If they hadnt spent 8 months encouraging everyone to roll as many alts as possible with their 12x XP and level 60 tokens, you may have a point. But they did. That is where they, until now, have steered the longevity to come from.

Because there is no curve. Their own idea shows story to be the easiest part, and hard mode Sf the hardest solo content in the game. As designed, the game goes from one straight to the other. It is simply bad design. Big healing companions simply covered it up. Just like they covered up the poor AI that they have now that seems them stop healing or attacking or aggroing an entire instance at once, and that level sync doesnt work right in many ways, for instance it overides buffs given for specific missions (satille's on the revan weekly for instance).

There is disconnect between the devs and the game they create. They want the story to be easy, fair enough. Then they add heroic star fortress to the story. Which they want to be 'hard'. They need to at least be consistent. Companion AI is broken anyway, so I am unsure how they think their 'metrics' stack up no matter which way you sway on the issue, but if they want people to follow the story and have solo challenges in the game that is fine. What they shouldn't do is mix the two together. Which is where they are right now. If the story is easy all through, then the story (remember, this is not player choice, the game directs them this way) straight into heroic missions at the star fortress and on planets (and since the changes the higher level planets take far too long for the reward) then it will cause problems. Solo star fortress should be the unlock for the story quests.

Level sync overides the buff you get. If you are level 60, you do that fight with around 110k health and stats are boosted about the same due to the buff satille puts on you. At 65, you get level synced to level 62, at about 54k health. Thing is, revan is essentially still a flashpoint main boss, he crits for 20k when he hits you at times. Satille and lana, the two healers in the instance, are also suffering the 'stand there and watch you die' issue that our companions are having, so if they decide not to heal at the same time Revan charges you, you can be dead in about 3 seconds. I've posted about it in the main thread as part of the problem with the patch.

In my original post in this thread I mentioned that the only real outcome of this change was to make getting the alliance grind done take more time. Yes, its harder to do stuff now and some classes will struggle more than others (highlight how badly they have balanced both players and content) but ultimately that is the outcome of it. Here is the thing. Why do they want it to take longer? They just spent at least 8 months encouraging everyone to roll endless alts, with 12x xp and now level 60 tokens. That is the longevity for most players, you finish the story (which now includes those heroic star fortresses by design as well as the alliance) and then move on to an alt. This change also screws that as well. Did they actually think anything at all through? PS. Level sync still overides satile's buff in the Revan weekly mission on Yavin so you are fighting Revan with his 20k crits with around 50K of health. Who the hell tests this game.

Star wars of the living dead. Another sign of a well tested patch if ever there was one.

Last year the main content for me to do at max level wasn't the planetary missions I first did in 2011 either. The alliance stuff was a bit of a kick in the teeth for that reason, but when you could do a planets worth in half an hour you can put up with it. Now, when some of them like makeb can take triple that for what, 4 alliance boxes. Sorry, not fun. The sad thing is them worrying how fast any of us were doing it, I have plenty of other toons to get through, I wasn't going to stop playing the instant I hit alliance 20 with one of them. Now I have stopped doing alliance on any of them. I've been here a very long time, one of the first members of this forum and in game since the preorders got early access. The game now is in a worse state than I've ever seen it before.

Actually, while I've already outlined the issues with the nerf in my original post, another aspect of this is that as the game works, you have the two star fortress missions the wrong way around. The game itself requires you to do the heroic version to complete the story. The solo story that everyone just finished that eric classes as easy. Not the solo version, the heroic one. If you dont do them heroic one, you instantly lose 6 places in your mission log, because you cannot abandon the heroic quests that you automatically get for competing solo content. The whole thing is ill thought out and badly presented. The high power companions allowed us to ignore it all. They took that away, so now I will continually point out how badly they actually did in making the thing.

I mentioned in Musco's feedback thread that companion AI is majorly bugged anyway, and the bigger heals that 4.0 brought in mostly just masked the inadequacies of the coding that we now are suffering from (liek stopping healing you through a fight and then starting again). But there is more underlying issues I've seen including level sync. The best one is the solo Revan weekly on Yavin. The Jedi, satile I think her name is, used to give you a huge buff to help you survive the huge hits Revan puts out. Now, she still does it, but level sync overides it and you end up with about 54k health instead of what was double that. Revan still hits you for 20k crits though, of course. None of what they have done has been tested or thought through at all.

All my toons are level 65, mostly in 216 with a few using 208, all vendor bought. Toons with higher defenses and/or good off-heals can cope in most things. Static, low defense DPS (Marksman Sniper is my experience) are struggling with planetary heroics past level 40, companions cant heal fast enough, tanking isnt working right and dps is too low to blow mobs away in a dps race. In addition, healing companions have been broken since 4.0. They stop healing mid fight, wander off, do a crossword, anything but heal. Before this patch, they would spark into life and burst heal me for 20K, so this poor coding on your part was covered by the powerful heals. Now, after scratching their backsides, they decide to heal for about 6K instead, which doesnt make up for your poor AI coding and I die. Why did you not fix actual bugs before the ridiculous 75% cut in healing power? How can a professional development team even attempt to balance something that is actually broken already and not working properly? Above all, adding time to a long grind for alliance, which is all your changes do, simply makes the game not fun. Well done in taking the fun out of a game. I'm sure it meets all your goals and metrics.

I should clarify. It is not any harder now if you are well geared, play a class that has high defences or good off-healing abilities. You can waltz through H2 star fortress the same as before (I've done it on my Powertech). It simply takes longer. Planetary H2 take longer too, and those are just a grind for alliance boxes, it make sno sense to make that even more drudgery, because it isimply makes the game not fun. Once you get to the level 40+ planets it takes too much time to plough through these things. As I said though, your experience is gear and class dependent. My Marksman Sniper is having a tougher time, because companions have been broken since 4 came out, but now, that awkward bit where they stand there like dummies and watch you get close to death isnt followed by a 20k heal to make up for it. Its 6K, and you die. There are MAJOR issues with this patch beyond epeen solo bragging. The higher powered companions were covering up some really poor coding and broken mechanics, they left the broken stuff, took away the stuff that covered for it. That is straight up poor development. Some people will be having a tougher time with this through class, gear or inexperience. That is a BAD thing. I can do it, I still want it changing back. Why? Because the game was fun then, now its just a drudge to work through for boxes. The grind was bad when you could do a planets worth of heroics in 45 minutes or so. Add another half hour and it just becomes something I don;t want to do any more. It seems I'm not alone. Games should be fun. This was. Now it isnt.

Its not any harder now. It just takes more time. That is more time doing content I first did in 2011, for the same reward. And you think that is progression? HK does less damage now at level 65 and influence 41 than he did at level 60 and in full yavin gear. Is that progression too? Nothing in this game has ever been hard. Pretending there is difficulty now is just making excuses for conceited people who want something to show they are better and different in game. Its just a bigger time sink. That isnt a challenge, its just frustration for most of us who don't associate our toons with our own self worth.

Not just healing. Damage is the same. HK now is putting out less damage than pre 4 in Yavin gear. When he was 5 levels lower and the equivalent of influence 10. Hes now 41. Progression they say? All these changes do is make everything take more time (although my sniper is screwed with tanks not working well at all, my powertech is still fine). More time doing the content I first did in 2011 to grind for alliance boxes. Not any more challenging, not any more reward, just more time. And now we don;t have burst heals of 20K to paper over the shoddy coding that has a healer comp just stoiod there watching you die doing nothing, I will submit a bug report about it every time it happens from now on. I ignored it when the overall effect of the companions worked. No good lowering the heals if you arent going to fix the rest of the broken stuff it was covering for. Whoever is managing this process should be out of a job, its so poorly done.

Same with DPS. HK is doing damage now about on par with what he did at 60 with all the 192 gear from yavin mission reward. Except now hes 5 levels higher and at 41 influence. That doesnt sound like progression to me.

They didn't just go too far. The other problem is that the healing was covering over the fact that companions in 4 are actually broken to hell. Healing companions will simply stop healing mid-fight and watch you lose health. This wasn't a problem when they could then drop a 20k heal on you. Now its about 6k, and you die because of buggy AI. I didn't care about misfiring companions and healing comps that wander off to kill stuff and not heal before, because the overall effect worked. Now the fact that the companions are broken annoys me, because they have removed the bit that covered up for the shoddy coding. Another well done to the team.

For the killing paladins achievement, solo mode is the best way, much quicker. But when you do the alliance quests to get all the companions, you automatically get the quests for the HM star fortresses, and you either leave them there taking up space or do them. As far as know you can't abandon them. So even if you don't want the achievement for soloing the HM ones, you are more or less walked into having to do them at some point anyway. If you can find a group when you get that far and just try and get through it all is my best advice. Solo took some time before the changes, but it is much more of a time sink now for no good reason.

From someone who has still soloed hm star fortress after the patch, I want to tell you that it doesn't matter what he meant. The change is bad regardless. Why? Because the game is no fun now. I can still solo on my pyro (but I am sure I couldn't repeat it on a sniper marksman as it is now) but the point of the game is to have fun, right? It isn't fun. Its time consuming just for the sake of being time consuming. Planetary H2s are still pretty straightforward to do, they , the same, just take longer. That is turning what was already a grind for alliance stuff into a slog I just cannot be bothered with. Great change, makes me not want to play, well done all involved. It doesn't matter who can and cannot solo this or that, the point is that even for those who can, it isn't fun. It just takes more time. In other words, its a very, very poor change. I've played since the start, I think this is about as bad as the game has ever been.

It is doable still if you have the right class and good gear (augmented 208's at least). My Powertech did it, I havent tried, but the way tanks are, I doubt my sniper could. But heres the thing all the 'I soloed it so can you' guys are not telling you. It takes even longer to do (like 15 minutes for the last fight alone) and it is just not in any way fun. It doesn't matter who can or cannot solo any specific mission, if the whole thing is no longer fun, it doesn't matter! Even planetary H2's for the alliance boxes take longer now, and that was a grind to begin with. Its not about who can do something or not, its not fun whether you finish the mission or not. That is not the place the game needs to be. I think this is a poor change, makes the game worse and I have no doubt will lose players.

'Not Fun' is the key phrase here. I don't care who can still solo the heroic star fortress, I can on my Powertech, but I think my marksman sniper would struggle, but those arguments are missing the point. Doing those SF heroics took forever solo as it was, now they take even longer still. Successful or not at the attempt, its just boring as well as repetitive now. Even the planetary heroics for alliance boxes take longer, it was a grind that was bearable when you could just do them quickly, now its just Not Fun and take too much time for the rewards. People need to stop bothering about who can and cannot solo any given mission, if none of it is fun anymore, who the hell cares whether you can finish it or not? I've been here since launch, this is about the worst place the game has been in in all that time.

I started on the first day the forum opened. 335

I love my 100% lightside marauder. Some of the conversations with other sith as you level up turn out to be pretty funny, especially with vette around.

http://www.swtor.com/user/ce/842

That is a good point. On my server at least, Red Eclipse, everyone tends to just queue for those rather than a free for all, you get the odd one who desperately tries to click before everyone else but in general it works well/ The lurkers though, when its busy is the exact opposite, everyone trying to get their 10 kills by any means necessary when the resource is limited.

I've been involved with this game since its announcement, one of the first people registered on these forums and played since the early access. I've never been in an Operation because of the attitudes the OP describes so well. Indeed, these days I play mostly solo. I have no idea how the OP mechanics work in the game, and no desire to find out any more. In fact, the very best thing this game has brought to me in recent times have been Yavin and Ziost weeklies, as I can now get 44 elite per week on each toon I have to slowly get 192 gear for them without having to go through all the fighting and drama of PUG stuff. It has really made a big difference, and whilst they are repetitive, I actually have some character progression to aim for. Someone else said there would be similar threads on the front page of most MMO forums, and I agree. Back in the days of Everquest there were always some of this type of player, but maybe its just my memory, I don't remember it being so widespread. The community was a bit more helpful in those days, now every MMO is full of self centered types who would rather berate than help.

The costs will be an issue for some, but more importantly the principal of forcing players to pay for changes that devs instigated is just plain wrong. But in truth, the real problem is that costs outstrip earnings in the expansion. I'm halfway to level 59, just finished the first solo flashpoint on Rishi, and the only thing I have bought is training. I'm about 300K down on where I was when I started. My toon can afford it, so it doesnt affect me, but forcing people to grind old content to afford to train up when they should be enjoying the new stuff is just idiotic game design. PS, for anyone who has the expansion, DO NOT waste comms on 172 mods. You can do the FA flashpoint solos even in 156 gear, and quests on Rishi drop effective gear to keep you updated to 178. Save the comms for later, and dont waste cash either.