Are ops/raids outdated?

The reason fewer people are queuing for ops, let alone capable of doing an op, is because the game no longer teaches people their class so they get to the endgame ops/pvp and have no clue what they're doing. Veteran players don't want to risk being in a fail group, which most pugs usually will be, and new players get alienated for being incapable of doing the content.

This, along with the lack of new content and Bioware's inability to fix bugs, has basically destroyed the PvE playerbase.

So no, I do not support the OP, at all. It will only make things even worse than they are now. Unfortunately Bioware will think it's a great solution and probably use it.

Like it or not, this game is well on its way out. We won't get new ops as they're releasing the minimal amount of actual game content. I predict they'll finish up the story with act 2 and shutdown in 2017.

~ Eudoxia

How did the old system teach player? I've played since 1.1 and hit 50 with my first char during 1.2. I don't think it's much different than now for people to know about SM ops, other than the "directy 60" token.

For the Sentinel (my first toon), the last boss of act 1 was unbeatable at level unless I learned how to interrupt. The last boss of Belsavis was a case of don't pull aggro from the boss or you die. The mobs were doing more damage than the healing companion was able to heal at level so I had to learn when to use defensive cooldown and avoid aoe on the ground to survive. You had to kill those fast enough before you get killed and using only the basic attack wasn't going to cut it, so some form of rotation was needed to learn. All those things were teaching at least some basics of rotation, role, utilities and to avoid taking damage. It didn't make a great player, but at least, they knew had an idea of the basics of their role.

Now, I could aggro just about any mob or boss from the story quest and wait until my healer companion kill them all. If you don't even have the chance to get killed while leveling, unless you start aggroing everything in range, it doesn't force people to learn the basic mechanics of their class such as using something else than the basic attack (saw a level 65 Commando in a HM FP using only Hammer Shot while standing still in aoes).

I don't think personal quests got to do much about ops.

There were, but most of them are just SM/ EV KP HM, even before 4.0 it's not hard to find ppl for the daily SM ops.

For the Sentinel (my first toon), the last boss of act 1 was unbeatable at level unless I learned how to interrupt. The last boss of Belsavis was a case of don't pull aggro from the boss or you die. The mobs were doing more damage than the healing companion was able to heal at level so I had to learn when to use defensive cooldown and avoid aoe on the ground to survive. You had to kill those fast enough before you get killed and using only the basic attack wasn't going to cut it, so some form of rotation was needed to learn. All those things were teaching at least some basics of rotation, role, utilities and to avoid taking damage. It didn't make a great player, but at least, they knew had an idea of the basics of their role.

Now, I could aggro just about any mob or boss from the story quest and wait until my healer companion kill them all. If you don't even have the chance to get killed while leveling, unless you start aggroing everything in range, it doesn't force people to learn the basic mechanics of their class such as using something else than the basic attack (saw a level 65 Commando in a HM FP using only Hammer Shot while standing still in aoes).

But the point is they used to. In the early years, you had to play your class well to survive some encounters. Now you can pretty much go from 1 - 65 using a basic attack, not dodging any aoe circle, not knowing how to cc/disrupt. Plus, now that the game is almost completely soloable, players don't know how to assist other players (target of target/healing/etc) You now have a companion that can do all roles + your job. The newer players that are joining your pugs probably do not know their abilities as well as they should because the game got to easy/faceroll.

I do believe Menace is correct. HM and NiM were not made for PuGs. They were designed as a challenge for Hardcore groups.That doesn't mean a PuG couldn't try or succeed at them.

After going through all the posts here, what I see is that you are a casual player that wants to do old school raids for the loots without the raid because of impatience ( you use the word drama but describe waiting for tanks and disconnects, that's not drama). That seems more of a player problem than a game problem. You won't take the time to schedule a one time (maybe two hour at the most) raid with a few friends or a guild? This is an MMO. Group and raid activites are part of that experience.

You argument about lifespan of content is only relevant to the player of that content. Some might see facerolling content as a intented result of overleveling, other might see it as sad to see good content trivialized. Each MMO is different in how they deal with this. I never really played wow (tried it a week and hated it) but I did play EQ1. I can say the higher level you were the less soloable mobs became for most classes at least. (even with 15 level differences in most cases.) Blade and Soul, it seems 5 levels different might be enough to solo dungeon content.

Your posts seem more of an attempt to take away the last bastion of group play. Raiding really is the last group play fixture in this game. Your desire for the loot of raids without working for it is creating the ill feelings. The reason I think this is only about the loot is you complain about not being able to faceroll raid content due to scaling, but ALL the game is scaled now. Why not attack scaling in general? You don't faceroll Heroics/Flashpoints/planets anyhting anymore. Why only attack raid scaling (unless it is only about the loot) ?

And this is the thing you need to understand. What's important is that people do operations. Which ones is step two. Of course EV and KP are favourites because they are more accessible to a lot more players, but at the same time the rotation of the priority ops also plays a role and if I'm not mistaken SaV will be on this coming week and we will see a lot of runs in that ops. Also I see people wanting to do different ops as well in between. You are right that it's not the majority but there is logic in the point that the more difficult operations in HM will attract fewer players because they are in fact too hard for a lot of players.

So please. This threads has many many pages and the only reason you are so active in this thread is that YOU got bored with the current set up of operations and now try to mirror this unto the entire community. And that is your lie, that's your falsehood. The truth is that you're angry about how they handled operations and while many other people do operations you do not and you want people to believe that these other people are not enjoying the current set up in a futile attempt to "prove" that BW has to do what you want.

Just accept that it's not going to happen and see what that means to you. It's always better to pay for the product you have than the product you hope it might be, so in that sense it is logical that you stopped your sub. But this litany of woe-is-me turned into a made up state-of-the-game reflection is just turning in circles and if you believe that this thread is actually going somewhere or is going to make a difference, I fear you are mistaken. In fact, there is no indication that this thread is doing anything more than giving your self-wallowing an obscene amount of stage time.

So yes, this thread has annoyed me more than it has enriched me. In fact nothing enriching has come out of this at all because of it's awkward regurgitation of non-facts and now I have to decide what that means to me.

Feel free to continue, we both live in relatively free countries, but know that this post will be the last here in this thread and that in my personal opinion you have offered NOTHING that actually supports your point, except false numbers that you made up because they suit your experience, which again is nothing. Disappointing because clearly there are issues that are worth discussing but they are drowned in the falsehoods that are being presented as if they were facts.

And from my personal experience, there is nothing that clouds issues more than opinions that are treated like facts.

Yes but most of these had to do with interrupt/snare/cc, these got little to do with ops.

EQ1 was a very niche MMO compare to later ones.

This is why MMO content has a lifespan and why don't they always stay on their difficulty. if you try to keep the "difficulty" then it will truly die and get wasted, and a large percent of the content would never be truly experienced by the majority, even after the raiders have moved on.