"[Heroic 2] Missions – Challenge Level: Medium. To complete this content, a player should have a good understanding of their class and game mechanics, as well as level appropriate gear. Their companion’s role should begin to matter at this point, supplementing the player’s own Discipline. We expect some players to find these challenging initially—maybe even needing a friend’s help--but once the player earns better gear, a few levels of Influence with their companion, and has a greater understanding of the game, they should be able to solo the hardest of these missions."

 

Those posts are so old they are hardly relevant, also they do prove my point. Why can I solo all of them without even trying and yet somehow they are still too hard? Even with the definition in mind? IDK, seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

What they are saying is: If your GS is 320+ (appropriate) and you can't solo a heroic you have two options: #1Ask someone to help, #2 get gud. Sure I paraphrased but that is what they mean, don't even try to deny it.

I would say that anything above level appropriate gear and basic (beginning) companion influence, combined with having done a specific heroic or mission 25-100 times previously, defines one as over-qualified for the content. Overall in these discussions, I agree with a lot of your points. Some people maybe want to farm things without any effort and complain because currently effort is required. My personal stance is that after a major update where tuning is altered due to changes in bolster, gearing, and companion performance, the devs need to try their best to get content to mirror the difficulty before the major changes. There are clearly KotFE, KotET and other "story" content where the difficulty of certain areas has gone from "Low" (The intended difficulty) to "high." I wouldn't label the H2+ heroics as High, but some of them have increased to medium even for seasoned, players in appropriate gear.

The reason I don't care for the (difficulty) increases in old content is because our (max-level) characters are supposedly higher level and more powerful than before, but all of a sudden, they are half as effective. I'm not into RP, so I wouldn't argue it breaks immersion, but it definitely defeats the purpose of leveling up.

"[Heroic 2] Missions – Challenge Level: Medium. To complete this content, a player should have a good understanding of their class and game mechanics, as well as level appropriate gear. Their companion’s role should begin to matter at this point, supplementing the player’s own Discipline. We expect some players to find these challenging initially—maybe even needing a friend’s help--but once the player earns better gear, a few levels of Influence with their companion, and has a greater understanding of the game, they should be able to solo the hardest of these missions."

 

Those posts are so old they are hardly relevant, also they do prove my point. Why can I solo all of them without even trying and yet somehow they are still too hard? Even with the definition in mind? IDK, seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

What they are saying is: If your GS is 320+ (appropriate) and you can't solo a heroic you have two options: #1Ask someone to help, #2 get gud. Sure I paraphrased but that is what they mean, don't even try to deny it.

Go back to the OP though:

Seeing as my old post devolved into an argument, I want to try to better explain myself

 

Level sync has made doing Heroics a long and at times, frustrating slog with long slug fests that just drain all the fun away. With Heroics needed to get locked supply crates, it has become increasingly frustrating to play them when it takes so long to get through one because all the enemies are just bullet sponges.

 

There is NO skill involved in these fights, just survival, and with some enemies having knock back attacks that can send you flying into yet another group of enemies it is just rubbing salt in the wound.

 

Edit: Most of my characters are not level 80 and still have the gear from the master's datacron, some have upgraded mods armor and such, none of it is augmented.

They aren't saying the CAN'T do it. They're saying it takes too long.

I happen to agree.

They aren't saying the CAN'T do it. They're saying it takes too long.

 

I happen to agree.

 

With Companions being the power level they were, “everyone” began enjoying them. And that was the point that we hadn’t realized. By reducing Companion power, we took that away from a lot of you. You could still engage in [Heroic 2]s and beat them, but they had become arduous, even grindy to many players.

What was relevant before is still relevant today (as evidenced by numerous threads since 7.0 dropped).

What was relevant before is still relevant today (as evidenced by numerous threads since 7.0 dropped).

That was a good find on your part.

I wouldn't have thought to look for that, even if I had remembered that they posted on this very same topic so long ago.

Those posts are so old they are hardly relevant, also they do prove my point. Why can I solo all of them without even trying and yet somehow they are still too hard? Even with the definition in mind? IDK, seems pretty reasonable to me.

Michael said that reducing companions' power was a mistake and made people enjoy the game less. It also shows that devs communicating with the community (with general community on the forum, not with their raider friends on some secred discord servers) goes a long way. How is it proving your point?

But if it does I'm all for bringing back scaling as it was in 4.1.

What they are saying is: If your GS is 320+ (appropriate) and you can't solo a heroic you have two options: #1Ask someone to help, #2 get gud. Sure I paraphrased but that is what they mean, don't even try to deny it.

With 7.0 awful scaling gear is pretty much meaningless - in the open world there is little difference between performance in 306s and 326s (I refuse to grind Nefra for higher rating).

I’m at 322 to 324 on three characters. Each has at least one level 50 companion, and I use them on the H2 heroics. I didn’t do a lot of heroics before 7.0 dropped because I just came back to the game in September, and I was working through some 8 years of new content. Version 7 has me doing a lot more heroics because I now need the ARMs.

While I can’t comment on whether they take longer or not, the only difference I’m noticing is how much more spiky my health is now. It’s rare that I get close to dying, but my health bar is moving a lot more now. When I get in trouble, it happens consistently when my healing companion gets 3 or more mobs focused on them, or 2 or more silvers. When too many focus on the companion, they stop healing me or themselves.

I don’t remember the name of the one heroic mission that really beat me down, but I had to go into a room with droids. It looked like just 3 or 4, but it turned out to be more like 6. I thought I needed to get to both terminals in the room, so I just rezzed and fought through them, but it turned out I only needed one. Maybe it would have saved a death or two if I had just clicked the first terminal when I cleared it.

I’m at 322 to 324 on three characters. Each has at least one level 50 companion, and I use them on the H2 heroics. I didn’t do a lot of heroics before 7.0 dropped because I just came back to the game in September, and I was working through some 8 years of new content. Version 7 has me doing a lot more heroics because I now need the ARMs.

 

While I can’t comment on whether they take longer or not, the only difference I’m noticing is how much more spiky my health is now. It’s rare that I get close to dying, but my health bar is moving a lot more now. When I get in trouble, it happens consistently when my healing companion gets 3 or more mobs focused on them, or 2 or more silvers. When too many focus on the companion, they stop healing me or themselves.

 

I don’t remember the name of the one heroic mission that really beat me down, but I had to go into a room with droids. It looked like just 3 or 4, but it turned out to be more like 6. I thought I needed to get to both terminals in the room, so I just rezzed and fought through them, but it turned out I only needed one. Maybe it would have saved a death or two if I had just clicked the first terminal when I cleared it.

That's a result of an adjustment to companions from awhile ago, pre 7.0

If I remember correctly, they altered the timing of how their attacks / heals actually "hit" and it makes the player's health fluctuate like that. We were told that the healing didn't change, just the timing.

Go back to the OP though:

 

 

 

 

They aren't saying the CAN'T do it. They're saying it takes too long.

 

I happen to agree.

Ok, but I think that medium difficulty content - very shady term too - should not be a face roll free win where your companions carries you. Like honestly most of them time I forget to even get my companion at all and just do it without. Heroics take too long + gear doesn't matter + companions don't matter, but then what matters? Exactly, it matters if you have a good understanding of your class amd the game.

Also because kotet and kotfe got mentioned: On MM they are impossible, ok well not impossible but impossoble in the way of: Literally any HM OP requires less skill than this and if you are playing for the first time the destiny2 legendary campaign is a joke in comparison to those chapters. chapter 2 of kotet.... is a beast, took me a while to solo the vine cat but holy moly the mandos at the end... maybe, very maybe you couls do it on IO or arsenal, maybe on bodyguard too but if you are not as good as cliff on merc you pretty much are done.

Heroics take too long + gear doesn't matter + companions don't matter, but then what matters? Exactly, it matters if you have a good understanding of your class amd the game.

What matters is if players are enjoying the game. That was the consideration that the devs used to balance difficulty in the past. Clearly, there has to be content that presents a challenge for the challenge seekers. There also has to be content that is enjoyable for those that don't like to be frustrated. The trick is getting the balance right. Right now, we are just seeing what happens when a change creates a noticeable difference to the players.

When the game originally launched, most things were challenging and grindy. When things were too difficult, you gained a few levels and came back to try again. Gain a few more and the challenge was completely gone. Then they removed a lot of the grind and introduced level sync. The basic stuff was a cakewalk... not challenging at all, but level sync prevented you from getting to the point where you didn't even take damage. Now, it seems in some things, they have reintroduced difficulty in basic stuff, but you no longer have the ability to gain levels and perform better. In content where level sync drops your level rating down, your better gear doesn't perform better., so things just remain grindy (and less fun overall).

Yeah ok. I understand your point, it's just that I personally take 25s longer to do a CZ run with or without a companion, it's not like coruscant and stuff takes long at all, sure if you choose to do hoth or belsavis H2s you will take longer, but that was also the case before 7.0, also there is no reason to hoth heroics more than once, or at least the weekly.

The game being fun and not difficult is a truely great point I agree with, however for me the most fun I had was in the times were I could learn stuff other people teached me, just boss fights, mechanics, classes stuff like this.

I truely belive that without making friends in a game someone cannot survive in a MMO and they will quit eventually. Ecerybody should be forced to group in some way or another, not because that was how things always are but to actually experience the game and all of it around. The drama, the idiots, the toxic noobs KNOWING you were all of them at one point is great.

But to get any improvement for myself I am currently working on focus target modifier for ranked (I bet 99% of people don't even know what that is) and for PvE it's absolute perfection, I've said it time and time again but for classes like sin tank even the ones that are on the very top are far from perfect. To be truely flawless, or even to play on an acceptable level is incredible.

Anyway, point being this isn't fun. Or I mean it is, but not because other people will notice those large skill differences between someone who has 100% OPs and a good raider, but rather it's not fun because you see how little effort it actually took to beat all 8m OPs.

At some point the only limitation is the game itself, and people claim that it is supposed to be here. In heroics? The not fun part? Heroics are boring, they always were and will always be, to me it's the same as saying "look I beat DF sm on my jugg this week so I should be able to get the weekly rewards om every other toon for free because I already did it". If you don't enjoy heroics, don't do them. If you don't enjoy them anymore it is not balancing, it's not companions and it's not scaling you dislike, you just dislike the feeling of being punished for doing them. The 7.0 reward structure is at fault, sure you could gear via FPs but you feel punished doing so because GSF and PvP is just THAT much faster. Same applies to ranked, with cheaters and wintraders not being punished the actual players feel punished for not wintrading because they essetially wasted their time, with the only upside being fun and honor, but honor is meaningless trust me, seen honor destroy more guilds and raid groups then gods MM release.

In SWTOR, this update brought almost no content except a ridicules gear grind. Basically, grinding your gear is the content. Keep busy while we "celebrate" the 10 year anniversary by way of grinding gear to run the exact same content we were running just fine with 306. Yay.

They kinda failed with that too. I have finished gearing one set for each role and all the weapons I need. Normally (and what I've done with previous expansions) I would start gearing up alts at this point. This is the first time I decided not to do that anymore for various reasons:

- you can only get the good stuff from NiM ops, and the drops are RNG unless you want to get a 320 piece.

- it's too grindy to upgrade 320 piece to 330, considering you can only get the mats from ops: currently ops are scaled so that you need eight competent people to finish most of them in HM and NiM, or you can only do EV and KP HM all day long.

- even if you'd have eight competent people for some challenging HM, all ops are not available in the terminal, which means you'd not gonna get all the rewards. We used to have plenty of options for HM ops, now we have one or two per week. Only raiders are denied the reward from weekly missions: they exist for all other game modes for pve, pvp and gsf. Even people who only run heroics have weeklies.

- if the mechanics in op require you to change class, which would require you to change character, you won't get the completion reward from the ops, even if you were lucky to have the weekly mission in the first place

- even if all stars were aligned, you'd have the mission, you'd be able to finish the ops with on character and you'd get the piece of gear you want, it's not moddable - I want my gear to be moddable.

- augment kits cost too much to gear up alts.

So yes, after finishing gearing up one set of gear per role, I have nothing left to do. Doing anything would mean I''ll cap on the mats that were so grindy to get in the first place and I hate wasting.

Conquest used to keep me busy but it was destroyed. Crafting used to keep me busy but it was destroyed already in 6.0. I wouldn't have minded grinding gear for alts with 6.0 system, but with 7.0 it's just too much.

Ecerybody should be forced to group in some way or another, not because that was how things always are but to actually experience the game and all of it around. The drama, the idiots, the toxic noobs KNOWING you were all of them at one point is great.

...for you. Different people, different tastes and preferences.

If you don't enjoy them anymore it is not balancing, it's not companions and it's not scaling you dislike, you just dislike the feeling of being punished for doing them.

This would be worthy of considering if not for the fact that large portion of the playerbase stopped enjoying them at the same time, with 7.0 release. And it's not about the rewards: they used to give you a crate and small amount of cxp. Now they give you a crate, tech fragments and gear currency so actually they give you more rewards than they used to.

7.0 showcased the reality they employ an amateur Dev team without skills or abilities in coding, no knowledge of the game, its engine or any common sense.

And I really believe you have inside information on BW's staff. Yep. 🙄