The end game PVE content is great, its execution however was poor.

[Samborino]

I think the end game is great to be honest, but the execution of it was poor. For PVE they made progression far too easy. If raid bosses dropped less loot and where harder , the PVE players would still have something to do.

 

If nightmare and 16 man raids had their own loot , alot of players would still have something to do. The loot system while leveling up was fantastic, but in the end game for PVP and PVE its just cookie cutter sets. They need to fix this. Sure allowing mods with set bonus's to be transferred to orange gear is going to help, but that still doesnt give them an excuse to rehash loot through every aspect of the end game, 16 mans and 8 normal and hm's have the same loot, on top of that commendation vendors and HM FP's also drop the same loot as 8 and 16 man normal raids (and some gear is rehashed into hard mode Ops as well).

 

They need a unique dynamic end game loot system, where their are really good pieces of gear that arent part of sets that have low drop rates, they also need to lower the amount of gear that drops from a raid, they arent doing anyone any favors by having an 8 man Ops drop 4 pieces of gear per boss on most occasions (although it kinda feels like they did a ninja nerf to that as now some bosses only drop 2 pieces). Edit: I found out this was the master looter bug , that prevented items from dropping in hard mode, so it wasnt a ninja nerf to drop rates

 

The end game content was great, but the execution was poor, if running HM FP's still had some value once you have columi gear that would be great, right now I have no incentive to run them , but id love one because they are alot of fun (which is why I still run them but incentives are always nice)

 

No one seems to ask the hard questions about the end game content, and look into the reasons they are actually bored with the content, if you really think about it would you be bored with the ACTUAL content if you had incentives to run it for longer, if OP's actually had progression (AKA harder gear checks , for instance the first time you go into EV your guild should only beable to clear the first 2 bosses until they get the group geared from those 2 bosses and are able to progress to the next boss)

 

They sped up the progression for end game PVE far too much and on so many different levels, to much gear drops from Raid bosses, all the different modes drop the same gear(HM FP's , commendations, Normal Ops etc). The raid bosses werent hard enough, the raids werent long enough etc. Getting full columi in 2 days shouldnt be possible, in wow it took most people weeks to get full tier sets. Also Tionese gear serves no purpose in this game as moost people run HM FP's before OP's and wont need it by the time they run Ops.

 

Sorry for the wall of text, I love this game and im enjoying leveling up new toons, I just hope they can fix end game progression eventually. Some of the stuff announced for 1.2 seems like it will help but there is still no news of whether 16 mans will get their own loot or not , that would be a really good start though.

 

TLDR. Slow down end game PVE progression, add more loot and lower drop rates. At the very least 8 and 16 mans should have their own loot tables the only incentive to run 16 mans currently is bragging rights.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Samborino

[Tarbacca]

What is with these long posts without a TL;DR. I am annoyed.

[Xanikk]

What is with these long posts without a TL;DR. I am annoyed.

 

If you don't have something productive to say as a response why post this crap?

[Samborino]

What is with these long posts without a TL;DR. I am annoyed.

 

Sorry ill make one , gotta appease the ADD generation lol

Edited February 26, 2012 by Samborino

[Tarbacca]

Sorry ill make one , gotta appease the ADD generation lol

 

The worst part is that I have ADD and anxiety :/

[Andryah]

the only incentive to run 16 mans currently is bragging rights.

 

Actually, for some guilds, it's ALL about the bragging rights.

 

Here's the thing about MMOs, they periodically update their end game, including the loot tables. Patience.

[Tarbacca]

Actually, for some guilds, it's ALL about the bragging rights.

 

Here's the thing about MMOs, they periodically update their end game, including the loot tables. Patience.

 

Cough cough Paragon on WoW cough.

[Samborino]

Actually, for some guilds, it's ALL about the bragging rights.

 

Here's the thing about MMOs, they periodically update their end game, including the loot tables. Patience.

 

I totally agree, and for launch i think it was fine especially considering how much time they spent on the leveling process. I watched the credits the other day took over half an hour. And so much of those credits where for the leveling process (voice work , planet design) So much work was put into this game and I think it has the best 0- end game out of any mmo ive played.

 

I just hope they dont continue along the path of adding a new FP and that FP will have the same loot drops as the new raid, and in that new raid the 8 and 16 mans have the same drops and nightmare mode has the same drops as Hard mode and the new commendations will also give the same gear as the new raid and the new hard mode, etc.

 

I dont expect them to deal with all of that at once, but at the very least giving 16 mans their own loot tables for future raids would be a start. That and lowering the amount of loot that drops per boss. People like gear so you dont hear to many comments on it, but 4 pieces dropping from an 8 man boss is alot. When i played wow I never thought that 2 pieces dropping off of a boss in a 10 man raid was too little, it was perfectly fine.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Samborino

[Xtroll]

Uhm, dont get your hopes up, if I Remember right from a Q&A thread, 16 man Ops was intended to be slighly easyer than 8 man ops. And therefore have the same loot.

 

Expect heavy nerfs in 16 man ops.

[BoomstarPrime]

I somewhat agree, hard modes definitely should've been harder. Plowed through them a bit too quickly.

[Forsbacka]

The post took longer to read than to clear nightmare modes.

[Jett-Rinn]

It never fails every time a new MMO is released we have a group that screams about how easy it is..the devs cave and six months later they realized what a huge mistake it is because people start leaving in droves.

 

Cataclysm is a perfect example of this when it launched we got snide "Dungeons are hard" blogs from the devs and Totalbiscuit was singing "hark the wrath baby"

 

Several million lost subs later; the devs are almost taking you by the hand to Deathwing and handing you Tier gear.

 

The Moral of the story? If they just left things alone and not listened to the hotpocket crowd they would not have to go overboard in desperation after losing a huge number of subs.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Jett-Rinn

[Forsbacka]

It never fails every time a new MMO is released we have a group that screams about how easy it is..the devs cave and six months later they realized what a huge mistake it is because people start leaving in droves.

 

Cataclysm is a perfect example of this when it launched we got snide "Dungeons are hard" blogs from the devs and Totalbiscuit was singing "hark the wrath baby"

 

Several million lost subs later; the devs are almost taking you by the hand to Deathwing and handing you Tier gear.

 

The Moral of the story? If they just left things alone and not listened to the hotpocket crowd they would not have to go overboard in desperation after losing a huge number of subs.

 

Although Cata had 2 difficulty levels just as wrath did and that offered challenge for serious raiders, HC Ragnaros beeing most difficult boss fight in MMO gaming history.

 

This game had 3 difficulty levels, easy easy and easy. People are complaining cause they thought there is different levels of difficulty with Nightmare modes beeing for serioous raiders , normals beeing for very casuals and hardmodes for average plyars. But instead they tuned nightmare modes so that most casual guilds clears em now. Why even make 3 difficulty levels for no appareant reason?

[Samborino]

Uhm, dont get your hopes up, if I Remember right from a Q&A thread, 16 man Ops was intended to be slighly easyer than 8 man ops. And therefore have the same loot.

 

Expect heavy nerfs in 16 man ops.

 

That doesnt mean it wont get its own loot table, im not saying it has to be a ton better, just different.

 

They need to steer away from only making gear that is part of sets, it makes everyone look the same. Right now for PVE end game the loot drops are as follows. Exotech set, Xenotech set, Energized set. Then 3 sets of tier gear that look the same but with different colours. That is 4 sets of gear, or 6 sets if you want to be optimistic about it.

 

I think alot of people dont realise that , that is all they have right now for loot in the end game, and its spread out through all the Ops and HM FP's(with duplicate drops all over the place such as battle of ilum drops a columi offhand 2nd boss in EV drops same Offhand and so on and so forth). Im not a fan of wow anymore or anything but just as a comparison Naxxramas (8 and 16 man) had more loot then all of the PVE end game combined in SWTOR.

[Jett-Rinn]

Although Cata had 2 difficulty levels just as wrath did and that offered challenge for serious raiders, HC Ragnaros beeing most difficult boss fight in MMO gaming history.

 

This game had 3 difficulty levels, easy easy and easy. People are complaining cause they thought there is different levels of difficulty with Nightmare modes beeing for serioous raiders , normals beeing for very casuals and hardmodes for average plyars. But instead they tuned nightmare modes so that most casual guilds clears em now. Why even make 3 difficulty levels for no appareant reason?

 

I hear what you are saying but consider this; every starter dungeon is a bit light on the difficulty even in the hardest mode....I'm pretty confident that Nightmare mode in the upcoming operations will be a bit more difficult and you will see a ramp up from there as we approach the first expansion pack. That is little solace for experienced raiders but it is what it is.

[Samborino]

It never fails every time a new MMO is released we have a group that screams about how easy it is..the devs cave and six months later they realized what a huge mistake it is because people start leaving in droves.

 

Cataclysm is a perfect example of this when it launched we got snide "Dungeons are hard" blogs from the devs and Totalbiscuit was singing "hark the wrath baby"

 

Several million lost subs later; the devs are almost taking you by the hand to Deathwing and handing you Tier gear.

 

The Moral of the story? If they just left things alone and not listened to the hotpocket crowd they would not have to go overboard in desperation after losing a huge number of subs.

 

Luckily this game offers 3 different difficulty levels plus 8 and 16 mans. All they have to do is make nightmare mode unbelievably hard and give people an actual incentive to run it(its own loot table please). And make hard mode actually be a challenge as it should be(and maybe have it so that it doesnt share loot with normal mode). Not clear 4/5 in an hour on your first night running it.

 

And right now i think any average guild who has done their due diligence in gearing up pre raid gear should have 0 problems clearing EV normal in their first night there, is that what you want? Where is the sense of progression?

Edited February 26, 2012 by Samborino

[Forsbacka]

I hear what you are saying but consider this; every starter dungeon is a bit light on the difficulty even in the hardest mode....I'm pretty confident that Nightmare mode in the upcoming operations will be a bit more difficult and you will see a ramp up from there as we approach the first expansion pack. That is little solace for experienced raiders but it is what it is.

 

Well i wont see next Operation since me and most of guildies quit already raiding or whole game but i hope for the people that are in it for raiding and will stay to play the game that you are true.

[Samborino]

I somewhat agree, hard modes definitely should've been harder. Plowed through them a bit too quickly.

 

Even if they werent harder and the drop rates where lower so you actuallly needed to go in there longer for loot, that would be acceptable for now, or even better more unique drops (ie. not part of sets) and a lower drop rate. I know its not like this for everyone but on my gunslinger i got 3 piece rakata on my first night in EV and the Main tank guardian got 2 piece. Why is more than one tier piece dropping? Maybe soa should drop 2 but on every boss seems a bit excessive.

 

Its a hard thing to say for alot of people, "i want less gear to drop" but someone needs to say it.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Samborino

[Xtroll]

That doesnt mean it wont get its own loot table, im not saying it has to be a ton better, just different.

 

They need to steer away from only making gear that is part of sets, it makes everyone look the same. Right now for PVE end game the loot drops are as follows. Exotech set, Xenotech set, Energized set. Then 3 sets of tier gear that look the same but with different colours. That is 4 sets of gear, or 6 sets if you want to be optimistic about it.

 

I think alot of people dont realise that , that is all they have right now for loot in the end game, and its spread out through all the Ops and HM FP's(with duplicate drops all over the place such as battle of ilum drops a columi offhand 2nd boss in EV drops same Offhand and so on and so forth). Im not a fan of wow anymore or anything but just as a comparison Naxxramas (8 and 16 man) had more loot then all of the PVE end game combined in SWTOR.

 

I do agree with you, I just dont belive they actualy will add new gear in the current content. But we can allways hope for more variety in future ops and patches...

 

I found the Q&A post I refering to and quoteing it just to clear things up:

 

ref: http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-feb-17th-2012

Lexiekaboom: 16 man Operations are much harder than 8 man Operations (to the point where most guilds can easily clear hard mode 8 man before being able to clear 16 man easy mode) but there is no loot difference at all to doing them. It's better to send your 16 man raid force to clear two 8 man instances .Is this oversight or design? What will be done to offset this in the future?

 

Gabe Amatangelo: This is not per design. The teams have been addressing this in the weekly patches to some degree and more so in Game Update 1.2. It is intended that 16 player mode is slightly easier than 8 player mode due to the fact that getting and coordinating 16 players is a larger hurdle in and of itself.

 

Im really not trying to take a Answer out of context here, But this is generaly the only "Answer" I seen from the devs on the topic, If it's eaven related... Thats for you to decide, I might be reading to much between the lines here.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Xtroll

[Gohlar]

It never fails every time a new MMO is released we have a group that screams about how easy it is..the devs cave and six months later they realized what a huge mistake it is because people start leaving in droves.

 

Cataclysm is a perfect example of this when it launched we got snide "Dungeons are hard" blogs from the devs and Totalbiscuit was singing "hark the wrath baby"

 

Several million lost subs later; the devs are almost taking you by the hand to Deathwing and handing you Tier gear.

 

The Moral of the story? If they just left things alone and not listened to the hotpocket crowd they would not have to go overboard in desperation after losing a huge number of subs.

 

Translation: Design for the lowest possible denominator or people will quit.

 

I think think SW has proved that incorrect as people are leaving this game in droves.

[Samborino]

I do agree with you, I just dont belive they actualy will add new gear in the current content. But we can allways hope for more variety in future ops and patches...

 

I found the Q&A post I refering to and quoteing it just to clear things up:

 

ref: http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-feb-17th-2012

 

 

Im really not trying to take a Answer out of context here, But this is generaly the only "Answer" I seen from the devs on the topic, If it's eaven related... Thats for you to decide, I might be reading to much between the lines here.

 

Yea ive read through that answer multiple times. I will remain hopefully optimistic

 

And also as much as I would like them to add new gear to the current content I agree with you that this probablly wont happen but as I said above , I just hope they dont continue down this same path of rehashing loot drops in every aspect of end game PVE.

Edited February 26, 2012 by Samborino

[Samborino]

Well i wont see next Operation since me and most of guildies quit already raiding or whole game but i hope for the people that are in it for raiding and will stay to play the game that you are true.

 

I hope so as well. They need to something , blowing through all of the raid content in a few weeks (you can only be saved once a week so its not like im just plaiyng 50 hours a week and blowing through all the content too fast) and have nothing left to do for PVE progression for the next month and a half or more should not be a pattern that BW wants to repeat with this upcoming patch.

 

Also if commendation vendors actually had their own unique loot so it made it worthwhile to still be running HM FP's that would be awesome, i found the hard mode flashpoints to be one of the best points of the game, and i still run them for fun on occasion , having an incentive to run them all again would be great though (beyond making a new toon which is what im doing right now). Its silly to have commendation vendors have the same loot that you get fromm HM FP's and then also to have Normal ops 8 and 16 man drop that exact same loot (and oh wait i forgot hard mode ops drops some of that same loot as well lol)

[rkopczak]

Agree with OP on every word, progression should be really slowed down.

It was so easy to do, just increase difficulity between hardmode and nightmare, give them separate loot, and here we go - we just doubled our content.

 

Yeah, it's also sad there's no point of running flashpoints as you gear up, there shoild be some fluff to get, like really rare social gear or whatever, to keep people interested.

 

I hope BioWare seen all that and will make changes on next operation.

[Samborino]

Agree with OP on every word, progression should be really slowed down.

It was so easy to do, just increase difficulity between hardmode and nightmare, give them separate loot, and here we go - we just doubled our content.

 

Yeah, it's also sad there's no point of running flashpoints as you gear up, there shoild be some fluff to get, like really rare social gear or whatever, to keep people interested.

 

I hope BioWare seen all that and will make changes on next operation.

 

Thank you. Yes it was so easy to do, it would also be so easy to fix this problem. Adding more gear and lowering the rate at which it drops is much easier than having to create raid content at a rapid rate because people are getting through it to fast they are really kicking themselves in the teeth here and creating a problem where their doesnt need to be one. Add more loot , give HM FP's their own drops and 16 mans their own drops, boom problem solved. Oh and give nightmare their own drops as well, like you said even just adding one of these suggestions effectively doubles the content, if they lowered the drop rate as well its even more than double. Lowering the drop rate makes the gear seem more valuable to the player, if its easy to get then the sense of accomplishment fromm getting it is diminished.

 

They need to have a big operation as well (hopefully the next one) like an operation with more than 5 bosses, a 10 boss operation, that sounds good

[Azzras]

Solution:

 

Increase NM mode boss health and dmg output.

 

Decrease number of drops to say 2 for 8m, and 3-4 for 16m.

 

Slightly increase current NM mode loot stats.

 

profit.