Jump to content

Updated thoughts from closed beta founder. they double down on Great Nerfening


captainbladejk

Recommended Posts

I had posted a thread awhile back discussing my thoughts as a closed beta founder after reading some the announcements. Since the new updates I wanted to update my thoughts on this. I have to say, I'm even angrier now than I was before. I've put my thoughts into a video form where I demonstrate some solutions and faults of the logic in the new dev post and why this is a bad idea. I will include most of those thoughts below as well. Video has timestamps in the description. Linking the video here as there are certain aspects that I can't show as well save in video form.

 

As far as my background, I am a closed beta founder that's been here since the launch of the game. I've played every class and spec at this point in the game's life. Some more than others, but yes I'm one of the dinosaurs that was there at the start of the game. I also have been modding older games for nearly 15 years, and have been modding some newer games as well.

 

ok first up, some of that doesn't go together like they think it does. You don't create a "broader set of skills" by taking skills away. That runs counter to your stated goals. This again is like the pie analogy. You can slice a pie into however many pieces you want to slice it into, but you're not creating additional pie with each slice you make. All you're doing is further dividing what's already there and removing more and more substance from each piece of pie.

 

There's a PVP side to this and PVE side to this. We'll examine the PVP side of things first. From how this reads, it sets off one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming today, when PVP concerns are allowed to dictate changes to the PVE side of a game or vice versa. I absolutely despise when games do this as it's unfair to both the PVP and PVE players alike and serves to create unnecessary animosity that doesn't need to be there. Even worse is that Bioware's solution makes a mountain out of an ant-hill and is totally unnecessary. There are much simpler and easier ways to accomplishing balancing goals than re-engineering the entire balance of the game, especially when most of your players are telling you that we don't want this. The first thing that they need to do, which they clearly haven't done is to separate PVP and PVE. The way this reads right now is that they're trying to use the same code twice but expecting a different result, which is literal insanity. World of Warcraft had a similar problem where certain abilities were critical for PVE, but were considered overpowered for PVP and vice versa.

 

Their solution was 2 fold. For certain abilities they felt could win matches on their own, they straight up disabled their use in ranked pvp situations. An example of this is the Bloodlust or Heroism ability, which gave a large haste boost and other boosts to your team. This ability alone was able to tip PVP matches and was too strong, yet was a vital part of a raid's toolkit in PVE. dis-allowing it's use in ranked PVP allowed both sides to get what they wanted. the pvp guys didn't have to deal with it, and the PVE guys got to keep a vital buff. For other abilities they were given modifiers that effected their behavior depending on who or what they were being used on. If it was a NPC it would do X, if it was a player it would do Y. Thus if an ability was too powerful on one side but just fine for the other, you could adjust the respective modifier without effecting the other side of the game at all. In fact this type of change had to be done with a Warrior ability that allowed them to keep their sunder armor debuff active. It would do damage and was a vital part of their rotation for awhile, but was way strong in PVP. the solution was a modifier that effected it differently based on if it was hitting a NPC or an actual player. Once they realized this how much flexitibilty it gave their dev team, we started seeing these modifiers pop up on more powers. In this instance SWTOR needs to do the same thing as it will allow them to adjust either side without effecting the other. You can't keep doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result, as that is the literal definition of insanity. You MUST separate the two if you want to have a viable balance for both sides.

 

A thing I like to do for fun is to design mods, maps, and levels for older games, and even a couple of newer ones. I've been doing this for about 15 years now. Several of my maps and levels used to be EA recommended for download in TimeSplitters Future Perfect for weeks at a time. Whether it's at the small time modder level, or full on AAA studio level, there are core questions that you must answer with this stuff that Bioware is no longer answering. I'll touch more on those questions when we get to the PVE side of things. Getting back to making easy adjustments to game balance, there are multiple ways this can be done without a complete revamp if you think there are issues.

 

As an example of this, here is some of the code for a thruster mod I created for Space Engineers. (more code shown in video)

<Component Subtype="GaldaxIonizer" Count="600" />

<MaxIntegrity>20</MaxIntegrity>

<BlockPairName>LargeGaldaxThrust2125</BlockPairName>

In the components section this tells me how many components of each type I need to create the thruster. Each component grants a certain amount of integrity or health to the completed block. Then there is the block pair name which allows me to pair a large and small grid version up for easy switching between the two modes. If I want to adjust durability of the block, I can raise/lower the amount of components needed for the block, I can raise/lower the integrity each component gives, or I could do both. If I thought a block was too powerful for the small grid, I can restrict it from that grid. if I don't want one of the grids having access to the block, I leave out the block pair name and it will restrict to whatever grid the block is sized for, which is the large grid in this case, or vice versa. With these small lines of code, I can shape the thruster to be as weak or powerful as I want it to be. If I can do all of that with a few lines of code, I have a hard time believing the devs at Bioware couldn't do something similar for SWTOR. I would rather go into a ranked match and be told that I can't use ability X Y and Z because they're too strong, than to have those abilities flat out removed from my toolkit.

 

The problem in PVE with doing things the way they're proposing to do it here is that it doesn't address the core issue at the heart of this, which is oudated content that no longer meets today's needs and standards. That doesn't make the original content bad, and it doesn't make the new abilities bad. It means that the content needs to be updated to meet the standards of today. World of Warcraft had a similar issue where they claimed that flying mounts were allowing folks to completely ignore the intent of certain quests and "bypass content". One of their guys at the time gave the following example. "Suppose you have a quest to rescue an NPC that's been captured. In the era before flight, you would approach on ground, fight your way through 20 mobs, then click the cage and rescue the NPC. In the era of flight you can land on the roof, click the cage, and fly off." He argued that examples like that justified restrictions on flying mounts, similar to how the Bioware devs are trying to blame too many defensive cooldowns for some of the issues today and arguing for their restritions or removal today.

 

There are several problems with that line of logic. First is that it comes off as blaming players for using options the devs gave them, and the devs getting mad about it. Second, it ignores the fact that the largest amount of the problems were caused by the players no longer having a reason to interact with those 20 mobs to start with. When you are developing content, be it at the small time modder level like what I do, or the AAA studio level like what the Bioware or Blizzard devs do, you must answer some key questions. If creating a map, I must answer the question of "why would I ever go there", or in the case of enemy mobs I must answer "why would I ever interact with these guys". If I as the developer of said content can't answer that question, how can I expect the players to do so. Players generally by and large are going to take the path of least resistance to get to their goals. If I can avoid fighting unnecessary groups, that's what I'm going to do. Why am I going to fight those 20 mobs if I don't have to? The solution to the problem is to give players a new reason to interact with the 20 mobs. In this instance, instead of being able to just click the cage and flying off, put a key one of the mobs. Then it doesn't matter whether one arrives on the ground, or comes in from the air, they must still fight the mobs to get the key to unlock the cage. Thus you have preserved the original spirit of the quest, and give folks a new choice of how to approach the quest. Do they try to fight their way in on the ground, or do a surprise attack from the air. That is an example of real choice being granted while preserving the existing toolkit. It forces devs and players alike to think outside of the box.

 

If the concern is defensive cooldowns allowing folks to ignore mechanics, then the problem isn't with the defensive ability itself, as it's doing what it was programmed to do. The problem is with the mechanic itself. I'm never a fan of nerfing the players to meet the mechanics as I believe in buffing the mechanics to meet the players. As one example of this, let's suppose they created a new mechanic that allowed the boss to "antagonize" the player similar to a tank taunting a boss. Let's assume our hypothetical player has 4 defensive abilities. Under the antagonize effect, they're considered unhinged. While the effect of the antagonize is in place, it only allows the use of 2 of the 4 defensive abilities. Now players have to think, do I use my small defensive or my large one?

 

Thus you have a new boss mechanic, and it makes the choice of what ability to use and when more impactful. Folks have been asking for new mechanics and such for awhile, and this is just one example. Another example, let's assume our boss has a nice power attack. If the player gets hit by said attack it "dazes" them and causes certain abilities to go on a longer cooldown if used while they're dazed. A 2 minute cooldown may now become 3 minutes as an example. So now they have a choice, do they try to dodge the attack, or do they try to tank the hit and risk the extra cooldown time coming back to haunt them. Neither of these mechanics have to last super long to make a large impact. The problem right now is the reasons to interact with certain mechanics have been negated or obsoleted. We now need new reasons to use the abilities we have instead of hording them like a dragon guarding his treasures. This game has been my golden standard for years of what a MMO could be and should be, and I would like to think that Bioware is up to the task.

 

Next, is the example of Freezing Force cited. This ability is being stolen from us and baked into an upgrade for Blade Storm. The upgrade to Blade Storm would make it an AoE that slows but in a "more efficient way." There's several things wrong with this. First up is if Blade Storm can already stun foes, why do I want my slow to proc on the enemy at the same time. If the stun lasts 4 seconds, and the slow 5 seconds, at best I've gotten 1 second of use out of my slow. This is not an "upgrade" but a straight up nerf and waste of a good slow. It also takes control of when the slow triggers completely out of my hands and ignores the purpose of what slows are supposed to do. Slows are meant to be used if a person has gotten in range to prevent enemy escape, or to allow someone to close the gap between them and their opponent. Blade Storm is a melee ability, and if I can't get close enough to hit my target, you've just made my new "upgrade" completely useless. So unless you're giving us a single target slow to go along with this new upgrade, you're straight up nerfing Guardians/Juggs but are too afriad to admit it. You can use fancy language all day long, but reducing the amount of abilities people have does NOT increase choice. Stealing abilities from us that we've had largely since launch, or for years, then feeding them back to us does NOT create new content, but steals content from us.

 

You say you want to increase choice, yet your implementation does the exact opposite of what you're trying to do. It's no different than someone thinking that slicing a pie into more pieces creates additional pie. All you're doing is reducing the size of each piece, and removing the amount of substance in each piece of pie. You are not creating new content by dividing and recycling what's already there. As for this example of Freezing Force, I prefer to control when I use certain abilities and not the game. Otherwise if the game is doing everything automatically for me, more often than not it's going to waste an ability when I don't need it, or worse yet, prevent it from being available when I do. This was the exact reason that World of Warcraft and similar games separated their interrupts and CC breakers from other abilities. It took the control out of the hands of the player, and may as well have been the game playing itself at that point. Games that play themselves are not fun, and I specifically play SWTOR because it hasn't been one of those games. I'm glad to see that Resolute and Force Kick missing wasn't supposed to be intentional, but I must still ask, why fix what isn't broke?

 

I have to ask with all of this, with all due respect, why ask for our feedback if you're going to just double down on your plans and try to convince us that we're wrong? Why waste our time and yours by pretending you actually want the feedback if you're going to double down and not actually do anything with it? That's a slap in the face to the players. I also don't know how I can drive this point home so you guys understand it but, THIS CURRENT PTS IS NOT FUN FOR US AND THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS. Stealing abilities from me is not fun for me. Recycling content and calling it new is not fun for me. Stealing abilities from me then chopping them up into smaller pieces is not fun for me, nor does it create new content for me. All it does is steal substance from me and pretend it's done me a favor. What you guys at Bioware are doing is akin to taking my Ferrari, taking the engine out of it, replacing it with a rusted out lawnmower engine, and then pretending you've done me a favor.

 

You guys can try to say how it's an upgrade all day long but it's a straight up nerf. Your players are all telling you that we do not want this, yet you seem intent on doubling down on it as though you're our parents trying to force an unruly child to take a pill they don't want. This comes off as not only smug but arrogance on the part of the company, and comes across as Bioware telling its customers "you don't really like what you think you like. We know what you like and we're going to give you what we think you want." It comes across as you guys telling people like me that have been here since the closed beta, that we're too stupid to know what we really want. I know what I like and I know what I want when i play a game, and this new imitation of SWTOR you're trying to push will not deliver and will chase people away from your game. You say you want to do deep dives into characters, and preserve their uniqueness, and all this other stuff. Yet you fail to realize you can't scuba dive or do a deep dive in only six inches of water. If you want us to have better customization and similar, there need to be options to customize with, yet you're taking those abilities away.

 

As my final point, you guys complain too many abilities being added, yet using the Jedi Guardian as an example, we see that we've had most of the abilities

you guys are saying have been "added over the years" have in fact been here mostly since launch.

1) Saber Ward: Knight Ability: 1.0

2) Awe (mild DCD for Defense): Knight Ability: 1.0

3) Blade Blitz: Knight Ability: 4.0

4) Enure: Guardian Ability: 1.0

5) Focused Defense: 1.2

6) Warding Call: Defense Ability: 1.0

7) Saber Reflect: Guardian Ability: 2.0

 

Only 3 of these abilities were added after launch, all of the others have been there from the beginning. Are you really telling me that as gradually as you guys added those abilities on, such as one per expansion, that you couldn't adjust to them having one additional ability? Overall the logic is flawed and this comes across as doubling down on the intent to nerf everyone into the ground for the sake of PVP and simply because they want to. It's not about making it better for the players at all. If this was about listening to feedback from players, you guys would be reversing course instead of doubling down since the vast majority of your players are telling you we DO NOT WANT THIS AND IT IS NOT FUN FOR US. It's delivering an inferior quality product that misses the mark just as World of Warcraft trying this missed the mark, and Star Wars Galaxies before it missed the mark.

 

As a closed beta founder who has been here with you guys since the beginning, it makes me angry that you guys seem intent on delivering something so subpar and robbing folks of the quality experience that myself and other veteran players had. It makes me angry that players coming in after us will not get to experience the epicness that we did. This will not be SWTOR any longer if you guys go through with this as is, but a cheap mobile game playing itself that pretends to be SWTOR. You guys are doubling down even though the feedback you asked for says to do the opposite. I am angry that a game I have enjoyed for nearly 10 years seems to no longer care about being unique but wants to go along with flavor of the month options. This is the equivalent of taking a game like Call of Duty, know for being a fast paced shooter then turning it into a turn based RPG game. Overall, you guys at Bioware need to scrap this and start over. Don't fix what isn't broke but instead give people reasons to interact with bits of content again. Bring the content up to the level of the players, don't nerf the players and pretend you've done us a favor. In video I demonstrated 2 run throughs of my rotation. 1 to show how well oiled the machine is, the second to simulate actual combat and how abilities get used. Unless I screwed up, or deliberately slowed my dude, it was hard to have nothing to do. Taking abilities from this willy nilly would cripple that class and others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 142
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

 

As my final point, you guys complain too many abilities being added, yet using the Jedi Guardian as an example, we see that we've had most of the abilities

you guys are saying have been "added over the years" have in fact been here mostly since launch.

1) Saber Ward: Knight Ability: 1.0

2) Awe (mild DCD for Defense): Knight Ability: 1.0

3) Blade Blitz: Knight Ability: 4.0

4) Enure: Guardian Ability: 1.0

5) Focused Defense: 1.2

6) Warding Call: Defense Ability: 1.0

7) Saber Reflect: Guardian Ability: 2.0

 

Only 3 of these abilities were added after launch, all of the others have been there from the beginning. Are you really telling me that as gradually as you guys added those abilities on, such as one per expansion, that you couldn't adjust to them having one additional ability? Overall the logic is flawed and this comes across as doubling down on the intent to nerf everyone into the ground for the sake of PVP and simply because they want to. It's not about making it better for the players at all. If this was about listening to feedback from players, you guys would be reversing course instead of doubling down since the vast majority of your players are telling you we DO NOT WANT THIS AND IT IS NOT FUN FOR US. It's delivering an inferior quality product that misses the mark just as World of Warcraft trying this missed the mark, and Star Wars Galaxies before it missed the mark.

 

 

They think the player base are idiots that don't know anything about the game ... because THEY know nothing about the game. They can't play it as much as we do. If at all.

 

They bank on us believing their word because of "metrics and data". They didn't expect anyone to actually look into this whole "too many DCDs added without rebalancing".

 

Thank you for your work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They think the player base are idiots that don't know anything about the game ... because THEY know nothing about the game. They can't play it as much as we do. If at all.

 

They bank on us believing their word because of "metrics and data". They didn't expect anyone to actually look into this whole "too many DCDs added without rebalancing".

 

Thank you for your work.

 

Funny thing a lot of the imbalance was introduced with the most recent gearing and tactical system, why don't they tweak/remove rebalance that instead of removing abilities that have been there since 1.0? so vanilla game wasnt balanced either :rak_02:

 

They introduced that system as an horizontal progression system that could be more easily tweaked but then 2 expansions later they need to remove baseline abilities to balance the game? Ok then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel like the very idea that all these abilities that have been added has made previous content too easy should be a non-issue. I mean, as our power level increases to meet new challenges, shouldn't the old challenges become easier? Doesn't that actually open up those Ops to more people being able to complete them? Why is that bad?

 

I think that strikes at the core of really the only reason that I've ever taken a break from SWTOR. The pace at which new content is released and the length of that content. If they were releasing new story content, new flashpoints, new operations, and new pvp maps at the rate of say ESO...I never would have played ESO. I would have been too busy playing SWTOR. Since I've come back to the game again, the thing I've actually spent the most time doing...is replaying content that I've already done countless times. Leveling a new Guardian through the class story, the same flashpoints, the same heroics, the same everything. It will entertain me for a while (I'm the guy that played through KoTOR and KoTOR2 with both genders, and both force alignments, some multiple times, and enjoyed it all), but it won't keep me here forever.

 

TLDR: If they had enough new content to engage players with, then the old content being "too easy" with the "extra" abilities wouldn't be an issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Game is too easy. I'm happy to see DCD's get the chop in 7.0.

Then take the abilities off our bar and leave me out of it. You already have a solution to your problem. Demanding I also must lose those abilities is not an argument, but you wanting to tell others how to play.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel like the very idea that all these abilities that have been added has made previous content too easy should be a non-issue. I mean, as our power level increases to meet new challenges, shouldn't the old challenges become easier? Doesn't that actually open up those Ops to more people being able to complete them? Why is that bad?

 

I think that strikes at the core of really the only reason that I've ever taken a break from SWTOR. The pace at which new content is released and the length of that content. If they were releasing new story content, new flashpoints, new operations, and new pvp maps at the rate of say ESO...I never would have played ESO. I would have been too busy playing SWTOR. Since I've come back to the game again, the thing I've actually spent the most time doing...is replaying content that I've already done countless times. Leveling a new Guardian through the class story, the same flashpoints, the same heroics, the same everything. It will entertain me for a while (I'm the guy that played through KoTOR and KoTOR2 with both genders, and both force alignments, some multiple times, and enjoyed it all), but it won't keep me here forever.

 

TLDR: If they had enough new content to engage players with, then the old content being "too easy" with the "extra" abilities wouldn't be an issue.

Although I strongly disagree with the game being too easy, I must thank you for using rational reason and trying to explain your argument. Not many I've engaged with on here have been willing to do that. It's all been emotional appeals.

 

Above in my post and in my video, I talk about part of the problem with this very thing. The problem is that the reason for folks to engage with certain content has been lost, and I gave the flight vs no-flight example from WoW as an example of this since it's what another dev gave at the time. The problem isn't the abilities making it too easy, and the problem isn't the content being too easy. The problem is in part as they said, that content was designed for a different time. As time goes on, we're going to be able to clear it easier than folks could back then because we can do things they couldn't do at the time. That doesn't make the new abilities bad, nor does it make the content bad. It means the content needs a face life to get it to today's standards. However instead of updating their content, they're choosing to blame the players for using abilities that they gave us, and getting mad about it. If they can do a complete rebalance of the game, there's no legitimate reason they can't just update their content and leave everything else alone. Instead however they would rather punish the players for a problem they caused.

 

When you're creating content at the modder level like myself, or AAA studio level, you must answer the critical questions of why folks would ever go to your map, interact with certain mobs, or down the line. If you can't do that as the creator of the content, you can't expect the players to do it. Also it ignores the fact that as players progress in power, naturally things that used to be hard will get easier. Again it doesn't mean the content is bad, nor does it mean those new powers are bad. It means they need to adjust the content if they don't want players simply blowing through it as they claim. If a class has 5 defensives now, but only had 3 at the time, then adjust it to account for the extra 2.

 

They've already shown that they're willing to do massive rebalances, so there's no legitimate reason they can't just rebalance the old content. At this point it's purely because they're trying to repeat the mistakes of World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies before them. They're trying the same thing for a 3rd time expecting different results and it will end this game if they don't reverse course.

 

Lastly, folks already have solutions now if they think the game is too easy. Take off some of the extra defensives. They are not obligated to use them. They choose to use them. Too many want to say the game is too easy, yet they don't want to use the solutions already available to them. They want to have their cake and eat it also. They want the game made harder, yet will claim the game is too hard and they've been nerfed at that point. I think the classes are fine as is. I want the content raised to the level of the players, not the players nerfed and punished for using abilities we were given.

Edited by captainbladejk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My dps guardian on test has lost all of the abilities that were added to the class (4 of them including force clarity) since launch. He's also lost saber throw and guardian leap and several others that he had since 1.0 (freezing force, awe, aoe taunt and probably something else that I'm forgetting off the top of my head). There's no way 7.0 is going to be "more fun" for me vs 6.0 and I was never a fan of the 6.0 gearing (but I never complained about that).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

 

Next, is the example of Freezing Force cited. This ability is being stolen from us and baked into an upgrade for Blade Storm. The upgrade to Blade Storm would make it an AoE that slows but in a "more efficient way." There's several things wrong with this. First up is if Blade Storm can already stun foes, why do I want my slow to proc on the enemy at the same time. If the stun lasts 4 seconds, and the slow 5 seconds, at best I've gotten 1 second of use out of my slow. This is not an "upgrade" but a straight up nerf and waste of a good slow. It also takes control of when the slow triggers completely out of my hands and ignores the purpose of what slows are supposed to do. Slows are meant to be used if a person has gotten in range to prevent enemy escape, or to allow someone to close the gap between them and their opponent. Blade Storm is a melee ability, and if I can't get close enough to hit my target, you've just made my new "upgrade" completely useless. So unless you're giving us a single target slow to go along with this new upgrade, you're straight up nerfing Guardians/Juggs but are too afriad to admit it. You can use fancy language all day long, but reducing the amount of abilities people have does NOT increase choice. Stealing abilities from us that we've had largely since launch, or for years, then feeding them back to us does NOT create new content, but steals content from us.

 

You say you want to increase choice, yet your implementation does the exact opposite of what you're trying to do. It's no different than someone thinking that slicing a pie into more pieces creates additional pie. All you're doing is reducing the size of each piece, and removing the amount of substance in each piece of pie. You are not creating new content by dividing and recycling what's already there. As for this example of Freezing Force, I prefer to control when I use certain abilities and not the game. Otherwise if the game is doing everything automatically for me, more often than not it's going to waste an ability when I don't need it, or worse yet, prevent it from being available when I do. This was the exact reason that World of Warcraft and similar games separated their interrupts and CC breakers from other abilities. It took the control out of the hands of the player, and may as well have been the game playing itself at that point. Games that play themselves are not fun, and I specifically play SWTOR because it hasn't been one of those games. I'm glad to see that Resolute and Force Kick missing wasn't supposed to be intentional, but I must still ask, why fix what isn't broke?

 

...

 

I have to admit this is a very very compelling argument that persuades me to question my support for what's being sold for the 7.0 Patch

 

Normally my droid is apt to try and troll threads with a wall of text. But activating the restraining bolt for this one - this is well argued.

 

#applause

Edited by Kass
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to admit this is a very very compelling argument that persuades me to question my support for what's being sold for the 7.0 Patch

 

Normally my droid is apt to try and troll threads with a wall of text. But activating the restraining bolt for this one - this is well argued.

 

#applause

Thanks for reading what I put out there. Believe me I hope they come out with something that just blows us all away and that it turns out I'm jumping the gun. This is one time I want to be wrong about what they're doing. However given my experience with other games, modding, and what I see going on here, I have a feeling I'm not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They think the player base are idiots that don't know anything about the game ... because THEY know nothing about the game. They can't play it as much as we do. If at all.

 

They bank on us believing their word because of "metrics and data". They didn't expect anyone to actually look into this whole "too many DCDs added without rebalancing".

 

Thank you for your work.

 

Or they actually did. And maybe notice the change history of those abilities. Like the fact that cooldowns of all of them have been severely reduced, or that they also come with powerful utilities that were not originally there for the abilities. To use a simple example that spring to mind instantly, Enure has now the half of cooldown it did at launch, and can cleanse with utilities. Saber Reflect got a master utility that nearly doubles the ability duration. Those are massively powerful upgrades.

 

A lot of people make claims about how they have played since the beginning, and seem to forget how the game evolved over the years. DPS classes have gotten enough defensive utilities that it is entirely possible to solo bosses of MM FPs with a DPS companion. Let me say that again: It is entirely possible to solo a boss that's supposed to require a balance team of four to overcome. It is actually one of the recommended ways of getting tech frags! I've seen videos of people soloing operations bosses.

 

That is, very clearly, not the intended way to play the game. So, you are left with two options: Either increase the difficult of all the content in the game to the point that only top 1% of players will be able to successfully finish it, or you take away the tools that have made classes too powerful for the content.

 

And catering to ultra elite players was never a particularly efficient solution, especially from a F2P game perspective. And by the way, regardless of what doomsayers say, it doesn't actually have that much of an impact on the player base. People will preach how everyone lowed MoP WoW gameplay, but ignore the fact that the game population has steadily dropped in that era, not risen. And people have always said that anything Bioware does will kill this game. I've heard it since 2012. ****, you can actually go back to the Disciplines threads from 2014, and you will see the exact same type of doomsaying. "They are dumbing it down! This will kill the game! Stupid devs ruining everything!". And yet, the game is still around. As it always is, despite the overreactions on this board.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or they actually did. And maybe notice the change history of those abilities. Like the fact that cooldowns of all of them have been severely reduced, or that they also come with powerful utilities that were not originally there for the abilities. To use a simple example that spring to mind instantly, Enure has now the half of cooldown it did at launch, and can cleanse with utilities. Saber Reflect got a master utility that nearly doubles the ability duration. Those are massively powerful upgrades.

 

A lot of people make claims about how they have played since the beginning, and seem to forget how the game evolved over the years. DPS classes have gotten enough defensive utilities that it is entirely possible to solo bosses of MM FPs with a DPS companion. Let me say that again: It is entirely possible to solo a boss that's supposed to require a balance team of four to overcome. It is actually one of the recommended ways of getting tech frags! I've seen videos of people soloing operations bosses.

 

That is, very clearly, not the intended way to play the game. So, you are left with two options: Either increase the difficult of all the content in the game to the point that only top 1% of players will be able to successfully finish it, or you take away the tools that have made classes too powerful for the content.

 

And catering to ultra elite players was never a particularly efficient solution, especially from a F2P game perspective. And by the way, regardless of what doomsayers say, it doesn't actually have that much of an impact on the player base. People will preach how everyone lowed MoP WoW gameplay, but ignore the fact that the game population has steadily dropped in that era, not risen. And people have always said that anything Bioware does will kill this game. I've heard it since 2012. ****, you can actually go back to the Disciplines threads from 2014, and you will see the exact same type of doomsaying. "They are dumbing it down! This will kill the game! Stupid devs ruining everything!". And yet, the game is still around. As it always is, despite the overreactions on this board.

 

Enure originally had a 90 second CD or it had that in 2012. On test the CD is one minute. Saber ward is 12 secs every 3 minutes (on test and in 2012). The game really hasn't evolved that much since launch in terms of number of abilities or cds on abilities.

 

Most of our expacs have been stretching out things like utility choices (which have had a couple different menus over the last decade). I was never one of the ones complaining about those. But the changes for this xpac are much more extreme - my character is losing every ability this game's given him post launch and he's losing many more. These nerfs are completely unprecedented in the history of this game. Which part of that is confusing you?

 

What you call "ultra elite" I call most of the players queueing regs in pvp right now. I couldn't care less about F2P players and BW has never catered to them. You do know that swtor has a fraction of the players it had in 2012 or 2015 or even 2017, right? I'm not predicting what their proposed changes are going to do to the existing player base but much smaller ability culls in this game have resulted in lost players and I can't imagine how this will improve player counts. But, in general, MMO players looking for something to try will respond to the "word on the street".

There's a 0% chance the "word on the street" for this xpac is going to be good even if they reverse 80% of the nerfs they're currently proposing. The "word on the street" comes from your "ultra elites".

Edited by Savej
Link to comment
Share on other sites

But the changes for this xpac are much more extreme - my character is losing every ability this game's given him post launch and he's losing many more. These nerfs are completely unprecedented in the history of this game. Which part of that is confusing you?

 

The fact that it's not actually happening? There is a very helpful spreadsheet for that. The only ability that seems well and truly gone is Freezing Force.

 

What you call "ultra elite" I call most of the players queueing regs in pvp right now. I couldn't care less about F2P players and BW has never catered to them. You do know that swtor has a fraction of the players it had in 2012 or 2015 or even 2017, right?

 

No, actually, I don't. Since there are no official stats, you have basically pulled that out of your ***. And ranked PvP, the most insular part of the game's community, source of drama, toxicity and similar present matters, counts, according to the official leaderboards, about 7000 characters. That's characters, not players. Dunno how many of those are dead accounts banned for win trading and the like, but I suspect a lot. That's across all servers.

 

Why should such a tiny portion of the games population dictate how it will play? Especially when the whole game is otherwise build around PvE experience?

 

I'm not predicting what their proposed changes are going to do to the existing player base but much smaller ability culls in this game have resulted in lost players and I can't imagine how this will improve player counts. But, in general, MMO players looking for something to try will respond to the "word on the street".

 

And they will not look for it here, but rather on reddit, or from the members of community they trust. This board has been considered the most hardline part of the community, and the most negative one, for a really long time now.

 

There's a 0% chance the "word on the street" for this xpac is going to be good even if they reverse 80% of the nerfs they're currently proposing. The "word on the street" comes from your "ultra elites".

 

Word on the street has been negative from the beginning. Again, you are acting as if this was a new thing, but it's not. This happens every expansion. This happened when the system that people now so hotly defend was introduced. You can literally go, and read page upon pages of DOOM back from 2014. This isn't new. It's a routine at this point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or they actually did. And maybe notice the change history of those abilities. Like the fact that cooldowns of all of them have been severely reduced, or that they also come with powerful utilities that were not originally there for the abilities. To use a simple example that spring to mind instantly, Enure has now the half of cooldown it did at launch, and can cleanse with utilities. Saber Reflect got a master utility that nearly doubles the ability duration. Those are massively powerful upgrades.

 

A lot of people make claims about how they have played since the beginning, and seem to forget how the game evolved over the years. DPS classes have gotten enough defensive utilities that it is entirely possible to solo bosses of MM FPs with a DPS companion. Let me say that again: It is entirely possible to solo a boss that's supposed to require a balance team of four to overcome. It is actually one of the recommended ways of getting tech frags! I've seen videos of people soloing operations bosses.

 

That is, very clearly, not the intended way to play the game. So, you are left with two options: Either increase the difficult of all the content in the game to the point that only top 1% of players will be able to successfully finish it, or you take away the tools that have made classes too powerful for the content.

 

And catering to ultra elite players was never a particularly efficient solution, especially from a F2P game perspective. And by the way, regardless of what doomsayers say, it doesn't actually have that much of an impact on the player base. People will preach how everyone lowed MoP WoW gameplay, but ignore the fact that the game population has steadily dropped in that era, not risen. And people have always said that anything Bioware does will kill this game. I've heard it since 2012. ****, you can actually go back to the Disciplines threads from 2014, and you will see the exact same type of doomsaying. "They are dumbing it down! This will kill the game! Stupid devs ruining everything!". And yet, the game is still around. As it always is, despite the overreactions on this board.

 

A couple of things, if you doubt my being a founder you can click the video link I gave at the start of this thread where my founder title is visible on my character, or if you wish I can happily provide you a screenshot.

 

With that said, abilities and upgrades don't get added to this game unless Bioware themselves add the abilities. You can't give players ultra powerful tools, then turn around and try to blame the players for using the tools that you gave them. That's just asinine. As usual, another person appealing to emotional arguments without addressing anything that was said. Well mostly nothing I suppose, you did at least try to blame the utility points.

 

As for "not intended to play the game that way", that ship sailed the moment they added those options to the game. If they didn't want players using them they shouldn't have added them. Again it's no different than the WoW devs who tried to blame flying mounts for "bypassing content." No, the flying mounts were never the problem. The problem was they refused to maintain their older content, it bit them in the rear end, and they didn't want to do the work to fix it. So instead they tried to blame the players when very simple fixes already existed.

 

Since we're talking utility points being potentially at fault, adjust the passive utility points. I already gave an example of how they can easily do something like this without the need for a complete rebalance of the entire game. Though if they're willing to rebalance the entire game over thinking there are too many defensives, they have ZERO excuse for not simply bringing the content up to the players. Also when I say "bring content up to the players" this doesn't mean everything has to become ultra hard sup3r l33t times 5 bajillion extra special hard mode. It means they update the older content to take into account the new abilities we have today as they should have from the start if they were concerned about it. There is no scenario in which they are not at fault for refusing to update their content if it concerned them.

 

Also on this point, as you level up in MMOs, gain gear, optimize your stats, run Flashpoints, OPS, or what have you, you will gain power over time and be able to clear things easier than you did before. If you go into a map with the bare minimum gear, it's going to be rough and you will need to take your time. If you go in a year later and you have 4 times the minimum amount of gear the map requires, then you're going to blitz through it. Being able to blitz certain maps when you've done the work to get the high level gear is NOT a bad thing.

 

The problem is the reasons they used to rely on for why players should go to certain maps, fight certain mobs, interact with certain elements, has been obsoleted. Just like the flight vs no-flight WoW example I gave before. The reason for the player to interact with the 20 mobs went away when flying was introduced. This meant that quest needed to be altered or flight needed to be restricted. Punishing players for using tools you gave them is not an option. As such the simple solution was to put a key on the mobs so that now one had to fight the mobs whether they approached from the air or ground. Again if someone like me who is a small time modder can figure this stuff out, they as a AAA company have zero excuses. The fact that they've doubled down just strikes me as them trying to tell us we're too stupid to know what we really want.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With that said, abilities and upgrades don't get added to this game unless Bioware themselves add the abilities. You can't give players ultra powerful tools, then turn around and try to blame the players for using the tools that you gave them. That's just asinine. As usual, another person appealing to emotional arguments without addressing anything that was said.

 

I don't appeal to emotions. I present to you a simple argument: The team behind the game has acknowledged that they have made a mistake by adding so many defensive utilities into the game. Therefore, to fix that mistake, they are now going to remove defensive utilities from the game.

 

There is nothing wrong with that reasoning. You don't like it, because you like the way the game is playing right now. And while that's perfectly fine, it doesn't make it any less of an argument from emotions than anyone liking those changes. You don't present tangible argument. You have no proper research to support your position. I do not either, but I'm not pretending to be objectively right.

 

Though if they're willing to rebalance the entire game over thinking there are too many defensives, they have ZERO excuse for not simply bringing the content up to the players. Also when I say "bring content up to the players" this doesn't mean everything has to become ultra hard sup3r l33t times 5 bajillion extra special hard mode. It means they update the older content to take into account the new abilities we have today as they should have from the start if they were concerned about it. There is no scenario in which they are not at fault for refusing to update their content if it concerned them.

 

Yeah they do. It's called a budget.

 

It is massively easier to remove the abilities that cause problems than to adjust 27 flashpoints and 11 ops. Especially when you also have to create content for the new expansion. And to be quite frank, some of those defensive abilities that they have left in the game I would have removed entirely from the balance perspective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't appeal to emotions. I present to you a simple argument: The team behind the game has acknowledged that they have made a mistake by adding so many defensive utilities into the game. Therefore, to fix that mistake, they are now going to remove defensive utilities from the game.

 

There is nothing wrong with that reasoning. You don't like it, because you like the way the game is playing right now. And while that's perfectly fine, it doesn't make it any less of an argument from emotions than anyone liking those changes. You don't present tangible argument. You have no proper research to support your position. I do not either, but I'm not pretending to be objectively right.

You say you don't appeal to emotions, yet the bit I highlighted in blue says you do. It's the same song and dance from everyone else that subscribes to your views. It's another variation of "you just don't want to learn new rotations" which is an emotional appeal that has no value and doesn't address anything. It's simply an attempted deflection so you don't have to debate the actual issues and come up with actual solutions. If better solutions to problems can be found, and better systems implemented I'm all for it. What I am not for is destroying the uniqueness of each class while pretending they want to protect it. I'm not for pretending this isn't them trying to copy WoW and repeat history. Actually I do have proper research, I have also demonstrated how small changes to code can have a massive change in the game. You ignoring what is presented to you doesn't make it less valid. If you have actual solutions that don't involve gutting the entire game let's hear them. If you believe I am wrong about something then you need to present actual arguments. Simply saying "you're wrong" doesn't make it so.

 

Yeah they do. It's called a budget.

 

It is massively easier to remove the abilities that cause problems than to adjust 27 flashpoints and 11 ops. Especially when you also have to create content for the new expansion. And to be quite frank, some of those defensive abilities that they have left in the game I would have removed entirely from the balance perspective.

They're already planning to "rebalance" everything around the abilities being stolen anyways, so no they don't have an excuse. The whole budget argument sailed when they decided to completely revamp the game for the worse. As for your arguments on balance, I'm glad you're not a dev because quite frankly you would destroy this game. You not liking a power doesn't make it bad.

 

Folks complaining about too many defensives and the game being too easy already have solutions to their problems, they simply don't want to use those solutions. Bioware wants to claim so many defensives have been added, yet that's absolutely false as we can look back at patch notes and so forth. This again is little more than blaming the players for using options given to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The fact that it's not actually happening? There is a very helpful spreadsheet for that. The only ability that seems well and truly gone is Freezing Force.

 

Dude, if it's not on my character sheet it doesn't matter to me if it's available to some other guardian. The point is that I won't be able to use it without hitting the respec button, which means it's gone when I need it unless I know ahead of time that I will need one ability and not another. My character right now has no such limitations. The character on test is heavily nerfed in comparison. If you can't see that you're being deliberately dumb.

 

No, actually, I don't. Since there are no official stats, you have basically pulled that out of your ***. And ranked PvP, the most insular part of the game's community, source of drama, toxicity and similar present matters, counts, according to the official leaderboards, about 7000 characters. That's characters, not players. Dunno how many of those are dead accounts banned for win trading and the like, but I suspect a lot. That's across all servers.

 

First, there's steam numbers. Apart from a bump in Jan, swtor numbers have been going down since it launched on steam a year ago. There have been a variety of ways of counting active players including logging onto servers and counting them. People have done this on Reddit in the past to figure out which server to play on (back when there were more than one or two per region). And right now, since there's only 2 servers in NA, it's very easy to count.

 

2nd, I was talking about PVP regs, not ranked. In regs I rarely see anyone without 306 gear (I look for sub 306's to target since they're more likely to be inexperienced) and most have at least a more-than-basic understanding of their buttons.

 

Word on the street has been negative from the beginning. Again, you are acting as if this was a new thing, but it's not. This happens every expansion. This happened when the system that people now so hotly defend was introduced. You can literally go, and read page upon pages of DOOM back from 2014. This isn't new. It's a routine at this point.

 

It's true that every expac has points of contention. No expac has nerfed characters like this. This expac had people excited initially - the top comments on the reddit announcement are still positive ones. That lasted right up to the Guardian release on Test. Many expacs in the past, such as Shadow of Revan, had players excited until they got to play a laggy/buggy mess (Sor's launch was historically bad). This one went from mostly positive to mostly negative in record time.

Edited by Savej
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a side note you can tell roughly when someone created an account by their member id #. If that number is smaller than a million, that account was one of the first million accounts created for this game service. Hover over their user name on the left to get their member id #. The game launched with a bit over two million accounts. Someone with a small number that says they're a founder almost certainly is one. Someone with a +10 million #? Not a new account but also not a founder, not with that id.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a side note you can tell roughly when someone created an account by their member id #. If that number is smaller than a million, that account was one of the first million accounts created for this game service. Hover over their user name on the left to get their member id #. The game launched with a bit over two million accounts. Someone with a small number that says they're a founder almost certainly is one. Someone with a +10 million #? Not a new account but also not a founder, not with that id.

 

349K here =-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Game is too easy. I'm happy to see DCD's get the chop in 7.0.

 

Do you mean that you are actually looking forward to needing double as much time to kill the same mobs you've killed hundreds of times before? To me, this is just tedious. What this game needs is NEW stuff, and not changes to OLD stuff. Because that old stuff will remain old nonetheless.

 

Funny thing a lot of the imbalance was introduced with the most recent gearing and tactical system, why don't they tweak/remove rebalance that instead of removing abilities that have been there since 1.0? so vanilla game wasnt balanced either :rak_02:

 

Hear, hear.

 

Or they actually did. And maybe notice the change history of those abilities. Like the fact that cooldowns of all of them have been severely reduced, or that they also come with powerful utilities that were not originally there for the abilities. To use a simple example that spring to mind instantly, Enure has now the half of cooldown it did at launch, and can cleanse with utilities. Saber Reflect got a master utility that nearly doubles the ability duration. Those are massively powerful upgrades.

 

By that logic, the solution would be to re-balance those abilities and not take them away.

 

A lot of people make claims about how they have played since the beginning, and seem to forget how the game evolved over the years. DPS classes have gotten enough defensive utilities that it is entirely possible to solo bosses of MM FPs with a DPS companion. Let me say that again: It is entirely possible to solo a boss that's supposed to require a balance team of four to overcome. It is actually one of the recommended ways of getting tech frags! I've seen videos of people soloing operations bosses.

 

The reason that people can solo bosses is not because of too many defensive utilities.

 

That is, very clearly, not the intended way to play the game. So, you are left with two options: Either increase the difficult of all the content in the game to the point that only top 1% of players will be able to successfully finish it, or you take away the tools that have made classes too powerful for the content.

 

It was BW's deliberate decision to make more content soloable back then. It is one intended way to play the game. Don't pretend that it's a common thing that players solo OP bosses.

 

And catering to ultra elite players was never a particularly efficient solution, especially from a F2P game perspective. And by the way, regardless of what doomsayers say, it doesn't actually have that much of an impact on the player base. People will preach how everyone lowed MoP WoW gameplay, but ignore the fact that the game population has steadily dropped in that era, not risen. And people have always said that anything Bioware does will kill this game. I've heard it since 2012. ****, you can actually go back to the Disciplines threads from 2014, and you will see the exact same type of doomsaying. "They are dumbing it down! This will kill the game! Stupid devs ruining everything!". And yet, the game is still around. As it always is, despite the overreactions on this board.

 

Ultra elite players? What does that even mean?

 

Since you claim that it was always just doom and gloom and never had an actual effect on the game, let me remind you of this:

 

We once had dozens of servers. Then a lot of people left, because they didn't like what BW did with that game. Eventually it was down to 9 US servers and 9 EU servers. Then even more people left, because they didn't like what BW did with that game. Eventually it was down to 5 servers worldwide. 5! And those 5 servers have about the same kind of numbers we had before on 5 of the 18 servers. E. g. Darth Malgus has around the same numbers now that The Red Eclipse had before the merger. But DM includes also The Progenitor which had just slightly less players than TRE and a third server (name forgotten). So the numbers of DM should be at least double as high if it would be the same amount of players we had on the three combined servers before. But we don't have those numbers. Which is proof that we have less players now than before.

 

The game is still around, sure, but it's not even remotely on a size as BEFORE BW decided on things which a majority of the players disliked. BW has been on a constant road of killing the game since 2012. With every update a little bit more. Deny it as much as you like. The metrics prove it. 5 servers worldwide are left. Fact!

 

No, actually, I don't. Since there are no official stats, you have basically pulled that out of your ***.

 

Do you seriously claim that the remaining 5 servers have the same amount or more players than several dozen servers in 2012?

 

And they will not look for it here, but rather on reddit,

 

From Reddit... OK, you got me good there. Nicely trolled, making me reply to your posts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you mean that you are actually looking forward to needing double as much time to kill the same mobs you've killed hundreds of times before? To me, this is just tedious. What this game needs is NEW stuff, and not changes to OLD stuff. Because that old stuff will remain old nonetheless.

 

Double the TTK? The devs are nerfing dcd's, not offensive power.

 

But anyway, I'm just happy for a new meta. I'm not sure what the devs are up to, but I'm guessing it's more than what has been announced so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Double the TTK? The devs are nerfing dcd's, not offensive power.

 

But anyway, I'm just happy for a new meta. I'm not sure what the devs are up to, but I'm guessing it's more than what has been announced so far.

I'm glad someone can finally admit it's a nerf. Either way you go it's an unnecessary nerf that guts the classes for no valid reason at all. Even still they asked for feedback, and no matter how you slice it, this will negatively impact the game overall. You don't create broader toolkits by removing abilities. As for a new meta, if you think it's too easy right now, take the abilities you feel are unnecessary off your bars and play without them. Nothing is forcing you to keep using all the abilities you have if you think it's too easy. But of course that's not a good enough solution for you people. You want everyone else to be forced to play like you. If you want your "new meta" then take the abilities off your bars you feel are unnecessary and leave me out of it. I prefer my characters without the lobotomy and false upgrades thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also for the folks who question if I am truly a founder, here is a screencap from the character I used in the video. You can see the founder title very easily. https://imgur.com/a/YAN6AcC

 

Why does that matter?

 

As member 1503, I say my opinion means more than yours, member 992,654.

 

Seriously, stop pretending that makes you more qualified than anyone else.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...