Metrics, Serious Raiding, SWTOR Has None

[DJunior]

Good post. 110% accurate. This is why I will be probably be going back to Rift as I wait for, most likely, Guild Wars 2. OP hit the nail on the head. The devs are really out of touch and 1.2 is not going to be enough.

 

Disappointing thing about it is that they are screwing up Star Wars. That's what I'm here for. I want to play Star Wars, not Rift, but Rift is just better, unfortunately. Furthermore, I've been waiting for years for a company to get right what SWG did wrong. In retrospect, I actually enjoyed SWG a lot more.

 

Oh well, I guess I can always cancel and resub down the road. Never know, they might get it right. The game is still in its infant stages after all.

Edited March 7, 2012 by DJunior

[Oneiros_IV]

I'd say bioware has not (yet?) developed internal mechanisms for fine-tuning and thus creating precisely competitive content.

 

It took blizzard some years before creating tools to analyse class/guild/raid performance dataz and thus putting bosses where 1% wipe is common onto production line. So yeah my guess is bioware is lacking data, real internal testing and experience on the matter will it improve or not we shall see. vOv

[hadoken]

I agree completely with the OP and was pretty disheartened to read Georg's response to the question on metrics. That BioWare feels it is their duty to try to stop natural player behavior (in terms of keeping data from the live client because someone MIGHT insult someone else over damage meters) is just ridiculous.

 

Following that train of thought why are we allowed to Inspect other players and at such a great range (much farther than in WOW, for example)?

 

My hope is that in time they will change their mind and give us an active combat log in game as more people start to request it (once what they're talking about goes live and everyone realizes that's not what they want).

[Oneiros_IV]

and was pretty disheartened to read Georg's response to the question on metrics.

 

Link please but yeah this is stupid

 

I got an idea: let's conceal all data to hide our lousy balance and shield our touchy players from information of how horrible they are

[ViperD]

I got an idea: let's conceal all data to hide our lousy balance

 

This is the main reason why I think we won't see true dps meters for awhile.

[hadoken]

Link please but yeah this is stupid

 

I got an idea: let's conceal all data to hide our lousy balance and shield our touchy players from information of how horrible they are

 

Q: Metrics for Operations? When will we get threat meters and combat logs? Gabe: We don't want to rely as much as meters, we want to rely more on visual in-game cues. We do want to have those metrics though. They're not in 1.2 though. Georg: We do realize it is useful to figure out what is being done wrong. But we don't want to people to be able to go out and judge you. With 1.2 you will be able to enable a chat log feature that indicates what killed you or what you killed. We also will have a detailed parseable combat log able to be written to disc. The log will not be available in-game.

 

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19973-guild-summit-stream-live-blog/page-3

[Unluky]

Everybody keeps saying that dps meters are a crutch, and that the only way to "be a true player" is by trial and error. I would rather have dps meters, be able to isolate a problem, and progress through more endgame content than wipe on a boss repeatedly because some people are not doing their jobs. Now at this point in time, there is no content that really requires that level of play, so the base problem is lack of endgame content and variety of difficulty in endgame content. Hopefully this gets cleared up with 1.2.

[BroadStreetBully]

I agree completely with the OP and was pretty disheartened to read Georg's response to the question on metrics. That BioWare feels it is their duty to try to stop natural player behavior (in terms of keeping data from the live client because someone MIGHT insult someone else over damage meters) is just ridiculous.

 

Following that train of thought why are we allowed to Inspect other players and at such a great range (much farther than in WOW, for example)?

 

My hope is that in time they will change their mind and give us an active combat log in game as more people start to request it (once what they're talking about goes live and everyone realizes that's not what they want).

 

That is what is wrong with "hardcore" raiders. Raiding isn't an individual thing, it is a team activity. It shouldn't be about belittling and excluding players because they aren't as good as some other player. The game should be about using the group you have to clear content. It is nice to see that this game is doing something to prevent these loser guild leaders from acting like tools. As has been said many times before, use trial and error. It is fun to try to clear something, wipe, and then go back and how to do it differently to succeed.

[Emptus]

First off: OP, bravo. You have done an excellent job explaining what you feel is lacking, and for that you deserve some serious praise.

 

To all those who have said: "No one know's who you are; no one cares about your "achievements" " -- I think you're missing the point. The point isn't that everyone cares about Ensidia or D&T's world first, but rather that some people do.

 

The fact is that raiding as currently implemented is woefully easy (think about what I just said: raiding is so easy that it is causing problems).

 

I'm no hardcore raider. At my most serious I would consider myself "casual-hardcore," but even that is really giving me more credit than I'm due. Sure, I raid, I have since I first hit level cap in BC WoW -- but I'm under no illusion that my 4-5 hours a day makes me "hard core" or that my purples make me 1337.

 

But you know what? I like watching kill videos and live stream boss attempts, reading up on theory crafting, tweaking my rotations, yes even filling out spreadsheets. I like pouring over my damage logs. And perhaps most of all

 

I like a well deserved wipe.

 

I like fighting hard for my wins. I want to bump against gear checks, to struggle with a fight and after months of attempts, beat it.

 

You know what I don't care about? Gear. I don't care about how I look, or having a sweet mount or lauding my achievements over others. Gear is only a set of tools that help me beat the next boss.

 

But, I appreciate people who do. I like seeing people in gear that I can't yet achieve. I remember the first time I saw Thunderfury in vanilla WoW, the first time I saw a real fleet in EvE, the first group who got the Amani War Bear, or downed kil'jaeden. Seeing other people's achievements drove me to work harder. They helped encourage me to keep raiding, to keep trying week after week.

 

I'm not going to say that Bioware needs to come out with new mechanics, or even that they need to include damage or threat meters. That's a different argument in my book.

 

What I will say though is that Bioware should realize that catering to the hardcore raiders does more for community than their small number would indicate. After all: the competition for world-firsts is constrained to maybe a couple hundred people world-wide.

 

But there are alot of us who are watching. Who are cheering from the sidelines.

[hadoken]

That is what is wrong with "hardcore" raiders. Raiding isn't an individual thing, it is a team activity. It shouldn't be about belittling and excluding players because they aren't as good as some other player. The game should be about using the group you have to clear content. It is nice to see that this game is doing something to prevent these loser guild leaders from acting like tools. As has been said many times before, use trial and error. It is fun to try to clear something, wipe, and then go back and how to do it differently to succeed.

 

You're stereotyping an entire category of people by the actions of some of them.

 

BioWare should not be in the position of protecting us from ourselves. You should leave a guild that discriminates against you instead of educating/helping you. BioWare has decided to just not give us those tools because some people use them improperly.

 

Bad form and not their business, in my opinion. Also as I mentioned, inconsistent with other areas of their game.

Edited March 7, 2012 by hadoken

[asymptomaticc]

this whole post makes me laugh.

he spent all that time trying to explain how raiding goes.

you take yourself way too seriously man. raiding in this game can be done by toddlers. so dont feel like you have accomlished anything. back to wow maybe?

[Aloro]

I like a well deserved wipe.

 

Me too. That's why I am in favor of increased difficulty.

 

That's not however directly related to the desire for in-game tools. You can increase or decrease content difficulty without such tools, or (as many people are requesting) you can implement tools explicitly designed to make raiding easier. As has already been discussed, there are downsides to that approach; it's simpler and more elegant to directly change the encounters.

[Elyssandra]

Correlation is not causation. You've just demonstrated that two things happened at around the same time; you didn't prove that one caused the other...<snip> ...I have no reason to believe you're a better player than I am; more egotistical, surely, but better? There's no evidence of that. You clearly have no idea how I play or what I enjoy, so any statements comparing our skill are clearly just projections based on your own insecurity. Clearly it's important to you to be "better", so carry on trying I guess. Good luck with that; maybe you can buy yourself a medal or a trophy so you have something concrete you can point to when people are amused by your claims of skill.

 

Props to you Aloro for the logical discussion - I enjoyed it.

 

OP seemed to unfortunately devolve into a rage fest, without making reasoned counterarguments. Pity...

[Aloro]

Props to you Aloro for the logical discussion - I enjoyed it.

 

OP seemed to unfortunately devolve into a rage fest, without making reasoned counterarguments. Pity...

 

Thanks! By and large, so did I.

 

I do understand where the OP is coming from; I just don't agree with regards to what is best for the game overall.

[HinjuMaspo]

No dps meter is needed. To say that we must have a meter, because we can not discern 'goodies' from 'baddies', is ignorant, shallow, and pedantic. Guilds should decide this amongst themselves. When we go to numbers we become numerically driven and thus loss some of the humanity within gaming. When we we lose this essence, we pass over potentially good rraiders. When we do this we ruin what is still potentially viable.

 

What you are really saying is that we must have winners and loosers. What you are advocating for is a game of haves and have nots. When something like this occurs, guilds build a '**** you' mentality (which has already begun --due impart to imported WoW guilds). This begins a cycle, that currently holds sway in WoW (causing them to make everything so easy to abate the fears of the crappiest of players). This game is supposed to be fun, if you want this to be hardcore then play Halo or Gears or better yet make a guild dedicated too your pursuits (dont force this on everyone).

 

There is a phrase or plattitude: Together we rise or together we fall. United we can suceed, divided we will destroy each other.

 

Finally, they are making improvements. Slowly, but they are trying to get things done right. Since EA, they have fumbled the ball repeatedly. But this is because of us, we wanted it 'NOW!' We were begging for an exit from the WoW ship, before it sunk. Things take time to improve, there is still plenty of stuff to do and still good things about this game. Ilum is still decent, you can do dailes, space combat, raiding etc. The failure is that they should have post-poned the game for another year to put everything out at once.

 

Stop qqing. There is no need for it. You're like the guy who complains about others not inviting them to BT, which causes them not to get geared, and you blame it on the inviter.

The point is you have the ability to change this, you can make your own 'hardcore' guild. See how far it gets you, which wont be as far as you think. This is not drivel, but an empirically gathered observation, one that everyone has come to experience in their MMO 'careers' (a career you wish to make everyone a part of). All great guilds fall, replaced by better ones--in this system you wish to have (meaning there are only losers). Why not deal with a laissez faire raiding system and deal with its cons? For there are far more pros than cons.

 

Take the 'me' out of this equation. Things will get better but we dont need dual specs or other stupid BS that will wreck the game. My rant is over, and yours never should have begun.

Edited March 7, 2012 by HinjuMaspo

[HellFlame]

No dps meter is needed. To say that we must have a meter, because we can not discern 'goodies' from 'baddies', is ignorant, shallow, and pedantic. Guilds should decide this amongst themselves. When we go to numbers we become numerically driven and thus loss some of the humanity within gaming. When we we lose this essence, we pass over potentially good rraiders. When we do this we ruin what is still potentially viable.

 

What you are really saying is that we must have winners and loosers. What you are advocating for is a game of haves and have nots. When something like this occurs, guilds build a '**** you' mentality (which has already begun --due impart to imported WoW guilds). This begins a cycle, that currently holds sway in WoW (causing them to make everything so easy to abate the fears of the crappiest of players). This game is supposed to be fun, if you want this to be hardcore then play Halo or Gears or better yet make a guild dedicated too your pursuits (dont force this on everyone).

 

There is a phrase or plattitude: Together we rise or together we fall. United we can suceed, divided we will destroy each other.

 

Finally, they are making improvements. Slowly, but they are trying to get things done right. Since EA, they have fumbled the ball repeatedly. But this is because of us, we wanted it 'NOW!' We were begging for an exit from the WoW ship, before it sunk. Things take time to improve, there is still plenty of stuff to do and still good things about this game. Ilum is still decent, you can do dailes, space combat, raiding etc. The failure is that they should have post-poned the game for another year to put everything out at once.

 

Stop qqing. There is no need for it. You're like the guy who complains about others not inviting them to BT, which causes them not to get geared, and you blame it on the inviter.

The point is you have the ability to change this, you can make your own 'hardcore' guild. See how far it gets you, which wont be as far as you think. This is not drivel, but an empirically gathered observation, one that everyone has come to experience in their MMO 'careers' (a career you wish to make everyone a part of). All great guilds fall, replaced by better ones--in this system you wish to have (meaning there are only losers). Why not deal with a laissez faire raiding system and deal with its cons? For there are far more pros than cons.

 

Take the 'me' out of this equation. Things will get better but we dont need dual specs or other stupid BS that will wreck the game. My rant is over, and yours never should have begun.

 

Jerk. Play singleplayer games there are no meters at all...

Edited March 7, 2012 by HellFlame

[Journeyer]

What a long OP...

 

What I got from it is that "insult insult insult, Swtor doesn't work like I'm used to."

 

Grow up.

[Fiddyy]

The amount of embarrassing posts in this thread is absurd. The poster posted a real concern from people who actually play games seriously, and all the idiots within this community jump on it. Let's get real here, your entire basis for not wanting meters come from two reasons. 1. For some reason you believe having no meters makes the game harder, which is fact isn't true since most of you people posting against meters wouldn't kill the end or the only "hard" boss in a raid till it was deemed irrelevant anyway. I know your type of person, and it's a general and well deserved statement saying so. 2. You don't want to be judged?! Is this a serious argument. The amount of illogical thought in this is incredible. You don't want meters so nobody knows, without going through alot of trouble if you're terrible. That's ridiculous. You people posting against it are probably the one or one of the people holding raids back. It's pathetic. "Carry me Bro!" Is all I'm reading, and it's really pathetic and redundant. Meters allow people who care about min maxing to have some more enjoyment, and thus to the people saying "Elitist jerks only use meters", or "Meters make the game harder." Let me respond to this by saying, if you don't like them, turn them off. Simple.

 

Now let's talk about the people posting some more. In any other game people's opinions posting that aren't in a top 50, actually **** it, top 250 US ONLY guilds, their opinion would be deemed, and rightfully so irrelevant. So to the people who are clearly in this group, and you can easily spot them, know this. Your opinion is, and should be worthless, you're bad at the game and you simply want to play without getting told you suck.

[zargulis]

Oh, and if BioWare is so concerned about players judging each other, why are there meters in Warzones? Players then get to vote on who they think is the MVP! Sounds like judging to me.

[va_wanderer]

I don't think you quite get it. I love the story in this game, in fact I wanted Raiding with Story Driven incentives. Your hard-work and striving in raids should produce an epic climax that is well-written, aka Bioware quality.

 

If, 60% of you guys aren't raiding then I fail to see why any of you would care if the raiding population had the ability to meter its performance. We enjoy playing the game a certain way, let us play that way. We enjoy pushing ourselves to the limits, seeing what our capabilities with the mechanics/abilities can produce...You don't deserve to tell us how to have fun nor limit our endeavors. If you want to play your way nobody is asking you to join our guilds or use our tools. Our epeening as you want to call it can be limited to our group. I would call it proud of performance, and there are certain political ways of purporting it, that others could take a lead on. But the only time we typical attack back is on this sort of bs and the unqualified statements coming from the gallery. It's like a C student telling a Straight A Student how things really are in the A students field of expertise. You only have so much patience for the BS. The difference here is the A student loves to pull out his qualifications where the C wants to find a bunch of ways to ignore it. Perhaps why Plato abhorred a democracy, the whole mob thinks their right on whims.

 

Here's why I say "no". The tools you mention allow for a higher maximum, because it breaks the game down closer and closer to the literal mechanics of the system, vs. oh....actually playing the game.

 

The more precisely you can build your tolerances, the tighter the "minimum" also becomes. The tools in question go from being optional to required, and the bar goes up to the point where content increasingly becomes exclusive to a small number of players. It's not "limited to your group". WoW proves that in abundance.

 

Now, I have zero problems with seeing some harder mobs in the game. As I've said- put some tough, powerful world-boss style mobs out there and give people the ability to force-spawn the encounters (with stuff that sinks credits out of the system) and put some unique loot on them.

 

But I don't want to even remotely see another Pandemonium Warden or Absolute Virtue. Or hours-long instances filled with bosses that take weeks to defeat. It's like passing a kidney stone or giving birth to a live adult wolverine. The only pleasure comes from it being over with for nearly everyone. Keep that out of the storyline stuff. That way, there's competition...but it's not a mind-numbing torment that takes a constant cycle of instance, clear trash mobs, linear boss series, repeat ad nauseum.

 

 

I've played MuDs, EQ, EQ 2, DAOC, AoC, WoW etc. After you've lvled there is nothing to do but raid, MMO's are about group activity and completing tasks together. Forming quality teams is what min/maxers do... Those of us in between hardcore raid less, but find players that Min/Max and play their class to its highest potentials. Casual Hardcore consists of players with lifes/jobs playing and employing the same competitive tools/skills the Hardcores do...and there's plenty of us. As the rise of 10 man raiding in WoW saw.

 

Black and white number from the devs- 6 in 10+ L50's haven't raided once. Put the effort into where it's being used- 4-man stuff - and leave the ubermobs to situations outside that.

 

Bioware's job is supposed to fill the gap with compelling stories and reasons for raiding in the background. With your model apparently everyone should just go roll alts and wait for story content...If thats the case why are we paying 15 bucks a month... should just wait for the Dragon Ages and Mass Effects...

 

Lastly, the 3 tiered system should allow for all mindsets to get along.

 

Story for the Casuals

Heroic for the Casual Hardcores

Nightmare for the Hardcore small population.

 

The Casual Hardcores would want meters and such to compare themselves to that top 3%. We'll never invest that much time/energy for stated reasons but if we're within 10% of their performance we're quite happy with ourselves. This is the mindset of normal people trying to be competitive...I fail to see why the game can't accommodate everyone. As to WoW and why switch...it comes down to yes its just raiding and having some awesome story would be great...and Star Wars is a great IP as well.

 

*sighs* One more time. You don't need meters. You never needed meters. All meters do is help strip a game down to it's zeros and ones vs. OMG I'M FIGHTING A SITH or OMG I AM A SITH AND I'M COOL. You want comparatives? You don't need meters. Try a stopwatch. You don't need gear that puts you in a "hardcore tier" right now, either. Bioware having a unique visual item that advertises "Hey, I helped chop off Darth Super's head and all I got was this AWESOME HELMET." works better and gives you a mark of achievement without splitting the playerbase.

 

Superior stats aren't required. Again, being able to focus TOO much means that if it does happen in SWTOR, content WILL be tuned to the point where people will find themselves locked in the WoW-style cycle of gearing up...and content will start having those walls go up, and we're back to "hardcore" content eating up dev cycles vs. "player content" that is good for everyone. That road leads to inevitable failure. Keep the "hard mode" content straightforward and outside of the storyline. More World Bosses, Operation-level mobs, etc. Not "nightmare mode" ops and instances.

Edited March 7, 2012 by va_wanderer

[va_wanderer]

Players' reactions to the 1.2 PvP gear changes is a perfect example. Battlemasters are unhappy because PvP gear will no longer require any Valor ranking. A lot of players feel the Battlemasters are just whining because they won't have the gear advantage anymore, but I do not think this is true. Battlemasters are unhappy because all the time they spent to acquire the Valor and the gear is now MEANINGLESS. Suddenly, the ranks and items they worked so hard to acquire are practically being GIVEN away! Imagine you went to college for several years, and upon graduating and getting a job, you discovered that all the jobs in your field no longer require a college education. How would you feel? I'm pretty sure you would feel like you wasted all that time in college. The same applies to Battlemasters feeling they wasted their time grinding valor. If something is easy to do, there is no satisfaction in doing it.

 

You know what the first thing I did was when Wrath of the Lich King came out was?

 

Found the toughest mobs my character could handle in the new area and proceeded to replace my raid-level epics with blue drops that were better. And yes, as I've said- I've done my time as a raider. Parked my butt in PoH on EQ back in the day, Nagafen, Kunark, Velious. FFXI on plenty of HNM's, Sky, Dynamis, CoP, ToAU. WoW through TBC -> Wrath.

 

Gearing up is an illusion at best, because the result is the next expansion turning them trivial to provide a new hamster wheel of gear to run on. FFXI managed for years to put in tougher content with minimal stat increases- people regularly did top-end raid stuff in gear that didn't provide huge amounts of stat boosts- if anything, much of it was "sidegrades" rather than "upgrades". Gear cycles are irrelevant to challenge or acheivement, they're an artificial barrier that encourages grinding rather than actually enjoying the content. I didn't have to be in top-tier AF2 to be effective against Odin, but I DID have to know my class, and that's where the mark of skill is and always should be.

 

You also don't need specially built little virtual closets to fight buffed up mobs in and they shouldn't be a barrier to story. Put the mobs out there, give them a way to be spawned on demand, beat them up for unique rewards, show off said unique rewards and feel uber....without needing to go into a gear up so I can raid these so I can gear up so I can raid more so I can gear up so I can raid cycle. That leads to a path of failure.

 

As for addons and meters and such, I think the option should be there. If I'm in a raid and someone is not pulling their weight, I want to know. I want to know where players are making mistakes, and if they cannot correct them, they should be replaced. If a player is not willing to learn fight mechanics and/or learn to play their class in a competent manner, I should not be obligated to play with them. I haven't read anything directly from the Guild Summit, but if I understand correctly from some of the previous posts, BioWare does not want players judged based on their performance. Now imagine if BioWare applied this attitude to their business: it doesn't matter how poorly an employee is performing his or her job, we can't fire them because that would be judging them. Or how about if parents applied this attitude to raising their children? "Well, we don't know if what you're doing is right or wrong, so whatever." Ridiculous, right?

 

If you need addons and meters to tell if someone's bad, then the content is already being tuned towards requiring those tools in the first place. This is not only bad, it's damaging to the game in general. It's like saying your parents need a suite of video cameras and high-tech biometric analysis to tell if their kid was fingerpainting on the wall instead of doing their homework.

 

Meters are also important for praising players who perform well. Why shouldn't they feel the satisfaction of a job well done? It isn't always about being the top of the DPS meter, and as a tank, I'm always at the bottom anyway (or if I'm not, whoever is below me damn well better be a tank or a healer).

 

Regarding threat meters and raid addons, they aren't so much crutches as tools to streamline coordination. Think of a boss as a mathematical problem and raid addons as a calculator. Sure, you could use long division and multiplication on paper, or look up the appropriate trigonometry values, but that's a pain in the *** and distracts from the important part of finding the solution (i.e. algebra and calculus). Raid addons just mean the leader doesn't have to shout out every little thing on ventrilo.

 

When you raid, you don't praise the player. You praise the group. You take everyone in because you, the raid leader believe each of them is essential to winning. The guild wins. The group wins. Not "the special snowflake wins".

 

And when you reduce a mob to a "mathematical problem", it's not a game anymore. It's a math problem and your guildies are part of an equation, not friends and fellow players. When you need the equivalent of doing complex math to properly play a videogame, it's no longer playing a videogame. It becomes a heartless analysis of a program vs. entertainment.

 

Keep that kind of thing as optional as possible and give it a minimum of pride of place in anything related to actual story. Take those six uber mobs and spread them around Corellia and Belsavis and Ilum instead of parking them in some instance. Having buffed versions of instances, sure. But mobs that take that excruciating a level of effort should be left as far away from such things as possible.

 

Speaking of ventrilo, do you guys think that's a crutch too? I mean, if visual cues and the built-in interface are enough for everybody, players shouldn't be allowed to communicate outside the game either, right?

 

Nope. Ventrilo uses nothing more than the real-time senses any player has, and I don't see voice chat as any worse than picking up a phone and talking to someone else during a raid.

[hadoken]

The more precisely you can build your tolerances, the tighter the "minimum" also becomes. The tools in question go from being optional to required, and the bar goes up to the point where content increasingly becomes exclusive to a small number of players. It's not "limited to your group". WoW proves that in abundance.

 

Well actually, it proved exactly the opposite. Over time the raid environment became more and more accessible to people. I don't think metrics really had anything to do with that, though. One could say that the average max level player was more aware of what they could and couldn't do and thus was able to achieve more, but that's kind of just a theory (another being content 'dumbed down' to the average player skill level). WOW certainly did not prove what you claim it did. Content became MORE accessible, not less.

 

The rest of your post about the numbers somehow breaking the illusion of us playing the game is rather comical. I would hope most people already know what it is they're playing and aren't honestly deluded into thinking they're running around with a saber 'being cool' and that's their only goal. I certainly have no desire to raid with those people, they won't accomplish anything useful in a moderately competitive environment.

[HellFlame]

You know guys all who are against meters are basically ruining the game =D

 

And the funny thing is you dont even realize that. All the hardcore raiders gonna quit this game, because bioware is shoving all the easy content up everybodies asses.

 

Seriously, if you suck ... well.. you do suck, meters wont change that (or maybe you get better ****)... You got meters in huttball.. i think people dont even realize that.

 

You fear that you might cant get all bosses on NiM? Its good so because it SHOULD be NIGHTMARE not EASY... every singleplayer boss is harder than those.. my last repair costs for EV & KP were like 2k (no wipe and one shot every boss).. BORING.

 

Especially Combat Log... Oh i got 1-hitted by 44k ... hmmm where did that came from? And the guessing starts...

Some of you might say "oh then serach for it in the forum or use some guide"... if your one of the first to actually do that fight i dont think theres gonna be a lot of stuff around.

 

Please let them complete the easy content bioware... make them feel good.. so sad. Make a game for the masses but then dont complain when we move on to a game which actually cares about endgame.

[va_wanderer]

Well actually, it proved exactly the opposite. Over time the raid environment became more and more accessible to people. I don't think metrics really had anything to do with that, though. One could say that the average max level player was more aware of what they could and couldn't do and thus was able to achieve more, but that's kind of just a theory (another being content 'dumbed down' to the average player skill level). WOW certainly did not prove what you claim it did. Content became MORE accessible, not less.

 

WoW automated the raid process via third party. Deadly Boss Mod, anyone? This made raid content more accessible, but it also made new content require one of two things- overgearing by alternative means (which WoW provided, to the liberal use of obscenity from "hardcores"...yes, I was there for the flamefests), or....those raid mods and meters.

 

The meters and mods aren't needed for the challenge. They simply become required for it, and that's BS. Like I said- I raided through WoTLK. I know what the raid guild environment was like and what guilds required because that's what content required to do properly. And I got sick of it. Again- you don't need meters and mods...until you put them in and developers end up building content to compensate for them...at which point they become a requirement to engage content as it comes out (or you are forced to sit there and wait).

 

Very simply, I don't want a game that takes installing large numbers of mods and third party programs in order to play even a small portion of it's content. Not even 1%. If they go in, then that process will become inevitable for gameplay. Not optional for content. Required.

 

The rest of your post about the numbers somehow breaking the illusion of us playing the game is rather comical. I would hope most people already know what it is they're playing and aren't honestly deluded into thinking they're running around with a saber 'being cool' and that's their only goal. I certainly have no desire to raid with those people, they won't accomplish anything useful in a moderately competitive environment.

 

I was exaggerating slightly for humor value there, but it really does. I don't expect people to be taking on mobs simply hammering on autoattack...like I said, challenging content should take knowing your class and playing it well.

 

What it shouldn't take is scientific analysis of the mob, it's mechanics, YOUR mechanics, etc. etc. It shouldn't take hours to set up. It shouldn't take hours to fight. You shouldn't need something that augments your ability to "read" what the mob is doing to survive fighitng it.

 

It should be something fought simply for the enjoyment of fighting it, not as an obstacle to progress. And that's what I believe putting too much analysis in the hands of players causes. It cookie-cutters builds to the precise optimal type and no other. It programs the raider as much as the mob they're raiding. I'd rather see the "ubermob" of SWTOR be more like a FFXI HNM than another Naxx, and I see the line of thought the OP has as leading more to the latter than the former.

Edited March 7, 2012 by va_wanderer

[Clucker]

@va_wanderer

 

The point isn't that you need them, certain people WANT to do that. People have and will always enjoy min/maxing.

 

I'm not saying everyone, but there are plenty of us out there. If it's not for you then don't do it. People enjoy being the best that they can be in MMOs.

 

I kind of agree with the OP but I think he is being a bit over the top.

 

1.2 will be a big make or break patch, I hope they do it the right way. A lot of exciting things to come.