Dear Bioware

 

Operations suck. Why you may ask?

I'll tell you why... because they're not fun, that's why.

What makes operations fun? Associating with others to clear content, learning the mechanics and bettering yourself at them, challenging yourself with dps, hps and tps targets, personal bests. Whilst knowing you are slowly bettering yourself at the game.

 

Why am I bringing this up?

 

Right now there is a serious issue, and a serious flaw with the design of priority operations, this can be segmented into two main factors

 

1) Creates an easy "get geared" ticket to players who have no intention of clearing the hardest content in the game

What I mean by this is very simple: To a 'casual' player, the question is easily and sometimes hastily raised;

Why bother do NiM content, when HM gives me 224 gear?

Players who PVE can have many targets, the most frequent one is, acquiring the highest rated gear in the game. This, prior to 4.0, was acquired by one method, doing the hardest content, ala Nightmare mode

Thanks to 4.0 and it's wonderfully lazy and rushed content, players now have a "get geared" ticket, by simply doing a chosen HM in a specific week.

 

I believe this is a mistake!

 

2) Encourages laziness, taking shortcuts and looking for easy methods on getting the end result

 

What I mean by this ties into factor number 1: A casual player, whom aims to simply acquire gear, will find the attraction of NiM to be of far less valuable than previously.

 

This creates a serious problem.

 

Due to players taking shortcuts to get the previous gear possible, player's attitude and mentality has become very rudimentary.

There is no drive, or any desire to want to even so much as learn boss mechanics and tactics on clearing the content, despite it's age.

People simply want it done...

 

If you think this is perfect fine, I highly suggest you create a mail to every player on a server attached with a full set of 224 gear, a smiley face and a "F*CK YOU!" as the title of the mail.

I'm pretty sure the casuals would appreciate it... minus the "F*CK YOU!" of course.

 

By why are we sacrificing accessibility and the demand for learning and improvement for these people?

Allowing players to acquire 224 this way does not incentivize players to do the content.

All it does, is create an insulated barrier between HM and NiM

The people who pug out priority HMs, will stay there. The people who have the adequate experience, knowledge and skill, will remain as they were.

This doesn't bridge the gap, it burns it, and throws relief supplies to the side with less to gain.

 

Remove Priority operations. Please

Let the people take the route to learn as they go on, and realize that nothing is a gift bag with nothing but goodies, and that things must be accomplished with hard work and effort.

 

The decision to make priority ops is a stupid one.

It's like you'd rather let an entire ship sink with everybody on board, because you know you can't fit everybody on lifeboats, and you'd feel bad for those left behind.

It's not a solution, it's a sympathetic clause that does more damage than you THINK it solves

Edited June 19, 2016 by Bonzenaattori

>>challenging yourself with dps, hps and tps targets, personal bests.

I stopped reading after that "tps" part.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Lodinn

I stopped reading after that "tps" part.

 

show yourself out *shoos away*

I don't think gear is as important as you make it out to be. I never have run nim operations for better gear. I'm not sure any nim raider runs at level for gear. It's always going to be a trickle effect. Some people will enjoy story mode so much that they want to progress to hard mode. Of those that progress to hard mode, only those who really want to get the most out of themselves as raiders will progress to nightmare. Having gear thrown out easily and quickly really isn't that large of a deal. It allows any bubble group to enjoy the level of content their currently trying to complete. Leaving it as is...is fine. The fact that gear is available quickly improve the accessibility for some. It's a good thing overall. Besides, if a nim raider doesnt want to run hardmode, 224 drops from nim bosses anyway. Edited June 20, 2016 by Shwarzchild

I don't think gear is as important as you make it out to be. I never have run nim operations for better gear. I'm not sure any nim raider runs at level for gear. It's always going to be a trickle effect. Some people will enjoy story mode so much that they want to progress to hard mode. Of those that progress to hard mode, only those who really want to get the most out of themselves as raiders will progress to nightmare. Having gear thrown out easily and quickly really isn't that large of a deal. It allows any bubble group to enjoy the level of content their currently trying to complete. Leaving it as is...is fine. The fact that gear is available quickly improve the accessibility for some. It's a good thing overall. Besides, if a nim raider doesnt want to run hardmode, 224 drops from nim bosses anyway.

 

Yeah when NiM wasn't dropping 224 I thought there was a problem. But now that it does, I think the priority HM actually encourages people to do HM ops. I mean otherwise why not just get all the stuff from EV/KP amd be content? Learning the other HM ops gets people interested. And maybe 224 priority HM gets people to do them.

Most players do not take advantage of HHM, but rather HHM EV/KP.

1. its funny how people been really going out on forums with making fun of the game, developers etc and i see no bans or deleted threads, seems they really dont care anymore, as long as they get their money from selling CM stuff. 90% of the swtor population doesnt go to forums anyway.

 

2. Gear, what is it good for? You have level sync everywhere where gear is irrelevant, you have HM flashpoints and SM operations where you get bolster and gear is irrelevant. There are a few instances, like Star Fortress where there is no bolster, true, but otherwise, its useless in the game besides NiM operations.

 

3. BiS? Not really, people are able to do the operations in 220/224 gear, full 224 is not the requirement of NiMs, as before it makes it easier, but its doable in much less. As it was mentioned its about how you play your class, not what gear you have (ofc stats are required, but its not about having to be full 224).

 

Overall to remove Prio Ops is a bit too late, Bioware lets the game go down the drain and nerfed evertything there was to be nerfed from Class Story bosses, to SM operations. They simply wanted to make the game easy for the new ppl that come inand that they really did and the question really is, whats the gear for then??

Yeah when NiM wasn't dropping 224 I thought there was a problem. But now that it does, I think the priority HM actually encourages people to do HM ops. I mean otherwise why not just get all the stuff from EV/KP amd be content? Learning the other HM ops gets people interested. And maybe 224 priority HM gets people to do them.

 

Unfortunately it currently encourages people to do only EV/KP HM.

 

I personally think is ironic that people want the best gear but are only willing to clear EV/KP. All current HM can be easily cleared in 216 (maybe except M&B) yet people still fail at other ops even if they have 224 gear. Due to level sync having 224 makes no difference over having 208 pvp gear when doing dailies or other stuff so there is no need for having the best gear other than NiM content.

Due to level sync having 224 makes no difference over having 208 pvp gear when doing dailies or other stuff so there is no need for having the best gear other than NiM content.

 

This.

 

However there's this thing called entitlement. Namely even if one does not raid on any level, but also a sub, than one should have the option to get the best gear there is. Or anything in particular. Any activity that one despise suddenly becomes a "gate" and "blocked" content/stuff.

2. Gear, what is it good for? You have level sync everywhere where gear is irrelevant, you have HM flashpoints and SM operations where you get bolster and gear is irrelevant. There are a few instances, like Star Fortress where there is no bolster, true, but otherwise, its useless in the game besides NiM operations.

 

Except one thing. Level sync doesn't touch Critical, Accuracy, Alacrity, Defense, Shield, Absorb. Only mastery and Endurance.

Except one thing. Level sync doesn't touch Critical, Accuracy, Alacrity, Defense, Shield, Absorb. Only mastery and Endurance.

I think other stats are capped, but in a weird way. There was some investigation on that matter, search something like "best gear for solo pve" or "stats for solo pve" on forums. If I'm not mistaken, it's technically best to get some defense on dps

 

Back to the topic - gear means little for NiM raiders as long as they clear stuff with it. Brontie/Styrak are bit tough if you're full 216 After the whole tier is cleared, it just comes to e-peening in starparse/leaderboards/enjin cause why not and what else to do anyway

 

Vanity is the true endgame, and I was always promoting stuff like titles as a reward - dirt cheap to implement, makes people go for it at least once if title is not too dumb (well Revanchist sounds dull but people still were going for it... Because of other reasons ).

In that regard, timed HM could be a thing making priority ops bit better.

 

In current state, priority ops just promote conquest guild approach "come and get it as many times as you can, just leave if you wipe more than once and zerg, zerg, zerg it until you get conquest points and loot". What makes 4.0 so deadly is that casual-midcore players have nothing to progress (NiM too hard, HMs except EV/KP still totally doable but completely unrewarding). So, getting better gear "in case some new raid comes out/they make NiM more accessible or HM more rewarding" becomes the only real goal besides getting couple achievements here, couple decorations there etc.

 

Highlights are not a bad thing. Absense of set goals for the players is. NiM raiders got nothing (well, 50 and 55 content got upscaled but it was cleared in a few weeks by the guilds who had their raid groups intact and given how little it took to get gear (also, remember NiM not dropping 224 lol) it literally was way too easy). People raiding 55 NiMs and some few bosses in 60 HMs got screwed cause they either had their vanity stuff in 3.0 or it slipped far far away from their reach, making it inaccessible for many. Finally, casual players enjoying some lore stuff, DM arc and such got less involvement in story while doing SM ops because of everyone who could raid HMs went there and SM pugs got really bad.

 

Rewards system is just wrong. It's mostly not about item rating, however, - if only developers put effort equal to that of drawing one cartel pack in the godsdamned expansion which comes once an year and made some really cool stuff ops-exclusive (and preferrably even dropping from HMs), participation in those would rise drastically.

Except one thing. Level sync doesn't touch Critical, Accuracy, Alacrity, Defense, Shield, Absorb. Only mastery and Endurance.

 

I dont do heroics and stuff anymore, but when i used to i went in NAKED!! Yes, my toon just had a weapon equiped, which was empty on mods and stuff, since i didnt wanna even bother sending gear over or using legacy bank in SH. I just went in naked (ofc having outfit designer gear for looks) and it didnt matter if i was full 224 or naked, the dps output was pretty much the same, i think it did hurt a bit more and i missed a few hits here and there, but overall it was very very similar to being full 224 gear under lvl sync, really.

 

No point to gear, unless you are doing stuff which is not bolstered or lvl synced, which are only NiM and HM raids (some minor instances like SF).

There is LITERALLY a full thread discussion about this. EV/KP is in the priority list.....it isnt changing....deal with it.

Due to players taking shortcuts to get the previous gear possible, player's attitude and mentality has become very rudimentary.

 

I didn't read through the whole text - but THIS is something I've seen A LOT in FPs and in OPs recently ... People use shortcuts nowadays I didn't even know they existed !

 

For example Eternal Chamber : After the first droid boss, a group went in that giant hall (with all of the floating droids) shart to the left ... And somehow managed to get a level deeper. And they forgot me, too.

I still don't understand how they got there - and why they forgot me as well. I'm avoiding these names now when I read them, because that group proved to be very ... strange ( for example they had master looter on and distributed the best stuff among themselves; and I felt i was only a tool for them ).

Edited June 23, 2016 by AlrikFassbauer

They just go down to trigger the speeder.

 

Basically they send one or two people down, and as soon as one of them makes it to Garjh's (sp?) room, the speeder is up and you can fly to the 2nd boss. Most groups do this to bypass the annoyance of the trash.

 

So - next time you get left behind simply run back down to the speeder and wait for it to appear.

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks. I didn't know that.

224 drops from nim bosses anyway.

 

after more then half year. THANK YOU MUSCO. WE PRAY ON YOU (SARCASM)

Except one thing. Level sync doesn't touch Critical, Accuracy, Alacrity, Defense, Shield, Absorb. Only mastery and Endurance.

. yet it's make it totally irrelevent. i can go with **** gear and pull 6k most of boss fights. what's the point?)

. yet it's make it totally irrelevent. i can go with **** gear and pull 6k most of boss fights. what's the point?)

You pull 6k dps wearing crap gear?

Not everyone has hours a night to spend in all HM NiM operations. Even SM people hate doing the longer ones.

With people having well over 16 toons, over 30 toons, etc. They want to do as many op runs as they can do to gear their toons. Don't go all legacy gear it on me. Not everything can be legacy sent. Not everyone is in the same guild. Some people don't want to be logging in to a toon in guild A to send gear to toon in guild D cause they don't want people to know they are around or available to play. I personally would rather spend my time doing 3-4 short op runs a night when I can play than spend 2 hours plus in SnV and be so sick of SnV that I don't want to do another run. I don't like these op runs where you spend more time walking between bosses for miles killing the mobs than it takes to kill the boss. Not everyone sits at the game 16 hours a day to run NiM groups. Then again this game has lost a lot of it's raiders and with no new raids people are just tired of doing the same crap over and over. This year is worst than last year with people forming groups. You use to see pug groups form all hours of the day and late into the night. People just don't do it anymore cause they left the game or sick of the same crap we've had for 2 years.

 

If they didn't have the system in place now that they do with priority ops and things being player friendly even less people would do ops.

HAHA Prio ops is broken now, your prayers have been heard

Not everyone has hours a night to spend in all HM NiM operations. Even SM people hate doing the longer ones.

With people having well over 16 toons, over 30 toons, etc. They want to do as many op runs as they can do to gear their toons. Don't go all legacy gear it on me. Not everything can be legacy sent. Not everyone is in the same guild. Some people don't want to be logging in to a toon in guild A to send gear to toon in guild D cause they don't want people to know they are around or available to play. I personally would rather spend my time doing 3-4 short op runs a night when I can play than spend 2 hours plus in SnV and be so sick of SnV that I don't want to do another run. I don't like these op runs where you spend more time walking between bosses for miles killing the mobs than it takes to kill the boss. Not everyone sits at the game 16 hours a day to run NiM groups. Then again this game has lost a lot of it's raiders and with no new raids people are just tired of doing the same crap over and over. This year is worst than last year with people forming groups. You use to see pug groups form all hours of the day and late into the night. People just don't do it anymore cause they left the game or sick of the same crap we've had for 2 years.

 

If they didn't have the system in place now that they do with priority ops and things being player friendly even less people would do ops.

 

Yes, these people fail to understand one thing:

 

Nerf EV/KP HM's drop isn't going to let people do other HM or even NIM, it's just going to keep them away from non-SM ops.

Yes, these people fail to understand one thing:

 

Nerf EV/KP HM's drop isn't going to let people do other HM or even NIM, it's just going to keep them away from non-SM ops.

 

You say that, yet back during 2.x highlighted ops weren't a thing and yet plenty of people would go and try HM raids after clearing SM.

You say that, yet back during 2.x highlighted ops weren't a thing and yet plenty of people would go and try HM raids after clearing SM.

 

Where is the "plenty"? Even on Harbinger it's damn hard to find non EV/KP HM group lfm even with priority and tons of them ask you for achievement. It's not hard to imagine what happens on the small servers.

Where is the "plenty"? Even on Harbinger it's damn hard to find non EV/KP HM group lfm even with priority and tons of them ask you for achievement. It's not hard to imagine what happens on the small servers.

 

It's hard to find groups because nobody does them when EV/KP gives the same gear and far less hassle dealing with people who can't do real HMs. I run multiple priority ECs for implants and the number of people who have 224 everything else and can't do Toth and Zorn is unreal.

Edited August 7, 2016 by FireFoxed