[SUGGESTION] Future Operations: Difficulty Level/Loot Drops

[xenofire]

Sorry but i just can't agree with you here.

 

Maybe you just have the wrong idea about 16' at all.

 

I only play 8' but so far i know you dont need more tanks in 16' .

 

So basically you run 8'. If you have more player avaibale, but not enough tanks for 2 x 8' you just run the 16' , deal.

 

I agree that managing 8 people is much more comfortable than 16 people is.

So maybe you should switch to 8'

 

More Players - More loot is fine.

More Player - Better loot is not.

 

The point is this; there's a nightmare mode 16. That means all progression will be tracked for nightmare mode 16. Nobody cares about progresison in the first tier, just whether or not you get it done. Your competitive, hardcore players will be forced to do 16 man. If you do like WoW did, and do not reward them for the extra time it takes to prune 16 players for nightmare, then you will lose your subscribers.

 

Want to know why so many top guilds in WoW have died, and why the top tier of players have been quitting like wildfire, causing all the masses below to quit? WoW stopped making it worthwhile to be at the cutting edge. This game has a chance to make it worthwhile. If they do, they'll piss off a few casuals or people who like to ***** about things in general, but the sad truth is life and competition is about survival of the fittest. The fittest should be recognized and rewarded for their accomplishments, we are in sports, we should be in anything we drive to compete in. If you allow that cutting edge to simply be seen as better and to have their just reward, then there will be masses upon masses of people trying to be that way.

 

TBC had basically no customer support for a year and a half, minus a few content patches. They didn't balance or change anything, but the game grew at a rate faster than ever. You see, that's the secret to subscribers. It's not the casuals, or the hardcore. It's all the people in between, who want to be better as players and will constantly improve themselves. These are the people who make up your player base, and if you don't create a venue where elitists can excel, then you won't have a very strong following of player base that wants to be that good someday. It's simple economics, blizzard screwed it up, and is losing all their subscribers one terrible homogenized expansion at a time. I hope someone is actually saying this stuff to Bioware, since I don't really think they read the forums.

Edited February 2, 2012 by xenofire

[Shizophim]

The point is this; there's a nightmare mode 16. That means all progression will be tracked for nightmare mode 16. Nobody cares about progresison in the first tier, just whether or not you get it done. Your competitive, hardcore players will be forced to do 16 man. If you do like WoW did, and do not reward them for the extra time it takes to prune 16 players for nightmare, then you will lose your subscribers.

 

But thats just a problem with your own attitude towards the progression of others.

(and maybe with the rest of the mindless pro-gress slaves

 

See i do hardmode 8' and eventually with my guild i do nightmare 8' depends on how the seven others do in the course of time I am fine with that, and honestly i done see any difference in me doing nightmare 8' or nightmare 16'. There is no reason why i should feel less skilled only because i do 8'.

 

Its not a matter of skill, its just a matter of available players or personal playstyle, hence i see no reason in giving better rewars for those who have more players available.

 

And in the ladder of Progession so far what counts is "who did it first" not "who gets this or that item in reward of doing things".

 

Its just stupid that the majority of players try to mimic the behaviour of those elitist.

 

And by the way doing things with with 'less' people is always the hardest way because you cannot compensate failure as much as with more player in general.

 

Tend to play 8' and only care for 8' progession as a community and give a crap about elitist play 16' soon enough those elitist will play 8', too.

 

Just stop whorshiping those guys

Edited February 2, 2012 by Shizophim

[xenofire]

Elitists are nonconformists, the goal is to find what's hardest, do it, and be the fastest. That won't change.

[arnoldlol]

Top guilds are quitting wow because the content is just bad. Recycled content and 15 minute gear-checks are not fun, there hasn't been any innovation or uniqueness to fights in a long time. The issue people had with 25 vs. 10 was realm firsts, since it's impossible to balance the two difficulty levels. The top 25 man guilds still kept realm firsts, while the people who would rather raid a smaller format did so, without reducing the rewards. In general, smaller group comp meant easier content, but that wasn't always the case. I honestly don't care about better gear in smaller vs. larger raids because it gets rid of being forced to run numerous ops of the same instance to maximize effectiveness. Doing so didn't prove you were more hardcore than guilds who didn't run 25's, it burned people out and made everything even more repetitive and boring. I've downed all the 25 man content from SSC/TK to heroic rag when it was relevant, and I understand why people would switch to the smaller format. I also guarantee I know 10 man guilds that have skill beyond what most try-hard 25's could ever hope to have.

 

Regardless, this isn't the reason for this thread. We're here to hopefully improve the reason we play these games, not argue about something that most likely isn't going to happen.

Edited February 2, 2012 by arnoldlol

[arnoldlol]

Plop.

[Craxim]

A few other things I would like to see change in addition to the OP.

 

I would personally be ok with having to clear Normal before you can attempt hard, and hard before you can attempt Nightmare. Since Normal and Hard have different lockouts, it would only screw you out of the standard first week of progression on the hardest difficulty and not two. I guess some people would rather have it just Hard before Nightmare, and not Normal then Hard then Nightmare. But a guild being able to blow through the hardest difficulty of content on 16 the day it comes out kills it. It just kills it. This needs to be fixed, I'm not a fan of creating "false" progression, but easier to unlock the harder is something that should be a standard of all MMOs.

 

8 vs 16. This is a joke. There NEEDS to be an incentive to run 16 other than for the challenge. We can't say you could want to do it for the fun, because on our server finding 16 competent people is a hilarious thought, and it makes 16 nothing close to fun. Crafting materials need to drop on master loot, and more Rakata gear needs to drop in 16. 2 pieces drop on 16 and 8, so why kill it in 16 and get 2 when you could have 2 8's kill it on 8 and get 4, all while it's easier. Either 16 needs straight up better gear, whether you do that through extra tiers of gear or having 8 and 16 versions of the same tier I don't care, but it needs to happen. My guild just lost server first on the Unyielding title entirely because our competition had been running 8's longer than we had, we had just recently dropped from 16 and they had better gear, even though at the beginning we had been beating them on every kill while we did 16 and they did 8, and we still beat them to every kill. Either make the difficulty proportional between 8 and 16 like 10 to 25 was in Cataclysm, or make 16 drop better gear like 25 did back in Wrath.

 

Server transfers. Guild drama and unrealistic expectations of what a launch mmo would be has torn us from our 16, and we are stuck on an almost dead server tons of casuals. The only competition we have just surfaced, and they aren't even competition, they are just slightly better geared as I discussed earlier. Either we need the option to **** our server or to recruit raiders from off server, we have the progression that would attract them, but no one wants to re-roll.

[Shedari]

I really hope Bioware reads this thread. While end-game progression may not be their largest playerbase, it *is* one of the bases that attracts players.

[Chorusgirl]

I agree with the lack of incentive to run 16 mans. We want to do it badly for the challenge but an extra incentive would be nice. Currently there's only one 16 man raiding guild on my server...that kinda sucks.

[arnoldlol]

I really hope Bioware reads this thread. While end-game progression may not be their largest playerbase, it *is* one of the bases that attracts players.

 

This!

[Ookiniyasashi]

+3 awesome

[arnoldlol]

+3 awesome

 

Thanks!

[Shedari]

Have you seen this thread yet, BioWare?

[arnoldlol]

Have you seen this thread yet, BioWare?

 

:mad:

[complexxLT]

I agree on every aspect and suggested somewhat similar tweaks in my thread.

Too bad I can't make such well constructed posts to attract the right amount of attention as English is not my native language, so thank you for posting OP.

(my suggestion thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=283976)

[Veoxess]

Definitely some great points. Thanks for the read. Hopefully, Bioware is aware of the concerns of the raiding population and implements fixes in future content. Not to say that current content is terrible. I found the starting flashpoints and operations to be very enjoyable. It was definitely a great start to a great game.

 

Now to fix the little stuff!

Edited February 9, 2012 by Veoxess

[arnoldlol]

Thanks guys!

[gramz]

this stuff is important!

[Samborino]

I completely agree OP. I made a similair post a few pages back but i put more emphasis on the current problems with the loot that is in the current end game of swtor.

 

Here is a quote from 1 portion of my 3 part thread.

 

"1. Duplicate Gear

 

Using the same gear for drops in every end game PVE mode. Energized, Xenotech, Exotech and The tier pieces. Thats all we have for drops in the end game. The same gear that drops in HM FP's is dropped in 8 and 16 man ops, and columi and some of the non tier sets are also dropped in hard mode 8 and 16 mans. Its just duplicated gear in every single end game PVE Mode, and im not talking about its gear that looks different with the same stats or gear that looks the same with different stats, its the exact same gear. Look at an end game raid for any popular recent mmo, i bet the loot table ( the gear that is in the dungeon/raid) is bigger than the entire end game PVE drops for SWTOR."

 

I also think that they did a decent job on the operations, but I still think normal mode is too easy, id like it to at least be something that takes more than 2 hours for me to progress through on my first try.

 

I dont want to retype all of my opinnions but if your interested in some like minded opinions check out my thread.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=288972

[Samborino]

Also you mentioned a little bit on how loot is shared but i would go a bit further and ask bioware for basically what is an industry standard.

 

Right now normal mode 8 and 16 mans and hard mode FP's all share the exact same loot they also share that same loot with commendation vendors. That is far too little loot for so many different modes. As of now there is no point in doing 16 mans beyond the challenge its better for a guild to just run 2 8 man groups. Also Even hard mode shares some loot with normal mode ops. 8 and 16 mans should most certainly have their own loot table, not having this decreases replayability of raids so much that its shouldnt even be called replayability because its pretty much pointless to even play 16 man Ops.

 

They have some serious work to do, they need to fill out their loot tables for ops and offer gear besides set gear. Xenotech , exotech and energized are the only other gear offered besides tier pieces and they are also from sets. They need to offer pieces of gear that arent part of sets not only to help people differentiate themselves look wise , but just to fill out the current lack luster loot table in ops.

 

 

I think adding different gear between 8 and 16 mans is currently more important than adding different gear between nightmare and hard (although both are extremely important)

 

People need to bring up this issue more its actually extremely important, bioware has decreased the replay value of their ops incredibly by 1. dropping too much loot per boss 2 pieces per 10 man was fine in wow, i never heard anyone complain about it. Why did BW decide to drop 4 pieces per 8 man? That is ridiculous. 2. Sharing the exact same loot between almost every aspect of the end game means someone can run HM FP's and have no need whatsoever to run Normal mode ops at all. Its the same problem between hard and nightmare mode as well.

 

Also new commendation vendors should offer unique gear that is different from what is offered in Operations, at least make some of the gear unique on top of offering tier pieces.

[Samborino]

Good post.

 

You left out the part where 16 mans should have better gear than 8 mans. When WoW moved away from this model, the game got worse and worse.

 

They piss off more people by making 16 and 8 mans the same-- and take away the competitive fun and necessity to orchestrate 16 mans-- than they piss off by making 8 and 16 man drop the same loot.

 

I miss the old days of MMOs, where small raid groups do smaller instances, and big raid groups do bigger instances. Do people forget that TBC into WOTLK was when WoW sold the most copies and had the most subscribers? It was when they released that homogenized crap in WoTLK that subscripts went down.

 

The reason people whine about welfare epics is because they expect them. Kill the expectation, and people will stop whining about not having free gear.

 

This game is by far the epitome of free gear. I dont understand the point your trying to make about wow though, I quit raiding after WOTLK but didnt 16 mans offer considerably better loot than 10 mans in WOTLK im pretty sure they did at the very least they dropped different loot.

 

I also value the extreme importance of different loot in all aspects of the game, HM FP's should not have the same loot tables as the normal mode ops. Drops should not be shared between Normal and Hard mode ops either. And nightmare mode should obviously have its own set of gear as well. The most important for me at the moment though , is having 16 mans drop completely different loot then 8 mans its essential 16 mans are useless at the moment and there is no point in running them when you can run 2 8 mans.

[Chorusgirl]

This game is by far the epitome of free gear. I dont understand the point your trying to make about wow though, I quit raiding after WOTLK but didnt 16 mans offer considerably better loot than 10 mans in WOTLK im pretty sure they did at the very least they dropped different loot.

 

I also value the extreme importance of different loot in all aspects of the game, HM FP's should not have the same loot tables as the normal mode ops. Drops should not be shared between Normal and Hard mode ops either. And nightmare mode should obviously have its own set of gear as well. The most important for me at the moment though , is having 16 mans drop completely different loot then 8 mans its essential 16 mans are useless at the moment and there is no point in running them when you can run 2 8 mans.

 

I personally don't think it's very fun that I got geared out with everything I need in 3 weeks of raiding. What's the point of going anymore? People are not going to keep playing when all they want to do is raid and there's really no reason to raid after your mini-month long grind for gear is done. We run the 16 mans because it's more of an achievement once you get it all down. I don't care so much about the difference in gear but those that like a bigger challenge are going to gravitate towards the 16 mans, assuming that they continue to be more difficult than 8s

[Samborino]

I personally don't think it's very fun that I got geared out with everything I need in 3 weeks of raiding. What's the point of going anymore? People are not going to keep playing when all they want to do is raid and there's really no reason to raid after your mini-month long grind for gear is done. We run the 16 mans because it's more of an achievement once you get it all down. I don't care so much about the difference in gear but those that like a bigger challenge are going to gravitate towards the 16 mans, assuming that they continue to be more difficult than 8s

 

Agreed, but more gear and fewer drops would make it so that you wouldnt be geared out that fast. 8 and 16 mans having their own loot would help greatly in that regard, if they want to just make hard modes have the same gear with upgraded stats thats fine but at the very least incentivise 16 mans with new gear.

 

Less people would be complaining they had nothing to do right now if from the begining HM FP's had their own loot table seperate from Op's and it was required that you gear out from FP's first to run Ops, second if 8 and 16 mans had their own loot it essentially doubles the raid character progression and makes 8 and 16 mans their own entities.

 

Its certainly something they need to at least look into or address because im not really looking forward to any new raids if i know it will be the same thing, as in i can get geared from them and doing the new fp's within less than a week. Where is the sense of character progression in that?

[Samborino]

But thats just a problem with your own attitude towards the progression of others.

(and maybe with the rest of the mindless pro-gress slaves

 

See i do hardmode 8' and eventually with my guild i do nightmare 8' depends on how the seven others do in the course of time I am fine with that, and honestly i done see any difference in me doing nightmare 8' or nightmare 16'. There is no reason why i should feel less skilled only because i do 8'.

 

Its not a matter of skill, its just a matter of available players or personal playstyle, hence i see no reason in giving better rewars for those who have more players available.

 

And in the ladder of Progession so far what counts is "who did it first" not "who gets this or that item in reward of doing things".

 

Its just stupid that the majority of players try to mimic the behaviour of those elitist.

 

And by the way doing things with with 'less' people is always the hardest way because you cannot compensate failure as much as with more player in general.

 

Tend to play 8' and only care for 8' progession as a community and give a crap about elitist play 16' soon enough those elitist will play 8', too.

 

Just stop whorshiping those guys

 

I dont think it should neccesarily have better gear, just different gear. The point is that right now there is 0 incentive for an average guild (which are the majority of guilds) to run anything other than 8 man. Whether the gear is better or not having it drop different gear would go a long way. I honestly think the 16 mans in this game are harder and just in general its alot harder to organize 16 people to raid and i think the rewards should show that. There is nothing wrong with running 8 man content and just running through that until you get to nightmare mode, maybe in nightmare mode there shouldnt be a difference in between 8 and 16 man gear, but i think for the other 2 difficulty levels it would be nice.

 

I just dont see how more gear is a bad thing regardless of where it is implemented right now the end game PVE gear is lacking considerably. If the problem is that people shouldnt be rewarded less for running top end 8 man groups , then make the gear for 8 and 16 mans the same.

 

Honestly regardless of whether running 8 mans and the 16 mans and then hard mode 8 mans and then 16 mans is repetitive or not its a way better alternative to what they have right now, with nightmare dropping nothing new and people getting full rakata within a few weeks of raiding. You dont have to participate in the extra level of repetitiveness they should make it so that you can advance through the content just doing 8 mans, or 16 mans but adding a new set of different looking gear in the 16 mans actually makes it worth it for people to do it even if its just for different looking gear.

 

Even if they implemented just a few extra loot tables i would be happy with that, like make hardmodes share 0 loot with normal mode ops or HM FP's and make HM Fp's have their own loot tables. Bam suddenly they have added a huge amount of replay value to their game with minimal effort (certainly less than building a whole new raid)

[Chorusgirl]

It would be nice if 8 and 16 were on different lockouts with different gear. I remember WOTLK (i think it was) were you had one item that could be best in slot from a 10 man so that was reason enough for us hard core ish players to run it every week. Not only can I not run an 8 man on hard or nightmare mode along with our 16 nightmare, but I have nothing to do 6 nights of the week besides dailies and those get old so fast. I agree with the more gear options, but i suppose there are advantages to having loot 'dumbed down' means that it's easy for the average player who doesn't want to go research all their best in slot items. But this is also a way for us to tell who does their homework when we are recruiting.

[arnoldlol]

Separate loot for 8 and 16 isn't the answer, running the same raid twice was not fun.