This game lacks epeen

[Uruare]

Forgive me if I am wrong, or if someone has already said this, but isn't epeen merely a "sense of accomplishment." As such, I can't fathom why anyone would argue against there being epeen in this game. Everybody everywhere wants to feel good about their accomplishments. By making certain things difficult, by setting goals for people, players feel good when they accomplish them. Once they have accomplished their goal, they want another, harder goal, to try to attain so they have that same feeling of accomplishment. Hence, higher and higher levels of difficulty in attaining goals.

 

If we were totally do away with any sense of accomplishment, image what the game would be like. Imagine a game where you just select any time in the game you want at any time for a database of items. Do you feel any pride or joy or accomplishment in attaining that item when it is just handed to you? No, you don't. What is all characters started at level 50. Would you have the sense of accomplishment that you have when you earn that level through hard work? No, you wouldn't. Yes, there are extreme unrealistic examples, but the lesson is applicable: enjoyment is derived from accomplishment (in many or most instances).

 

That being the case, how can epeen (I.E. - a sense of accomplishment) be bad?

 

 

 

Imprecise as the term is, I tend to regard 'e-peen' as a reference made to unhealthy degrees of fixation on what could and, in my thinking should, elsewise be a contributing degree of accomplishment's role in a game.

 

 

Again per my interpretation, you're not e-peening if you and your guildmates are shooting for a world first; that's a perfectly valid goal and there's nothing inherently arrogant, egotistical or hinged on flaunting about it.

 

If you go around bragging that you're in a guild contending for world firsts, you're e-peening.

 

If you achieve a world first and strut around being arrogant and rubbing others' faces in it, you're e-peening.

 

Basically, I take it as a signifier of maturity. Healthy degrees of fostered accomplishment and behaviour encouraged by those fostered systems is good for a game.

 

Focusing on encouraging e-peening? Why, so we can encourage everyone to envy others and fixate on getting that stuff too wherein which, if they can't meet the demands to do so, their game experience -will- suffer for it?

 

That's just bad reasoning. There are better ways that could be employed to foster and encourage both accomplishment as well as community without resorting to a known method for proliferating division, hatred and social toxicity.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Uruare

[Laokoon]

Because a sense of accomplishment necesscarily precludes some players which goes against the "I want it all and I want it now" mentality of too many players.

 

If, hypothetically, we gave every person playing the game "everything" and we gave it all to them "now", do you think they would be happy or would they be annoyed? I would be willing to bet that 99.9% of people would be angry because, though they want everything, they don't want everybody to have everything, they want to be better off than others by comparison.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Laokoon

[Agenteusa]

In the case of online communities like forums and MMO games, there will always be egoists with superiority complexes. These egoists are known for their excessive bragging, regular condescending comments to others, and an overall abrasive nature. Nobody likes egoists, so it is common in virtual communities for people to mock these egoists by referring to their 'electronic *****es' being bigger than others. Indeed, to have someone refer to your epeen is to have someone insult you.

 

There you go.

[Agenteusa]

I would be willing to be 99.9% of people would be angry because, though they want everything, they don't want everybody to have everything, they want to be better off than others by comparison.

 

I completely agree with you. That said I don´t need to spam my guild/general channel chat or call other names just because the Rakata Weapon dropped for me.

 

Nor do I need to vanglorify myself before others to have a sense of achievement. thats what epeeners do basically. They need to get reactions from others for their ego to be satisfied.

[Pekish]

did i read somewhere down the road "purpose to play"

 

people amaze me.

[vanisle]

I brought this issue up the first week of playing and everyone boo'd me - hahaha

 

Everything about this game is too easy - a person can just solo through it

 

Ramp up the difficulty - add hp to mobs, more adds, whatever it takes - I'm talking even the general PVE environment during leveling. This is an mmo, make it difficult, force grouping to complete tasks due to difficulty. Just my opinion.

 

I shouldn't be able to solo a same level elite - I'm not that good - I mean I think I could prob solo 2 elites easily with Khem and me healing, wth?

Edited February 28, 2012 by vanisle

[Samwiseee]

While the OP worded it quite poorly, he is touching on something that is actually at the very core of the issues this game has. First I'll say that I do come from a hardcore raiding WoW experience, but am enjoying leveling slowly and enjoying TOR's story immensely.

 

There seems to be an increasingly popular sentiment in this thread by casual players lashing out in anger at the hardcore players who simply want difficult, high level game content to work towards. This stance is no less intolerant than the ideas they are bashing.

 

In WoW, there were certain piecing of armor only accessible to the rank #1 pvp player on the entire server, or the the most high ranked players. Many extremely difficult bosses dropped items that on some servers only one person had, due to its rarity. Now, you might think "wow! only one player gets the item?! *** is the point of that?" The point of it is to give players something to dream about and to strive for. That one, single item causes thousands upon thousands of players to play more often with more vigor, hoping that they will soon attain it. It may seem like a trivial thing to add, but it is something incredibly important to players and touches on the psychology of why players keep playing the game and what makes them feel like their time isn't being wasted.

 

Yes, it is true that a casual player might not have gear quite as good as a hardcore player. Is that a bad thing? Do you honestly drive around scoffing at people who drive BMW's lashing out in anger that they have a better car than you? No, of course not, and if you do you're acting irrationally. They bought that car with money they earned, just like a hardcore player will have put more time into the game than you, and earned their gear accordingly.

 

Appeasing the hardcore players by adding higher level content and novelty awards/items with higher stats would be a healthy addition to the game, and not only to the hardcore players but to everyone who plays. The best thing the game can do is to have something that appeals to every type of MMO player. Right now, casuals have a lot of things in their camp, and now the hardcore players need a little love.

 

Casual players don't like competing for high ranks? Then don't compete for high ranks. Don't like raiding nightmare ops? Then don't raid nightmare ops. But working to keep things these out of the game simply because they won't be able to reap the rewards is nothing short of pure, unabashed selfishness.

[vanisle]

Surely you jest on the trophies right?

 

In the world i live in there are winners and LOOSERS

 

Ya loose people are annoying...

[Agenteusa]

There seems to be an increasingly popular sentiment in this thread by casual players lashing out in anger at the hardcore players who simply want difficult, high level game content to work towards. This stance is no less intolerant than the ideas they are bashing.

 

This is about epeening not about Hardcore players.

 

I´m a former hardcore player and I don´t have anything against hardcore players. I do have against "epeen players" as described in this thread and generally againt people bashing the developers with everything that crosses their minds no matter how insignificant it is.

 

Yes, it worries me since important issues will be forgotten, like, let´s say Ilum for instance?

Objective based pvp?

Raid bosses not being bugged?

 

Those are important issues taht don´t work as intended as of now so yeah I don´t care about people who say teh game is easy, and you get gear so easily and fast asking for stuff that imo not only will ruin the community but even make the game easier (x-server lfg, combat logs, macros. healbots, etc).

[Uruare]

While the OP worded it quite poorly, he is touching on something that is actually at the very core of the issues this game has.

Snip

 

 

Agreed, and you'll never find me, for one, bashing on a thread calling for any of what you singled out in the parts I snipped.

 

However, look at the thread title. Look at the framing of the OP's position.

 

He wants to be King Purple dancing on a fencepost with groveling plebs stopping as they mill about in their peon activities to /bow at him and to have all of these perfectly reasonable things many would appreciate to do with fixing the content in question and scaling its difficulty across a genuinely challenging array of both mechanisms and diversities in thematic nature be engendered in...the context of e-peenery?

 

I'm still going "Wat" in the flattest mental tone possible at it. He's made a wonderful argument for why his opinion should be set on fire and publically burned.

 

Not much else. And I'd still rather see all the content that holds any appeal for the hardcore be broken and suck and remain anemic and imbalanced than see it turned into a revolving door of ego idolatry.

 

Thought by now we'd have learned, in a general sense, that a lot of what's been working in most MMO's to date isn't necessarily working because it's good, but because it's what's there for the many to make the best of that they can.

 

There are better ways to spin it, in short. Focusing on envy as a motivator, well...in order to express how much I loath that sentiment, I'd need a tire iron, a length of rope and three days alone with the concept out back in the woodshed.

[Dumpiduke]

I honestly cant say. My highest is lvl 39 and i havent started raiding yet.

 

But to disregard the hardcore player bases contribution to the game as a whole is counter-productive and just plain retarded.

 

The people who contribute to the game arent people like me, who only have a small amount of time to play. They are the hardcores, that spend +8 hours a day on the game, and maintain community data bases (swtorwiki, torhead), design raid strats. theory craft, and (hopefully in the future) design mods and UI add-ons.

 

 

seriously read the OP

 

I’m going to have to agree here. While ‘hardcore’ players do make up a smaller portion of the population, their incessant time spent in the game helps to really analyze the areas of the game that are problematic. People that are exposed to something for larger amounts of time can typically point out its flaws. In this case, the hardcore’s that have spent hours and hours of playing are proving that perhaps there isn’t as much content as Bioware initially thought that there was.

 

The carrot on a stick is the oldest MMO trick in the book. The problem with TOR is that it’s letting players catch the carrot, gorge themselves on it, and then roll over perfectly content to never have to chase it again. You can literally experience everything that TOR has to offer from 1 to 50 in less than 200 hours. As far as I’m concerned, the most important months for an MMO are the first 6. If you can keep the majority of your player base chasing a goal until the next major patch update, you’ve got a good chance of keeping your subscriber base; and then, you just repeat the process over and over again. Pretty simple really.

 

I’ve been on both sides of the fence. Currently, I’m a casual player, but I see the importance of having a thriving, competitive, hardcore audience in the game. It’s fun for me to see what some of the more hardcore guilds actually end up achieving. I’m not selfish enough to care that someone spent 500 hours working for an item that very few on the server have. I’ll think they’re crazy, but that doesn’t mean that I’m completely unsupportive of how they choose to spend their time. There are a lot of hardcore players out there, and I really think that they bring something worth noting to the community beyond “HUR DUR look at my l33t gearzz!”

 

I fear that Bioware has this philosophy that hardcore players are a poison to the future of their game, and that Bioware should just let them quit. I think this is wrong, and it’s going to come back to bite them in the end if they don’t fix it. Even Bioware themselves have said that an average play session is 4 to 6 hours. If that’s the case, they better start pumping out content like crazy or making it much, much, much harder if they're going to keep up with these astounding figures.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Dumpiduke

[JediElf]

Imprecise as the term is, I tend to regard 'e-peen' as a reference made to unhealthy degrees of fixation on what could and, in my thinking should, elsewise be a contributing degree of accomplishment's role in a game.

 

 

Again per my interpretation, you're not e-peening if you and your guildmates are shooting for a world first; that's a perfectly valid goal and there's nothing inherently arrogant, egotistical or hinged on flaunting about it.

 

If you go around bragging that you're in a guild contending for world firsts, you're e-peening.

 

If you achieve a world first and strut around being arrogant and rubbing others' faces in it, you're e-peening.

 

Basically, I take it as a signifier of maturity. Healthy degrees of fostered accomplishment and behaviour encouraged by those fostered systems is good for a game.

 

Focusing on encouraging e-peening? Why, so we can encourage everyone to envy others and fixate on getting that stuff too wherein which, if they can't meet the demands to do so, their game experience -will- suffer for it?

 

That's just bad reasoning. There are better ways that could be employed to foster and encourage both accomplishment as well as community without resorting to a known method for proliferating division, hatred and social toxicity.

 

This needs more attention. A very good post, with many good points in it.

[Dumpiduke]

 

Yes, it is true that a casual player might not have gear quite as good as a hardcore player. Is that a bad thing? Do you honestly drive around scoffing at people who drive BMW's lashing out in anger that they have a better car than you? No, of course not, and if you do you're acting irrationally. They bought that car with money they earned, just like a hardcore player will have put more time into the game than you, and earned their gear accordingly.

 

Finally, a car analogy I actually like that I think fits the bill TOR needs BMW's!

[Vagessel]

Agreed, and you'll never find me, for one, bashing on a thread calling for any of what you singled out in the parts I snipped.

 

*SNIP*.

 

There are better ways to spin it, in short. Focusing on envy as a motivator, well...in order to express how much I loath that sentiment, I'd need a tire iron, a length of rope and three days alone with the concept out back in the woodshed.

 

I admire your wit and skill with words. Was hoping to merely send it as a PM but didn't figure it out. Whatever, there you go.

[Samwiseee]

This is about epeening not about Hardcore players.

 

I´m a former hardcore player and I don´t have anything against hardcore players. I do have against "epeen players" as described in this thread and generally againt people bashing the developers with everything that crosses their minds no matter how insignificant it is.

 

Yes, it worries me since important issues will be forgotten, like, let´s say Ilum for instance?

Objective based pvp?

Raid bosses not being bugged?

 

Those are important issues taht don´t work as intended as of now so yeah I don´t care about people who say teh game is easy, and you get gear so easily and fast asking for stuff that imo not only will ruin the community but even make the game easier (x-server lfg, combat logs, macros. healbots, etc).

 

"E-peen players," as it's being called, is just one of the many types of players that sit in the hardcore camp. The items he is asking for are obtained through a hardcore playstyle. Yea, the more hardcore content you introduce, the more "E-peen players" will emerge, just as how the more casual content you introduce, the more whiny babies emerge complaining about how everyone's gear is better than theirs. That's not to say that all casuals are like this, or all hardcore players are like this, but they are both players that want to enjoy the game and they shouldn't be disregarded just because you think their playstyle is stupid.

 

He wants to stand on a giant speeder and show off his shiny gear? Awesome! Let him - it's of no concern to me. The ideas I am fighting for are the availability of the things he is asking for, because there are players that would appreciate their inclusion.

 

Also, while you say that there are more pressing concerns to deal with right now, I'd say that maximizing player retention is right up there at the top, and including content for everything (yes, even e-peeners) is something that shouldn't be ignored.

[VarnieTsk]

Um, Actually, I hate it when you park yourself upon me, the mailboxes, and the storage units, so yes you do get in the way with obnoxious epeen blocking the view and my whole screen.

 

Kindly go to a smaller , and apparently (QQ) less epeen, speeder or walk while in the Fleet so as not obstruct everyone's view of important things, like anything on their screen.

 

So, take your Super Mount out of my face, please.

 

Oh yeah, and WoW, wasn't it the epeen guilds/crowd/testers that were all caught Exploiting what they passed in tests? Oh, 8 day ban slap, oops.

 

This! 100x This!!!!!

[Stupiddrummer]

While the OP worded it quite poorly, he is touching on something that is actually at the very core of the issues this game has. First I'll say that I do come from a hardcore raiding WoW experience, but am enjoying leveling slowly and enjoying TOR's story immensely.

 

There seems to be an increasingly popular sentiment in this thread by casual players lashing out in anger at the hardcore players who simply want difficult, high level game content to work towards. This stance is no less intolerant than the ideas they are bashing.

 

In WoW, there were certain piecing of armor only accessible to the rank #1 pvp player on the entire server, or the the most high ranked players. Many extremely difficult bosses dropped items that on some servers only one person had, due to its rarity. Now, you might think "wow! only one player gets the item?! *** is the point of that?" The point of it is to give players something to dream about and to strive for. That one, single item causes thousands upon thousands of players to play more often with more vigor, hoping that they will soon attain it. It may seem like a trivial thing to add, but it is something incredibly important to players and touches on the psychology of why players keep playing the game and what makes them feel like their time isn't being wasted.

 

Yes, it is true that a casual player might not have gear quite as good as a hardcore player. Is that a bad thing? Do you honestly drive around scoffing at people who drive BMW's lashing out in anger that they have a better car than you? No, of course not, and if you do you're acting irrationally. They bought that car with money they earned, just like a hardcore player will have put more time into the game than you, and earned their gear accordingly.

 

Appeasing the hardcore players by adding higher level content and novelty awards/items with higher stats would be a healthy addition to the game, and not only to the hardcore players but to everyone who plays. The best thing the game can do is to have something that appeals to every type of MMO player. Right now, casuals have a lot of things in their camp, and now the hardcore players need a little love.

 

Casual players don't like competing for high ranks? Then don't compete for high ranks. Don't like raiding nightmare ops? Then don't raid nightmare ops. But working to keep things these out of the game simply because they won't be able to reap the rewards is nothing short of pure, unabashed selfishness.

 

 

Good post.

[JediElf]

The problem is that the ePeen crowd is never satisfied, ever. They want the Devs to spend every waking moment of their time, on 'their' content. They want all the attention and the rest of us players, be dammed.

 

What some of us are really worried about is the social aspect of this game being laid to waist, in lieu of feeding the ePeen crowd.

 

Some of us want more hair, more conversation options, more romance, more races, more classes to play, appearance gear, and instances with more story.

 

We're afraid that all of those things will be come an afterthought to raids, raids, raids, raids and more raids.

 

Someone if just want balance...is that to much to ask?

Edited February 28, 2012 by JediElf

[Aloro]

I would argue that the e-peen mentality is why other mmo's *have* nice things; a community with an identity, resources for new/learning players and stable economies.

 

Probably the nicest community I've ever encountered in an MMO was in LotRO, and there's basically no epeen stuff in that game at all.

 

Don't mistake "interaction" for "good community". Epeen-measurers interact a lot with each other, but it's largely bragging and childish insults. Epeen-measuring in no way promotes a stable economy; it's unrelated. As for resources, I'm torn there. On the one hand, yes, epeen-measurers do like to make epeen guides, but those are only valuable to epeen-measurers. There are plenty of examples of guides made by casual players, as well as by hardcore players who aren't interested in comparing their performance to others'.

 

I just don't see any of this being true.

[Mashy]

The op is spot on and this is what we need. You need th hardcores for th backbone.

 

^^ That made me lol pretty darn hard. Especially the back bone bit hahaha! Sooner the epeen pullers are all gone the better.

[Dumpiduke]

The problem is that the ePeen crowd is never satisfied, ever. They want the Devs to spend every waking moment of their time, on 'their' content. They want all the attention and the rest of us players, be dammed.

 

What some of us are really worried about is the social aspect of this game being laid to waist, in lieu of feeding the ePeen crowd.

 

Some of us want more hair, more conversation options, more romance, more races, more classes to play, appearance gear, and instances with more story.

 

We're afraid that all of those things will be come an afterthought to raids, raids, raids, raids and more raids.

 

Someone if just want balance...is that to much to ask?

 

I don't think this is true at all. Let's be clear, everyone has different things that they want out of TOR, which is why Bioware has 'strikeforces' devoted to several separate aspects of the game's design. I think the general issue is that whoever is in charge of endgame content needs to do a better job of making sure that the content caters to a variety of play styles. It's ignorant for them to completely ignore the hardcore players just because their playstyle doesn't fit Bioware's vision of the game.

 

Shoot, I'm casual and even I think that this game is far too easy to progress in.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Dumpiduke

[Silarr]

That's basically what happens in wow, or any similar mmo. Hardcore players log in by the time new content comes out, finish it in a few weeks and off they are, they just log for dailies or some PvP.

The rest of us just takes it easily hopes for a buff or two, so we can finish the content in months time. Than new content come out and the story goes on.

 

Besides PvP or raiding none of this games offer anything more to do.

 

Regarding the E-peen factor, it will be added as soon as the next raid tier is implemented into the game. People with better gear will be able to finish it faster than people with anything less. As it is right now it's quite easy to acquire similarly good armor with no to little effort, which is normal for a launch.

[Eileithia]

IMO there's 3 things that BW should have done slightly differently that would have fixed a lot of the end-game issue (Not including bugs).

 

1 - Leveling. Currently if you do all the class quests, all the side quests and all the bonus quests you out-level the content. And that's not including PVP, Space Missions, Flashpoints etc. The XP gain should have been reduced so that if you did ALL the quests AND one of the above (PVP, Space, FP) while leveling you would not out-level content before even getting to a planet.

 

2 - Gear (PVE). Gear should not be gained from "Commendations". End game gear shouldn't be purchased from a vendor period. As a Raider, it gives you nothing to look forward to. YAY a TOKEN dropped.. Yipady-Crap.. End game gear should drop from the mobs, and you should have to kill the stuff before you ever see it. It leaves you wondering if there's some Rare uber drop in that loot table that nobody's ever seen.

 

3 - Gear Tiers / Raids - The current set-up is fundamentally flawed for raiding guilds. It encourages smaller groups, and fragments the community. As to the "I want to solo for epics" crap, that doesn't work in MMOs long-term. WoW is a EXCEPTION to the rule, not a standard to strive to. The reason so many of the recent games have flopped a few months after release is there's nothing to keep people long term as you see all the content and have all your gear before the developers could possibly push more content out.

 

T1 (Tionese) should be Level 50 / HM Flashpoints, and Normal Ops ONLY

 

T2 (Columi) Should be very Rare Drops in HM Flashpoints, Semi-Rare (every other boss) in 8-man HM Ops, and Standard loot (every boss) in 16 man HM Ops

 

T3 (Rakata) should be very Rare Drops in 8-man HM Ops, Semi-Rare in 16-man HM Ops, and Standard drops in Nightmare.

 

Currently there is no incentive to run anything over 8-man hard-mode Ops other than saying you've done it. And you can't run anything over 8/16 hard-mode unless a sizeable chunk of your raid is already in full Rakata/Battlemaster and they get nothing for it other than a title.

 

And again, to the people who want to solo for epics. YOU DON'T NEED EPIC GEAR TO SOLO!. It should be exclusive gear for the people who have cleared the hardest content in the game AS A TEAM. Not something you can gain from commendations, tokens, and dailies. If you only have a few hours of playtime a week, you don't need this gear to do anything you'd be doing in the game.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Eileithia

[utio]

Adding something like a new speeder, or pet, or title for the hardcore player to work for is fine. Hardcore players should have something to work for, if that's what they want. But what happens when they've got it all again? What then?

Anything that affects your stats, like armour, should not, IMO, be part of it though, if raiding is the only way to get it. So yeah, give the hardcores more trinkets to hang around for, as long as it's just fluff. I remember the amount of people raging about the ce vendor, and how it should just sell cosmetic items. If that's the case, then the raiders should get the same.

[cipher_nemo]

Hey OP, thanks for the really good, long laugh. Bioware must be doing something right when it gets people like you POed.

 

Probably the nicest community I've ever encountered in an MMO was in LotRO, and there's basically no epeen stuff in that game at all.

 

There is PLENTY of epeen stuff in LOTRO, trust me. I've seen it, collected it, etc. But the difference is that the LOTRO community doesn't use epeen stuff for an epeen effect. The community is just too friendly to have that WoW mentality.

Edited February 28, 2012 by cipher_nemo