So, I had this thought, everybody seems to dislike the difficulty of content, or rather it being a drag and while it always was a drag to certain degree I'll have to admit that I understand why many of the PvE, PvP and conquest players quit.

 

In PvE the current problem is that some content, like gods MM, is just too hard - it's not realistic to do the timer on this patch no matter how good you are, what setup you play and how long you try. Saying it's impossible would probably not be true, but it's just not a realistic goal even for the best of the best. The easier content like DF and SnV can be cleared by many groups, but not nearly as many as before 7.0 - now this is not necessarily a bad thing don't get me wrong, but you couldn't even fix this if you tried. They would have to rebalance all content yet again and they simply lack the resources to do this, 7.1 gear still won't fix this - as a matter of fact it might barely help.

 

In PvP, with gear capped your stat pool is very weird due to it not counting augments and stuff. Now, while I do hope it's a bug even if they would work regs would be even more imbalanced, it is very concerning seeing the damage of e.g. engineering combos and to think they will do EVEN MORE with working augments.

 

In conquest-content aka all planetary content, all FP content seems to be taking too long due to main stats being scaled down. Now while I do think this is not bad it is far from optimal, your stats very simply do not matter and then why would you gear but with gear the only thing really worth grinding in 7.0 why would you play?

 

The solution: Alright, I suggest the dev team should change the diminishing returns calculations and make it more linear instead of logarithmic, not 100% linear of course, but just a bit less curved it you catch my drift. It would certainly be an improvement to get more stats out of your gear, especially for tanks and healers it really doesn't matter if you play 4.7k shield or 6.2k - the difference is not even noticeable because you are so far into these diminishing returns it just simply doesn't matter. For DPS specs like lightning, arsenal and carnage (OMGEALUL) could play 1.3 GCD while still having good crit and overall the classes would play a lot, and I mean a lot, nicer in PvE. The DPS checks would get... well easier but hopefully not too easy. Tanks could actually reach the, almost (if no marauder), required 85% defense chance on their MR cooldowns.

For PvP this could be critical since the bursts of classes like engineering are already above 100k damage, yes it does take 5 GCDs to setup to get the maximum, but it could still do more than 50% damage + a stun that doesn't even require LoS. But this is what they wanted to do right? They wanted to lower the TTK and it is still around the same because you just have a bigger health pool, they wanted to reduce it? Well this is the way to do it, to be fair this would be insane in teamranked and would probably make the gamemode... unplayable due to AOE setups, but who even plays teamranked - even Quanny made a video about him quitting. It will probably get removed with 7.2 (so in like 1 year ) anyway.

FP and story content would get easier, just like everybody seems to want (?) and master mode chapters would be reasonable to solo again.

 

I just think it is unreasonable to expect the dev team to rebalance ALL content AGAIN after they've done this 2 months prior to day so they won't do that. However changing the diminishing returns would solve most problems - and yes it is more than just likely this would break some random quest on Nar Shaddaa or something weird like that, I do think it's worth at least trying to do that. Surely it can't be too much to ask for to change a few multipliers right? I can absolutely understand people quitting, I can understand the devs not changing scaling and balancing, because they just did that! So: to fix balancing, especially for OPs and story content you could change these calculations and see what happens? Heck they released stuff with the WIP symbol on it once or twice before, and if it really breaks PvP by that much just scale the gear down or implement hard caps - not the best way to handle it, but getting actually playable HM and MM content, together with story balancing would initially fix a lot of the complaints while not delaying the development of the much needed new content.

 

I'm curious to hear some thoughts about this. It's never possible to make everybody happy, and no steam chart doesn't show how many people play - but it shows the general direction of if the people come or go, and it's not looking good. There needs to be a fast, relatively conservative solution - and it's not the new gear in 7.1, it won't change much - even with new augments who are rumored to give A LOT of more stats, what does it matter if you keep hitting into the diminishing returns.

As far as stats, last they said they want to return Accuracy to the way it was in 6.0. It won't scale down. You will be able to be accuracy-capped in all content, including low level stuff. They are also thinking about doing this with Alacrity, but they haven't decided yet.

 

As far as flashpoints, master mode might be too hard -- I don't have enough experience with them -- but veteran flashpoints don't need to be made easier. They are at the right difficulty now because low level characters can actually contribute, whereas before in 6.0 low levels were a liability. A group of 4 low levels couldn't complete Cademimu in 6.0. They can in 7.0. That's how it should be. Any combination of levels and disciplines should be able to finish veteran, and that's pretty much true except for Nathema final boss because it's a DPS race. Nathema final boss is the only one Bioware should change for veteran, just remove the stacking damage in the final phase.

I'm curious to hear some thoughts about this.

Thoughts:

There are as many opinions as to the state of play, its difficulty, and its satisfaction level as there are players.

Regarding your post, dig a bit into the recent past and you'll find a ton of "game is too easy" threads.

So, I had this thought, everybody seems to dislike the difficulty of content, or rather it being a drag and while it always was a drag to certain degree I'll have to admit that I understand why many of the PvE, PvP and conquest players quit.

 

In PvE the current problem is that some content, like gods MM, is just too hard - it's not realistic to do the timer on this patch no matter how good you are, what setup you play and how long you try. Saying it's impossible would probably not be true, but it's just not a realistic goal even for the best of the best. The easier content like DF and SnV can be cleared by many groups, but not nearly as many as before 7.0 - now this is not necessarily a bad thing don't get me wrong, but you couldn't even fix this if you tried. They would have to rebalance all content yet again and they simply lack the resources to do this, 7.1 gear still won't fix this - as a matter of fact it might barely help.

 

In PvP, with gear capped your stat pool is very weird due to it not counting augments and stuff. Now, while I do hope it's a bug even if they would work regs would be even more imbalanced, it is very concerning seeing the damage of e.g. engineering combos and to think they will do EVEN MORE with working augments.

 

In conquest-content aka all planetary content, all FP content seems to be taking too long due to main stats being scaled down. Now while I do think this is not bad it is far from optimal, your stats very simply do not matter and then why would you gear but with gear the only thing really worth grinding in 7.0 why would you play?

 

The solution: Alright, I suggest the dev team should change the diminishing returns calculations and make it more linear instead of logarithmic, not 100% linear of course, but just a bit less curved it you catch my drift. It would certainly be an improvement to get more stats out of your gear, especially for tanks and healers it really doesn't matter if you play 4.7k shield or 6.2k - the difference is not even noticeable because you are so far into these diminishing returns it just simply doesn't matter. For DPS specs like lightning, arsenal and carnage (OMGEALUL) could play 1.3 GCD while still having good crit and overall the classes would play a lot, and I mean a lot, nicer in PvE. The DPS checks would get... well easier but hopefully not too easy. Tanks could actually reach the, almost (if no marauder), required 85% defense chance on their MR cooldowns.

For PvP this could be critical since the bursts of classes like engineering are already above 100k damage, yes it does take 5 GCDs to setup to get the maximum, but it could still do more than 50% damage + a stun that doesn't even require LoS. But this is what they wanted to do right? They wanted to lower the TTK and it is still around the same because you just have a bigger health pool, they wanted to reduce it? Well this is the way to do it, to be fair this would be insane in teamranked and would probably make the gamemode... unplayable due to AOE setups, but who even plays teamranked - even Quanny made a video about him quitting. It will probably get removed with 7.2 (so in like 1 year ) anyway.

FP and story content would get easier, just like everybody seems to want (?) and master mode chapters would be reasonable to solo again.

 

I just think it is unreasonable to expect the dev team to rebalance ALL content AGAIN after they've done this 2 months prior to day so they won't do that. However changing the diminishing returns would solve most problems - and yes it is more than just likely this would break some random quest on Nar Shaddaa or something weird like that, I do think it's worth at least trying to do that. Surely it can't be too much to ask for to change a few multipliers right? I can absolutely understand people quitting, I can understand the devs not changing scaling and balancing, because they just did that! So: to fix balancing, especially for OPs and story content you could change these calculations and see what happens? Heck they released stuff with the WIP symbol on it once or twice before, and if it really breaks PvP by that much just scale the gear down or implement hard caps - not the best way to handle it, but getting actually playable HM and MM content, together with story balancing would initially fix a lot of the complaints while not delaying the development of the much needed new content.

 

I'm curious to hear some thoughts about this. It's never possible to make everybody happy, and no steam chart doesn't show how many people play - but it shows the general direction of if the people come or go, and it's not looking good. There needs to be a fast, relatively conservative solution - and it's not the new gear in 7.1, it won't change much - even with new augments who are rumored to give A LOT of more stats, what does it matter if you keep hitting into the diminishing returns.

 

** I appreciate the fact that you are genuinely looking at solutions! WE may not always agree ... but I do like this! (much appreciated).

 

** I'm not up to speed on the tech-no-babble (as you no doubt have already surmised from the rest of my posts). BUT I do think that needs to be a solution where players can enjoy SWTOR once again.

 

** I have often suggested something like the following: Having the availability of Multiple levels of difficulty for both SOLO and GROUP interaction.

 

** Those levels might look something like this:

Group:

* Story mode: (yes there are some folks out there that might still desire to go through different parts of the game in groups ... but still at a less aggressive level of play.

* Veteran mode: Obviously for "veterans" of SWTOR that prefer a bit more of a challenge.

* Eliete mode: Seriously increased level of difficulty

(it should be noted that some might further suggest a 4th level in between Veteran and Eliete)

 

SOLO:

* Story mode: (self explanatory)

* Veteran mode: Same idea as group veteran ... higher level of difficulty yet still doable as "solo"

* Eliete mode: seriously increased level of difficulty.

It should also be noted that for solo there might also be a 4th level in between "veteran" and "Eliete".

 

Yes rewards earned would be reflective of the level of play. ALL gear would be made available to all players. (Some might take longer to acquire based on level of engagement).

 

Obviously a lot of details to be hammered out! I do believe that we have seen the introduction to this concept (of sorts) in the availability of repeatable chapters of KOTFE / ET. My overall thought behind this is "IF it can be instanced .. that part of the game should be able to set for different levels of difficulty.

 

As for "group" players... IMO the leader of the group should be able to set (or select) the level desired. It is also conceivable that a part of the equation of determining the level and number of "mobs" could be at least partially determined by the number of players and the level of equipment they are wearing. Something similar to this was done way back about 15 to 18 years ago with SFC: OP. And that seemed to work pretty good.

 

Any how ... just a few thoughts. BTW... OP ... Well done!

They could start by fixing it so color crystals and augments work again in level synced content. That would have an immediate impact on balance since the NPCs were balanced against characters having functioning color crystals and augments (It would also make low level augments a viable power up since Level Sync isn't a hard cap anymore and the power of your gear in unsynced areas does impact it's power in synced areas).

Thoughts:

There are as many opinions as to the state of play, its difficulty, and its satisfaction level as there are players.

Regarding your post, dig a bit into the recent past and you'll find a ton of "game is too easy" threads.

 

Yes it is, I love 7.0 and OPs being a challange, doesn't mean it is what I think should be happening. If only 16 people can clear Gods 2/5 it's fun for these 16 people and soon there is nobody left you can play with, or pug NiM ops.

As for "group" players... IMO the leader of the group should be able to set (or select) the level desired. It is also conceivable that a part of the equation of determining the level and number of "mobs" could be at least partially determined by the number of players and the level of equipment they are wearing. Something similar to this was done way back about 15 to 18 years ago with SFC: OP. And that seemed to work pretty good.

 

Any how ... just a few thoughts. BTW... OP ... Well done!

 

Well, that is my point. Having a higher gearscore will be a lot less impactful then it was in the past. Especially for raiding content where there's no bolster the effect should be big. But the numbers are so big that the % value relative to the number cannot change enough.

 

What I'm basically saying is that woth more gear the content will still be too hard because you don't less of an increase for more of your stats, that is why you don't just stack crit too.

They could start by fixing it so color crystals and augments work again in level synced content. That would have an immediate impact on balance since the NPCs were balanced against characters having functioning color crystals and augments (It would also make low level augments a viable power up since Level Sync isn't a hard cap anymore and the power of your gear in unsynced areas does impact it's power in synced areas).

 

Sure, I couldn't care less if planets are scaled or not, it juat doesn't matter to me at all. What I'm saying is that even future gear won't increase your damage by nearly as much as it should, which is also true on planets - and the immediate solution is to make your current gear just simply give more stats, or not more sorry - but the current gear with the same stats should give you a higher % value in the details tab. Due to planets scaling the raw values of course it doesn't impact planets by much - but they aren't overtuned by much either, or at least I could imagine someone dying in H2s.

Well, that is my point. Having a higher gearscore will be a lot less impactful then it was in the past. Especially for raiding content where there's no bolster the effect should be big. But the numbers are so big that the % value relative to the number cannot change enough.

 

What I'm basically saying is that woth more gear the content will still be too hard because you don't less of an increase for more of your stats, that is why you don't just stack crit too.

 

Well yes ... and no!

 

I'm kind of one of those odd ducks! Hey I'll admit it! I'm OLD ... and (for the most part) slower than you are!! That does NOT mean that I don't want to do some stuff that a lot of solo players just don't want to mess with!

 

Just for example ... running a gauntlet (so to speak) ... by the time I'm done with the first "group" of basic mobs (and consequent looting) .. you're probably a 100 years ahead of me! ( well .. you get the idea).

 

I use the "stats" (believe it or not). I use them to help "compensate" for areas where I'm not as fast as I use to be. Some of that is hand/eye coordination .. some of it is just plain age!! BUT !!! I don't expect everyone else to do things the way I do!! I just don't. I usually don't try to speak of others playing this game because 98% of them are younger (probably MUCH younger) than I am. That also means that their approach to stuff is different!

 

So what does all of that mean?? Frankly I'm not sure what technobabble stuff to throw out there to make sense. Sorry ... ( What I wouldn't give to be able to run this stuff through where it made sense to most of you).

 

What I can tell you is that some major stuff went south in 7.0 (Companions .. gearing .. maybe a combination of all of it at one time) ... and maybe a couple of bugs thrown in the middle of all of this which makes it even more confusing!

 

What I do know is that gearing / impact data has pretty much always been a thing in games. I have played others: SFC: OP ... WoW .. STO (still doing that one). AND even on STO I can change the difficulty levels. I have done that from time to time. I usually run in the middle (not the easy one ... And almost never the really hard one).

 

Sooo why not do that here? I dunno ... but why not try it ?

 

Sorry for the rambling thing tonight. I just found out dad has covid (for a second time) .. and he's not doing so hot! So I didn't take the time to really push this through the old grind and all that jaz.

 

HEY! I hope this makes some sense. I do appreciate your giving some thoughts to actual solutions though!! Tip of the hat to ya!!