Add variety and content. Stop the focus on gear

[Stellarcrusade]

OP has a very good point. It feels like the dev team either wants to or has to only put tiny amounts of actual work into the game. There is a reason so many players are idle. There are whole guilds of 1000 people that have like 90% of the players at level 70 who haven't logged in for many months. When new content comes out a large portion of swtor players play the new content once, then leave. They _may_ return the next time content comes out.

 

For players who focus mainly on PvP like myself, when a new super long gear grind is presented, I just go away until the next patch/expansion comes out that may have a reasonable PvP gear grind. If I can get a char to max PvP gear in a few weeks of casual play, ok. But like the last time gear was added, I was like, hmm, nope. I'm not going to spend thousands of hours per character to get max. And I'm not going to PvP long without max, so I leave and see what the notes for the next patch/expansion is. Gearing is a waste of time. When gearing is done is when the game starts.

[Damask_Rose]

Interesting, which ones are these? Looking over at the second monitor right now, I have DDO, GW, GW 2, ESO and Neverwinter shortcuts up, and none of those do this, Rappelz didn't do it either. The only game that I played that had procedurally generated content was Diablo, and a NWN mod that I worked on that generated mobs on an OnEnter script that varied according to player level. All of my MMO experience is exactly the same as it is here. This would include games like Aion, and Runes of Magic off the top of my head.

 

You should check out City of Heroes. NCSoft has let fans put up servers and they are booming right now. "Dungeons" in City of Heroes are procedurally generated and mob spawns vary according to the difficulty set by the player and the number of players in the group.

[JediQuaker]

I'm not sure it's correct to say that BW's "focus" is on gear. It seems as though it's the forum posters who "focus" on gear (and neglect the rest) - especially the PvP'ers who basically don't want to play the actual game, but just PvP.

[UmbralSpirit]

All of my MMO experience is exactly the same

 

And thats the problem.

[Blacklynx]

Interesting, which ones are these? Looking over at the second monitor right now, I have DDO, GW, GW 2, ESO and Neverwinter shortcuts up, and none of those do this, Rappelz didn't do it either. The only game that I played that had procedurally generated content was Diablo, and a NWN mod that I worked on that generated mobs on an OnEnter script that varied according to player level. All of my MMO experience is exactly the same as it is here. This would include games like Aion, and Runes of Magic off the top of my head.

 

My first MMO, Anarchy Online, has a terminal in the cities that would allow you to randomly choose a mission to do, if you knew how to use the sliders it would even allow to choose the type of enemies (humanoid, animal, robot) and the type of mission (kill, find an npc, grab an item, etc), it even allows you to choose the level of the mission (higher or lower than you by a certain amount). Always baffled me why i never saw anything remotely similar in other mmo's i played.

[cibacrome]

How is frustrating the player base absolutely necessary?

 

Huh wut? i'm assuming this is a joke.

 

My actual quote was:

 

The focus on gear is absolutely necessary, IMHO. Ossus was a case-study in how to frustrate your current player-base, and it's up to Bioware to fix it and make good.

 

Put down the 1/2 finished bottle of vodka and I'll hold your hand through these two sentences - Bioware needs to talk about gear because they @#$% the @#$% out of Ossus gearing, frustrating a lot of players, and now need to make good.

 

Point being Bioware designed a gearing system that raised specific flags in the PTS. They got specific feedback, that if they had listened, would have solved many of the complaints unleashed after release. There are a lot of dimensions to this, but it seems like they recognized a serious problem and are now attempting to address it.

[robertthebard]

And thats the problem.

 

Not to me. I notice that there were two examples MMOs that have procedurally generated content, and one of them is closer to a "build your own adventure" than procedurally generated. Meaning, if I use the terminal, and choose the same options, the same content will happen on the same maps, instead of being generated as you go, such as Diablo did.

 

I'm all for new stuff to do, but since I've been playing around in the industry since it was an industry, I'd appreciate less hyperbole about how "all these other MMOs do things", especially w/out a list of games that are actively doing it. It screams "I hope anyone reading this only plays swtor".

[cibacrome]

I think procedural dungeons would be awesome, but lets face it, can't even get decent fps in this game with shadows turned on, nobody left at Bioware seems to have a handle on how to deal with this miasma of an alpha release gaming engine from 2006 gone rogue (Hero)... and we're having a chat about procedural content? I want to laugh but I think imma just cry instead.

[Suzsi]

I'm not sure it's correct to say that BW's "focus" is on gear. It seems as though it's the forum posters who "focus" on gear (and neglect the rest) - especially the PvP'ers who basically don't want to play the actual game, but just PvP.

 

The Devs haven't answered any questions at all re: story for 6.0 not even on the forums. They have only commented in gearing related questions. The rest of us would like some responses and something to look forward to also given its the first real expansion we have had since Makeb. It's not unreasonable that the rest of us would like a bone tossed our way too.

 

It would take literally five minutes of time for someone to answer just a couple of questions about something other then gearing. The reason a lot of story players aren't here right nowto comment is because many are unsubbed waiting for that bone that gives them a reason to sub again. Hasn't been a lot of story in a long time just tiny snips, the last decent sized story drop that was more then 5 to 10 mins of story was KoTET. The rest of us are just holding down the fort for them.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Suzsi

[Delani]

Here's my main point. The way that game trending is going, it needs to be easy to jump in and play. People don't want to spend time grinding gear anymore than what 4.0 era had. All these things with tacticals and amplifiers are unnecessary.

 

When your content revolves around doing things to get gear then its not going to attract people. Even WOW is bleeding subs.

 

Worried that pvp is too stale? Then add a new class and class story. That will add variety to game as well as pve content. Doesn't that sound more fun than grinding stuff to find optimal amplifiers?

 

Then you can spend more time on creating better maps, better ranked ideas, better operations, balance, etc

 

New class, I agree, new class story probably not going to happen because it is very pricy.

[Delani]

People can get hours/weeks/months of enjoyment playing around with builds and gear sets (i.e. new class meta), but new content is old and stale after a week. This is also why I'm baffled they never added new classes, subclasses, or specs.

 

"Sure you've done X content 100 times, but have you done it on a Ninja???" <player creates a ninja and does X content 20 more times>

 

EXACTLY, especially since the Necromancer was just introduced in ESO

[Delani]

I'm tired of reading about gear! I'd like details about other parts of the expansion like say companions and story. Something to actually look forward to. Grinding 999 levels isn't it.

 

Do you have to stay subbed for that?

[Delani]

You all need to chill. Seriously.

 

Gearing was painful in this game and they are working to fix it.

They are also working to make it more fun and customizable.

 

This isn't a bad thing.

 

I get this may not be what you guys want to know about, but they spelled out exactly the pattern they would be releasing information on and this was next up. There were no surprises.

 

They also said they wouldn't be commenting on story, preferring to leave that as a surprise for the expansion.

 

So I am not too sure what else you want to hear about the new expansion? It's pretty obvious that gearing is the number one change they are able to talk about and they need the most feedback on as well.

 

Whining about it isn't going to make them change direction as this is a badly needed change. It's happening. Get over it.

 

There will be some other things discussed over the summer that I am sure will more suit the tastes of people in this thread. Just wait for that.

 

Gearing is also important because people who actually play the game and invest into the game will have content for months after which also means subs for months after 6.0 launch. Once those story players get their 5 hour story they are gone after one months sub. From a busness standpoint, im going to invest my money into longevity rather than a quick fast buck.

[Delani]

Personally I play for story as well, but I want stuff to do in between stories, because they take a lot of time to put out, I don't want to have to always grind gear, but I would like to have something to set a goal for. I like how Dantooine is giving me a reason to actually do dailies/weeklies because I want the companion lol. But as far as gear goes, I eventually get bored of that treadmill and quit playing again after a month or two of casual play. I would also like them to try new types of content.

 

Thats were a new class comes into play

[Delani]

Not commenting on story at all is a mistake.

 

It's all story players care about. Gear etc doesn't effect us. Still only have one toon out of 84 with a full set of command t1 gear. The rest don't even have that. It's just not an important part of story play.

 

Play MY way is playing the STORY. This also includes repeating it on whichever characters I want at any time. They CAN discuss it without actually giving spoilers about the actual story.

 

IE:

Will the new content be repeatable at will like the chapters are? Which so far is the only repeatable story content on any toon.

 

Will LIs and existing companions play a role at all? Dates? Letters? Conversation?

 

Will the story for any of the previous flashpoints and Iokath ever be made repeatable?

 

For starters for those 3 questions the answers would give zero spoilers but would give story players more incentive to get excited about going forward. As it stands right now, I wont be doing it when it first comes out, I will wait to see if it's worth doing because they've given me nothing to look forward to or be excited about as a story player.

 

Story is important for my 'Play my own way. The rest has minimal impact on it. Without 1 and 3 how can I even play MY WAY to gear up anyways so why should I care about it or how its going to happen?

 

Do you have to stay subbed to play repeatable chapters?

[Delani]

 

People need elitism. They need goals, and they need those goals to be frustrating in order to be satisfying. Frustration is absolutely necessary for a good mmo.

 

You got a good one liner for that?

YES!!!!!! It also keeps the sub

[KendraP]

YES!!!!!! It also keeps the sub

 

Well 5.10 came close to getting me to drop my sub for the first time in almost 7 years.

[BoySaber]

Gear should exist but not be focus. Character builds should be the builds, gears should just increase stats, gear should not be builds. Let us customize our characters through abilities. Bioware did amazing job with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and you don't need 4 action bars to play different builds, you just need 3 buttons. For Swtor I'd personally be ok with 1 action bar to have active abilities for every class (and 5 passive that don't need action bar), but that we can customize those abilities via character build, not via gear, like the utilities or the upgrades of an ability (like mass effect with branches).

 

Get rid of so many currencies and give us one that we can earn through playing the content, and we can use that one currency to buy gear from vendors. Don't make gear shells to be currency, don't make million more currencies don't complicate things. Galactic Command (Renow?) RNG loot boxes can stay as a "supplementary", a bonus way to earn stuff, open it to preferred at reduced speed progression.

 

Make races matter more than just cosmetics. There are few narrative that address that but its usually human and rest are aliens. At least you can give us some perks, passives and actives that add flavor to gameplay. Social skills are fun to use first 3 times but are just useless after that. We need something better than "animation and skin color" to separate races.

 

New Classes do not require new stories. Every Force and Gun class can have a third branch with its 3 disciplines, with a different play style, weapon, etc. So adding 1 advanced class to every base class would be a way to go, cheaper, does not require new ships and hangars or new story, and still gives us more variety to play. Creating a whole new base class with two advanced classes (and then mirror it for opposite faction) with a new origin stories and updating it through all expansions at this point is just a dream. BioWare locked themselves in the start with this design. All they can do is now make what they have better.

 

Create a feature that allows us to save/name and load builds/loadouts/quickbars/profiles the same/similar way we do with outfit designed.

 

Allow PvP to select what they want to play, just like PvE can (with some indicators which warzone is for example waiting for how many players to join)

 

Release a full expansion for every type of player, because you have them all. Don't do half baked like last time. That means content for every player type

Stories (coop friendly pls and to have difficulty options)

Companion interactions

New Planets

New Heroics and Dailies

New Flashpoints

New Operations

New Warzones

New Stronghold

New PvP GSF map

New content a PvE GSF? Maybe where we get to fly our class ships together with friends in a PvE space mission with GSF gameplay?

New races (I heard Nautolan is coming but what about Echani, Voss, Zeltron, Kel Dor, these should not be difficult to make, you have models you just play with colors).

New mounts that allow us to ride our friends with us too

Edited June 16, 2019 by BoySaber

[JediQuaker]

The Devs haven't answered any questions at all re: story for 6.0 not even on the forums. .

That would seem to indicate to me that the "gear" is done & dusted while they are still "focused" on other content.

 

Again, I would suggest it's the forum posters who are "focused" on gear and gearing.

 

My suggestion would be that you wait until September and see what happens, rather than spending any time now worrying about what "might" happen.

Edited June 16, 2019 by JediQuaker

[Delani]

Gear should exist but not be focus. Character builds should be the builds, gears should just increase stats, gear should not be builds. Let us customize our characters through abilities. Bioware did amazing job with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and you don't need 4 action bars to play different builds, you just need 3 buttons. For Swtor I'd personally be ok with 1 action bar to have active abilities for every class (and 5 passive that don't need action bar), but that we can customize those abilities via character build, not via gear, like the utilities or the upgrades of an ability (like mass effect with branches).

 

Get rid of so many currencies and give us one that we can earn through playing the content, and we can use that one currency to buy gear from vendors. Don't make gear shells to be currency, don't make million more currencies don't complicate things. Galactic Command (Renow?) RNG loot boxes can stay as a "supplementary", a bonus way to earn stuff, open it to preferred at reduced speed progression.

 

Make races matter more than just cosmetics. There are few narrative that address that but its usually human and rest are aliens. At least you can give us some perks, passives and actives that add flavor to gameplay. Social skills are fun to use first 3 times but are just useless after that. We need something better than "animation and skin color" to separate races.

 

New Classes do not require new stories. Every Force and Gun class can have a third branch with its 3 disciplines, with a different play style, weapon, etc. So adding 1 advanced class to every base class would be a way to go, cheaper, does not require new ships and hangars or new story, and still gives us more variety to play. Creating a whole new base class with two advanced classes (and then mirror it for opposite faction) with a new origin stories and updating it through all expansions at this point is just a dream. BioWare locked themselves in the start with this design. All they can do is now make what they have better.

 

Create a feature that allows us to save/name and load builds/loadouts/quickbars/profiles the same/similar way we do with outfit designed.

 

Allow PvP to select what they want to play, just like PvE can (with some indicators which warzone is for example waiting for how many players to join)

 

Release a full expansion for every type of player, because you have them all. Don't do half baked like last time. That means content for every player type

Stories (coop friendly pls and to have difficulty options)

Companion interactions

New Planets

New Heroics and Dailies

New Flashpoints

New Operations

New Warzones

New Stronghold

New PvP GSF map

New content a PvE GSF? Maybe where we get to fly our class ships together with friends in a PvE space mission with GSF gameplay?

New races (I heard Nautolan is coming but what about Echani, Voss, Zeltron, Kel Dor, these should not be difficult to make, you have models you just play with colors).

New mounts that allow us to ride our friends with us too

 

Honestly I agree LOL

[MingusPho]

I think procedural dungeons would be awesome, but lets face it, can't even get decent fps in this game with shadows turned on, nobody left at Bioware seems to have a handle on how to deal with this miasma of an alpha release gaming engine from 2006 gone rogue (Hero)... and we're having a chat about procedural content? I want to laugh but I think imma just cry instead.

 

You're probably right lol. But until they explain exactly what their limitations are I'm going to keep demandin things from them befitting of the star wars ip. Anything with the star wars label should be at the forefront of innovation, quality, you know--hard to compete with lol. To me, swtor is kind of behind.

[Elessara]

Look at WoW. The most frustraing times for WoW gearing was Vanilla and Burning Crusade. Guess which times saw the playerbase increase?

 

Vanilla and Burning Crusade.

 

Wrath of the Lich King saw slight player growth, and that was easier gearing, and from there every expansion it was easier and easier to gear and the player base dwindled and dwindled.

 

Now you have BFA, which has epic gear all over the place, literally given to you, there's no challenges, no community spirit, and people left it in droves.....and now everyone is talking WoW again, but not because of BFA, but because vanilla servers are opening up, and all that challenge and misery is drawing them back in.

 

People need elitism. They need goals, and they need those goals to be frustrating in order to be satisfying. Frustration is absolutely necessary for a good mmo.

 

You got a good one liner for that?

 

 

I like having goals in a game. I do not like to be frustrated. Making something too annoying is a good way to make me not bother or just leave entirely. If I happen to find the reward compelling enough to deal with the frustration, when I achieve said goal I don't find satisfaction or happiness in achieving it. I find relief that the annoyance is over and I'll never have to do it again.

 

As for your WoW example, correlation does not imply causation.

Personally, I only played WoW for a year and that was when Mists of Pandaria was released. I hated it and only played because my friends were playing. My dissatisfaction had nothing to do with the gear grind or lack thereof.

 

Also "frustration" is subjective. What some people find frustrating, others find enjoyable. What some people find challenging, others find easy.

[KoriVash]

I too would like a new class for each faction or even a brand new neutral faction. However I think it will never happen for so many reasons mentioned by some here in this thread and so many other threads. Which really don't need bringing up again as players will believe what they want to believe on the viability on new classes.

[Delani]

I too would like a new class for each faction or even a brand new neutral faction. However I think it will never happen for so many reasons mentioned by some here in this thread and so many other threads. Which really don't need bringing up again as players will believe what they want to believe on the viability on new classes.

 

New faction sould be dope but thats a LOT of work

[Sarlegant]

So life without gear creep... what does that look like.

 

Raiders having a new raid on farm in less than a month, it’s just mechanics. But, nothing to farm, raids die waiting for new content. It’s all story mode. You know, Call of Duty.