Congratulations. You just killed sm ops

[Darkknightfk]

I'm not interested in HM/NIM I'm a casual. I was in a guild but it died due to lack of content all that was left for me was pugging SM ops. Now no one is doing that. Even with the re balancing to the new ops it can be hours of just standing on fleet waiting. Tried to start my own one time and no one would join. So now i have nothing to do in this game bar grind weeklys and that got old before it started. I'm sure I'm not alone here.

[FrozenGoalie]

Sounds like you need a guild.

[Grovsie]

its fine as is now. You shouldn't be getting top tier comms with old content on SM.

 

Hopefully it will stop all the bads from playing this game.

[Zohkar]

its fine as is now. You shouldn't be getting top tier comms with old content on SM.

 

Hopefully it will stop all the bads from playing this game.

 

So you want fewer players playing the game so they consolidate the servers and or realize because fewer people play there is no reason to put out newer content or fix bugs exploits and then finally decide to pull the plug. Honestly they could of left the ultimate commendations in the hard mode version's of the story modes or maybe all the Nightmare versions since not many people can beat them. No matter what level you are if you fail mechanics you fail and nothing you do can fix that.

 

The 198 gear that you purchase with ultimate's is more then likely equal to what 180 gear is. Its un-optimize and really not going to help a person survive if they can't do mechanics. Now I can understand when a person says well grind basic then grind elite and then finally ultimate. I know for myself, my Nightmare gear from DF and DP was sufficient to take me to level 60 in 3 1/2 hours and allows me to heal the two new operations no problem as well that I let others get gear first. And no I only consider myself a average player. I know there far better players out there.

[Soul_of_Flames]

Anyhow what you want back is the exploit that you could get ultimate commendations for story mode 16man SnV/TFB/DP/DF, ok it is not so bad as the ravagers exploit... but rather harmless no they had no reason to ban people because the com gear suck anyways so instead the fixed it.

How on earth did you get that out of my suggestion? No I don't care about getting ultimate comms in the old ops. What I want is reason to do the old ops.

 

But.. apparently getting 10 ultimate comms for doing 3 old ops even in story mode is... an exploit?

[mynameisbugged]

just wait for nim mode to come out - the elite players will then no longer care abt SM being nerfed hard so long as HM is still hard

[verfallen]

its fine as is now. You shouldn't be getting top tier comms with old content on SM.

 

Hopefully it will stop all the bads from playing this game.

 

 

 

I'll quote you someone on that page.

 

I'm not interested in HM/NIM I'm a casual. I was in a guild but it died due to lack of content all that was left for me was pugging SM ops. Now no one is doing that. Even with the re balancing to the new ops it can be hours of just standing on fleet waiting. Tried to start my own one time and no one would join. So now i have nothing to do in this game bar grind weeklys and that got old before it started. I'm sure I'm not alone here.

 

 

 

He is not a bad, just a type of player that represent a good chunk of the player base. Not everyone has either the motivation or the time to really invest time and effort into a game, for whatever reason that regard them.

 

Those people however, if they do operations, still pay Bioware monthly for the access.

 

Those people therefore contribute to the money the company receives to keep being interested into keeping this game alive and release new content at a decent pace.

 

Those people, when they log on, probably have in mind of doing an operation, maybe they have a guild, but mostly if they're casual they are in a casual guild that will run some ops every now and then, but will pug a lot.

 

The pace we had commendations at in 2,0 was far better than it is now, and it was a golden age for ops imo. Old ops kept being played, new ones were very active, and flashpoint queues were very fast. Thing is, everyone was having fun.

 

And when I play a game, thats mostly my main goal.

 

That a part of the game is aimed at hardcore gamers is quite fine. You don't see casual players coming to those forum saying HM and NiM version of new content are "too hard, and make them cake".

 

At the same time, I'm trying to figure why someone who apparently is more into the category of an access to HM content figures its fine to come into forum and rejoice that easier content just got dropped, without any replacement to make them worthwhile, and have even some people call that "exploits".

 

Commendation gear is not top tier gear. Other than the offhands, its all crap. The 192 token are much better, or equal (A lettered mods are fine, so one component by 100 comms is correct), but the pace of getting 192 gear is a lot slower.

 

So the fact is: those people currently can hope perhaps for 40-50 ultimates a week (tactical and hm fp weeklies, 8m versions of ToS and Ravagers (16m are riddle with bugs)) and one or two token if they win the roll on the one drop per boss or so. If they are on the more competitive specter of the casual players (some are just really not interested in being good, true, others have the skills to become more serious, but don't want or can't invest the extra time to become a progression raider) they'll be able to clear HM SnV and HM TFB even if they are in a guild that want to plan that one, altough the mechanics are far harder.

 

You are right: Current status of the game will drive all the "bads" you so look down at from your beloved game.

 

Problem is, along with them are also going to leave a bunch of good people, and you'll find you are very few to maintain the kind of income a game the size of TOR needs.

[Fordbird]

I hardly think that NiM raiders have a large enough population to keep the game running solo. In fact, like the above poster suggested, the players being disregarded are the casuals...those that run/ran SM content and HM sometimes. The ones you'll be left with are the new players or the constant levelers that never do end game content anyway...hurray:(

[MisterBlackJack]

You shouldn't get ultimate comms for 55 content.

 

However, there is also the fact that right now there are only two ops at 60, with only 10 bosses and that just isn't very much to do per week. This is compared to the previous situation where there were 4 ops to choose from.

 

But, we can't even do that much because the only ops version that can be reliably completed in a pug is 8M Ravagers.

 

8M Tos and the 16M of both Ravagers and ToS cannot be done by an ordinary pug. (At least, they could not from launch date a month ago until today's patch.)

 

The casual SM ops community is absolutely in a bad place right now. What's needed is not to send people back to 55 ops -which is what has been happening for the last month - but to nerf Ravagers and ToS Story Mode. We got some of that today with Bulo and Walkers being nerfed. I hope it's enough, but I just spent an hour wiping on Underlurker 16 SM with a guild group, so currently it's a fail.

 

I dissagree with your assessment and your suggestion.

 

I think your wrong with your assassment because, Yes there were 4 ops back before 3.0 however what you clearly missed/forget is that Before dread fortress and dread palace, there was only 2 ops that dropped ulitmates (TFB and SnV) EC, EV and KP never dropped ultimates and can only get ulitmates from doing HM/NiM difficulty Classic Weekly, which is no different this time around. So bioware is still doing what they did last Xpac, yet nobody complained when it was just TFB and SnV getting comms (and TFB was bumped up to 55, SnV was the only real new ops this time we got 2).

 

I think your suggestion of nerfing the current endgame content is wrong as well, because it only ignores the REAL problem that arised from the 2.0 cycle. Which is players were having content and gear handed to them with having Content that was either a breeze in SM that you can ignore 50%-90% of the mechanics (see grob'thok and CZ) that the fights were not teaching them how to be better players, which IMO, will have a better community. Because more good players = more players for harder content and more players running with other players constantly. Bioware doesn't need to nerf the fights more. Players need to get better at understanding the fights.

 

I'm tired of people trying to take the easy route to gear but not making the effort to learn mechanics. These ops are breath of fresh air and I hope bioware continues the trend of more Mechanic checks like Ravengers/TOS and hopefully we can get back to the level of EC

Edited January 19, 2015 by MisterBlackJack

[BobaFaceroll]

So bioware is still doing what they did last Xpac, yet nobody complained when it was just TFB and SnV getting comms (and TFB was bumped up to 55, SnV was the only real new ops this time we got 2).

 

No one complained because you could run 16 man TFB and SnV from day one and get Ultimates. You could run any of the previous 3 quite easily for the Classic weekly as well. There was also TC 16 story and both 8&16 HM for Ultimates.

 

This time around Ultimates are hard to come by. The new Ops are buggy (far worse than TFB and SnV at 2.0 release), several fights were (or still are) overtuned in SM, and the 16 person loot tables are broken. The Classic Ops reward gives you fewer Ultimate comms, and there's no stand alone equivalent to TC. Compare how Bioware handled 2.0 and 3.0 and it's not hard to see why people are complaining.

 

I like the new Ops quite a bit. They need to work properly though, and drop the correct loot for 16 man runs. I'm all for mechanic checks like EC....so long as they work reliably like EC. If people had to find a new way to fight Firebrand and Stormcaller each week because their mechanics didn't behave, or the minefield randomly changed from green to red as you were standing in a square, people would be just as frustrated as they are now.

[MisterBlackJack]

No one complained because you could run 16 man TFB and SnV from day one and get Ultimates. You could run any of the previous 3 quite easily for the Classic weekly as well. There was also TC 16 story and both 8&16 HM for Ultimates.

 

This time around Ultimates are hard to come by. The new Ops are buggy (far worse than TFB and SnV at 2.0 release), several fights were (or still are) overtuned in SM, and the 16 person loot tables are broken. The Classic Ops reward gives you fewer Ultimate comms, and there's no stand alone equivalent to TC. Compare how Bioware handled 2.0 and 3.0 and it's not hard to see why people are complaining.

 

I like the new Ops quite a bit. They need to work properly though, and drop the correct loot for 16 man runs. I'm all for mechanic checks like EC....so long as they work reliably like EC. If people had to find a new way to fight Firebrand and Stormcaller each week because their mechanics didn't behave, or the minefield randomly changed from green to red as you were standing in a square, people would be just as frustrated as they are now.

 

Never considered TC an Ops and i despise TC with a passion. But that is a personal preference and your point is taken. However outside of 1 boss fight (torque) I don't find these ops overtuned i didn't find Bulo overtuned in 16 man before the nerf. And outside of 1 boss (underlurker) I there isn't many bugs with most of the fights. at least the ones I have come across in 16 man. Most of the wipes I see is due to people not paying attention to mechanics. In terms of Ultimate rewards, there are still about the same outside of the fact that SnV has 2 more bosses. You also have to remember that 16 man GF didn't give Ultimates like it does now. so if you factor in the GF rewards with the rewards you got when 2.0 launched. Rewards in terms of comms are roughtly the same.

 

Edit: Also do you ever wonder why Classics were run all the time, at least more so than now? None of them gave out ultimates minus the classic weekly. However they were run all the time because the first 2 ops (EV and KP) were cake walks to do even before 2.0. How many PUGs actually did there classic runs through EC HM/NiM? The reason I bring this up because this still goes to the problem I see in terms of PUGs and more casual players, which is the content before didn't challenge them to better themselves. Now with this time around many of the mechanics in HMs for the new Ops are so differnet from their storymode version (Op 9, Thrasher, CZ, Brontes, the Dread Council) that the gap between of required knowledge of the fights were so far apart from the two difficulties that it has handicaped a portion of the community. SMs should prepare you for HMs and HMs should prepare you for NiMs. However the 2.0 cycle didn't do that. Now there is a group of players who have content they were not forced to prepare for with the SMs.

 

Now is this Bioware's fault for not putting in mechanics to prepare them for it, Yes to a certain extent. But I believe we as a community have failed the casual players. Calling them noobs, turning them away when they don't meet what we considered required game mechanic knowledge. I believe it falls more on us rather than Bioware to bring these players up to the level of content, instead of asking for Bioware to bring down the level of content to the players.

Edited January 19, 2015 by MisterBlackJack

[Soul_of_Flames]

I don't necessarily think that's the issue. People ran EV/KP all the time for the weekly classic ops not because it was easy (although that is very much a major playing factor) but because it was quick. You could do EV in like 20-30 minutes. It was the perfect thing to run when trying to kill time... and you didn't even need a full roster of players to complete it.

 

Difficulty aside, the major factor behind why people don't want to do the "new" classic ops is simply because they take too long. If they were somehow shorter... the difficulty would be irrelevant. People would cope. As long as they had the possibility of going in, going out and being done.

 

Now, I've been getting in pugs for HM S&V and TFB... and we do just fine. It just takes HOURS to do this stuff. And that's only to earn a measly 10 ultimate comms.

 

It begs the question... "Why spend hours putting up with pugs in a HM when you could be spending those hours progressing through the new content?" Especially since doing that new content is giving you better gear than what you can even buy with ultimate comms!

 

Basically... the entire rewards system is all out of whack in 3.0. The content that is ran is largely not giving out the proper tier of rewards. It's quite obvious that loot was merely an after thought when they put this patch on live. The entire 55hm FPs dropping better comms than 60hm FPs is proof of that.

[Izrin]

I dissagree with your assessment and your suggestion.

 

I think your wrong with your assassment because, Yes there were 4 ops back before 3.0 however what you clearly missed/forget is that Before dread fortress and dread palace, there was only 2 ops that dropped ulitmates (TFB and SnV) EC, EV and KP never dropped ultimates and can only get ulitmates from doing HM/NiM difficulty Classic Weekly, which is no different this time around. So bioware is still doing what they did last Xpac, yet nobody complained when it was just TFB and SnV getting comms (and TFB was bumped up to 55, SnV was the only real new ops this time we got 2).

 

I think your suggestion of nerfing the current endgame content is wrong as well, because it only ignores the REAL problem that arised from the 2.0 cycle. Which is players were having content and gear handed to them with having Content that was either a breeze in SM that you can ignore 50%-90% of the mechanics (see grob'thok and CZ) that the fights were not teaching them how to be better players, which IMO, will have a better community. Because more good players = more players for harder content and more players running with other players constantly. Bioware doesn't need to nerf the fights more. Players need to get better at understanding the fights.

 

I'm tired of people trying to take the easy route to gear but not making the effort to learn mechanics. These ops are breath of fresh air and I hope bioware continues the trend of more Mechanic checks like Ravengers/TOS and hopefully we can get back to the level of EC

 

I disagree to your statement yea I believe am not the best player in the game and I am casual but EA didn't even give me a chance to get any ulti coms at all in these two new expansions I have to pug to run a group and I yet to complete any of the new Operations in 16m even after they fixed the second boss, I know how mechanics work and I Know how to play my toon just because I play as a casual base dosen't mean I am a bad player it just means I have no time to spend on it.

 

Many casual players also have no time due to heavy work schedules and family what my complaint is about as well as many others I just want to join a pug group via groupfinder and complete the damn op already and get some gear on the way and have fun with it not making it a major task out of it.

 

That is why they have 3 different challenge levels SM for casuals to get their coms, HM for players that like that challenge and NiM modes for players that like that grind and challenge as well.

 

I un subbed because the fact remains they totally ruined it for casual players cause everything that is surrounding us is all basic coms and everyone by a month that this expac has been out were at least in the elite gear already having 2 operations that appears to be impossible to do in 16 man and not enough coms for the weekly to gain any crap ulti gear anyway.

 

My point in this that I am not paying for a game like many others are to stand around in gaining nothing at all.

 

Like buying a coffee and a burger with not what u want in it do you consider that a waste of money or complain about it?

[Fordbird]

This was my original point. I don't care about the comms. Elite is fine for me. I do run the occasional HM, and that has been sufficient to get set gear on my main(s). I only want to run the content. I have found that a pretty major majority of players will not play if there is no reward at the end. Weekly fp's, random gf, classic ops, etc..gave ultimates before the 3.0.2 patch. Now 2 broken ops give them out. Have 172 set pieces drop in Sm SnV/TFB/DF/DP...or even 186 since it is older gear now. People will on e again queue and pug, and the HM/NiM can still say that they have much better gear than the rest of us. I will mention once again, that running voidstar in pvp will now give a higher tier of gear than it did before, and the mechanics, nor the difficulty changed. Do something similar for pve content and its' player base.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

But I believe we as a community have failed the casual players. Calling them noobs, turning them away when they don't meet what we considered required game mechanic knowledge. I believe it falls more on us rather than Bioware to bring these players up to the level of content, instead of asking for Bioware to bring down the level of content to the players.

 

This as a major reason for me also.

 

How often have people not wanted to take new players to HM on a HM run simply because they hadn't done the HM before?

 

Are they REALLY that much more difficult now at 60 or is it just assumed they are? Perhaps it's jsut laziness on pug raid leaders behalf? IMO if you want to lead a bug then at the beginning of each fight you should TYPE up a quick run down of the differences between SM and HM, if they don't know the SM mechanics like the back of their hand I agree they shouldn't be there.

 

From there you simply ask if anyone doesn't specifically know what THEIR role on the fight is so you can quickly tell them if so. I know that often you get people who say nothing regardless because they don't even know the SM mechanics and just wanted something to do but that's part and parcel with pug raid leading and often gear checks are a good means to see what content someone has completed ( like no set pieces at all ... pass or all comm gear etc. ).

 

One you do the the above running HM pugs isn't quite as frustrating for everyone involved, it just relies a good raid leader. I remember learnings op mechanics back at 2.0 launch and I had a few failed attempts and it was one good pug group I ended up in that quickly and clearly explained the fight ( without going overboard on detail ) to the point that I knew the mechanics down pat for the next time I run them because that leader had done a good job of leading.

That was for SM also which in essence is HARDER to lead first timers into because you have to explain the whole fight. Leading first timer HM players who can cake walk SM is often a much easier job as you only really need to explain the differences.

 

People need to lose some of the arrogance I think and realise that many people wanting to raid aren't idiots and will get it right if explained correctly. It's the raid leader who is the idiot if he/she fails to do this.

[Faardor]

making group finder 8 man again would solve a lot of problems I see people having in this thread.

[Test_Eagle]

I don't know why people get upset that the lvl 55 ops gave ults. As it stands now lvl 55-59s can earn ults doing operations and its not end game content.

[verfallen]

making group finder 8 man again would solve a lot of problems I see people having in this thread.

 

why not both? You queue for 16m or 8m.

 

At any rate, what I would like to see is :

 

-Small ammount of GF reward ultis rather than elites for the daily fp (around 5 for a max of 35 a week that way)

 

-Small ammount (10 or so) for clearing SnV, TFB, DP, DF in any difficulty mode. 8m drops elites, 16m elites x 1,5 of 8m or so to make 16m still worth it (kinda balance the higher number of dps compared to tank and healer, so encouraging it is rather healthy for server pop)

 

-Small extra ammount for doing any one of those HM (another 10 lets say (mean leaving weekly as it is)

 

-NiM SnV and TFB drops ultis like DP/DF NiM, or perhaps one or two less per boss, but ultis.

 

-Small ammount of ELITE commendation for clearing level 50 ops with a boosted drop rate of a few nice things(decos, speeders etc), since no one care about the gear they drop anymore (goal here is just to keep that content alive, so people getting the courrier mission can clear them without waiting for 3 hours to make an ops team, and people around the fleet with nothing better to do figure, why not, could get something not too bad)

 

Goal is a casual player that every week does a fp every day, every single ops he can do (55 sm and 60 sm) should be darn close to weekly cap.

 

I wouldn't be saying this if ultimates gave access to extremely good gear, but they don't. They're giving access to some gear people that go casually about the game find interesting, and it keeps servers lively. A big improvement from now.

 

In 2,0, true we had only 2 55 ops, but HM EV and KP were far simpler than HM SnV or TFB for the HM comms, we had TC (altough I didnt check out new yavin boss) and we had comms on GF FP.

[Gluo]

so my toon has 192 gear working on getting set armor...i run Rav and TOS and now i'm done for the week...my point is that use to be able run all week for the weeklies now there no reason...the devs lost the purpose of the game to do and flashpoints...now there no que and no one does df or dp or and thing thats not easy as a sm...so why do i pay 15 dollars a month to play on my couple toons???i think the devs need more content and they need to put balance in the game...till then i'll drop my monthly and check some new mmo's coming out..at lease i'll new story and new challange and be able to play all week in stead of putting credit spams on ignore and wait for a ops to come around...

[Soul_of_Flames]

Here is another idea... maybe let us buy a Matter Transubstantiator for 1000 basic comms?

[Loc_n_lol]

Here is another idea... maybe let us buy a Matter Transubstantiator for 1000 basic comms?

 

100*

 

*only for those who didnt exploit Ravagers.

[Ardusnyc]

My biggest problem with the change is that because I don't have a steady schedule, I can't do Ops in a progression guild. That forces me to find PUGs doing ultimate content. Unfortunately, most PUGs are extremely bad at coordination and there's no way of knowing if it's worth the time until you actually pull the boss. And sadly if the PUG manages to seem even the least bit promising, most players ragequit after 3 pulls.

 

I haven't been able to complete a ultimate content since patch release. I no longer need elites but my progression has stopped on my raid toon. So now I'm just playing alts =/.

[JouerTue]

My biggest problem with the change is that because I don't have a steady schedule, I can't do Ops in a progression guild. That forces me to find PUGs doing ultimate content. Unfortunately, most PUGs are extremely bad at coordination and there's no way of knowing if it's worth the time until you actually pull the boss. And sadly if the PUG manages to seem even the least bit promising, most players ragequit after 3 pulls.

 

I haven't been able to complete a ultimate content since patch release. I no longer need elites but my progression has stopped on my raid toon. So now I'm just playing alts =/.

 

and this is mostly because it's over one year that the causal player rofl stomps all the available endgame content

 

it took 5-6 wipes for a pug who oneshotted the walkers to start hiding behind the *********** rocks, and their minds axploded while trying to understand that burning the boss/ignoring adds doesn't mean you don't have to hide behind the *********** rocks one last freaking time..or 5 wipes needed to have half of the dps stop using AOE skills on torque? really? it's exactly like when people kept failing interupting a single mob on draxus. until healers overgeared and become able to heal through 2-3 MA there was a huge failing rate at that boss.

[Zohkar]

The ultimate commendations where the carrot for us to continue to play the old raids. With how the newer two raids are bugged on both encounters and loot the ultimate commendations from the older raids was our constellation prize for sitting threw hours of aggravation at the hands of this current update, sorry its not a expansion compared to other games I have played in the past. Twice last night while trying to pug Ravager 's we where forced to drop down to 8 man so that we could continue with 16 man. Torque, buddy your health is not in proportion that it should be for 16 man content.

 

Only reason this week we are seeing a few more operations being run for older content is because most are involved for conquest points. And those are being run in 8 man anyways because there is no loot anyone needs and most people continually cap out on basic or elite each week before even raiding. So unlike player verse player which rewards people commendations for gear win or lose, player verse environment took a hit.

[Lecto]

I'm not interested in HM/NIM I'm a casual. I was in a guild but it died due to lack of content all that was left for me was pugging SM ops. Now no one is doing that. Even with the re balancing to the new ops it can be hours of just standing on fleet waiting. Tried to start my own one time and no one would join. So now i have nothing to do in this game bar grind weeklys and that got old before it started. I'm sure I'm not alone here.

 

In my guild we have about 3-4 people that show up to our raids on a regular basis, but like this guy said....it takes about 30min-an hour to get people who want to roll an 8man sm LvL 60 Raid -- forget about 16man. This isn't counting the nights where we can't put together a full group because most casuals do not want to run this content.