dexvx Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Anyone feel that the current end-game goes by way too fast? My guild walked into Eternity Vault (normal) for the first time on Friday, with most of them fresh 50's with little to no HM-Flashpoint gear. They cleared it in 4 hours (not a great time, but they didn't watch any Youtube videos or read any strategy). Then on Sunday, they returned and went 4/5 EV on Hard-Mode, opting out of SoA due to being a melee heavy group. I can understand normal being easy, but HM was a pushover (except SoA). I don't raid with my guild (I go with another guild, ironically), and I feel that even Nightmare mode is easy, save SoA and the "turret boss". Furthermore, every boss (in 8 man) drops 5 pieces of gear. So mathematically speaking, an 8 man raid will be fully geared after just 4 runs. Where does that leave us, as a subscriber? I'm not advocating we change everything to a super-slow Everquest I style grind. But unless BioWare is content on releasing new FP's and Operations every month, it's going to be looking a little stale. Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toymaker Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 The current end game is buggy, unpolished, and clearly incomplete. You're in a paid beta. It will get better. I wish there was a better answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurugar Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Anyone feel that the current end-game goes by way too fast? My guild walked into Eternity Vault (normal) for the first time on Friday, with most of them fresh 50's with little to no HM-Flashpoint gear. They cleared it in 4 hours (not a great time, but they didn't watch any Youtube videos or read any strategy). Then on Sunday, they returned and went 4/5 EV on Hard-Mode, opting out of SoA due to being a melee heavy group. I can understand normal being easy, but HM was a pushover (except SoA). I don't raid with my guild (I go with another guild, ironically), and I feel that even Nightmare mode is easy, save SoA and the "turret boss". Furthermore, every boss (in 8 man) drops 5 pieces of gear. So mathematically speaking, an 8 man raid will be fully geared after just 4 runs. Where does that leave us, as a subscriber? I'm not advocating we change everything to a super-slow Everquest I style grind. But unless BioWare is content on releasing new FP's and Operations every month, it's going to be looking a little stale. Thoughts? You cant do only the easy encounters and then complain when you find the content too easy. Normal mode is about the equivalent difficulty of doing a flashpoint but with 8 people instead of 4. Hard mode is more or less the first real "raid" mode, and even then the first 4 bosses are still easy. If you want more of a challenge, you're going to have to either NOT skip Soa (the only hard boss in the instance) or bump it up to 16 man. Everything else can be done pretty easily in 8 man even in nightmare mode, assuming your dps/heals are good enough to beat annihilator. As for loot...loot in normal mode is autoassigned, and anyone who's done it can tell you that the auto-loot system is, well, "less than efficient", as it takes literally nothing into account beyond what class you are. As a shadow I can get auto-assigned one of 3 different pieces of gear - the one I want, the one that sages want, or the tanking one. And that's assuming you get assigned something you might want - the last time we went in my shadow friend got about 3-4 pieces of columni gear, all of which he ended up vendoring because he had the same or better already - but they were ALL upgrades for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexvx Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 You cant do only the easy encounters and then complain when you find the content too easy. Normal mode is about the equivalent difficulty of doing a flashpoint but with 8 people instead of 4. Hard mode is more or less the first real "raid" mode, and even then the first 4 bosses are still easy. If you want more of a challenge, you're going to have to either NOT skip Soa (the only hard boss in the instance) or bump it up to 16 man. Everything else can be done pretty easily in 8 man even in nightmare mode, assuming your dps/heals are good enough to beat annihilator. As for loot...loot in normal mode is autoassigned, and anyone who's done it can tell you that the auto-loot system is, well, "less than efficient", as it takes literally nothing into account beyond what class you are. As a shadow I can get auto-assigned one of 3 different pieces of gear - the one I want, the one that sages want, or the tanking one. And that's assuming you get assigned something you might want - the last time we went in my shadow friend got about 3-4 pieces of columni gear, all of which he ended up vendoring because he had the same or better already - but they were ALL upgrades for me. The raiding situation is similar to WoW at the end of WoTLK. All the bosses were super easy on normal mode and hard-mode with 1 exception: HM-25 man Lich King. While it's nice having a challenge (for the most part SoA is fine, save for the reset issue when the MT gets ported), I don't think it's necessarily a good one of balancing the encounters. I will do the 16 man operations with my guild and see where that leads. From what I've read on the PTR notes, that is getting nerfed to be more in-line with the 8 man operation (which makes sense given that they drop the same gear). I still think the loot is somewhat "excessive". Not from an ease perspective, but from a "What am I going to do now that I'm fully geared?" perspective. If BioWare fixes Master Looter, it will literally take 4 weeks to get your raid fully geared and have no reason to ever run those Operations again. It doesn't seem that great from a design perspective, especially when people may stop subscribing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurugar Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 (edited) I still think the loot is somewhat "excessive". Not from an ease perspective, but from a "What am I going to do now that I'm fully geared?" perspective. If BioWare fixes Master Looter, it will literally take 4 weeks to get your raid fully geared and have no reason to ever run those Operations again. It doesn't seem that great from a design perspective, especially when people may stop subscribing. But you have to keep in mind that the loot you get from normal/hard modes is still equivalent to the heroic flashpoint loot aka columni gear. The only pieces from hard mode that you cant get from doing heroics I think are the main hand weapon (Soa hard mode, just got mine yesterday) and helm (bonethrasher hard mode). "Raid" gear is really the rakata stuff. Edited January 9, 2012 by Jurugar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValaxDarkseer Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 My 8man team is 4/5 HM EV basically on first attempt. Same team cleared normal 8man EV in 2 nights without looking up any strats. So yes it is. At least the 8man versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Failure Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Normal Mode = Kiddy pool free gear faceroll Hard Mode = "Normal mode" by way of other MMOs Nightmare Mode = Casuals need not apply Try running the real raid difficulty before passing judgement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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