Gaspodia Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 So this is the problem, Rescaled ops is not impressing the raiders, nor is it liked by casual players. My guild likes the rescaled ops. We are a mix of progression raiders and casuals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 Why not what? And be careful with words like "many people". What is many. You seem to imply knowledge about majorities of players but all you and I have are small personal experiences. I cannot know how many people do or do not do something. Neither can you. Clearly BW didn't want some of these items to be too easy to get. Perhaps there could've been different solutions but they shut it down. I guess they have their reasons, though I also would've opted for another solution. There are many groups by then. I didn't say it was solving the issue, in fact I specifically stated they were separate issues. What it has done is create some benefits for newer players, but again that doesn't solve the other issues. But as I stated earlier the problem lies more in the point that apparently operations had less and less visitors, even when they were new. I believe it was Eric Musco who stated here, after SoR was out half a year that not even 8% of players had set foot in ToS at all. I think that aside from content getting stale, the problem is that operations have less appeal to the player base than perhaps you might think. And considering that it probably takes a fair amount of resources to build such an operation the problem might simply lie in the issue that there are not enough players for operations, even when there are new ones. Why? Because it's not appealing to either side. Raiders want new ops, they don't want to run the old ones again. Other players are also bored with these very very old ops. Nor do they want to spend much effort on these old stuff just for some gears. Why do they need these gears when there is no new ops to use them? See the problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsillah Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Raiders want new ops, they don't want to run the old ones again. Whoever these raiders are, they are not playing this game. That's what I've been telling you. When ToS was new, after 6 months not even 8% set foot inside of it. Not even SM. Let that sink in and tell me again that raiders want new ops...of course they do, but apparently there's not that many of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeNaCe-NZ Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I don't see a lot of people complaining anymore about a lack of new ops actually. I think the raiders largely got the message and left. We aren't getting new ops. If you didn't get the message, fair enough, now you have. This is probably true, either leave or stop complaining seems to be the gist of it and I guess we won't really know how many did leave as a result and if it was offset by subscribers coming back or starting fresh ( and if they turned out to be as long term as what they would have lost ). At the moment we also have no idea for what the future beyond KoTFE is ... could be more of the episodic content, could be something new, could be elder game pve focus, could be maintenance mode, could be all sorts of things. The April and July investor call I feel are going to be about the most telling information for the health of the game ( beyond torstatus which is far from decent conclusive data ) that we're likely to get prior to any possible future announcements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 Whoever these raiders are, they are not playing this game. That's what I've been telling you. When ToS was new, after 6 months not even 8% set foot inside of it. Not even SM. Let that sink in and tell me again that raiders want new ops...of course they do, but apparently there's not that many of them. So rescaling these ops is even more pointless if its point is to "keep challenge to the raiders". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dracmor Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 The problem in swtor is not so much lack of interest in raiding as it is lack of interest in doing the exact same half a dozen raids over and over and over for almost 2 years. So my crazy new op idea: There are a ton of flashpoints in this game which are not bad but probably don't get overly played because they don't drop "relevant" gear. But the best part of these flashpoints is that they only require 1 tank and 1 healer. So why not scale them up? Now, on JC, even with raiders leaving and the slow death of raiding overall due to no new ops, I've not seen much problem recruiting healers to run, it is usually the tanks that are hard to find. One way to fix this would be to make tanking more enjoyable/easier; since I do not tank I will let others give ideas on how to do this (although I am sure there are plenty of other threads that address this). The other idea would be to have raids that only require one tank. In some ways, this is already being done, as some current OPs can be solo tanked and the other "tank" position is actually filled with a dps with a taunt. Bioware could help this by allowing the op group finder to only require one tank to queue. So now back to the flashpoints... imagine if there was "flex" raiding for these. Scale it to 5 man: 1 tank, 1 heal, 3 dps. Or fully scale them to 8 man: 1 tank, 2 healers, 5 dps. It would only require scaling the flashpoints to op-type standards and raising the rewards for them. Granted, it's recycled content, but it would still be "new" raids for a lot of players so should generate more interest in raiding overall. Especially with a one tank only requirement. And it would greatly increase the variety of raids in the game, which would also help. At least until Bioware decides to create and release one or two new "real" raids... Just my two cents... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 The problem in swtor is not so much lack of interest in raiding as it is lack of interest in doing the exact same half a dozen raids over and over and over for almost 2 years. So my crazy new op idea: There are a ton of flashpoints in this game which are not bad but probably don't get overly played because they don't drop "relevant" gear. But the best part of these flashpoints is that they only require 1 tank and 1 healer. So why not scale them up? Now, on JC, even with raiders leaving and the slow death of raiding overall due to no new ops, I've not seen much problem recruiting healers to run, it is usually the tanks that are hard to find. One way to fix this would be to make tanking more enjoyable/easier; since I do not tank I will let others give ideas on how to do this (although I am sure there are plenty of other threads that address this). The other idea would be to have raids that only require one tank. In some ways, this is already being done, as some current OPs can be solo tanked and the other "tank" position is actually filled with a dps with a taunt. Bioware could help this by allowing the op group finder to only require one tank to queue. So now back to the flashpoints... imagine if there was "flex" raiding for these. Scale it to 5 man: 1 tank, 1 heal, 3 dps. Or fully scale them to 8 man: 1 tank, 2 healers, 5 dps. It would only require scaling the flashpoints to op-type standards and raising the rewards for them. Granted, it's recycled content, but it would still be "new" raids for a lot of players so should generate more interest in raiding overall. Especially with a one tank only requirement. And it would greatly increase the variety of raids in the game, which would also help. At least until Bioware decides to create and release one or two new "real" raids... Just my two cents... This is what I've been saying in the first few pages. And sometimes it's slow to find healers, even on Harbinger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 This is probably true, either leave or stop complaining seems to be the gist of it and I guess we won't really know how many did leave as a result and if it was offset by subscribers coming back or starting fresh ( and if they turned out to be as long term as what they would have lost ). At the moment we also have no idea for what the future beyond KoTFE is ... could be more of the episodic content, could be something new, could be elder game pve focus, could be maintenance mode, could be all sorts of things. The April and July investor call I feel are going to be about the most telling information for the health of the game ( beyond torstatus which is far from decent conclusive data ) that we're likely to get prior to any possible future announcements. I think if they want to keep one certain group of people, they should do what they want. Story people mostly prefer to relax and enjoy the old ops and get what they couldn't get long ago rather than spend these effort, waiting for specific roles and endure the dc/drama on the ops that they have either done many times or weren't that interested at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsillah Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 So rescaling these ops is even more pointless if its point is to "keep challenge to the raiders". But clearly that isn't the point. I believe the point is to get more of the newer players interested in raiding. That's why a lot of SM ops were made easier and all got scaling so people with crap gear could participate. The traditional operation endgame with really challenging bosses is left with a few boss fights of the more recent ops, but traditional progression raiding as such is dead. So what they need to do is replace it with content that people do like to repeat. Story is one thing, they tried some stuff with Star Fortress and Alliances and I think they got some success with that. Personally I like to see new ops but I am not holding my breath. It may yet happen it may not, but it probably would be wise if they made operations something different than just traditional boss fights with tons of mechanics that people need to memorise...the newer players just can't be arsed it seems but they didn't want to make the ops a complete roflstomp either because that will lose its charm quite quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 But clearly that isn't the point. I believe the point is to get more of the newer players interested in raiding. That's why a lot of SM ops were made easier and all got scaling so people with crap gear could participate. The traditional operation endgame with really challenging bosses is left with a few boss fights of the more recent ops, but traditional progression raiding as such is dead. So what they need to do is replace it with content that people do like to repeat. Story is one thing, they tried some stuff with Star Fortress and Alliances and I think they got some success with that. Personally I like to see new ops but I am not holding my breath. It may yet happen it may not, but it probably would be wise if they made operations something different than just traditional boss fights with tons of mechanics that people need to memorise...the newer players just can't be arsed it seems but they didn't want to make the ops a complete roflstomp either because that will lose its charm quite quickly. But the problem is quite simple: What kind of new players would come to SWTOR KOTFE? Mostly for the story, not raid, if they aren't gonna release new ops, these players won't come or stay for long since there are more games with better raid/new content. What they are focusing is the story, shouldn't they change the ops to the way these people like? If they want to keep the charm, they have to release new content, there is no other way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsillah Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 But the problem is quite simple: What kind of new players would come to SWTOR KOTFE? Mostly for the story, not raid, if they aren't gonna release new ops, these players won't come or stay for long since there are more games with better raid/new content. What they are focusing is the story, shouldn't they change the ops to the way these people like? If they want to keep the charm, they have to release new content, there is no other way. You seem to live in a small world. I admit it surprised me as well initially but the truth is that apparently the majority of players here don't crave this endgame and are perfectly happy messing about in this game with all the other things that are there to do. And in fact they are doing exactly what you say, but not in the form of ops. The Alliance stuff, Star Fortress were new things. The Eternal Championship is another that's coming. Improvements for Strongholds, new pvp maps. There is new stuff coming for players, just not operations. And hey they might still drop in an ops here and there but I think they are focusing on other types of activities because apparently that's what most players here want. Who am I to argue with that? I liked doing Operations and still do but in the end, if there are alternatives I'd be happy too. Let them add more scavenger hunts, jumping puzzles whatever. Maybe a new type of small ops which focuses on teamplay and tasks within them rather than just boss fights. Whatever it takes, but in the end, the traditional endgame and endless gear treadmill does get boring, even with new ops and higher levels of gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khevar Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Whew! This thread moved fast -- sorry I didn't see your reply until several pages have gone by. What it should have accomplished and what it did do aren't the same thing, after all. Sure, we can play the anecdotal evidence game. My experience is that during the <2.0 cycle, the gradient worked decently. The players I dealt with (both in guild and in pugs) were, for the most part, running HM FPs before operations, and SM ops before HM ops. Heck, during this time it wasn't uncommon to see people playing HM FPs carefully with marking targets, CC, worried about pats, etc. Failing to do so would could easily result in a wipe. It wasn't until later in the 1.x cycle, when high-end gear was being sold on the GTN for peanuts (remember molecs coming from RE on PvP gear?) that a typical pug would happily ignore mechanics and zerg their way through. So yes, I believe that what it should have accomplished and what it did do were closely enough related to consider the approach (or something like it). Frankly, I would have been interested in seeing a return of the "Tier 1" vs "Tier 2" flashpoints and operations. Few people have troubles running BoI / FE in the group finder, for example. But many have troubles with Blood Hunt. Similarly EV/KP vs EC. Etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 You seem to live in a small world. I admit it surprised me as well initially but the truth is that apparently the majority of players here don't crave this endgame and are perfectly happy messing about in this game with all the other things that are there to do. And in fact they are doing exactly what you say, but not in the form of ops. The Alliance stuff, Star Fortress were new things. The Eternal Championship is another that's coming. Improvements for Strongholds, new pvp maps. There is new stuff coming for players, just not operations. And hey they might still drop in an ops here and there but I think they are focusing on other types of activities because apparently that's what most players here want. Who am I to argue with that? I liked doing Operations and still do but in the end, if there are alternatives I'd be happy too. Let them add more scavenger hunts, jumping puzzles whatever. Maybe a new type of small ops which focuses on teamplay and tasks within them rather than just boss fights. Whatever it takes, but in the end, the traditional endgame and endless gear treadmill does get boring, even with new ops and higher levels of gear. I don't do much ops either after KotFE either. I just think it could go to the better way for people to enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeNaCe-NZ Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 But the problem is quite simple: What kind of new players would come to SWTOR KOTFE? Mostly for the story, not raid, if they aren't gonna release new ops, these players won't come or stay for long since there are more games with better raid/new content. What they are focusing is the story, shouldn't they change the ops to the way these people like? If they want to keep the charm, they have to release new content, there is no other way. Which is why I'm quite worried in a lack of a plan 'B'. In that I personally have found the story really lacking and the episodic approach a failure to boost or even keep my interest. Now there ARE people who have the complete opposite view but there are people who share my view or view it even worse. The problem with a one trick pony like KoTFE is if the people who are in favour of it don't outweigh those who are against it then you've got a big problem as your revenue starts to drop off. It's worth noting that many of those who really don't like this model or story and have left the game as a result aren't here anymore to voice such an opinion due to the sub restriction on posting ... this forum will never give us a true indication of popularity and neither will sites like reddit which are far more negatively geared. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robertthebard Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 But there are a lot of people who wanted to farm it easily, you can see them everywhere in SoR. Tell me, if such way is good, why is people keep complaining, especially for new ops still? Because they have run it so many times that it's old news, and they don't need it "adjusted" to suit their casual playing style. In fact, most of them would probably be insulted to be referenced in the same sentence with "casual", or the very idea that it needs to be toned down for them to complete it/enjoy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 Because they have run it so many times that it's old news, and they don't need it "adjusted" to suit their casual playing style. In fact, most of them would probably be insulted to be referenced in the same sentence with "casual", or the very idea that it needs to be toned down for them to complete it/enjoy it. So this had pleased neither side. Release new ops for raiders. Leave the old ones for pugs' fun How hard is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeNaCe-NZ Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 So this had pleased neither side. Release new ops for raiders. Leave the old ones for pugs' fun How hard is it? Very hard apparently otherwise we would see parallel development ... seems to not be the case though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robertthebard Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 So this had pleased neither side. Release new ops for raiders. Leave the old ones for pugs' fun How hard is it? Not at all, all they have to do is what they're doing right now, absolutely nothing to existing content. Thanks for finally coming to that realization all on your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 15, 2016 Author Share Posted March 15, 2016 Not at all, all they have to do is what they're doing right now, absolutely nothing to existing content. Thanks for finally coming to that realization all on your own. But they rescaled the old ops in the release of KotFE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robertthebard Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 But they rescaled the old ops in the release of KotFE. Which means they don't need to change a thing, since it's already changed. Leave it alone and let people run it or not as they see fit. The fact that you don't want to form a group, or put up with "group politics", aka drama doesn't mean they need to do anything. You need to find a static group to run this content in, which is one of the primary purposes of guilds, to find some like minded people and do things together. Taking this one step, building a static group, will change your entire experience, all w/out anyone having to "dumb down" the content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 15, 2016 Author Share Posted March 15, 2016 (edited) Which means they don't need to change a thing, since it's already changed. Leave it alone and let people run it or not as they see fit. The fact that you don't want to form a group, or put up with "group politics", aka drama doesn't mean they need to do anything. You need to find a static group to run this content in, which is one of the primary purposes of guilds, to find some like minded people and do things together. Taking this one step, building a static group, will change your entire experience, all w/out anyone having to "dumb down" the content. No, it's not a good change and I gave out my reason. It's not I don't want to find a group, it's that such OLD ops isn't fun to run anymore, even for raiders. It's like asking others to form a 40 men group and follow all the mech for MC in WotLK. Edited March 15, 2016 by Slowpokeking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeTone Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 (edited) I personally still enjoy running the old ops but my raiding guild has lost more than half it's members over the past couple of months and we don't even have a full 8-man team at the moment. Raid nights have been cancelled for the past few weeks. I'll still be subscribed but mostly doing story content and weeklies. I think raiding is mostly dead in this game. Edited March 15, 2016 by LeeTone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabigool Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 So excuse me if I take this idea that people were better under the old system with a grain of salt. Honestly, not really even arguable. Can't really take you too seriously if you want to debate this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TX_Angel Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 So this had pleased neither side. Release new ops for raiders. Leave the old ones for pugs' fun How hard is it? Ops are expensive to develop, I suspect the ROI for them is rather poor when looked at directly, which is why we have gotten only 2 new ops in years. Oct 2013 is the last time before Rav/ToS came out that we got new ops, and that would be DF/DP. It is now March 2016, or 2.5 years later. Rav/ToS came out in 2014, so we went all of 2015 without a new operation, and it looks like we may well go all of 2016 without one too. It is clearly not important to Bioware to make new ops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowpokeking Posted March 15, 2016 Author Share Posted March 15, 2016 Ops are expensive to develop, I suspect the ROI for them is rather poor when looked at directly, which is why we have gotten only 2 new ops in years. Oct 2013 is the last time before Rav/ToS came out that we got new ops, and that would be DF/DP. It is now March 2016, or 2.5 years later. Rav/ToS came out in 2014, so we went all of 2015 without a new operation, and it looks like we may well go all of 2016 without one too. It is clearly not important to Bioware to make new ops. I understand, so if their main focus is not raid, then they should left it there rather than rescale it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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