Rant: RNG is NOT perfect for SWTOR, But Inevitable. Another Take on the Issue.

[AlesisCitadel]

This post is spawned off of a well-rounded and somewhat of a just devil's advocate for BioWare, And just so I am being fair, here's credit where its due. Click Here to see the post. The post's author is Aowin, And if he reads this, Hey man, great post! However, I see your argument but also a side I feel needed to be spoken as well.

 

 

Everyone who’s on this forum can see the first five pages are 80% composed with some sort post concerning either the CXP changes in 5.0a, or the exploit fix, or the CXP boost just added to the market.

 

 

But How Did We Get Here?

 

 

This is certainly not a new kind of response to an issue brought up by gamers. However, as the post I linked above very importantly stressed, Inclusion of new players is the reason for implementing this system, as Aowin says. The goal is to welcome new players.

 

 

But that's not the issue. Aowin addressed but skipped over this. The issue is SWTOR is not a new MMO, but is also no longer New Player Friendly.

 

 

But I don't mean in tutorials; rather, I mean the psyche of TOR-Culture.

 

 

The Establish my Perspective: I am Alesis Citadel, also renowned as Erasis Citadel, on Beregen Colony. I am a subscriber, and I've been playing this game since about five months before Rise of the Hutt Cartel, or Patch 2.0 was released. Thus, many of my points are based in evidence from then on.

 

 

I mostly play healer, and although I’ve dabbled in PVP, and got silver once or twice in ranked, as well as a respectable but not hardcore valor 80, I am also an avid roleplayer, who does many different story arcs for friends and colleagues. I also am definitely a PVE’r, downing both Hateful, and brandishing my crest, albeit never getting my wings or nightmare runs. If we were to put class on Swtor players, I’d be in the Upper Middle-class: Almost Elite, but not.

 

 

Back to the point.

 

 

Pre 2.0: The game was still growing, but already changing ways members interacted with each other. In PVP, Gear bags were changing to comms, requiring farming to a much easier extent, allowing people to actually get gear to play well. Everyone was still learing “Optimizing” and so were the devs. In PVP, Nightmare ops had already existed, and many world clears were already in the past. Prog groups, and guides on Dulfy.net (Shoutout to bae) were vast and many.

 

 

2.0: ROTHC, and Patch 2.4-2.7 (Dread Ops, Obroan Level PVP Gear) drastically made it clear that as a player, you had three options, with a supplement of RP in all three. One, you could be the best PVP’r there was. Two, the Best PVE’r. Three, Hardcore both. This third option was highly costly, due to optimization, and the dreaded (haha) Augmenting, of course prices, were still in the phase were $1million was a wealthy fellow.

Then of course, In this time the Cartel Market hit, and the slow rise of Inflation sunk in. Remember that detail for later patches, but its irrelevant right now.

 

 

Group mentalities were strong, but already, certain groups of people could still get away with anything. You could leave a flashpoint, and basically your grouped friends were screwed. 8 vs 8 ranked was done away with, and so was Season Ranking requirements on Certain gear sets, which was the first step to Ranked Elitism, as certain cosmetic hunters no longer needed anyone to depend on to get “pretty” gear. They could obtain it eventually now. Thus, a small chunk of ranked pvp’rs left. And some came in.

 

 

3.0: This was THE Time for Rp’ers. Galactic Strongholds, Revan , Great and mediocre Cartel Outfits. Pvp’ers Got Arenas, Ranked Seasons Started up. PVE’rs got TOS and RAV. Set Bonus’s For both got 7/6 Tiers instead of 5/4. Great Right?

 

 

Oh yeah. But look back at forums.

 

If you recall, some of the largest outbursts of forum “anarchy” or ‘Unsub-a-thon’s” began henceforth. The two critical issues? 1. The Contraband Slot Machine. 2. The Ravager’s and NIM Nefra’s Gear Exploit.

 

Slot Machine Mayhem occurred when people were easily able to gain Jawa Junk and Cartel Market Certificates from the then-new SH décor, the former being turned into mats and sold for profit. Bioware veered, and rolled back to a point of near-to-nothing rewards. Forum explosion. Over time it faded out but people were still P I S S E D.

Exploits Happen, but there was a hidden benefit. So many people took to the scene to get great gear, and I think this actually contributed to a rise on ops activity, because people and new players had the gear to make minute mistakes.

Cartel Market got into full swing, as did XP bonus’ and the first wave of “Is BioWare Pay to Win?” began. Prices Skyrocketed, into the Millions. But we all made do. Ziost came, with responses all across the board. And Group Finder fixed some of the Quitters in flashpoints who were screwing us over. PVP’rs got three tiers of WZs splitting at 10-30, 31-59, 60.

 

4.0: KOTFE. No New Ops, Although Star Fortresses, and simplification of Ops in group finder made people more selective but made queues slightly faster, albeit they had rapidly slowed. PVP Split. There were the casual Warzoners. And there were the Elite Ranked Vets. At this point, it began to become impossible to get into ranked as new player. If you were bad, you simply just weren’t cut it for it, and the Elites often let you know. (Not all, I’m speaking for majorities here.) Ranked also was the warrior’s way, proving your worth, and then bragging on the fleet. So then A 2018 expertise rating came in, and one again, ranked became elites only. Which isn’t bad.

CREDITS for everything on the GTN got so much more expensive, so getting credits became supreme. Enter the Credit Sellers, and subsequent banfests.

 

We wanted credits, so we farmed heroics. THEN they nerfed our companions. We fired back, they fixed it. THEN they nerfed heroic creds. WE fired back, they fixed it.

 

So how come its different in 5.0?

 

Well, in 4.0 new players suddenly could reach endgame in 5 levels. This created a whirlwind in all forms of content. These “n00bs” were untrained, and they were doing beyond stupid things. Look in the PVE forum and you can see there are post dedicated to tracking that. Oh, and New players got Wz comms easier, but many veterans got frustrated, it seemed no one knew how to focus or taunt or offheal. And lets not forget the amount of standing in stupid.

 

Veterans were getting pissed, but not a lot of people really got too worried in the forums, they voiced it different.

Now, Aowin is right. All of these things from melding PVP and PVE gear into one as well as getting new gear via RNG is a goal to encourage new player growth, and also “fix” the eliteism of pvpers and pver’s. Equal opportunity. But It’s really not. Old players have an unforgivable advantage, /timeplayed. And that forever for us vets.

 

This new system makes it so that if we want to progress again, we need to teach unexperienced players. A sort of “foster-system.” But, the already mentioned elitism is going to make that a scary feat.

Now, I plan to stay subbed, because I enjoy other aspects to the game such as RP. But there is a definite wrong beginning. But the question no one seems to ask is what Bioware can do to satisfy Subs, while insuring they get revenue with new people to keep going? Or…is there anything at all?

 

Thank you for reading, I am open to constructive criticism, but outright petty insults will be ignored as childish play. 

 

[StupidWiz]

I took a break when RoTHC was about to drop and just came back when KoTFE started, so thank you for a brief history of swtor as an mmo and what has been happening in the forum until now.

[AlesisCitadel]

I took a break when RoTHC was about to drop and just came back when KoTFE started, so thank you for a brief history of swtor as an mmo and what has been happening in the forum until now.

 

Glad to be of service!

[Wayshuba]

This new system makes it so that if we want to progress again, we need to teach unexperienced players. A sort of “foster-system.” But, the already mentioned elitism is going to make that a scary feat.

Now, I plan to stay subbed, because I enjoy other aspects to the game such as RP. But there is a definite wrong beginning. But the question no one seems to ask is what Bioware can do to satisfy Subs, while insuring they get revenue with new people to keep going? Or…is there anything at all?

 

In most MMOs, when an expansion drops there is usually some new system added that you can further grind or advance to make content repeatable.

 

For example, in LOTRO, they added reputation and legendary weapons (with the Moria expansion) which gave another level of progression. In The Secret World, they added supplemental weapons (and are still adding them), ability augments and an Aegis system (all further levels of character advancement and diversity). Even with SWTOR they added the legacy system (one of their best ideas IMHO), decorations scattered throughout the game and later achievements.

 

The point is, there is usually something new and non-disposable (story is disposable) coupled with some NEW systems that progress the game further.

 

Why the outrage here is clear to everyone. BW has added, outside of the disposable 5 hours or content, and 1 hour and 30 minutes of Uprisings, nothing new to the expansion. So to keep people paying they are hanging the "end game gear" carrot to get to the same end game everyone has played for more than two years. In addition, BW has done a good job up until 5.0 of promoting an alt friendly game (I wish every MMO had a legacy style system), and this new system is a complete 180 from everything the game has been up until this point.

[Hichitsuki-hime]

u got to keep in mind, that new people first of all need to be WILLING to learn for anything good to happen at this point. same as you I've been in this game since before TFB and S&V came out, mostly am a PVEr, though i do enjoy PvP now and then, never quite into RP (fanfiction is more my thing apparently haha), I've cleared all the 8man content, am an assistant GM in one of my guilds, been a raid leader for like 3-4 years now. so i am very familiar with teaching new members for sure. Now what I've noticed over the years is this: for us vets to teach the n00bs, the said newbies have to first WANT TO LEARN. I would take new people with me every now and then. and when cap level people ask stuff like: "what's an interrupt?" or just plain don't say that they don't know the fight and we wipe over and over cause they're doing stupid stuff, or even better, we're trying to tell this new tank that he needs to keep the boss turned away so he doesn't cleave and he blows up for no reason, or those awesome sages or sorcerers in defense gear coming to dps a nightmare DF..... or a gunslinger saying he is stacking aim so he doesn't miss.....

coming across stuff like this over and over u realize that YES, we need to do what we can to teach them.... but unfortunately like any education process it is a two-way street.

As for strictly 5.0... yes, if a group starts all together and they have some newbies then they can all progress together, but what if your group looses a vet player and is forced to pick up a newbie instead. not only we will have to teach them, but also we have no way to help them get geared to catch up to us. so how the hell is this system inclusive ?

On the matter of the RNG, i'll repeat what i've said on Dulfy: It's a copy of WoW legendary drops system....and an extremely BADLY implemented one at that.

:eek:

Edited December 6, 2016 by Hichitsuki-hime