Everyone does not enjoy raiding

[Snowred]

I agree 38% is actually high... it's well known the majority of MMO players don't ever see raid content (WOW's own figures once gave it as low as 10% for MC - when MC was the best they had to offer)... so it constantly suprises me that the best non raiding PVE content games bother to offer continues to be..... dailies. There is a market and room for improvement

[Frostvein]

I agree 38% is actually high... it's well known the majority of MMO players don't ever see raid content (WOW's own figures once gave it as low as 10% for MC - when MC was the best they had to offer)... so it constantly suprises me that the best non raiding PVE content games bother to offer continues to be..... dailies. There is a market and room for improvement

 

WoW's own figures now blow that out of the water.

 

 

MC was back when raiding was inaccessible by the large majority of people, not the weak *** versions that both Blizzard and Bioware offer now.

[Valkirus]

These numbers are kind of meaningless because you can't substantiate them in any way.

 

However, I think its a fairly safe bet to put the number closer to 50% based on 3 different things -

 

1, the portion of people who plan to raid but haven't yet

2, we don't know how Bioware got their numbers. Some people do have multiple 50's and yet only raid on one.

3, There are some people who want to raid but their server just isn't capeable of it/they don't play at peak times/cant commit to it.

 

That is purely a assumption on your part. The only ones who know for sure is BioWare. And as they stated, they are concerned that only 38% of the player base has done any Operations. All they had to do was look at some WoW figures to see the majorty of thier players would not be experencing raid content with thier present design for doing so. It was only after Blizz added thier Looking for Raid feature, they saw a major increase in the % of thier player base doing raids.

[Frostvein]

That is purely a assumption on your part. The only ones who know for sure is BioWare. And as they stated, they are concerned that only 38% of the player base has done any Operations. All they had to do was look at some WoW figures to see the majorty of thier players would not be experencing raid content with thier present design for doing so. It was only after Blizz added thier Looking for Raid feature, they saw a major increase in the % of thier player base doing raids.

 

First, Bio stated that it was 38% of level 50's, but they never specified if it was per account or as a whole.

 

 

The 50% might be an assumption, but Its not really an assumption to say that there are people who want to raid but haven't yet (myself) and that people have multiple toons who only raid on one, and that there are people who want to raid but playtime/server status can't handle it.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Frostvein

[Blackardin]

I only have one level 50 and I have yet to do a Operation. You cannot base what only you have experenced as a matter of fact across the board. I read a interesting note yesterday on MMO Champ, they said before WOTLK in WoW, less than 1% of the player base experenced the last raid in TBC, Sunwell Plat. So , if you was one of those less than 1% who was in a hardcore raiding guild which did do SWP, you may feel like everyone you know has run it.

 

What he is saying is that the premise from which the OP is proceeding is faulty. He is saying that the conclusion drawn from the faulty premise is incorrect.

 

In short, drawing a number from the total of level fifties will not give an accurate finding since it is very common for accounts to have multiple level 50s. In Wow, I had 5 at max level but only raided with one.

 

A more proper means by which to arrive at accurate statistics is to use a more accurate baseline, such as account numbers with at least one level 50.

 

Your second point is moot when used in the way your are intending. The 1% that did the end game content, or hardest raids, have no bearing on average raiders as that end game content was specifically designed to be only for the most elite.

 

What we are doing here is attempting to make factual statements based on conjecture.

[stineo]

Raiding causes a huge burnout rate of alot of players. It gets very difficult to devote 4+ hours of continuous gaming with little interuptions. Having a family, job, and somewhat of a life tends to prevent that. So raiding as whole is not very causal friendly and will always fall under the minority of any current MMO.

 

You will see in future MMOs the way to making the high end content more in line with smaller groups. It has been happening ever since the start of the high end raiding game in EQ1 with 72 players. Then vanilla WoW brought it down to 40. EQ2 brought it down to 24, and so on. I even heard that GW2 is going the single group high end content route.

 

So I see raiding will eventually evolve to something that is less stressful and demanding on someone's life.

[Leoness]

Everyone does not enjoy playing this game or any other MMO that is available.

 

Mommy promised all the colours and I wants them NOW!

 

(failure to adhere to said distribution of colours will result in cancellation of subscription)

[Aloro]

endgame brings players into the game, stories and dailies do not, simple as that. If you have problems understanding that, look at any other mmo that actually has more than 200k players.

 

There are millions of SWTOR players out there who don't play MMOs the way you do, or for the reasons you do, just as an FYI.

 

Endgame doesn't "bring" players to MMOs, unless of course those MMOs hand out top level chars for free. When MMOs do that, it's a pretty clear sign that they have failed to make a game that's fun to level up in; why then would this be a basis of comparison? "We can't make it fun to play the actual game, so we're going to give you endgame chars so you can skip playing the game and go directly to the endgame"; this isn't a success in any sense.

 

So, again, endgame is something that people only experience once they've already played the game, except as above. Endgame thus cannot by definition bring players into the game. You could argue that endgame RETAINS players, but then you'd need to research to see how many players are turned off by the progression raiding that you refer to.

 

This is a common approach by ex-WoW players who spent a lot of time in raiding guilds there; you folks generally assume that you're the most important part of the community in every sense, and that games succeed or fail based on your approval or lack thereof. This wasn't true though, even in WoW... and it's a lot less true here.

[Nicain]

Since not enough people raid, and I'm a PVP player I'd like tier 3 gear made more accessible to me in the same manner PVP gear is being made more accessible to the PVE community please.

[Kalfear]

Asking players to take a poll when logging in would not produce viable data in my opinion. You have to get players who actively want to take the poll. Making it a popup after log in is akin to forcing players to take the poll and you're going to get a very high percentage of players just being silly and answering the questions willy-nilly and without regard or any amount of seriousness.

 

Polls can really only be effective when the participants are willing contributors who have been asked to seek out the poll and take it themselves. Which brings us full-circle to the root of the problem, which is the fact that the largest group of players who will choose to participate is not the group of players that you want to represent your position on these issues.

 

I don't think the issue is quite as big as it's being made out to be though. While the hardcore raiders are the most active groups of players at these types of events, I believe the gaming industry is fully aware that it takes both raiders and non-raiders to make a successful MMO. It's also important to remember that these events are not the sole source of player feedback. They use the forums and data collected in-game as well before making decisions.

 

 

Disagree Qu,

 

In read forums every day and I can say beyond any doubt that if I was a developer, 95% of forum posters would be on ignore already!

 

I find maybe 5% of the posters on the Forums not trying to push their own agenda to make their playstyle more important/more rewarding then others.

 

Those types offer no valid imput for my money.

 

Ive spoken to lots of people that dont use forums and tyhey dont post their thoughts because they dont beleive posting will do anything and when you do post you become part of "that" community, which they DO NOT WANT to be associated to.

 

A log in poll would give them a voice while no forcing them into (and lets be honest here) a area od the community that is very simular to grade 3 elementary school society with how many behave and carry on.

 

Sorry but if you think the forums are where to look for answers, your not asking the right questions. As I said, maybe only 5% of the forum posters are not pushing some selfish agenda and have a clue about the industry as a whole.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Kalfear

[Tricky-Ha]

"One interesting factoid about the current state of Operations in the game is that only an astonishing 38% of level 50 players have played an Operation. One of the reasons for this relatively low number is that there are bugs, particularly in Eternity Vault, which have become disproportionately frustrating to players than other areas of the game due to the time invested and level of reward."

 

I got that info after the guild summit.

 

Raiding is not what everyone looks foward to in this game. In fact, would'nt a number like 38% be considered a minority.

 

That is right people, I PLAY SWTOR, AND I DO NOT LIKE RAIDING. WE ARE THE 62%.

 

I don't like it either, much love for us 62%'ers. I think I would like to run Ops if there was a same server group finder tool, but until there is I just don't feel compelled to do them.

[Darth_Gao_Gao]

this is hilarious because this game is a themepark, and the raids are the rides. if you don't like raiding (i don't blame you at all for this), then what future do you think you have in this game?

 

heh.

[JacenHallis]

I"m not sure about that.. I didn't start raiding til SoV and that was the 2nd expansion and that DID have a max raid size.. I thought I read about 72, but as I said, "I think" .. and why? Because our guild NEVER reached a point to max.. Our normal raid night was about 30-40 people on average.. sometimes more..

There was no such thing as a raid group in EQ until shortly before Planes of Power released. Before that, guilds got together in a large number of six-person groups and killed raid mobs. Those groups were not connected, and it was the tank group that got all the experience and money from the mobs. Since anyone could loot a corpse in EQ, this was acceptable.

 

Raid groups were introduced (with a 72-person cap) shortly before Planes of Power. PoP was where raiding in EQ got fun. The limit in people allowed for a certain "economy" to work with when designing raid encounters. It allowed for the addition of interesting mechanics, when previous raid mobs were basically huge sacks of hit points that required a very simple tank-and-spank "strategy" to defeat.

 

Raiding in EQ before PoP was horribly boring. I would definitely not want to see a return to that style of raiding, and I believe that any game that attempted to do so would fail miserably.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "social raiding" in EQ. EQ raiding was notoriously "hardcore." The guilds that required all its players to be available 24-7 for raiding, the guilds that required players to be available when the servers came back online after a patch or restart, the guilds that required every second not raiding to be devoted to gathering resources to be used when raiding, the poopsockers ... these are all stereotypes that Everquest created.

 

I didn't play DAoC, so I don't know what the raiding situation was like there. In my experience, truly "social" raiding didn't show up until WoW got rid of 40-man raids. I was in a non-guild raid group in EQ, and we did pretty well, but we were definitely not on the "cutting edge" of raiding like the hardcore groups were. We were an expansion or so behind, but we were totally okay with that. We were the minority in EQ. In WoW, people like us became much more commonplace.

[JacenHallis]

Raiding is not what everyone looks foward to in this game. In fact, would'nt a number like 38% be considered a minority.

 

That is right people, I PLAY SWTOR, AND I DO NOT LIKE RAIDING. WE ARE THE 62%.

There are a large number of people who do not like every aspect of MMOs.

 

A large number of people don't like leveling characters. I've seen this quite often on MMO forums, and I've seen it here, too. "The real game starts at 50." Or 60, or 70, or whatever the level cap is. Should we get rid of that aspect of the game?

 

There are a large number of people who don't like PvP. I'm one of them. I do it occasionally, but I have to be in a certain mood that comes around rarely. I'm not alone by a long shot. Should PvP get dumped?

 

For every aspect of MMOs, there is some sizable group that doesn't enjoy or take part. For some aspects, the people who do take part are a minority. Those aspects still deserve development time.

 

The statistic you quote is confusing. Is it 38% of accounts? It seems that way, but the wording "level 50 players" is misleading. A player can't be level 50--a character can. Did they mean level 50 characters? If so, then there are some people who haven't raided because they are not eligible to do so yet. If they meant accounts, then that's still a sizable minority, and it still may be because some accounts just do not have level 50 characters on them. I myself have a level 50 character, but I don't want to raid with it. So, I'm technically one of your "62%," but I want to be in the 38%. I doubt I'm alone.

[Bluerodian]

Personally, I'm sick of raiding. Done it to death in the past and have absolutely zero desire to do so anymore. Never enjoyed PVP in any form.

 

So that being said, I'd kill for a means of char progression at level 50 that was centered on small-group (preferably) or solo content. No, not the current systems designed to "get ready for raiding". I'm talking about a completely separate and segregated progression path in parallel to raiding where following one path would not have any bearing on the other.

[mothear]

Bioware do indeed ask there subscribers what they want. I received an e-mail from them asking for feedback and suggestions before I ever wrote anything on the forums. I have no idea how many people are asked each time a request goes out but assuming 3% gives a fairly accurate sample then that would be 60,000 e-mails. Again obviously I don't know how many responded.

 

To keep it short I will only put in a synopsis of how I replied with:-

 

1. The story driven part of the leveling experience is first class, I will be expecting to run alts on all the different character types for both sides.

 

2. Your decision to prevent 3rd party add-ons is the correct one;

 

3. All world PVP sucks. People who like it only like it so they can gank people at lower levels. It is organised by players themselves when it happens properly and cannot be coded for. Remember people will always take the short cut to biggest gain so IMHO stick to warzones and forget Ilum.

 

4. A personal DPS meter only visible to myself

 

5. Variety in end game dailies with a theme (it may already be there but as I am not 50 I don't know). Include quests with vehicle e.g. bombing runs against the opposite faction, hit and run raids on a speeder or using a walker are examples of what you may consider, as well as the standard dailies.

 

6. I understand that obviously the initial release will cater to my style more than many others as everyone is levelling. I understand that you will need to introduce new operations/warzones/flashpoints for the more skilled gamers just don't force the player base down the route of having to do those options.

 

I can only assume that a lot of people have been answering their requests in the same way looking at patch 1.2.

[TheRainstater]

"One interesting factoid about the current state of Operations in the game is that only an astonishing 38% of level 50 players have played an Operation. One of the reasons for this relatively low number is that there are bugs, particularly in Eternity Vault, which have become disproportionately frustrating to players than other areas of the game due to the time invested and level of reward."

 

I got that info after the guild summit.

 

Raiding is not what everyone looks foward to in this game. In fact, would'nt a number like 38% be considered a minority.

 

That is right people, I PLAY SWTOR, AND I DO NOT LIKE RAIDING. WE ARE THE 62%.

 

Every MMO has Raids or instances like the OPs or Flash points. I haven't run many of them because I would rather PvP. I like the objective based PvP arenas. I have even started to like Hutball now that I am getting better at it.

 

So yes I would fall into that 62% because I play the game the way I want to and thats via PvE solo story and group PvP, not operations. The Operations are fun and rewarding don't get me wrong but if PvE is not your focus than why focus on it?

[GnatB]

this is hilarious because this game is a themepark, and the raids are the rides. if you don't like raiding (i don't blame you at all for this), then what future do you think you have in this game?

 

heh.

 

No, the storyline are the rides. And future storylines are the future of this game if/when I finish all the existing storylines.

[Darth_Gao_Gao]

No, the storyline are the rides. And future storylines are the future of this game if/when I finish all the existing storylines.

 

lol. sure dude.

[Tic-]

 

3. All world PVP sucks. People who like it only like it so they can gank people at lower levels.

 

 

Sounds like a design problem... But its so much easier to make a instanced 8v8 mini room, so why hold developers to a higher standard, right?

 

I love world PvP and never gank lower levels, unless they are impeeding me somehow. So your statement is also false.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Tic-

[mothear]

Sounds like a design problem... But its so much easier to make a instanced 8v8 mini room, so why hold developers to a higher standard, right?

 

I love world PvP and never gank lower levels, unless they are impeeding me somehow. So your statement is also false.

 

It's my experience and therefore opinion, but it's a fact that this is what I said (copy/paste). If people wish to have world PvP and 2 guilds meetup in Ilum, tatooine or elsewhere then do it. All I see is PvP'rs exploiting any bugs that come along and refusing to PvP unless they get a reward. If this is the case then keep it in a warzone.

 

If you are different sir then I applaud you however it would appear to me, in my opinion, that you are a minority within your crowd.

Edited March 20, 2012 by mothear

[Tic-]

It's my experience and therefore opinion, but it's a fact that this is what I said (copy/paste). If people wish to have world PvP and 2 guilds meetup in Ilum, tatooine or elsewhere then do it. All I see is PvP'rs exploiting any bugs that come along and refusing to PvP unless they get a reward. If this is the case then keep it in a warzone.

 

If you are different sir then I applaud you however it would appear to me, in my opinion, that you are a minority within your crowd.

 

People don't do much of anything in MMOs these days without rewards, so in my opinion you need to throw that right out the window, unfortunetly.

 

If you want to encourage world PvP, and stop people from "exploiting" ( i assume you mean kill trading?), then stop rewarding the individual, perhaps?

 

Give people a reason to fight for their faction, perhaps bring back some faction pride to MMOs. Reward the faction for world victories, as opposed to giving each individual a "new pair of shoes."

 

Nothing too crazy, perhaps small damage bonuses, crafting bonuses, increased experience or valor gains. Nothing too outlandish, but enough motivation for people to go out there.

 

It might be tough, folks are more interested in getting their BiS, than helping thier faction these days.

 

Just food for thought.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Tic-

[Samborino]

"One interesting factoid about the current state of Operations in the game is that only an astonishing 38% of level 50 players have played an Operation. One of the reasons for this relatively low number is that there are bugs, particularly in Eternity Vault, which have become disproportionately frustrating to players than other areas of the game due to the time invested and level of reward."

 

I got that info after the guild summit.

 

Raiding is not what everyone looks foward to in this game. In fact, would'nt a number like 38% be considered a minority.

 

That is right people, I PLAY SWTOR, AND I DO NOT LIKE RAIDING. WE ARE THE 62%.

 

Meh their havent been any raid breaking bugs in eternity vault since our guild first cleared it on our first try (with only 3 wipes, we are a casual guild). So that is simply an excuse.

 

My question is, if you do no enjoy raiding, why in the hell do you need raid level gear? What benifit does it have to you? And what are PVE players doing in the end game if they are not raiding or running FP's? You certainly dont need the new item level gear to run any of the flashpoints.

 

Im assuming that most of the other 62% are pvping, and pvp has its own system and gear.

[mothear]

My question is, if you do no enjoy raiding, why in the hell do you need raid level gear? What benifit does it have to you? And what are PVE players doing in the end game if they are not raiding or running FP's?

 

Im assuming that most of the other 62% are pvping, and pvp has its own system and gear.

 

Be able to do H+2 and H +4 content quicker, more easily perhaps.

 

In an MMO the usual goal, apart from having fun, is to progress your character(s).

If it takes you a couple of weeks to get your gear and us 'soloists/dueters' 4/5 months to catch up what is your issue? We work on progressing our characters just as much as you but it take a lot longer.

 

Oh yes, I do PvP occasionally, but haven't yet in SWToR.

 

edit - @Tic - yes I would certainly go for that, wish I'd thought of it for my reply.

Edited March 20, 2012 by mothear

[Tetrablade]

I might as well pipe up again..

 

I grew up in EQ1 before Kunark, and loved the raiding at that time.. Bring as many as you want to the fight (max was 72 I believe).. It was very social, Everyone in our guild that wanted to join in , did.. NO ONE was told to stay home.. This is what I believe is missing.. This e-sport raiding we have now turns people off.. I know it did me and friends.. If Bioware would allow for social raiding , I might hop back in it..

 

Think of it this way.. IF you allow for open social raiding, imagine how much easier it would be for the classes... Balance is TOSSED out the window.. Who cares if YOUR spec/class doesn't do the optimal dps for 8 man raiding, just pick up a 9th person, problem solved.. When I raided in EQ, NO ONE ever gave me crap about my druid's DPS numbers.. oh wait.. I did other jobs that could not be measured by a combat log...

 

IF I was Emperor of Star Wars I would revamp the entire raiding philosophy..

 

I guess you sort of see that with open world bosses? But I never see any invites for those these days.