Level synch = death of SWTOR

[Kaisernick]

think about it.

People have asked if they would get new content on old planets but if they did it without level synch then players on koriban could accidentally walk into a lvl 60 zone and get creamed.

 

now the possibility for old planets to have new content and story exists it also means that for things like the droid seeker quests that the number of players willing to help goes up.

 

its not a bad thing at all granted if handled wrong it could go **** up but you can say that about anything.

 

and what isn't the death of SWTOR, hell technically KOTFE is the death of SWTOR cause our factions get creamed.

[Icestar]

KOTFE is the death of SWTOR cause our factions get creamed.

 

It is the beginning of something interesting

[DalrisThane]

A lot of people have talked about being at level or being max level but I can see myself taking a level 50 character back to Hoth or Tatooine, just cause I like it and can level there just the same. I haven't seen too much talk about that idea.

 

I can't comment about what's coming but I can say about what I saw in Guild Wars 2 with their version of Level Synch. SWTOR might do the same.

 

Upside = You could pick the zone you liked, either because of Lore, Mob types, Skyboxes, NPCs or dynamic quests, and, you could advance to Max level and get "real" (as opposed to downsized) level appropriate gear never leaving that favourite zone of yours.

 

Downside = Some mechanics (usually 1 shot kills, "Simon Says" fights, etc...) were only in "real" Max level (80 for GW2) areas. So, say, if you did all your levelling in L1-15 zone and got to character L80 that way, then, one day, you went to a L80 area... you could die horribly, and in some cases, ruin the event for all.

 

Danger = In GW2, as per any game, somebody with a calculator found "THE" spot for low skill players (Queensdale Champ train) and "THE" spot for high skill players (Maguuma Wastes Chest farm). All other zones eventually got scarce.

 

MADE UP EXAMPLE = It'd be as if "THE" spot in SWTOR for poor skill players would Nar Shaddaa Heroics, and "THE" spot for high skill players would be Yavin Weeklies. And soon, other spots would have a scarcity of people. IF unchecked of course.

 

Granted, SWTOR devs have the hindsight of GW2. But they will have a lot more work cut out for them as they're going to have to "whack a mole" the risk vs reward pretty often; as opposed to "Who cares if Nar Shaddaa is out of whack RvR. People only spend 5 levels there."

 

As per my prior posts, I'm no fan of level synch. However, I do disagree with some people that it will be less dev work. I think it will be MORE work for the devs, as with each iteration, since everyone can go everywhere, THE spot to be will change. And if they don't change it, I'm sure you can guess what could happen.

 

Unless of course, they get the entire system balanced within a few patches.

 

We'll see in a couple of weeks.

 

I'll admit, my interest is low, so I've been only logging in to do Space missions (!) to murder Tier 1 ships with my Tier 7 gear for 20 minutes or so, while slowly gearing up my alt's ships. I figure those missions will be safe from the level synching for times I want to mindlessly slaughter foes with no risk of death while I daydream...

 

As for the PvE game (I don't PvP), that first week or two will be critical for me.

 

As Murtaugh says "I'm too old for this... stuff..." when it comes to new fangled games (not all applies to SWTOR) with their level synch, action RPG, 1 shot kills, simon says mechanics... I miss my Baldur's Gate era. Helm of immunity to ALL MIND CONTROL was my prized item. Wear and forget about an entire mechanic. I loved that.

 

/puts away the old man cane... for now...

Edited October 3, 2015 by DalrisThane

[Rafaman]

As I mentioned before, I think, the strange thing is that people are up in arms over something they, the obvious majority, rarely do. Lowbie planets aren't overrun with overleveld players. Lol. Most players don't go back to leveling worlds regularly because there is nothing to do there. This whole thing is being blown out of proportion by those against it but they don't frequent those areas either.

 

Stick to your guns BW. Don't let a vocal minority of players make you do something rash. There is no need to rework something up before launch. Launch with the changes. There will be a large influx of new players and there will be a few departures, but in general, the game will be in a great place population wise.

 

My guess is that things will eventually calm down, there will be a steady flow of players, there will be a few bitter souls, and this will be remembered as another classic forum dust up of little consequence.

 

This whole thing is really not that important at all.

[Elracor]

I like the way you point something out that is bleeding obvious

 

That wasn't the point. The point I was making is from what we have seen server load seems to affected more by number of players / number of combat actions rather than number of instances. As many instances as you like doesn't seem to be a problem for this game. If number of instances were a concern we wouldn't have seen a design of game that throws instances at us left right and centre, and oodles of private instances as well. Just imagine for a second all these players running around during 12x how many instances are being created every minute, and the server doesn't so much as blink, it's actually very impressive. Now of course a small private instance isn't the same as a planet instance (before you make that point) but I don't believe number of instances would be a problem.

 

It's not about what causes the most effect. It's about this suggestion adding more work on top of all the combat action etc. We saw with SoR that the servers already get really pressured when there's new content, adding more instances will only make that worse.

Even if the servers can handle it, it's still a mechanic that makes the game more complex (chances are many/most players don't even know the world Instances exist) for what is IMO very little gain.

[Faelandaea]

BW pls buff all planetary mobs by 20%

 

would like to not have my main target die before i can get a dot spread off.

 

/agree

[Kiesu]

Also this is the only Star Wars MMO, so it's not like there's completion for fans to play elsewhere.

 

The point I'm making is it's a bit of a laugh for Bioware to be like, "Yep, majority voted for Cathar" when the majority would most likely have a lot more experience with the species in all the other media, like the films all this is based on (and to a lesser extent the two Clone Wars). Cathar don't appear there once. Most of the others appear in spades.

 

So I mean, even Bioware's version of a "majority" is skewed as hell.

 

 

 

 

Except I also have said, repeatedly, that I didn't just ask my "circle of friends", I asked anyone on Fleet who'd talk about it. And I watched and "listened" (well read) when other people had conversations in general.

 

What I saw was a lot of unhappy people, and a handful of people saying it was good. And not Joe Schmoe harping on for an hour by himself either.

 

 

Whether majority or minority, it's still a boatload of people upset by it.

Oh look another upset player who just repeated the exactly same thing he said two pages back already...

This is what we mean when we talk about "noisy minority".

[Transairion]

As I mentioned before, I think, the strange thing is that people are up in arms over something they, the obvious majority, rarely do. Lowbie planets aren't overrun with overleveld players. Lol. Most players don't go back to leveling worlds regularly because there is nothing to do there. This whole thing is being blown out of proportion by those against it but they don't frequent those areas either.

 

That's entirely your opinion, since I spend more time on lowbie planets than I do doing dailies or sitting on Fleet bored out of my mind (ie paying to do nothing) waiting for queue pops. There's also hardly anyone in high level dailies like Section X either, since getting a group for that is almost impossible for me since there's never 4 people in the zone whenever I visit.

 

I'm not everyone, obviously, but it's nice to have the option to go solo when nobody wants to group anyway. If post-KOTFE everyone maxes Reputation and so on, which they will, the amount of people doing group content will once again plummet.

 

Just like how Seeker Droid and Shroud Heroics takes forever to get a group for right now.

 

 

Stick to your guns BW. Don't let a vocal minority of players make you do something rash. There is no need to rework something up before launch. Launch with the changes. There will be a large influx of new players and there will be a few departures, but in general, the game will be in a great place population wise.

 

My guess is that things will eventually calm down, there will be a steady flow of players, there will be a few bitter souls, and this will be remembered as another classic forum dust up of little consequence.

 

This whole thing is really not that important at all.

 

Oh believe me, they won't change anything, they rarely do. BW does what it wants, it doesn't really care what happens so long as they get the cash (obviously if something will prevent them from making CC sales, they'll do something about it).

 

I'd what amounts to outright killing most solo play that's possible right now a little more important than some things though. I don't want to be here in a few months if my day-to-day becomes spamming "LFG" on Fleet and waiting for queue pops because the next chapter is 29 days away.

 

 

Oh look another upset player who just repeated the exactly same thing he said two pages back already...

This is what we mean when we talk about "noisy minority".

 

Because if someone replies to me it makes more sense to actually, er, address what they said?

 

Also it seems like hardly anyone reads either (understandably) since the same questions and points keep getting made that have already been discussed, so it's an endless loop.

Edited October 3, 2015 by Transairion

[Kiesu]

Nothing wrong with soloing world bosses or heroics? Sometimes we're doing it for a weekly. There's that one that requires 3 world bosses to be killed.

You need to learn how to quote mate. This "belief" has been answered to about 100 times in this topic already. WBs were intended to be lowbie content, lowbies can no longer do it, as some lv 60 is always camping them for whatveer reason. WBs are dead for the majority of their spawn time. Believe it or not, lowbie raids were an actual thing at vanilla cap, havent been in years now because max-lvs decided its entertaining to solo these and now they're just dead all the time good luck trying to find a group anymore before they're dead again because some 60 has toon logged on wb spawn.

And dont tell me this doesnt happen. It does. All the time. When our guild do these for conq, they constantly complain the WB is already dead when sitting on their spawn with their 60. If you want to kill a WB now, get a group, like intended.

Edited October 3, 2015 by Kiesu

[Transairion]

Don't think so. Looks like they are favouring the H2 format over H4, so you shoul be able to do Heroics with your companion.

 

Also my suspicion is they will do things like a new reputation track to encourage people to go visit lower planets.

 

It was my understanding that the whole point of sending players back to do Heroics and so on is due to Alliance System, which requires KOTFE, which requires 60+. So you only really get 5 levels of exp for "relevant to Alliance" content, and the rest is just generic questing if you're lower. Upscaled rewards, sure, but it probably won't count for Alliance since you're not in KOTFE yet.

 

I'm more thinking post-finishing the Alliance tracks, once you're maxed everything out and are max level, your only real incentive to go back there will be for credits and Commendations/Data Crystals. It has the potential to get real dull while waiting for next KOTFE chapter to be released.

[Faelandaea]

You need to learn how to quote mate. This "belief" has been answered to about 100 times in this topic already. WBs were intended to be lowbie content, lowbies can no longer do it, as some lv 60 is always camping them for whatveer reason. WBs are dead for the majority of their spawn time. Believe it or not, lowbie raids were an actual thing at vanilla cap, havent been in years now because max-lvs decided its entertaining to solo these and now they're just dead all the time good luck trying to find a group anymore before they're dead again because some 60 has toon logged on wb spawn.

And dont tell me this doesnt happen. It does. All the time. When our guild do these for conq, they constantly complain the WB is already dead when sitting on their spawn with their 60. If you want to kill a WB now, get a group, like intended.

 

Exactly. But the griefer crowd won't listen. They want to have their fun. Who cares that there is someone who actually NEEDS the WB? They just want to troll. They don;t need the WB but they feel it somehow makes them look cooler if they pop it off as a smaller, lower level group is trying to coordinate on it.

 

To me that is one of the biggest reasons for a sync, but the nay sayers won;t hear it, crying "choice" when "choice" would do nothing but let the trolls come right back, which if I were a dev I'd create this sync just to prevent, with XP, grouping and everything else just being cool benefits to the whole thing.

Edited October 3, 2015 by Faelandaea

[Ratajack]

So, I left for a bit to get some popcorn, and missed most of the discussion.

 

Has anyone provided evidence that the community majority supports the opinion of the original poster?

 

Not that I have seen.

[Kiesu]

Also it seems like hardly anyone reads either (understandably) since the same questions and points keep getting made that have already been discussed, so it's an endless loop.

This is exactly what I was talking about. Same names repeating same arguments for 200 pages for various reasons. Nobody is going to ever read that thread either, yet they keep going.

[Zaltais_Xaal]

The title to this thread makes me mad. Who are you as the OP making a decision for me about level sync, as I'm quite happy with what changes are happening and this in particular. Last I checked it is only a minority who post on this forum so please, just please think before you write absolute dribble because you hate it. Just quit if you do not like the changes.

 

Always the same old rubbish on here and well, you wonder why Tait or Eric don't respond to your crap.

[Ratajack]

I never said I only asked my friends, I said I asked them as well as general chat and basically everyone and any who'd answer me. Anyone ingame who'd reply about it.

 

 

A guild of RPers isn't gonna answer the same as a guild of PvP, nor a guild of PvE's so I'm not sure what your point is.

 

 

Trying to convince me that 75% of Gen Chat on Fleet saying "I hate this change!" isn't fair data is kinda BS though. Given how many servers have been squashed into the Harbinger, I'd say it's about as a majority of opinions as one could get asking that chat.

 

I have not seen anywhere near 75% of the players complaining in general chat.

 

The same 10 people on fleet monopolizing general chat with their endless whining, ad nauseum, about level sync when there are over 300 people in fleet, spread between two instances does not constitute anything near a majority of players, let alone 75%.

[Max_Killjoy]

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. Max said:

 

"As long as they're not actively depriving others of enjoyment of the game, I don't care"

 

And by the very definition we all agree on, griefing would NOT fall under that definition (of max not caring) because griefing DOES deprive others of enjoyment. Max was talking about not caring about a situation where somebody is slightly gaming the system, but isn't depriving anybody of any fun. I think Max WOULD care if somebody was griefing. I certainly would.

 

A griefer IS depriving a player of their fun. I think we are all on the same page here but confusing the hell out of each other.

 

Exactly.

 

I'm not sure why both of them are acting like I wouldn't care about someone griefing -- I even explained that a griefer would be someone who IS actively depriving others of fun, and thus not "covered" by that clause.

 

I have no patience and no tolerance for griefers. They're a problem now, and they'll continue to be a problem with mandatory level-syncing, and they would continue to be a problem with optional level-syncing. Only direct action by Bioware in the game to actively seek out and punish griefers would have any affect. Passive measures and system changes will either do nothing, or just cause the griefers to change methods.

[Ratajack]

True, but usually when a happy customer sees an unhappy customer blasting something or other about something they consider good, usually they come to their defense.

 

If there's 100 happy people and 10 unhappy people, why are 99 of the happy ones mute on this change? I find way more people ingame talking about it being bad, with only every so often someone coming up and saying they like it.

 

Surely that suggests something.

 

How often do you see a happy person coming to the "defense" of what they see as a good thing, only to be ridiculed and condemned for being a "fanboi", by the irrational "unhappy" person?

[Max_Killjoy]

I have basically stayed out of this debate but some of the people you are saying are stubborn may have very good reasons right now not to support you in this.

 

I have since launch tried to support people in options for different playstyles, pvp, operations, etc, but when this expansion was launch I was one of the ones that requested if BW could give an option to those of us that wanted to be able to group with our boyfriends, friends, spouses, etc, a way that we could do the missions once and allow us to let the mission count no matter what the outcome was for us.

 

When this was requested we were told get over it, deal with, bioware doesn't have the time or resources to do that for people like you.

 

We didn't keep arguing but anytime someone would bring it up we were constantly told that.

 

People here keep saying don't force us to play your way but that is essentially what people told us when we asked for an option to group up and do the missions once, not twice.

 

So some of us are not being stubborn. We have just been on the receiving end.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

So... because you were denied the choice then, you find it better to deny everyone the choice now, instead of pushing for everyone to get the one thing you wanted all along?

 

Really?

[Rafaman]

Oh believe me, they won't change anything, they rarely do. BW does what it wants, it doesn't really care what happens so long as they get the cash (obviously if something will prevent them from making CC sales, they'll do something about it).

 

Hmm.. no. I think you are wrong there. In fact, I think they tend to over react if anything. I would argue that almost everything they have done since the initial launch of any note has been in response to players wants and needs. Here is a small list off the top of my head.

 

-Slot Machine: They would have done nothing there if not for the outcry that the rewards were way to easy by a vocal minority.

-Group finder

-Strongholds: This was not the direction they were headed initially.

-GSF: Super Secret Space Program. Player driven at the start.

-Gree Bolster: Lowbies could run Gree until complaints arose due to massive leveling during the event.

-Groupfinder Bolster: Player complaints of no gear check in Group Finder.

-Nerfs of various toons and classes. Classic case and point.

-Chest no longer dropping creds. Complaints of gold farmer farming

-QT terminals for dailies areas

-Nerf of various flashpoints and Ops and the removal fo tier 2 flahspoints.

-Double XP followed by 12xp.

-Sprint at level 10.

-No charge for training.

-Repair cost decreased

-Mod removal costs decreased.

-Sorting features on GTN.

-etc. etc.

 

I guess I could go on and on, but no, the reality is that they are slow but bend over backwards to appease players and sometimes the vocal minority gets there way to the detriment of the game overall. The slot machine is a perfect example of this.

 

My fear is that they will cave here and end up spending cycles maybe even delaying the launch over something that really is insignificant in comparison to everything else that xpac is delivering. BW, stay the course and launch on time if you can. If a correction is needed later, then by all means. But don't give in now.

[Max_Killjoy]

This seems to be the issue I see people have if they object to the mandatory down level. It's anecdotal, yes, just people whom I know. But this same thing was cited as the reason for their dislike.

 

A day after the stream and announcement, 5 players in the guild I am in quit the game. It's a casual guild, a bunch of friends. Today 2 more followed. Most of the players talk on skype, and I finally got to ask them what they disliked so much.

 

This was it. They like to over level things a bit, which will not be possible anymore. They just don't want to deal with it. I play mostly healers, I rolled all the healers and told them, I'll come along for anything and heal if they'd like.

 

They wouldn't mind it but it was the principle that turned them off. They'd prefer to over level a bit and just do it. It's how they like to play, and they have no interest otherwise. They completely lost interest.

 

3 have characters in another game and went back to that game exclusively now. 2 others followed immediately. Now the other 2, today, say they rolled characters there as well.

 

Anyway, what you said caught my attention. And going by the dev post, you won't be roughly 2 levels above the planet. You'll be at max level for that planet.

 

I'm OK with the downscaling, but clearly others are not.

 

The down leveling isn't chasing me away, but as word spreads ( most people do not follow the forums and dev posts and streams etc), I am seeing people leave. Their subs are still active for now I assume, but they have indeed left. I know their leaving is supposed to be good for the game, but I disagree.

 

Incidentally they've asked me to make a healer with them in the game; seems few want to roll a healer in games. I'll give it a shot. Not Star Wars, for which I have real soft spot, but maybe I can have fun there too. Been playing swtor exclusively for a long time now so it might be nice for a change.

 

Sounds like the reality out there in the actual player base doesn't match the "you're not actually leaving, you're just saying that, you'll still be here in 6 months" troll-posts we see here over and over.

[DarthDetonate]

The Why: Well, its the absolute cheapest way to make reusable content out of pre-existing assets.

 

No new Ops, No new flash points. Simply level them to 50-65 and utilize a bolster effect to try to get a larger pool of players available to play with one another. Basically if you can think of a way to reuse something, do it.

 

People only like story right? I mean, that's what I hear. and with the 12x Exp, everyone has oodles of alts so...everyone should be fine. This is, as I've been informed, an RPG not, in fact, an MMORPG so the mechanisms and constructs that make an MMO an MMO, wont apply to SWTOR.

 

 

As far as how Level Sync will feel?... Well ask Guild Wars 2. Most common answer of their exit poll was " I just don't feel powerful.I leveled past areas then im right back at the same level."

 

Is that the future? We'll see.

Edited October 3, 2015 by DarthDetonate

[Kiesu]

I see someone ignored BWs message to quit making new threads on the matter and use the existing ones. Theres literally a ton on the front page right now.

[DarthDetonate]

I see someone ignored BWs message to quit making new threads on the matter and use the existing ones. Theres literally a ton on the front page right now.

 

Ehh I used to think Bioware and I had a healthy relationship however they nor I have actually listened to each other since closed beta.

[Kiesu]

Ehh I used to think Bioware and I had a healthy relationship however they nor I have actually listened to each other since closed beta.

Seems that also applies between you and the forum user-base. Rather than joining in the conversation, ignore it, start a new one. Reached social rank I, graz

[Transcendent]

Seems that also applies between you and the forum user-base. Rather than joining in the conversation, ignore it, start a new one. Reached social rank I, graz

 

Perhaps he would prefer to have his view heard over the cacophony of other voices arguing back and forth about how they view level sync?

 

Paying customer and all that, so perfectly entitled to do so, with or without your blessing.