We understand it's a time-consuming endeavor, but the game simply doesn't play properly with the current level-sync to 70 in FPs and OPs. Even with the "Veteran" buff, bosses and mobs don't feel tuned properly, and this takes away a great deal of enjoyment from almost the entire PVE endgame (save for the new FP and OP in Onslaught, which are 75 by default).

 

It's a general consensus in our large guild that this and crafting are the main things in 6.0 that still need work. Operation loot needs to be a little more rewarding too, i.e. bosses having more consistent set bonus drops, ideally assigned slots. Otherwise, 6.0 has been enjoyable so far and a nice addition to the game.

 

Bravo especially to the art folks for the new areas Onderon and Mek-Sha. Both look great.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited November 26, 2019 by arunav

Nah, just pure laziness.

 

Second, this needs to happen.

Big seconded for future enjoyment of the game.

There is nothing like releasing a new expansion that increases your characters power. but only let that increase be used to in 2 instances in the entire game. Dxun and Objective Merridian. Every other FP and OP delevels you and caps your stats.

 

What is the point of adding all this new gear if we almost never get to use it?

This absolutely needs to happen.

 

Getting all the fancy new gear, making sure it all has the best mods and enhancements, grinding conquest for the mats to craft the new augments, and then going in to 95% of "end game content" to find that all that stuff is useless due to stat caps when we're downgraded to level 70... feels bad man.

 

FR and SA relics, attack adrenals, new augments, all the 2pc set bonuses that give 2% mastery, and everything else that boosts your power or mastery, are all completely useless when you're scaled down to lvl 70. They (just recently?) made Force Empowerment work in level 70 stuff, but that just makes me worried that they have no plans to re-scale everything to 75.

 

We went from all ops and fp's being end game content, to just one op and one fp that are actually end game content where gearing up matters.

 

This can't be the goal for end game. Everything was scaled up to 70 for reasons, and for those same reasons, everything needs to be scaled up again to 75. Scaling the player down just screams "We are underfunded and understaffed, so we need to take shortcuts, even if it makes for a terrible experience."

For a game like WoW where each expansion has four raids and large new areas, the level scaling isn't too bad because you have a variety of places where you can use the new gear, but to have the new stuff only good in two small daily areas, one operation, and one Flashpoint? Makes getting good gear seem like a waste of time.

Yes please.

 

Not to mention that rescaling endgame stuff to lvl 75 will fix those horrible health bars we healers have to deal with.

Or set all ops back to their original level without level sync and make more level 75 content.

 

I know...wishful thinking.

So are there news about the scaling problem?

It´s still a nuisance that I have to switch between 4 sets for one class spec.

 

If everything would be lvl 75 content I´d only had to use 3 sets (fps/ops + ops + pvp). I know that the difference doesn´t seem much but the need to have so many sets for each content keeps me from playing more classes.

(I´m a perfectionist so I NEED the perfect stats.)

 

IDK how other games solve this problem but there is probably a better way than it is now in SWTOR.

the biggest issue is,,wen we queue up in grp finder and one of these comes up,,mostly everyone quits on the spot,,the ****,,2nd,,the decos,,stupid holo`s,,i was planning to farm the new fp and meridian,,but somehow the updates also brought along huge mess of long loading times and horrible playability as in im forced at times to put my graphis at ultra low to even be able to be decent playing,,,getting booted cause im stuck in loading then everything freezes wen i move.attack.run,etc,,,were as the last 4 yrs with the same rig i had no issues at all,,now this morning my gpu friend cause it was on max non stop....thanks

xxxx

This is one of those reasons that I hope we DON'T get a level cap increase later this year. Given how half-assed it was last time, it only end up being more of a mess. Edited January 10, 2021 by Ner_idia

Or set all ops back to their original level without level sync and make more level 75 content.

 

I know...wishful thinking.

 

^ This exactly.

 

There is no use in a constant re-scaling of old content to the current level. All it adds to the game is boredom and an unhappy playerbase because they already completed this content before. Old content is for farming outdated achievements or transmogs or titles or mounts or whatever.

 

Each new expansion or bigger update should ideally add new and unique content. That's how you keep your endgame alive and exciting.

Edited January 10, 2021 by Jesseriah

Or set all ops back to their original level without level sync and make more level 75 content.

 

I know...wishful thinking.

 

Just when I wanted to chime in, somebody already beat me to it.

 

There is two choices that can possibly happen which would in both case make the playerbase happy on this topic.

 

Either you put back every content to the level it was supposed to be at launch, and down-syncing disappear entirely except maybe for more casual content like flashpoints and story-mode operations (the two type of content that needs to give exp and can be played casually with group finder without premade groups), then release more high-end content which incentivize players to get geared with the new shiny gear that Bioware really wants us to farm.

 

Or you increase everything up to 75 directly. This avoids down-syncing which feels bad (and shows that you removed the old set bonuses only because you didn't have any idea on how to make players still want to grind new gear), gives a (false) sentiment of fresh and usefullness to every class/gear, makes gear grind "somewhat" less useless and allows Bioware to not work on endgame content until three or four years later when they decide they wanna release an "expansion", or whatever they call their next glorified patch.

If BW could actually release enough new content, I'd agree with putting, say EV and KP back at level 50 and so on.

 

The simple fact of the matter is they started raising the level of the older operations because they weren't adding enough new ones to have an endgame.

 

I assume the downscaling is because rescaling everything with a new level cap was also a difficult venture; but they still need an endgame, so we have this stupid version of a level 70 endgame.

 

I'm glad to see this issue finally being raised and taking off; I was feeling lonely in my attempts.

If BW could actually release enough new content

 

Makes you wonder what they're doing during all these months without any updates. I'd argue that it doesn't take that long to design a flashpoint, especially since 75% of the visuals and decor of the flashpoint is often multiples old assets mixed and mashed together for new visuals.

 

I like that they're currently monitoring amplifiers on PTS, especially since amplifiers are probably one of the few features that they got kinda right.

 

It's usefull, but not to the point of not getting the right ones with rng being frustrating or a hindrance to progression

 

Makes me wish that they'd put the same amount of care into other features. But again, it's the same studio that was supposed to release Gods from the Machine over the course of a year. There's probably one guy working on all of the pve content by himself, doing the best he can. I may be too harsh on him.

Makes you wonder what they're doing during all these months without any updates. I'd argue that it doesn't take that long to design a flashpoint, especially since 75% of the visuals and decor of the flashpoint is often multiples old assets mixed and mashed together for new visuals.

 

I like that they're currently monitoring amplifiers on PTS, especially since amplifiers are probably one of the few features that they got kinda right.

 

It's usefull, but not to the point of not getting the right ones with rng being frustrating or a hindrance to progression

 

I can almost forgive them for last year because the virus put a bit of a monkey wrench into all our lives.

 

That said, points I've been reiterating since 6.0 that still exist unchanged in their current form are:

 

1. The primary issue we're discussing here: the downscaling. I think all of us can realize, we're not getting a half dozen ops in a year. Ergo, I say the best thing that is a reasonable expectation is for BW to accept their own failures and raise the cap. Raising uprising like they're discussing on pts is... nice, I guess? But not enough. Raise FPs too, and more importantly, ops.

 

2. Amplifiers. These were always stupid in principle. A stat that's so small as to only be relevant to min maxing is dumb on its face. If they're big enough to make a statistically significant difference in dps/hps/whatever, they're in fact relevant. If they're too small to make a statistically significant difference, they serve no purpose and should never have existed in the first place. Based on the fact I see recommendedations on what is "best" for specific classes and even specs, I can assume they're significant, and thus the marketing was dumb. Lessen the RNG (which I grant is being discussed on pts, but I seriously doubt goes far enough).

 

3. The pure RNG in getting BiS item modifications for gear, particularly enhancements (and thus ear/implants). This is absolutely ridiculous. Not as much of an issue for me, personally, as I've geared all the classes I really care about. That said, its still dumb that there a exorbitant number of enhancements, at max item level, that are basically useless. Or only useful because of the nearly incomprehensible idiocy that is point 1.

 

And the point that is more recent but older at the same time:

 

4. Adding new vertical progression gear (ilevels, higher I level augments, what have you) without adding new content or a higher level cap. The most recent example is the new augments. The previous one was ossus gearing toward the end of 5.x. in the most recent case they are an obvious attempt to get people to participate in low population game modes while simultaneously adding a credit sink. Surely there is a better method of both.

 

All of this leads me to my ultimate conclusion and TLDR:

5. Gear is not a substitute for substance. I haven't played in a week because cq capping 23 toons last week, including all 18 of my guardians, has left me somewhat burnt on out cq, I've geared all the toons to the levels I care to considering the randomness that exists, and there is absolutely nothing else to do other than cq and gearing.

Well it seems Bioware have decided to ignore FPs and OPS for the mean time in favour of pushing forward with rescaling / upscaling Uprisings instead. Something that I’ve not seen anyone asking for

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=988245

 

Surely time and resources would be better spent to upscale FPs and OPS that people have been clambering for since 6.0 landed.

Edited January 11, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

Well it seems Bioware have decided to ignore FPs and OPS for the mean time in favour of pushing forward with rescaling / upscaling Uprisings instead. Something that I’ve not seen anyone asking for

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=988245

 

Surely time and resources would be better spent to upscale FPs and OPS that people have been clambering for since 6.0 landed.

 

I'm assuming uprising were done because there are fewer of them, and even fewer people doing them. So by scaling them, maybe people will actually go do them, and there are less of them to scale. I assume they weren't downscaled properly because so few people bother doing them that BW simply "forgot" about them in the leadup to 6.0.

 

Optimistically, this could be the first step in raising the cap on other content as well.

 

Pessimistically, which is where I tend to be, even scaling uprisings won't make people want to do them, so the failure could keep BW from pushing FPs and Ops to 75.

I'm assuming uprising were done because there are fewer of them, and even fewer people doing them. So by scaling them, maybe people will actually go do them, and there are less of them to scale. I assume they weren't downscaled properly because so few people bother doing them that BW simply "forgot" about them in the leadup to 6.0.

 

Optimistically, this could be the first step in raising the cap on other content as well.

 

Pessimistically, which is where I tend to be, even scaling uprisings won't make people want to do them, so the failure could keep BW from pushing FPs and Ops to 75.

 

I think even less people will end up playing it with the upscaling. Even before 6.0 dropped they were dead content. At least the lvl 70 scaling allows players like my wife and I to play them in tandem for conquest and not need 4 man pug groups.

 

All these changes do for us is limit or remove more things from the game that we currently do and enjoy as they are. With pvp pretty much dead to me now, we do all our socialite conquest achievements in uprisings, this is just another backend Nerf to our casual play style.

 

I’m sad that there is will be even less for us to do than there is now. We’re considering dropping our subs and spend more time doing other things than swtor. $22 swtor sub x2 + $20 WTFast sub x 2 for the limited amount of content we currently get is already silly. At least when pvp was still fun, I could justify it. Now I’m not sure it’s worth $84AU a month for us to both play.

Edited January 11, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

I think even less people will end up playing it with the upscaling. Even before 6.0 dropped they were dead content. At least the lvl 70 scaling allows players like my wife and I to play them in tandem for conquest and not need 4 man pug groups.

 

All these change do for us is limit or remove more things from the game that we currently do and enjoy as they are. With pvp pretty much dead to me now, we do all our socialite conquest achievements in uprisings, this is just another backend Nerf to our casual play style.

 

I’m sad that there is will be even less for us to do than there is now. We’re considering dropping our subs and spend more time doing other things than swtor. $22 swtor sub x2 + $20 WTFast sub x 2 for the limited amount of content we currently get is already silly. At least when pvp was still fun, I could justify it. Now I’m not sure it’s worth $84AU a month for us to both play.

 

Oh yeah, I fully agree that, in typical BW fashion, they chose the dumbest possible way of doing something. This then allows them to say what, we tried and you guys are just being difficult/impossible to please!!!

 

I too am actively looking for things to do that aren't swtor. The high republic launched this week so I've been reading. I still have hope for Avengers, if they were to release some kind of repeatable raid like content, and personally my experience with PVP here (given how my guild died) has basically turned me off PvP as a game mode.

 

Cq is getting a tad dull and repetitive. I capped 23 characters (my 18 guardians, 2 VGs, 2 sentinels, and a scoundrel) last week, and today getting on just to get the guild to small cq cap.

 

That is how I would describe swtor in a nutshell, dull and repetitive. Unfortunately, I really can't find anything better to do with the free time I do have (mostly weekends as the weekdays have been so hectic I basically get home and crash).

Just when I wanted to chime in, somebody already beat me to it.

 

There is two choices that can possibly happen which would in both case make the playerbase happy on this topic.

There is a third option actually. Revert back to level 50 as the cap. Keep level sync for content below level 50 and govern endgame with gear tiers. In the end the vast majority of our stats come from gear anyway.

 

And instead of raising the level cap with each expansion, just add epic levels to characters that are only about access to gear tiers. This has to be done because I do understand that BW needs people to sub at least every expansion to have access to the next content and gear tier(s). So a level 50[1] would only have access to tier or bracket 1 gear.

 

This way the leveling is more sensible without all the superfluous levels. Leveling a new character also doesn't take too long and you have access to all the endgame and stories once you hit 50. And you can then choose to skip or play the stories as you can now. Also there would be only level sync and no bolster anymore. So it only downlevels you and not uplevels. That way you can play the old FPs at their original levels and not have a huge discrepancy in power between say level 20 characters and level 50 characters who would otherwise just one-shot everything.

Oh yeah, I fully agree that, in typical BW fashion, they chose the dumbest possible way of doing something. This then allows them to say what, we tried and you guys are just being difficult/impossible to please!!!

 

I too am actively looking for things to do that aren't swtor. The high republic launched this week so I've been reading. I still have hope for Avengers, if they were to release some kind of repeatable raid like content, and personally my experience with PVP here (given how my guild died) has basically turned me off PvP as a game mode.

 

Cq is getting a tad dull and repetitive. I capped 23 characters (my 18 guardians, 2 VGs, 2 sentinels, and a scoundrel) last week, and today getting on just to get the guild to small cq cap.

 

That is how I would describe swtor in a nutshell, dull and repetitive. Unfortunately, I really can't find anything better to do with the free time I do have (mostly weekends as the weekdays have been so hectic I basically get home and crash).

 

If you have a joystick or game controller, you should try out SW squadrons. It’s pretty good and what GSF should have been in this game.

I’ve been waiting for Avengers to be developed more before I take that step. I had high hopes for it, but all I hear is bad stuff. They could really do with a pvp option in it.

The other one I was excited for was Cyberpunk, but it’s also got some issues.

 

The hard thing for me is I need to find the game I enjoy and then convince my wife to like it too

Edited January 11, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

I can almost forgive them for last year because the virus put a bit of a monkey wrench into all our lives.

 

That said, points I've been reiterating since 6.0 that still exist unchanged in their current form are:

 

1. The primary issue we're discussing here: the downscaling.

 

2. Amplifiers.

 

3. The pure RNG in getting BiS item modifications for gear, particularly enhancements (and thus ear/implants).

 

4. Adding new vertical progression gear (ilevels, higher I level augments, what have you) without adding new content or a higher level cap.

 

5. Gear is not a substitute for substance.

 

1) Downscaling is an issue as long as there is nothing new added to the table. I'm all for downscalling when there is enough max-level content worth doing for. This will tie later into what I think of Uprisings, but right now yeah, the downscale is a bit of a bummer when it isn't done correctly (-> Everything scaling to 70 except the two new "raid".)

 

2) While I personally don't mind amplifiers, they're just in fact another extra layer of RNG. Not one that will make or break your overall PvE run like set bonuses and tacticals are, but if they are just here to implement another credit sink due to RNG, I think the issue is that they shouldn't have been implemented in the first place.

 

3) This is another issue to me as well. Before 6.0 dropped, there was only 2 different armorings, three different modules, and one enhancement per stat type (iirc, there may have been more but I've forgotten since). There was also one single tier of augment (that they nerfed because they needed to release "new ones"). All in all, this was some pretty standard gearing for a MMO. I've seen worse and I've seen better, but it had enough to make BiS easy to calculate while not making a nightmare of the rng gearing system. Now there's like... How many enhancement just for crit ? How many implants ? Just... Way too much for it to make any kind of sense. This is another artificial (so useless) way of increasing the time it takes to gear up. This is unnecessary and game design logic means that you should avoid it by all means, and one of the many reworks the gearing system will need to get if they intend to release another expansion.

 

4) Vertical gearing without anything new to go with it isn't worth it. It reminds me of 5.X when they released two new tiers of iLvl, as well with augments. Nobody *needed* this gear to clear content, because you were intended to clear master mode with an ilvl of 236 at the time. So basically, 242 was already "useless" because there was nothing to gear up for except maybe pvp. Everything past this point was just another layer of useless and unneeded grind which again, has to be avoided as much as possible if you want to simply make players enjoy playing. If half of the time it took for Bioware to release the last gear tiers of 5.X was used in raid developpement or even flashpoint developpement, I believe we would have seen way more content in the previous expansion. Enough to make players happy and give them a reason to engage into a gear grind. There is a reason why others MMO do not release any new tier of gear unless they are releasing new and harder content. Because there is no point in doing so, and it's wasted ressources.

 

5) Gear is what should come either at the end of a content (the reward to beating the content, to make reclear easier), or in the case of swtor, should be easy to grind before entering any kind of content. Furthermore, adding way, way too much useless gear/set bonuses that nobody should actually use isn't how you make a fun endgame MMO experience. Adding new gear when you don't even upscale old challenging content/add new challenging content is as much a waste of ressource.

 

 

TL;DR -

Downscaling should be either removed or improved. There needs to be downscaling in easy/leveling content like veteran flashpoint and story-mode operations. Anything else should be played at max level, so gear actually matters.

 

Adding useless RNG layers/too much useless choice to gearing is bad and a waste of ressource. There is too many useless set bonuses everywhere, and some class don't even have a "good option" to choose. When it comes to gearing with mods/armoring/enhancement, less choice is always best, especially with RNG gearing.

 

Vertical progression (adding new item-level tiers) is useless if we can already clear current content with current i-level. Nerfing gear to add new gear is bad, should never happen again like with augments. You add item level when you add new content that is more difficult. Or don't add item level and just release new content, you don't waste ressources like this.

 

I think even less people will end up playing it with the upscaling. Even before 6.0 dropped they were dead content.

 

Imo, uprisings should be reworked to be "noob-friendly" content. Short content that is meant for players to actually learn how to play in group scenarios. How to use taunts and tank cooldowns, how to heal and help mitigate damage, how to avoid aoes and interrupt enemy abilities. Since 4.0 with the rework of companions, there is a tremendous skill gap between what fresh new players know and what is required of them in high end content, which is one of multiples factor that makes newbies unable to participate even in story-mode operations.

I think even less people will end up playing it with the upscaling. Even before 6.0 dropped they were dead content. At least the lvl 70 scaling allows players like my wife and I to play them in tandem for conquest and not need 4 man pug groups.

 

QFT.

 

I've done as many of them as I could solo, for the achievements. The way to encourage people to do content is to make it reasonably easy (but not any easier,) and to make it fun; for some people, the rewards in terms of drops also matter. Many of the Uprisings are fun, but I can't get people to join up for them. I'm reduced to solo'ing MM Uprisings as they're not even in GF. But not all. Some cannot be solo'ed due to mechanics, some because they're extremely challenging. Then there is "Trial and Error."

 

Making them more difficult (and leaving them out of the Group Finder) is the exact opposite of what was needed. In fact, changing Uprisings was not exactly a popular demand, to put it mildly. So, naturally BW went with it. The honest truth: as soon as I read it, I burst out into a laugh in real life. Honestly. I don't use "lol" or variants on any platform, ever. But it'd have been warranted here when I read they upscaled Uprisings.

Cq is getting a tad dull and repetitive. I capped 23 characters last week, and today getting on just to get the guild to small cq cap.

 

That is how I would describe swtor in a nutshell, dull and repetitive.

 

How the hell can you cap 23 characters :v If there is a secret recipe I want to know it. Unless it's conquest... Then I kind of don't see the point in doing them anyway.

 

On another subject, sadly yeah there isn't anything like swtor. I mean, mmo with lightsaber and stuff. I quit to play some other mmos that are amazing (where I'm still currently playing tbh), but in the end and as silly as it sounds, they still lack the pvp fun you could have on swtor, which made me like... Buy a sub for a month, to see what changed. Sadly now I see that not even PvP can make me come back as well. Because there's like... Nothing left on the french server.

 

But hey, things are looking better now. We've got a Community Team prepping to engage in discussions with the playerbase, all that fun stuff. It's still slow. But like you said anyway, covid made a mess of everyone's life, so I guess this year I can't really blame them for the difficult times at work.

 

But just this year.

 

Edit :

There is a third option actually. Revert back to level 50 as the cap. Keep level sync for content below level 50 and govern endgame with gear tiers. In the end the vast majority of our stats come from gear anyway.

 

Then you'd end up with an issue similar to 5.0, with gear having so, so, so much stats in the end that it would just be silly. Because you can't obviously hard cap stats if you want to indefinitely increase item level, otherwise there comes a point where it's useless to farm them. On the other side, if you don't hardcap them, or even softcap (which could be reached really easily before) you'd end up with dumb 80% crit chance build, with 30% alacrity by default. That's... Not good either for the health of a game, imo.

Edited January 11, 2021 by supertimtaf