There is a right and a wrong way to give us players new content to keep us lvl 50 players whether we be PVE centric or PVP centric happy.

The right way would be to develop a new Operation or battle ground and keep it for a few months un released to be played by your developers / a closed Beta group of gamers so that they can find most of the bugs / exploits and then release them in a patch.

The wrong way is to have a limited Beta which is what Bioware did for their entire developmental period of their game. By this I mean that everytime there was a build change all of their beta testers had to start over again from level 1. What should have been done is that beta testers should have been randomly assigned a character level range and corresponding planet to start on so that they were free to Quest as well as credits depending upon their character range.If this was done, things like Hardmode FPS, OP's and PVP battlegrounds wouldn't feel as well buggy as they are now, cause like it or not the current endgame community of this game IS THE BETA TEST for endgame activity.

To sort of put a bandaid on this I think we need to not see a huge patch adding a bunch new raids or PVP battle grounds but a middle of the road sort of thing.

1. Add Nightmare Flashpoints and let them drop Rakata NQ (***I'll get to this later***)

2. For current Hardmode Ops let them drop Rakata HQ (*** I'll get to this later***)

3. Give us a 3rd raid in which the boss fights are more straight forward, no puzzles, no massive transitions like SOA just more spank and tank fights where the bosses hit like trains and are hard to damage and DPS through with the same tight enrage timers, make the drops from this be equivalent to Rakata but without the set bonus similar to what already drops in current HM's.

4. in the 2-3 months were are enjoying your new content aside from the much needed bug fixes to your current Hardmodes like EV and Kragga's develop the new one with aforementioned Developer and game testers and make this the raid with complex boss fight mechanics, transitions and puzzles.

5. We need better then Rakata gear as a reward for doing the 16 man Hardmodes and Nightmares, right now the only reward is bragging rights which is limiting guild sizes (why have even more then 8 dedicated Raiders in the guild the reward vs. frustration benefit is hardly worth it.) The only reason to do the 16 man raids is for bragging rights.

*** Rakata gear that drops in hardmode ops should have an open Augment slot in it just like the Rakata Belts, Bracers, and Relics that you can currently craft this would be Rakata HQ where as Rakata NQ would be the current Rakata gear.***

As it sits right now, its a combination of boredom at not having anything to do and frustration with current game bugs which is basically chipping away at the endgame community. There is going to be some issues with content vs. bug testing but I have to wonder how is it that Trion is able with Rift to release the content it does while having it be relatively low on bugs? What is Trion doing right that SWTOR isn't?

Bioware could have put in 3 times the amount of raids when the game released and we would still have people saying there isnt anything to do and they want more.

More is coming, people need to slow down.

The way they're doing it is fine. Bioware (or anyone) can't create content fast enough to appease you hardcore "locusts".

its not hardcore raiding when you can clear both the hardmodes minus the bugs (if you 1-3 shot everything) in about 2 hours each. Thats 4 hours a week of raiding. My guild hardly rushed FP's or anything, but when you get to a certain point Hardmode Flashpoints become pointless to you as Normal mode Ops get the same gear faster...

Further when you have full columi and every other member of your guild has full columi, after you do your dailies you have nothing to do on non raid nights.

And we have 2 bounty hunters due to how drops have been going who have near full sets of both Rakata DPS and Rakata healer...

Again we didn't rush getting to 50 doesn't take long, doing 1 hardmode FP a day for a month + normal mode operations ='s columi finished ... in short 2 months and your sitting there in the same position I am in.

The way they're doing it is fine. Bioware (or anyone) can't create content fast enough to appease you hardcore "locusts".

The only reason they cant is because all the content is a joke in difficulty. Bump up the difficulty and presto content.

Just because they call it hardmode and the all dreaded nightmare mode doesnt mean its not a joke.

Bioware could have put in 3 times the amount of raids when the game released and we would still have people saying there isnt anything to do and they want more.

 

More is coming, people need to slow down.

How much slower can a person play? I am asking seriously, if you played from launch with early start you should with an average time investment of 15 -20 hours a week be done literally everything at this point

it takes about 7 hours a week to do all the dailies that you can solo, And the average guild that raids will have probably 3 raiding nights a week with 3 hours blocked in for each session. (thats what my guild does.) 7+9 = 16...

And again I am not asking for 5 new raids I am asking for a filler raid and nightmare mode FP's to give us things to do in the meantime while bioware bugfixes EV and starts developing another complex raid like EV.

The only reason they cant is because all the content is a joke in difficulty. Bump up the difficulty and presto content.

 

Just because they call it hardmode and the all dreaded nightmare mode doesnt mean its not a joke.

Hardmode Op's are pretty much a joke I agree the only thing about SOA that makes him hard are his bugs. If he doesn't glitch or bug you can 1 or 2 shot him. But if he decides to bug all night well ... 1 hour to get to SOA 1 hour and 45 minutes of attempts where he bugs then you get the 1 time he doesn't and boom he's dead.

its not hardcore raiding when you can clear both the hardmodes minus the bugs (if you 1-3 shot everything) in about 2 hours each. Thats 4 hours a week of raiding.

Thats during the so called progression period. This game has no progression at all. If you go in and attempt and have 1/2 a clue whats going on and somewhat ok gear then its a 1-3 shot. That again is not progression its just giving you an area to get gear that anyone can get because its so easy.

Thats during the so called progression period. This game has no progression at all. If you go in and attempt and have 1/2 a clue whats going on and somewhat ok gear then its a 1-3 shot. That again is not progression its just giving you an area to get gear that anyone can get because its so easy.

except literally the first time going into EV we 1-3 shot everything on Normal then did the same on hardmode minus SOA cause hardmode really isn't that hard. our progression if you want to call it that was a night of wiping to SOA on hardmode and then the next time we attempted it, face roll.

so that was basically 3 +3 + 45 minutes of attempts ='s 6 hours and 45 minutes of raiding that week.

Again my guild isn't amazing, were good players but there is no challenge to it and not enough content to give us a reason to log in all the time. it took 3 weeks of Raiding on Hardmodes to get to this point by the way... so add it up 24 hours and 45 minutes and we have nothing to do.

So your complaint boils down to the fact that after 16 -20 hours of game play a week your bored?

I guess BW should shift all the devs to 16 hour over lapping shifts to make you happy? if 9 hours of raiding a week is not enough for you I really hope your not married or have kids because it would suck to be them.

So your complaint boils down to the fact that after 16 -20 hours of game play a week your bored?

I guess BW should shift all the devs to 16 hour over lapping shifts to make you happy? if 9 hours of raiding a week is not enough for you I really hope your not married or have kids because it would suck to be them.

I am married ever heard of playing a game with your significant other? And I don't play 16 hours a week when I work and we don't raid 9 hours a week either as we can clear both Op's on hardmode in about 4-5 hours max right now.

Clearly the problem is I have no life and not that the game has nothing really to offer right? Any criticism of the game is completely unfounded because it is absolutely perfect so the only possible thing to do is to insult people who don't agree with you?

Really people like you should just not post at all, I never in my post insulted this game or Bioware, I was constructive with what I said, I never said the game sucks, just that we have nothing to do at a certain point which is absolutely true.

I agree with this thread, even though it hurts me to admit it.

the way the raids are structured in this game, are meant to be cleared in several hours.

I can only compare these to what i have experienced before in WoW, where in molten core, we pretty much could only get "so far" to a certain boss, and then had to wait for next reset, so we could get that far again, but this time before slightly better gear, and get another boss.

the difficulty of bosses in this game are not spread out the same.

let's take EV for example (at least from my experience):

Robot at the start > second boss (it is harder, the second boss is easier)

third boss is a puzzle where fear is not important.

4th boss - gear is slightly important, in HM still possible without full columi)

Soa - still don't have to have "the best" gear.

and kragga's palace is pretty much the same:

Bonethrasher can be pretty hard.

then the 2nd bosses are easier.

then the 3rd boss is still easier than bonethrasher,

the 4th boss is the hardest.

Kragga is very simple, and doesn't require the best gear.

tldr: the bosses difficulty is not spread in a higher steps structure. each has it's own difficulties, but are all doable right at the start.

There is a right and a wrong way to give us players new content to keep us lvl 50 players whether we be PVE centric or PVP centric happy.

 

The right way would be to develop a new Operation or battle ground and keep it for a few months un released to be played by your developers / a closed Beta group of gamers so that they can find most of the bugs / exploits and then release them in a patch.

 

The wrong way is to have a limited Beta which is what Bioware did for their entire developmental period of their game. By this I mean that everytime there was a build change all of their beta testers had to start over again from level 1. What should have been done is that beta testers should have been randomly assigned a character level range and corresponding planet to start on so that they were free to Quest as well as credits depending upon their character range.If this was done, things like Hardmode FPS, OP's and PVP battlegrounds wouldn't feel as well buggy as they are now, cause like it or not the current endgame community of this game IS THE BETA TEST for endgame activity.

 

 

To sort of put a bandaid on this I think we need to not see a huge patch adding a bunch new raids or PVP battle grounds but a middle of the road sort of thing.

 

1. Add Nightmare Flashpoints and let them drop Rakata NQ (***I'll get to this later***)

 

2. For current Hardmode Ops let them drop Rakata HQ (*** I'll get to this later***)

 

3. Give us a 3rd raid in which the boss fights are more straight forward, no puzzles, no massive transitions like SOA just more spank and tank fights where the bosses hit like trains and are hard to damage and DPS through with the same tight enrage timers, make the drops from this be equivalent to Rakata but without the set bonus similar to what already drops in current HM's.

 

4. in the 2-3 months were are enjoying your new content aside from the much needed bug fixes to your current Hardmodes like EV and Kragga's develop the new one with aforementioned Developer and game testers and make this the raid with complex boss fight mechanics, transitions and puzzles.

 

5. We need better then Rakata gear as a reward for doing the 16 man Hardmodes and Nightmares, right now the only reward is bragging rights which is limiting guild sizes (why have even more then 8 dedicated Raiders in the guild the reward vs. frustration benefit is hardly worth it.) The only reason to do the 16 man raids is for bragging rights.

 

*** Rakata gear that drops in hardmode ops should have an open Augment slot in it just like the Rakata Belts, Bracers, and Relics that you can currently craft this would be Rakata HQ where as Rakata NQ would be the current Rakata gear.***

 

As it sits right now, its a combination of boredom at not having anything to do and frustration with current game bugs which is basically chipping away at the endgame community. There is going to be some issues with content vs. bug testing but I have to wonder how is it that Trion is able with Rift to release the content it does while having it be relatively low on bugs? What is Trion doing right that SWTOR isn't?

The problem is that takes too long.

My recommendation is to release content quicker as an average platform so everyone has a lot more to do with raids/FPs and warzones. The casuals, end gamers interested in new content and new mechanics should be happy. The elitist night mare mode people would get a bit of the short end with the focus being more on quantity, and the quality coming in slower but eventually showing up. In theory it should take just as long to tweek warzones and FP/raids to be better, and releasing the 'average/normal mode content without too much tweaking' with enough teams working on both.

The major let down was the release of only 3 warzones. They have had several years to work on more. As if leaving a lot to do at the end, when also developing other PVE/riad content and of course working out the bugs.

If they worked on the game for over 4 years then it took them over a year per warzone. Of course that cant be the case but it shows where their priorities are in developing warzones when they had a lot of time.

However what is kind of clear is that it takes time, since the next major update we will get a warzone. Which is in 4 months from release. So that means it takes around 4 months to make one warzone.

4 years =

12 months /4 months = 3 warzones per year * 4 years = 12 warzones.

We should have around 12 warzones from the release of the game if they thought it was worth an equal amount of time to develop. Which of course would make this game a lot more addictive and a way bigger success.

So GW2, or future competitors or even future swtor (since I want to only play swtor), take notes please. Keep warzones coming quick, its what you need for your games, and of course open world objectives, and the rest of the jazz. But for swtor they have raids and PVE covered really well. Unfortunately that took up their triple A budget and left them with a mediocre everything else.

So, back to the point, when we have other groups or teams working on warzones or raids/FP tweaking that to making it more challenging for rated warzones for example or for HM or nightmare mode raids/FPs we can have more content.

That way people dont have to wait every 6 months for a new war zone and a couple of raids/FPs.

At this point they can release a lot of normal mode content with different and interesting mechanics to experiment with. Then with certain feedback tweak it over a long time, or how ever long it takes to make it better for more competitive use.

VegaPhone, what you're suggesting is impossible, or not accurate.

what do you mean by "release content faster"?

it takes a lot of time to design, create and test new content.

they can't ship out new operations every month, unless you want to have operations that use the same assets as the previous ones, and with nothing interesting of note in them.

i can assure you, end-game players will not be happy with that.

they will be happier with content that has a steep difficulty curve that will take at least 1-2 months to complete.

i admit i don't know how can bioware implement that, considering some guilds have cleared all content in two weeks from launch.

EDIT:

well you've edited your post.

and your assumption that it takes 4 years to create these many warzones is completely off.

it could have taken 3 years to develop the world and engine tools.

and 3 months to create the warzones.

The way they're doing it is fine. Bioware (or anyone) can't create content fast enough to appease you hardcore "locusts".

I just hope they have a deployment schedule like this game (that I don't play or subscribe to):

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/general-discussion/293766-welcome-back-guide-whats-changed.html

Or maybe hotfixes with this frequency:

http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/patch-notes/

Now come on.. you gotta admit that's pretty fast roll-out of new content and hot fixes. At least give 'em that much. Or is any comparison to something other than SWTOR taboo?

I just hope they have a deployment schedule like this game (that I don't play or subscribe to):

 

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/general-discussion/293766-welcome-back-guide-whats-changed.html

 

Or maybe hotfixes with this frequency:

 

http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/patch-notes/

 

Now come on.. you gotta admit that's pretty fast roll-out of new content and hot fixes. At least give 'em that much. Or is any comparison to something other than SWTOR taboo?

Dont worry about taboo as long as your are saying how you feel with good intentions and constructive feedback as well. You should be able to offer your opinion civilly in a democratic society.

Dont worry about taboo as long as your are saying how you feel with good intentions and constructive feedback as well. You should be able to offer your opinion civilly in a democratic society.

The internet is not a "democratic society". Nor are these forums.

VegaPhone, what you're suggesting is impossible, or not accurate.

 

what do you mean by "release content faster"?

it takes a lot of time to design, create and test new content.

they can't ship out new operations every month, unless you want to have operations that use the same assets as the previous ones, and with nothing interesting of note in them.

 

i can assure you, end-game players will not be happy with that.

they will be happier with content that has a steep difficulty curve that will take at least 1-2 months to complete.

 

i admit i don't know how can bioware implement that, considering some guilds have cleared all content in two weeks from launch.

 

EDIT:

well you've edited your post.

and your assumption that it takes 4 years to create these many warzones is completely off.

it could have taken 3 years to develop the world and engine tools.

and 3 months to create the warzones.

Yes i did edit my post. Sorry I should have added an edit which I normally do when I do.

The game took longer than 4 years to make, but yea you have a point about, so the idea still stands that it takes a bit of time and they did indeed have a lot of time. The amount of time they had is illustrated with the amount of planets and content on each one of them.

Also, please do not focus on just ignoring what valid pionts I have to just argue.

You mention making the content hard mode, and taking time. So that takes longer to develop. So instead of releasing all their content with hard mode they can release their content only as normal mode and it would be quicker. That should be common sense. I am not asking for a miracle.

I am however asking if they try arrange their teams to focus more on making normal modes, and then have another team focus on hard mode. Or something to that effect by having content release quicker without it being delayed for an extra phase when for example the normal mode does work and is sitting on a hard drive, and its just waiting to be released.

edited

The internet is not a "democratic society". Nor are these forums.

There are international standards. You cant ignore that.

The internet is part of the international standard.

And what about the casual 50lvls?

There is absolutely no casual content in the game

You mention making the content hard mode, and taking time. So that takes longer to develop. So instead of releasing all their content with hard mode they can release their content only as normal mode and it would be quicker. That should be common sense. I am not asking for a miracle.

 

I am however asking if they try arrange their teams to focus more on making normal modes, and then have another team focus on hard mode. Or something to that effect by having content release quicker without it being delayed for an extra phase when for example the normal mode does work and is sitting on a hard drive, and its just waiting to be released.

 

edited

I don't see how is this gonna help, and i'm not saying that just for the sake of arguing.

I am a programmer myself, and i know how development works, and this is not a possible solution.

you can't just "cram out" content. period. not even easy one.

it will have bugs, these take time. and i'm not even talking about boss fights bugs.

that is, unless you want to have an empty corridor with mobs and have to reach the end. that can be done fairly easy.

now, separating the content team into 2 difficulty groups. is pretty insane.

you'll have 2 separate teams that would need to know the same fights, and would have to communicate between themselves to make sure there is even a difference between what they made.

but i guess you meant they should work on separate content completely.

well, now you have to make the artist make assets for twice the content and they won't be able to make those on time.

you'll have testers find bugs in more content.

you'll have to make sure there is difference between the content difficulty..

etc. etc.

you get my point.

there should only be 1 content team.

they should focus on 1 task and make it of high quality.

kaon under siege, is high quality.

i want more of that.

And what about the casual 50lvls?

There is absolutely no casual content in the game

Every thing about the game is casual, they even give you companions to do the fighting for you. It doesn't get much more casual than that.

I don't see how is this gonna help, and i'm not saying that just for the sake of arguing.

I am a programmer myself, and i know how development works, and this is not a possible solution.

 

you can't just "cram out" content. period. not even easy one.

it will have bugs, these take time. and i'm not even talking about boss fights bugs.

that is, unless you want to have an empty corridor with mobs and have to reach the end. that can be done fairly easy.

 

now, separating the content team into 2 difficulty groups. is pretty insane.

you'll have 2 separate teams that would need to know the same fights, and would have to communicate between themselves to make sure there is even a difference between what they made.

but i guess you meant they should work on separate content completely.

 

well, now you have to make the artist make assets for twice the content and they won't be able to make those on time.

you'll have testers find bugs in more content.

you'll have to make sure there is difference between the content difficulty..

etc. etc.

 

you get my point.

there should only be 1 content team.

they should focus on 1 task and make it of high quality.

 

kaon under siege, is high quality.

i want more of that.

So you are saying they cant release normal mode content unless they make hard mode content?

Somehow it just doesn't work?

So you are saying they cant release normal mode content unless they make hard mode content?

 

Somehow it just doesn't work?

what i'm saying is that they can't split a team so that one would make hard and the other normal.

it has to be the same team.

now, the difference in this game between normal and hard, is not as massive as you'd think.

it is mostly DataBase changes (takes 5 minutes to change).

bosses do not get new abilities.

the hardest part in developing that, is balancing and testing.

for example:

change bonethrasher cleave to do 10k hp damage instead of 6k.

this is easy to change in the database.