Why the new Operations are threatening to kill the game.

[Island_Jedi]

I cant speak for everybody, but my guild and myself are pretty much in the same position. We are not hardcore raiders, most of us being 25 y/o and up with jobs, families etc. We have progressed nicely through all the past ops, sm, hm and even some Nim content. Sm is too easy, and Hm is a big challenge with Rav and tos. Most of us are tired of beating are heads against the wall, and ready to throw in the towel. Have plenty of alts, that sit around collecting dust. With hm df and dp, you could jump on an alt and pug into a hm and have a good chance of getting 4/5 or a clear. Go on the fleet now, nobody advertises for a hm group with tos or rav, and the reason is obvious. I know for many, there isn't a lot of things to do anymore, so people just are not logging on and losing interest. Hopefully things change.

 

You are a symptom of precisely what I am talking about. The mid range community raiders are getting hit hard in addition to the casuals. I think the new HM ops difficulty should be called "Elitist mode" or "L2P mode".

Edited April 24, 2015 by Island_Jedi

[Khaleijo]

...

Have plenty of alts, that sit around collecting dust. With hm df and dp, you could jump on an alt and pug into a hm and have a good chance of getting 4/5 or a clear. Go on the fleet now, nobody advertises for a hm group with tos or rav, and the reason is obvious. I know for many, there isn't a lot of things to do anymore, so people just are not logging on and losing interest. Hopefully things change.

 

I think part of the problem is that the previous content cycle was up far too long and most players don't remember the time when DF/DP HM was still hard for casual raiders, if everybody who complains about the difficulty now was even around then.

 

You are right with pugging HM DF/DP during the later half of that content cycle, but a very long time only very good pugs mostly with alts of progression raiders were able to beat more than the first bosses there.

We had those operations for 14 month and it wasn't puggable from the beginning. SM was possible maybe a little bit earlier than ToS now, but at least on my server most SM groups broke apart with 4/5 DP because the awareness and coordination of pugs usually wasn't enough to get the Council down and the gear not good enough yet to just ignore the mechanics.

But there were other level 55 Operations those who needed experience or gear or just wanted some fun in the evening could run. Asation, Darvannis or even Denova were still interesting and new stuff for most players.

 

It took much time until the majority of players learned the mechanics and got better gear to outplay the difficulty of the Oricon operations. Alone the coordination of interupts at draxus was a pug killer for very long even in SM, raid damage at Corrupter Zero wasn't easy either until the damage income was reduced and most healers got enough gear to just heal through everything. Not even talking about Calphayus, Raptus or Council in DP.

 

When NIM got released the 180 modifikations and much more important hilts and barrels became craftable and available to more players for elite coms without having to kill the final encounter themselves.

From then on pugging was much more effective, 180 gear for elite coms and maybe buying a craftted piece here and there and the average PUG player was overgeared enough to compensate for the lack of experience or skill with the more difficult encounters. At least for DPS and healers comm gear was more useful than it is in the current cycle.

 

With the current content cycle we aren't at this spot yet. On my server there are the some HC pugs now but this only started last week. But same as with Nefra Nim, there are groups organizing SM PUGs regularly and if they get Rav and ToS clear without much problems, they kill Sparky and Malaphar HC for implants and relics.

 

The difference is that we don't have other level 60 operations yet and the old ones were done so often even by the most casual raider, that no one can see them anymore.

There is no easier but still interesting alternative you could play instead of Rav and ToS.

And this time not the final encounter is the major problem like it was with DP but one right in the middle, although, as i remember and wrote above the Oricon ops weren't "easy run through and kill everything with a PUG" for a long time either. But there the mechanics didn't depended on one players awareness and ability to understand the encounter. If the rest of the group was good enough they could manage the encounter even with a weak or dead player. Which isn't the case with UL.

[benficakungfu]

Nah sms are easy but certains players ( those proclaiming elitist l2p mode) are simply in denial and unwilling to learn. Sorry.

I feel authority to say this. Not meant to ofend anyone

[AlrikFassbauer]

There is no easier but still interesting alternative you could play instead of Rav and ToS.

 

There is some truth in this sentence.

I only see calls for group members for both of them in the Fleet's General Chat - not for any other OP.

 

One interesting thing, though, is that guilds and PUGs are doing the old content more and more often with the new Rishi & Yavin 4 gear. At least that's how I see it, personally.

Edited April 24, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[FerkWork]

Nah sms are easy but certains players ( those proclaiming elitist l2p mode) are simply in denial and unwilling to learn. Sorry.

I feel authority to say this. Not meant to ofend anyone

 

Well if you have authority at least L2Spell.

[MetalMudsy]

This is the problem from a raid leader's perspective ...

 

The learning curb is too high for SM and gap too far from SM to HM.

 

While this has little effect on experienced raiders individually the flow on is impacting the progression teams because the learning curve between SM and HM is now substantially increased. The more difficult HMs will frustrate some raiders who were used to faster progression previously and they will inevitably quit raiding, maybe for the short term or forever it doesn't matter. This is fairly normal for a progression team, but this is where the large learning curve comes in to play. The progression team that loses player/s now have to recruit for a replacement, but they can't teach a new person, the learning curve is too great and will slow progression to a point where other team members will also quit or leave the team. So in order to maintain the progression team an experienced HM raider with around equal progression is required. The HM progression team has to now operate like a hardcore NiM team.

 

The end result is the team will eventually fold or absorb players from other teams causing them to fold. For small guilds this pretty much kills the guild, for larger guilds they are forced to merge their teams into smaller and smaller numbers.

 

The end result is a only very few teams are able to progress and huge amounts of talent and skill is laid to waste.

 

Bioware should be releasing all tiers of Ops at the same time to avoid this, like other MMOs do.

 

I understand the logic, they don't want the elitists all over the forums crying how easy HM is and how bored they now are because NiM isn't out. Instead they are alienating all the new players, and potentially awesome raiders are not getting the opportunity to shine and progression guilds slowly crumble away.

 

This is how it is threatening the game.

Edited April 24, 2015 by MetalMudsy

[AshlaBoga]

I cant speak for everybody, but my guild and myself are pretty much in the same position. We are not hardcore raiders, most of us being 25 y/o and up with jobs, families etc. We have progressed nicely through all the past ops, sm, hm and even some Nim content. Sm is too easy, and Hm is a big challenge with Rav and tos. Most of us are tired of beating are heads against the wall, and ready to throw in the towel. Have plenty of alts, that sit around collecting dust. With hm df and dp, you could jump on an alt and pug into a hm and have a good chance of getting 4/5 or a clear. Go on the fleet now, nobody advertises for a hm group with tos or rav, and the reason is obvious. I know for many, there isn't a lot of things to do anymore, so people just are not logging on and losing interest. Hopefully things change.

 

Oddly enough, 4/5 HM ToS is much easier than even 3/5 HM Ravagers.

 

I think that if they nerf HM Ravagers 2-4 *slightly* and FIXED ALL THE CORATANNI BUGS then everything in HM would be perfectly balanced.

[Island_Jedi]

Nah sms are easy but certains players ( those proclaiming elitist l2p mode) are simply in denial and unwilling to learn. Sorry.

I feel authority to say this. Not meant to ofend anyone

 

I was talking about HM not SM in that comment. Please actually read the posts and L2spell would help also.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Island_Jedi

[JouerTue]

looking at the patch notes, with more ultimates around and all the incoming nerfs, if there will still be people complaining about content difficulty they just need to uninstall and move along..

[mynameisbugged]

Does the progression community feel the Cortani and Revan fights are overtuned in HM?

 

recently defeated coratanni last week and don't think she's overtuned(quite easy actually). We're working on revan now and still getting used to mechanics on 1st floor but nothing too hard yet.

 

I would say hm fights now aren't too hard mechanically, but much more unforgiving than last tier.

[Shwarzchild]

Wow did anyone read the patch notes yet? If pugs can't clear these operations now...then I have zero answers. Hell if my raid group can't suddenly finish off Bulo I'm going to have to reassess my own self. They took everything and made it extremely easy. I'm a bit shocked they hit hardmodes as much as they did. And...they hit blood hunt's first boss which I am totally happy about now people won't be just insta quitting that (although clearing him did feel pretty good).

[Island_Jedi]

Wow did anyone read the patch notes yet? If pugs can't clear these operations now...then I have zero answers. Hell if my raid group can't suddenly finish off Bulo I'm going to have to reassess my own self. They took everything and made it extremely easy. I'm a bit shocked they hit hardmodes as much as they did. And...they hit blood hunt's first boss which I am totally happy about now people won't be just insta quitting that (although clearing him did feel pretty good).

 

Yes they did nerf the content, but in all seriousness it needed to be nerfed from SM to HM. Putting players into a NIM environment was a bad call and I am glad to see the changes. For those of you that are very elitist just wait for NIM and smash your heads against that. Bioware has finally joined the fight and not a second too late. They have made the needed changes to ensure the enjoyment of all in the game. Its good to know that Bioware has indeed listened to the voice of the community and hopefully found a happy medium between challenge and accessibility.

[FerkWork]

Yes they did nerf the content, but in all seriousness it needed to be nerfed from SM to HM. Putting players into a NIM environment was a bad call and I am glad to see the changes. For those of you that are very elitist just wait for NIM and smash your heads against that. Bioware has finally joined the fight and not a second too late. They have made the needed changes to ensure the enjoyment of all in the game. Its good to know that Bioware has indeed listened to the voice of the community and hopefully found a happy medium between challenge and accessibility.

 

General assessment recorded below is neither support or condemnation of the nerfs and is merely conjectural and speculation:

 

Well they did nerf the second bosses in HM but it looks like the other ones are the same difficulty as before. I suspect BW is putting in gradual nerfs now as the average amount of people that participate is enough to advance to the unerfed content which is the later bosses. Most likely we will see a Torque nerf and UL HM nerf in the future. Then a Master and Blaster one (Revanite Commanders possible but the fight is still not a hard fight on HM if you use CC correctly). Then by the time NiM is about to be released we will see substantial Cora Nerfs and Revan.

 

What these nerfs might be? Hard to say but going off the "hardest" part of each fight:

UL: Reduction of HP on boss

Torque: Decrease damage of adds and decrease HP of boss

M&B: Decrease damage on Blaster main attack, decrease knock back and damage on mines

Coritanni: Reduce health on Ruuger

 

But that is all speculation as stated above.

Edited April 28, 2015 by FerkWork

[FerkWork]

Oddly enough, 4/5 HM ToS is much easier than even 3/5 HM Ravagers.

 

I think that if they nerf HM Ravagers 2-4 *slightly* and FIXED ALL THE CORATANNI BUGS then everything in HM would be perfectly balanced.

 

Torque HP and Ruugers HP and how quickly groups can whittle them down usually determines whether a group clears that boss. Everything else is pretty much fine IMHO.

[Arunas]

Wow did anyone read the patch notes yet? If pugs can't clear these operations now...then I have zero answers. Hell if my raid group can't suddenly finish off Bulo I'm going to have to reassess my own self. They took everything and made it extremely easy. I'm a bit shocked they hit hardmodes as much as they did. And...they hit blood hunt's first boss which I am totally happy about now people won't be just insta quitting that (although clearing him did feel pretty good).

 

In my opinion SM ops now are so faceroll doing HM FPs is utterly pointless now as you can join pug groups that are being spammed /via GF instead of waiting forever for a FP pop as DPS.

 

HM FPs seems to be significant challenge if you are not a hardcore progression team, since you will have less stable group and few members that are less geared/skilled/experienced. So the problem now is its not easy transition, having HMs be easier a bit and having NiM tier would be better, spamming mainly SMs will inevitably lead to burnout.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Arunas

[Shwarzchild]

In my opinion SM ops now are so faceroll doing HM FPs is utterly pointless now as you can join pug groups that are being spammed /via GF instead of waiting forever for a FP pop as DPS.

 

HM FPs seems to be significant challenge if you are not a hardcore progression team, since you will have less stable group and few members that are less geared/skilled/experienced. So the problem now is its not easy transition, having HMs be easier a bit and having NiM tier would be better, spamming mainly SMs will inevitably lead to burnout.

 

I apologize...I didn't really understand what your point was. I think I got a piece of it so ill put my thoughts down below, but if im off base please tell me.

 

Neither operations or flashpoints are worthless. They are actually tied together. MK-2 192 gear offers improvements over 186 and 192 MK-1 gear which a lot of story mode raiders use out of the gate. They also offer ultimate and elite comms to aid in the gear progression to the time when a player has the set pieces in full. Experience wise flashpoint mechanics require you to work in a group setting to beat the bosses and sometimes the environments. Operations are no different in principle. Also, and this is my personal view, I feel like each are their own separate entities to a degree. Flashpoints are tailored for the crowd that simply doesn't have the time/ patience/ what have you to put down 2 hours for an operation. They may not like that extra level of team coordination that's generally required in an operation. Operation is for the people who want that higher tier. I'm not entirely sure I understand your view of the transition in fairness. When moving from 4 man to 8 man content I think the whole transition is pretty seamless actually since you're already primed for group content.

 

Regarding hardmode flashpoints, in their current state as a whole they are not harder than an operation's boss and if you require a raiding team to beat any of them then I had to say it but you may be part of a minority that could use some help from other players and I'd be happy to help if you're on POT5. There's plenty of tips and tricks and general things I've picked up clearing them that could help since most likely if a raid team is required for say Korriban Incursion or something there could be holes in your team's knowledge base that just need filling.

 

Regarding burnout happens in mmos. It's why populations are eve in flux. I'm not sure that's some symptom we can cure.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Shwarzchild

[Arunas]

...

What I meant is that gearing via SMs is easier, mainly because more people do them than FPs.

[Shwarzchild]

What I meant is that gearing via SMs is easier, mainly because more people do them than FPs.

 

Remember that a lot of people were having a lot of problems with specifically the Underlurker so your assumption may not have been true. The patch has been out for 1 day so I don't think we can make a logical jump to say that well people are going to story modes more than flashpoints. Don't forget that you can only do those operations 1 time per week still. Gearing via operations probably is easier if you can get the pieces, however If you're pugging you still have to roll for gear against seven other people. In a flashpoint you can get mk-2 gear and roll only against 3 other people. Although, are you really gearing in flashpoints or are you "gearing"? I'd say gearing means BiS or Set Bonus. BiS can be obtained from mk-2 gear so yeah I guess you are gearing in a way from flashpoints even if it's way more specific.

 

You can also run flashpoints until you fall over from exhaustion. I would think that your assumption that more people do story mode operations over hardmode 60 flashpoints is probably incorrect...or at least it may have been. Simply because you can do them everyday as opposed to once a week for each operation. But, the caveat that I think you do have a ledge to stand on is that now the old operations give out ultimate coms. So you can run every old operation get some ultimate coms, and then yes skipping flashpoints is probably true.

[FerkWork]

What I meant is that gearing via SMs is easier, mainly because more people do them than FPs.

 

The problem with getting token pieces to drop in FPs is that there is no lockout so you could potentially have an unlimited farm of gear unlike Ops which have a lockout.

[Arunas]

The problem with getting token pieces to drop in FPs is that there is no lockout so you could potentially have an unlimited farm of gear unlike Ops which have a lockout.

 

Technically you can do SM ops on fresh alts (now that Ziost gives 190 which is superior to old 186) and transfer the set bonus tokens via legacy gear so its actually faster than that.

 

You can also run flashpoints until you fall over from exhaustion. I would think that your assumption that more people do story mode operations over hardmode 60 flashpoints is probably incorrect...or at least it may have been. Simply because you can do them everyday as opposed to once a week for each operation. But, the caveat that I think you do have a ledge to stand on is that now the old operations give out ultimate coms. So you can run every old operation get some ultimate coms, and then yes skipping flashpoints is probably true.

 

You can only spam FPs with guildies/friends. As a DPS you will spend more time waiting for a pop than actually doing them. In SM ops that now take something like 40-60min to complete you can have 3-6 items you can roll for, which is more efficient than doing any other form of PvE.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Arunas

[FerkWork]

Technically you can do SM ops on fresh alts (now that Ziost gives 190 which is superior to old 186) and transfer the set bonus tokens via legacy gear so its actually faster than that.

 

 

 

You can only spam FPs with guildies/friends. As a DPS you will spend more time waiting for a pop than actually doing them. In SM ops that now take something like 40-60min to complete you can have 3-6 items you can roll for, which is more efficient than doing any other form of PvE.

 

Except that is capped at 22 if you had all the alts on serve doing runs. Still not unlimited

Edited April 30, 2015 by FerkWork

[Overmind]

Is it me or HP on all HM FPs mobs has doubled+ ?

[Declan_Vee]

Haven't checked honestly. Is it just the trash, or the boss fights as well?

[ChroniKill]

I tried HM tos and ravagers last night.

 

Sword Squadron is now very easy. The damage appeared lower and the removal of all the smoke made life so much easier than previously in terms of people not standing in circles.

 

Bulo was laughably easy. The damage coming out has dropped drastically - volley ticks for 13 rather than 20k and barrel throw appears to be much less painful.

 

Torque is more problematic. The new fire appears to be more difficult to avoid as the edges aren't quite as well defined. We also appeared to have a couple of instances of invisible fire which were awkward.

[FerkWork]

I tried HM tos and ravagers last night.

 

Sword Squadron is now very easy. The damage appeared lower and the removal of all the smoke made life so much easier than previously in terms of people not standing in circles.

 

Bulo was laughably easy. The damage coming out has dropped drastically - volley ticks for 13 rather than 20k and barrel throw appears to be much less painful.

 

Torque is more problematic. The new fire appears to be more difficult to avoid as the edges aren't quite as well defined. We also appeared to have a couple of instances of invisible fire which were awkward.

 

Sword Squadron I'm really glad they reduced the smoke, also improved my game performance as that smoke was causing some performance issues. Hope they fix Torque, I can't even see the fire anymore

 

Also, Revan has been quite Unstable since the last patch