Lets make our voices heard - Boss fights and level sync

[PlasmaJohn]

Should have dismissed your companion or put it on passive - that would have certainly helped. As for the fight itself, it's the end of the story, and while it could be made more difficult, it's just obviously meant to tell the story, not challenge you as a player.

 

Dismissing the companion wouldn't have any effect. He was down when I was roughly halfway through my opener. It simply did not fit the narrative at all.

 

Maybe switching to /punch would have been more sporting?

[IanArgent]

I like it the way it is.

 

The "challenging" content shouldn't be the story...and it isn't. Do HM FPs, PvP, or Ops for your "challenge"...leave the story as it is. If you really want the story to be more difficult, set your companion to passive.

 

A point of solid agreement between you and me.

 

I have a feeling the main problem with a lot of bosses, not just synced ones, is the companions being too insanely strong.

 

I am redoing an agent for the DvL event, as an operative. I havn't done this story in, oh, 2 years or so.

 

I just fought Jadus and I decimated him. I absolutely wrecked his face. Everytime he stepped down off his platform, he just got MELTED in a second and a half. Jadus used to be HARD, not just challenging, HARD. You saw people asking for help on DK, fleet, alderan, for help to fight Jadus. I mean that guy whooped my butt repeatedly!!

 

Now vector slapped him in his face and he died.

 

Nobody should have to group up to complete their solo stories.

 

__________________________________________________

 

 

Now, I happen to think that the specific cases of the end-story bosses whose fights are set on low-cap planets are an unfortunate side effect of Planetary Level Sync.But, the fights were only "hard" when the level cap was 50. I did the JC, JK, and Trooper storylines pre-4.0, but at either 55 or 60 depending on when I did them, and I steamrolled those fights. Even the JK one where I had to use the "gift gear" for T7 because I hadn't kept his gear up to date (and it was much worse than the comp gear I could have crafted). Once the level cap was 60, and those fights were 50, they were even less challenging than they are today because the opponents literally cannot touch you if you're more than 7 (or so) levels higher than they are. (You might still be able to see this in action on the starter worlds where the level cap is just north of 10 and you can fight L1 and L2 enemies).

 

While I can think of a couple ways to work around this issue, why bother? The character story no longer ends at Chapter 3 Class Story; that's basically the first part of the "Series" now for a character, their "origin story." And the difference between the difficulty of the DK-set fights and the Corellia-set fights isn't THAT big a deal, they're both over pretty quickly. I didn't notice a whole lot of difference between the last "end-story" Trooper fight I did vs the one for my Inquisitor, other than one number was 50 for the trooper and one was in the teens (I forget offhand what the cap for DK is). They were both over relatively rapidly, with little fuss.

 

Like TUXs said, if I want a challenge, I'll go do group content, or TEC or an HSF. Used to do Aurora Cannon until I realized I wasn't having "fun" playing with the end boss (though the big mobs in the corridors are still a useful way to refresh me on "how to play my character" if I've stepped away from that char for too long.

 

The game has changed what various parts of it are used for in post-4.0, that's all.

[PlasmaJohn]

While I can think of a couple ways to work around this issue, why bother? The character story no longer ends at Chapter 3 Class Story; that's basically the first part of the "Series" now for a character, their "origin story."

 

Why bother? It's part of the story. The level-sync so completely breaks that fight an insult contest would have been a better use of my time. And so much more satisfying. *Darth Tubby is so enraged by your taunts he has a heart-attack. [Apply CPR (LS)] [insult his Hello Cathar underoos (DS)], [ignore him].*

 

While I don't mind a challenge I don't go out of my way to find one. I thoroughly enjoyed the Solo FP's I ran, yes even with the god bot. The fight didn't need to be soul-crushingly hard just something worthy of the neutered gold-silvers we have today.

 

Heck there were several potential allies picked up along the way. Any of those could have fulfilled the god-bot role if necessary.

[Tsetso]

Dismissing the companion wouldn't have any effect. He was down when I was roughly halfway through my opener. It simply did not fit the narrative at all.

 

Maybe switching to /punch would have been more sporting?

 

Don't know about Barras but i regularly do it on Rishi for the pirate life achievements. All my alts are normally naked with no mainhand or offhand so most of the time i'm trolling the pirates with punches while the companion kills them

Edited September 8, 2016 by Tsetso

[LyraineAlei]

Should have dismissed your companion or put it on passive - that would have certainly helped. As for the fight itself, it's the end of the story, and while it could be made more difficult, it's just obviously meant to tell the story, not challenge you as a player.

 

I had my companion on passive while fighting Nomen Karr. That used to be a pretty good fight for a level 28-32 Warrior even with a companion healing you - I used to need a medpack in it (I was a bad, I know, but still!) ad heal up after each round. Passive comp and using just the basic attack (Slash, I think?), three hits each round, didn't bother healing myself up. Sure, I was a level 65 sync'd down to 12, but still. And then Vengean was dead after being merely poked.

 

Macrobinoc and Seeker droid missions scale on group size for difficulty, and I keep thinking that somewhere there was a mission or something that scaled based on player/group level as well. If there were a way for the instanced fights to scale to (lowest group member or) player level, maybe that would work better?

 

Those were instanced fights,

[TUXs]

I had my companion on passive while fighting Nomen Karr. That used to be a pretty good fight for a level 28-32 Warrior even with a companion healing you - I used to need a medpack in it (I was a bad, I know, but still!) ad heal up after each round. Passive comp and using just the basic attack (Slash, I think?), three hits each round, didn't bother healing myself up. Sure, I was a level 65 sync'd down to 12, but still. And then Vengean was dead after being merely poked.

 

Macrobinoc and Seeker droid missions scale on group size for difficulty, and I keep thinking that somewhere there was a mission or something that scaled based on player/group level as well. If there were a way for the instanced fights to scale to (lowest group member or) player level, maybe that would work better?

 

Those were instanced fights,

Yeah...I think this has a lot more to do with how level sync may have changed that fight. The starting planets are God awful easy, and this fight may have been overlooked by the Devs...most take place elsewhere where level sync doesn't impact them nearly as much as this fight does.

[LyraineAlei]

Yeah...I think this has a lot more to do with how level sync may have changed that fight. The starting planets are God awful easy, and this fight may have been overlooked by the Devs...most take place elsewhere where level sync doesn't impact them nearly as much as this fight does.

 

Corellia/Immediately after Corellia (Everyone except the Sith classes) ones are better. Not quite as one-two-three-dead for even a 65. Might take half a rotation or a whole rotation, maybe. With or without a companion.

[Gokkus]

I wholeheartedly agree with this thread, and it should stay up here till it is acknowledged by the powers that be!

[IanArgent]

Corellia/Immediately after Corellia (Everyone except the Sith classes) ones are better. Not quite as one-two-three-dead for even a 65. Might take half a rotation or a whole rotation, maybe. With or without a companion.

 

I just did the Trooper's story again, and just before that I had done the S.Inq story, both post 4.0. Neither was anything approaching difficult. The main difference was that the "end boss" of the Trooper's fight had a big bag of hit points, so it took a little longer. Tedium != difficulty.

 

In the abstract, sure, it'd be nice to make the changes necessary to bring the DK "end-story" fights up to a level sync of 50. What new feature gets cut to do that, though? Changes like that aren't "free," even if they did a really quick and dirty change. For a fight that happens once per character, and only grognards care that it was once harder? And even if they did make the change, it still won't be anything like difficulty, just longer. Let it rest, folks. It's not worth it.

[josephxp]

The thing is it would still be pointless.

 

Hypothetically lets say Baras was a level 50 boss and level sync was bumped to level 50.

 

You are now level 50 fighting a level 50 and its highly likely you will be at a base of level 65 where its so easy to level up.

 

Now the boss would be a bit harder but you have all of your utilities and abilities and they would still be pushovers and easy to kill. Just like with the emperor on the JK storyline, you are both 50, hes a pushover because you have all of your abilities at max.

 

So it would be pointless in the end.

[Ralei]

The thing is it would still be pointless.

 

Hypothetically lets say Baras was a level 50 boss and level sync was bumped to level 50.

 

You are now level 50 fighting a level 50 and its highly likely you will be at a base of level 65 where its so easy to level up.

 

Now the boss would be a bit harder but you have all of your utilities and abilities and they would still be pushovers and easy to kill. Just like with the emperor on the JK storyline, you are both 50, hes a pushover because you have all of your abilities at max.

 

So it would be pointless in the end.

 

Totally agree. 99% of those "boss fights" were tank and spank to begin with. I don't remember dying to any of them that first year. The hardest mechanics were just like, interrupts or basic stuff. I mean, level based mmo's are just number games - you're x level against x level - the outcome is always going to be the same because the numbers are based on level. What is the point of it taking longer to kill something that you know you're going to beat anyway? Boring!

 

If any improvements are made, it should be to the actual mechanics of the fight. Add something interesting. Like, make Baras use his impressive set of lungs to burst your eardrums unless you time throwing a hotdog in his mouth right. Aiming and everything. Or, right before you pull out your lightsaber, he tempts you with a delicious cookie and you play a text based mind game with him.

[LyraineAlei]

The thing is it would still be pointless.

 

Hypothetically lets say Baras was a level 50 boss and level sync was bumped to level 50.

 

You are now level 50 fighting a level 50 and its highly likely you will be at a base of level 65 where its so easy to level up.

 

Now the boss would be a bit harder but you have all of your utilities and abilities and they would still be pushovers and easy to kill. Just like with the emperor on the JK storyline, you are both 50, hes a pushover because you have all of your abilities at max.

 

So it would be pointless in the end.

 

It would feel more rewarding if they took longer that three strikes to kill, to me at least. The whole story line, these bosses are set up to be big bad***es, the strongest of all, but when they're sync'd down to 12 with the player, they don't seem to even be level 50's synced down to 12.

[LordArtemis]

....maybe a 5 level debuff for the player would help, either as a consumable or a setting?

[Nempo]

You can't seriously be suggesting the game is easier now than it was...are you? Since level sync, everything can be 'challenging'. Prior to 4.0, you could out level a boss by 40+ levels, making them impossibly easy. You literally could NOT die prior to 4.0...because they couldn't even touch you. I've one shot bosses, including world bosses before level sync.

 

The story portion of this game has absolutely NEVER been challenging. If you found that it was...wow lol.

 

In Beta it was challenging. Voss was so bad most of the tester base couldn't solo ANYTHING there. The complaining was legion, and the only people who could reasonably solo Voss and Corellia were tanks with healer companions...and it took time to do it that way lol. Was back when you actually had to worry about hard hitting attacks and the like...stunning, CCing, and interupting was extremely important.

 

Going from beta to the release game was enough to cry over.

[LordArtemis]

In a perfect world, I would have designed the game entirely for a solo player and balance it that way. That way, with a level sync system, the game would present a challenge to the player at ALL times on ALL planets.

 

At the same time, if you pulled out your companion, you could play the game MUCH easier, much like playing with another player.

 

Right now players assume the game should be balanced around companion play, and companion play should be compulsory. I disagree with this viewpoint. Right now the game is far too challenging for solo play, and not easy enough for companion play IMO (only slightly so in both directions).

 

That is why I support the idea to expand the level sync range but add some kind of level debuff to either the settings or as a consumable...which would provide a WIDE range of difficulty options for players.

 

Single player, debuff - Nightmare mode

Single player - Normal mode

Single player, Companion - Easy mode

 

This is assuming the expansion of the upper sync limit by two levels is set across the game. Want to play with a companion and still have normal mode? Use the debuff.

Edited September 9, 2016 by LordArtemis

[IanArgent]

In a perfect world, I would have designed the game entirely for a solo player and balance it that way. That way, with a level sync system, the game would present a challenge to the player at ALL times on ALL planets.

 

At the same time, if you pulled out your companion, you could play the game MUCH easier, much like playing with another player.

 

Right now players assume the game should be balanced around companion play, and companion play should be compulsory. I disagree with this viewpoint. Right now the game is far too challenging for solo play, and not easy enough for companion play IMO (only slightly so in both directions).

 

That is why I support the idea to expand the level sync range but add some kind of level debuff to either the settings or as a consumable...which would provide a WIDE range of difficulty options for players.

 

Single player, debuff - Nightmare mode

Single player - Normal mode

Single player, Companion - Easy mode

 

This is assuming the expansion of the upper sync limit by two levels is set across the game. Want to play with a companion and still have normal mode? Use the debuff.

 

You want to adjust difficulty? Use lower-statted gear. Don't use your class bufss (though 3/4 of those are capped by level sync).

[merovejec]

In the end people are slowly coming to the same conclusion and that is that level sync was a stupid idea. Now people are demanding some bosses and instances to not-be lvl synced or synced differently etc. Why bother, remove the thing completely, was a stupid idea to start with.

 

However, we all know why Bioware had to do this, there is just not enough content for the game, I mean look, after 5 years where is the game at? not that many planets, instances or operations/flashpoints. The game needed this in order to make the content "up to date" again so that you wont be going everywhere killing stuff with basic attacks. Now im thrown off my speeder in my full 224 lvl 65 geared character. I wreck the attackers, but still they bother me since im lvl synced to them.

 

The whole level sync is only a stupid excuss for lack of content.

[Rion_Starkiller]

The problem is two-fold:

• level sync
  
• fast leveling
  

 

Originally, you had to do side quests, flashpoints, etc, to stay on par with the level of your class quests. Thus boss fights were more difficult because often you were 1-3 levels lower than the the quest (orange difficulty?).

Edited September 9, 2016 by Rion_Starkiller

[PlasmaJohn]

In the end people are slowly coming to the same conclusion and that is that level sync was a stupid idea. Now people are demanding some bosses and instances to not-be lvl synced or synced differently etc. Why bother, remove the thing completely, was a stupid idea to start with.

 

Completely disagree.

 

My recent experience was done with a fresh legacy and preferred status and I used whatever gear that dropped. As preferred I couldn't even get the gear boxes that dropped from heroics so I was mostly in greens. While things weren't hard they weren't a cakewalk either.

 

While this made some things stupid easy it also let me play what and where I wanted to. I'm the sort of person that needs a bit of incentive to do things. Without it I'll try to optimize (for example, skip trash and bonus missions). Level-sync let me play what I wanted to play when I wanted to play it and still make progress towards end-game. I had the freedom to do class story, take a break and run a bunch of heroics, TFP's, pvp, etc. and then pick up on the class story where I left off without having to run grey missions.

 

I have two specific criticisms of how they implemented level-sync. The current scaling is pushed down too far. Most people need that extra bit of struggle to get the hint that they need to use more than their basic skills. The other is this thread's topic: Important class fights are utterly trivialized and that cheapens the story experience.

 

I'm not insisting that these fights get returned to their former relative difficulty, but they'd be much better served if their instances were restored to their original levels. No re-work necessary, it already exists.

[IanArgent]

Level sync exists because, at least at the point at which I was playing the storyline the first time, if you did all the missions on a planet, you would rapidly outpace the planetary level (note, I did not use XP boosts, did not play PvP, and did only Esseles) to the point where you literally could not be damaged by anything on a planet, including world bosses. The "end-game" bosses were only challenges when the max level in the game was 50-55 (and even 55 was enough overlevel that there wasn't much of a challenge). Once the level cap went to 60, that was it; those bosses were not challenging, and could not be made so because the expected level range was too big - you could still get to the end of your story at L50 if you were F2P, or didn't do extra missions - you'd still be at the "appropriate" level for the planet, so cranking the difficulty at that point would mean the recommended level indicator would be a lie; but at the same time, you could be 10 levels higher than the recommended level and almost literally immune to attack.

[josephxp]

Level sync exists because, at least at the point at which I was playing the storyline the first time, if you did all the missions on a planet, you would rapidly outpace the planetary level (note, I did not use XP boosts, did not play PvP, and did only Esseles) to the point where you literally could not be damaged by anything on a planet, including world bosses. The "end-game" bosses were only challenges when the max level in the game was 50-55 (and even 55 was enough overlevel that there wasn't much of a challenge). Once the level cap went to 60, that was it; those bosses were not challenging, and could not be made so because the expected level range was too big - you could still get to the end of your story at L50 if you were F2P, or didn't do extra missions - you'd still be at the "appropriate" level for the planet, so cranking the difficulty at that point would mean the recommended level indicator would be a lie; but at the same time, you could be 10 levels higher than the recommended level and almost literally immune to attack.

 

Yup, level sync makes it a bit more challenging, but not to challenging depending on how dramatic the level sync drop its easier. Note the heroics where the mobs are at the same level at you on tatooine are easier to kill in comparison to eashka in a heroic area as the same level as you on belsavis. The lesser the difference in actual level (not level sync level) the more the difficulty increases. The only solution to have a challenging boss would be to have the class bosses instance match your current non level sync level, which for most would be level 65 then and only then would they be a slight challenge.

[UmbralSpirit]

Gods that "blablabla to easy blablabla" from some random kids who think it makes them look "cool" gets so annying, you want it more challenging? Put away your companion and take off your armor but no you (example) go into a level 50 fight with level 65 gear and then whine it's too easy.....the stupidity.....

[PlasmaJohn]

Gods that "blablabla to easy blablabla" from some random kids who think it makes them look "cool" gets so annying, you want it more challenging? Put away your companion and take off your armor but no you (example) go into a level 50 fight with level 65 gear and then whine it's too easy.....the stupidity.....

LOL. Try "going into a level 12 fight with level 48 greens" and you'd be closer to the mark.

[Kajuratus]

I'd say yes, it would be nice to rework those instanced boss encounters that take place on lower level planets intended for higher level characters, like the ending of the Warrior and Inquisitor class stories. Ending the Inquisitor Act One mission by whittling Zash down to 1 hp within 3-5 seconds and then, through a cutscene, have her force push me against a pillar as if I was nothing just felt immersion breaking. Ideally, I would like the instanced encounters to scale to your current level, similar to how the rakghoul event works in the Rakghoul tunnels. But probably, the easiest solution (other than ignoring this thread) has already been stated, to bump up any gold enemies to... you know, that star icon that world bosses have. Even with level sync, you would still have skills, passives and companions that would be more than a match for even a shiny star enemy.

 

Funny thing is, level syncing was implemented so we WEREN'T overpowered on lower level planets

Edited September 9, 2016 by Kajuratus

[Nempo]

I recently started a play through to test difficulty.

1) companion is not allowed to be in heal mode or tank mode (thius if they pull aggro it is only due to attackign things you aren't)

2) only allowed to use what drops, quest rewards are no go. it must be looted from the dead or you can't use it

3) no medkits, class buffs, stims, etc.

4) no crafting

5) can buy things to wear only from npc's if it costs credits, no data crystal usage allowed

6) no you don't get to be a healing class, and no sorc/sages (the point of challenging yourself is to NOT play the overpowered classes)

 

So far? It has been fun and difficult simply because I am on my 3rd planet with half my gear still white. The "jesus companion" effect is severely lessened when they aren't in heal mode.