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An Appeal to Bioware Regarding Operations Difficulty and Design


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Now imagine having 100 players that you have to make content for and, 1 of those players demand you dedicate significant amount of time and make content especially just for him (that other 99 dont care for at all), because he claims he is a special snowflake and if he leaves your DM-ing will be"epic-fail"

 

Would you do it?

 

I posted earlier as a casual player who wants there to be a difficulty level that I can't achieve based on my limited time input. Will you please elaborate on the theory that one tier of incredibly difficult raiding makes the game less fun and enjoyable for those who do not have the time to finish it? I understand that an inordinate amount of resources should not be put into content that only 1% of player base will undertake. However, they are not clamoring for special snowflake status, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of "epic fail" type language in this thread. The end game pve model that Bioware adopted is made up largely of raiding. They did a pretty nice job in their first attempt at it, however, raiders have come here to state that they would like to see an added degree of difficulty that comes in the form of mechanics, not just more health/more damage. In all honesty that type of difficulty is just a gear check, and caters to the no lifers you so strongly despise.

 

Finally, and most importantly, the hard core raiding community are the vast MAJORITY of people who test end game on the PTR. This tier of raiding is incredibly buggy. It was Bioware's first shot at it, and in all honesty I think they did a pretty good job, especially due to the fact that are dealing with a myriad of issues on top of raid bugs. However, they have at their disposal a group of people who are totally willing to test all of that content and provide bug feedback on every imaginable strategy and sequence of events that will happen in a given fight. This is an incredible benefit to casual players when they get to end game, as I can attest that beating the bugs on HM SOA is hard and it is frustrating. I have limited play time, and I want to fight bad guys not rng, and a strong group of hard core raiders who play test a good bit of upcoming raid content can help insure that.

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Just read the OP. Well-thought out. A post I, and I'm confident much of the raiding community, strongly supports.

 

At it's core, we need more challenging encounters that take days/weeks, NOT hours, to complete on maximum difficulty 16m.

 

The bugs are similarly significant. However, there has clearly been a marked improvement between EV and Karagga in terms of bug prevalence. Just please don't lose your ambition for introducing interesting mechanics because you're afraid of creating a few bugs, devs! Soa is very buggy at the moment, but is probably the most interesting of the encounters so far (I personally also enjoy The Annihilator Droid and Karagga).

 

I would add further comment, but Jinga presented all the points my guild have been discussing for weeks very well.

Edited by Lindos
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Nice speech pal, the only thing missing was a power point.

 

Right now I'll give you points for the 'duh' factor, everyone who cares about this already acknowledges it and I'm guessing has no problem agreeing with you.

 

So...cheers I suppose on your cleaning me of the five minutes it took me to pour through this redundant text.

 

/snark off

 

Yeah....dude, we know.

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A few points:

 

1) The content is already made - no one is asking for content to be made for the hardcore crowd only. We are simply asking for Bioware to make use of the 3 difficulty settings and tune them such that the hard and nightmare modes represent a challenge. This does not lock anyone out of anything. Everyone still gets to see the end game content at varying levels of difficulty.

 

Thats besides the point since similar mechanics are already present throught a game, art is reused... "Just tuning it a bit to be at random person "Acceptable difficulty level" takes considerable amount of time.

 

2) Your examples are massively exaggerated. If you can show me any statistic that says there are 100 casual players that actually raid for every 1 hardcore raider I'll retract that but I think the chances of that happening are abysmally small.

 

Really? My examples are massively exaggerazed? Comes from a guy that havent thrown single hard number and uses descriptive words like "many" " a lot of" .... which mean absolutely nothing. If you prove that significant amount of players want this over something else i said already said ill agree with that. But you aint quite good at that.

 

3) If the only thing for us to do is simply "roll an alt" I can't see this game retaining many long term subscribers. A large number of people simply have absolutely no interest in doing this and, even for those that do, if the only re-playability in the game lies in rolling alts the majority of the game's subscribers will move on to other things within 2-3 months. SW:TOR promised a decent end game and has the system in place to deliver such. Large numbers of people, myself included, bought the game based upon this. If the game's developers have no intention of delivering this kind of content I'm okay with that. I will feel that I was mislead but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it and will simply move onto another game that doesn't mislead its customers.

 

Theres lot of replayability if you dont play 10+ hours a day. And guess what? 99+% doesnt.

 

And if you think that large masses think that "play same exact thing (raid) every week for x weeks till RNG gawds smile upon you to obtain some digital item that nobody cares about" is some kind of exeptional replayability you are mistaken.

 

Patch 1.2 will be the real test for SW:TOR. I'm eager to see what happens because I really think it will be a make or break point for this game.

 

For you maybe. For 99% others dont give any significance to "are nightmare modes in 1.2 a bit harder or not". BW has hard numbers and is toning down 16-mans. That should be quite an indicator for you.

 

Devs have already said that if playerbase start pushing NMs they will reconsider. Guess what? Playerbase just started pushing HMs.

Edited by GrandMike
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first, you need to remember (or realize if you werent here in these forums since '08) that the vast majority of community members voted against raiding of any kind at all. This game was never meant to be wow. But raids are here and that's great for those who like that. But i don't think Bioware should tune up raid difficulty to "hardcore wow raid guild" difficulty because of a very few guilds. I wouldn't mind seeing a harder MODE for those who elect to enjoy it, and a SLIGHTLY improved set of rewards, but once they become the end-all be-all rewards, those without hardcore guilds and elevated status within those guilds become the galactic beggars. I think BW was smart for not creating the very sense of elitism and exclusion that so many originally clamored against on these forums.

 

Serious question. What DID the community members in '08 want then?

 

You say that they didn't want raids by a large majority, and from what I've seen they also don't want PVP as embodied by recent MMOs. So did they just want KOTOR3 with chatroom functionality? Not trying to be a dick, I'm genuinely curious what people thought this game would be.

 

On topic: The game when you get right down to it is reskinned WoW. Yes it has voiceovers and cutscenes and all that, and that's great, but it's only relevant while you're leveling. Once you hit 50 none of those things matter at all and you're left with the gameplay itself.

 

When you look simply at the gameplay at level 50, this game is a less responsive WoW, with less features and worse raids/dungeons. The state of raiding in this game doesn't surprise me at all, since Bioware has never done an MMO or raids of any kind. Their best bet is to go all in and copy WoW.

 

If you're going to have multiple difficulties, then they need to be mechanically different as well. The Raids should be tested on the PTR (which still has no character copy feature so it's no wonder nothing is properly tested). None of this matters at the moment though since their number one priority should be squashing the existing bugs in Master Loot, 4 man HMs and all all Ops difficulty levels.

 

2 months in and this is still not done, and in patch 1.2 they're adding significantly more features and code, which is sure to present more bugs. Bottom line, I'm sticking around to see how 1.2 pans out, but it had better be impressive or they stand to lose a lot of subscribers, including myself. With the "fixes" they've made to the GCD indicator over the last few patches, I have little hope that 1.2 will be the savior Bioware needs it to be.

 

Don't misunderstand though, this game will never need to go FTP, unless Bioware thinks they'll make more money with that model and microtransactions. The Star Wars IP has enough fans that this game cannot possibly fail, no matter how badly Bioware messes up the gameplay. SWG was a pile of **** after the NGE and it still made money, and would still be making money today if Sony was able to run it concurrently with TOR.

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Thats besides the point since similar mechanics are already present throught a game, art is reused... "Just tuning it a bit to be at random person "Acceptable difficulty level" takes considerable amount of time.

 

I think the mostly positive responses this thread and several other similar threads have gotten indicate that they would not be re-tuning things for the sake of any singular "random person".

 

Really? My examples are massively exaggerazed? Comes from a guy that havent thrown single hard number and uses descriptive words like "many" " a lot of" .... which mean absolutely nothing. If you prove that significant amount of players want this over something else i said already said ill agree with that. But you aint quite good at that.

 

The reason I am not using hard numbers is because admittedly I do not have them. I have never pretended to have them. This is in contrast to your own approach where you use hard numbers and they are (yes I am going to use a hard number here) 100% made up.

 

Theres lot of replayability if you dont play 10+ hours a day. And guess what? 99+% doesnt.

 

Even assuming I did play as much you suggest this means that you are contrasting me with the casual player that plays substantially less. If this is the case why do you even care about the tuning of content you will never spend enough time to reach in any event?

 

At this point I really think you are just trolling. If you want to post some more pseudo statistical gibberish be my guest. I've said my piece and clearly the number of others who feel much the same way are far from insignificant in their number. You only have to look at the response this thread and other similar threads have received to fathom that.

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Serious question. What DID the community members in '08 want then?

 

Sad fact is he's lying. I was an active member of the pre-launch community and while raids were one of the things (like half a dozen others) that got peoples collars to rise there was never anything like a massive decisive vote against 'raiding of any kind'. There most likely was some polls that indicated as such (with maybe about fifty people tops voting) but at that time every day there was anywhere between three and six new topics with polls on them on every topic concievable that would be repeated by another person the very next day. The few topics that remained successful and long lasting never really derived any massive consensus of any kind with the potential exception (from what I recall) of realm-control based world pvp.

Edited by silverprovidence
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This post is written from the perspective of a hardcore guild raid leader. I fully understand that everyone plays this game for different reasons and my aim in posting this is simply to try and make Bioware aware of how their operations content is being received by people who have a serious interest in SW:TOR raiding. It is very much a critique of what I and many others regard as serious flaws within the SW:TOR operations system and due to its length I have tried to break it down into sections.

 

Lack of variety between difficulty modes

 

One of the core weaknesses of SW:TOR raiding is that there is an alarming lack of variety in boss mechanics. The vast majority of raid encounters play out identically in terms of boss mechanics no matter what difficulty the raid is attempted on. The difficulty is only increased through increased damage and increased boss health pools.

 

The net result is that progression through the higher difficulties feels like little more than a gear check. The lack of new mechanics to adapt to makes the encounters feel very stale and unimaginative. The sense of having genuinely accomplished something by completing nightmare mode content is severely diminished because you simply do not feel as though you have overcome some new obstacle that has been placed in your path.

 

Narrow Range of Raid Difficulty

 

When it was revealed before the release of SW:TOR that it would have three different difficulty modes for raiding I do not believe I was alone in thinking such a system would have huge potential. There has been concerted push among MMO developers to make raid content available to the more casual player in recent years and understandably so - hardcore raiders do not make up a large percentage of the overall market. A three tiered system seemed to be the best possible way to satisfy people at both ends of the MMO spectrum, the casual player and the hardcore raider.

 

Such a system allowed Bioware to implement a raiding system where the normal mode represented an opportunity for just about every player to experience raid content and, to be totally fair to them, this is exactly what they accomplished with normal mode raiding. I have absolutely no problem with the tuning of normal mode raiding. It is very well tuned to offer the vast majority of players to experience raid content and to engage with the storylines surrounding this content.

 

The tuning of hard and nightmare mode content however is especially poor. There should be a significant jump in difficulty going from normal mode to hard mode. As a middle ground hard mode should be tuned to the level that casual or semi-hardcore guilds need a great deal of preparation in terms of gear and consumables to complete them. It is more or less a given that some more hardcore guilds will be able to compensate for a lack of gear with better execution, strategy and by taking more of a min/max approach to their individual roles. This is where the nightmare mode becomes key. Nightmare mode should be tuned such that it absolutely requires every raider to put in the maximum possible effort in terms of pre-raid preparation. It should also require an exceptionally high level of execution and strategy to complete encounters at this level. There is absolutely no reason why nightmare mode content should not be tuned to this level given that normal mode gives the more casual player an entry point to raiding and hard mode gives them something to aspire to.

 

Tuning nightmare mode raid content such that it is able to be completed by the average player simply bloats the system - it simultaneously renders hard mode content obsolete while massively devaluing the inherent sense of achievement in completing nightmare mode content for the hardcore raider.

 

As things currently stand the difficulty level of hard mode and nightmare content should both be significantly increased. As a rough indicator the current difficulty of nightmare mode content is approximately where hard mode should lie and nightmare difficulty should be completely re-tuned such that the difference in difficulty between normal and the new hard mode is similar to that between hard and nightmare mode. At present there is very, very little difference in difficulty between hard and nightmare mode content on 16 man (possibly 8 as well although I do not have personal experience with this).

 

Lack of Gear Differentiation

 

There is a very distinct lack of gear differentiation between encounters of different difficulty. When I am talking about difficulty in this section I am referring not only to normal/hard/nightmare modes but also to the size of the raid given that (at present) 16 man content is more difficult than 8 man content. The gear available through hard mode flashpoints and normal mode operations feels very well tuned. You accumulate Columi level gear through both of these but at a much faster raid through normal mode operations and this feels very intuitive and makes sense.

 

The problem with this is that with only 1 tier of gear above Columi, Rakata, it means that this is all that can be offered for what are effectively 4 different levels of difficulty - 8 man hard, 8 man nightmare, 16 man hard and 16 man nightmare. The sense of achievement in acquiring a Rakata level piece of armor is severely diminished by the fact that it can be acquired just as easily on 8 man hard mode as on 16 man nightmare mode.

 

There are two possible solutions to this. The first is that more of an effort should be put into ensuring that 8 man and 16 man raids are tuned to the same level, although from the latest Q&A it seems like the intent is simply to swing the pendulum back in the other direction and make 16 man content easier than 8 man content (more on that below). Even if it were possible to balance small group raiding with large group raiding, which seems unlikely given that several MMOs have tried and failed to do so, it would still mean that the problem is merely diminished and not resolved.

 

Assuming that both 8 and 16 man raids were tuned to the same level it would still mean that under the current loot model that hard mode raids were awarding exactly the same loot as nightmare mode raids. This is pretty poor planning. It is far to late in this current tier of content to make sweeping changes but ideally it should have been set up as follows:

 

Normal mode OPs and hard mode flashpoints drop entry level gear

Hard mode OPs drop mid level gear

Nightmare mode OPs drop the best possible gear

 

This would have meant either allocating Tionese level gear to hard mode flashpoints and normal mode operations or else adding a 4th tier of loot higher than Rakata that was only obtainable in nightmare modes. This type of gear spread is very much needed in the next tier of raid content to ensure that each difficulty mode maintains the appropriate level of risk vs reward.

 

Bugs

 

Before I get into the problem of bugged raid content let me say that I understand as a member of a hardcore guild I expect to encounter bugs simply because we are among the first few to complete the content. To expect a bug free raid environment when you are among the first to do said raid content is probably setting yourself up to be disappointed. With that said some of the bugs are so readily reproducable and consistent that I cannot help but believe that the content is either being rushed out with known bugs or that the in house raid testing is lacking or even non-existent.

 

As a developer of an MMO Bioware has any number of guilds at their disposal who would likely assist them with raid testing but it really does seem as if this resource is largely left unused. The ability to call upon a group of people to test your product free of charge is not at all common in most industries and there really is no excuse for Bioware to be releasing raid content that is littered with bugs when they have such a resource available to them.

 

Admittedly of late they have picked up the pace somewhat of late in terms of bug fixing. There does not seem to be any regression testing done with some of these fixes however. A perfect example is in the fix to Soa which prevented the fight from resetting if the tank were to become trapped by a mind trap. The problem was that this fix now causes him to reset threat every time a mind trap is cast. This bug would have been blindingly obvious if the fight was tested even once or twice after the initial fix but instead the secondary bug went live to the game and is still live after a few weeks. More of an effort needs to be made to ensure that these fixes are not simply introducing new bugs into the game.

 

Similarly there are glaring bugs which have simply been ignored for too long. The fact that master loot in operations has frequently caused some loot as well as crafting materials not to drop has been present since release and has STILL yet to be fixed. This is absolutely appalling. Another slightly different example is the bugged reset on the Ancient Pylons encounter in the Eternity Vault. This was supposedly fixed several patches ago according to the patch notes but again, to date this bug is still present in the game.

 

Customer Service

 

This is probably one of the worst aspects of SW:TOR. Response times are the worst I have seen in an MMO with the possible exception of Funcom games. Solutions are rarely found for any problem submitted and the vast bulk of the time you simply receive a generic template reply which indicates that they cannot assist you with your problem but that it has been forwarded on to the appropriate department so that it does not occur in future. With the number of bugs present in the game since release this kind of customer service is entirely inadequate and unacceptable.

 

Given that it has been widely reported that SW:TOR only needed 500,000 subscribers to be profitable and that recent figures show it has over three times that number of subscriptions this lack of investment in delivering quality customer service is nothing short of shameful. I am utterly tired of hearing the argument that the sheer size and scope of SW:TOR and its playerbase makes it virtually impossible for them to deliver good customer service. This is patently absurd. If anything it means that the larger revenues generated by their product make it possible to allocate more resources toward customer service. If this is already occurring then all I can say is that this capital allocated toward customer service is being allocated very wastefully.

 

Lack of Basic Features

 

The lack of basic features that are of critical importance to an MMO with raid content is particularly damning. The lack of a combat log and more detailed UI customization upon release are key features that by this time surely have to be considered as standard. Other features such as dual spec have surely become standard in the MMO industry at this point in time. I am very much aware that the developers have said that these features are being worked on but with a 5 year development and the large development budget of SW:TOR I simply cannot fathom why these features were not available at release.

 

Regarding the Potential Downgrade of 16 Man Operation Difficulty

 

The recent Q&A discussion saw it mentioned that the design intent was for 16 man content to be slightly easier than 8 man content to compensate for the logistics of having to organize a larger number of people. There has been a great outcry over this and for good reason. There are any number of subscribers who want to test themselves vs the most difficult content available to them and if this shifts toward 8 man content instead of 16 man content this will either see guilds running multiple 8 man groups or else fragmenting into several smaller guilds. I genuinely feel that either of these outcomes would be a sad loss for the SW:TOR community as the end result would likely be a game population of small fragmented groups which have very little interaction with each other. This to me goes against the very spirit of what an MMO is all about - it is a slippery slope which diminishes the multi-player element of SW:TOR. Without this multi-player element SW:TOR becomes little more than a single player RPG with very little replay value. I strongly urge the game's designers to re-consider this intended design as it has the potential to be very, very detrimental to the game's long term prospects.

 

What is SW:TOR Getting Right?

 

In terms of raiding I would be being dishonest if I did not say that there is very little that SW:TOR is getting right in terms of its raid content. There are some positive signs though. Fights like Soa really show that Bioware has it within them to generate very dynamic and interesting boss fights that make much more use of the game environment than most other MMOs. If they can couple this with some serious reforms to other aspects of their raiding system, as discussed above, there is no reason they could not go on to dominate the MMO market in much the same way as WoW has for so long.

 

I am not writing this to try and put another nail in SW:TOR's coffin - quite the opposite. When I began playing this game I really thought that this was the next game where I would take root and play for many, many years. I desperately want this game to succeed where so many others have failed shortly after release in recent years. SW:TOR does seem to be heading in that direction however and I can only hope that Bioware takes heed of not just my concerns but of the concerns held by many members of the SW:TOR community. Massive changes in terms of raid design and implementation are absolutely necessary if SW:TOR is to avoid quickly spiraling toward becoming just one of many free to play, casual oriented MMOs on the market.

 

 

Hire this man as your PVE endgame designer.

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I have no desire to read every single post beyond the original, all I want to say is you're right.

 

Very good post, GJ

Sums up my feelings too. Excellent post.

 

Although I'm not sure where the OP's high expectations for raiding in TOR came from in the first place (maybe it was the game in general).

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Anyone who wants a challenge for challenge's sake can already get it by simply doing stuff in low level gear.

 

Anyone who wants BW to make stuff harder for everyone is not after a challenge, but wants to keep others from enjoying the same content.

 

BW should not cater to those people.

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Anyone who wants a challenge for challenge's sake can already get it by simply doing stuff in low level gear.

 

Anyone who wants BW to make stuff harder for everyone is not after a challenge, but wants to keep others from enjoying the same content.

 

BW should not cater to those people.

 

Nobody is saying that. We want them to leave normal mode as it is. That way everybody can see everything.

 

More serious raider have Hardmode and Nightmare, which should be considerably more difficult.

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Nobody is saying that. We want them to leave normal mode as it is. That way everybody can see everything.

 

More serious raider have Hardmode and Nightmare, which should be considerably more difficult.

 

It's not about seeing everything, it's about getting everything. BW should not make it harder to get the best gear in game. Anyone who wants a challenge can give themsevels a challenge, there's no need for them to ask to make it harder for others to get BiS gear - unless they are not actually after a challenge, but simply want to prevent others from getting the same gear.

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I think the mostly positive responses this thread and several other similar threads have gotten indicate that they would not be re-tuning things for the sake of any singular "random person".

 

You are random person that came to say that by your arbitrary measure NMs are not hard enough. Any other random person can consider them:

 

a) too hard

b) just right

c) too easy

 

and claim HE should be that measure.

 

 

The reason I am not using hard numbers is because admittedly I do not have them. I have never pretended to have them.

 

Nice so you have no basis for anything. Glad we got that out in the open.

 

Even assuming I did play as much you suggest this means that you are contrasting me with the casual player that plays substantially less. If this is the case why do you even care about the tuning of content you will never spend enough time to reach in any event?

 

Who says casuals wont reach it? They sure wont be going around claiming "they cleared everything in 2 weeks" and that "game has no replayability" and in addition "i have 5 lvl 50ies already"

 

I've said my piece and clearly the number of others who feel much the same way are far from insignificant in their number.

 

And there you go again. Ill just quote yourself to debunk this:

 

The reason I am not using hard numbers is because admittedly I do not have them. I have never pretended to have them.
Edited by GrandMike
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It's not about seeing everything, it's about getting everything. BW should not make it harder to get the best gear in game. Anyone who wants a challenge can give themsevels a challenge, there's no need for them to ask to make it harder for others to get BiS gear - unless they are not actually after a challenge, but simply want to prevent others from getting the same gear.

 

So... whats the point of having different difficulty scales then? Things that keep these games going is having something, even small things, that are generally just out of reach of most players while still keeping things competive across the board. Either its something that will push people over that last threshold, or something to aim for all the same.

 

Having gear of a small degree better in the higher difficulties lets people push a bit more and have the same reward basis (rather than a system where you just grind the easiest to gear up till you outgear the higher difficulties). Like with pvp gear. I roll my eyes at people that admit its about gear (as your doing) but hypocritically dont say anything more. After all. If everyone should have the 'best gear'. Why not just have it all just bought off vendors for 100 credits each?

 

Answer: Because thats **** for retention. Its also backsliding from what it means to be an RPG. While theres no need for silly systems (ie four hour long boss battles) retention is built by systems that encourage player participation and the view of 'plateus' to aim for rather than a bunch of 'equal' activities with no goal in sight. If you disagree with that why do we even have the levelling process?

Edited by silverprovidence
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So... whats the point of having different difficulty scales then? Things that keep these games going is having something, even small things, that are generally just out of reach of most players while still keeping things competive across the board. Either its something that will push people over that last threshold, or something to aim for all the same.

 

Oh, I know that, and I agree - I simply do not think they should it make harder than it is now, just because a few self-styled hardcore raiders are bored already. The whole thread reeks of "I want to keep the noobs down" attitude.

 

Hardcore raiders are poison for a game, they act like locusts, devouring content at an alarming rate and pushing the devs to cater to them, leaving the casual gamers left behind, cut off from increasingly large parts of the game.

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Oh, I know that, and I agree - I simply do not think they should it make harder than it is now, just because a few self-styled hardcore raiders are bored already. The whole thread reeks of "I want to keep the noobs down" attitude.

 

Hardcore raiders are poison for a game, they act like locusts, devouring content at an alarming rate and pushing the devs to cater to them, leaving the casual gamers left behind, cut off from increasingly large parts of the game.

 

Was a part of the forum community for a couple years pre launch and I can pretty much say that I've seen every attitude from self-entitled to nonchalant expressed and frankly the OP has very cogent points. Arguably if things were too hard we'd have outrage exploding on these forums. And points such as not finding enjoyment in 'hard modes' that are just more numbers rather than mechanics ie gear checks are very fair views to express.

 

Also I just shake my head at people who dismiss arguments (generally on content they dont enjoy/partake in) by saying 'oh their hardcore'. How... do you know they're hardcore? What is hardcore? The top 60 players? You can't make the claim that everyone who posts on these forums about raiding are in this 0.25% of players because you dont know that. And to use that to dismiss arguments is frankly something people seem to do brainlessly too much not because they have serious arguments but because they hate this idea of a mythical 'hardcore' that realistically, if they did exist as people argued, wouldnt have any effect on them.

 

Like when people went on about reward basis and argued against loot lockouts (as I personally would prefer) for content lockouts. Because it 'throttles the hardcore so they dont outgear everyone'. The times when I asked 'what effect would that have?' generally got answers like 'their mother-basement guilds of players that play 20 hours a day and it would just unbalance things'. Seriously? THATS the hardcore people are afraid of? How many servers have GUILDS of players that play 20 hours a day? I dont doubt there are examples (when you start having players numbering in the millions statistics allow for a lot of eventualities) but seriously. Entire game systems to throttle them? Thats funny in and as of itself and shows the problem we have of people jealously guarding the 'casual' label as a model of virtue.

 

Also I'd advise against laying claim to the title of 'casual' as if you represent 99% of the playerbase. Because in my experience unless you consider every player to be someone who plays 20 minutes of the day and is a bumbling idiot unable to express coherent thoughts (an offensive thought in itself) people who claim to represent them are guilty of making the same paper thin arguments themselves. The playerbase is FAR more diverse than some simple label of 'casual' that its proponents NEVER define.

 

What proof do you have that the OP, or the many people that have supported him, are this 'hardcore' content devourers other than that we're talking about raiding? I suspect very little.

Edited by silverprovidence
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I agree with the original poster 100%.

 

I love SWTOR, and I like games that offer a real challenge. Unfortunately SWTOR doesn't quite reach the challenge I was expecting. The only fight that is even remotely difficult in-game atm is Nightmare Soa, and it feels great to down a boss of this difficulty. If all bosses offered this challenge and provided a greater reward for completing this challenge, I'd be an extremely happy customer.

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What proof do you have that the OP, or the many people that have supported him, are this 'hardcore' content devourers other than that we're talking about raiding? I suspect very little.

 

That they are bored already at this point and want harder ops/raids is proof enough that they devour content too fast to cater to them.

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That they are bored already at this point and want harder ops/raids is proof enough that they devour content too fast to cater to them.

 

Eh... endgame content is shallow Im not quite sure how people could call TOR's endgame content deep. As for the difficulty thing... just basing that on people complaining is a poor way to go about it. So people cant complain about it being too easy for devs to respond to? Seems perfectly legitimate to me. If it was too hard would be not have the right to complain? Besides if devs are going to divide things into difficulties as a design choice... they may as well do it right. And player feedback on that is necessary.

 

If the game isnt tuned to those 'plateus' of pursuit enough players have the right to voice their disapproval. If that they have complaints is enough for you to lable their concerns as irrelevent I can only hope bioware doesnt take your advice to count. They'd be ignoring most of their playerbase if they let players like you arbitrarily decide what is and whats not important.

 

Just because a content 'exists' doesnt mean that it appropriately structures the 'pursuit' nature of RPG's thats necessary for retention. And just because it 'exists' doesnt mean its going to last months. Why are people still not on the origin planets? Thats a LOT of content! Its supposed to last half a year easy!

Edited by silverprovidence
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Not to bash on anyone, but it's interesting to me to see it point-blank stated that if the best gear doesn't come out of the hardest raid difficulties, people will blow them off as a waste of time.

 

This in contrast to the oft-stated position of many that they want the challenge.

I'd be direly interested in finding out just how many dedicated raiders actually -are- interested in the challenge, and would pursue heightened difficulty even if the rewards weren't escalated for it, in contrast to those that use such as a smokescreen.

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It's not often I actually log in when reading these forum posts...But I felt that I needed to login in to reply to this thread

 

I agree with you completely on your opinions, especially the risk vs reward in regards to Hard and Nightmare modes as well as that the 16 mans shouldn't be "easier". I feel that making 16 mans easier would diminish the spirit and rush large groups get when completing something as a large team. My guild also felt that there was no point in running nightmare when hard mode could be cleared much faster, with less effort, and with the same reward. Again with just 16 mans in general: with nothing to a reward to set it apart, why run 16's other than the self satisfaction from saying we did it?

 

 

 

Consider this post /signed.

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