Rarely but they are always asking for hardcore versions of their own not making the whole game harder. They generally don't say anything about the game being too easy.

Well I'm glad we could fill you in that it isn't happening

Agreed. Only place I see this complaint is on the forums.

I was wondering how long it would take for the true reasons for wanting it harder to come out. This has been standard fare for the game is too easy crowd for a while. If I play the game in easy mode (which is no challenge to me) I should get the same rewards as someone who doesn't find it so easy but when I play content that is equivalent challenge, I should get more rewards. Personally, they should reduce rewards for any character that is above the planet level and wearing gear higher than the planet level. Playing a level 10 planet with a level 70 character, you get 1/7 the reward because it is too easy at that level. Wearing 320 gear on Coruscant get 1/20 the reward.

The White Acute Module does work outside Double XP events (at least it always has for me). It should just be made available outside the double xp events. Another similar debuff that lowers your level sync level even more should result in "more challenging" content (maybe something that reduces your effective level by 25-50% for the purposes of level sync. or even sets your level sync at -3 or -4 to the planet level). Then people who are not challenged by the content can make it more challenging for themselves and not affect the way other players play. For years experienced players have been providing advice on how to make the content more challenging. It requires an active role so it is often dismissed by the game is too easy crowd. The only other thing that needs changing is putting all the end chapter bosses in instances so they can be set to the level appropriate for the intended difficulty instead of the planetary sync level.

What you are not understanding is that those abilities generate power creep, a perfectly normal thing that happens in every MMO. The longer you play the more powerful you character gets and the easier the low level content gets. In most MMOs, that power creep is restricted to one character but the way SWTOR has always been setup, those buffs carry over between characters. A lot of the people clamoring for harder content likely fall into the category of long term gamers that have had their characters power increase simply due to the length of time they have played the game (and their own overall increase in skill that results from knowing the stories inside and out and knowing the best approach to every fight before it even starts). For example, when I play a JK, I start every fight with saber throw, force leap, force sweep. This is the most efficient way to damage opponents and ends the fight fast (against low level opponents it is devastating) Over the years people have bought experience boosts as well (that stack on top of the game's current high xp rate), that exacerbate the problem. The issue is that brand new players are at the same relative strength they always have been (with a few exceptions like end chapter bosses level synced on low level planets). Having abilities you shouldn't have when facing opponents (like having a saber throw ability on a low level planet) make defeating those enemies much easier than they should be. So if you have huge xp bonuses (subscriber, character perks, rested xp, purchased boosts, etc) you quickly outpace what the original content intended while someone who doesn't have those doesn't. Overall, the game difficulty is fine for new players. There are a few areas that need some attention, but an overall increase in difficulty to appease "experienced" players is not warranted.

The only real way to bring difficulty for over-leveled characters in line would be to remove abilities you are not supposed to have at that level and that would be massively unpopular (and would significantly increase the grind). The fights have never been updated to current abilities (and who knows what kind of mess trying to do so would make - risk damaging the best part of the game just to satisfy a few players who are unwilling to make any attempt whatsoever to find their own challenge) and many classes (but not all - which is another part of the more difficult leveling approach) are now very overpowered for some of the fights. End chapter bosses should be in their own instance (of the appropriate level) instead of synced to the level of the planet they are on. Making general mobs overall more powerful just makes progress more boring. The only mechanism update that seems to be considered is knockback which is basically useless against half the classes and extremely punishing for the rest.

This was probably the biggiest joke about 7.0. That was ridiculous but they had to make sure that players could quickly get to their broken "end game" flashpoint. After weakening characters by making their existing gear useless, they needed them to get to level 80 quickly so they could start the gear grind all over again before they just decided to dump the game.

Following up. It's mostly class buffs (5% crit bonus, 5% Health Bonus, 5% Mastery Bonus, 10% Damage Resistance, and 5% increase to all damage and healing - all of which are applied after Level Sync adjustments so they have a bigger impact than straight gear boosts)) and the datacrons (which can add up to a lot of points for a low level character - on a level 5 character I have, mastery is almost 200 and Endurance is almost 100 wearing no gear at all on my main Legacy. On Tulak Hord where I have 2 characters neither of which has reached chapter 2 (and just Tython datacrons and 1 Coruscant datacron collected) yet a level 6 character has 50 Mastery and 50 endurance. Gear at that level adds another 100 Mastery and 50 Endurance (and that's not even a full set yet like you would have at the end of the planet.

Which part about "WOW launched with no end game content" did you not understand

One operation plus the first boss of the second. The full second one was out within a month of launch. Two months after launch got the third and the fourth was within 9 months.

Health in open world mobs was reduced (primarily to reduce the slog) but they didn't fundamentally change their abilities. I don't believe they reduced the health of any "bosses" or champs (maybe not even golds) except for what Level Sync might be doing. More the universality of companions than their actual strengths. The JK got a healing companion early because they were weak defensively while the trooper got it late because they were strong defensively (the healer companions were generally weaker offensively to compensate). Part of the reason the comps got a boost was so solo players could solo Heroics since they were a big part of Conquest at the time (really the only content you could do once you hit max level). Fast xp also plays a role and the result is over-levelling. The underlying base mechanic is still there when you over level. If you are 6 -10 levels above the opponent they do little to no damage to you (Level Sync actually doesn't do anything to this). Level Sync is also a bit of a misnomer in that high level characters synced down are still much more powerful than characters actually at that level. They get to keep all their abilities (and have more of them so you don't use the basic attack - which is pretty weak overall - much), some of which the original content was not designed to deal with. Saber throw is actually a good example. It does a lot of damage. 5% is a pretty solid buff considering most high level utilities are 1% buffs and as I recall, the class buffs are added on after the level sync reductions.

I'll have to follow up with you on that. I'm not on my gaming rig right now. After I log in tomorrow, I'll respond to your post. One thing that does impact things a bit are class buffs as well. Having all 4 class buffs is a pretty big boost.

It doesn't really other than being a response to someone who said SWTOR didn't have as much end game content as other MMOs and that was why people left as opposed to the grind the game was in the first 6-12 months.

The point simply is that there is a massive difference in power between brand new players on their first character and "professional" players on their 20th character after playing 10 years and accumulating all the bonuses associated with playing that long. Your experience is completely different from what someone on their first character experiences (they aren't one or two shotting anything). So when I leave the mailbox on Tython and my character is as powerful as a new player's character leaving Taris, the game should be balanced around that instead of the much weaker character that the new player is going to have. That is a recipe for a game shutting down. The game never was difficult, just tedious and it was end game players that complained the most about how long it took to get their second and third alts to "endgame".

SWTOR launched with 2 Operations (5 bosses each). WOW launched with zero. Rift launched with no raids. Warhammer Online launched with 1 raid. Age of Conan launched with 1 raid. Everquest launched with 1 world boss. Final Fantasy 11 launched with no end game content. How exactly was SWTOR different in end game content than these contemporary MMOs

A return question. How many datacrons do you have collected in your legacy? What are your total legacy based bonuses to your stats (particularly your Mastery and Power)? What level were you? Sounds like a lot like a lucky crit or a massively overlevelled character. I've played that fight dozens of times (even with a nearly complete legacy) and don't recall ever one-shotting the Sith (and with a Knight character Force Leap is just about a universal opener - until you get one of the saber throw abilities). Boosts to your stats from datacrons are exempt from level sync (except for crit which seems to have a hard cap). There is a big difference between playing a new character in a legacy where you have legendary status and someone hitting that fight on their first character.

This was only a small percentage of the players playing the game. There were no where near enough players leaving the game for this reason to have any real impact. Most players left the game before they even got to endgame. That waves of people left because there was no endgame is a massive exaggeration.

wrong, most players quit before they even got to endgame. "They quit because there was no end game" is a fantasy built by some end game players.

yup, this is exactly what happened at launch. Players logged in found it way too grindy and quit. Works both ways.

The door you are supposed to blow open with the explosives you pick up is already open when you arrive.

What time of night. I just left Tython a few minutes ago and there were nearly 100 people there. Seems reasonably active to me.

Beyond the Discord channels and gamer forums, just about any site that offers to bring buyers and sellers together to buy virtually anything. Some are dedicated to gaming items others are not. It's pretty easy to tell the pros from the amateurs on those sites. Not that long ago, someone posted their credit balance in a screenshot (which was either from their legacy bank or a guild bank based on the amount) too show how much they had available to sell, but weren't really careful with what they cropped and ended up posting a portion of their open in game mailbox which contained mail that would be unlikely to be found with a professional credit seller. Perhaps not ironclad, but very suggestive of a "wealthy" player attempting to sell credits rather than an actual professional credit seller.

They aren't all credit seller websites (in fact most of them aren't). Didn't see your name, though I think you are too smart to go that route anyway (You don't strike me as someone who would sell credits, but others do).

take a look at some of the sites that have credit seller info. Some people are too eager to make a profit they don't even hide their identity (lots of in game names and how to contact information). You just don't want to acknowledge it is happening.