SWTOR is too easy now!!!

[Transcendent]

If I actually thought that people would use it, I'd agree...I just don't think they would.

 

If the rewards scaled with difficulty, such as in Diablo 3 (where you can scale your difficulty ) then I think players would choose to do so. There are other factors to consider, such as gear, without decent gear you get squished pretty quickly because Blizzard's version of level sync is different to BioWare's.

 

If anything, that makes the game much more fun, especially when you consider the loot drops being much much better for random mobs in Diablo 3 on harder levels compared to SWTOR, which sadly has had all the loot ripped to pieces in 4.0 now we have level sync. So yes, SWTOR random trash mobs are complete tedium now. Not only is there no challenge, and no fear of dying, but the loot you get for having to engage that filler is worthless vendor trash.

 

As to the point of levelling fast on starter planets, I'm not sure that's a bad thing, I recall my very first character that got to Hoth, hit level 40, and I gave up on that character and rolled a new one. I was bored by that time, it was too much of a grind levelling previously. The streamlining BioWare has done in 4.0 in regards to the levelling quickly via story content is a good change, certainly one positive aspect of 4.0 to weigh against the negatives.

[robertthebard]

Why did you have to make it all personal...

 

Yes... I read the OP... but the comment I was responding to was more on about the entire difficulty of the game as a whole.

 

 

 

If you have some beef with me you could use resort to a PM... jesus...

 

It took actual work to gear companions back then, mostly likely augmented and in operation gear to do be able to do that on level. Now, just using them out of the box at influence level one is fine, as they can solo elites on any mode. It takes no work or effort to gear them anymore, you went through a most likely long process to get Nadia to that ability and was rewarded for it, now, you don't have to put in a dime, even have them disapprove with your actions, and still get influence.

 

As I return from running the Rakghoul event, I have to say, hyperbole is a poor basis for a point. The Heroic 4 in the tunnels? Yeah, my DPS Sage managed to solo one of 3 champs. Now, my tank will probably be a lot better off, lots of stuff to do to mitigate damage and/or keep damage focused where I want it, but on that sage, with Nadia, at 56, she wasn't soloing the champs, she in fact, died first. Now, I can't gear her to make it easier, I can't do anything to her but raise her influence, 16 currently, but I do have a maxed out Legacy. If we're basing the game on story content only, maybe? But out there in the actual game world, what's presented here doesn't come off as true.

[eriksarcasm]

It's fine to have a difficulty setting, however handicapping yourself just to get a modicum of challenge from the game is terrible imo, especially if average players have to do it. If you're a NIM/HM op runner yeah... that's fine... but someone who runs tacs, something all players are suppose to accomplish has to force some degree of artificial difficulty? Seriously?

 

 

But isn't that essentially what the easy and hard settings do? I suppose it depends on the game but it's usually some sort of buff or nerf to either the player or enemies (Or in olden times, the frequency of boost items and quantity of enemies). And that's something the player themselves have control over. And that's essentially what you're doing by taking your clothes off and sending your companion away; you're nerfing yourself.

 

There will always be a segment of any player base who find any content too easy. There's people out there who can speedrun Super Meat Boy and I Wanna Be the Guy, whereas most "average" players struggle to get through at all. There's all sorts of ways those elite players challenge themselves further. Let's see if I can do this faster than last time. Let's see if I can do it using a guitar controller. Let's see if I can do it blindfolded, with a gun to my head while a ****** is.... distracting me. There's plenty of precedent for manufacturing your own difficulty.

[eriksarcasm]

I think you've completely misunderstood what I said.

 

I posit that a difficulty setting is an artificial method of changing difficulty for yourself, similar to the myriad ways one can nerf oneself in SWTOR. It's different but one has the option to make the game harder on oneself, if one so chooses. Not bad game design, in fact quite the opposite. It's a roundabout way to do it, but it's there.

 

But oh, how i miss the days when we could equip our companions. As it is now, it's either OP or nothing, and there's no taking back influence. The only option is to put one away and take out a lesser-influenced companion.

[LyraineAlei]

Every single thing you are suggesting to opt out is part of the core game play and game design.

 

All in all you are just saying: just don't play the game at all.

I was intending it to be a list of options a person can peruse through that I've seen people suggest in other similar threads.

 

In a way, it would be similar to Pokemon where fans have put together variations of a Nuzlocke challenge.

The premise is that you start off with a team, fainting is the equivalent of death.

That takes away a whole key part of the game mechanics - using a Pokemon Center to heal your fainted pokemon, and Revives to heal your fainted pokemon.

 

Others have applied other aspects such as

• Must have a full team of six, even if the team is all pokemon people would consider "poodoo"
  
• As soon as you catch your first pokemon, you store away your starter pokemon to never be used again.
  
• To avoid temptation of retrieving "dead" pokemon and using them again, release them instead of storing them in storage
  
• Do not use potions to heal your injured/weakened pokemon
  
• Do not use the Pokemon Center to heal non-fainted pokemon
  
• Do not buy things from the Pokemart Vendor
  
• Do not evolve any pokemon on your team
  
• Do not add abilities learned by the pokemon, or by the teaching devices in the games except for the ones vital for moving forward in the plot/gym sequence
  
• Use only one pokemon ever.
  
• Limitations on what pokemon can be part of the team (variable, can exclude Legendaries, or OverUsed, the UnderUsed, depends on what the variation the person decides on)
  

Anything on the list could be considered opting out of a core part of the game play and game design. All those Nuzlocke players are saying is, and I quote from your turn of phrase "just don't play the game at all."

 

I will say that I never said it was the best list of ways to make the game harder, just a list of ways a person can alter the difficulty of the game for themselves.

 

Although if it means ignoring a part of the core gameplay, wouldn't that mean the game would be harder for not using it? Like playing Mass Effect on Nightmare without using a screen to look at. Or not keeping companions' gear up to date (Seriously, watching Kaiden die every other fight or so wearing the basic gear and not upgrading his abilities or armor, while my Shepard was level 40-something was pretty fun. It was like Garrus and I were running things as a two-person team instead of the default three-person).

Edited September 28, 2016 by LyraineAlei

[Rolodome]

As the title says, SWTOR is too easy now. Since the KOTFE expansion leveling is so easy that you can level up to lvl10 in 30 minutes or 1 hour, even if you only do your class story. The leveling is so easy that you don't need to do the planetary missions to lvl up fast, what a waste of some good mini stories.But the thing that bugs me most are the DAMN SUPER OP COMPANIONS!!

Now your companions have a lot more of life than you,more damage than you and they heal you for lots of HP so you never die and you don't need to use medpacks because,why use medpacks when you have a companion that heals you for the double or triple HP than a medpack??

I hope swtor changes this because I'm practically invincible with my OP companion XD

As I've said before, if you stick to the class missions and planet story arc, you don't do exploration missions (which you have to manually turn on anyway) and you don't go out of your way to use XP boosts, you will be about where you need to be each time.

 

The leveling is only super fast if:

A) You're using a variety of boosts (particularly full set of DvL gear + 25% XP bonus)

B) You're doing everything. Class missions, side quests, exploration quests, heroic quests, PvP, flashpoints.

 

As for companions, if you want more challenge, then swap their role to damage or tank. Edit: Then pull two or three groups of mobs at once. On Oricon, in the H2 area.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Rolodome

[Nempo]

It was always easy.

 

Always.

 

Closed, invite only Beta (before they started letting in pre-orders and such) Act 3 planets were tuned as H2's...and you honestly needed 2 people. Corellia was punishingly difficult.

To solo in act 3 and onward you had to be on top of your game, actually interupt the right skills while letting others just fire off, by NOT using your healing companion (it would take you too long to kill things before they killed you) unless you were a tank, and the actual "heroic" missions were all 4 man missions more punishing than the FPs at the time.

The devs actually tried to kill you. Was quite fun.

[Deewe]

Closed, invite only Beta (before they started letting in pre-orders and such) Act 3 planets were tuned as H2's...and you honestly needed 2 people. Corellia was punishingly difficult.

To solo in act 3 and onward you had to be on top of your game, actually interupt the right skills while letting others just fire off, by NOT using your healing companion (it would take you too long to kill things before they killed you) unless you were a tank, and the actual "heroic" missions were all 4 man missions more punishing than the FPs at the time.

The devs actually tried to kill you. Was quite fun.

Now I'm sad.

 

I remember those times when we even had to plan in which order we're going to interrupt, use CC and make sure not to break them while playing in group.

 

I'm all for leveraged content but now the game's boring as way too easy.

 

We don't need to gear anymore. We barely need to learn our classes and companions OP's characters.

Never thought I'd ever say that, but having a dumb AI on companions makes content sometimes enjoyable as a more challenging.

 

One thing I don't miss though is leveling so slowly that we had to grind that much. IMO something in between what we had before and what we have now would be good.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Deewe

[VitalityPrime]

Not going to lie, the game is very easy now.

 

However, that being said, everything we do/did in game to level up, get better gear, is in attempt to make the game easier...so the game being easier is not that big of a deal overall.

 

As far as companions, part of me does dislike the fact of knowing that you can sit back and have them do everything for you...but, I overcome that by just jumping in combat and having fun myself.

 

The worst change for me...was companion abilities. While I absolutely love that you can make all companions serve any role now...I very much dislike that they all only have 5 abilities per role...and they all open up as soon as you get them. I actually preferred the idea of companions getting abilities as they leveled up with you. Basically, I wish companions were able to just keep their old ability layout, while still being able to swap between roles.

[Andryah]

Now I'm sad.

 

I remember those times when we even have to plan in which order we're going to interrupt, use CC and make sure not to break them while playing in group.

 

I'm all for leveraged content but now the game's boring as way too easy.

 

We don't need to gear anymore, we barely need to learn our classes and companions OP's characters.

Never thought I'd ever say that, but having a dumb AI on companions makes content sometimes enjoyable as a more challenging.

 

One thing I don't miss though is leveling so slowly that we'd have to grind that much. IMO something in between what we had before and what we have now would be good.

 

For us "old gummers" that have been playing MMOs since forever... yeah.. today's MMOs are much more forgiving then in the "old days". However, I don't really miss the old days.. when you literally needed a small group in order to level efficiently. Forced grouping in order to progress, or progress efficiently dried up a long time ago in the MMO market (the exception being some of the older MMOs, but frankly most of them have simplified the leveling challenge as well.. just to keep competitive in the market.

 

I left DAoC to play WoW back in the day. In the year or two after WoW released, Mythic greatly simplified the leveling grind in DAoC to compete with the emerging changes that WoW blazed (easy solo to level cap). I went back and played it for a while in 2006 and sure enough.. it was much easier. Then I went and played on a freeshard of DAoC which touted it's "classic" rule set, no buff bots allowed, and reversion to a patch that predated the first xpac. MAN was that some tedious crap to deal with. No thanks... WoW shifted the paradigm and even an old veteran of DAoC from day one (me) ... I did not want to see that ever again.

 

Now.. not all MMO players are members of the "old gummers society" and hence are not nostalgic about the old days, and have probably grown up on console games and mobile games, where casual play is more normal then someone setting the game they are playing on super-hard difficulty and getting their backsides handed to them left and right.

 

If you want large player populations in today's MMOs..... making leveling very hard, tedious, and forcing group play IS NOT going to get you there. It appeals to a much smaller segment of player base these days, especially when players (who are almost always clever) can find simple ways to up the difficulty so they at least have to be at their keyboard and attentive.

 

Hardmode leveling in MMOs is the domain of small indy boutique studios these days... who focus on a small number of particular playstyles.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Andryah

[jimmorrisson]

This game's top drawback from the start was the time sink - that is leveling reputation and travel. 4.0 solved the travel and travel issues. Reputation (including Social and PVP Valor which should be combined) take way too long to max out.

 

There is a ton of prizes locked behind reputation walls because the certificates which grant (a relatively small amount at that) are rare onto themselves.

 

Then there is Raids. Just because a group spent 18 hours on a Final Fantasy raid doesn't mean all games should. If players are sticking to "easy four" (EV, KP, DF, DP) than that is a obvious sign.

 

KOTFE should have it's alliance missions and Star Fortress repetitions reduced.

 

Eternal Championship should also be simplified - this stay out these circles then stay in those circles is confuzzling.

Edited September 29, 2016 by jimmorrisson

[Rolodome]

Hardmode leveling in MMOs is the domain of small indy boutique studios these days... who focus on a small number of particular playstyles.

From what I understand, Wildstar pretty much sunk the nail in the coffin of hardmode, in terms of proving this point. I wasn't watching it extensively, but it's my understanding that the devs basically tried to make a game for the "hardcore" players and it flopped harder than a gold-plated fish.

[Andryah]

From what I understand, Wildstar pretty much sunk the nail in the coffin of hardmode, in terms of proving this point. I wasn't watching it extensively, but it's my understanding that the devs basically tried to make a game for the "hardcore" players and it flopped harder than a gold-plated fish.

 

I agree, in the context of end game. I never played it, so I don't know about the leveling curve in Wildstar, but the end game clearly was back to classic WoW Vanilla style 40 mans with pre-reqs.

 

It was a grand experiment to return to the old classic approaches and they failed hard. Large difficult raids with tons of pre-reqs just to gain entrance. So yeah, I think that experiment has shown that the player base, even if they talk the talk the, don't really want to walk the walk.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Andryah

[Pscyon]

As I've said before, if you stick to the class missions and planet story arc, you don't do exploration missions (which you have to manually turn on anyway) and you don't go out of your way to use XP boosts, you will be about where you need to be each time.

 

The leveling is only super fast if:

A) You're using a variety of boosts (particularly full set of DvL gear + 25% XP bonus)

B) You're doing everything. Class missions, side quests, exploration quests, heroic quests, PvP, flashpoints.

Mmmm, no, that's inaccurate. On Korriban at least, only doing class and planet still puts you above. Level 12-14 or so. Depends on how much trash you fight I guess? It's not really an issue, though it does prevent you from queueing Black Talon (yeah I know, solo mode) and I dunno what happens to the advanced class missions if you pick an AC during leveling. Not an issue either technically, but it does mean you lose out on regular content you're meant to play.

 

Maybe it evens out after the starter planets. What you describe is how it should be, and how we were told it would be, but it's not necessarily the case. I was briefly a free player some weeks ago, and I noticed while playing a DvL character that they apparently have nerfed xp gain. Perhaps with the xp nerf, one levels at the intended rate?

[Rolodome]

I agree, in the context of end game. I never played it, so I don't know about the leveling curve in Wildstar, but the end game clearly was back to classic WoW Vanilla style 40 mans with pre-reqs.

 

It was a grand experiment to return to the old classic approaches and they failed hard. Large difficult raids with tons of pre-reqs just to gain entrance. So yeah, I think that experiment has shown that the player base, even if they talk the talk the, don't really want to walk the walk.

Yep. At least not in large enough numbers for the kind of profit that MMOs want now. I suspect some of it has to do with content production cycles at its core; you make a super hard, overtuned raid and you maybe delay the best guilds in the world for a couple of weeks, but one of them finds an exploit, or tries something you didn't expect and next thing you know, they're saying "done" and your next raid is half a year away from completion.

 

I do think it'll be interesting to see what we can do far in the future of game design if there are significant advances in procedural design. With the right tools, that could make the content gap, esp. for things like raiding, a thing of the past and really change the playing field.

 

I imagine we're decades off from that though. I haven't heard a peep about procedural in recent years beyond the rare fringe experiment and stuff like No Man's Skydive-Into-Obscurity, which has demonstrated just how hard-limited our current procedural design is.

[Rolodome]

Mmmm, no, that's inaccurate. On Korriban at least, only doing class and planet still puts you above. Level 12-14 or so. Depends on how much trash you fight I guess? It's not really an issue, though it does prevent you from queueing Black Talon (yeah I know, solo mode) and I dunno what happens to the advanced class missions if you pick an AC during leveling. Not an issue either technically, but it does mean you lose out on regular content you're meant to play.

 

Maybe it evens out after the starter planets. What you describe is how it should be, and how we were told it would be, but it's not necessarily the case. I was briefly a free player some weeks ago, and I noticed while playing a DvL character that they apparently have nerfed xp gain. Perhaps with the xp nerf, one levels at the intended rate?

Well there is somewhat of an XP gain difference between sub, pref, and F2P, IIRC, but I don't remember when it kicks in and how much it is.

 

I guess you're probably right about the first planet. Tho I do have to ask, are you taking things like guild bonuses into account?

 

I do think that either way, it evens out after starters. Especially as you get into the high 20s / early 30s, the XP gain starts to feel a lot slower, which I think is largely due to the planet content involving more travel time and less "go to this 2x4 area and complete four missions at once." It's hard for me to remember whether it fits like a glove, as many of my non-XP-boosted toons were leveled in part during the may 2x event. But I distinctly remember doing combination of planet story and class mission without boosts and just about being where I needed to be. Maybe a little over if I did every single planet story arc mission, as some of them are rather extensive.

 

Additional thought: Rested XP can be a wild card factor as well, if you're a sub. That can significantly muck up the "fitting like a glove" part, especially if you build up a lot of it at once.

[Pscyon]

I guess you're probably right about the first planet. Tho I do have to ask, are you taking things like guild bonuses into account?

Guild experience bonus has indeed slipped my mind. I tend to get my alts into the guild fairly quickly to avoid all the invite popups. Only 2-3 active members at any given time, so that means the bonus is 5,something % I think? Unsure how significant a difference that is early on, but maybe that makes all the difference. Woah. Must be pretty much more for people who join guilds with the full bonus then.

[AllisonLightning]

I was briefly a free player some weeks ago, and I noticed while playing a DvL character that they apparently have nerfed xp gain. Perhaps with the xp nerf, one levels at the intended rate?

 

You were Preferred, in any case the XP penalty is 25% past level twenty although it's not really a big deal. I've levelled, 1-65 without flashpoints and hit it just prior to Makeb. With the new XP boosts doing general story of 3 hours... level gain isn't the problem and neither is difficulty.

 

We all play at different skill levels but the longer we play, the baseline difficulty that challenges us lifts which is why it's a pity you can't increase difficulty. The problem with increasing it so that it's challenging for veterans is that you pull the entrance skill required beyond what they started with. Also pre 4.0 the difficulty without the updated companions absolutely punished solo play for new players and since I now do group content as well, it's a really good thing 4.0 dropped for me mid Hoth since I was close to throwing in the towel, because of the grind going from mob to mob.

 

What was the medpack nerf anyway? .

[Rolodome]

Guild experience bonus has indeed slipped my mind. I tend to get my alts into the guild fairly quickly to avoid all the invite popups. Only 2-3 active members at any given time, so that means the bonus is 5,something % I think? Unsure how significant a difference that is early on, but maybe that makes all the difference. Woah. Must be pretty much more for people who join guilds with the full bonus then.

That makes sense.

 

Although, to agree with you about the rate of XP gain... one could argue it should be expected that new players will join a guild, so it should be balanced for that.

 

But then, I think things were revised around the time of KOTFE, weren't they? And KOTFE is a solo experience, so maybe that's why they didn't take it into account. Either way, at this stage of things, I don't think going backwards on XP gain would be received well. I do think level sync could be refined a bit better though.

[LyraineAlei]

I do think that either way, it evens out after starters. Especially as you get into the high 20s / early 30s, the XP gain starts to feel a lot slower, which I think is largely due to the planet content involving more travel time and less "go to this 2x4 area and complete four missions at once." It's hard for me to remember whether it fits like a glove, as many of my non-XP-boosted toons were leveled in part during the may 2x event. But I distinctly remember doing combination of planet story and class mission without boosts and just about being where I needed to be. Maybe a little over if I did every single planet story arc mission, as some of them are rather extensive.

 

The size scale of planets does slow the rate of leveling per hour, Tatooine, Alderaan, Hoth, Belsavis, Voss, Corellia, are larger and more spread out with the missions.

 

And Makeb is huge, if you're not at max level by then.

[peter_plankskull]

As I return from running the Rakghoul event, I have to say, hyperbole is a poor basis for a point. The Heroic 4 in the tunnels? Yeah, my DPS Sage managed to solo one of 3 champs. Now, my tank will probably be a lot better off, lots of stuff to do to mitigate damage and/or keep damage focused where I want it, but on that sage, with Nadia, at 56, she wasn't soloing the champs, she in fact, died first. Now, I can't gear her to make it easier, I can't do anything to her but raise her influence, 16 currently, but I do have a maxed out Legacy. If we're basing the game on story content only, maybe? But out there in the actual game world, what's presented here doesn't come off as true.

 

No where did I state, that as of right now, companions could solo champions, I said pre 4.1 nerf they could, not now. Not to mention that yeah... it's one of the ONLY heroic 4s left in the game, and that isn't solo content it's optional multiplayer content, completely different to the subject we were on.

[peter_plankskull]

But isn't that essentially what the easy and hard settings do? I suppose it depends on the game but it's usually some sort of buff or nerf to either the player or enemies (Or in olden times, the frequency of boost items and quantity of enemies). And that's something the player themselves have control over. And that's essentially what you're doing by taking your clothes off and sending your companion away; you're nerfing yourself.

 

No, regardless of the difficulty, you would still need to gear on those settings, the only difference is that you would need more gear on higher difficulties. We shouldn't have to have NO gear, the core element in progression in this game next to leveling, you should just need more or less dependent on what you have picked on the slider.

 

There will always be a segment of any player base who find any content too easy. There's people out there who can speedrun Super Meat Boy and I Wanna Be the Guy, whereas most "average" players struggle to get through at all. There's all sorts of ways those elite players challenge themselves further. Let's see if I can do this faster than last time. Let's see if I can do it using a guitar controller. Let's see if I can do it blindfolded, with a gun to my head while a ****** is.... distracting me. There's plenty of precedent for manufacturing your own difficulty.

 

Super Meat Boy is a skill dependent game where it completely depends on the user. Their is no sense of progression as "getting better" other than you're brain working faster and better on the task at hand. Their is no "leveling up" or "gearing" just practice.

 

Not to mention, you don't even need to have have some world gaming champion skills in order to play this game with no gear, you just need a companion. Yes, their is some sense of skill in this game, such as rotation, interrupts, when to time stuns, etc, however it mostly relies on preparation and progression in gear. Apples and oranges between these games.

Edited September 29, 2016 by peter_plankskull

[Icykill_]

Yes, it's ridiculously easy now. No challenge at all.

[robertthebard]

No where did I state, that as of right now, companions could solo champions, I said pre 4.1 nerf they could, not now. Not to mention that yeah... it's one of the ONLY heroic 4s left in the game, and that isn't solo content it's optional multiplayer content, completely different to the subject we were on.

 

Were at the point when companions literally SOLO EVERY mob you will encounter in a solo instance, thank god they got nerfed in 4.1, they could solo champions pre nerf. I just can't be open minded with this argument... people who like comps as they are now just simply want the game to be automated.

 

I guess I misread part of the second post here, in our exchange. I mean, when you emphasize how they solo every mob in all caps, it's distracting, and detracts from your point. The fact is, there is challenge to be had in this game w/out nerfing yourself to get it, I found some quite by accident, just tooling along doing the dailies and weekly for the Rakghoul event.

 

Nadia set to heals = fail to kill the mob. Nadia set to DPS would have been a fail, but there was a Guardian standing close by, and jumped in to help. Nadia set to tank was successful, but it took about 15 minutes solo to kill one champ. I'm not sure about where you're from, but that equates to challenging in my neck of the woods.

[BanGyaMan]

Yes, it's ridiculously easy now. No challenge at all.

 

I agree.