[Panel Discussion] Operations and Flashpoints (2:00PM CST)

[deminio]

Did they say how many bosses there are in the new operation ?

[Rebazar]

For the combat logs.... will they be parsable in a spreadsheet, or maybe able to fit into an XML format?

[svartalfimposter]

pointless reply

 

Rude person.

[Valtrim]

Is this still going? If not, is anyone there willing to quickly summarize what was covered?

[CJAShadow]

I feel as though it should go:

 

1. (MUCH better) LFG tool- Single Server

 

2. Server consolidation

 

3. Refined LFG tool- Cross Server for Flashpoints/Ops/Raids

 

Idk where Cross Server PVP would fit in, maybe for only Ranked Warzones?

[Kaelemvor]

I missed the stream, I understand that they are going to make a better LFG tool. Is it going to be similar to WoW's dungeon finder? I personally loved that tool. I do think that they should limit it to a single server to foster community.

 

Another thing they should do is borrow from a few of the things that Warhammer Online did right, namely the open groups. Those were the bomb for open world PvP and those large group/area quests. The rest of the game was a bust. But the grouping tools were awesome.

 

My 2 cents.

[EzoEo]

I missed the stream, I understand that they are going to make a better LFG tool. Is it going to be similar to WoW's dungeon finder? I personally loved that tool. I do think that they should limit it to a single server to foster community.

 

Another thing they should do is borrow from a few of the things that Warhammer Online did right, namely the open groups. Those were the bomb for open world PvP and those large group/area quests. The rest of the game was a bust. But the grouping tools were awesome.

 

My 2 cents.

 

It will be a general purpose group finder for any type of group content.

 

They did state it would single server only to build communities.

[Arotec]

lol....

 

The stream can be summed up by one phrase:

 

"It's on our list"

[Thorvath]

Single Server LFD... so basically instead of "it sucks standing in fleet spamming general"

we get "it sucks standing in fleet and waiting forever"

 

MMOs have basically become single player games with multiplayer added in. That's not a complaint, I would never play a game where I needed a group at all times to simply play. The problem is the devs and I guess the more vocal players can't accept that these games are coming to the point where other people are actually a hindrance. I was watching a video that must have been recorded at launch and what floored me was that there were over 100 people in Korriban at the time. I can't imagine getting quests done with that many people crowding you. I intentionally play on mid to low pop server for that reason, so 90% of the game is quite enjoyable. Then "endgame" rears its ugly head and suddenly every form of decent progression suddenly requires me to join a guild and make "internet pals"

 

I post this because I don't want server merges, I enjoy having planets mostly all to myself. But I would like to enjoy a flashpoint or two, gasp maybe even an operation. Restricting it to same server just punishes small servers. You can already see it with the same server warzones, when people get the Huttball versus the battlemasters everyone drops group. Honestly I'm shocked those guys still play, half their matches must be 120 secs long.

 

The best detractors can counter with is that cross-server LFD ruins community, well hate to tell you this but it shows you exactly the state of MMO gaming. Community is a lie. If you are in some tight knit guild that's played together for years and half of you married each other more power to you.. but you are increasingly the minority.

[bizcuits]

I just dont understand, how you can you say that you dont want cross server PvE queuing (im talking FP and OP, there are obvious issues with quest queuing since that is being rolled up) because they want to focus on server community, but then believe in PvP cross server queuing..

 

I for one play 'Republic' Sorry Ive been playing the drinking game along with the pannel, and its a major disadvantage for PvE content since we are 1 to 6 on the server. If your going to open cross server pvp, then you should allow cross server pve for the same reasons...

 

I think single server PVE Group finders and multi-server PVP group warzones is brilliant. PVE and Raids need to be more social, not a tool to power level your character as they are in WOW. Questing should be the primary means of leveling while raids are secondary and more social, with a harder social mindset. Face it WOW cross server dungeon finders ruined raiding unless you had a guild to go with. People ninja loot left and right, no one communicates during them and the feeling of actually carrying about your party is gone. (You'll likely never see them again after the raid)...

 

These feelings aren't as important in PVP where you just want targets to slay.

[NarutosRamen]

Is there a transcript to be found anywhere? I'd really like to read through what was said, because i was working for most of the summit.

[Serrta]

Ugh it's already 15 minutes into the next part, why can't I view the live stream??????

[Anrew]

My question is about Hardmode Flashpoints. Is there gonna be a way to implement a better loot system in the future? I noticed how pointless drops don't happen in Operations. Is there a way that you could possibly do that for HMs as well? Like adding something that can tell what classes are in the FP and itemize loot that way.

 

Not that i don't hate it when columni drops for class that isn't with me, but companion gear. At least for a sage. Would be nice for BOA items...

Edited March 6, 2012 by Anrew

[Pravis]

That's doing little beyond throwing me a bone. I don't want to see a Jedi in bounty hunter armor. I don't want to see scoundrels running around force choking anything. It's a stupid idea, and that was my only point. "Give everyone everything" is a development model that has screwed a lot of perfectly good games up.

 

But you probably won't see it as much as you think. Not in flashpoints, ops, pvp, anytime you're grouped since companions are gone....where are you going to see it?

 

If stuff like that bothers you then you might consider going on an RP server which I imagine has more people sticking to canon gameplay.

[Killowatt]

Coming from pre-Kunark era EverQuest as a content-discovery raider, what I'm most interested in is the separation of casual raiders from those that put in a significant amount of effort. Here's what I mean:

 

Take the introduction of Planes of Power. PoP required a grueling, incredibly-involved and very vague quest line to flag players for new zones. Each new zone was required to move forward in the series, and each one rewarded new gear and new challenges. In many ways, this was the apex of MMO raiding.

 

As this happened, the best-equipped and most competent guilds were through the bottom tier the quickest. They gained access to the next tier while the closest guild behind them was gearing and making attempts. The top guild geared as they moved through tiers, and the separation between them and the next closest guild increased exponentially.

 

When we were finished with Quarm and all of the expansion content for the first time, the next closest guild was barely breaking into PoFire.

 

This is what I want to see. I want to see a lot of difficult content that requires concentrated effort and dedication, that separates guilds. I don't want to see every guild in the game wearing the same endgame gear because everyone has equal access to it.

 

Blizzard destroyed the idea of "earning" your rewards and a very large portion of MMO players expect gear to be obtained easily with very little effort. I'm not saying get rid of that and punish casual players; I'm saying give me a real challenge that requires we put in real effort, and make the rewards leagues beyond anything else.

 

Endgame gear is too easy to get. Separate the men from the boys.

 

This era of gaming is gone... and died with the removal of obtaining keying for instances thanks to WoW.. The general public would freak out if they had to do "X" before the could get into "Y" instance.

[Pravis]

This era of gaming is gone... and died with the removal of obtaining keying for instances thanks to WoW.. The general public would freak out if they had to do "X" before the could get into "Y" instance.

 

And this is a good thing. It is poor game design for many reasons, not the least of which is having a pool of players to draw from when wanting to progress. Once players have gone through their jeting or attunement for the next tier there is no incentive to go back. In fact redoing the attunement was always such a hassle so new players or alts would sufer when they get to a stage and nobody wants to group.

[LizardSF]

I really enjoyed the challenges in Bards Tale, M&M I and II, and Wizardry I-V, where you had to hand-map on graph paper and contend with darkness, spinning rooms, and teleporters, and there were no internet sites you could just print out the maps from. (There were, for Wizardry, a lot of quasi-legal data editors being passed around by sneakernet, I must admit.)

 

But I don't expect to ever see a game like that again, especially not as the kind of major release those games were in their time. There's not even any good retro-clones of that style of first-person, party-based, square-grid play.

 

Likewise, anyone expecting a return to EQ1 style raiding with 80 man raids and pissing in Mountain Dew bottles is just going to get angrier and more frustrated. As the old song said, "Them days is gone forever!"

 

You can accept the passage of time with semi-good grace and wistful reminiscences and "You darn punk kids don't know what real gaming is!", or you can nerdrage, nerdrage, against the dying of the light, but the light's still dead anyway. Your choice. (Vanguard was the last, best, hope for an EQ style "hardcore" experience. Even though its failure had little to do with that aspect of gameplay, it still failed, and that's all any investor cares about.)

[rkspeck]

And this is a good thing. It is poor game design for many reasons, not the least of which is having a pool of players to draw from when wanting to progress. Once players have gone through their jeting or attunement for the next tier there is no incentive to go back. In fact redoing the attunement was always such a hassle so new players or alts would sufer when they get to a stage and nobody wants to group.

 

I don't agree with that or you had crappy guild members. That's the problem with MMOs today is that everything is "Hand Fed" to players.

 

SWOTR said it their selves that guilds are one of the most important parts of this game and want to expand on that.

 

When I played in past MMOs, we would go back to the easy content to help scale the new players up becasue it didn't take 5 hours a night.

 

For instance BWL use to take all week in the learning phases of WoW. After AQ came out, we was clearing BWL in 1:45 mins on a saturday running alts, or new recruits through.

 

IF your guild doesn't want to help you get attuned either 1. you are in the wrong guild or 2. They don't need you.

 

 

Same goes for OPs now in SWOTR. Maybe the first time trough it took you a full night or maybe 2 nights to clear. Now it takes us less then 2 hours, very efficient. We don't stop doing Normal because we are all Rakata. We continue to take ALTs, or new members to get them ready for the Nightmare runs.

Edited March 6, 2012 by rkspeck

[Sandtrooper]

Any news on server transfers?

 

 

Sand

[Felioats]

Speaking with other guild leaders here at the summit, it has so far been unanimous: Like it or not, Bioware has no choice but to add cross-server LFG. There just aren't enough people on one server.

[JohnWooKilla]

I believe that it was mentioned that the Hard and Nightmare modes would include more difficult mechanics to make the gameplay different. I was wondering If there is a possibility of Nightmare Mode to include an additional End Game boss for rewarding those who clear the Operation? This would obviously be for those Hardcore Raiders, and it would also include an additional Lore Effect.

 

Also i agree with the the idea of having to clear old content before raiding through new content. If people have to clear Raids in 1.1 before they can do 1.2 and beyond, it Goes smoothly with the Story line, which is what SWTOR is trying to accomplish, a Story Driven game.

Edited March 6, 2012 by JohnWooKilla

[Felioats]

I'm really looking forward to story mode, and hope ops will be completable with fewer than the recommended number of players (with their companions).

[Battilea]

Also i agree with the the idea of having to clear old content before raiding through new content. If people have to clear Raids in 1.1 before they can do 1.2 and beyond, it Goes smoothly with the Story line, which is what SWTOR is trying to accomplish, a Story Driven game.

 

The problem is that it breaks down over time.

 

As time passes, new HMs will be added that offer better gear. This gear will invalidate the older raids. People that run lots of HMs currently, for example, are already going to have about all the columi they need. So pretty soon they'll need to add 4 man content that gives access to Rakata level gear. Matter of fact, I wish it existed already.

 

Then there's the guild factor. You're a guild on the edge. You need a class X. A guild member switches over, since his class was deemed less than optimal anyway. And now you've got to run him through content you consider to be junk, a waste of time.

 

This is why the keyed system essentially got done away with. It started with requiring only a portion of the raid required to have it...and doing said raid would then flag you to be able to do it again in the future. And ultimately, just plain removed.

 

MMOs should encourage the mutliplayer aspect, while the keying systems tend to discourage them.

 

Also worth noting that TOR does a bad job with consistency on this issue. To do the Foundry, you have to do Call to Arms. But to do False Emperor, you don't have to do Battle of Ilum. Nor do you even have to advance the storyline sufficiently even to the point of BoI. Malgus can still be happily on the Empire's side in your story and yet you've chucked him over the edge half a dozen times.

[Rystet]

I was at the Summit, and it was an awesome experience. Thank you Bioware!

 

A point I would like to make about operation difficulty levels, and how they relate to guilds. At the Summit and in the past Gabe has discussed that 8 mans should be slightly more difficult, because 16 man has the increased difficulty associated with Organizing 16 people. So instead of multiplying a bosses health by 2 for 16man, it gets multiplied by 1.8.

 

I am not at all in favor of this concept. One of the Issues with Legacy encouraging players to re-roll the other faction is that it is splitting guilds up, and leaders are losing track of their players who are now playing on the opposite faction. This issue was discussed in detail during the summit.

 

While not as wide scale an issue, this difficulty difference does the same thing in the Endgame Progression Environment. If 8 mans are going to be the more challenging encounters then that is going to be the scale which guild progress is rated. The First thing my Co-GM and I did when Gabe explained there philosophy is go through our entire raid roster and try and figure out who we would have to cut, if we went to 8 mans. Yes, we could split into 2 8mans, but as a progression guild you are not going to divide your resources evenly... You are going to stack your best players in an a group to push content. Forcing us to either cut members completely or form a secondary B group of lower class citizens.

 

So as guild leaders... If 8 man becomes the standard of progression. We would be forced to draw a huge line down the middle of our guild creating lots of divisions and anger... or we remove 50% of our guild from raids completely. Please, just make the difficulty levels even. Guilds that do not enjoy or are not capable of organizing 16 people don't have to do it. They have the option of running an 8 man operation. Don't force progression guilds into feeling like they can only run 8 mans to be competitive in endgame operations.

[svartalfimposter]

A space mission raid.

 

I bet that's the secret project, let's pretend I didn't say anything.