So far all my thoughts on game scaling and scaling in flashpoints can be summarised as such: I feel weaker at level 80 than I did at level 75.

 

I feel like I do relatively less damage to enemies while taking more damage and healing less. Companions also appear to heal for much less.

 

I only tested with 318 gear because finding a group to go through content with on the PTS is practically impossible, so it's possible that with better gear, rebalanced legendary items (and they do need rebalancing) and tacticals things will be different.

 

After the whole play the game your way thing, it feels like 7.0 is going to be a step in the opposite direction with weekly rotations for content and different tiers of gear for different bits of content. At face value I much prefer the current system we have in 6.0 where you can more or less do what you want and get gear for any character in your legacy. Hopefully at least legacy transferable gear will stay.

I have tried Battle of Ilum MM and I would say it is impossible to complete. We managed to kill the first boss only after one of our DPS's left and we summoned Z0-0M comp to help our healer. Even then we had to ignore the turrets completely so we could meet the DPS check on Velasu Graege. We gave up on Krel Thak after 4-5 attempts: too much damage, too much HP, he enraged at 40% most of the time.

I'd also like to point out that the loot you get from the bosses is tied to your active discipline only and the Loot Discipline feature where you choose the spec to get the loot for is not working.

It looks like tertiary stats are going to be capped now in scaled areas.

 

Overall this won't matter much, but it would be nice if we had the option to set our own stat priorities. For easy content it doesn't matter much, but part of endgame gearing is getting things like your alacricity, accuracy, and critical to decent levels.

 

Alacricity at the levels they chose to cap it on Ziost in particular is terrible, you may as well have no alacricity at all. It feels very slow and clumsy to be max level and have sub-par alacricity. It makes cooldowns and energy regeneration different in capped vs uncapped content which changes the feel to combat.

We tried to do Toborro’s Courtyard story mode on the PTS and it was a horrible, horrible mistake. We boosted our characters to level 80, got level 80 item-rating 318 gear, got two free legendary earpieces, went in with a tank 5 DPS and 2 healers and got our butts handed to us. The boss had 27 million health vs the current in-game TC which only has about 8 million. Even with using the Isotopes constantly and using all the defensives I had we barely got to 80% after our third try. We aren’t sure if the Game Scaling is bad, if Toborro itself is bad, or if we were supposed to go get more gear through Flashpoints or something similar first before going into Operations. It was pretty miserable lol.

 

We also tried Umbara Flashpoint with a similar kind of group on Veteran Mode (random through Groupfinder) and it was REALLY hard. Like.. doable, but out patient team quit after the first boss.

 

Corellia Black Hole enemies seemed fine.

 

I tried to attack Trapjaw alone and he 1-hit me as a tank (LOL).

 

Well I posted this in a similar thread, cause one person said VET Flashpoint felt like Master Mode. Yet I'm honestly not surprised! This is why I thought that below...

 

I experimented on soloing some vet FP and my thoughts:

 

I enjoy to solo MM FPS on live now. On pts vet fp feels like master mode fp on live, for solo players (except bosses harder because kolto stations don't work if you not in group).

 

Well realize 70-75 (36 New Item Levels) where we got larger Item Level increase, so until we see 37-41 new Item Levels with 80 it will be a lot harder!

 

So yes VET Flashpoints likely will feel like Master, and Master will certainly be taken to the NEXT level as well. It's also likely because too many can run Master (alone) today when fully augmented out?

 

So it's also going to mean they'll need to change VET mode Queue, to ensure a TANK & Healer are required similar to what they do for Master Mode today.

 

I just don't like loosing 2 class abilities, and the choice of 9 Combat Proficiencies.

 

▬▬▬▬▬

So this doesn't surprise me at all VET Mode feels like Master Mode Flashpoint! There making it harder at least initially, while also removing options to customize Play Style preferences, eliminating choice--making it easier, yet also less fun to customize Combat Proficiencies far more and learn.

 

(End of response to above quoted person)

▬▬▬▬▬

 

Still I'm really surprised LadyAdmiral at the experience you had in Story Mode Operations, I realize you are aware many Vet / Master Mode Flashpoints are going to be harder. Yet still was quite shocking and unexpected to see what you found in a story mode Operation.

 

I suspect someone set STORY OPERATION at the wrong TIER here for sure! Hopefully they FIX it very soon...

Edited November 4, 2021 by Strathkin

More like a bug report here. Karaggas palace still has veterans egde stacks which cap at 30 on 320 item rating. We were able to kill Bone trasher on 8 man HM (VM) last night because of the stacks. In tank spec i had 550k hp and one sorc dude even had augments which brought his HP to 630k. It was fun but please remove the vet stacks, please.

No scaling on Voss either, (with a character copied from live then upped to 80 at droid on fleet).

Here is a video of me killing Nightmare Pilgrim Voss world boss solo on PTS.

 

Welp, there goes my only chance of consistently killing the darn thi- Wait, no, Bioware don't listen to this individual! They lie!

More like a bug report here. Karaggas palace still has veterans egde stacks which cap at 30 on 320 item rating. We were able to kill Bone trasher on 8 man HM (VM) last night because of the stacks. In tank spec i had 550k hp and one sorc dude even had augments which brought his HP to 630k. It was fun but please remove the vet stacks, please.

 

More details be NICE, like was this STORY, VET, MASTER mode?

 

My only guess is they want to make it FAR harder initially, as someone denoted a VET Mode Flashpoint felt like MASTER MODE. Which means it will be MASTER will be like a DIAMOND truly! So I hope they reconsider enforcing Healer & Tank in VET Mode Flashpoints if so.

 

I don't think they planned to change how many stacks once we see MAX item level, yet can't be sure. All I know is 80 were seeing 318 Item Level which is like 270 at 75. With 75 we had 36 new Item Levels. One would THINK we'll see 37-41 New Item Levels at least with 80 in time...

 

At least initially, so I hope they reconsider enforcing Healer & Tank in VET Mode Flashpoints if so.

 

▬▬▬▬▬

It's also a single Cookie Cutter approach to ALL BUILDs especially with the REMOVAL of Combat Proficiencies too. It's why I've been very disappointed with 7.0 - they made it no FUN to customize toons anymore.

Edited December 4, 2021 by Strathkin

More details be NICE, like was this STORY, VET, MASTER mode?

 

My only guess is they want to make it FAR harder, as someone denoted a VET Mode Flashpoint felt like MASTER MODE. Which means it will be MASTER will be like a DIAMOND truly! So I hope they reconsider enforcing Healer & Tank in VET Mode Flashpoints if so.

 

Like I said, we killed the first boss on VETERAN MODE (VM). Also story mode (SM) has those stacks. KP has no master mode (MM). BioChris confirmed that veterans edge will be removed in Theorycrafters discord server, so this truly is just a bug or oversight.

 

I hope they make it far harder. Currently on live servers MM flashpoints are a complete joke and the only way to make then challenging or hard is to solo them. In a sense it's little like veteran mode since you don't need a tank, having dwt and a healer is more than enough (there are few bonus bosses which are exceptions).

 

I ran MM hammer station several times on PTS in this build and it is not hard either, more like actually fun compared to MM FPs on live. It just requires players to have mastered their classes (as the name of the difficulty implies). This means tank has to be on point with taunts and threat generation or DPS will pull aggro on them and die. Tanks have to also be able to use dcds properly to mitigate damage before it happens, not as "oh ****" buttons you press when your hp gets low. DPS need to know how to pump decent numbers or bosses will enrage, threat drop on trash and use dcds when they pull aggro off the tank or they die. Healers need to have fast enough reactions to burst a tank or a DPS when their HP drops for reason or another. Anything less and it's no longer 'master' mode.

For game scaling, I tested Sorcerer (Lightning, Madness, & Corruption) and Assassin (Deception).

 

How does this experience compare to live?

The comparison here is a bit apples-to-oranges. On live, I have a full set bonus at 306/286 for these classes. On PTS, I'm in the equivalent of green trash gear. I expected to feel weaker, and I did. But it wasn't a bad experience.

 

Honestly, I'm kind of happy? Being able to solo-clear vet flashpoints on live is a fun novelty, but it trivializes the group experience. On PTS, I had to pay attention again. VM Flashpoints were still perfectly clearable* on PTS when grouped with one other person, and I had more fun with them than I do on live. (One thing that didn't change--the last boss of Mandalorian Raiders is still rather ticklish).

 

I also walked into SM KP with one guildie (we ran Lightning & Corruption) and we pulled the first couple trash packs for fun. Scaling at i318 made it slow, but manageable (especially with judicious application of instawhirl... thank you devs for building that in). Of note: KP currently has VE stacks in both Story & Hard (Veteran) mode. I took a look at EV and both Dread Ops before I ran out of phase resets and they do not have VE stacks, so I assume this is a bug.

 

Do you notice anything off with your stats?

Tert stats (including presence?) are capped planetside, which I assume is mostly intended. Hard to give strong feedback on this point, though, because it looks like stats are undergoing some kind of combo/change in the new UI. I'm reserving opinion for now. One of my guildies testing planet scaling did say that his comp seemed noticeably weaker.

 

*A Note on Bolster: I also copied over a level 42 Powertech from live and walked into vet Hammer Station to take a look at bolster, which currently seems to boost character stats up to ~318 iLevel equivalent. Based on my flashpoint experience on PTS, this bolster point--much like live--may be punishing for characters running the original leveling flashpoints as they open in groupfinder.

Something is definitely wrong with the companion scaling as well. The damage they do is barely a tickle to enemies (such as those on CZ-198). I'm not sure if this is purely a game scaling issue, or just a bug, but it's very noticeable.

Something is definitely wrong with the companion scaling as well. The damage they do is barely a tickle to enemies (such as those on CZ-198). I'm not sure if this is purely a game scaling issue, or just a bug, but it's very noticeable.

 

Weird. I ran several daily areas as shield PT and lvl 50 companion (that Kuban dude from season 1) and even soloed Aurora Cannon, the heroic 4 on Section X. I had green 318 tank gear with no augments and my companion did at least same damage as me. Maybe certain companions are broken?

What's the point of scaling down tertiary stats? On lower level planets it basically wipes out your accuracy and crit multiplier since it's comparing level 30-40 accuracy/critical rating to level 80 targets, it's almost the same as having no gear at all.

What's the point of scaling down tertiary stats? On lower level planets it basically wipes out your accuracy and crit multiplier since it's comparing level 30-40 accuracy/critical rating to level 80 targets, it's almost the same as having no gear at all.

 

At this point I feel like accuracy shouldn't even be a tertiary stat, we should just always have max accuracy and the devs can focus on properly balancing the other stats.

At this point I feel like accuracy shouldn't even be a tertiary stat, we should just always have max accuracy and the devs can focus on properly balancing the other stats.

 

Yeah, agreed. The accuracy target is obscenely high with this update too (2693 from what I can tell, managed to hit it dead on 110%) so you're losing out on other stats just to meet this mandatory cap.

 

On an unrelated note regarding the scaling:

 

Bioware, please pay careful attention to the changes you're making on base game planets. You made a change to the Tython heroic to lower the enemy ranks (so no gold level enemies anymore outside of the champion at the end, most of the silvers were dropped to standard/weak, etc). That's not a problem on its own until you realize that the mission items needed to progress that mission only drop off the silver enemies, which are now much less plentiful. I used to never have an issue getting the amount needed by the time I got to the console at the end. This time, I was close to that point before I even got my first one, had to circle back to the first room and fight more enemies to get the rest. That's with no competition. Shared tagging won't help if the enemies are dead already when you get there, leaving you stuck waiting for respawns.

 

The respawn rate in that heroic isn't terrible, by the time I circled back a lot of the ones I'd killed were respawning, but Tython is a busy planet due to being a starter planet. When there's only like 6 enemies in the whole area that drop the mission item and they go down like a wet paper sack, this won't be a fun time. More importantly, if this is happening on Tython, it can happen elsewhere. So again, please pay close attention to what you're changing and how it affects the associated missions.

I was making another Sentinel to test recent changes so thought I might as well check the Tython heroic and it does seem really odd that a heroic 2+ is basically now just a normal mission. I was able to complete it fairly easily at level 7 without a companion and only one aoe ability. I did think that having strong enemies be the only way to get power cells would be really really bad, but then I remembered that we're going to have shared tagging and hence shared loot - which mostly alleviates this issue.

 

It will still depend entirely on how well the respawn timers are tuned. Heroics have a long history of incredibly poorly balanced respawn timers that are extremely frustrating when more than one person is doing them. Hopefully this changes for 7.0 considering the somewhat enforced content cycles.

Not sure if this is the kind of scaling you're asking about.

 

But hitting for 30k hits in pvp, the same amount I was hitting in 5.0 when people had 250k less health, feels really terrible. Removing DCDs to help with the TTK doesn't work when you don't increase the damage players are doing while pretty dramatically increasing health pools. That has pretty much been the biggest problem in pvp the past few years, not the amount of dcds people have but just the fact nobody does any meaningful damage.

 

It could be that we were only in 306 gear or unoptimized 318 gear from the vendor that made feel that way, but even hitting the level 75 dummy I was hitting for pretty low numbers and that's 5 levels below me. I get that they might not want to go back to pre 4.0 surge nerfs scaling where if you knew what you were doing you could get genuinely global somebody and something like an ambush could do 80% of your health. But your abilities that are supposed to be big burst only doing around 10-15% is not enough damage to lower the TTK like they say they want. No amount of DCD pruning will change the TTK when players simply do no meaningful damage.

So as another wrinkle to this: you need to look at how bolster works in Flashpoints now too. Because while downscaling characters from level 80 to whatever still checks you against level 80 stat targets, meaning you'll never be at accuracy cap in downscaled content, the reverse is true for bolster. You're bumped up to level 80 for vet mode Flashpoints, but you're held to level 80 targets and the bolster doesn't give you enough accuracy to bring you to 110%, even if you're at 110% for your natural level. I noticed this on a level 75 character that was in full 306 gear, with 110% accuracy, and going into a Vet mode flashpoint dropped me to around 107%. Accuracy target for level 80 is almost 2700, bolster only takes you up to around 1900. This isn't how bolster works on the live server currently, a character that has 110% accuracy before bolster will have at least 110% after.

 

I assume this applies to Ops as well but I didn't test that. If anybody else wants to confirm it should be an easy test.

Edited November 7, 2021 by The-Kaitou-Kid

Something I noticed when I was doing the scaled content on planets that I think needs to be looked at is the amount of Alacrity we get.

 

I play a class that I use the 1.3 GCD on for the Live server. Now I know the formula is changed on PTS, so that changes to the 1.4 GCD when I gear up in 318-320 gear. However when I go to a planet my Alacrity rating goes down to single digits most of the time or at the highest 50. This needs to be looked at because DPS should have a consistent GCD for timing of the abilities they use. If I do FP's and Ops and my GCD is 1.4, and do Heroics/dailies and it's 1.5 because of the scaling that's not a good thing.

 

Plz make it so the Alacrity is left as it is in the gear specifically so people can keep the same Global cooldown through their entire play time.

Maybe this has been addressed already, but something's off. I tried the 7.0 PTS today for the first time with my level 75 marauder in full 306 gear. One of the first things I did was Tatooine heroics, and it honestly felt like I was doing a veteran mode star fortress. I did CZ-198 dailies right after, and that felt like it did when level 60 was the cap and before level syncing became a thing. By the time I was done with CZ, I was level 76 and proceeded to Oricon. Oricon felt fine and, again, similar to when when level 60 was the cap, and before level syncing. Also, all my class buffs kicked in once I reached level 76. I'm wondering if becoming level 76 had anything to do with it since going from level 70 to 71 on Ossus felt like I went from level 70 to level 65, for whatever odd reason, despite using the same 258 gear at the time.

Devs: scaling is a bit fecked on the current PTS (10th December)

 

318 gear as a concealment operative doing Tatooine heroics today... got my arse kicked. There's no veterans edge, and I checked my stats when synced down - oof. That can't be right I thought, so I went to check the actual numbers on live

 

Live: 306 irating, augmented - 6708 hitpoints, 331-380 damage, Accuracy 110%, Crit Chance 35%

 

Test: 318 irating, not augmented - 5980 hitpoints, 214-264 damage, Accuracy 102%, Crit Chance 18%

Edited December 10, 2021 by EHKodiak

Devs: scaling is a bit fecked on the current PTS (10th December)

 

318 gear as a concealment operative doing Tatooine heroics today... got my arse kicked. There's no veterans edge, and I checked my stats when synced down - oof. That can't be right I thought, so I went to check the actual numbers on live

 

Live: 306 irating, augmented - 6708 hitpoints, 331-380 damage, Accuracy 110%, Crit Chance 35%

 

Test: 318 irating, not augmented - 5980 hitpoints, 214-264 damage, Accuracy 102%, Crit Chance 18%

 

Yep. This is what I was trying to tell people when it came to gearing last PTS build. The stats are capped so low that no matter what gear we have it won't matter.

Devs: scaling is a bit fecked on the current PTS (10th December)

 

318 gear as a concealment operative doing Tatooine heroics today... got my arse kicked. There's no veterans edge, and I checked my stats when synced down - oof. That can't be right I thought, so I went to check the actual numbers on live

 

Live: 306 irating, augmented - 6708 hitpoints, 331-380 damage, Accuracy 110%, Crit Chance 35%

 

Test: 318 irating, not augmented - 5980 hitpoints, 214-264 damage, Accuracy 102%, Crit Chance 18%

 

Yeah, this is how scaling has been during almost every iteration of the PTS so I have to believe it's intentional. Essentially what's happening is that you're being synced to tertiary stat values that make sense for your synced level (on Tatooine that'd be like level 30-32 I think?) but you're being held to level 80 stat targets. So, for instance, you still need ~2700 Accuracy to have 110% Accuracy, which is outright impossible on most lower level planets/instances. This means your Accuracy, Crit Chance, Alacrity, etc, will all tank on synced planets.

 

Level sync and bolster are both in a bad spot in my opinion because of issues like this, would be really nice to see this iterated on and resolved before release.

Edited December 10, 2021 by The-Kaitou-Kid

Tried out level sync with the latest PTS phase soloing heroics on Voss and I still feel weaker in 320 gear than I do on live with maxed out 306 gear. Tertiary stat scaling is still utterly broken which is an even bigger issue now that the vast majority of players won't be allowed to mod their endgame gear. You can't even reach 110% accuracy with the 318 or 320 gear that's available on PTS, crit is 10-20% lower than on live and alacrity has similar issues.

 

It would be great if we could get some comments on what is happening with tertiary stats and why they have been altered in this way as right now it feels really really bad.

Would be great if they remove level sync

Im playing on a 3840 x 2160 Screen the big TV screen. When I set my desktop resolution to 1280 x 720 and in the game I adjust global scale to 1.25 and not everything is scalling properly, like Map after pressing M is cut in half the skill window too also Cartel market so it's not possible to buy stuff for cartel coisn. I hope you can repair this and forward this problem because from what I've researched many people have this problem and they hope that when the new update will be out in Feb 22 this issue can be repaired. Many people try Global scaling just because they want to see the items descriptions font bigger, because the letters are too small so to solve this problem many people are using global scaling in the game options so the letters can be bigger but the global scaling itself is not working properly and it's not scaling everything as it should like Map and some other windows. Please repair global scaling or add a feature for the items description font to be adjustable when you hover the mouse over them. From what I've been researching I found out that people have been asking for this for many years now and sometimes when they play on their TV or bigger screens the game is unplayable because letters and items descriptions are too small it makes the game simply unplayable.

 

Screenshots:

 

https://imgur.com/vy8vuOj

 

https://imgur.com/VBg4wJi

 

https://imgur.com/Ku0wkYE

 

https://imgur.com/Oi6Fq7E

 

https://imgur.com/KZVBHpw

 

https://imgur.com/qHzO5zt

 

https://imgur.com/A8SSNq0

 

Working properly:

 

https://imgur.com/LqgSWZO

 

 

With normal global scale (not adjusted and unplayable because of the font size):

 

 

https://imgur.com/HQPn7Nr

 

Please fix this because it's the game ruining core feature of the game that is absolutely broken for many years now.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Mopsmaster