This game lacks epeen

Because that's how hardcores play. If you keep that carrot on the end of the stick they'll play the same content for years to get it all.

That doesn't mean YOU have to do it, but for those who WANT to do it, they can, and continue to get rewarded for doing so.

Gear acquisition is the carrot, and the longer it takes to get the carrot the longer they will pay and play.

As to the "Vocal minority can shove-it, I'm having fun".. Good for you. I'm having fun too, but guess what all the potential new customers are reading when they come to the forums to check out the game. The ones who are vocal, and upset with the current state of the end-game. You may not like the Hardcores, but they are the voice of the playing population in a lot of cases.

Exactly.

OR, if you can't do that, then don't sign up for a new MMO. Wait 6-12 months before you jump in if you are a one character min/maxer.

Your right.

The thing is I've played a lot of MMO's since 1999. I can't think of one that had much if any "hard core" content 10 weeks after release. The vast majority of SWTOR's casual playerbase hasn't even hit level cap yet. They havn't even seen normal mode of the 16 mans yet. And they definitely don't have full BM yet, all you got to do is go to Ilum and look around. They aren't doing the bag grind for fun.

I'm pretty hard core but don't kid yourself, there are way way more casuals then hard core players. You'll get more content, but it's gonna take them more then 10 weeks.

Same here.... people usualy refer to DAoC as setting some kind of standard in mass PVP, and they did without a doubt... but what people seem to forget is that even in a game like DAoC the first few months were... well... "fun" to be honest.

No armor ingame (not crafted or dropped) over level 35 (50 was the max)
No falling damage... what a great day it was after that patch seeing 90% of the players fall to their deaths due to not reading the patch notes
Infiltrators killing entire groups without loosing stealth...

Oh, those were the days.... to bad people usualy seem to compare the state of a game now to any new game...

You may have a point there, and I'd fully expect to see some alterations made to the XP values of things as time goes by and quantities of content (presumably yet to come) start getting integrated in the 1-50 game.


I'm not sure I would agree to what you're suggesting those changes should be though. My position is that I have too little information to make a good speculation on what the changes should be into the future, and as for what's already gone...ehhhhh...I don't know that anybody except the hardcore probably (big ? attached to that) had much cause for complaint on XP gain/time investment ratios.

Would be interesting to see the median data of the statistically average player on this one, I think.



You make a valid enough point for your position from the perspective of placing a positive value on that substance of what is and isn't left to the imagination. It's not of any particular concern to me either way on a personal level, but I can at least see the point you're making; if someone valued that process of finding out, this could be a detriment to their enjoyment.

On the other hand, I can just as easily see how there might be some that could, on equally valid terms, argue the contrary; that they have no knowledge until someone sets up a website listing all known gear drops from various things and wouldn't have any say on what they got if it were all up in the air. And possibly that lists would proliferate soon enough that would take the mystique out of it anyway, and then they'd be left with no deterministic options no matter.


But perhaps...there's other places where things could be left to the imagination. Random events in instances with unique-to-the-random-encounter loot drops (not tokens or commendations of any sort) could be a handy compromise.

And such a thing could certainly spice up content that can elsewise get old quickly, especially if several random events could happen at various points in a dungeon or raid.

Just a thought for where the sentiment you express a sense of positive value upon could be achieved to, perhaps, the interest-engaging benefits of many without having to necessarily alter the way the 'core loot' is handled with the current model of semi-deterministic commendation vendor lists.





While I certainly won't argue with the frequently true observation that both the lazy and the efficient will seek the path of least resistance as a matter of course, I encounter this position a lot in other places, and I like to counter it with this; why do people climb Mount Everest?


There's nothing up there to get. You don't get terribly famous for it. It -CERTAINLY- isn't easy. And yet, people still do it. And many more that will probably never climb Mount Everest still go rock climbing, some of them on equally impressive terrain features, or even just down in their local gym on the peg wall or at an indoor rock climbing arena.


It defies human nature on many levels; it's not easy and you don't really seem to get anything for it. It's a highly impractical thing to do, in fact; lots of risk (necessitating all the safety precautions even in an indoor arena or on a peg wall) and what as a reward?

Sense of achievement can often be found amongst rock climbers as the most commonly reported reason for why they climb things like that, just to throw a spoiler on the quandary.


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So...how might Bioware turn their endgame into less of a carrot-hunting steeple chase and more of a Mount Everest?

How might they make it be something that people want to do because of how much of an achievement it would be without having to be bribed with better gear than most will ever own to do it?

Personally, I think the carrot-chase is a pretty played out canard, but also a very easy one to lean on and automate.

Still, with the emphasis of the MMO industry taking a definitive turn for the casual, I think the hardcore would be very well counselled to start coming up with ideas developers can use that can better synergize with a casual format.

Mount Everest is a wonderful example to make for this too, I think. The rock climbers that never actually go climbing much of anything outside their gym's peg wall can well admire the strength, grit, determination and perseverence of someone that prepares for and then even attempts an Everest climb, let alone succeeds at reaching the summit.

They can rally behind such individuals, support them, cheer them on when they hear it's being tried even if they don't know them; it's not a competition by any necessity.

Gear on here? Another participle of human nature can be described as that everyone's going to want all the shinies.


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I say, put all the shinies within casually comfortable reaching distance of everyone.

And then put successions of everything from the Carlsbad cave adventures before them on over to Mount Everest summit attempts ...to climbing your local cliff or open pit mine walls.

Take the glorified status away from the tools...and put it on what you can do with them; what you may, as a hardcore, put in the time, the preparation and the effort to go forth and do with them.

And then, at the top of Mount Everest in this context, put something neat and relatively rare or unique that isn't necessarily superior gear to stick in a slot, but...hey...if you're wearing the black with glowing violet trimmed full set of Mount Everest vanity gear that you can pick three different appearances for (Light, Medium or Heavy) while retaining the function of whatever the best armor type you can wear is that you can also plug all your own mods into, that'd be pretty dang cool right?

E-peeners could even slobber all over themselves over it if they got it.

It wouldn't deny even the most casual indoor rock climber the best tools available. If they didn't have time or interest or what-de-frak ever to go climb Mount Everest (which is NOT a solo climb, to put a fine pointed finger there), they'd still have all the functional ability (read as 'statted gear') to do it.

Just not the marks of achievement showing off that they'd done it. Yeah, it'd boil down to an appeal to vanity more specifically than ego on functionality.

But that, I think, is a really, really good place for that kind of appeal to be utilized.

And I think synergizing it with casual interests rather than diametrically opposing the limited tolerances/interests/willingness to invest of the dominant-and-growing casual market would serve everybody's interests.

Even those motivated by nothing more than wanting to stand on a fencepost and /dance in the hopes that passers-by would stop and gawk and /bow at them.

Your thoughts?

to me the only way to make mont-everest experience is through the comunity/social part of the game and it actually realize itself in the PVP

PVE is made for you to win no matter how u turn it around it will always be a carrot
it did happen a couple of time that i saw unbeatable PVE (actually in AOC T3 was unbeatible for a while) and it only bring discontent in the comunity whine and at the end or tehy make you drop cooler gear that allow you to make it or they lower the bar.

PVE is made to be win by most (when is by few it will not work as will not bring satisfaction to the comunity)

On the other hand PVP "could" be the real Mont-Everest IF some rule apply one and for all you need to remove gear and unbalanced advantage taken through PVE or even through PVP farm (that is actually another form of PVE "carrot" for PVPer)

second you have to make it effect the existing world that will give you the "feeling of accomplishment" that u are looking for

People are complaining because the "hardest" raid content in the first raid created in a 2 month old MMO isn't as hard as the players want it to be?

Do you see where your logic falls apart?

Since it's their first raid they need time to get feedback, both from players and their own statistics. They need to get a better feel for how players play each class and how each class plays for different players.
That is nothing new. It's simply that BioWare couldn't possibly have the information required from the player base as a whole to adjust different content difficulties to the appropriate levels. Give them time to get their data.

The 'complaints' are precisely that, feedback. I agree with you, but there is nothing wrong with the many, many players voicing their concerns about the end game content. It is justified, and hopefully Bioware adjusts accordingly in the 1.2 operation.

I dont know if you are bioware u know exactly what is the % of player that ended for real the content...

you can monitor exactly the number of people how many time that raid has been made how many failed how many didnt....

and you think a guy whining is a real feedback?

I always though feedback was more intresting stuff than a guy whining with no number at all about a thing he has no clue about

maybe i am wrong.

I'm I guess a moderate gamer, in-between casual and hardcore.

I'd have to say right now the game is far too easy all the way thorugh, too solo centric, and nothing "on the side" that I can do to grind up for something special.

Although I can live witht he general ease of the game, I would like to see some sort of "carrot on a stick" out there that takes awhile to get and shows to everyone else you worked hard for something in the game as something else to do.