Of all the things wrong in 7.0 this one grates me the most. What problem are they trying to solve with this move? Heroics are my favorite thing in the game to do, they are super chill, I can talk on discord and things while I'm doing them, they are a great way to relax (for me) On the PTS there are four planets to choose from, right now one of them is

Coruscant, which means there are only three because I'm not going to sit around for 45 minutes to "obtain a pass key"

All this change does is mean me playing less, it doesn't mean I will go do Nim OPs. It means I will log in less.

The FP change does what good? This week I won't get in queue for Hammer Station? KDY is on the FP list this week, so someone checks only KDY and now all I get is KDY every instance? Funny part is I queue 27 out of 27 FPs, and I don't get Hammer Station as nearly as people complain they do. Nothing has been solved from the player side with these changes that I can see, and, at least for me, you are discouraging logging in, not encouraging logging in.

It breaks my heart because I've seen other games go this route, thinking the answer is to remove choice and try and force people into certain content. What I don't usually see is people playing content they don't want to. They just don't play it and if the game doesn't offer something else, they don't log in.

I hope that 7.0 is a big success and I don't mean that sarcastically but with changes as drastic as the dev team is making in 7.0, I hope that they decide to be open and honest with the enduring fans of this game and explain to us why they are making these changes.

Well, I do not know if you stay on the fleet long enough to notice, since you are doing heroics only, but currently there is only two operations that people are doing. EV AND TC. The same with flashpoints, people only doing hammer station farm to get tons of gear and spam command crates and levels.

I believe this change was made to adress this issue. I am not entirely sure why the heroics got the axe as well, but it might have been the case, if we're doing these two, let's throw in another as well. As all pve content will be on rotation now, it doesn't give much freedom to the players and it sucks, especially with heroics. But operations needed that change. And flashpoints could get some love too.

How many times I have entered some of even older fps and people were completely unaware of tactics, hidden passages, shortcuts and avoiding pulls. Just blasting through everything like it's hammer time! And don't quote me with, let people play how they want. No. They can, but it just diminishes the overall level of a player of this game. It doesn't give a chance for new players to reach for newer content, learn it, enjoy it.

Quoting someone from the fleet: " Just spam TC and HS m8, you will get gear faster than any other path."

So yeah there was something terribly wrong and it needed a change.

That's it

Peace

For Heroics, at least if you mean the H2 quests from the Alliance terminal, the problem they're trying to solve is GTN credit inflation.

If you have a stealth class, and with 7.0 every character is potentially a stealth class, and know which heroics to run, you can pull in between 1 and 3 million credits per hour. Caveat, that this is if you're smart about selling the companion gifts on the GTN, so not all of that really contributes to inflation, maybe only a few hundred thousand credits, but it does add up if a lot of people do it multiple days per week. Same idea as behind slowing Conquest, they're trying to slow the rate at which the game issues new credits. They could dial rewards down, instead of limiting play time in a particular mode, but if you're a developer and are hoping for player retention you might think you can nudge people to play other parts of the game and avoid getting bored or burn-out. Not saying that that works, just that it's something the developers might be hoping for.

For groupfinder queues, it is targeted at people spamming the perceived easiest FPs for easy gearing. For starters, 7.0 doesn't have much in the way of content, so the devs need players to just recycle the old content. Then there's a clear focus on making 7.0 a long slow gear grind, because there's really nothing else to do (see lack of content). So to avoid player burnout due to repetition, and to reduce the rate at which people can gear by doing quick FPs, you force them to pick from a small random sub-set of FPs. Why not just add loot to entice players to enter less played content? Refer to the deliberate intent to make gearing a slow miserable grind, and to fight inflation. Basically, having significant in game rewards for playing the game is something they are trying to avoid, hence they're not willing to bribe people into content. There's also the consideration that there's a fraction of players that will just do the easy FPs regardless of reward. They might be trying to prod those players into playing other FPs.

TLDR: Trying to solve: credit inflation, player burnout from repetitious content, making end game gearing more grindy to try to disguise lack of new playable content.

Not saying these are good solutions, but they are trying to solve real problems from the developers' standpoint.

Coruscant, which means there are only three because I'm not going to sit around for 45 minutes to "obtain a pass key"

Except you shouldn't have to wait 45 minutes to get a key. Not even on live how it is and especially not on PTS. You don't have to group up or race to the mobs, mobs can be shared with people outside of your group, and you'll each get your own loot

Except you shouldn't have to wait 45 minutes to get a key. Not even on live how it is and especially not on PTS. You don't have to group up or race to the mobs, mobs can be shared with people outside of your group, and you'll each get your own loot

Good point

Quoting someone from the fleet: " Just spam TC and HS m8, you will get gear faster than any other path."

 

So yeah there was something terribly wrong and it needed a change.

Reduce the rewards from Hammer Station + Toborro's. In fact, reduce the rewards from all flashpoints and ops, and substantially increase the reward from random queuing for all FPs/OPs instead of specific ones, so the reward from the roulette outstrips the total reward from any single dungeon. Boom, done.

There's a smart way and a counterproductive way to solve problems like this. It's entirely possible to look at the dozens of other MMOs on the market who've had these problems and tried different solutions to solve them, and see which ones worked and which ones were ultimately detrimental to the game. It's beyond me why BioWare Austin has chosen not to do that, and insisted on repeating instead of learning from the mistakes of its peers.

Well, I do not know if you stay on the fleet long enough to notice, since you are doing heroics only, but currently there is only two operations that people are doing. EV AND TC. The same with flashpoints, people only doing hammer station farm to get tons of gear and spam command crates and levels.

 

I believe this change was made to adress this issue. I am not entirely sure why the heroics got the axe as well, but it might have been the case, if we're doing these two, let's throw in another as well. As all pve content will be on rotation now, it doesn't give much freedom to the players and it sucks, especially with heroics. But operations needed that change. And flashpoints could get some love too.

 

How many times I have entered some of even older fps and people were completely unaware of tactics, hidden passages, shortcuts and avoiding pulls. Just blasting through everything like it's hammer time! And don't quote me with, let people play how they want. No. They can, but it just diminishes the overall level of a player of this game. It doesn't give a chance for new players to reach for newer content, learn it, enjoy it.

 

Quoting someone from the fleet: " Just spam TC and HS m8, you will get gear faster than any other path."

 

So yeah there was something terribly wrong and it needed a change.

 

That's it

 

Peace

You could just untick Hammer Station you know? I did from time to time