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Trash-free flashpoints?


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For as long as I've run FPs, I always hear about how such-and-such FP has too much trash (and it's not just Kaon, Chiss or Nathema) or how people would rather follow convoluted paths (and sometimes requiring tricky or glitchy jumps to perform; I've been yelled at on several occasions because I missed a jump) to evade trash.

 

And, of course, Red Reaper with 4 stealthers (assuming at least one of them can actually CC and interrupt) is the closest experience in the game to a trash-free FP and hence is run regularly. Speaking of which, for those that actually ran RR with 4 stealthers, do you feel the experience of running what amounts to a trash-free FP should be replicated in a future FP?

 

Now, a properly designed trash-free FP can still have boss fights with adds but not too many of them in a wave.

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Nathema and Chiss are nearly trash-free if you bring just one stealther. Have the stealther run to a check point, and everyone else jumps off a cliff and dies, they respawn at a check point.

 

On Chiss the stealther needs to be aware of some stealthed mobs though, as they appear in the middle of the path and unexperienced ppl usually manage to run straight into them... I think there's some mobs with stealth detection too, but I forgot which ones.

 

On Chiss, even if we don't have a stealther in the group, we just run to first boss popping cooldowns and slowing down & rooting the adds as much as possible. Most likely someone will make it to the first boss, and the whole group will respawn there after they die. Shame on BW for ruining a nice FP with so much annoying trash, that people don't even consider killing them all.

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Well, at what point does a trash-free Flashpoint stop being a flashpoint? If you just run through some area and fight a boss, that's about the same as just an ordinary World Boss fight.

I.E. New flashpoint, Tatooine Revenge: Travel to the Dune Sea and kill Trapjaw. The end. 🤔

😋

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Well, at what point does a trash-free Flashpoint stop being a flashpoint? If you just run through some area and fight a boss, that's about the same as just an ordinary World Boss fight.

I.E. New flashpoint, Tatooine Revenge: Travel to the Dune Sea and kill Trapjaw. The end. 🤔

😋

 

It doesn't stop being a FP until it becomes a single-boss kind of thing: running RR with 4 stealthers proved it decisively. You still need multiple bosses even if there was no trash between them, though.

 

On average, however, trash tends to be described as unengaging at best (unengaging enough for people to prefer taking routes with trick jumps or otherwise avoid fighting trash whenever feasible, no matter how risky) and tedious at worst (Kaon, Chiss) and bosses are usually much more engaging than trash in the same FP (or op), and often what makes FPs or ops even engaging at all.

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Good Day,

 

I am not sure if trash free FPs are the way to go, I think making the trash mobs more interesting and engaging should be the plan.

 

I would love to see this game take a page from the WoW book and institute a Mythic+ type system to get people interested in flashpoints. For those that don't know, the trash mobs in the dungeons have a lot of mechanics in WoW and the consequences for not dealing with or "trying to burn through them" usually means a wipe. The problem with SWTOR trash mobs for the most part is they don't have any mechanics or interrupts that really matter, it is just a bunch of stuff you have to AOE down endlessly to get to a boss, with no real consequences, in other words, boring.

 

There is a timer on the WoW dungeon, and beating the timer grants you a key that you can insert at the beginning of the next dungeon which increases the mobs and bosses health/dmg and there are certain mechanic affixes that gets added the higher key you go.

 

When the key gets high enough, it I actually a relief to get to the boss at times, because the trash mobs have so many mechanics and interrupts that HAVE to happen.

 

Maybe they don't need to take it to that extreme, and use the opportunity to improve somewhat on that system, but none the less, I think the ticket is to make the game more interesting and engaging, rather than taking out things.

 

The other nice part to being able to increase the difficulty of the flashpoint, is that you can give decent gear rewards. I am a little out of touch with the gearing system in this game, however, in WoW you can get heroic level gear from dungeons, and a weekly piece from your cache that will be mythic (NiM level). The other major issue with flashpoints in this game is the rewards have always been garbage, often not even dropping gear that is the same item level as the level suggested that you need to run the flashpoint. Once you get 100% completion on a flashpoint, is there ever any need to ever run it again without a reward?

 

Make them not boring and rewarding, and people will queue.

Edited by Akureng
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Good Day,

 

I am not sure if trash free FPs are the way to go, I think making the trash mobs more interesting and engaging should be the plan.

 

I would love to see this game take a page from the WoW book and institute a Mythic+ type system to get people interested in flashpoints. For those that don't know, the trash mobs in the dungeons have a lot of mechanics in WoW and the consequences for not dealing with or "trying to burn through them" usually means a wipe. The problem with SWTOR trash mobs for the most part is they don't have any mechanics or interrupts that really matter, it is just a bunch of stuff you have to AOE down endlessly to get to a boss, with no real consequences, in other words, boring.

 

There is a timer on the WoW dungeon, and beating the timer grants you a key that you can insert at the beginning of the next dungeon which increases the mobs and bosses health/dmg and there are certain mechanic affixes that gets added the higher key you go.

 

When the key gets high enough, it I actually a relief to get to the boss at times, because the trash mobs have so many mechanics and interrupts that HAVE to happen.

 

Maybe they don't need to take it to that extreme, and use the opportunity to improve somewhat on that system, but none the less, I think the ticket is to make the game more interesting and engaging, rather than taking out things.

 

The other nice part to being able to increase the difficulty of the flashpoint, is that you can give decent gear rewards. I am a little out of touch with the gearing system in this game, however, in WoW you can get heroic level gear from dungeons, and a weekly piece from your cache that will be mythic (NiM level). The other major issue with flashpoints in this game is the rewards have always been garbage, often not even dropping gear that is the same item level as the level suggested that you need to run the flashpoint. Once you get 100% completion on a flashpoint, is there ever any need to ever run it again without a reward?

 

Make them not boring and rewarding, and people will :)queue.

 

First, trash with mechanics has been tried: Kaon being the main one, Lost Island to a lesser extent, and Chiss/Nathema being very poorly executed in this regard, Meridian went back to mech-free trash. Even so, relying too much on trash led to accusations of lazy design.

 

Second, M+ affixes change weekly, and, with it, whether trash has the extra mechs or the bosses, or in what proportion. In WoW, there has also been complaints about excessive trash, even in M0. But that's as far as I know about it from an outsider perspective, beyond the timer forcing people to skip trash even when there's a clear risk of wiping by skipping said trash.

 

Given the diminishing patience of who's still playing, and, more importantly, BW's limited resources, I am more than convinced that trash-free is the way to go, and, if a trash-free FP proves to be well-liked and run regularly, maybe future FPs will be trash-free, too. But, if the boss mechs of a new trash-free FP are anywhere near the difficulty of Meridian... would it be enough to compensate for the absence of trash?

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tbh i just wish bioware made fps with a set time in mind, some fps can take up to 30 odd minutes. When **** like hammer/rr/cad take like 5-10.

Flashpoints are intended to be fun group content for people to play. They're not intended to be just something to rush through for quick rewards in as little time as possible.

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Flashpoints are intended to be fun group content for people to play. They're not intended to be just something to rush through for quick rewards in as little time as possible.

 

And yet, people will still want to rush through content, even more so now, so trash-free is definitely the way to go, especially given 1) who's still playing, 2) trash is often described as tedious and 3) BW's limited resources.

 

As for story reasons for why it would even be trash-free to begin with, it could be taking place in a derelict, orbital facility (much like the Theoretika), it could also be that a distraction could have driven the trash away, it could also be that some weapon has been fired at that area to which trash was not immune but bosses (and possibly adds as well) were.

 

Then again, do you think people will grit their teeth and learn to play better if clearing a trash-free FP (with bosses at the level of at least 3.0-era FP bosses) faster than even Hammer/RR (and has the rewards of such) actually requires an entire team to play well?

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I'd probably prefer less trash but far longer agro range on the remaining trash. For the FP story, trash is important, and walking by them clearly in field of view seems wrong. I know we've seen some of these FP's for years and do not care about the story in ex. Dir7 anymore, but to me it's part of the FP.

 

I even did all bonus objectives in a vet Dir7 a few days ago in just a random group. Ofc. i asked first if people wanted to, at least one of them never knew there was a bonus boss in there. Even killing a lot more trash than a normal Dir7 run, it was one of this weeks better FP runs i've done via groupfinder with 3 strangers.

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If you want a good example of how trash-free content can still be challenging, for those who play, or played, ESO, Cloudrest and Asylum Sanctorium are trash-free 12-person raids. Sure, a good team can clear these in ~10 minutes, or even less, and the fastest known Asylum run is about ~3.5 minutes or so. But don't go around thinking that sort of speed-run is feasible with just about anyone.
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  • 2 weeks later...
And yet, people will still want to rush through content, even more so now, so trash-free is definitely the way to go, especially given 1) who's still playing, 2) trash is often described as tedious and 3) BW's limited resources.

 

Agree on trash free, of all fps had their trash removed im pretty sure people wouldn't give a hoot about farming hammer/rr, since all fps would have a very similar clear time.

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I wouldn't like FPs without trash either. A boss needs its minions that are thrown against the heroes first. This is still also an RPG so please don't change FPs into more or less simple loot boxes. That it is possible to run through Taral V without killing any of those Imps we are at war with and even to ignore all but one of the bosses, irks me since I stepped into that FP for the first time back before even ROTH was released.

In general I do FPs for the fun of it and I actually hate the groups that think rushing HS or RR is fun, and everyone I did ask who is doing that says themselves, it isn't fun for them either, they just want the loot as fast and easy as possible. They don't have any real interest in FPs but think it's the fastest way to gear and thus a necessity to do for a while. (As far as my experience goes, it's actually faster to list random FPs with a guild group, more loot more tech fragments and more extra reward boxes (and a lot more fun than HS grind too :rolleyes:)

 

Also killing the trash along the way (not killing everything there is but neither doing ridiculous jumping sequences to avoid groups that just die as fast in a combined group effort) is a big part of how I get my conquest points every week. Would hate to get that taken away.

 

As someone who is involved in teaching new players in our guild how to tank and heal or deal damage in a group setup, I also have to say there is a significant difference between someone who already knows a bit how to deal with bigger trash groups of the more advanced FPs in comparison to those only doing HS or RR stealth runs.

Trash is not just there to bore players to death. In the more complex FPs those mixed groups of trash are always a chance for new tanks to learn how to build up threat on multiple targets, how to avoid damage income, DPS should learn about kill priorities (sadly most don't, and it doesn't really matter towards the success of the group) and interrupt or short stuns (Kaon, the enemies that stun the tank for example, how many DPS players these days care about freeing the tank? How many do even notice the tank is incapacitated?) and also how to deal with short term aggro on them. Depending how well the other two roles do their job there, healers learn how to deal with potentially several players taking damage and the estimation who might be more at risk and who is literally suicidal and not going to survive the next few seconds anyway. Bosses, especially single bosses, don't teach that the same way.

Though yes, due to the nerfs, trend to rush through everything and of course over-gearing that learning effect has been better in the past.

But I still stand by the point that trash is part of the training grounds FPs are for the more demanding content. It wouldn't do the game and the general quality of the player base any good to take that away.

Just think of the second and third boss encounters in DXUN it's both times 'how to deal with groups while moving through the area" and it really shows who knows how to deal with bigger and mixed groups, initial aggro from fresh spawns and who only knows how to sneak past trash or just attack what slips into target first. Bosses like the second in Traitor among the Chiss are also a show case of how well do the players know how to prioritise targets and deal with new add groups again and again.

Make trash groups more interesting or rewarding again, like dropping more than the pitiful credits here and there, or add either random loot or decorations for example. Make them unavoidable and asking for more than just tank jumping in and bomb away.

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Trash mobs are not there to wipe your group they are there to slow you down. 3 whites 2 silvers and 1 gold are not going to kill a group of lv 75-306 item level -286 auged out players. then you can choose to agro the next mob or heal up. There is 0 challenge to fp trash mobs before boss.

 

A big part of your conquest comes from killing random whites/sivlers/golds not the mission completion, odd.

 

At best tanking fps teaches you how to wrangle adds the fastest so dps can nuke them so you can get to the real meat and potatoes of the fp the bosses.

 

Making trash unavoidable? thats your solution? and you dont want your tank to just wrangle adds and nuke them, thats what every trash pull is. Tank pulls adds stacks them up all neat, and you nuke. thats what you do in dxun 2&3 boss so its odd that you wouldnt want that in fps.

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Trash mobs are not there to wipe your group they are there to slow you down. 3 whites 2 silvers and 1 gold are not going to kill a group of lv 75-306 item level -286 auged out players. then you can choose to agro the next mob or heal up. There is 0 challenge to fp trash mobs before boss.

 

A big part of your conquest comes from killing random whites/sivlers/golds not the mission completion, odd.

 

At best tanking fps teaches you how to wrangle adds the fastest so dps can nuke them so you can get to the real meat and potatoes of the fp the bosses.

 

Making trash unavoidable? thats your solution? and you dont want your tank to just wrangle adds and nuke them, thats what every trash pull is. Tank pulls adds stacks them up all neat, and you nuke. thats what you do in dxun 2&3 boss so its odd that you wouldnt want that in fps.

 

As I wrote those trash groups used to be harder, there were days those groups did wipe people if no one cared about kill order, interrupts or short stuns, these days of course 306 gear with 30 stacks and after quite some nerfs it's just 'bomb away', though maybe that is a big part of why it is perceived that boring. Personally I found the trash groups much more interesting back when they needed more tactic than just 'jump in and bomb', no matter if as tank, healer or DPS.

 

Trash/bosses made unavoidable was meant for FPs like Taral V where avoiding stuff is just extreme.

In DXUN SM yes, maybe, in HC I really do prefer to have players who have heard of focus fire and target priorities instead of mindlessly bombing on the first target they find with tab.

 

As for conquest, the finishing of a FP alone actually doesn't give that many conquest points, only the weekly does or the daily random when it's an objective.

Just did MM False Emperor, weak trash was 58 CPs per enemy, gold already were worth 443 CPs per enemy, considering the bosses and the FP mission each gave only 626 CPs in comparison, trash is not a waste of time but rather the bulk of the CPs earned in there (all numbers with full stronghold bonus). Did the HK bonus chapter(didn't look up what that actually added to conquest) and two FPs, one VM, Copero with someone sneaking through to the first boss, and one MM, False Emperor, where no trash on the direct way was skipped with a guild-less character today and was done with personal conquest without even finishing any weekly quest or special conquest objective (did not queue for all FPs so no extra for that either).

 

Even in the longer FPs the difference of killing stuff or skipping by jumping somewhere complicated maybe adds up to about 5 minutes all in all anyway. Over the course of most PUG FPs, you wait just as long for people being ready in conversations, to come through elevators or be ready to pull a boss or to find their way through those odd jumping spots or sometimes texture glitching used to skip trash.

While I can understand to stealth through the beginning of Copero as those vanishing enemies are annoying especially in VM without a tank, in Meridian for example it's really no difference at all whether you quickly kill stuff/kick them into the abyss or jump over boxes and wait for everyone to manage that. Just think how often in PUGs someone either pulls doing that anyway or gets stuck somewhere, in that time the trash group usually would have been killed several times over already (and added to the conquest goal)

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Sorry if I didn't make myself clear earlier, but trash-free FPs should only implemented for a new FP, on an experimental basis at first, and if the resulting trash-free FP is well liked and run regularly (although I have serious doubts about a new trash-free FP being run regularly if the bosses are as difficult as Meridian's) maybe more trash-free content will be released then.

 

Now, I know that, in WoW, Trial of the Crusader (which is a trash-free raid released in the Wrath days) suffered from several design issues that would still have happened even with trash.

 

For existing FPs, there ought to be some trash that could be removed (especially on the longer FPs) from some FPs without adversely affecting their difficulty, while the remaining trash could drop decos at a similar rate to ops trash. Bosses are much more critical to a FP's story than trash could be, and several FP stories could be told almost exactly the same without trash.

 

Even in the longer FPs the difference of killing stuff or skipping by jumping somewhere complicated maybe adds up to about 5 minutes all in all anyway. Over the course of most PUG FPs, you wait just as long for people being ready in conversations, to come through elevators or be ready to pull a boss or to find their way through those odd jumping spots or sometimes texture glitching used to skip trash.

 

Tython or Directive 7, I could understand adding up to about 5 minutes, but Taral V is the FP where the difference between killing trash on a direct path and skipping it with a convoluted, narrow path that includes a long sequence of jumps is the greatest, and Ilum presents the next-greatest opportunities for time savings by skipping trash. In both of these FPs the time savings are greater than 5 minutes (and in Taral V a lot greater), but not in the others. (Even one death from skipping trash after the second boss in Cademimu, or before the starting elevator in Meridian, can waste all the time you could hope to save)

 

Also, do you think a jump-intensive or puzzle-intensive trash-free FP would be well-received (even if it was CP-poor)?

 

I wouldn't like FPs without trash either. A boss needs its minions that are thrown against the heroes first. This is still also an RPG so please don't change FPs into more or less simple loot boxes. That it is possible to run through Taral V without killing any of those Imps we are at war with and even to ignore all but one of the bosses, irks me since I stepped into that FP for the first time back before even ROTHC was released.

 

If the big boss chooses to either:

- Lull the heroes in a false sense of security by holding back its minions until the heroes get to a point the big boss deems to be strategically important enough for a boss fight

- Dispense with the minions because past experience may have shown, to the boss' eyes, that minions are useless or otherwise inappropriate to deal with the sort of heroes our characters are

 

That would be a breath of fresh air compared to the current boss personalities, with most of the bosses that seem to place too much faith in minions. The above covers only two of the possible story premises I have in mind for why a new FP could be trash-free, but in the first case you would expect adds while the boss fight happens, in the second, you don't.

 

Other possible story premises could include:

- The FP taking place in a derelict facility (planet-side or space-borne, similar to the Theoretika or on, say, Ziost; however, in that case, expect a lot of jumping)

- A distraction (much like a plot point of Ch11 in KotFE, but more effective) that draws all the would-be trash away

- A strike has been conducted beforehand, using weapons to which bosses (and potentially adds) are immune but trash isn't immune

- Destitute and/or logistically depleted bosses

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It's interesting to note the conflict between those who suggest trash free FPs and those who want a separate GF queue for those who don't want to rush. 🤔

I would suggest that they aren't, as such, in conflict. If one person advocates both, that's a little strange, perhaps, but they aren't incompatible goals.

 

I I think it's reasonable (given the goals) to say that the trash-free FPs would end up reserved for the "rushers" queue, with full-story FPs being for the "no rush" crowd.

 

But in that case, why not have trash-bound and trash-free versions of the existing FPs, with some adjustment of the triggers for the bonus bosses, as needed. (Consider: in both BT and SLS, the bonus chain requires the party to kill substantial quantities of trash mobs, a trash-free BT/SLS would require those parts of the chain to be modified or even just removed.)

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I know that I also suggested a separate GF queue in the past, not so much to keep rushers out (I accepted that, even in more difficult content, such as Meridian, people would still rush it, the biggest difference being the skill floor to clear the content), but based on their difficulty instead, with higher rewards from FPs in the advanced queue.

 

As for a separate queue without trash, the most workable would be refitting VM, in which case bonus bosses should be unlockable unconditionally (much like 5.0 FPs' bonus bosses are unlockable unconditionally and hence I always ask for these when I run 5.0 FPs and Meridian) yet I acknowledge that doing this would make the transition from VM to MM harder than it currently is (and not just because people wouldn't be able to LOS for grouping unavoidable trash or sneak past trash that can be avoided, but these would be the primary things that would make transition from VM to MM harder if VM was trash-free and MM wasn't), and some FPs have trash-dependent objectives (Korriban, Blood Hunt) so these would be the hardest to rework.

 

However, Kaon is an outlier, where there just wouldn't be a story without trash.

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and some FPs have trash-dependent objectives (Korriban, Blood Hunt) so these would be the hardest to rework.

Perhaps this is an indication that the simple trash // boss dichotomy is false. Perhaps there are *three* categories of enemies in an FP:

* Trash Mobs (a good example being those guys between Yadira Bann and The General in BT - they serve no purpose other than to consume time).

* Bosses (needs no explanation).

* Objective Enemies (e.g. the four commanders in Korriban on the way to the droid boss)

 

Clearly a trash-free FP has no Trash Mobs, but equally clearly, if it is to have the minimum possible structural modification, it must have Objective Enemies if the full-whack version has Objective Enemies.

 

One might even argue that the guys in Korriban that accompany the commanders are Trash Mobs, while the commanders themselves are Objective Enemies.

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I look at Flashpoints like songs. A good one has lyrics (mobs) that lead to the chorus (bosses). The player doesn't even notice too much trash in a well balanced flashpoint. It needs to breath like a good song with parts that slow down or different types of dynamics. There could be cool scenery, areas, rooms, or things like the tram in MR or large elevators in Cad.

 

The last created Flashpoint in Corellia, I think, is absolutely aweful. Nothing but cityscape brown yuck, boring scenery, boring mob groups. I didn't think the bosses are very interesting. Again, imo. Whereas, DoM if very interesting with varied levels and interesting boss fights. BH has interesting boss fights. Kaon and LI are great FPs.

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I have no problem with trash in flashpoints, when it's inserted skillfully. I would hate a flashpoint with absolutely no trash and I don't want a 2nd Theoretika. But Iif it gets too tedious, repetitive, or even has way too high a HP pool, it gets lazy and becomes a time sink; Chiss trash was overwhelmingly a failure based on all of this. People have wasted half an hour fighting through the city and then having no idea what they're facing with the Guardian Droid and Syndic Zenta because the frash was so mindless.

 

Good trash should be like a good SM Op, it should prepare you mechanically for the big fish or the harder modes, no more and no less than that. Trash that only serves as a cheap way to keep you playing longer should be removed until something more creative is thought up.

Edited by MagicTerror
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