I may be in the minority, but I am going to state my mind anyway. I have played this game a very long time (since it first came out) and I have enjoyed it most of the time. The time when I didn't enjoy it was either daily grinding (which is a chore anyway so take that as you will) and when I play with other people in group content and they decide to take pointless shortcuts to get things done faster. I am going to cite two examples, both Flashpoints: Lost Island and The Battle of Ilum. In the beginning of Lost Island, there are players that would rather run through burning lava and hurt themselves than fight enemies; I ask, where is the logic in this? In The Battle of Ilum, it is far worse. If it isn't players running along the borders of an exhaustion zone at the beginning utilising a shortcut that takes you up and over, it is players literally running past most of the boss fights and automatically evading them when they get far enough. I don't know about you, but I find this behaviour really pathetic. How would you feel if you were developing this game, put hard work into making this content, only to have players hop, skip and jump through most of it? Something needs to be done, and now.

take pointless shortcuts to get things done faster.

 

Getting things done faster IS the point. Once you've done a particular FP more than a few times, seeing how fast you can get it done is really the only interesting thing left.

How would you feel if you were developing this game, put hard work into making this content, only to have players hop, skip and jump through most of it?

If it was current content, I'd want to know why and try to figure out what I did wrong. If people are running older content I'd be happy that they're found enough value in it to actually run it.

 

For instance... getting people in my guild to run EC is like convincing people that root canals are fun. Aside from certain achievements the payout stinks. Contrast that to SnV where we happily clear trash because we make tons of credits and the crafting mats are current.

 

Battle of Ilum is kinda meh and while I don't mind skipping trash, I am surprised that certain boss fights can be bypassed.

 

If you want to run content in a particular way find a group of like minded people to run with you.

How would you feel if you were developing this game, put hard work into making this content, only to have players hop, skip and jump through most of it?

 

I wouldn't be surprised because I'd know the rewards aren't good enough to justify clearing it the "right" way.

You are 100% in the minority. There is no reason to clear trash when the rewards dont justify it. Like people above me have said; ill clear trash all day in ScV and TfB, heck ill farm the first pulls of TfB to get money and mats, but thats because the payout and mats are worth it. In those old FP's nothing is current and the credit drop is so low that skipping every thing makes sense. The fastest ive cleared battle of ilum is 11 minutes 16 seconds and that was with a fun sloppy pulls from people not hugging corners. The end reward for completing the flashpoint is the only thing worth getting.

No it doesn't need to be stopped.

 

It should be a group decision to skip or clear. If you want a full clear you have two choices. 1) ask, personally I have never been in a group that refused. When someone does ask I always reply "either way don't care, but it should be a majority decision and you should be grown enough to accept the decision, either way. 2.) find four other people to go that want to clear everything.

 

What not to do, don't pull everything just because you want a full clear and others do not.

 

When I am doing a 50 HMFP with people still leveling, then I have no problem doing a full clear so they get the xp. Thus the reason to say I don't care.

 

I have been doing many 2 to 3 HM 50 FPs on my recent 55 sage learning to heal on her and also for social points, most have been full clears because they have been with people leveling. Some of these bonus bosses I haven't even seen for almost 2 years.

Edited February 7, 2014 by mikebevo

Wait, guys. People still run flashpoints?

With multiple 55s, most people have probably run every flashpoint on SM and HM at least 500,000,0000 times and the 300 credits you get per group isn't worth the time to engage them.

 

Hell, even completing flashpoints isn't worth the time because I have 3 55s capped on elite comms, 2 full sets of 72 gear waiting for my level 48 to hit 55, and doing 3 fps for 12 Ultimates isn't worth it when you can cap on ultimates just pugging ops. I have guildies who are in a similar way with about twice as many characters as I have. We haven't run a flashpoint in months other than 2 manning some of the higher end SM ones to help level my alt. If Bioware really doesn't want people rampantly skipping things, they should make it worth the time to engage.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Paintcheck

Wait, guys. People still run flashpoints?

 

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/009/993/tumblr_m0wb2xz9Yh1r08e3p.jpg

I don't care if people skip random trash mobs, but I do get frustrated when people skip half the bosses on Illum. I'm doing this because I want comms. Killing bosses gets me comms. Thus, I want to kill the bosses.

 

If the developers where that concerned about people skipping mobs, they would make it impossible. Put things in the way so you can't go around them, or just spread the mob a bit more. Make them chase farther so that just running through them only makes you pull more mobs, without evading them.

Good thing I found this thread, have a few questions that needs answered. Am a sin tank levelling throught only FPs and class quests so yeah I'm always skipping adds.

 

How do you explaing to the group that it's more beneficial to finish the FP fast than to do a full clear? I tried answering something like "Time vs XP ratio my friend" but apparently that doesn't impress the groups that follows the "kill adds more xp" mindset.

 

Flashpoints experience boost, do they apply to the stuffs you kill in a flashpoint and/or the reward you get finishing a flashpoint? (E.g. Talking to Malgus via holocomm at the end applies to fp exp boost?)

I've tried. The best explanation I can come up with is "don't waste time picking up pennies where there is a $100 bill to be found." But people still believe that weak trash mobs provide enough XP to be worth the delay of completing the mission, and no amount of discussion seems capable of changing their minds.

 

So my advice is don't spend a lot of effort on it. You're the tank, only pull what you want to pull, and if the DPS don't like it they can leave and go sit in queue again. Or they can pull on their own and get themselves killed. That may sound rude, and you don't actually have to be rude about it in group. But people look to the tank to control the pacing of the FP, so don't be afraid to assert yourself a bit.

 

The only exception should be for bosses...if someone wants to kill a boss for gear/achievement, we should kill it even if it can be skipped.

How would you feel if you were developing this game, put hard work into making this content, only to have players hop, skip and jump through most of it? Something needs to be done, and now.

 

The devs totally expect most trash skipping by design. And they have posted a few times in the past that trash skipping is ok because the players take the risk.

 

A typical example was the old EC trash skipping between the 3rd and final boss. We could clearly see the detail the devs put in along the path that it was working as intended.

 

But I do agree that it is annoying that some pugs just like to cheese every single mechanics. For example people jumping down from the 3nd floor before the 1st boss in Czerka Lab always annoy me. Killing 2 more trash packs would take less than a minute.

The devs totally expect most trash skipping by design. And they have posted a few times in the past that trash skipping is ok because the players take the risk.

 

 

Ok I did not know that, if you or anyone can link me to those posts it would be appreciated, so I can read for myself what they have said.

 

However, one thing I will NOT stand for is weekly ditching. Say what you want about ad skipping, to quote another post, why waste time picking up pennies when you could have a £100 bill at the end (1. Yes, I'm British and 2. wouldn't you be richer, at least slightly, with both pennies and the £100 bill?). But in terms of collecting comms, I see no reason why it should exist at all. 8 man SM ops via GF have 10 ultimates at the end of the op, and 16 man SM ops drop ultimates at every boss. Someone please explain?

to quote another post, why waste time picking up pennies when you could have a £100 bill at the end (1. Yes, I'm British and 2. wouldn't you be richer, at least slightly, with both pennies and the £100 bill?).

No you would NOT be richer "with both pennies and the £100 bill".

 

Why is it so hard for most people to understand?

 

This is the most simple concept in the world.

 

The time it took for you to collect those "pennies" you could have instead gotten the "£100" for the second time.

 

So really, would you really rather have 101 than 200?

 

And before someone says "but skipping does not make it twice as fast" which may or may not be true depending on a FP but still even if it was one of those flashpoints where you can skip less and skipping only made it 1.5 times faster then a group that skips all trash that can be skipped would still complete the FP 3 times in the same amount of time that a group that kills everything would complete it only 2 times and still getting a third FP completion would give more xp than you would have gotten from killing all the trash.

I don't know about you, but I find this behaviour really pathetic.

 

I don't know about you, but I find complaining about other peoples choice of play style pathetic. You have neither right, nor valid reason. You need to accept the fact that you are playing with other people and they may find enjoyment in different ways of doing the same thing.

You need to communicate with them, ask to complete all challenges and do not complain after the fact. If people in your group do not agree with you, it is their right to do so.

 

I will give you, in my opinion, reasonable example why spending extra few minutes on trash is not valuable. The time it takes for a group to complete all challenges in battle of Ilum is sufficient to complete the same flashpoint twice. I am going to gain more experience that way, and I will get closer to completing my weekly.

 

I do not consider flashpoint a source of credits, what I may be interested in is weekly or perhaps experience. If you consider this pathetic then I am sorry and I hope we will never be grouped together.

Edited February 16, 2014 by ELRunninW

Weak mob grinding per se is hardly worth it, though if those mobs are tied to a bonus inside the fp, then perhaps is good investment to kill them.

 

In any case, I rather skip them if I have a voice in the matter. Killing trash mobs is what makes leveling grindy and boring. And you have to kill a gazillion of them.

If I really want some xp through mob grind, I do it by myself. I pick golds 1 or 2 levels above my character for lots of xp. Kinda disheartening though, seeing that in some cases killing 3 golds gives as much xp as your current class quest :-/

Edited February 16, 2014 by wainot-keel

Ok I did not know that, if you or anyone can link me to those posts it would be appreciated, so I can read for myself what they have said.

 

A couple that I am able to find quickly

 

However, as you state, the situations reported here don't appear to be exploits, and you'll be safe to skip trash if you are able to.

 

 

Q: Have you been surprised by the shortcuts and tricks and such that allow groups to skip large amounts of trash and/or bosses? Is skipping trash mobs something you agree with and go along in groups?

 

Jesse: In my experience, skipping trash carries a risk of making wipe recovery a lot more painful, so I don't really have a strong opinion about whether we should take strict measures to prevent it. It only really annoys me when groups go to ridiculous lengths to avoid a few seconds of combat, because at some point it becomes self-defeating. When I see a group doing that, I just start pulling encounters to save us the headache.

 

My preference would be to provide more incentives to engage trash. For example, in Terror From Beyond, all the trash has a chance of dropping Artifact-quality crafting mats, and one specific encounter drops a hefty amount of credits. So that's the sort of thing we're looking to do more often, but philosophically we've also gravitated toward tighter play-spaces and less trash overall.

Edited February 17, 2014 by Banegio

Say what you want about ad skipping, to quote another post, why waste time picking up pennies when you could have a £100 bill at the end (1. Yes, I'm British and 2. wouldn't you be richer, at least slightly, with both pennies and the £100 bill?). But in terms of collecting comms, I see no reason why it should exist at all. 8 man SM ops via GF have 10 ultimates at the end of the op, and 16 man SM ops drop ultimates at every boss. Someone please explain?

 

It's about opportunity cost, and what else you could be doing with the time you spend killing trash.

 

Assuming that the goal is to level as quickly as possible, that means maximizing our XP/hour played ratio. In the example I gave, sure, you could spend the time to collect all the pennies and eventually collect £100 as well. Except in the same period of time, you could have skipped the pennies, collected £100, and be well on your way to the next £100. Does it make sense now?

With legacybonus +30%, experience potion and rested experience it is not at all bad

When I saw the subject of this thread, I thought it was about skipping the ads on YouTube videos.

 

I will not stop skipping ads. I hate ads.

 

I think he meants "adds" or "trash mobs." And it won't stop, for reasons pointed out by others in the thread. Get used to it.

The reason for this is games like SWTOR are designed as massive time sinks where players are forced to choose which activities they will do based on the time they have available (never enough time).

 

Couple that with the fact this is a gear based progression game, and spending time on activities that do nothing to progress your character becomes something most players try to avoid.

 

Make trash drop useful comms, gear, and / or tons of credits (or anything of real value) and people might stop skipping trash.

 

Otherwise most of us see trash as the useless time sink it is and avoid it where-ever possible.

 

Edit to add: To the math challenged, it doesn't matter if you have XP bonuses unlocked, using XP potions, or whatever other boosts you may use - those will also apply to the XP you get for completing the missions / FP / killing the bosses.

 

Unless they come out with some super special trash killing XP boost, one will still earn more credits and more XP completing FPs faster by skipping pointless trash.

Edited February 18, 2014 by DawnAskham

Edit to add: To the math challenged, it doesn't matter if you have XP bonuses unlocked, using XP potions, or whatever other boosts you may use - those will also apply to the XP you get for completing the missions / FP / killing the bosses.

 

In fact such bonuses make add skipping even more advantageous. These numbers are completely made up, but assume killing all the adds nets you 5K extra XP, and completing the FP nets you 15K.

 

5000 * 30% = 1500 XP from the bonus

10000 * 30% = 3000 XP from the bonus

 

That makes the 30% XP boost 2x more valuable on the mission XP than on killing adds. The overall ratios of adds vs mission XP remains the same, but since the XP you need to get to the next level remains constant, killing adds falls further behind as a useful activity.

It has been said already, but IMO cannot be said enough...

 

If you want to kill something you need to SPEAK UP!!!

 

As has been said, most players don't care either way, but the assumption is to get in, get it done, get out. If you do not communicate your desire to kill all the bosses, or to get the bonus boss, or to do a full clear, then the fastest route to completion (of skipping trash and bosses) is going to be used.

 

And the reason that assumption is made is because this game is 2+ years old now and most players have "been there, done that" so many times, that they just want to get it done because of the XP/time spent ratio is best when skipping is done.

 

The OP and others may not agree with those assumptions, but they are in the minority. The math of XP/time is there. If you don't see it or choose to ignore it, that does not mean the math is not valid.

 

Personally, I have started soloing FPs so I can do the whole thing at least once. Yes, that means the drops are no longer useful and the XP is significantly less to nil, but it does give me the opportunity to experience the whole thing.

I saw a whole lot of "it's all about me and what I want" in this thread. Fact is, if you're qoing to quibble about how best you could be spendign your time, you're playing an mmo either way. It won't matter in 100 years. If you really care about how you spend your time, step away from the computer and do something IRL.

 

But this isn't always about *you*. Some people are new and don't know what you can and cannot skip. How about trying to be a team leader instead of just getting yours and getting out.