My only question is how do we know if we are going to lose names or not? If Bioware is establishing a priority, there should be some way of knowing beforehand what names are going to be kept and what will be lost.

Are we ever gonna hear anything about Nahut, Scyva, and Izax? 5.5? The traitor and his or her plotline? The roadmap that is overdue? Something on the horizon? We are three weeks post 5.4 and mum is the word.

The get good argument people need to find another thread. The only practical reason this shouldn't be implemented is the resources it would take. Telling people they need to learn to play the game, or that solo content should be ignored is not the answer.

While i may not be a fan of the idea, I think it's really unfair to the OP that this thread has went really off track. People have hijacked the thread with making vanity items cm available and companions in ops and exactly NONE of that is productive to the discussion. The point of this thread is to discuss why or why not revamping oricon for solo content is a good idea. We should all stick to that, and not deviate on rogue agendas.

This is my last post to you, cause I don't feel like were getting anywhere or contributing to the discussion. The old content isn't keeping people around. The game literally only peaks when there is new content, and it peaks because people want to do the NEW content. Relying on old content isn't a solution- bioware already gambled on that once and it couldn't have failed worse. Did you read what I wrote? There are like a dozen different ways to gauge skill. Having a vanity item is not one. Anyone can get carried- it was never intended to convey the idea that "I did this well". It does convey just "I did it, even if I /stucked in a corner and no one else rolled against me." It's a reward for doing the content, not doing it well or even not for surviving. Also, for the sake of everyone on this thread, go buy the Wings and stop trying to make this your own agenda. You're actually hurting the argument of those who want this change.

I think you're making a unfair assumption that most of us who don't agree with you are elitist by nature. For the record, elitism is acting like you're better than someone because of skill or some other factor. I haven't seen people who have raided alleging that solo players are bad, I have seen them give reasons that this is not the best idea. So I'm gonna refute that. Let me clarify why bioware does not have the resources below. All of the things bioware would have to do to make this an operation soloable: Compose a team of seven characters (keep in mind everyone who stepped foot on unicorn went crazy) to carry you through Either: 1) Develop a new boss with new mechanics 2) Retune the Council fight for Solo Mode (something that has never been done on that scale) Retune fight HPs and damage from bosses Balance the fight so it is able to be completed by all three classes It's basically designing another boss, and bioware already has proven they can barely keep up with doing a boss every two months. I can't remember the last patch that added something substantial that wasn't torn apart via the forums. They need to be focusing on the new content that will save this game potentially. A change like this will not do that. Why would they then do this (which will likely throw that schedule off) for content that came out FOUR years ago that only a small subset of people will go back and do this way? I really sympathize with you. Should it have been implemented? Yes. Everyone should have access to the storylines. Does that mean correcting it is better than just accepting it in the current climate? No. But similarly, I also wish I go back and change a few things on my 8th Grade book report, so that I could have gotten an A instead of a B. C'est la vie.

You clearly miss the overall picture that if the game doesn't get the endgame back on track this game will not survive. The data proved they miscalculated on how important raiding was in the game, it stabilized communities on a lot of servers, and now most are BLEEDING players, especially when they see the current endgame content. This has to be rectified. They have to start making positive changes to this game so people don't jump on the forum every time there's a patch and rip bioware a new one. All of the little changes and implementations on stuff that has been accepted for a while now has been torn up- bestia farm, crystal swap. What if they screw the pooch on this? Then the solo players will be left SOL and MORE people will yell about how this was a waste of time. Maybe realize that there is the word multiplayer in the game genre and accept that not everything can be solved by our little mini god commanders, and that you get by with a little help from your friends. So is it really about the content here, or is it about getting access to older stuff? It sounds like you're trying to ride this to both. People still sell em. Guilds do because they fund progression. Raiding (especially now since everything is expensive as all get out) is extremely credit negative. Like I have 236's/242's on my main and it's 10k ish each time I die. Times that by eight (or sixteen) and that's 80k/160k PER PULL. A guild could drop a million or so credits PER NIGHT of raiding. New content can take weeks to get on clear. Instead of farming credits through mission runs or whatever or playing hands at trading, use what your successful at: raiding. It's a completely fair thing. The stuff (Wings, Grobthok Jr., etc) is representative of completion of the content, whether that achievement was done bc you were in a guild that server first'd it or whether you /stuck in a corner at the beginning. Bioware implemented many ways of determining how skilled someone was (ex. Nightmare Power titles, Timed Runs, Achievement Times, etc. etc.). Stuff simply says I did it- never how or why. Whether or not bioware decides to invest in redoing oricon, i dont know. I know however they will never make top tier raiding vanity items CM purchasable. And that is for the better.

Because it's not the same thing. Making a solo fp is easy. It's the same everything except you have a dummy dragging you through that tanks and heals. Most mechanics in the Forged Alliances were already forgivable because of tactical mode. It wasn't a stretch to make it solo from there. There is however no tactical operation. For an op you need at seven dummies that execute. Assuming they just kept the Dread Master's end fight, they'd have to figure out which mechanics to cut, which to keep, if they want to add new training wheels ones for a solo player, retune the fight. Oh and figure out who to add to the storylines (considering everyone else besides your character who stepped foot on Oricon went mad) Do you see the complications with this? this, content that was released four years ago, content that has come and gone.

Appearances are not what they seem. I have no problem with this in principle. I think that for new content they should make a solo mode which they pretty much do for everything now and all is well. My problem is that bioware is failing to deliver new content and people think that this is a good idea to do, when it so is clearly not. What scares me is that bioware might invest time into this and not actually focus on finishing Iokath, wrapping up this storyline effectively which is already in dire straights after Umbara, etc. Bioware is not even delivering new content at a reasonable level that is bug free. Whose to say they don't screw the pooch on this too? All in all, this content came out FOUR years ago. That's three expansions ago, 15 levels ago. I can spew off more facts. I actually looked back, Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball was the #1 single in the US when Dread War dropped. Feel the old The point of all of those random facts is it is not relevant any more and most people have seen the story indirectly or directly at this point. The amount of people who would generally benefit from this- i.e. super solo players who would care enough to go back to a story that has no relevance to the current direction of the game- is too small for the effort, plain and simple. My rationale is bioware's rationale for not making the content have a solo option- a) it wasn't in game, b) it was a storyline designed around raiding. That was the dominant theory then, and people just have to accept that. And no, it is not the same option. They would have to design at minimum a new quest (which wouldn't really make sense since all of unicorn is already fashioned to the questline, so they'd have to make a new area or something) or at worse a standalone ops like revan encounter (which wouldn't make sense bc who would be your allies, etc.) and its just not worth it. Stabilizing the playerbase with new content is the only hope this game still has. I get that the principles of this game have changed- people are now heavily skewed toward solo play, so much so that they certainly should not be ignored or punished. Which is why going forward yes all content should have solo features. But this update was from a time when group content was still heavily tied to endgame and that's how it operated, and that the opportunity cost of diverting time and resources from new content is too high for content released so long ago.

Oh, the old take one word out of context and attack trick. okay. It's really not gated. The gate is wide open, but the two posts are there. The posts represent the fact you have to actively use the chat box, find other players, group up, show the ever slightest bit of coordination (the only thing that matters in SM), and spend 60 minutes doing something to get the end result. But all of those things are easily doable. I'm sorry I don't remember when solo flashpoints started. Still, they're retroactively soloable, so there is literally zero bar to doing any of those now. And they have far more relevance to the storyline of the game than Dread Masters, which is a borderline aside on the main story.

It really wasn't. It was presented as a storyline that evolved from the previous operations. I don't get whats complicated about this. It's a story for a select class of players (raiders). It's almost no different than Shroud of Memory (a story for a select group of people). You had to sub to get shroud. You have to raid to do Dread Masters. It's gated content. Granted, the gate is practically wide open in this case for Oricon. You don't see people whining about Shroud (or well, people do, but they're widely rebuffed by people saying sorry not sorry). If you want to play a storyline all by yourself, there are many options. Class stories. All My Children starring Valkorion. Forged Alliances. But this was intended for raiders as it was a storyline for the raiding operations and it was done at a time when the second M in MMO still meant something. I never said bioware invested their time wisely. That's been proven in multiple threads and multiple "fixes" of things that make no sense. Bestia XP nerf and the crystal weapon swap come to mind. What I am saying it's very clear they are lacking the resources they possessed before Shadow of Revan. if you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe check the patch notes for frequency of substantial content updates back in 2012 vs now? I can't really help you with context clues. What I can say is this makes no sense. Why would you do this for the story aspect? It has no relevance any more, it happened like a decade ago in SWTOR time ish. There's been like several different power changes in the galaxy, we've been frozen in carbonite, etc etc. I'd rather focus on them writing a better story and executing something that people will really like. They need to focus on engaging people in new fresh content, not tweaking group content done back when this game was an MMO. I could maybe if this piece of content was in some way relevant to the new story lines but it isn't in any way. Hm, I don't know. Would you tell people directly you don't have the capacity to put out quality content like you did four or five years ago, or would you might have to infer that one on your own?

It was never made solo friendly for the plain and simple reason that the ENTIRE Dread Masters storyline (with some exception to Section X but not really since its still fairly separate) occurred in operations. Yavin and TOS was soloable because that was an extension of the main player story. Why if you played solo would you have done the lead in to the dread masters in EC, TFB, and SV? Also, Dread Fortress and Palace and the shortest two operations by a long stretch. They can be done in under an hour easy. No wipes on anything takes about 45 min each. The only mechanics I can think of in storymode that are one shot is Brontes clockwork phase if you miss the first one (which I think now has a DPS check that is nonexistent) and Tyrans simplification pattern (which is a generic border pattern). If you really want to do the story, they are not hard to do. It's not like there is any mechanic in there that is like the Underlurker cross or even the Aviela and Esne coordination checks. I get people hate group content but this is an MMO, and interacting with others is not a dirty word. There is a bolster, there is literally no reason anyone shouldn't be able to walk in to SM and get a clear. Bioware so does not have the resources. They can barely churn out content at the snail's pace were going now. And that content they do churn out often is filled with bugs galore or glaring issues. And you want them to go back to content that was released nearly FOUR years ago, invest time in making sure everyone has access to a story plot that doesn't even make any sense with the current plot of things, and change the way it works?

Hey, balance is hard. I don't dispute that- nobody's saying they have it easy, and I wouldn't expect them to nail it every time. I just have a high enough IQ (and a memory of fifth grade math) to know you can't solve a multi-variable problem by pretending that all variables but one, you know, don't vary.

Uh, I don't know what game you're playing, "kiddo", but Bioware is still running around fixing old random "bugs" (which have been established in game for years). They are still churning out too little new content for it, and haven't shown one palpable piece of evidence that says their focus is different. Nobody asked for the crystal swap change- nobody knew that it wasnt even intended! And Bestia farm is just stupid because it doesn't fit the "do KOTFE/KOTET narrative". It's ridiculous because the premise of an MMO is kill things= experience. Bioware changing that cause someone figured out some way they didn't like is dumb. The Sage changes were only asked for by a subset of PvPers who didn't have enough brain cells to realizes sages weren't the problem, warzone role imbalances were. The problem is and has always been Bioware focusing on the wrong things. They haven't started to turn the ship around. They're still not listening to the players, just they are saying they are. 5.3 and 5.4 both were disasters in implementation, the only bright spot was that Aviela and Esne was a good fight. Bioware needs to walk the walk and stop trying to tell us they walk the walk.

How can you balance around HPS? That's the dumbest argument I have ever heard. HPS varies wildly for a healer fight to fight and class to class in a way DPS doesn't. Does bioware just not care that their entire way of looking at balancing the healing classes is backwards? This "simplify everything" ideal that has dominated Bioware's decisions since Shadow of Revan doesn't work. You can't simplify healing down to a single variable. You can't even REALLY do it for dps (although it is a bit simpler to play with). It's time for Bioware to admit they were wrong, and say they'll fix class balance in the next expansion.

I honestly am starting to think the Devs are trying to expedite the shutdown of this game. It makes more of the decisions make sense.

Update: Following today's patch I have new additions to the list of bad things Bioware has done to the player base. The weekly cap on Alliance Recon Data prevents anyone from getting the SH for the week. Really? You make new content and then gate content off for no reason? This is what I'm talking about. You are discouraging people from trying to play the game for reasons that do not make sense. The traitor, whose identity I will not reveal, is probably the worst story plot point introduced in the entire KOTOR series. It only makes sense under certain conditions, and certainly doesn't make sense for everyone, and honestly feels like it was just done for shock value and without consideration of the character itself. The story has truly hit rock bottom. If someone forced me to choose between watching all of the rubbish dialog between Anakin and Padme in Attack of the Clones for infinity or the scenes from this FP, I'd probably chose the former. Stop simplifying the plot so that its the same generic stuff for everyone. IT DOES NOT WORK. Sometimes I think Biofail just wants people to stop playing so this game can die and they can move on to another project.

Bioware's entire approach- looking at a magic HPS number as some divine truth- is so wrong in the first place, I can't believe no one said "hey guys, this is a REALLY bad idea". This doesn't work when all three classes are really hard to balance (especially since it's been apparent since early 3.0 era that Bioware has no real clue how to balance sage healer against the other two) and have a ton of different metrics to separate the classes (raid utility, mobility, etc.). They should have considered playing with other elements of sage and not just, "well, we're gonna nerf basically everything, and obliterate the only positive thing the sage class has gotten since 2.0". Sages are now vastly underpreforming against Scoundrels and Commandos, so much so that several high end PvE guilds have their sages rolling something different. The data is there that in the high end content there is no reason to bring a sage over a commando or a scoundrel, assuming they're all equally skilled. It's not a learn to play thing, and it's really irritating to see a lot of people who probably don't really understand sages saying "you're just not good". They didn't bring sages in line, they ended up dropping them below the average. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if they had perks to their class (ex. maybe made salv worth using again, maybe add a supercharge esque buff etc etc), but this isn't the case. Sages do not have any advantage in raiding right now over scoundrel and commando, except that people say they are "easy" to play, which is rather subjective and I think is more a result of bioware oversimplifying the rotation over the last few years than actually being just inherently easy. The defensives was just a suggestion. If superbubble got nerfed so that sages were not so crazy in PvP, that would have been a better compromise between PvP crybabies (who weren't really mad because sages were good, but were mad cause they had to face several sage healers at once who thus wouldn't die) and, you know, sages who actually like raiding and don't like feeling like they need to reconsider which healer they main. Bringing this full circle back to bioware's focus problems, it's sad when the best thing bioware has done in months is announce they aren't touching scoundrels, because they dont have a way to balance them either! If only they did that for Sages...

Sage heals needed to be changed to keep the power but make them more vulnerable in PvP. What they did is literally make sages not viable for endgame pve content. The data shows that the best sages on the leaderboards are doing less hps than scoundrels and commandos and its not really debatable. There is zero reason now to take a sage over a scoundrel or commando in a void (assuming all three have equal play skills). Bioware should have looked at nerfing the defensive cooldowns and not ruined a class because of PvP forum rage. My only hope is they come to their senses and rebalance healing classes for the next expansion.

Uhh gear does not equal experience. I really don't have anything else to say on that, because it's just not true. And it's really annoying to not have gf because on my server people don't typically recruit for random FP's not in GF. If you're in a rough pug 99% of the time it's because people are slacking/being terrible/do not have the skills, even in Master Mode. Gear has never been a barrier to doing any group content, especially fps. It may make it more difficult, but it doesn't make it impossible.

I do not get half of the changes that are being made to this game anymore. Instead of going back and fixing trivial things you consider "bugs" (crystal swap in weapons/bestia farm) and using questionable decision making when balancing classes (nerfing sage heals instead of altering their defensives), start focusing on making new real content that isn't filled with bugs and problems (see Manaan Stronghold) and implementing more of the suggestions you get. How about changing something people ACTUALLY want? The entire forum raged over the 242 gear requirement for MM Umbara and it's still going forward. If you actually need 242 gear to do it (which would shock me considering gear has never been a serious barrier in almost any group content, especially flashpoints), then fine. But it is gonna look really stupid if I can do MM on my healers in 230's, or worse, with my alts in whatever gear they have from old content (like dread tier gear). I get its only for GF queue but it is still ridiculous because there are terribad players in 248s and amazing players in 230s- gear is too unrelated to be the entry ticket. Or how about fixing/improving/renovating the Manaan Stronghold? On the thread I made alone there is several pages of constructive criticism about how it could be improved, ranging from low hanging fruit like changing a hook here and there to adding more rooms. There was so many other threads though, some more volatile than others, which I get isn't easy to look at and discern positive changes. But it should be apparent from the range that the design missed the mark of what the overall group of people wanted, and that maybe improving it was in order. Still, nothing came of it. But making sure people can't farm bestia to level their 20th alt for whatever reason? That was important. (One might get the impression you are trying to force people into playing KOTFE/KOTET on their alts... it still won't work, the replay value just isn't there. I'd daily my way to 60-70 before doing that and I'm not alone. Maybe make BETTER content next time) "Fixing" things like this is only irking the people you still have playing the game. Focus on making changes that don't generate these kind of problems, focus on new content, focus on something productive. Then maybe not only will people not rage every time a new set of patch notes are posted, some people ~might~ even come back to subbing.

In defense of the criticism, they need to follow through with the transparency. Actions speak way louder than words and if they're trying to chance the precedent set they have to start showing it. For example, name ONE valid reason this game shouldn't have an open PTS. The people they are getting to critique comment are failing horribly or simply just searching for bugs and glitches and not evaluating the content itself. It makes no sense to not have open playerbase testing unless you just don't care. There is no content this game has put out since launch that has merited a closed private testing server.

I think the major problem right now is the ops tiers are all off because some ops go to nightmare mode and some don't. Doing Tyth HM is a lot different than doing TFB HM, which is A LOT different than doing EV HM. The DPS checks that I have seen are mostly in Gods of the Machine, Ravagers, and Temple of Sacrifice, which is justified. The previous ops in HMs mostly have mechanics checks, if I'm remembering correctly how things are tuned this tier.

For the record, they commented on it publicly that they were looking into it. That's not an admission of change, but they acknowledged the feedback and they know people will gripe if it is put in.

If by "most stable" you mean "most stable at ridiculous prices", then you are correct. I love TEH and play here for a lot of reasons but the economy here, especially in cartel market items, decos, etc., isn't perfect. People here blatantly exploit on prices because its an RP Server and there's quite a few infamous people who buy up the market and price fix on several different types of items consistently, and for the prices to stabilize it takes days (granted, the price fixing people usually set them to absurdly high prices). There's a lot of reasons Ebon Hawk is a really great server- lots of content options (RP/PvE/PvP/sometimes OWPvP), different mix of people, pretty good population, queue times aren't bad in primetime or even sometimes earlier, not nearly as volatile as harb- but the economy is not one of those reasons.