Out of curiosity, isn't the reason most of these changes are being implemented is to make the game more challenging? It would seem that ever since launch the "majority" of players have been screaming that the game is WAY too easy. Given that assumption, shouldn't it be much harder now for a top-end guild with BiS gear to clear a NM Ops unless they change their method of approach?

 

1) We have had zero word from the Devs about their intentions. Any comment on the reason is pure speculation.

 

2) With some exceptions (Grav Round nerf), these changes overwhelmingly simplify gameplay. There are fewer meaningful choices, and less of a gap due to skill. The content is harder, as defined by lower odds of success, but there is less challenge, as defined by actually having to develop skill and rapidly make the right decision. While I have no hard data, I believe that most people prefer difficulty that rewards skill and competence over arbitrarily inflating difficulty and increasing gear-dependence.

 

Discussion of possible reasons why is a bit off topic, though.

I want to specifically emphasize the point about Smart Targeting on the AoE HoTs. On paper, I think Kolto Bomb/Cloud looks pretty good. But without smart targeting, both spells are wildly inconsistent, and extremely hard to use efficiently.

 

I assume that these spells are not intended to be only usable when every single member of the operation is damaged. It seems to me that they're conceptually intended to be useful even if only half of the raid took damage. Unfortunately, without smart targeting, if half your raid takes some damage, using these AoE HoT spells are a huge gamble.

 

Let's use the Soa fight as an example. It's not uncommon that three or four raid members take simultaneous damage (2x Lightning Balls, tank getting hit, and some lift damage). Our raid clumps up after all of these events. There's a decent chance that Kolto Cloud randomly hits 3 targets that don't need healing, and instead lands on people with full HP.

 

I'm really excited about the usability changes to Kolto Cloud, but until they smartly target lower hp players, it's still a difficult spell to use.

 

But at the same time it'll be amazing for Bonethrasher and Karagga.

Out of curiosity, isn't the reason most of these changes are being implemented is to make the game more challenging? It would seem that ever since launch the "majority" of players have been screaming that the game is WAY too easy. Given that assumption, shouldn't it be much harder now for a top-end guild with BiS gear to clear a NM Ops unless they change their method of approach?

 

A small percentage of elite guilds were screaming the game was too easy, the rest of us liked it just fine the way it was. As a BH healer I like to DPS occasionally or watch the floor for red stuff and not have to stare at my heat bar stressing out who is going to die because I cannot keep up with the healing. Where is the fun in this?

 

I pay $15 a month to relax and enjoy myself playing a video game, not all of us are progression guilds.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Brakner

while you view it as sad and childish, I view it as "voting with your wallet".

 

if you do not un-sub, how are they to know that you're unhappy with the changes?

 

it's like the people who don't vote during elections, yet find it convenient to voice how much they dislike the system.

 

if you are still subbed, AND you are unhappy with changes, I would say that you're the childish one, expecting things to just happen your way magically.

 

The only numbers I'm interested in is HPS in different scenarios for different healers. If commandos get a nerf, sages get a nerf and scoundrels get a buff all that tells me is that I need to re-assess their strengths and weaknesses relative to other classes and other choices in the game.

 

Healers are going to always exist and content will always be beatable by any healing class - what matters is how they stack up against each other and less about how your individual rotation was affected.

 

I think that those are numbers I'd really like to see, we're all leaping to conclusions about how bad everything is otherwise.

Edited March 23, 2012 by dcgregorya

The challenge should come from mechanics, not nerfing healers and dps. They should have left everything existing as is, and made new content more challenging.

 

The worse part is they did both, the new HM Flashpoint and Storymode Operation are considerably harder than what we have now and the HM only drops Columni. There are several threads here with full Rakata equiped groups having a very difficult time in them.

 

You need Rakata to get Columni?

Edited March 23, 2012 by Brakner

Out of curiosity, isn't the reason most of these changes are being implemented is to make the game more challenging? It would seem that ever since launch the "majority" of players have been screaming that the game is WAY too easy. Given that assumption, shouldn't it be much harder now for a top-end guild with BiS gear to clear a NM Ops unless they change their method of approach?

 

Sure...but it will also provide a significant barrier to people just starting in operations. My sage is a fairly new 50 and geared in daily mods with a tionese weapon (Two EV runs and 6 HM flashpoints have yet to yield a columi drop for me). Ran KP last night and I'm probably 90% sure we wouldn't have been able to heal through it with these new changes (other healer was a maybe 1/2 columi geared scoundrel).

 

It still doesn't change that hard is a slight increase in difficult while the intended gear change (should be going from basically daily gear to columi gear during normal mod ops) is quite signficant.

 

And that Nightmare mode is still only a slight increase in difficulty from hard (not sure the how much harder Karaggas is, but when I did Nightmare EV I didn't really notice a different between that and Hard mode).

 

IMO Normal was tuned well; hard probably a little easy for EV and probably good for Karaggas (overall, some tweaking between bosses would make sense); and Nightmare need to be quite a bit harder.

 

But there are no real changes between modes...just an overall hack to everything. They also basically left tanks and DPS unchanged so the difficulty will probably no rest with one of the three roles.

The only numbers I'm interested in is HPS in different scenarios for different healers. If commandos get a nerf, sages get a nerf and scoundrels get a buff all that tells me is that I need to re-assess their strengths and weaknesses relative to other classes and other choices in the game.

 

Healers are going to always exist and content will always be beatable by any healing class - what matters is how they stack up against each other and less about how your individual rotation was affected.

 

I think that those are numbers I'd really like to see, we're all leaping to conclusions about how bad everything is otherwise.

 

I sent Lileth an email this morning with plans for some tests of what you are looking for for him, Saerith, and Scuffy to test out. It will take time to get the data back from all 3, though.

2) With some exceptions (Grav Round nerf), these changes overwhelmingly simplify gameplay. There are fewer meaningful choices, and less of a gap due to skill.

 

As far as PVE goes, the grav round change won't impact how a commando plays. It's still FA on curtain procs, HIB & Demo on cooldown, grav round in between and HS to maintain ammo. It's just shifts the damage around between those a little.

I sent Lileth an email this morning with plans for some tests of what you are looking for for him, Saerith, and Scuffy to test out. It will take time to get the data back from all 3, though.

 

You guys are awesome. Thanks.

To bad we can't compare HPS pre 1.2 to after.

No wonder they didn't want to include a log.

 

My guilds been farming both NMM, and on at least 4 of the fights I know I will not be able to heal with any increase to heat (not hard fights just way to much raid damage). Losing the kolto buff is bad enough.

 

Disclaimer: I cant test it in 1.2 so that is an educated guess.

Our lack of understanding only exists because of their lack of communication.

 

And the desire to understand, among other things, in spite of BioWare Austin devs' deliberate aloofness is what they take advantage of to get PTS players to do the work that internal (QA) teams should be doing.

 

That being said, "amazing" is the only word I can use to describe the time and dedication you and others are putting forth. Amazing.

Edited March 23, 2012 by onfireguy
add clarification (italics)

Looks like more changes are coming before 1.2 is final:

 

Based on the feedback brought to us so far from testers playing on PTS along with metrics and combat logs gathered from our guild testers, we are going to make additional adjustments before Game Update 1.2 is promoted to the live servers. For example, we reopened the internal debate about having an in-combat resurrect ability for Mercenaries/Commandos based on PTS feedback regarding the new Operations, in light of the higher utility value this ability brings to the table in 1.2. We're listening to your feedback, too, and rebalancing some of the changes made to healing based on data gathered from PTS. Look out for a future update to PTS for more details.

Out of curiosity, isn't the reason most of these changes are being implemented is to make the game more challenging? It would seem that ever since launch the "majority" of players have been screaming that the game is WAY too easy. Given that assumption, shouldn't it be much harder now for a top-end guild with BiS gear to clear a NM Ops unless they change their method of approach?

The reason for some of the changes is in fact to increase the challenge level of top end content by tightening class balance. Healing through top end content was, as a fact, not tightly balanced enough in the past and a prime contributor to the fact that our top end difficulty content was just not providing the challenge level people expected.

 

This encapsulates both the medpac change (without being able to make safe assumption about the availability of optional healing, it is impossible to strike a reliable balance that doesn't require people to shell out hundreds of thousands of credits for item based healing) as well as the class changes.

 

The other major reason is class to class and role to role balance.

Looks like more changes are coming before 1.2 is final:

 

Tempest, can you please provide a link?

It is from the Developer Q&A for this week.

http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-march-23rd-2012

Yeah, I just found it. Thanks.

 

The full relevant text for those interested:

Niktika: Can you please explain some of the reasoning behind the healing nerfs? It almost seems like every healer is up in arms regardless of their class.

 

Georg: Sometimes it's hard to hear this, but the change to healers you're referring to was, quite simply, a result of them being too good. When one healer is close to target performance and the others aren't, it's natural to think that the logical course is to buff the underperformer and leave the over-performers alone. I want to dispel that notion and explain why it isn't always possible.

 

All specs for all roles have a target performance. This is what drives the balance of the game: soloing, Heroics, PvP, Flashpoints, Operations... everything. When those targets aren't hit, we can't just ‘bring everyone up’ to the highest performer without negatively impacting the balance of the game and creating unsustainable inflation in our combat system. Frankly, it's also a lot more work to change all end game content in the game to compensate for an over-performing role than to bring the role back in line. The hard but simple truth is that Sorcerers and Sages had better Force management than we intended (e.g. a well-played Sage was almost incapable of running out of Force) and Mercenaries and Commandos were significantly over target in their healing performance.

 

After considerable testing, we're more confident than ever that all healing roles are both closer to target performance and closer to one another than ever before, leading to a much tighter balance on end game content. The community will be able to confirm this using the new combat logging feature in Game Update 1.2.

 

I know trying to ‘sell’ a downwards adjustment (AKA nerf) to anyone affected is like selling the need for a tax increase to people. When you are on the receiving end of it, you're not going to be happy about it. It may appear massive to you, even if the overall impact is limited. You likely won't care that it's 'for the greater good of the game' and, if you decide to disagree with our action, there's little we can do to sway you.

 

Based on the feedback brought to us so far from testers playing on PTS along with metrics and combat logs gathered from our guild testers, we are going to make additional adjustments before Game Update 1.2 is promoted to the live servers. For example, we reopened the internal debate about having an in-combat resurrect ability for Mercenaries/Commandos based on PTS feedback regarding the new Operations, in light of the higher utility value this ability brings to the table in 1.2. We're listening to your feedback, too, and rebalancing some of the changes made to healing based on data gathered from PTS. Look out for a future update to PTS for more details.

So now we know that there are no under the hood changes via the testing done by Lilith and RuQu. The patch notes are a straight up nerf. Imagine that...exactly what we suspected. Unlike what GZ hinted at there was no need to test the info because we were right in the first place. So why all the lies/deception from GZ about under the hood changes to make up for the alterations they made? Lack of communication is one thing...outright lies to your player base are another. BW may have felt that changes needed to be made. The player base was happy with merc/commando healing on both sides. The player base was happy with the sage fix to the one ability that was bugged. The player base was happy with improvements to smugglers. It is nice that BW is happy with themselves but the players paying the bills are not. The nerfs were bad, the lack of communication was worse, and the lies are pretty much unforgivable.

What gets me is waving the carrot of an in combat combat rez for mercenary healer, yet still basically nerfing us into the ground. Would've been nicer if he didn't get our hopes up, and in the future be more honest.

 

The developers need to do better at not lying to our face.

The reason for some of the changes is in fact to increase the challenge level of top end content by tightening class balance. Healing through top end content was, as a fact, not tightly balanced enough in the past and a prime contributor to the fact that our top end difficulty content was just not providing the challenge level people expected.

 

This encapsulates both the medpac change (without being able to make safe assumption about the availability of optional healing, it is impossible to strike a reliable balance that doesn't require people to shell out hundreds of thousands of credits for item based healing) as well as the class changes.

 

The other major reason is class to class and role to role balance.

 

So if we don't have the perfect group the way you want it, or do everything perfect the way you want it, we won't be able to finish operations at all. At this point, with these changes, I'd have to leave my guild and join an elitist guild that does everything perfect, cause people in my guild make mistakes. The game is already set up that you can't make many mistakes now (with these stupid enrage timers that no game should have as they show poor design in mechanics so you just slap an enrage timer on it) with these changes one mistake means failure on these bosses. "Tightening" difficulty content means only a perfect group can get through and there's no room for failure.

 

I really don't think the "majority" as many people say really think things are too easy at the moment. Bonethrasher is a pain, mainly do to terrible animations at hardmode and higher. SOA is ridiculous cause of bugs, lightning orbs hitting twice, platforms not showing up, people taking their lightning orb then instantly being put in air ensuring their death. Yeah other bosses are fairly easy to figure out their mechanics, but as you call this "tightening" I fear for groups that aren't made up of perfect players.

So if we don't have the perfect group the way you want it, or do everything perfect the way you want it, we won't be able to finish operations at all. At this point, with these changes, I'd have to leave my guild and join an elitist guild that does everything perfect, cause people in my guild make mistakes. The game is already set up that you can't make many mistakes now (with these stupid enrage timers that no game should have as they show poor design in mechanics so you just slap an enrage timer on it) with these changes one mistake means failure on these bosses. "Tightening" difficulty content means only a perfect group can get through and there's no room for failure.

 

I really don't think the "majority" as many people say really think things are too easy at the moment. Bonethrasher is a pain, mainly do to terrible animations at hardmode and higher. SOA is ridiculous cause of bugs, lightning orbs hitting twice, platforms not showing up, people taking their lightning orb then instantly being put in air ensuring their death. Yeah other bosses are fairly easy to figure out their mechanics, but as you call this "tightening" I fear for groups that aren't made up of perfect players.

 

THIS.

 

If top content for the progression guilds who spend hours honing themselves for epically hard battles is too easy then... make a new tier above nightmare mode for them with even tighter enrage/damage etc.

 

Don't change the game for the rest of us based on this very small minority!

So, the "Underlying Changes" was just a lie?

Bioware, seriously, you have no *********** idea of how to manage an MMO community, how to design an MMO or how to balance it.

 

Stick to what you know: Single player games based around stories....oh wait....ME3 comes to my mind.... nvm

So, the "Underlying Changes" was just a lie?

Bioware, seriously, you have no *********** idea of how to manage an MMO community, how to design an MMO or how to balance it.

 

Stick to what you know: Single player games based around stories....oh wait....ME3 comes to my mind.... nvm

 

It is also possible that some changes just aren't in the current PTS push.

 

Again, the answer is more communication from BW.

 

What are the "under-the-hood" changes? What is the intention behind them? Are they in this PTS push?

It is also possible that some changes just aren't in the current PTS push.

 

Again, the answer is more communication from BW.

 

What are the "under-the-hood" changes? What is the intention behind them? Are they in this PTS push?

 

GZ stated we should go play the test server because of the underlying changes....that would infer that they were in. So no changes just deception and nerfs.

 

This encapsulates both the medpac change (without being able to make safe assumption about the availability of optional healing, it is impossible to strike a reliable balance that doesn't require people to shell out hundreds of thousands of credits for item based healing) as well as the class changes.

 

The other major reason is class to class and role to role balance.

 

Just wow. Do you really and honestly believe that guilds were going out in drones to make sure everyone had their medpacks ready for raiding? and will do so to counter the healing "balance"? The more your "raid" team tries to cater to the Hardcore guilds out there, the more customers you will absolutely lose. I know all of those guilds don't want to hear this, but believe me, you're the minority and shouldn't have your opinion valued over everyone elses. (Wow, kind of reminds me of America right now.)

 

Here's a thought. Why didn't you just make "Only one medpack per boss fight" for hard/Nightmare mode only? I mean... that's where you were trying to increase the difficulty anyway, right? People who only run in story mode do not give a flying monkey about world firsts // server firsts // their standing in the US//EU kill list. They just want to go in there casually with their group of friends and kill stuff.