away others groups of players.

In my subjective point of view the vanilla game became to easy. Will they make it to the level I think is perfect? Probably no, passable and still enjoyable -hopefully yes.

If you guys were advocating for a toggle or level selection for yourselves, the way they have a toggle with KOTFE and KOTET, I'd have no issue. But forcing everyone else to "enjoy" your harder playstyle in class story content WILL drive players away. Not everyone is here for an operations-style battle when they just want to enjoy the story. Not everyone cares about learning endgame content because not everyone LIKES or wants to do that group content.

If you want harder content in the game, you can nerf your own character (remove gear, companions on passive, etc.). You can play Ops, or flashpoints in NiM, or the many other hard things that SWTOR offers. Why do you also need to force that difficulty into the story content?

As for the heroics, it's one of the only viable ways for solo/story players to level up. The minute they require grouping or heavy duty combat, they cease to be viable.

Hey, though, as I said above, it's all moot now, isn't it? You guys won. You'll get your harder game, and the rest of us will get driven off. Enjoy.

Please count into everything that we have much more tools to use these days, like Legacy Unity (or how it is called), Legacy buffs (if all companion stories were played through) and Heroic Moments.

All this stuff was not there years ago, and thus everything felt harder and more of a challence.

These Legacy buffs, for example, everyone forgets about them easily, because they are not openly presented to the player. You can read about them only in the Legacy window.

When I created years ago a new character on a different server with no Legacy etc. at all, it definitively felt so much harder, and my char died much more often because oif that.

Legacy buffing is to me a bit like the "Matthew Effect", like with "those who have will be given even more". The more your legacy advances, the more legacy buffs you receive.