Stop complaining about 1.2 changes...

[lokivoid]

unlikely - Georg Zoeller has already had the logs (and far more data), and that's what he's based 1.2 on.

 

Georg Zoeller has absolutely no real experience with gameplay balancing. Every single project has worked had major balance flaws. Though it was not a huge concern with those titles considering the single player nature.

[RuQu]

Georg Zoeller has absolutely no real experience with gameplay balancing. Every single project has worked had major balance flaws. Though it was not a huge concern with those titles considering the single player nature.

 

Can you list some of those titles for the curious among us?

 

Also, I wonder how the OP feels about the changes now considering he said:

Everything will get changed AGAIN after combat logs are torn to shreds..

 

So relax.

 

And nothing did....

[Feran_Feitwo]

the path that Bioware's design philosophy leads down, is one that will end with players having 1 single ability. tanks will have 1 button, taunt. healers will have 1 ability, heal. dps will have one button, pewpew.

 

at such point, all quantities will be static, and totally predictable. BW's metrics experiment will be complete, and the boss encounters can be tuned to exacting numbers because they will know exactly how much any person can do, if they can push a button every 1.5 seconds.

 

sounds like an awesome game..

 

You forgot the part where they take out the skill trees and consolidate All the advanced classes into their original starting class, so as to give the game an Epic Star Wars-y Feel.

[Feran_Feitwo]

Can you list some of those titles for the curious among us?

 

 

Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights to name a couple.

[Beaken]

The more I read the more I see how unhappy many of you are, I have to assume you're very hardcore gamers that live off of the stats. Personally I'm a casual player that likes the PVE and storyline. Though I do dabble in PVP.

 

I like to think that with eight classes the perfect balance I hear many speak of is hardly possible... I'm sure they could achieve that for you, healers have a heal button, dps has an attack button, tanks have a taunt button.

 

I for one will stick it out with my Sorcerer which I find one hell of a fun class to play. Post 1.2 everyone knows the healing isn't going to be what it was, and it was freakishly easy not running out of force but I'm here to be challenged and this is a challenge I'll enjoy.

 

So to those who just cancelled in a teared rage I say good riddance, your better served playing a game like Diablo3 where you can take out all your frustrations wearing the clicker out of your mouse.

Edited April 14, 2012 by Beaken

[Soshla]

I like to think that with eight classes the perfect balance I hear many speak of is hardly possible... I'm sure they could achieve that for you, healers have a heal button, dps has an attack button, tanks have a taunt button.

 

I for one will stick it out with my Sorcerer which I find one hell of a fun class to play. Post 1.2 everyone knows the healing isn't going to be what it was, and it was freakishly easy not running out of force but I'm here to be challenged and this is a challenge I'll enjoy.

 

So to those who just cancelled in a teared rage I say good riddance, your better served playing a game like Diablo3 where you can take out all your frustrations wearing the clicker out of your mouse.

Your criticisms are interesting. Many healers are leaving expressly because they feel healing is moving towards "healers have a heal button", which you yourself don't seem fond of.

 

They've increased the difficulty while removing complexity. You could "tightly balance" fights by giving healers one button and making sure they have to be healing the right person at all times with good reflexes, but many would find that incredibly dull to play. SWToR seems to be heading in that direction.

 

It's not a teared rage for some people, I regret having to unsub. I wish they had taken the high road and developed around the complexities (and add some more complexity to Ops) rather than dumb down the game.

Edited April 14, 2012 by Soshla

[XtremJedi]

The more I read the more I see how unhappy many of you are, I have to assume you're very hardcore gamers that live off of the stats. Personally I'm a casual player that likes the PVE and storyline. Though I do dabble in PVP.

 

No... not at all. I'm a big fan of characters needing to be 'good enough' rather than always the best or comparing to other classes all the time. I'm the one who only plays occasionally (certainly not every day) and will nearly always take the route that has more challenge and skill to it - e.g. I have played in perma-death guilds on several MMOs (where when your character dies you actually delete him and start over). I often try unusual character choices in end-game because they seem like fun and push the envelope a bit - even if my numbers don't match up to others. I never PvP.

 

I started playing ToR after trying it in the beta. It seemed to me that the game-play was pretty average at best and there were a bunch of bugs - but it was solid enough and the story-line would probably hold my attention. I was confident enough, that I took a 6 month subscription.

 

But it has to be fun and engaging. I found it dull playing classes like Op healer in the end, because that kind of very limited rotation and lack of utility really doesn't appeal to me. I kept expecting more to come as I levelled... and found that it really didn't. I was looking to 1.2 to add more complexity and challenge to my game-play - not remove it.

 

And then 1.2 comes along and the class that I really still enjoy playing (Sage/Sorc) gets slower, less varied and less able to mix in utility/DPS than before. I still don't really have to worry about resource management... I just use those tools less and heal a lot slower and add less other stuff in. I don't mind taking a huge hit in healing output - I would have expected that... but they managed to do it in a way that makes game-play even less interesting (which I could barely have believed).

 

You say you're going to enjoy the extra challenge of playing your healer and I'm really happy for you. But I struggle to see where the extra fun and challenge will come from and given the range of other issues with the game (low pops, low PuG formation, beta bugs still around, repetitive missions, dull encounters)... there really did need to be some extra fun and challenge in 1.2.... not less.

 

X

Edited April 14, 2012 by XtremJedi

[Orduno]

The more I read the more I see how unhappy many of you are, I have to assume you're very hardcore gamers that live off of the stats. Personally I'm a casual player that likes the PVE and storyline. Though I do dabble in PVP.

 

I like to think that with eight classes the perfect balance I hear many speak of is hardly possible... I'm sure they could achieve that for you, healers have a heal button, dps has an attack button, tanks have a taunt button.

 

I for one will stick it out with my Sorcerer which I find one hell of a fun class to play. Post 1.2 everyone knows the healing isn't going to be what it was, and it was freakishly easy not running out of force but I'm here to be challenged and this is a challenge I'll enjoy.

 

So to those who just cancelled in a teared rage I say good riddance, your better served playing a game like Diablo3 where you can take out all your frustrations wearing the clicker out of your mouse.

 

I think I'm generally going to side with the people who explain their posts with logic and statistics rather than the folks who seem to think posting "lol u mad nerds?!?!!" is making them win at forums.

 

If you have to make assumptions of what people enjoy and that they "cancelled in a teared rage" despite the mounds of evidence to the contrary, that's kind of funny honestly.

[Monkeybusiness]

The homogenization has begun.

 

Look at the Shadow Kinetic Combat talent "Harnessed Shadows." Notice anything? 3% self-healing.

 

this killed wow arena/PvP for me for alot of people actually.

[Drakkip]

unlikely - Georg Zoeller has already had the logs (and far more data), and that's what he's based 1.2 on.

 

I disagree with GZ from a design philosophy, but you cant fault the man when it come to numbers ; that is very clearly his "thing".

 

GZ and his "metrics" make me think of a guy who is standing there with a clipboard saying "According to these numbers you baby should be well fed and sleeping soundly, you must be a bad parent if they are crying right now!" His opinion really has no basis in reality in terms of game play.

 

As a healing scoundrel and tank shadow my friend and I rarely had a hard time taking down most healers. Timely interrupts were the key, now just roll a senti/maura and faceroll healers.... That being said I was hard to take down with guard, breaking LoS, etc... Now 1 marau tears me up fast...

 

Whatever though... it's funny to think that it feels like this game has hit it's peak after 6 months into the game... Usually it takes game companies a lot longer than that to "kill" the game and start the downward spiral, I guess BW wants to be ahead of that curve!

[whiteallez]

I played a Sorc Healer from the begining and very much enjoyed it. I never understood the OP remarks about healers because I continually got my *** handed to me by people who properly used interupts. Maradors and the Rep equivalent terrified me in pvp. I also never understood the balance of WZ metals as i could easily get 4 or more on my powertech tank in a single fight but struggled to get that many through an entire WZ as a pure healer. Decided to try the pvp after 1.2 not really paying any attention to the nerfs thinking they would be minor like in other MMOs i have played

 

I found myself dead most of the match. I could not really understand it. I was consistently the best healer in the WZ before and this one was no exception but I felt like I could not really do anything. I felt slow and clunky. I finnally decided to pay attention and read throught the patch notes and the forums here to find that I was not alone. My character had been throughly down graded.

 

I dont know that I can quote all the numbers as I do not pay to much attention to them but it feels worse. It is not fluid at all, and I dont know what to do. I dont want to heal anymore its just not fun.

[Masturomenos]

BW thanks for listening to the healers concerns and then completely ignoring them. This is exactly how you kill your player base.

 

At this point i wish they had ignored our concerns. Id give back brez and kolto 4 target aoe heal to just go back to before 1.2.

 

Not only did they ignore us they did the exact opposite of what we asked.

 

Too many people unsubbed since 1.2 and i dont know why they did that much work to lose players.

 

Ive played wow for almost a decade and theyve made mistakes but never have they given me a free month for doing such horrible work.

 

At this point forget balance i hope bioware can save the game all together.

 

Just bad job all around classes, pvp, bugs i mena they even copied wows world event and i am happier if they just continued to copy other games then do anything they think of themselves.

[Jenzali]

I have to agree. I thought the new changes were "playable" and I could deal with them, but the real problem is that it's a nerf to fun than anything. It's just not fun when you don't have any spare resources to use on offensive or utility abilities. It's not fun when your resource management is so restrictive that anything out of the ordinary can completely screw you over unless your Vent Heat is up. It's not fun using rapid shots 5 times in a row watching everyone die around you. It's not fun staring at the respawn gate because everyone on the enemy knows that healers an easy kill.

 

I would have been fine with all my heals healing for 10 or 20% less. I would have. But resource management is not something you completely turn upside-down in a single patch.

 

I had a Mercenary and a Commando, both healers. I love this game so much, but I will be shelving both characters until they fix the resource management.

 

It's a shame, really. Pre-1.2 was the most fun I have ever had healing, in any game, ever. Even having played every single healing class at some point in WoW endgame, nothing compared to the sheer fun of healing with a Merc/Commando until this drastic change came along. Ammo/Heat was a totally new concept in MMO's as far as I am aware, and the playstyle was incredibly fun and rewarding, and you still had to make tough decisions about triage, burst healing, using your utility abiltiies, all while balancing this against heat management. Now it's me staring at my heat bar because it no longer feels fluid at all. It's clunky and makes me feel powerless in the face of the huge amounts of incoming damage.

 

I imagine newer players aren't too concerned by the changes, but this is really tough on veteran healers as our playstyle is being simplified and arbitrarily bottlenecked. Combat pace seems to have slowed to a crawl even though I'm dying much faster. It's paradoxical

Edited April 17, 2012 by Jenzali

[XtremJedi]

I do wonder about how new players will take it.

 

I think that if they are coming from an MMO back-ground, then they'll play the healers in ToR and recognise that it's a fairly restricted and dull system, particularly since the changes in 1.2. I would think that the percentage of players actively playing healers will continue to be fairly low among this group... certainly lower than it could have been.

 

But players coming from a different back-ground, without much MMO experience may be less discriminating. It's hard to tell isn't it?

 

Time will tell I guess.

 

X

[Xaearth]

I do wonder about how new players will take it.

 

I think that if they are coming from an MMO back-ground, then they'll play the healers in ToR and recognise that it's a fairly restricted and dull system, particularly since the changes in 1.2. I would think that the percentage of players actively playing healers will continue to be fairly low among this group... certainly lower than it could have been.

 

But players coming from a different back-ground, without much MMO experience may be less discriminating. It's hard to tell isn't it?

 

Time will tell I guess.

 

X

 

In my albeit limited experience with friends, family, and guild members, those without much MMO experience and those without much healing MMO experience switched to DPS by the time endgame came around anyways.

 

Seriously, I hadn't logged in for nearly 2 months before 1.2 was live, so afterwards I asked all these healing newbies how they took the 1.2 changes and they said "What changes? Oh, they changed healing? I switched to DPS a while back."

[Daiyukie]

I switched from Scrapper to Sawbones and find it infinitely more useful and marginally more fun, if that encourages anyone here. Only ever played Guild Wars for a bit and EVE for 3 years, dislike MMOs in general because of the "this is the best mathematical rotation so you use it all day long against a boss with 3 million hp" type of content. Very boring, but Scoundrel was actually active and fun, but that's not allowed in this game apparently so then comes all the nerfs. I only made and leveled one after two nerfs, for the record, so I never even got to experience shoot first crits that were actually scary.

[RuQu]

I switched from Scrapper to Sawbones and find it infinitely more useful and marginally more fun, if that encourages anyone here. Only ever played Guild Wars for a bit and EVE for 3 years, dislike MMOs in general because of the "this is the best mathematical rotation so you use it all day long against a boss with 3 million hp" type of content. Very boring, but Scoundrel was actually active and fun, but that's not allowed in this game apparently so then comes all the nerfs. I only made and leveled one after two nerfs, for the record, so I never even got to experience shoot first crits that were actually scary.

 

Enjoy it while you can. This game is much simpler than WoW mathematically. The only reason there aren't high precision sims of every class so far is a lack of time/interest from the sim programmers. I made some sims for this game for 1.1.5 and have them partially upgraded to 1.2. They come out extremely close to what the Combat Logs say, and the mechanics were not hard to program.

 

On the other hand, at the rate this game is dropping players there may not be anyone playing who also codes sims fairly soon, so the game may never get "solved" like WoW.