Scaling Tech in Group Content Feedback

[ZionHalcyon]

Thanks, my raid group will hop onto the PTS later today.

 

However, I'm not sure what to make of the intended difficulties:

 

First of all, operations were always intended to be tuned this way but your post reads like the devs have special plans for Onslaught specifically.

 

Second of all, it doesn't address the following two points, which are IMO the most pressing when it comes to operations balance:

• What about the gap between difficulties? Since 4.0, the normal leveling content has become so easy that there was been a huge learning curve when entering SM operations, which you "fixed" by nerfing the SM operations until there were barely any mechanics left.
  We are now left in a situation where new players can complete a complete SM operation but they are overwhelmed by all the VM because they learn none of the mechanics in SM. In addition, the newer VM operations (Rav/ToS/GftM/Mono/Queen) are tuned much more difficult than the older VM operations.
  Also, most of the veteran players have moved all their raid time outside of raid groups to MM ops, whereas during 2.X/3.X they would PuG VM ops, which allowed new players to be carried through the content and learn from the more experienced players.
  
• What about the differences in operations from the same tier? (e.g. EV vs. GftM) Your post makes it sound like they will all be tuned identically but this was never the case in SWTOR, and will never be the case without rebalancing all bosses from scratch.
  At least pre-3.0, there was not that big of a difference between the easiest operation (EV) and the hardest operation (S&V/DF/DP). But all of the newer ops (Rav/ToS/Mono/GftM) have added in difficulty on top, which means that the difference in difficulty of two VM ops has never been greater. The result is that e.g. EV VM is easier than GftM SM which should not be possible according to your plans for SM/VM/MM.
  Personally, I don't think all operations from the same difficulty tier should be scaled identically. It is good to have some progression from easier SM ops to harder SM ops, to easier VM ops to harder VM ops, especially because of the increased distance between SM and VM.
  Unfortunately, this progression is not apparent in the game. If you are a new player and look at Activity Finder, there is only one SM ops. Without asking other players, you won't know if today is an easy or a harder operation. My suggestion would be to add another SM operation to Activity Finder, so that there'll be a rotation between both the easier SM ops (EV/KP/EC/TFB/S&V) and the harder SM ops (DF/DP/Rav/ToS/GftM). I wouldn't worry about thinning the population too much; most players form SM ops on fleet and not through Activity Finder, and having two options might actually increase the amount of operation players. Because right now, everyone is running SM ops when EV is in the rotation but the fleet is awfully quiet when it's GftM.
  

 

Anyway, that's my feedback for now. I'll test the scaling with my raid group later.

It would be great to see some improvements but operation scaling has been getting steadily worse since 3.0 so I don't have high hopes that you are truly committed to improving it.

 

Don't try to read between the lines too much. Its pretty simple. Many players asked for context , and received it.

 

And you can say everyone understood that to be the case "so why say it again", but you're wrong. There are people who want Story mode to be Nightmare difficulty. There are people who want Flashpoints soloable, and still others who want Veteran to be as hard as nightmare ops. If there isn't a stated baseline, then we are subject to people's whims, and the feedback then becomes less valuable.

[TrigPt]

Ran through veteran Hammer Station solo again without a companion and it was noticeably more difficult than before. I did think that the trash mobs were harder than the bosses, which to some extent has always been the case with this flashpoint.

[GgGKanko]

Hey there,

we just group up for after patch-Testing Karagga with 5/6 people. HM

 

Bonetrash:

Numbers of 5 Dps Player (2 Sorc, 1 Sniper, 1 Mara, 1 PT ( 2.370dps) ) | Healer is Sorc

- Just HM

Parser:

https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-8bb53a-1564768988.png.html

- Adds were dying instandly

 

2nd Boss:

- Same setup as first one

Parser:

https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-a61bf1-1564769341.png.html

- PT Dps just broken

 

3rd Boss:

- Same setup

Parser:

https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-e8b4dd-1564769479.png.html

- no tank just Dps

 

4th Boss:

Parser:

https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-da252c-1564769558.png.html

- we used to a tank here, 2 systems Player

 

5th Boss:

- Still 6 men, no movement just dpsing, PT died btw. Tank used

Parser:

https://www.bilder-upload.eu/bild-b263a5-1564769714.png.html

 

________________________________________________________________________________

That wasnt a challange for raiding but its still Hardmode.

The amout of Dps is pretty close in a standart dummy parse like Karraga is.

Probly u dont need a tank 4 it with a full setup group of 8 men.

Combination of Healing and Dtps are not even a problem.

Some funny in the raidframe about 95% health of 100%.

Critical rating has to be decreased too a bit.

 

We go a head and doing Explosive Conflict Nim.

Edited August 2, 2019 by GgGKanko

[kerplunkcatt]

Alright, here goes.

 

During this phase of the PTS, as per BW recommendation, I was able to do an Eternity Vault, Karaga's Palace, and Hammer Station. Here are my thoughts on all of those.

 

Eternity Vault:

 

Admittedly I was only able to do this one on SM, but I feel that is an adequate gauge on where that mode is now. Since the PTS, I've done this twice, once with a PUG on fleet which went about as well as live. The content was easy, I was never at risk of dying, etc. Per Eric's post I think this is the intention. For people that haven't seen the content before to be challenged a little while also not being an hours-long grind.

 

The issue is with the other time that I did it. A few members of my guild and I went in there with the intention of testing a few of the tacticles and what not to fight the first boss. What's interesting about this is the fact that there were only four of us, 1 tank and 3 DPS and we were still able to kill the first boss with basically no off-healing.

 

I know that we want this content to be accessible by nearly everyone, but this feels as though it has gone way too far in that direction. There is almost no difficulty for that first boss. Granted, I don't think we could have done the entire op like that, but I think it a fair indictment on the difficulty that we were able to do the first boss in an operation with half the requisite people, and with no dedicated healer.

 

This sentiment carries over to KP, but I was unable to test this with the guild. My only experience in there was with a PUG that was able to clear it in just under 40 minutes.

 

I will say that this is slightly biased because the folks that are hopping on to test are likely to be folks that have done/seen all the content before, so it may play over differently given enough people of casual interest, but my point stands. I feel it is a bit easy on that front.

 

Hammer Station:

 

Now, in light of the operations that I ran we were looking to really push this, so we set it on Master mode...... With just two of us. Myself on a sniper running Engineering, and a guildmate on a Jugg Tank, as well as two level 1 2V-R8 companions set to heal. We then proceeded to roll through the entire flashpoint with really no difficulty at all except for the last boss, and that's just because companions stood in stupid and died very quickly due to their HP being so low.

 

Per Eric's post, this is meant to be content intended for a group of coordinated, skilled players. Now, unless 2V is holding out on me for being in a Nightmare progression team, I don't think this was the case. I know that this was only a FP, but this was the second bit of content on the PTS that we were able to accomplish with half the number of people than are recommended, not to mention set to the hardest difficulty that we could set it to.

 

In conclusion, I think the difficulty of each mode needs to go up, though, to be fair, I didn't get a chance to do HM ops, and didn't test the HM Hammer Station.

 

Thanks for reading this, and I do think that changing scaling is a great idea for future content. Just giving my honest feedback.

 

Disclaimer: These tests were all done prior to the patch on 8/2/19. Disregard if things have been fixed.

Edited August 2, 2019 by kerplunkcatt

[GgGKanko]

Quick Explosiv Conflict NIM/ MM...

__________

 

its so easy, to easy

no encounter just a meme i would say

less dtps to much dps, no healing needed in mostly parts of the operation.

 

[xSssoulx]

Thanks, my raid group will hop onto the PTS later today.

 

However, I'm not sure what to make of the intended difficulties:

 

First of all, operations were always intended to be tuned this way but your post reads like the devs have special plans for Onslaught specifically.

 

Second of all, it doesn't address the following two points, which are IMO the most pressing when it comes to operations balance:

• What about the gap between difficulties? Since 4.0, the normal leveling content has become so easy that there was been a huge learning curve when entering SM operations, which you "fixed" by nerfing the SM operations until there were barely any mechanics left.
  We are now left in a situation where new players can complete a complete SM operation but they are overwhelmed by all the VM because they learn none of the mechanics in SM. In addition, the newer VM operations (Rav/ToS/GftM/Mono/Queen) are tuned much more difficult than the older VM operations.
  Also, most of the veteran players have moved all their raid time outside of raid groups to MM ops, whereas during 2.X/3.X they would PuG VM ops, which allowed new players to be carried through the content and learn from the more experienced players.
  
• What about the differences in operations from the same tier? (e.g. EV vs. GftM) Your post makes it sound like they will all be tuned identically but this was never the case in SWTOR, and will never be the case without rebalancing all bosses from scratch.
  At least pre-3.0, there was not that big of a difference between the easiest operation (EV) and the hardest operation (S&V/DF/DP). But all of the newer ops (Rav/ToS/Mono/GftM) have added in difficulty on top, which means that the difference in difficulty of two VM ops has never been greater. The result is that e.g. EV VM is easier than GftM SM which should not be possible according to your plans for SM/VM/MM.
  Personally, I don't think all operations from the same difficulty tier should be scaled identically. It is good to have some progression from easier SM ops to harder SM ops, to easier VM ops to harder VM ops, especially because of the increased distance between SM and VM.
  Unfortunately, this progression is not apparent in the game. If you are a new player and look at Activity Finder, there is only one SM ops. Without asking other players, you won't know if today is an easy or a harder operation. My suggestion would be to add another SM operation to Activity Finder, so that there'll be a rotation between both the easier SM ops (EV/KP/EC/TFB/S&V) and the harder SM ops (DF/DP/Rav/ToS/GftM). I wouldn't worry about thinning the population too much; most players form SM ops on fleet and not through Activity Finder, and having two options might actually increase the amount of operation players. Because right now, everyone is running SM ops when EV is in the rotation but the fleet is awfully quiet when it's GftM.
  

 

Anyway, that's my feedback for now. I'll test the scaling with my raid group later.

It would be great to see some improvements but operation scaling has been getting steadily worse since 3.0 so I don't have high hopes that you are truly committed to improving it.

 

This, is there a like button or some sign sheet so devs looks at it little more and we can more of their thinking about operations difficulty

[AwesomeTacoCat]

Thanks, my raid group will hop onto the PTS later today.

 

However, I'm not sure what to make of the intended difficulties:

 

First of all, operations were always intended to be tuned this way but your post reads like the devs have special plans for Onslaught specifically.

 

Second of all, it doesn't address the following two points, which are IMO the most pressing when it comes to operations balance:

• What about the gap between difficulties? Since 4.0, the normal leveling content has become so easy that there was been a huge learning curve when entering SM operations, which you "fixed" by nerfing the SM operations until there were barely any mechanics left.
  We are now left in a situation where new players can complete a complete SM operation but they are overwhelmed by all the VM because they learn none of the mechanics in SM. In addition, the newer VM operations (Rav/ToS/GftM/Mono/Queen) are tuned much more difficult than the older VM operations.
  Also, most of the veteran players have moved all their raid time outside of raid groups to MM ops, whereas during 2.X/3.X they would PuG VM ops, which allowed new players to be carried through the content and learn from the more experienced players.
  
• What about the differences in operations from the same tier? (e.g. EV vs. GftM) Your post makes it sound like they will all be tuned identically but this was never the case in SWTOR, and will never be the case without rebalancing all bosses from scratch.
  At least pre-3.0, there was not that big of a difference between the easiest operation (EV) and the hardest operation (S&V/DF/DP). But all of the newer ops (Rav/ToS/Mono/GftM) have added in difficulty on top, which means that the difference in difficulty of two VM ops has never been greater. The result is that e.g. EV VM is easier than GftM SM which should not be possible according to your plans for SM/VM/MM.
  Personally, I don't think all operations from the same difficulty tier should be scaled identically. It is good to have some progression from easier SM ops to harder SM ops, to easier VM ops to harder VM ops, especially because of the increased distance between SM and VM.
  Unfortunately, this progression is not apparent in the game. If you are a new player and look at Activity Finder, there is only one SM ops. Without asking other players, you won't know if today is an easy or a harder operation. My suggestion would be to add another SM operation to Activity Finder, so that there'll be a rotation between both the easier SM ops (EV/KP/EC/TFB/S&V) and the harder SM ops (DF/DP/Rav/ToS/GftM). I wouldn't worry about thinning the population too much; most players form SM ops on fleet and not through Activity Finder, and having two options might actually increase the amount of operation players. Because right now, everyone is running SM ops when EV is in the rotation but the fleet is awfully quiet when it's GftM.
  

 

Anyway, that's my feedback for now. I'll test the scaling with my raid group later.

It would be great to see some improvements but operation scaling has been getting steadily worse since 3.0 so I don't have high hopes that you are truly committed to improving it.

 

Agreed this is an excellent post.

 

As far as veteran mode becoming irrelevant, I think this occurred due to gearing changes. Post Ossus, there’s literally no point in doing veteran mode ops for gear. NiM ops are still relevant because of components, but this is less important because even in the absence of components people would still do NiM ops because they’re fun.

 

This idea holds to a lesser extent prior to Ossus - the best way to gear was do like EV/KP HM for all the gear available from those operations, do a couple HMs for relics/implants/head and then just do NiM for components to get BiS. So this system doesn’t render veteran mode entirely pointless, but pretty close to pointless.

 

So, if gear progression is based around ops, people will start gearing from operations again, bringing veteran mode operations back into relevance. This will mean more people pugging VM ops, which I think is probably good for the community.

[jambalayabungee]

EV sm felt too easy, but its more the way a sm should be. It feels the way we would breeze through it with a group of 258 in live. Havent tried HM yet.

 

The health of the group was all wrong, Tank was a 110%, dps at 95%, healers at 100%. As an healer having the habit to top ppl off , it bugged me to no end lol .

 

Not sure why the ops should be level locked exactly, Im not sure how I feel about that. Maybe if its just the sm ops?

I know its superfical and psychological, but passing from 18k dps to ... 1,7k dps....its sad lol. sure sucks for parsing, to find a good target dps / hps to aim for. To test sets and abilities, we are using dummy parsing, but we cant compare how they fare in a live situation because the numbers are all off .

Im sure Im not alone in thinking thats kindof lack luster. Big numbers are something mmo players like, its a fact I guess if its working like that in the future we will get used to it but, yeah. The people in the group I was seemed to have a similar reaction lol.

[phalczen]

I mean Jerba's argument is identical to what goes on now with MM Blood Hunt/Battle of Rishi, MM Umbara/Copero/Nathema, even Kaon/LI to some degree. I'm sure Jerba recalls this but when Group Finder first came out there was precisely a division between tier 1 difficulty group content and tier 2. Kaon/LI for example were the first "Tier 2" flashpoints. I think they even had Explosive Conflict in tier 2 with EV/KP in tier 1, since EC came out around the same time as Kaon/LI.

 

In a philosophical sense, its not too dissimilar to the argument about longer queue times for better pvp matchmaking versus fast queue pops. It all comes down to what are the Dev goals. You can't really have an Activity Finder that includes everything, if you're going to delineate difficulty tiers. And you can't delineate the tiers without affecting options on Activity Finder, because there won't be enough operations at some tiers to have something available every day of the week and/or doesn't run up against the weekly boss lockout.

 

I'm fine either way, I like having the mix of easily farmed ops and challenging ones, but I've been playing since the beginning. By reading most of the player feedback, it seems like the devs were more concerned with the notion of level 50s having too hard of a time in the "newer" ops (say, Ravagers onward) if they simply scaled the op to 75 and adjusted Bolster accordingly, compared to ops originally designed for fresh 50s. But should 50 really be considered the "Endgame" now? There is a lot of story content from that point onward, and honestly you're not going to be able to do most Endgame content without subscribing anyway which means you'll automatically have access to story content through 75. Is it necessary, in this stage of the game, with as fast as leveling is, for players either on new alts or brand new players joining veteran friends, to be able to join ops with their friends from 50 onward? Like is being able to bring your inexperienced friends or a guildmate's underleveled alts with you the biggest consideration here? If that's the big driving factor we should know.

[captainwesson]

EV sm felt too easy, but its more the way a sm should be. It feels the way we would breeze through it with a group of 258 in live. Havent tried HM yet.

 

The health of the group was all wrong, Tank was a 110%, dps at 95%, healers at 100%. As an healer having the habit to top ppl off , it bugged me to no end lol .

 

Not sure why the ops should be level locked exactly, Im not sure how I feel about that. Maybe if its just the sm ops?

I know its superfical and psychological, but passing from 18k dps to ... 1,7k dps....its sad lol. sure sucks for parsing, to find a good target dps / hps to aim for. To test sets and abilities, we are using dummy parsing, but we cant compare how they fare in a live situation because the numbers are all off .

Im sure Im not alone in thinking thats kindof lack luster. Big numbers are something mmo players like, its a fact I guess if its working like that in the future we will get used to it but, yeah. The people in the group I was seemed to have a similar reaction lol.

 

THIS is actually huge here. Devs please listen: a lot of us are in raid groups and are also teaching newer players how to beat tank, heal, and dps. When we parse as a group, it’s not for bragging rights, it tells us TONS about what we need to help them with! Are they taking too much damage during a fight? Are they hitting the target dps that others are? Is the healing too weak? What kind of threat are they generating? Are they using threat drops properly when needed?

 

Without seeing the same numbers between testing dummy and live, it’s a lot harder for us to train, and to tell how much dps someone should be doing. Or heck, if they need a better rotation. It’s like saying, you should be doing 18k dps on this dummy here, and on this specific fight you should do 2k dps. That’s dumb and very confusing.

 

Please consider this as well when looking at your scaling down.

[theedgecrushr]

If stats are capped why do I want better gear then I have now. Or am I going to need 1800 acc to be at 110% acc in a lvl 50 op? If this new gearing system is about customising, wouldn't a cap on stats kill high mastery, high alacirty, high power, high endurance ex builds. New set bounuses that give you %stat increases would be pointless except for 1 op Edited August 3, 2019 by theedgecrushr

[Iymurra]

The way it currently functions, stat caps cap Mastery & Power (and weapon damage...etc) but do not affect the % you have on tertiary stats (accuracy, crit, alacrity) so you still want to gear to % values on Tertiary and mastery/power just comes with the territory.

 

I don't know if the PTS has retained that exact functionality but I can go check.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Iymurra

[ottffsse]

KP Hm

 

First Boss in KP hm I think is all right felt about right...the subsequent bosses felt a tad on the easy side but not too much....if everything there could use a 10% increase in difficulty probably be pretty good for starter hm after ev.

Mobs are on the easy side though compared to the bosses that are almost right as mentioned above.

[cibacrome]

Just did KP HM, 7 manned and solo heal most of it, felt way too easy. Probably same % too easy as EV SM felt. Story Heroics are harder than HM ops now, i'm guessing that's not the goal hehe.

[theedgecrushr]

just did kp HM 2k DPS wooot that's fun. 7 maned solo healed solo tanked too. sooo there's that. If thy're tweeking this any way tweek it on lvl. Edited August 3, 2019 by theedgecrushr

[Tiranea]

Did MM Hammer Station with some guildies tonight and it felt about right, similar to live. Obviously it's a bit hard to judge current gear levels vs. what we're given on the PTS, but basically it felt easy enough when we were co-ordinated, trash still nearly killed you as a non-tank if you pulled stupidly, and the Asteroid Beast wiped us when we were goofing off too much instead of focusing on the fight. As it should be.

[Zinadu]

The way it currently functions, stat caps cap Mastery & Power (and weapon damage...etc) but do not affect the % you have on tertiary stats (accuracy, crit, alacrity) so you still want to gear to % values on Tertiary and mastery/power just comes with the territory.

 

I don't know if the PTS has retained that exact functionality but I can go check.

 

This right here is an issue in my opinion.

 

If you scale only mastery and power down then you would want to optimize gear down for any op that isn't dxun. If you want to say get masks from hateful to make it easier you would make sure that instead of using power augments if that is what would give you better returnees in non sync'd ops; since they'll be hard capped anyway you grab a set of gear and stack either alacrity or crit because it will give you better gains in the old ops which will be 90% of them with the level cap.

 

While I don't think a static difficulty cap on the older NiM's is necessarily bad you also wont get any kind of scaling like you do now where the 258 gear makes people that would have struggled harder in NiM get to actually progress and clear ops in it.

 

The likely outcome of level syncing the ops you will get what you have now where NiM gods is so so much harder than any of the other ops because it will have to be scaled against the best gear and all the old ops will have to be easier because the scaling is asymmetric.

 

The other part is it will likely push for any op that is not Dxun to be preferable to crit heavy builds to push damage numbers up since it is the stat that will most have an effect if power and mastery can't get higher especially for fights with burst windows.

 

The other downside is trying to get people to learn what is good enough DPS will be extremely hard. Like if your doing 20k on live at 75 is that going to be good enough scaled to 50 or how about lvl 55 or 60 or 70. And what will those values need to be around for each tier of raid. I think that will make it harder for people that are new to raiding or inexperienced to get into and progress through the easier HM's and NiM's.

 

While its probably easier to scale down the raids for the dev teams I don't think it would be particularly better for the game over all.

[jambalayabungee]

THIS is actually huge here. Devs please listen: a lot of us are in raid groups and are also teaching newer players how to beat tank, heal, and dps. When we parse as a group, it’s not for bragging rights, it tells us TONS about what we need to help them with! Are they taking too much damage during a fight? Are they hitting the target dps that others are? Is the healing too weak? What kind of threat are they generating? Are they using threat drops properly when needed?

 

Without seeing the same numbers between testing dummy and live, it’s a lot harder for us to train, and to tell how much dps someone should be doing. Or heck, if they need a better rotation. It’s like saying, you should be doing 18k dps on this dummy here, and on this specific fight you should do 2k dps. That’s dumb and very confusing.

 

Please consider this as well when looking at your scaling down.

We , as players, see it that way, and its a valid frustration, although somebody explained to me than to achieve a better balance, the level locking might be necessary .

Unfortunately i cant explain it in as much depth as they did, but it had to do with the balance between the current health pool being bigger than before, and therefore the dps and hps being bigger (because in pvp you need to be able to kill players, hence the dps/hps increase) versus how the damage used to be tuned in these older ops, when people had smaller health pools and the dps/hps wasnt that disproportionate.

(if I resumed that wrong, please correct me ! )

Anyway. I apologize if I jumped on my high horses here, I can understand there is more than meet the eye and if the level locking help reestablish the balance in ops, i can live with my numbers inconvenience

 

Seems like its bringing other more important inconveniences tho, with mastery and power being caped. Some ppl pointed out that mastery and power relics, as power adrenals, stats bonuses and other abilities related boost (15% mastery on the new Tactical Overdrive ability?) might be made irrelevant in ops if its the case. Hope they will find a way around that

[Iymurra]

Thats a real good point actually, whether the relics and the like have an impact in stat locked content. It would completely negate the use of some adrenals for older content which would either make the content harder than it necessarily needs to be or would be adjusted to give a slightly higher cap than what was necessarily intended making the content a little more trivial while the gearing equally pointless.

 

Edit: Just jumped into the synced Hammer Station solo to test it out. Anything that boosts Mastery, Endurance or Power by increasing the stat rating does not function while synced. So any Relics that affect either Mastery, Endurance or Power are non-functional while inside a synced instance. The only reason to have gear equipped is to maintain your tertiary stat % (alacrity, accuracy & crit). Any abilities which affect stat % do still function though, so things like Stim Boost continues to function in its normal manner and the new Tactical Overdrive (15% mastery increase) will increase your damage and healing appropriately.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Iymurra
Tested

[captainwesson]

There are lots of good points here, both for and against the level sync. It’s leaves me with another point though:

 

The whole point for any level increase and gear increase is to make our toons be and feel more powerful, yes? So if you are taking all that work you just did, and scaling it down for every Op except 1....why even do it at all then? It’s kind of undoing everything you just created.

 

And I do hear some saying that it would probably be a lot harder for the devs to scale the ops up by that significant amount, rather than scale us down. But that leads to another question...why did they increase our health and damage by double then?? It’s silliness at best, why not simply give a small increase, and then give the same small bump to the ops? But no, let’s make a HUGE increase to what players have and do, but scale it all back at the same time. Wut?

Edited August 4, 2019 by captainwesson

[Darev]

When the "veteran" flashpoints are easier than the Black Hole heroic (to solo) there's a problem.

 

I'm going to obviously echo what others have stated..

I tried Hammer Station vet mode solo on an Arsenal Powertech using gear from the generic set bonus vendor.

I used Aric Jordan leveled up to 42 (who sucks as a healer).

I was able to run through no problem at all.

I didn't have to plan anything. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to worry about rotations.

I did have to move him out of the circles of doom on the last boss...that was it.

 

My first thought was maybe if they make it so the level of your toon matches the level of the mobs...maybe that would balance it out.

Then I tried Boarding Party.

Where the level of your toon DOES match the level of the mobs.

 

Nope, still too easy. The third row of mobs in the very first room did almost kill me, but that was only because the NPC mobs didn't attack (it's been awhile since I've run it). I did it up to, and including, the first boss. it's too easy.

 

it's story mode.

 

and honestly, is there even going to be a point to doing them at "veteran" mode at all now?

The mobs are reduced in level so the mats are low level - farming for level 10 mats is out now.

I didn't see anything great for loot, even from the bosses. Maybe it's not implemented yet on PTS?

 

Now, I'm under the presumption that you want it to match the CURRENT vet mode on Live servers as far as difficulty goes. If you do, you're not there. I'd say you're 50% of the way there.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Darev

[Jyroshi]

I run Hammerstation and for comparision Mando Raiders with 2 members of my raidgroup after fridays patch, both FP in Mastermode. All of us on their main classes we are raiding Nim Ops with on live at the moment, with full 306 equip including augments and so on - if that matters for lvl sync (19 stacks of the item rating adjustment buff).

Me as sin tank, the other as sorc dps and operative heal.

First FP (Hammerstation) we got an additional sorc dps by groupfinder, second (Mandalorian raiders) we run with an lvl 1 companion.

 

I can only tell from the tank perspective, but it felt very hard - very similar to the time when it first came out as lvl 55 hardmode FP and we run it with minimum gear (which is fine).

I felt like my damage taken was insanly high (but feeling and knowing are 2 different things so I tried to dive deeper in it)

Entering the FP phase with the item sync alone - the base damage reduction goes down by 7% (additionally to having less dmg reduction than on live server - even with the 306 equip).

Resulting in DTPS numbers which are equal or even higher than my dtps in nearly all of the Nim Op boss fights on current live - additionally the hitpoints are lowered to less than the amount of todays hitpoints on live: which pretty much explains why it feels so bad and "spiky"

 

to provide some numbers - dtps

Hammerstation

Boss1: 4287

Bonus Boss: 4271

Boss2: 3395

Endboss: 3165

 

compare to Mando Raiders (even it was not mentioned as already "scaled" we got the same item rating adjustment buff like in Hammerstation):

Boss1: 2271

Boss2: 4403

Bonus-Boss: 5158

Endboss: 5188

ok, here for the first boss you have to considder other incoming group dmg as well. The Bonus-boss was on the harder side but manageable. The endboss was a bit overtuned in my opionion.

 

In my opinion it fills a bit the gap in the learning curve which Jerba mentions. As long as the FPs are this hard, it's some content where a player can learn to play a class and do some appropriate number in dps or healing.

[theedgecrushr]

When the "veteran" flashpoints are easier than the Black Hole heroic (to solo) there's a problem.

 

I'm going to obviously echo what others have stated..

I tried Hammer Station vet mode solo on an Arsenal Powertech using gear from the generic set bonus vendor. /QUOTE]

 

Well we all know how op arsenal powertechs are

[fire-breath]

I agree with the comment that Hammerstation is decently hard now. I went in with 3 members of our nim team and it was definitely not a cake walk. It wasn't hard either. Except maybe the bonus boss which got better once I swapped to a better suited setbonus.

 

However ..........

We got a case of naked bolster again eric ..... All scenarios are Hammerstation

 

Scenario 1 - Standing outside of instance fully geared, when inside I keep my keep gear on

Amount of stacks = 18

Mastery = 12445 --> 8425

Endurance = 13450 --> 8518

Power = 0 --> 0

Defense = 7382 --> 7382

Shield = 5801 --> 5801

 

 

Scenario 2 - Standing outside of instance --> removing all my gear --> entering instance --> while inside re equipping all gear

Amount of stacks = 0

Mastery = 12445 --> 7759

Endurance = 13450 --> 7846

Power = 0 --> 3569

Defense = 7382 --> 7382

Shield = 5801 --> 5801

In short, I lost about 650 mastery and 675 endurance while I gain 3,5k power. Not a bad trade off I would say???

 

FYI. This tactic worked up to 261 rating

 

 

Scenario 3 - Standing outside of instance  removing one gear item + entering instance + while inside re equipping all gear

Amount of stacks = 7

Mastery = 12445 --> 8018

Endurance = 13450 --> 8107

Power = 0 --> 0

Defense = 7382 --> 7382

Shield = 5801 --> 5801

 

This is more per information that bolster is broken. This is a negative change which won't be used by any sensible person. It does indicate though that SOMETHING is broken ....

 

 

Just a quick test with my sorc - entering instance without any gear and equipping it inside

mastery 11861 --> 7759

end 13751 -->7472

power 7180 --> 3569 (I guess you assume a base of 3569 power?)

crit 2866 --> 2866

alac 440 -->440

acc 1293 -->1293

 

Again but now entering fully geared as i'm supposed to do.

mastery 11861 --> 8462

end 13751 --> 8182

power 7180 --> 3908 (I guess you assume a base of 3569 power?)

crit 2866 --> 2866

alac 440 -->440

acc 1293 -->1293

 

Result: still broken but not in an exploitable way.

[Jerba]

With my raid group, we ran the following content:

• EV SM: 1st boss
  
• EV VM: full run
  
• GftM VM/MM: 1st boss
  
• EC MM: bosses 1-2
  
• Hammer Station MM
  

 

The first thing we noticed was that we had different HP based on difficulty (SM: 14k, VM: 17k, MM: 21k). I don't really understand the point behind that; shouldn't players have the same stats in all difficulties?

 

Other than that, it is hard to give specific feedback. Certain boss abilities felt very easy while others felt too overpowered. So I can't say that the level locking made the content too easy or too difficult, it is just too unbalanced to give good feedback. Some observations:

• Trash mobs and adds have very little HP, while bosses appear to have the correct HP. For trash mobs this is fine IMO; those should not take a long time to kill, but adds in boss fights must remain at the same TTL or else the fights are unbalanced. Specifically, the pylon puzzle in EV VM felt even more facerollish than on live.
  
• GftM was at level 70 even though it was set to level 75 in the previous PTS patch. Players remained at level 75 though; I assume you scaled the mobs but did not yet add level lock in? Tyth was much easier when you are 5 levels above but still a challenge.
  
• We killed Zorn & Toth MM on our second try despite making tons of mistakes, like not cleansing fast enough, taking too much cleave damage, killing one boss while the other was at 60%, playing with 3 melees. If the goal behind level lock is to have the content tuned like after release, it is too easy.
  I do think there should be some "easier" MM bosses so that VM players can get a foot into MM content without hitting a wall. So if the later MM bosses/ops are tuned harder I guess it's fine that the first MM boss is easy.
  
• We wiped for an hour on the tanks, mainly because players killed the shield with AoE or did not deal with Double Destruction correctly. And we can confirm that the mechanics are very punishing when you mess up. So I'd say that the tanks are tuned correctly but they still felt easier than on the live servers.
  
• Hammer Station MM felt somewhat challenging; we were all very tired and wiped on the bonus boss and the final boss. But like I wrote above, not everything is overpowered; some abilities deal too much damage while other abilities deal too little damage. So I can't tell if the flashpoint is tuned correctly or not.
  

 

The health of the group was all wrong, Tank was a 110%, dps at 95%, healers at 100%. As an healer having the habit to top ppl off , it bugged me to no end lol .

We noticed the same issue.

This type of bug (where highest HP is different from the maximum HP shown in UI) is not new. It also happens when you are in a group and someone travels to a low-level planet. When you are close to them, the UI is correct but if you are too far away or on a different planet, then they'll show up as something like 20k of 180k HP even though they are at full health, but the UI still calculates the percentage based on their level 70 HP.

 

I know its superfical and psychological, but passing from 18k dps to ... 1,7k dps....its sad lol. sure sucks for parsing, to find a good target dps / hps to aim for. To test sets and abilities, we are using dummy parsing, but we cant compare how they fare in a live situation because the numbers are all off .

I've had the same thoughts. Even when running older/easier content, it is nice being able to look at a parse and seeing how well you did. With level locking, this is no longer possible since you'd have to know the average DPS values at level 50/55/60/65/70/75, which is too much to remember.

However, I don't see a solution that does not get rid of entirely. I guess it is not gamebreaking since you can still compare your DPS to the other players in the group and see if you did better or worse than them, and StarParse should be able to calculate the percentiles correctly as long as everyone is level locked.

 

Finally, we noticed that the debuff tooltips are not refreshing. I.e. if you place your mouse over a debuff, the tooltip is not counting down the time; it stays at whatever duration was left when you opened the tooltip.