WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

TL;DR version : Don't make flashpoint easy sauce.

OPs reason slightly different timing (nerfing heroic Rag and then all the H:FL bosses).

 

This would be like Konami released a patch to Contra that let you take hits before dieing, except it somehow got to every nintendo cart and the real game as the programmers intended is gone forever. (Yes I know bad analogy, but contra was a good game that was hard that would have been ruined by being nerfed...)

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

Big deal. I cleared Dragon Soul long ago, I cleared Firelands before the nerf, I cleared BWD/Chogall/ToTFW before they nerfed those, and I don't care that they later nerfed them. Let the unwashed masses in to clear them, it doesn't change my game one bit, because by the time they nerfed those areas, we were done with them.

 

I understand that some people can't raid the current content successfully. Yes, some of them are bad gamers, but many of them don't have the time to devote to games that you or I do. It's a good thing that they can still accomplish things in the game even though they have to wait - it keeps people playing which keeps new content and new games coming.

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

Good post and I agree. However at this point, all difficulty levels of the raids are too easy. The fact that EV and KP have been completely cleared by my guild in Nightmare mode in two days is ridiculous. And this is not me boasting, this is me saying that the stuff in this game is already too easy. Maybe we're all just used to the same ol' boss mechanics we've seen in WoW, but when the only difference in modes is basically how much health the bosses have, it's no wonder a lot of guilds are going to be farming boss mounts over the next couple weeks.

TL;DR version : Don't make flashpoint easy sauce.

 

This is not actually what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there needs to be a normal and hard mode of flashpoints/raids/future content and one is allowed to be tweaked until everyone can see it, and one needs to remain as difficult as the developers originally intended.

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

When I first read your topic title, I thought *oh great, another one of those...,* but after reading your post, I agree with what you said. SWTOR is better served if the game has content for all styles of players, including people that like to accomplish very challenging missions, instances, and raids. Like you, I think the "normal mode" should be designed with the average in mind and tuned to a level where the vast majority of players can do them, but "heroic" should be just that, heroic.

I don't mind the nerfs, and here's why.

 

Hardcore raiders get in, they get their gear, finish their hardmodes and then eventually move on to the bigger badder bosses.

 

Players that're casual, don't have the time to dedicate to the game (and often are just as good as the 'elite') get into the hardmodes after the nerfs. They paid for the content. They got their 'easy' raid done, they want to do the harder stuff, if you block them from seeing those fights, and their changed mechanics, eventually that casual player leaves - and takes his buddies with him.

 

You might not see an issue with this, but when those casual players hit that wall of 'we can't get into end game content, we have nothing left that we can achieve' and leave.... the company loses money. When they lose those subs, they make less, have less to put into developing new content for you.

 

Those "unwashed masses" as you so rudely put it are the ones that in reality pay the majority of your bills to keep the MMO running. Like it, love it or hate it, you need them in place or you'll see the game start to die. That's what WoW realized and that's why they kept nerfing things steadily after the content was initially released each time.

Its obviously for economical reasons they "dumb down" content so even the 6 year olds can do it. Personally im fine with having the hardcore players have content available to them that the casuals dont. If you want to get anywhere in life (and in gaming) it requires commitment. If casuals dont want to put the time in, they can find another game if they feel cheated out of content access. There are plenty of no skill "free" MMOs out there they can play instead. Everyone should learn that things arent spoonfed them in this world. If you arent good enough to beat the hardcore content, well thats that. Train harder, get better gear or simply accept there are things in this game you wont be seeing.

 

I would also like to say that personally i have never since felt the level of accomplishment i had after my guild took down Ragnaros for the first time (back in vanilla wow). I would give just about anything to have a shot at getting that feeling again somehow in SWTOR. I doubt it will happen. But that was DIFFICULT - took us months of boss/gearing up progression - hence the feeling of accomplishment!

 

So yeah, dont dumb down content just so the whiny casuals can get to see "everything". Its what also helped me leave WoW in the first place. Everytime you felt you had done something special, a patch would come and make whatever accomplishment you just did feel pretty much useless.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Praetorian_DK

Big deal. I cleared Dragon Soul long ago, I cleared Firelands before the nerf, I cleared BWD/Chogall/ToTFW before they nerfed those, and I don't care that they later nerfed them. Let the unwashed masses in to clear them, it doesn't change my game one bit, because by the time they nerfed those areas, we were done with them.

 

I understand that some people can't raid the current content successfully. Yes, some of them are bad gamers, but many of them don't have the time to devote to games that you or I do. It's a good thing that they can still accomplish things in the game even though they have to wait - it keeps people playing which keeps new content and new games coming.

 

Rofl at this comment. While we may have cleared all of it prenerf (And pre-nerf real bosses too, at that), doesn't mean that there aren't people out there that were still progressing on the content at the time of the nerf that would have rather not had their challenge taken away from them.

Yea man i agree OP...We used to battle our way through content, get through bosses the week before they were nerfed into faceroll territory. Imo, gear should outclass boss fights not nerfs. If you cant beat a boss with a great strat and good team work then eventually you will get there by outgearing it...Imo, that is the perfect way to balance raids, not by nerfing abilities, it cheapens the game greatly. When the game is never really ever beaten then you need to at least let people keep the quality of their achievement.

Just because some of you have the time and dedication and skill to defeat bosses when they are hard doesn't mean that the content shouldn't be made more accessible in the future. I don't have the time to put toward raiding because I have a life outside my games. If it weren't for WoW's Raid Finder tool, I would never have beat Deathwing. I like that Blizzard is finding ways for more than 10-20% of their "top players" (as you call them) to experience endgame content, and I feel that BioWare can learn from that example.

I personally have always liked the idea that content nerfs over time until most players can see it. However, I do think it would be nice to leave a mode for the original content, at the difficulty level it was originally launched. These 'original difficulty' raids could have some sort of non-game changing 'epeen' reward, like a pet, title, or slightly different looking (but same stat) gear drops. Casuals can then see all content, and hardcores get the challenge and prestige they are looking for. Then as close to everyone as possible is happy. (Some people are never happy, no matter what you do. The majority of them post "This game sucks because..." threads on the forums.) Edited January 22, 2012 by eGraced

Other TL;DR version:

 

Epeen is important to me and if it's taken away I have very little to be proud of.

 

I agree with you OP and I have a solution. Just prior to nerving content, Bioware should place a gigantic ***** icon over each character that cleared the content already (Display optional of course for those of us that have cleared the content but feel no need at all to show it off). That way when people see you they can immediately identify you as a person with incredibly fragile self-esteem who hides behind a thin veil of ultra-confidence.

 

Also: /me casually directs all this WoW discussion to blizzard's forums where people might still care about that game's content.

 

</sarcasm>

I guess, I've been on both sides of the fence regarding this.

 

There were fights in various games that I beat pre-nerfs. I was in one of the first guilds to down several bosses. We didn't get world first, but we were up there.

 

Then I got a job, I in essence - got a life that doesn't give me enough time to be hardcore on gaming. If I work a regular 12+ hours with a 16 or more when things go wrong, I'll be damned if I can get the time to dedicate to playing a game enough to be 'hardcore'. I dropped over to casual. Now... I still pay the same 15$ a month, I don't feel my enjoyment of the game should be less, or that I shouldn't be able to see that same end game content.... but I can't expect to be carried to it either. So either you need to make me an easier version - or dumb down the content....

 

It's not my fault if they decide it's better to dumb it down than give me an easier version.

 

They realize players like me are out there, and that's why they do it, because they don't want to lose us to the F2P games.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Manathayria

IMHO if they nerf the normal modes it really doesnt matter. But for those of us in casual raiding guilds, it might take us a while because they are mostly composed of real life poeple that take a bit at a time to clear everything. Now I am not sure if there is a feature that allows for lockout extensions yet (been slowly working my way through the leveling process), but I am a husband, college engineering student, and entrepenuer. Life takes precedent over gaming and I can only do it a fraction of when I was a kiddy. But to have a nice insane challenge is something to shoot for, clearing a raid on normal is more like something cool to do, but the nightmare modes and such are the hard yet fun challenges.

 

I will echo the sentiment that there should be a near impossible raid setting that sits on a cliff mocking all. When I played WOW I loved hearing all the MURU horror stories that was told, and the reminiscing on Cthun. It creates a fun atmosphere that lets you know there is still something sinister out there in more then a story way.

It's already happening. EV Hardmode/Nightmare (except 1st Encounter) is stupidly easy (8 man raid at least, 16 seems to be harder but pointless).

 

Flashpoints can easily cleared with 3 people. And still Kids are crying about some other ones where you have to think a tiny little bit (Collicoid Wargames) .

 

I am no hardcore player but this game simply lacks challenge (stupid grind is no challenge) and everything is for free. Epics are for free and you don't even need a prequest or travel somewhere to enter the high tier operations: BORING!

It's already happening. EV Hardmode/Nightmare (except 1st Encounter) is stupidly easy (8 man raid at least, 16 seems to be harder but pointless).

 

Flashpoints can easily cleared with 3 people. And still Kids are crying about some other ones where you have to think a tiny little bit (Collicoid Wargames) .

 

I am no hardcore player but this game simply lacks challenge (stupid grind is no challenge) and everything is for free. Epics are for free and you don't even need a prequest or travel somewhere to enter the high tier operations: BORING!

 

Until there's a revolution in MMO design, or the big MMOs start taking ideas from the better designed, but less marketed MMOs out there, there's no such thing as "challenge" in an MMO.

 

The only challenge in a game like SWTOR or WoW, is getting X amount of people who don't "derp" all day, and getting them to listen to you instead of going to the bathroom everytime one comes back and being alt tabbed while you're trying to regroup.

 

Once you have 8-16-(whatever amount your current MMO allows) people who actually stare at the screen and read/listen to instructions and/or on vent not watching TV, everything tossed at you is trivial, because all it is is hitting buttons at the right time, Rockband style. Even worse if you have add-ons, as all it is is reacting to things quickly (again, Rockband style), and anyone who has played action games for a year or two can do it.

 

So what we need is for big names to stop copying each other and look at smaller name games for ideas. Then we'll have challenges, instead of having "push button at right time!" all day long.

Just because some of you have the time and dedication and skill to defeat bosses when they are hard doesn't mean that the content shouldn't be made more accessible in the future. I don't have the time to put toward raiding because I have a life outside my games. If it weren't for WoW's Raid Finder tool, I would never have beat Deathwing. I like that Blizzard is finding ways for more than 10-20% of their "top players" (as you call them) to experience endgame content, and I feel that BioWare can learn from that example.

 

The point here is IN THE FUTURE. Right now content is already that easy with an average playtime of 8 hours a week you can clear all FPs and Operations on Hardmode without any effort.

If people are too bad to handle the content then they should not get it the easy way for a long time until the average gear level makes it possible for them. Right now the game is boring because our casual Raidguild already cleared all the content except some nightmare bosses.

I also agree with OP - I was in a similar boat although I was a WotLK baby, I was hooked and in deep... until Dragon Soul came out. I was with a semi HC guild and we ripped through normal in the first week, the same as so many and then into Heroics 2nd week. I may be one of the few, but I personally don't value heroic modes that much...

 

I saw the content already... its got more HP and maybe a couple of new mechanics, that bumps my interest factor by a small amount, not really enough to get me jazzed though. I still like raiding with people but it just said to me that I had had enough of WoW. SWTOR came out and I continue to have fun levelling my 2 characters.

 

I hope that the challenge at 50 is of sufficient difficulty that you don't blast through it in a couple o weeks... although so far at least new content has been released. Thats more than that other company did to keep me interested. And yes. Even Ruby Sanctum counted.

 

In summary, I am a fan of new content over hard modes, and I like it to be challenging enough that it actually engages discussion over strats and a sense of accomplishment when defeating.

 

So far in the FP's I think Bioware has created excellent content, however... haven't really had much trouble in PUG's running through it as a point and click healer (which I never do!).

 

much love to you all

TV

I also agree with OP - I was in a similar boat although I was a WotLK baby, I was hooked and in deep... until Dragon Soul came out. I was with a semi HC guild and we ripped through normal in the first week, the same as so many and then into Heroics 2nd week. I may be one of the few, but I personally don't value heroic modes that much...

 

I saw the content already... its got more HP and maybe a couple of new mechanics, that bumps my interest factor by a small amount, not really enough to get me jazzed though. I still like raiding with people but it just said to me that I had had enough of WoW. SWTOR came out and I continue to have fun levelling my 2 characters.

 

I hope that the challenge at 50 is of sufficient difficulty that you don't blast through it in a couple o weeks... although so far at least new content has been released. Thats more than that other company did to keep me interested. And yes. Even Ruby Sanctum counted.

 

In summary, I am a fan of new content over hard modes, and I like it to be challenging enough that it actually engages discussion over strats and a sense of accomplishment when defeating.

 

So far in the FP's I think Bioware has created excellent content, however... haven't really had much trouble in PUG's running through it as a point and click healer (which I never do!).

 

much love to you all

TV

 

I miss the hardcore days of WoW... I left WoW after they made it idiot proof, and all the elite kiddies moved in....

 

BW made a big mistake with SWTOR, it's to linear story driven, as much I love the stories. I'm playing Rift and I ACTUALLY feel as though I'm emerssed into an MMO. The environments feel like environments, things aren't static... SWTOR should have been KOTOR3, without the MMO label.

 

Don't get me wrong loved the game for a few weeks, and will keep my eyes on it... but Rift all the way for me at the moment.

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

The real issue here is not that they are nerfing the content. The real problem is that they are not designing raids properly. It is something Bioware should notice, and make sure that they don't do with Operations.

 

The change in this occurred because of Sunwell. Sunwell was extremely well done from the developers stand point, however less than 5% of the player base even walked into the portal for the raid. Less than 1% killed Kil'Jadean.

 

It was after Burning Crusade that Blizzard stated that they wanted to make end game content more accessible to everyone. This is what lead to the massive heading out of epic during Lich King, and now to the Looking for Raid system.

 

Having content accessible to everyone is not a bad thing, and I think that a three tiered system can work, being Normal, Hard, Nightmare modes. However, the fights, as they increase in difficulty should also have varying strategy, not just increase health and damage. Let the casual player base see the content through normal mode, let regular guilds be able to handle hard mode in an organized fashion, and give the hardcore progression guilds something to be proud of that they accomplished and I think this makes everyone happy.

 

Hopefully content comes out bug free, but issues do occur once patches go live, it happens in all games. With that said, once the content is released, only apply bug fixes. Make sure it is tuned properly before release and don't make it easier because some are having trouble with it. That's why there are three difficulty modes, so it doesn't need to be nerfed.

It's the end of the expansion and they introduce a TOGGLE buff for the zone that is 100% optional to allow people who maybe were underperforming slightly to complete certain encounters if they want to.

 

As someone who's consistently completed dungeons pre-nerf dating back to TAQ when you literally couldn't kill C'Thun, I really don't have a problem with this.

 

Quite honestly, you would like there to be a casual, normal, and hard difficulty to each encounter but that ties up valuable resources designing three versions of the same encounter that could've been spent designing three different encounters instead.

 

The rate of content release to prevent capping your most serious players is probably more important than consistently implementing easier difficulties of the content when you can always introduce flat nerfs/buffs (optional or not) later on for accessibilities sake.

It's the end of the expansion and they introduce a TOGGLE buff for the zone that is 100% optional to allow people who maybe were underperforming slightly to complete certain encounters if they want to.

 

Even if it is optional the question comes in of "Why wouldn't you use it?". What's the point of making a buff optional? I'm sure there are some extremely small group of people that would go in and say "Nope, don't get the buff, we don't need it.", but again, why wouldn't you get it if it's going to make you get through content quicker.

Even if it is optional the question comes in of "Why wouldn't you use it?". What's the point of making a buff optional? I'm sure there are some extremely small group of people that would go in and say "Nope, don't get the buff, we don't need it.", but again, why wouldn't you get it if it's going to make you get through content quicker.

 

Half the argument in this thread has been about people being DEPRIVED of the CHALLENGE of the original content.

 

That's why toggle buff/nerfs are way better than flat buff/nerfs.

 

 

If you want the challenge, you can still get it (but I'm betting that most people cheat).