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Why Endgame is lackluster, and what Bioware should do.


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I think I agree with each and every point that OP posted. Well thought out.

 

Even rift had a hard raid instance and 3 weeks later made another raid instance just as hard. None of it was cleared the first week or two and only the hardcore guilds, 5 days a week raiding, were clearing the content at a steady pace. I use rift as an example because it was the most recent MMO launch.

 

No matter how much people hate Rift, I have to say that it was a well polished game at launch. Their bug fixes were hourly (i know because i was there) and the devs were responding to each and every issue very quickly. I did get bored and I stopped playing but I will say I was impressed.

 

I hate the argument, the game just came out, because it is 2012. Companies know what we as consumers want and they need to deliver. Instead of scamming us and being held up by people saying it will get better.

 

The first raids were easy and bugged, wait till 1.1.. 1.1 came out finished in one night. It was in development for almost a year.

.

 

 

I agree 100% with you on this. Why should we even compare SWTOR with WOW or any other game. Why cant BW set some standards for other MMO rather than giving us an excuse that it took WOW for so many years to perfect so we will also take our sweet time.

Edited by Yummymango
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Molten Core, outside of Rag, was actually very easy. Once they get this game smoothed out and can focus on developing end game content, I expect it to get better. The fights themselves have the mechanics there. I think its just a matter of tuning the numbers correctly for each difficulty. And of course seperating hard modes from nightmare modes by adding additional abilities or phases to make them more in depth.

 

Like I was telling some people in my guild, the height of raiding in WoW was Burning Crusade when Blizzard made raid content and ddnt care who could do it or not. Sure, hardcore raiding guilds may be the minority in games, but that doesnt mean their numbers are small. We are still talking about tens of thousands of players who do it. So developing content for them and making it difficult isn't a waste.

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The problem with your progression chart is that not all of those instances came into the game at the same time, so comparing all of BC to the first month or so of a new MMO isn't quite fair. Just consider the fact that in the future there will be further operations that you can compare on a similar level to WoW. Don't try and compare it a month after the game came out. Consider the fact that it was basically trying to find 40 people for Molten Core right after the game came out and even if you are talking about BC, the raiding still came out gradually.

 

I think you missed the entire point as to why he listed the BC raid progression. He stated that single mode raids are preferable to multi-mode raids and used BC as an example. I understand why developers use the mechanic with it being so much less expensive to simply modify and reuse an existing raid over creating a new one from scratch but emphatically agree with the poster you quoted that raiding in BC was the best I've seen in any MMO.

 

You're response is, "Wait and give them time to develop more raids" while missing his point that EV should be the entry raid with more on the horizon without HM and NMM.

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You clearly didn't read what he said. He never once said the game in its current state is awful. Please go away and start trolling somewhere else.

 

I'm sorry, did I insult your beloved game?

 

Before you attempt to troll me, think about what I said. You can't argue with it, its basically philosophy at this point.

 

Again, in its current state the game is awful. You sit on the fleet all day watching people attempt to find tanks. You have no reason to go anywhere but Ilum and Belsavis, which makes every other planet worthless. Biochem is the only good crewskill to go atm because everything else sucks. There is barely any content, most content can be cleared in two nights, and half the flashpoints can't be done on Hard.

 

Maybe you like sitting around and RPing, or doing nothing all day, but the majority of people don't. And all we're saying is that we hope they fix it, because if they don't, they are going to lose a lot of subs to games like GW2 and WoW. I definitely don't want to see that happen.

Edited by Artacks
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Have one or two entry level raids set at 8 man (with lower level reward epics) to get people used to larger group sizes, and then upper tiers kick off at 16 man raids with progressively harder group mechanics in each tiered encounter.

 

Sorry, but that's a terrible idea, essentially excluding smaller guilds from the majority of raids. End game content should be available to everyone who wants to do it. Even fielding an 8 man team can be tricky for smaller guilds due to time zones, RL commitments and so on.

 

I've no problem with larger groups getting more/better loot but being a small guild should not exclude them from content. BW would be foolish to do so - possibly losing subscriptions and also the fact that all the work they put into raids will be seen by fewer players.

 

I think that as long as each mode offers sufficient reward vs challenge, then its a perfectly good model. However, I do agree that the harder modes need additional mechanics or something to make the encounter different.

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NM mode Ops actually feel slightly easier than the HM flashpoints. Enrage timers are a lot more forgiving, at the very least.

 

I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but I can see a logic path that gets to this point on purpose.

 

Players who aren't familiar with MMOs may want to dive straight into Ops after hitting the level cap. From a plot-centric point of view...why go back to Black Talon? You took care of that after you left for Drommand Kaas. The story continues into the Ops, not back into the Flashpoints. Since this is a story-focused game, this is sensible -- it's just the polar opposite of how MMO veterans are used to handling progression.

 

We're used to Level Cap > HM dungeons > Normal Raids > HM Raids. If you follow that path in this game, you tread water since HM Flashpoints and NM Ops drop the same loot, and the difficulty curve feels backwards.

 

My guess is that there are two progression paths.

 

The Casual path is Level Cap > Normal Ops

The Hardcore path is Level Cap > HM Flashpoints > HM Raids, skipping normal Ops entirely

 

The problem is not that this deliniation exists, it's that they completely failed to tell us it exists. So we form our new guilds in this new game, we tell people once they hit the level cap to farm HM FPs for gear so we can do Ops....and find out we'd wasted our time in FPs, because in the absence of this information, we default to the path we already know.

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Might sound crazy but One mode for everyone, and hard encounters would make this game way better. Like in rift, it didnt have much going for it but if you raided you got a good run. Hammerknell took around a month for the top guild to clear and even the first two raids were difficult to do without the right gear/tactics. I remember going into Hammerknell and the newer raiders still having a little trouble on the easier raids 6months down the road.

 

I have yet to raid, but SWTOR is a themepark and from what i heard over mummble and seen. When the ride ends it really does end. New raid took 1 day to clear? lol Great for the more casual crowd for sure.

 

i could agree with this but those who new to the game need normal mode like my wife she never raid before so it helps her learn the game better :/.

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The raiding came out slowly, I never raided much in WoW, but i assume it was good raiding Otherwise why would all the guilds stick around to do so?

 

I hate the argument, the game just came out, because it is 2012. Companies know what we as consumers want and they need to deliver. Instead of scamming us and being held up by people saying it will get better.

 

The first raids were easy and bugged, wait till 1.1.. 1.1 came out finished in one night. It was in development for almost a year.

 

Even rift had a hard raid instance and 3 weeks later made another raid instance just as hard. None of it was cleared the first week or two and only the hardcore guilds, 5 days a week raiding, were clearing the content at a steady pace. I use rift as an example because it was the most recent MMO launch.

 

That is the stupidest argument I keep hearing, it's 2012! So what? Let's say I want to start collecting coins, people have been doing that for over a 1000 years. Lets say my father has been collecting coins for 60 years, by your logic I should have all the same coins from the start as my father has after 60 years, it's 2012! It a tried and true hobby people have been doing for thousands of years, it should be easy.

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While I did enjoy BC, the whole make 2 groups to farm this 8/10 man THEN move to the big raids, just flat out doesn't work well at all. I saw too many guilds get splintered trying to gear up to handle Gruul, because one group wasn't quite as good as the other. Which brings up another point. Do we force newcomers to go through all the old raids just to gear up to make the new ones?
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Just hire the Ulduar team from wow (ICC was the next best). Then you get awesome endgame. I like how hard modes were something you did in fight and not the toggle stuff. I havnt done the new karaggas palace stuff but so far SOA is the best boss. Why? Because stuff actually happens in the fight.

 

Check this out for a fight with a bunch of stuff to learn and master. Made the fight quite fun.

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Itemization is pretty bad. There is essentially no choice of gear for each class. This is bad because it goes against the whole goal of modding. Everyone raiding at a high level runs around in full "rakata"-there is hardly any choice of stats that the player can partake in. This is even more true, considering modding is the only way to alter gear (anything like enchanting from WoW is absent), and honestly, modding hasn't done its job at all, considering the highest level mods are already in the Rakata gear.

 

The solution should be something like this:

Make other items besides tier items drop in ops, and give them diverse mods. Diverse mods are essential to this game, because currently, all kinds of gear custemizatoln are absent.

Bioware could also do something better with Augments. Maybe add more augment slots, and make augments more fun. Maybe give weapons a special augment slot, which can accept "fun" augments, which gives the weapon a cool proc or something. Bioware has a lot of options here, but the current system leaves no room for customization, optimization, or anything else really. If Bioware wanted gear to be more flexible, theyve failed.

 

Good set bonuses will, unfortunately always dictate what everyone wears - if you want diversity, you need to provide individual alternates, or an alternate set which provide statistical equality, or even advantage (mitigated by rarity).

 

I'm a big believer that there needs to be choice within a given spec.

 

Currently for one spec (lets say medic):

 

Medic Set

Medic Subpar Non-set items

Medic craftable subpar drops that raise in value if you crit the craft (augment slot)

 

If a Set is going to be the 'king' set, then they need at least two alternate 'king' sets per spec.

 

Crit/Surge Medic set Vs Alacrity/Power Vs Cunning or whatever

 

But I am personally far more enticed by a rare non-set upgrade than the pokemon sets a la wow/diablo.

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If you're looking for hard modes being hard switch to 16 man. It's ridiculous how much more difficult it is compared to 8. Protip bioware, you can't just double the amount of damage an attack does because it's 16. we don't get double health.
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Bioware: even if you don't like the suggestions, something must be done to make endgame better, and fast. Maybe just release a statement, and tell us what you're thinking. Many raiders' attentions are waning, so this is very high priority.

 

I think they should give the pvp "fixing" a rest for now, people always gonna whine about that. but the PVE aspect, common, we are talking about programs and not other human players, its should be simple enough to just tune to the community voice [which like 95% say the same exact thing, unlike pvp] and give us what we need so we will continue playing and enjoing the game. and im not saying i will drop playing anytime soon, i do have faith in BW, but time is cruicial here, other players dont wait too long and you need to give them, us, a bone here and fast.

 

most of us wasting time on broken things, while you try to rebalance pvp, but common, the whiner voice of pvpers are much lauder then ours becasue they are facing other players, and there are more emotions in the play there.

we on the other hand, the PVE players, spend hours and hours in game trying to fight buggy npcs and then do dailyes for other hours, we spend SOOOOO much time ingame and not in the forums because its logical to just try again the npc and not just spend our time whining in the forums that X class is OP, and N class is UP, and the B class is soooo OP and blah blah blah instead of actually playing.

PVP gets frustrating much faster, and face it BW, it will take you ALOT of time, if ever, to setisfy the pvpers. but common, you CAN setisfy US, the PVEers much much much easily and more productivly for the long run.

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Originally Posted by jamiem

 

karazhan > gruul > magtheridon's lair > ssc > tk > mh > bt > sw was the best progression flow of any mmo i have played and the difficulty tuning was spot on.

 

Except Gruul was so overtuned it had to be nerfed few weeks after release and you had to stack ranged/mages. To even get there you had to finish a (heroic 5m)questline which also has been removed with the nerfs.

 

Same attunement was later removed for SSC (for which you had to kill Gruul) and TK where it was neccesary to kill Magtheridon, who had to be nerfed 4x for even top 100 guilds to be able to kill it! Last boss in SSC(Vashj) was bugged to degree it was unkillable for months. Last boss TK(Kaelthas) was so overtuned/hard it was the same. Attunement for Hyjal had to be changed the week first guild should go there as it was bugged and only allowed for 1/25 person to attune every week... oh and the SSC trash on 45 min respawn where it took 35 to clear. JOY spot on difficulty!!!

 

BT on the other hand was cleared the first week it released and had to be made harder where again it was cleared next week by guilds who could afford serious raid stacking in melee for mother shazrah. Others had to wait for nerf. Story for itself were Illidan and Reliquary where Warrior tank was hugely favoured against Paladin and Druid due to Shear-block mechanic. Attunements were again removed later because they have been destroying guild raids.

 

SWP was the only raid instance where I cant remember any serious issue with difficulty/bugs etc. So please explain to me how TBC was tuned and spot on difficulty.

Only way I see it you either played for Nihilum/DeathnTaxes/Method/LastResort/Forte/Celebrity guilds OR you did not experience those raids firsthand. TBC was tuned horribly and had to be retuned way before the usual nerfs when new instance releases!

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I detest modes. Raids should be difficult, but not extremely hard.

 

One mode, for everyone.

 

I get your point, but then there goes the player base. I'm pretty certain there's probably a large percentage of the player base that is super-casual, and will probably only see the first few bosses of NM ops before the next tier comes out.

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To make a difference between HM Rakata and NM Rakata they could make NM Rakata drop with augment slot. Or add a NM item drop which would add the slot into the vendor Rakata item. Rakata Augmenter :) would only work for Rakata and lesser gear so further items couldnt be made better with these by then old drops.
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Except Gruul was so overtuned it had to be nerfed few weeks after release and you had to stack ranged/mages. To even get there you had to finish a (heroic 5m)questline which also has been removed with the nerfs.

 

Same attunement was later removed for SSC (for which you had to kill Gruul) and TK where it was neccesary to kill Magtheridon, who had to be nerfed 4x for even top 100 guilds to be able to kill it! Last boss in SSC(Vashj) was bugged to degree it was unkillable for months. Last boss TK(Kaelthas) was so overtuned/hard it was the same. Attunement for Hyjal had to be changed the week first guild should go there as it was bugged and only allowed for 1/25 person to attune every week... oh and the SSC trash on 45 min respawn where it took 35 to clear. JOY spot on difficulty!!!

 

BT on the other hand was cleared the first week it released and had to be made harder where again it was cleared next week by guilds who could afford serious raid stacking in melee for mother shazrah. Others had to wait for nerf. Story for itself were Illidan and Reliquary where Warrior tank was hugely favoured against Paladin and Druid due to Shear-block mechanic. Attunements were again removed later because they have been destroying guild raids.

 

SWP was the only raid instance where I cant remember any serious issue with difficulty/bugs etc. So please explain to me how TBC was tuned and spot on difficulty.

Only way I see it you either played for Nihilum/DeathnTaxes/Method/LastResort/Forte/Celebrity guilds OR you did not experience those raids firsthand. TBC was tuned horribly and had to be retuned way before the usual nerfs when new instance releases!

 

You make it out as if those raids were impossible/ broken when they first came out - they were not. Those issues all got cleared up within the first few weeks (Vashj was not unkillable for months at all, all the issue was was that the green crap she spewed in her last phase was excessive to the point that the raid had to watch where they stepped and not rely on heals to survive - she was much easier than say Kael'thas who truly was a HARD boss to beat) of their release, they were diificult, but if you were organised, figured out the group mechanic and payed attention you beat them.

 

I did play for a successful raiding guild on Magtheridon EU but guilds all over Europe and NA were beating those bosses pre-nerf, not just mine. The attunement system was awesome (once they ironed out the issues) and created a real sense of achievement before you even entered the instances - a kind of epic quest line to allow you entry to the that raiding tier - usually culminating with obtaining items that dropped from the the last boss of the previous tier. The Kael'thas encounter was one of the most original and challenging fights I have experienced, taking us over two weeks to defeat and lasting for about 10-15 minutes - however the pay-off was incredible and made everyone feel like they had really achieved something.

 

The difficulty tiered system is merely a direct result of dumbing down content which not only ultimately killed competitive raiding on WoW but is also dumbing down variety within encounters themselves as all you do with diifculty modes it seems is ratchet up HPs and damage and lower enrage timers - it's just depressing and doesn't really give you much excitement about what may be next.

Edited by JamieM
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If Bioware wants hardcore raiding guilds, the fights have to be difficult to master, (3-4 more mechanics then they have now), and tuned up 10-15% from where they are now.

 

I took this as the TLDR portion as it basically sums up the problem you're trying to point out.

 

I've been following SW for years and I can't remember a single time that they stated that this was one of their goals. They have harped high and mighty about story and character choice (basically 1-49 which is admittedly very good) and I've yet to see a single post about their end-game intentions or target audience.

 

Maybe they're happy not having them?

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I agree with the OP, the normal raids are the only ones that strike the right balance. Bioware's attitude toward difficulty is "increase the HP and damage of the boss". Hard and Nightmare modes are no more of a challenge than Normal (mechanically), just more of a gear check. More specifically, DPS/healers will get just get 1-shot by certain abilities on Nightmare 16-man unless you've got enough health. The raids haven't been tuned properly at all, and this is the problem that Bioware have run into by trying to provide 6 levels of difficulty.

 

Trion's approach in Rift was 1 difficulty level for raid content, and to nerf/rebalance content as they noticed a certain number of guilds getting stuck during progression. Suffice to say, even Greenscale's Blight was more enjoyable than EV. But that's not just because it had one difficulty level - fights were just more complex mechanically.

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I took this as the TLDR portion as it basically sums up the problem you're trying to point out.

 

I've been following SW for years and I can't remember a single time that they stated that this was one of their goals. They have harped high and mighty about story and character choice (basically 1-49 which is admittedly very good) and I've yet to see a single post about their end-game intentions or target audience.

 

Maybe they're happy not having them?

 

I agree with you but my question is what kind of content we should expect in future?

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I agree that NM should be very challenging. HM ops should also be more difficult, I agree with this too. But you all do realize this game is barely a month old and they have already added new content along with fixing most of the major bugs. Give em some slack. I swear none of you were present at WoW's launch and just expect far to much. Get your expectations in check plain n simple. This game is literally JUST over a month old. IMO they are doing a great job, there is ALWAYS room for improvement but this is a great game and has been an amazing launch packed with content...end game content aswell. WoW didnt have 1 raid at launch let alone two. I agree with many points the OP makes but i also think not many are giving BW the credit they deserve and just expect perfection from the get go. Unrealistic expectations plain n simple...
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Except Gruul was so overtuned it had to be nerfed few weeks after release and you had to stack ranged/mages. To even get there you had to finish a (heroic 5m)questline which also has been removed with the nerfs.

 

Same attunement was later removed for SSC (for which you had to kill Gruul) and TK where it was neccesary to kill Magtheridon, who had to be nerfed 4x for even top 100 guilds to be able to kill it! Last boss in SSC(Vashj) was bugged to degree it was unkillable for months. Last boss TK(Kaelthas) was so overtuned/hard it was the same. Attunement for Hyjal had to be changed the week first guild should go there as it was bugged and only allowed for 1/25 person to attune every week... oh and the SSC trash on 45 min respawn where it took 35 to clear. JOY spot on difficulty!!!

 

BT on the other hand was cleared the first week it released and had to be made harder where again it was cleared next week by guilds who could afford serious raid stacking in melee for mother shazrah. Others had to wait for nerf. Story for itself were Illidan and Reliquary where Warrior tank was hugely favoured against Paladin and Druid due to Shear-block mechanic. Attunements were again removed later because they have been destroying guild raids.

 

SWP was the only raid instance where I cant remember any serious issue with difficulty/bugs etc. So please explain to me how TBC was tuned and spot on difficulty.

Only way I see it you either played for Nihilum/DeathnTaxes/Method/LastResort/Forte/Celebrity guilds OR you did not experience those raids firsthand. TBC was tuned horribly and had to be retuned way before the usual nerfs when new instance releases!

 

That's how it was when SSC and TK were initially released. Within a month, most of those changes were already made and the vast majority of people experiencing those dungeons never encountered. The same will be true for the problems in TORs current end game.

Edited by Zeppelin
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