Add solo(story mode) to ALL operations.

[Lunafox]

Nope you had 2 years of dedicated goodies only for you as a solo player, now BW is bringing back the multiplayer aspect the MMO and solo players are having a conniption fit because they think they are being ignored. Anxiety or not follow master Yoda's mantra "Do or do not, there is no try", so either to the Ops as they are intended to be or find content that fits you but don't ask for a waste already super limited dev resources when the latest Operation in 3 years isn't even finished.

 

Many raiders like myself stayed subbed through the single player non-sense just to continue our progression raiding so don't act like solo players saved the day in SWTOR.

 

That's not the impression I had, the way the raiders were going on about leaving in droves when they didn't have a new OP in a long time. There were countless posts of raiders stating they were going to quit and given their lack of presence on the forum, one can only surmise they made good on their threats. Not all left, obviously, but a good bunch did and it felt like the game was being carried by us soloers and cash shop whales for a good long time.

 

You seem to think I'm angry or having a conniption, I'm not. I'm just like anyone else, asking for what they like, or sharing an opinion of what I'd want. You don't agree, that's cool, it's really no skin off my teeth. While your disagreement is fine, you trying to tell me what I should or should not ask for isn't, just because it doesn't mesh with your reasoning. I am and will continue to ask for what I want. In that, I'm not different than anyone else and there is no need to be hostile just because I see things differently. If you're not being hostile fine, but it seems a bit that way in how you're coming across.

[VegasTheLost]

Jeeezus crist what is happening here. Are you folks serious at all? Let me break it down to you!

 

1: ghost mode: sorry but there's youtube for this, frankly asking to implement something with nearly zero interaction is something I don't have a word for it. Legit you would get more story by watching a youtube vid. Please don't ask the devs to implement something that is already there.

 

2: I get it, it's not the same: well than you can't have everything in life unless you willing to put some effort in it. Some of you demand effort from the devs because of reasons, but I ask you, where is yours? How is it fair that you ask for something but you aren't willing to put in the least amount of effort to try out the current implementation that is far more accessible than any game in the market, mind you. And this is point 3...

 

3: accessibility: the following are the requirements to access to an SM ops: minimum level 50, at least an item(don't really matter the quality) in each slot and a subscriber status. No more no less. Is it that hard? Even if you interested, still that hard?

 

4: how about asking for assistance: guess what, the game is packed with guilds, there are tons out there, all it takes is 1 or 2 sentence to get in to a nice guild and ask for a group to help you out. I'm 100% sure that there are more groups out there than toxic ones, I dare everyone/anyone to prove me wrong. Pro tip: most of the guilds accept that only 1 of your alt will join them, remember they are quite similar players than you are.

 

5: where to look: server forums, good place to start, start a discussion, write down your needs, what you looking for and eventually you will find someone to meet your needs.

 

Any questions? Happy to answer and help if I can. The rest is on you.

[-Highsteel-]

How will you be able to solo, say Toth and Zorn? They have mechanics for a reason. What will you do on the minefield? Run back and forth from tower to droid? How will you avoid the fire? What about Calphayus and the future/past mechanic? Raptus and the curses phase? They will no longer be operations if you take away the mechanics made for a specific group.

[ivanhedgehog]

Yes, +1.

 

Always up for more options, and this is a good one. It really makes me wonder why anyone would argue AGAINST letting MORE people enjoy content. It's not like anything is being taken away from the group experience, it would literally just be an option to play it solo. Group crowd is happy, as is the solo player.

 

I am a raider and I can support this. It adds content for people which is a good thing.I think it should drop one random unassembled token at the end and be locked out to once a week, but yes, its a good idea.

[VedaRa]

+1; I support the OP. The game has changed over the last 6 yrs; gone is the hard core raiders and today the game is dominated by solo players. So letting the solo players run operations, the way they want too (IE solo) is only going to help keep the largest population of players around.

[LordArtemis]

So as I assumed there isnt much story there...so it is really just a matter of curiosity and access to the mats perhaps.

 

Well, if I had my way this is what I would do with respect to these missions....

 

1) Offer a "KDY" non trinity mode that is very easy as a "training" version of sorts, naturally with much lower rewards.

2) Restore direct armor drop rewards to hard modes, as well as components to choose what armor piece you want.

3) Remove mats, or add mats to the KDY mode. Putting the mats behind a wall like this was not wise IMO.

 

I think this would cover all the bases and give candy to everyone involved.

Edited January 22, 2018 by LordArtemis

[DWho]

Part of it is that people are desperate for content and are looking for ways to speed up its development by reusing existing content like Operations and Flashpoints. Most Operations could be converted to a story like arc and the same is true for Flashpoints (not replaced but adapted into something a little different). No content should be exclusive to one group or the other at this point(whether that be reusing parts of KotFE and KotET chapters for Flashpoints and Operations or reusing maps and models from Flashpoints and Operations for story-like content) if it is feasible to make it available. I don't know about solo Operations but using the areas and substituting something else for the boss fights could expand the available content.

[-Highsteel-]

+1; I support the OP. The game has changed over the last 6 yrs; gone is the hard core raiders and today the game is dominated by solo players. So letting the solo players run operations, the way they want too (IE solo) is only going to help keep the largest population of players around.

 

If they made it like MM or Vet chapters, I would have no issue with them doing so. MM/Vet chapters is the only solo game-play I believe in the game that helps the player learn their class/spec as they progress. But if they dumbed it down like every other solo game-play in this game, I believe it'll be more detrimental to the future of this game.

[Spyderwraith]

I've read this entire thread and have been baffled constantly regarding the request for a Ghost mode, and subsequent disdain for youtube videos

What does Ghost Mode accomplish that youtube does not?

People against Youtube videos complain it isn't what they want because they want to be in the Ops and don't want to have their experience hindered by someone else's choices.

Ghost Mode: Being on the "shoulder" of someone in the ops essentially being hindered by the person inside the ops and subject to the choices of that person.

Someone please explain this because the only feasible difference is "Ghost Mode" would require development time and coding that frankly can be utilised elsewhere.

A youtube video surely does accomplish what this Ghost Mode accomplishes. with absolutley zero negative aspects.

Furthermore I can always tell people who never code by their comments like

"oh they can just put a god droid in no big deal"

Take an example from Jurassic Park the movie where they have to fix Denis Nedry's lockout and Sam Jackson says he has to debug every single line of code in order to find the specific key strokes Nedry used to do what he did.

Hammond says "how many lines are there"

Sam replies "About 2 million"

Lets run this mathematically. and for the sake of argument it takes one person 1 hour to write one line of code.

lets further say there is 2 million lines.

Divide 2 million by 24 and we have 83,333.33333 repeating. which means it takes 83 thousand three hundred thirty three days to write 2 million lines of code.... and this is only one person so if you want to find out numbers just divide the 83,333 by how ever many you think BW has that code this game.

TLDR: Stop saying "they can just put a god droid in it". You've absolutely no idea how to code.

Second: Youtube videos accomplish the exact same end result as a "ghost mode" so......

[lightSaberAddiCt]

I've read this entire thread and have been baffled constantly regarding the request for a Ghost mode, and subsequent disdain for youtube videos

What does Ghost Mode accomplish that youtube does not?

People against Youtube videos complain it isn't what they want because they want to be in the Ops and don't want to have their experience hindered by someone else's choices.

Ghost Mode: Being on the "shoulder" of someone in the ops essentially being hindered by the person inside the ops and subject to the choices of that person.

Someone please explain this because the only feasible difference is "Ghost Mode" would require development time and coding that frankly can be utilised elsewhere.

A youtube video surely does accomplish what this Ghost Mode accomplishes. with absolutley zero negative aspects.

Furthermore I can always tell people who never code by their comments like

"oh they can just put a god droid in no big deal"

Take an example from Jurassic Park the movie where they have to fix Denis Nedry's lockout and Sam Jackson says he has to debug every single line of code in order to find the specific key strokes Nedry used to do what he did.

Hammond says "how many lines are there"

Sam replies "About 2 million"

Lets run this mathematically. and for the sake of argument it takes one person 1 hour to write one line of code.

lets further say there is 2 million lines.

Divide 2 million by 24 and we have 83,333.33333 repeating. which means it takes 83 thousand three hundred thirty three days to write 2 million lines of code.... and this is only one person so if you want to find out numbers just divide the 83,333 by how ever many you think BW has that code this game.

TLDR: Stop saying "they can just put a god droid in it". You've absolutely no idea how to code.

Second: Youtube videos accomplish the exact same end result as a "ghost mode" so......

 

I agree with everything you said except for one thing. Game designers don't "code" in the classic sense, unless to modify engine physics. It is literally drag and drop with pre-made assets. But The ghost mode is particularly stupid, since it will cause lag. If there is 10 people "ghosting" that is still 10 more people pulling the bandwidth in the OP instance.

 

The only thing dumber then a "ghost mode" is a "single player mode" for OPs. Its not going to happen, but keep on sprinkling that fairy dust to maintain the illusion that it will.

[Solaece]

I still like the person who said they'll introduce it when they introduce solo PvP.

 

That said the situation on Yavin was best. Two paths then a final boss that ended the story.

 

But please don't make operations soloable. People would do them once only and never again(because the rewards would have to be miniscule or people would flip).

 

The very funniest thing though is that this whole entire thread was started because the op wants to ABANDON the quest and cannot. They don't really want to do the operation at all.

 

Let's see. You can solo flashpoints. How many times had everyone soloed battle of rishi? Once per character during the quest? None if you weren't on that questline? How many times in a group? I know my answer. Once solo. Just finished the 25 time cheevo for mm. Still have yet to finish the veteran one since if I'm going to do a flashpoint I prefer tank heal and dps.

[Bejita]

Im in favor of slightly nerfing story modes, but making them soloable is completely out of the question. This is an MMO.

[Estelindis]

Personally I'd love this. It'd allow the reuse of existing content such as areas and creature models to create new solo content. I think that giving a group and solo option vs Revan on Yavin was the way to go and other operations with story leading up to them would benefit from the same. Edited January 23, 2018 by Estelindis

[Lunafox]

If there is 10 people "ghosting" that is still 10 more people pulling the bandwidth in the OP instance.

 

 

I'm fine with the single player option for the ops, so that people can see what happens and get to enjoy the cutscenes. I support the single player option suggestion.

 

I do also see that the ghost suggestion while interesting would cause more problems than solving, and I personally don't see the point of that, because if the people in the OP are calling the shots and making the choices, well, you're not seeing your character do it, and then what happens if people start space barring everything that you want to see like the dialogue scenes? It defeats the purpose, in my line of thinking. I want to be able to experience the dialogue and see the cutscenes with my toon, not run invisible and endure people space barring through...so I see no point in the ghost stuff.

[merovejec]

So what did we have so far? Solo ops and spectator view?

 

I mean is there an MMO out there that has such a thing? Yes WoW has ops which can be soloed due to overleveling but this is something else, we do not have enough content in this game for something like that to be possible. We have to do 6 year old operations that are on level since there is no new stuff!

 

The new stuff took 1 year to do and still isnt done! People have to realize this, Bioware does not have the resources for anything like this. They are not able to do Solo ops or anything, the best they can do is take the Ops requirement out of the Oricon quest! Spectator mode would also prove hard I bet.

 

So in the end, the game has raids, like any other and since they are no level they cant be soloed. Let Bioware focus on new stuff rather then on reworking old things.

[Kaldron_Fell]

I want to be able to experience the dialogue and see the cutscenes with my toon, not run invisible and endure people space barring through...so I see no point in the ghost stuff.

Once again, this is a misconception. Ops are not flashpoints for 8 people. Ops are about fighting big stuff and ugly mobs. While there are very short cutscenes, they are used exclusively to introduce bosses. They are usually very short and if at all have only boss one-liners.

 

There is no dialogue in ops. Only short monologue.

Edited January 23, 2018 by Kaldron_Fell

[Eshvara]

So what did we have so far? Solo ops and spectator view?

 

I mean is there an MMO out there that has such a thing? Yes WoW has ops which can be soloed due to overleveling but this is something else, we do not have enough content in this game for something like that to be possible. We have to do 6 year old operations that are on level since there is no new stuff!

 

The new stuff took 1 year to do and still isnt done! People have to realize this, Bioware does not have the resources for anything like this. They are not able to do Solo ops or anything, the best they can do is take the Ops requirement out of the Oricon quest! Spectator mode would also prove hard I bet.

 

So in the end, the game has raids, like any other and since they are no level they cant be soloed. Let Bioware focus on new stuff rather then on reworking old things.

 

Amen!

[Tsillah]

So what did we have so far? Solo ops and spectator view?

My idea was an explorable version of the ops with basic champion bosses rather than an ops.

I mean is there an MMO out there that has such a thing? Yes WoW has ops which can be soloed due to overleveling but this is something else, we do not have enough content in this game for something like that to be possible. We have to do 6 year old operations that are on level since there is no new stuff!

I think Aion has, but I fail to see why it's relevant if other MMOs do this. 8 class stories is also something other MMOs don't do. I think that if the criterion is whether other MMOs do something or not, then you're barking up the wrong tree entirely.

The new stuff took 1 year to do and still isnt done! People have to realize this, Bioware does not have the resources for anything like this. They are not able to do Solo ops or anything, the best they can do is take the Ops requirement out of the Oricon quest! Spectator mode would also prove hard I bet.

That's a lot of assumptions. I think the general consensus is that Bioware has very limited resources but it does seem to me that fixing GC and doing the server merges took a lot of their resources. So if they hadn't brought out GC or at least in the way they did, chances are we wouldn't have needed server merges and they certainly wouldn't have needed to spend so much time fixing GC. They might have gotten that ops out completely last year already.

So in the end, the game has raids, like any other and since they are no level they cant be soloed. Let Bioware focus on new stuff rather then on reworking old things.

Well to be fair, Bioware has been reworking a lot of old things the last two expansions. So it's not strange for people to think in those lines. However, at the same time we also have to conclude that this approach has not been successful. I personally think that upping raids to max level was a bad idea. How they handled FPs with bolster was an equally bad idea.

 

So I do think that this game still is in need of an approach that makes old content work properly but it should be part of moving the game forward as you suggest. My view is that the operations and FPs should be restored to their original levels and that leven sync should be put in place. Bolster should be completely removed from PvE.

 

Now there is one issue there which is that if they did that completely we would only have 1 ops for progression raiding. And that's not enough. So I'd say that Ravagers and ToS should be kept at max level at least so there will be 3 ops that are actually difficult.

 

By putting older ops back at their level it will be easy to do the old ops especially in SM. You'd be level synced but in SM you'd be very powerful still so that makes it easy for also story players. HM and NiM could be more difficult still but that aside.

 

At some point also Rav and ToS can be let go off when new ops come in to replace them. But to me it only makes sense to have a handful of operations that are current for progression and to come out with new ones every expansion. For every new one, an older one can drop off. Because let's be honest it's common practice in other MMOs to leave older raids behind and they can then become part of the leveling experience or just for fun.

 

And maybe, just maybe that can give some bigger importance to new FPs in MM to be actually hard and part of endgame content with appropriate rewards.

 

The question is...will Bioware be able to make that transition. Under normal circumstances I can see them do an ops per year but I think we'll need that to be 3 ops in 2 years to at least make progression raiding viable. If the conclusion is that they cannot manage this, well then to be honest, maybe they should leave raids behind entirely and focus on FPs as endgame. I know that might upset some people but reality is that if they can't keep up a decent schedule for new raids, I feel they should leave that area be and focus on an endgame that they can support with their resources.

 

I remember when Lost Island came out and how hard it was to complete back then. Perhaps Master Mode FPs are the answer and not operations that they cannot bring out quick enough to make it really viable. This game has suffered a lot from them not being able to deliver. Perhaps the biggest issue is there. There is a small chance that the new ops will bring some players back when it's complete...but I fear that they've lost their momentum and that now it won't have much of an effect anymore.

 

Maybe there are still people excited but I can't even find the energy to get excited about Scyva coming out today. It just doesn't seem to matter anymore to me. I get the feeling in game that even on Darth Malgus the amount of guilds that still do real progression raiding has gotten very small indeed. Could be perception but the biggest guilds are conquest guilds, not raiding guilds and these conquest guilds do raids but it's often quick runs and particularly last boss runs...that's not really raiding.

 

Now if new raids came out regularly and the reward system made sense again where the hardest content actually gets rewarded best, then that'd get my vote. However, if Bioware cannot keep up with that because of limited resources, then perhaps they should just leave it be and focus on making a concept for endgame that doesn't include raids that they can support with regular content and stays fresh that way.

 

And that by itself would take care of the issue of solo ops aswell...

[kodrac]

Amen!

 

Amen to your amen! New stuff is the key.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

I'm fine with the single player option for the ops, so that people can see what happens and get to enjoy the cutscenes. I support the single player option suggestion.

 

I do also see that the ghost suggestion while interesting would cause more problems than solving, and I personally don't see the point of that, because if the people in the OP are calling the shots and making the choices, well, you're not seeing your character do it, and then what happens if people start space barring everything that you want to see like the dialogue scenes? It defeats the purpose, in my line of thinking. I want to be able to experience the dialogue and see the cutscenes with my toon, not run invisible and endure people space barring through...so I see no point in the ghost stuff.

 

Luna, I will just have to respectfully disagree with you. I am of the thought that OPs are for group content. Period. SM OPs are so easy, most of them you can 4 man. I would assume that after almost 2 years, BW said, hey, instead of now focusing on group content, we are going to shift our resources to solo OPs, well, I think alot of people would freak. I am not going to be arrogant enough to try and speak for them, but I just see that pissing people off. I mean I left this game right before KoTET. the ONLY reason I came back is that I knew they were close to finishing the OP bosses (sorry I am not going to just fight 1 boss every month, that is just stupid).

 

We are just at two very distant views on this matter...

[ZionHalcyon]

I am down for this. Make solo operations give good cxp and starter gear for lowest level group ops, and they don't count for weekly.

 

Done and done. That way, people can finish stories like Oricon without having to wait for a pug that doesn't wipe.