Things they have done to make the game easier 1) increased xp gain rate 2) increased companion strength (the complaints were about performance in heroics no leveling play) 3) increased xp rate a second time 4) reduced mob strength in heroics so they could be soloed 5) increased gear ratings 6) added level sync (which allowed very high level characters to stomp low level NPCs and get rewarded for it) 7) Changed level sync to allow even higher levels of stats with no cap. in no particular order There's more but we can stop there. Those are the highlights 7.0 was hated because it was a massive disappointment for a 10 year anniversary update after all the build-up not to mention being delayed and not fixing any of the bugs pointed out in the first or second PTS testing.

Apparently they forgot to add it to their reasons for canceling their subs when they quit because Bioware has done nothing that would indicate large numbers of players quit because the leveling content was too easy. They have only made it easier (including with 7.0). In 7.0 they had mobs do more damage but turned right around and gave everyone more health by uncapping the endurance stat (along with all the other ones that increased the damage players did)

They are not actually bracers, they are gifts for Amity. It has the wrong picture.

By far the vast majority of players left SWTOR before 3.0 which was when the game was first simplified and XP gains increased. Their leaving had nothing to do with leveling difficulty because they left long before anything changed. Edit: later players left because Bioware kept ricocheting from one type of content to a different content instead of providing everyone with something.

That I wouldn't disagree with as long as the choice of difficulty is optional. I think though you will find that most people doing "harder" content do not think achievements, titles, or cosmetics are sufficiently rewarding. Look at all the complaining about the gearing system that went on and how certain posters were dead set against cosmetic only rewards for "harder" content. They wanted a concrete advantage from doing it. Soloing FPs, Heroics, and even World Bosses in vanilla was actually quite easy (very few had any multiplayer mechanics). All you needed to be was 6 levels above the content (for Heroic 4s and World Bosses you needed to be 10 levels above) and the NPCs did virtually no damage to you. I think it would be more accurate to say Bioware didn't expect people to try to solo FPs

It would take resources far in excess of the value to change the mechanics of NPCs to make them more challenging.

But it's already too easy for them so they should get less rewards right. Less challenging = less rewards in your book right?

Equally probable is that the players currently playing the game find the difficulty just fine and don't come here to complain about it. After all, how often do you see a "I love the way this works" post.

The "gimicky stuff" is how you fix the issue for the people who have a problem with not feeling challenged while not imposing your preferences on someone else. Is it perfect?, no, but it is most certainly an option to increase difficulty (and most definitely the direction Bioware should take in creating an optional difficulty increase should they choose to do so). In fact most of it is just an extension of something that already exists in the game (Level Sync), which doesn't work properly on low level planets on its own and is why you need these extra "gimmicks" to create more challenge. What you and the other "game is too easy" people continue to fail to realize is that the game is functioning exactly the same as it did at launch. When you massively out-leveled the content at launch it was trivial (heck I used to solo World Bosses for the weekly gearing crystals, try doing that now and tell me how easy it is). It is exactly the same now (nothing different other than the pace at which you increase in level). The problem now is that experienced players with BIS gear and max influence companions are so much more powerful than someone playing their first character, that balancing the entire game around anything is all but impossible. Make it hard enough for the elites to feel challenged even slightly and it becomes a massive uninteresting slog where the tedious combat muddles the story (oh, I have to stop my story progression and grind mobs for a couple of levels so I can take on the next planet's story). The correct solution is to nerf the elites further (as an option) in the "trivial" content, not increase the overall difficulty of the game. It is just wishful thinking to believe people left the game because it was too easy when back at launch all the clamoring was about how difficult (mostly read time consuming) it was for players to get their second or third alt to endgame. Bioware responded to those requests by speeding up leveling which leads us to where we are now with overleveled characters trivializing the low end content and then complaining it is too easy.

The self-sabotage as you put it is mechanistically the same as making the game harder except that it impacts only those finding the game too easy. You have called for increasing the damage of the mobs. That is functionally equivalent to reducing your gear rating and companion strength. The difference between what you are suggesting and what others in the thread have suggested is that your suggestion impacts everyone else negatively while the optional approach allows people to play the game the "hard" way if they choose or go the easy route if they find it more fun and fun is what games are all about.

Yeah, that one went from nearly impossible on level at launch to nothing at all now. The Voice of the Emperor insta-kill takes a long time to charge up and with his reduced health in that low level instance, you can pretty safely ignore it. He'll be dead long before the channel completes. It's kind of like the insta-kill ability of the Golden Droid on Makeb, though the droid usually gets to use it before you can take it out so you need to get your positioning right.

Challenge in SWTOR is no different than any other MMO. When you massively over-level/overpower what you are fighting, it becomes extremely easy. Level Sync is largely ineffective on the first 2 or 3 planets because your abilities change so fast and it ends up being the abilities that are a major driver in how easy the content is at that level. Once you get past those first couple planets, level sync starts to "work" in that the fights become longer. The closer you keep your character to the level of what you are fighting the more "challenging" it becomes. You are not going to die often from the leveling content but you can end up taking lots of damage and with the increased repair costs, it can start to be a challenge to keep your gear repaired unless you are making major forays outside the basic leveling content to acquire credits (selling stuff on the GTN, running dailies and weeklies, and doing heroics). Even at launch, leveling content was not difficult, just tedious (and over-leveling was the way to solve difficult fights and even solo heroics, flashpoints, and world bosses). 1) Try keeping your level on par with the content (don't use xp boosts wherever possible and avoid rested xp). You could also use a f2p account which gets 20% less xp that a sub account or if you have one, use a White Acute Module, available from a Gree vendor on the Fleet during double xp events, it is legacy bound so you can move it freely between characters through the mail or a legacy bank 2) Only use the gear that drops from the class story or planetary story missions (heroic gear is very over-powered compared to the leveling content) 3) Create a special toolbar that only contains the abilities you would have available to you if you were the same level as the planetary maximum and only use those abilities in combat. Using high level abilities against low level foes (even as few as 5 levels higher) can seriously unbalance the encounter since the NPCs were not built with those abilities in mind. 4) Only level your companions (Influence from Presence stat) through the story missions (no gifts or boosts) and keep them set to the role they had in the original game instead of using them as heals all the time. If you use high influence companions, they will quickly overwhelm the lower level NPCs ability to do damage (or take damage in the case of DPS companions). 5) On low level planets, collected datacrons in your legacy can be the majority of your stats making your character very overpowered for the level since as long as you are below the planet level, stat reductions from level sync are not applied. Playing storylines on the European servers from the US (or vice versa) is not particularly impacted by lag so you could start a new legacy there with no datacrons or boosts if your main legacy is filled out. There are some places where there is nothing you can do to make the fight any more challenging due to the way level sync works on NPCs. The Emperor fight for the JK and the Baras fight for the SW occur on a low level planet and with level sync are now very easy with a high level character. This is something Bioware should look at fixing. Placing Chapter bosses in instanced areas set to the level they are supposed to be would go a long way to making these fights more interesting. KotFE and KotET are a different story in that they have multiple levels of difficulty available for leveling but in the "easy" mode some of the fights are very challenging for certain classes when played with KotFE/KotET gear and level.

There were quite a few changes. I think there was a Dev Post back around when 7.0 launched that explained the changes and the rationale behind them. A bit of a summary: 1) Prior to 7.0 only Mastery, Power and Endurance were adjusted (and they were hard capped at a specific value per planet/area). After 7.0 all statistics except Alacrity and Accuracy are scaled back based on how much of the ability you have so a high mastery build is still a high mastery build after level sync is applied. (Originally Alacrity and Accuracy were also going to be synced but that was changed before 7.0 launched. 2) Since abilities were hard capped prior to 7.0, stims, procced relics, and other temporary increases to abilities were ignored if you were already over the cap. 7.0 changed this and those items now add on top of your synced stat. 3) Presence was initially hard capped (when 7.0 launched) making all companions regardless of influence more or less exactly the same performance-wise. This was changed for 7.0 to recognize that at the time, getting a comp to level 50 required a significant amount of resources. (Its a lot easier now to get level 50 comps with Galactic Seasons) 4) Datacrons only added up to the cap and anything over that was not applied prior to 7.0. In 7.0 all legacy adjustments to stats are applied in full (with the exception of crit I believe) There were a couple other things including the lowering of the level sync "level" for the planets and some gear penalties if you were using old gear that applied before the level sync stat calculation. Primarily this targeted the old 306 gear to get people to stop using it and grind the new gear (removal of gear bonuses based on how many pieces you had were also removed as part of this process) All in all, the current level sync system is quite different from the old system. Edit: One other thing that happened was that all color crystals no longer add to your stats. They are cosmetic only. Edit 2: Here is the Bioware Post: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/921183-level-sync-update/

Three things determine survivability against mobs: 1) your level (if you are 10 or more levels above the mob level you take next to no damage). This is leftover code from game launch where out-leveling content was how you solved difficulty issues. It used to be the trick to soloing heroics and flashpoints (and even World Bosses) before Level Sync but the effect is still there. 2) Your health which is determined by your level, your endurance stat, and any bonuses from various abilities. Some classes have baked in damage resistance which can overwhelm the damage output of the NPCs if the character is high enough level 3) Your gear (which directly affects your stats and may have built in damage resistance). With the change to level sync since 7.0, there is no longer a hard cap on any ability so better gear = better stats always (even true when comparing "level 10" gear to "level 20" gear). Your Presence stat can also have a large impact as the companion healing keeps you from losing hit points (and most of them have a damage resistance ability which also increase in strength with your Presence stat). The higher your Presence the less damage your take. These items can be adjusted for you specifically without impacting players with lower levels of them. If you just boost the damage to the point it is "pushing" a high level (or high stat) character, lower level characters will start to fail regularly and will be hit with extremely high repair bills (which they are also likely not to be able to afford).

The not dying problem is related to your health and the comps healing ability not the damage output of the NPC (Bioware in fact increased the damage output of all NPCs with one of the 7.0 patches).

You're right on this one. Suppressive fire is way overpowered even with a low level character. It gets downright scary with a high level one. It is arguably the best AOE in the game (as is the Smuggler equivalent Sweeping Gunfire). This is one that does need a tone down.

Take a look at Swortista's page linked below. Specifically the section about "Outside the Event" https://swtorista.com/articles/how-to-level-slower-in-swtor-white-acute-module-guide/

I take it the battle with your sniper didn't go as you planned. And you still didn't address what you consider an adequate challenge. Until you do there is no way to address your concern. We could just up the health and damage randomly but since you have no idea what you really consider challenging, that is just shooting in the dark. Come back when you have something positive to add to the discussion Edit: if a 2-3 second battle isn't acceptable what is? 30 sec, a minute, more. What is the goal post?

OK, that's a start. Not particularly concrete but can be worked with. It sounds like your character is not taking enough damage (or your companion is healing too much). This is very likely specific to the player and character so we can start there. - An additional debuff that lowers your health and damage (maybe determined by how far you out-level the opponent or what your total stat bonus is or even potentially specific to that "boss") -If your character doesn't do anything for 30 seconds, end the fight and kill the character (repair costs apply). A general anti-afk solution. -A debuff that reduces your companion's healing and damage (also based on how powerful your character is relative to the opposition). 1) So, how long should this hypothetical fight take if the player is participating. one minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 seconds? 2) Where should you be at health wise when the fight ends. 80%, 50%, 25%, 10%? 3) Is it really necessary to make the entire game "harder" so that this one fight can be challenging? 4) should there be a minimum level of character below which the above debuffs don't apply (to keep the game in reach of newer players without as much firepower and skill)

How would you defiine this Ironman version? What criteria would you use to classify it as such?

That is just an anecdotal comment that doesn't address at all what you consider a challenge. You are just saying that boss doesn't present a challenge (an "I'll know it when I see it response"). What result would you have considered challenging? Edit: What I am asking for is what you do consider challenging? Listing things you don't find challenging doesn't advance the conversation at all because we cannot ascertain what the goal is other than a vague "more challenging".

You could actually provide feedback. That might help instead of just saying over and over the game is too easy. Give examples of what you consider a challenge. Should a planet mini boss kill you 3 out of every 4 times you fight it. Should you win the fight with less than 10% health left. Should the battle take 5-10 minutes. These are obviously exaggerations but what exactly is your definition of a challenge from the game in something more concrete than a vague "I'll know it when I see it response". Then maybe there could be a discussion about how to accomplish it in a way other than upending the entire game.

As I said, It's not bad when something happens rarely. It is mathematically possible with the right combinations of abilities and lucky criticals, that doesn't make it broken any more than winning the lottery means the lottery system is broken. Your hypothetical are nonsensical.

No, because very rare occurrences do happen and are not indicative of a problem. Edit: Not that long ago I got a Czerka crate as a mob drop. A very rare occurrence. Does that mean there is something wrong with the loot tables.

That happens rarely if ever. I've done that fight dozens of time with overpowereed characters and never had it happen once. Edit: Just to be clear I have tested claims of one shotting bosses, mobs, etc dozens of time when they are brought up on the forums and never ever has it happened as indicated much less on a regular basis.