Currently I enjoy raiding. I enjoyed raiding in WoW and do so in SWTOR. However looking at the current state of operations (aka raiding, opsing) I think a lot of people agree it needs work. From what I’ve read and mostly agree with, it boils down to the following things:

1. Raid stopping bugs (Ancient Pylons, Ghajr, SOA mostly)
   
2. No control over loot on normal mode
   
3. Hard and Nightmare mode not offering new challenges
   
4. No new gear on Nightmare vs hard
   
5. No incentive for 16 man
   
6. Useless tokens
   
7. No multi-user gear tokens
   
8. No raid tools
   
9. No instanced world bosses
   
10. Unbalanced gear
    
11. Corpse running
    
12. Master loot advance
    
13. No PTR character copy
    
14. More to-do
    
15. 16 man should be harder then 8 man
    

 

Raid stopping bugs

Currently operations are the most buggiest part of the game. Every week my raiding guild runs into bugs which costs us precious raiding time. It even costed us a few members because they enjoy raiding so much, they do not like to see this part of the game be so buggy. Just to note a few bugs:

• Ancient Pylons unable to be clicked or refusing to lock in (workaround that you only lock in the south pylar first)
  
• Unable to reset instance or not being resetted at all
  
• Operations having multiple instances (it’s a known problem)
  
• The council giving the debuff on a wipe and retrying the event thus preventing you to do damage on your mob (I think it’s because of the small raid heal from Jedi Knights in a certain form)
  
• SOA missing platforms upon wiping
  
• People sometimes unressable during end of SOA’s phase swapping
  
• SOA’s bolts keeping aggro on you during phase swap
  
• SOA not hitting the pyramid thus not losing the shield (could be lag on server end, has happening a lot since last patch)
  
• SOA has invisble bolts
  
• SOA having aggro issues during the last phase (new since last patch!)
  

 

No control over normal loot

Currently the normal loot method needs a lot of work. It gives healing items to DPS and vice versa. Or give items to people they do not need while a poor geared person might need it. It also stops guilds from using their own loot methods. Having a way to overrule this for non-PUG operations would be nice. It makes gearing up people a lot easier and gives said people more freedom of controlling their own loot distribution.

 

Hard and Nightmare mode not offering new challenges

Currently the hard and nightmare mode do NOT give extra challenges besides the standard more HP and hit harder (the only exception being the Ancient Pylons). What most people agree is that hard mode and nightmare should do is give extra abilities to bosses that guilds have to deal with (on top of the normal mode abilities). Currently once you done normal mode, you know how hard and nightmare work which makes it too easy.

To put the icing on the cake, adding an extra boss on nightmare mode geared towards people who enjoy such modes would be neat. This boss should be really hard and give something neat besides gear.

 

No new gear on Nightmare vs hard

Gear progression currently stops at hard mode and does not provide any more better loot on nightmare mode. Adding better loot to nightmare mode gives more incentive for guilds to do them. Not to mention it makes sense in terms of progression.

 

No incentive for 16 man

Same as previous statement, only here it’s 8 man VS 16 man.

 

Useless tokens

Currently the Tionese tokens are easy to get and useless after a certain point (if not too soon useless). You only collect more and more. Adding more usage for those tokens could help making them more useful. For example add stims or crafting reagents or recipes in trade for Tionese tokens. Same goes for other tokens from doing operations.

 

No multi-user gear tokens

Sometimes the bosses drop loot nobody needs. This is normally accepted in an MMO. However in terms of gear-tokens, it’s just silly. To get more out of gear tokens, make them multi class usable. For example [Heavy bracers] can be used by anyone that can use heavy armour. Another example could be tokens by role.

 

No raid tools

Currently raids do not have a lot of tools they can use. The most important one being a DPS/heal/tank meter. It’s currently hard to see who’s doing a good job and who’s “slacking” because we have no meters to show. If Bioware does not want to add meters, why not do the same as PvP and show a sheet of who has done that at the end of each boss attempt. Alongside that, aggro meters help a lot to get the max potential out of DPS without worrying about drawing aggro. Another tool that could be handy is coloured frames which person in the operation has a debuff. The icons are too small to see who has what debuff. For some bosses having a target of target tool could ne handy so people can spot who is targeted for what ability (for example Bonethrasher who’s being followed). A manual roll would also be neat for various reasons like master looter, fun rolls, etc. And last but not least, but not highly needed, would be an enrage timer for bosses.

 

Master loot advance

While the current ML option is working, it's pretty much bare bones. Add options such as calling for a roll for person X, Y and Z but not person A,B and C. Heck, even add a manual /roll. Doing this will give raiders more control of loot distribution when multiple want a certain item.

 

No instanced world bosses

Currently on my own realm people are competing and farming the L50 world boss to death. This makes it harder for other guilds to do it. Why not simply put this boss in an instance and have him doable each day. This gives more control and allows each guild to do it. Not to mention we had some jealous people trying to taunt the boss off us and despawning him. They even went and killed the adds trying to enrage the boss. In the end the laugh was on us because we killed him.

 

Unbalanced gear

The gear in its current form seems odd and out of place. For example the Sage's healing gear T1.2 focusses on alacrity where as T1.3 focusses on crit and surge. Seems odd to go from one stat to the other.

 

Corpse running

While corpse running is a general MMO thing, in its current form it's silly. You die, you get loading screen, you are at the entrance and get a loading screen again when you enter. Maybe it's an idea to just start at the entrance of the instance of instead of spawning at the entrance of the portal. This will save people frustration of loading and speed up doing operations. Not to mention a possible load reduction on the servers because people do not zone as much.

 

No PTR character copy

Most people are willing to test operation content on the PTR. However because it's end-game content. people have no chance to test it. Adding premade character copies or even your own character copy could help with testing this. Do note, Bioware already confirmed it's being worked on: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2662200#edit2662200

 

More to-do

In it's current state high end guilds can clear instances in one-two days (3-4 hours a day) giving them not much to-do in terms of operations. Adding more bosses, varied bosses (on various modes) and harder should help with this.

 

16 man should be harder then 8 man

Since the latest Q&A the developers said that 16 mans would be getting easier compared to 8 man. I think a lot of people agree that they want 16 man operations to remain hard as it is for the challenge factor. Some fights are even harder on 8 mans compared to 16 mans (SOA for example).

 

 

So all in all, can we please get a Bioware employee in here to explain as what the future plans are in regards to these issues? Please give us an answer so do that we know these issues are being looked at.

 

Again I do enjoy operations but I feel changes are needed (especially those fixes!)

 

If there are any other issues I might have missed, feel free to say so. Also feel free to support the topic.

Edited February 21, 2012 by Schwick

The biggest problem with raiding really is nightmare mode. If nightmare mode offered a real challenge comparable to WoW raiding, and provided appropriate gear rewards for that challenge, a lot of these other points could be overlooked. At the moment nightmare mode serves no purpose except to be a very slightly tougher gear check in every encounter except Soa.

the thing with nightmare is that all mechanics just deal more dmg, but no new ones are added.

Agree with everything the OP said.

 

But the scary part is BW's silence. Yes theres a mention of bugs every now and then in the patch notes. But this is big and borderline unplayable. Yet they havent come out and aknowledged the current state or told us what their commitment is towards the ops.

 

And theres lots of stuff arround the ops as well that sort of gives the indication that ops are not really a focus area.

 

Eg.

Exotech biochem patterns not working

Tiersets having strange itemisation between the different levels

Rakata weapons being lvl 126

And the whole issue of raiding materials. Do they really intend for adrenals to be that expensive for non biochems?

And the strange bop requirements for all the patterns that drops, yet the gear that drops are better.

 

Just lots and lost of stuff that really points towards BW not focussing on ops atm. And lets face it its a big part of engame entertainment for lots of people

 

And yes sadly this have allready meant that longtime friends and fellow raiders (from that other mmo) has left the game :-(

Indeed. And that's what I meant with my segment in the post

Very good post, and I agree with everything said. This definitely sums up operations at the moment.

 

Some personal experience that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth:

a. Been to SOA three times, two of the three times had missing floors that caused raid wipes multiple times.

 

b. Was in a normal ops raid in which experienced guild members were trying to help out new guild members; of course all of the raid gear was assigned to the experienced guild members who already had the same or better gear.

 

c. Not an op, but finish False Emperor in hard mode and a trooper chest drops, no troopers in party.

 

The end-game is substandard at the moment.

I think it would be awesome to have a post report after a boss kill or wipe that shows everyone's damage/healing etc.

 

That would be pretty nice addition.

Well written post. I fully support this thread.

 

I hope someone from Bioware is paying attention.

 

I love this game, I want it to succeed. But it needs work.

But the scary part is BW's silence. (

 

Total feel this way as well. PvP seems to be getting more attention right now.

In terms of difficulty, I'm not going to start panicking until I see their Tier 2 raid content.

 

Most games start with easy content because your population will all level up at different paces. You'll have some people who clear everything fast and are geared for Tier 2 months before it releases.

 

You'll have other people who take their time and don't get geared for Tier 2 until right before it starts.

 

If you made the Tier 1 content really tough and take a month or two to clear, that second group of people wouldn't be even close to geared in time for Tier 2, because they took longer to get to end game in the first place.

 

When Tier 2 content releases, the majority of their player base will already be end-game and geared, so they'll be able to make the encounters tougher without pissing off a lot of people (look how many people QQ already at the difficulty of hardmodes).

 

This happened in Rift, first 2 raids were trivially easy, the third was tough as nails (nearly 2 months before a guild cleared it).

 

Hopefully the next tier of content is tough.

 

 

 

 

They do need to fix nightmare loot, it's really frustrating to constantly kill nightmare bosses and not get any Rakata drops.

Edited January 30, 2012 by eNcFireWraith

In terms of difficulty, I'm not going to start panicking until I see their Tier 2 raid content.

 

Most games start with easy content because your population will all level up at different paces. You'll have some people who clear everything fast and are geared for Tier 2 months before it releases.

 

You'll have other people who take their time and don't get geared for Tier 2 until right before it starts.

 

If you made the Tier 1 content really tough and take a month or two to clear, that second group of people wouldn't be even close to geared in time for Tier 2, because they took longer to get to end game in the first place.

 

When Tier 2 content releases, the majority of their player base will already be end-game and geared, so they'll be able to make the encounters tougher without pissing off a lot of people (look how many people QQ already at the difficulty of hardmodes).

 

This happened in Rift, first 2 raids were trivially easy, the third was tough as nails (nearly 2 months before a guild cleared it).

 

Hopefully the next tier of content is tough.

 

 

 

 

They do need to fix nightmare loot, it's really frustrating to constantly kill nightmare bosses and not get any Rakata drops.

 

Ow sure, I do agree in regards to the first couple of instances not being balls hard. But if you do hard modes, they are suppose to be hard and not just a "simple" copy and paste (more HP / More damage). If Bioware says the first two instances will be like that and the next will be way harder with different strategies per modus, then I am content in that factor.

Agree with everything the OP said.

 

But the scary part is BW's silence. Yes theres a mention of bugs every now and then in the patch notes. But this is big and borderline unplayable. Yet they havent come out and aknowledged the current state or told us what their commitment is towards the ops.

 

And theres lots of stuff arround the ops as well that sort of gives the indication that ops are not really a focus area.

 

Eg.

Exotech biochem patterns not working

Tiersets having strange itemisation between the different levels

Rakata weapons being lvl 126

And the whole issue of raiding materials. Do they really intend for adrenals to be that expensive for non biochems?

And the strange bop requirements for all the patterns that drops, yet the gear that drops are better.

 

Just lots and lost of stuff that really points towards BW not focussing on ops atm. And lets face it its a big part of engame entertainment for lots of people

 

And yes sadly this have allready meant that longtime friends and fellow raiders (from that other mmo) has left the game :-(

 

Good stuff, added those.

Also added this one to the first post.

 

Corpse running

While corpse running is a general MMO thing, in its current form it's silly. You die, you get loading screen, you are at the entrance and get a loading screen again when you enter. Maybe it's an idea to just start at the entrance of the instance of instead of spawning at the entrance of the portal. This will save people frustration of loading and speed up doing operations. Not to mention a possible load reduction on the servers because people do not zone as much.

 

 

Also must mention we actually had a bug free operation run in EV and Karaga normal mode yesterday. Things are looking up... now hard mode on Thursday which probably will be the opposite.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Schwick

I fully support everything in this thread...especially BIOWARE's lack of acknowledgement of the crippling bugs present in end game.

 

They need to speak up, step up and stop deploying patches that cause more problems than they actually fix and get this stuff right.

 

The game will be hemorrhaging players in less than 2 months as people get frustrated and lose their patience with the silence/lack of fixes and quit.

 

I too, love this game and want nothing more than for it to be a huge success but I'm not going to sit around paying a monthly fee and spinning my wheels in buggy end game while Bioware takes it sweet time figuring it out. I'm with the rest of the camp I hear saying that if come March/April things aren't radically improved...I'm outta here.

 

Just sayin' fighting bugs is not fun end game.

I totally agree with the original post. Hard and nightmare ops are too easy. We need more fight mechanics, and harder ones. Fights are too simple, just adding hp and dmg to bosses is not enough, it's far from being enough actually.

 

Bring us epic fights please. It's Star Wars universe, sky is the limit...

Edited February 1, 2012 by Kaelletar

There's a bug we ran into where 8 man hard/nightmare was dropping the same quantity of loot as 16 man. We did Bonethrasher 16 man nightmare, got 2 rakata helms, then split and did 8 man nightmare jarg/that other guy and got 2 rakata belts. Shouldn't we have gotten 4 rakata helms on 16 man? We also had 16 man nightmare soa only drop 2 chests.

 

We haven't raided hard/nightmare yet since the Tuesday patch, but there was nothing in the patch notes about this being addressed.

Good stuff, 1.1.2 brings the weapon rating fixes, some more Operation fixes and some Biochem tweaks. Not to forget about future crafting changes towards raiding.

 

Now if only we could get a reply about the other "hot" issues regarding raiding.

When we got to SOA on hard mode (assuming the pylon boss didn't bug 5 times in a row), some of the lightning balls were invisible. The lack of target of target frame is ridiculous. I know there is a command for it, but I have no idea why this feature was left out. Would make Karagga much more pleasant.

 

As is, I'm done with raiding in this game. I don't have the patience anymore. Once I'm bored leveling alts and pvp, I'm done with this game.

Spot on as usual Schwick. The silence from BW is poor PR IMO. After all, if the endgame is lacking and buggy, as it is now, it's true that people will drift away to other games. So unnecessary if only BW would communicate and direct some effort in the right direction.

When we got to SOA on hard mode (assuming the pylon boss didn't bug 5 times in a row), some of the lightning balls were invisible. The lack of target of target frame is ridiculous. I know there is a command for it, but I have no idea why this feature was left out. Would make Karagga much more pleasant.

 

As is, I'm done with raiding in this game. I don't have the patience anymore. Once I'm bored leveling alts and pvp, I'm done with this game.

 

Hey, it did take even Blizzard a while to implement such stuff. Bioware did say they were going to add targets frames. It really could help with the first boss in Karaga's palace. It's not needed, but does make stuff easier to heal.

Updated the first post again with some small tweaks

Totally agree with everything.

Great job compiling all of those.

Thank you

Agree with pretty much everything as well. /signed

 

The corpse running is retarded. Why can't they just place a medical droid for repairs down by the speeder and spawn there on "return to med center".

 

But the worse is the game-breaking bugs and useless gear dropped. And don't get me started on how the Eternity Vault punishes melee DPS over ranged DPS. Although I love TOR, Blizzard is laughing at us right now for poorly done operations.

 

The funniest thing so far? The initial turrets in ET are more challenging than any of the bosses (except may be the final boss).

Edited February 6, 2012 by cipher_nemo

Agree with pretty much everything as well. /signed

 

The corpse running is retarded. Why can't they just place a medical droid for repairs down by the speeder and spawn there on "return to med center".

 

But the worse is the game-breaking bugs and useless gear dropped. And don't get me started on how the Eternity Vault punishes melee DPS over ranged DPS. Although I love TOR, Blizzard is laughing at us right now for poorly done operations.

 

The funniest thing so far? The initial turrets in ET are more challenging than any of the bosses (except may be the final boss).

 

Well I must say that the last couple of weeks the bugs are getting less and less. Granted, it's still not bug-free. The two biggest bugs that still plague us are multiple instances and Ancient Pylons not working (well we actually found a way around it, just make sure the south pylon is locked first)

Edited February 7, 2012 by Schwick

And once again two steps forward in bug fixes, one step backwards:

This time SOA seems to have random aggro issues during phase 3 on all modes. Not sure if intended, but it sure makes him somewhat more annoying. It's not in the patch notes, so I'll chuck it up to being a bug.