One thing I hope Bioware NEVER copies from WoW

[Gabriah]

was DIFFICULT - took us months of boss/gearing up

 

I hope I never see this in SWtOR. Difficult should be overcome with clever tactics, solid gameplay, good teamwork - not by farming gear. I want this to stay a RPG played out in a mmo setting - not an Star Wars flavered MMO fight game.

 

I hope BioWare adds more story arcs, and other in-game-content (Sabacc anyone?), before trying to copy what other MMOs have been doing for the past 15 years.

[Leohat]

On one side is the "hard core" that needs challenging content. They have the time to raid multiple nights per week. They have the time and patience to grind for rep, to grind for mats. They have preset groups to help with group quests. They know where the quest areas are, they know where the quest givers and receivers are. They know what the boss mechanics are. They say that content is too easy and lacks challenge. For them, that is indeed the case.

 

I wonder how much of the problem is that players have actually gotten better. I'm betting that players are used to see certain kinds of Boss mechanics. They are used to seeing bosses summon adds at certain times, they are used to void zones, enrage timers, multiple phases, etc etc ad nauseous. Basically a 'nothing new under the sun' problem.

 

I read somewhere that one reason that they are able to blow through content so quickly is that a lot (most?) of them have already done the content, when it was in beta. In some cases they have done it multiple times in beta.

So when live comes out they appear to have blasted through it. So they have already had weeks if not months working on content. So it appears that they blasted but in reality they have not.

I'm curious, of those of you that are complaining about endgame being easy, how many of you were in the beta or early-access? I'm betting a lot.

Of those of you that have multiple 40+ how many were in Beta? I'll bet a lot if not most.

 

I don't remember all the details but I recall a MMO (not wow) that pulled a 'bait and switch' on one or more of the end game raids. The raid that was in beta was completely different then the live raid. It took even the hard core guilds a few weeks to master it. I think that it was EQ2 but don't quote me on that.

 

The other side is the "causal" that does not have the time or the patience to raid often, if at all. I fall in to this category. I don't have the time or energy to raid more than once a week if that. I don't have the time or energy to grind rep for raid level gear. We may enjoy the game in other ways, such as collecting mounts or pets or achievement metals but not raid kills. My complaint is that the story line is build in to the end game raids. Because I can't raid, I never get to see the end of the story. Personally I like to see some sort story wrap up for non-raiders. If nothing else some kind of end game cinematic.

 

There needs to some sort of compromise; p

 

A possible compromise may be server segmentation. Instead of just PvE/PvP/RP servers, they should be farther segmented as hardcore vs casual.

 

Maybe a solution could be a permanent choice, like the Advanced Class choice. At 50 you'd choice hardcore or casual and that would be it.

 

Personally I'd like to see raids/bosses scale, some sort of variation of City of Hero's Monster mechanic that automatically scaled damage by level. The CoH sidekick/mentor mechanic was also pretty cool. Too bad that game is one massive grind fest.

 

Maybe Automatic scaling of bosses based on gear (ilvl?), with token drops reflecting difficultly, higher gear, higher difficulty thus more/higher tokens.

 

Maybe scaling of bosses based on average DPS of other bosses/trash. Again with token drop would reflecting how far above or below the average the group is. This could have some interesting side effects, such as groups trying to sandbag it to bring down the bosses average. How low of DPS can you do and still kill the boss aka how long can you stand the bosses enrage? Of course then you might get really hardcores trying to drag the average up. Might be especially interesting if the current average is unknown. Might be an easy fight one day and a wipe fest the next.

 

I think that as others have pointed out that some kind of visual epeen reward is needed.

 

tl;dr

I'm not sure where the middle is but both sides are right.

A compromise is needed. Or possible segmentation of the two.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Leohat

[Skann]

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

Have you cleared the current WoW content in Hard Mode? All of it?

[chalonverse]

You are lying when you claim you cleared Hard Mode Dragon Soul the 2nd week it was out. Because no one in the entire world cleared hard mode Dragon Soul the 2nd week it was out. Not on 10, not on 25. It was the 3rd reset that anyone cleared it. And unless you're in the top three guilds in the world, you didn't clear it on the 3rd reset either.

 

Furthermore, at this point, less than 100 guilds in the entire world have cleared Dragon Soul on Hard Mode. The patch came out like 2 months ago.

 

Compare this to SWTOR where people cleared Nightmare Karagga's Palace the first day of the patch, and I don't think you can really say SWTOR raids are harder than the WoW ones.

[EpsilonC]

First of all, WoW raids have had some of the hardest bosses the game has EVER seen.

 

T11 was considered the hardest tier of content made by WoW, including vanilla.

 

Heroic al'akir, nef, and twilight council were some of the hardest bosses ever seen, then you have sinestra, that's all tier 1.

 

Then in t12 the only really hard boss was Heroic Rag, but he was still one of the harder bosses WoW has ever had.

 

And now you have heroic spine and DW, which are again, two of the hardest bosses WoW has ever produced.

 

You cleared dragon soul 8/8 first week? Well guess it, that's because it's geared towards NORMAL FIRELANDS geared players. If you're geared in heroic firelands gear, you're obviously going to blow through it.

 

Lastly, why does it alienate the top end players? You realize that there are MANY top end players that can't clear content simply because they don't have time? Many world top end guilds put in at least 20 hours a week, and as many as about 50 hours a week raiding each week, and it takes them usually hundreds of pulls to down the hardest bosses.

 

So why should elite players that can't put in 50 hours a week be unable to see content? It's a game, not a godamn job.

 

Furthermore, even after all the nerfs to Firelands, around 5% of the raiding guilds have down heroic ragnaros.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Paralassa
content/insults

[fusrodahz]

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

Blizzard has lost my support because they continually take the blistering challenge I enjoy and nerf it straight to hell, cheapening my victories and sucking out all of the fun of raiding for me. Firelands heroics were challenging and fun until massive nerfs made them insultingly easy.

 

Bioware, I understand that content has to be accessible to everyone on some level or it's a waste of your time and money to develop. However, there HAS to be something for the best of the best. There HAS to be something to challenge very competent players that they can take pride in and think "yeah, I did that. That was sick." I left WoW after six years because of constant decisions made by blizzard this expansion to cater exclusively to casual players.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there should absolutely be content for players who "just want to have fun and not stress". There should be raids for such people, in fact. I have no problems whatsoever with game companies nerfing and tweaking their normal mode content until almost everyone can see it. What happened with WoW though is it took it's "elite" content, the heroic modes, and nerfed them as well. No hard mode raider is EVER happy with nerfs like that. They raid the hardest stuff for the challenge, for the prestige, and for the rewards. You take away that challenge through nerfs and your best players have nothing to do or care about.

 

Don't cheapen your content across the board. Leave something for all types of players to enjoy. There needs to be modes for bad (though they won't admit it), good, and truly exceptional players.

 

So you're telling me Sinestra, Heroic Rag, Heroic Al'Akir, and Heroic Nefarion 25 all pre nerf were easy? From someone who's actually in a world top 100 guild and cleared all of the content this expansion, I can tell you for a fact Heroic raiding in Cataclysm has been some of the most brutal raiding since Sunwell. Yeah, all of the content gets nerfed after it's all been cleared by top guilds. Big deal. This happens in literally every MMO, top guilds are given a few months to clear everything out and compete, then the content is nerfed so those whom aren't as hardcore / good can have a chance to see the content, or give them that push they need to get it down.

 

SWTOR stated before launch raiding (Operations) would be on the more casual side of things. Yeah, I'd like to see nightmare modes be more difficult and add in new mechanics / bosses, but the game has been out what, a month and a half? Maybe less? You can't expect the first raiding tier to be the hardest thing you've ever played through in any MMO. Look at Rift. Greenscale and Alzbeth were both mind numbingly easy, the 2nd raid tier (Hammerknell) Was very difficult and satisfying.

 

Give Bioware some time to let people adjust to raiding in a new game, I'm sure content will become more difficult. And if you aren't satisfied with raiding then, there are other MMOs to play.

[Oneiros_IV]

WoW continues to alienate it's top performing players. I've just read about the first round of nerfs coming to Dragon Soul, by far the easiest and most faceroll raid of the entire expansion. I crap you not, a toddler without hands could down this raid. I cleared it on normal first week, moved on to Heroic Modes the second week, and left WoW by the third.

 

I call BS on it. By the time nerfs come everybody who should've clear heroic / hm's already did so.

 

performing guilds are distinguished by server 1 feats of strength. Top EU/US/World are all mentioned in news.

 

quick fact 1: everyone and their dog cleared normal DS on wednesday.

quick fact 2: you dodged the elboration on how exactly you "moved" into hard. So I suspect you didn't have a hc madness kill before leaving game. Or at least not in 1st echelon. Wich makes you in no position to complain.

 

to recap: Faceroll top content is not fine. Overtime nerf of top content is fine however, for by the time it comes everybody who has slightest right to care already don't.

[Andyuk]

Big deal. I cleared Dragon Soul long ago, I cleared Firelands before the nerf, I cleared BWD/Chogall/ToTFW before they nerfed those, and I don't care that they later nerfed them. Let the unwashed masses in to clear them, it doesn't change my game one bit, because by the time they nerfed those areas, we were done with them.

 

Couldn't of said it better myself.

[spicycookie]

I'm fine with Normal Mode being Easy Sauce and Hard Mode being ownage sauce. I'm casual these days and i just want to spam my tracer missiles and collect loot and be happy. Because i have no time to wipe ... always feel bad to leave the raid or they call it operations in this game.

[Bozse]

Players that're casual, don't have the time to dedicate to the game (and often are just as good as the 'elite') get into the hardmodes after the nerfs. They paid for the content. They got their 'easy' raid done, they want to do the harder stuff, if you block them from seeing those fights, and their changed mechanics, eventually that casual player leaves - and takes his buddies with him.

 

Just because you are casual doesn't mean you can't clear it on the hardest difficulty, I recently quit raiding in WoW but up to the day I did I cleared all content with only two days a week of raiding. Now what Blizzard does is to take away my challenge with their nerfs, I was before quitting 5/8 HC in DS with those two days a week raiding, only one day a week over the holidays.

 

If the highest level of content is left as is the optional challenge is there for anyone that care to undertake it, if you don't have the time or ability to play on a schedule then you have normal and hard to go through.

 

Besides, with better gear being introduced later on you can go back if beating nightmare is so important to you, or is it just the gear you want and not the challenge...

 

 

Edit: What you should ask for is more content to be added in a time frame that makes the nerfs to the highest level of content unnecessary, Blizzard is slow at releasing new content and has had the gamer fooled for years thinking that it's impossible to make content at a faster pace than they do. It's quite possible to make new dungeons and raids faster than once every 6 months, just isn't as cost efficient, and Blizzard is all about that these days.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Bozse