Is change of difficulty confirmed?

[americanaussie]

Gosh I hope it's not too difficult. I managed kotet fine and the Vaylin fight fine but the newer content has been a bit tricky (was fine on my operative but the health bar got a workout on my Jedi Knight). I'm terrified of taking my sniper through everything after being melee for so long.

 

I don't want to gear grind for story content. I also don't want a fight too challenging that I can't do it. I remembered I struggled in one that I asked them for tips and they didn't have much to offer. (Boss Fights are a big secret)

 

In the end, I can only play story due to high ping so if I can't do it because my 240 gear isn't good enough then I'll just quit and watch the cutscenes on YouTube. I'm done gear grinding. I just want to play through the content. A little challenge is fun, but constantly dying is not.

 

BTW I thought we did have SM Veteran MM ? Keep the real hard stuff for people that want it. I don't.

[casirabit]

I don't see it as people are complaining so much about the difficult is that even when they do report the problems BW tends to ignore what they say and not make changes. I was on PTS and there were some things even for me (and I am one from launch) that was a bit overtuned. Sometimes it does seem that BW is trying to force people into grouping and that is not going to happen. They are going to wind up leaving and that hurts everyone.

 

I will group with a selective group. I am not a fan of using LFG as I prefer to play with people I know and trust. Group pickups sorry I been through too many of those that I will not do them ever again except under the condition we only need 1 and the rest are made up from my guild.

 

I just hoped they listened this time. Past history shows it takes them a long time to listen to what people say and this time we may not have that time. We really can't afford a lot of people quitting anymore.

[IoNonSoEVero]

Exactly this ^^

 

Which is both reasonable and logical. And which has been suggested to Bioware by just about anyone who has asked for the vanilla content to be made harder again.

 

No reasonable person wants to ruin another players fun or make it so they can’t play the game the way they enjoy it.

The above solution is the one that accomodate everyone.

 

But everytime I’ve suggested this in the past, I’ve been attacked by some people (who are actually in this thread) stating they don’t want this because then everyone is seperate and it doesn’t feel like an MMO.

Their solution fo people who want difficult content always comes back to taking your gear off or putting your comp on passive. Which isn’t how the game was designed and it’s not reasonable to expect players to do so.

 

It comes back to what’s fair. You can’t please everyone, but you can accomodate most by having a system like the one batwar has suggested.

We already have a pvp instance. Why can’t we just have a SM, veteran and MM instance too? Or at the very least, have a SM and Veteran/HM instance.

 

I think the issue is probably a technical and cost one that is stopping them.

 

It's all right, Trixie, you can say my name. I'm not Voldemort.

 

You know what would probably happen with easy/MM instances? MM players would come into the easy instances, knowing the players there are slower/weaker, to either grief them by getting in the way of their play or to ninja objectives. Or Bioware would crowd all the easy players into just one instance, leaving it way overpopulated and difficult to get anything done.

 

I'd certainly prefer that to ruining the game for everyone by making it harder, but please don't act like it would be a perfect solution for everyone. It wouldn't and it would likely lead to SM players having trouble getting much done. Of course if the entire area is personally instanced like the KOTFE chapters it could work, but then we get complaints OH NOES ITS NOT OPEN WORRRRLD...from the same people who hated that but still want higher difficulty.

 

They could still technically do that - the big boss fights in vanilla story are all in instanced areas, and they could perhaps let you set those specific personal areas to be MM or whatever. But I'm sure people would complain because they want every mob they meet on the road to take 20 minutes to kill and want everyone to have that same "challenge."

 

Oh, and as for testing? It took me a week to download the game. Is Bioware going to reimburse me the week of my sub I'd lose by downloading the PTS, since you can't play while it's downloading? I was actually looking over a few people's shoulders in the earlier builds, but it's pointless. They're not listening (see crafting and RNG) and they don't care. I doubt they'll do anything when 6.0 goes live other than flail around on the largest issues once the playerbase gets wind of the changes and hemorrhages again. Not to mention that since the game's about to become unplayable, I'd like to actually play it while I can. Yeah, it's selfish, but after hearing people here rag on solo/story players for YEARS, and with my sub running out...frankly, I don't give a damn.

Edited October 10, 2019 by IoNonSoEVero

[TrixxieTriss]

It's all right, Trixie, you can say my name. I'm not Voldemort.

 

You know what would probably happen with easy/MM instances? MM players would come into the easy instances, knowing the players there are slower/weaker, to either grief them by getting in the way of their play or to ninja objectives. Or Bioware would crowd all the easy players into just one instance, leaving it way overpopulated and difficult to get anything done.

 

I'd certainly prefer that to ruining the game for everyone by making it harder, but please don't act like it would be a perfect solution for everyone. It wouldn't and it would likely lead to SM players having trouble getting much done. Of course if the entire area is personally instanced like the KOTFE chapters it could work, but then we get complaints OH NOES ITS NOT OPEN WORRRRLD...from the same people who hated that but still want higher difficulty.

 

They could still technically do that - the big boss fights in vanilla story are all in instanced areas, and they could perhaps let you set those specific personal areas to be MM or whatever. But I'm sure people would complain because they want every mob they meet on the road to take 20 minutes to kill and want everyone to have that same "challenge."

 

Oh, and as for testing? It took me a week to download the game. Is Bioware going to reimburse me the week of my sub I'd lose by downloading the PTS, since you can't play while it's downloading? I was actually looking over a few people's shoulders in the earlier builds, but it's pointless. They're not listening (see crafting and RNG) and they don't care. I doubt they'll do anything when 6.0 goes live other than flail around on the largest issues once the playerbase gets wind of the changes and hemorrhages again. Not to mention that since the game's about to become unplayable, I'd like to actually play it while I can. Yeah, it's selfish, but after hearing people here rag on solo/story players for YEARS, and with my sub running out...frankly, I don't give a damn.

 

I don’t want to argue with you about this. I’ve made my point and I think this is counter productive.

 

The expansion will be out on the 22nd and you can run the content and provide all the feed back you want. Until then, all this is doing is driving fear into people (for no reason) who might want to play the game.

 

If you didn’t test for what ever reason, how can you even comment on wether it’s too hard for you or not? You will only know if they get the balance right when you try it on the 22nd. Just leave it till then and stop trying to divide the community and possibly scare others off because of your own fears,

 

What’s done is done, all we can do now is wait a week and half. If they mess it up, it won’t just be you who is pissed off, both my wife and I will be too, along with many others.

6.0 really has no wriggle room for a massive stuff up. They either get close to it working or it kills the game for good.

[IoNonSoEVero]

I don’t want to argue with you about this. I’ve made my point and I think this is counter productive.

 

The expansion will be out on the 22nd and you can run the content and provide all the feed back you want. Until then, all this is doing is driving fear into people (for no reason) who might want to play the game.

 

If you didn’t test for what ever reason, how can you even comment on wether it’s too hard for you or not? You will only know if they get the balance right when you try it on the 22nd. Just leave it till then and stop trying to divide the community and possibly scare others off because of your own fears,

 

What’s done is done, all we can do now is wait a week and half. If they mess it up, it won’t just be you who is pissed off, both my wife and I will be too, along with many others.

6.0 really has no wriggle room for a massive stuff up. They either get close to it working or it kills the game for good.

 

I agree, I'm not going to continue the argument past this post, but it's pretty funny that you would think I have the ability to divide anyone or scare anyone off. I'm a random, fairly antisocial poster who has certainly tangled with a few people here, not an influencer. The posts on the PTS, the posts across the Internet, the comments on this main board, the articles posted by the real influencers have all taken very negative views of the PTS version of 6.0 for all sorts of reasons. There's plenty for anyone to read and be worried about. I fully agree that 6.0 is probably do or die for this game, and I'd like to think they have taken all that feedback to heart and made positive changes, but history doesn't seem to suggest that's how they roll.

 

If you read my posts again, I said IF it's too hard I won't play. I don't know yet if it's going to be too hard, but the posts on the PTS and what I have seen for myself seem to suggest that it will be way more challenging and way less fun for me. I'm allowed to respond to that and express concerns about the direction they seem to be taking, just as you are.

Edited October 10, 2019 by IoNonSoEVero

[cmcougar]

The bottom line is this: If the new difficulty system makes the game too hard for casual players to get through, they are going to bail. And like it or not, casuals are the bread and butter that keep this game alive. By and large, most casuals are solo players (and really don't like grouping for assorted reasons) so if they are edged out by difficulty concerns this game is going to go belly up. The devs really should consider making some tweaks to the system before it goes live.

[Hudlar]

Just hope the story -- the real story -- not story mode FPs ...

are not that hard -- my gear is story mode ... I do not do operations for better gear, not what I am interested in ---

if is impossible to solo the STORY -- then ... well ... <sigh>

 

Of course, we won't really know for sure until 6.0 comes out. However, based on my experience on the PTS, I don't think the difficulty change will be as great as some people fear and others hope. I did some (admittedly limited) testing on Voss and CZ-198, and I probably wouldn't have noticed a difference at all if I hadn't known I was on the PTS.

 

It's true that Trixxie and others found some huge issues with the walker sections in KOTET, and JainiaDral found some weird difficulty spikes in early vanilla content. I really hope most of those issues are fixed before 6.0 goes live. But I'll be very surprised if story players aren't able to play missions, dailies, and heroics without a problem in 6.0.

[DWho]

The core of the issue is that these changes are very much a solution in search of a problem. Yes, the game is too easy for some players but it is also to hard for others. These changes will do absolutely nothing to make it harder for those who already find it too easy. It will make it harder for those already struggling with the content. Prior to level sync you had lots of options to overcome difficult content. You could get better gear or gain more levels, but both of those have been basically eliminated as options. Right now if you are at the level cap for the planet, basically no amount of leveling or gearing will allow you to do or take more damage. You are stuck with refining your "rotation". (I'm sure someone is going to say "all they have to do is spend a few hours practicing on a practice dummy" - to those people I'd say its nice that you find swinging/firing at an inanimate object fun but most people prefer to play the game). No story content other than end bosses should even require a "rotation". Trash mobs shouldn't even require DCDs. A trash mob is just that, something to slow you down not kill you.

 

Part of the problem with the tuning, which has become apparent from running KoTFE/KoTET chapters is that content was apparently balanced assuming the characters would be over-leveled and over-geared (hence the problems showing up with some of them). Adjusting level synch, gear, and companions all at the same time uncovered a lot of issues that it is unlikely will be fixed for months. Pretty much the same as it was for the "solo" version of the Traitor Arc story flashpoints. Those were content tuned for four skilled players that were retrofitted to story play by removing mechanics resulting in battles that lasted tens of minutes (usually longer than a battle against an operations boss with 8-16 players)

 

The only things these changes do is slow down progression (it generally takes 25% longer to do content on the PTS vs Live). You earn levels slower, gear slower, and earn credits slower. The change to companions was the most egregious change because it was done to make you "appear to take more damage" as stated by Bioware. Its no appearance at all, you do take more damage and across the board have significantly less health to deal with that damage. It was a totally unnecessary change and was based on the false premise that companions are overpowered. It is your character's damage reduction that makes them appear overpowered since there is a hidden damage resistance stat based on the difference in levels between the character and the NPC. For those that remember the early game when the level difference was more than 6, NPCs with a lower level could barely hit you and NPCs with a higher level couldn't be damaged by you.

[Rion_Starkiller]

The bottom line is this: If the new difficulty system makes the game too hard for casual players to get through, they are going to bail. And like it or not, casuals are the bread and butter that keep this game alive. By and large, most casuals are solo players (and really don't like grouping for assorted reasons) so if they are edged out by difficulty concerns this game is going to go belly up. The devs really should consider making some tweaks to the system before it goes live.

 

I think the issue is that the VANILLA game is too easy. The newer content/chapters you can change difficulty. I won't claim to be an expert on KOTFEET content, but I can definitely speak for the faceroll & braindead ease of vanilla SWTOR.

[DarthSealth]

I'll be honest I wanted a difficulty setting similar to KOTFE/ET for base stories and alike or at least in story phases increase enemy level to your level.

The reasoning behind this was a lot of encounters really didn't feel title worthy or ending worthy. e.g.

 

 

Sith Warrior killing Baras.

 

 

I can't remember how easy it was before planet syncing though, but I don't think it was as easy.

But a difficulty setting would fix it for everyone and it then pleases everyone still to this day the hardest solo content I have faced was The Championship Arena, god how fun is that probably the best part of the expansion really gave me KOTOR nostalgia.

[MikeCobalt]

Considering the RNG in the vendors, the crafting system and new drops if the story game play settings are also "Non Story" compliant, instead of 6.0 being a new big start, 6.0 may be the event that caused alot of the older story players to stop paying money.

[Goreshaga]

Honnestly most of the trash fights makes me feel like my character's a weakling, not being able to oneshot the trash...

Seriously, we have the best fighter of the Jedi Order, one of the strongest if not the strongest Sith warrior, the SI and JC who are supposed to be very powerful Force users, the best BH, a soldier who is one of the best... and they can't OS the trash they encounter, that's not very immersive.

 

I mean, i'm ok with a Jedi struggling against a Sith or Mandalorian, or fights like these, but the trash... It's like Vador not being able to clear that corridor on Leia's ship like he did in Rogue One, or like Han not killing Greedo in 1 shot... They'd look lame...

 

And these fights are a waste of time

[Nefla]

Honnestly most of the trash fights makes me feel like my character's a weakling, not being able to oneshot the trash...

Seriously, we have the best fighter of the Jedi Order, one of the strongest if not the strongest Sith warrior, the SI and JC who are supposed to be very powerful Force users, the best BH, a soldier who is one of the best... and they can't OS the trash they encounter, that's not very immersive.

 

I mean, i'm ok with a Jedi struggling against a Sith or Mandalorian, or fights like these, but the trash... It's like Vador not being able to clear that corridor on Leia's ship like he did in Rogue One, or like Han not killing Greedo in 1 shot... They'd look lame...

 

And these fights are a waste of time

Yeah I hated that about the level scaling decision it's so stupid for the same weak slugs my MC was killing as an acolyte to be any challenge at all when he's a member of the Dark Council. Plus if you go to a planet you already cleared and used to be far higher level than and you just want to go somewhere quickly, the weak trash can still knock you off your speeder -_-

[TrixxieTriss]

Yeah I hated that about the level scaling decision it's so stupid for the same weak slugs my MC was killing as an acolyte to be any challenge at all when he's a member of the Dark Council. Plus if you go to a planet you already cleared and used to be far higher level than and you just want to go somewhere quickly, the weak trash can still knock you off your speeder -_-

 

The lvl scaling we currently have was essentially to “speed up lvling” more and under the disguise of saying people could go back and do content again and it still be a challenge (which it isn’t). It’s not even a challenge the first time now.

(Which is so categorically the wrong thing to do IMO).

All it did was increase lvling speed and they made it super easy, plus gear stopped mattering. It also made it slower or impossible if you wanted to go back and do somethings you weren’t able to do as a solo player when you were at that lvl. ie, If you were a solo player and wanted to do the story from the flash points, you could go and do them easily when you were over lvl’d. I know of people who even did operations in pairs.

 

As someone else already pointed out. There were better mechanisms under the older system to allow you to decide to make the content easier or harder for yourself.

If you wanted it easier, you made sure you were over leveled for the planet and had the best gear for you and your companion.

If you wanted it hard, you tried your best to get to the next planet while all the quests were deep orange in colour and half would still be red. You could also relax how upgraded your gear was and your companions.

 

Bioware have demonstrated for the last 5 years that their priority is to get players to the “newest” end game as fast as possible. They’ve done this at the detriment of older vanilla content and even went so far as to turn of the side planet stories by default. Many new players don’t even know about them or even need to do them to lvl.

 

I do under stand that some players wanted to lvl faster than having to do all the side quests or grinding to be high enough. But dumbing down and even turning content off was not the way to do it. The best way would have been to make in game tokens available, like a reverse white acute module, to allow super fast lvl (aka, like double XP). They could have made it a prerequisite that you needed to complete all 8 stories or lvl’d 8 Alts to max.

 

I also got sick of the same pve content grind to get my Alts to max lvl. So I really do understand why people were wanting another avenue. For me, it was lvling them up in lowbie and mid pvp (which I know isn’t for everyone). But with all the changes to the end game gearing system in 5.0 and since, Bioware has effectively removed that option because no one lvls up that way anymore. It’s faster to do story quests and a flash point or two.

 

Bad decisions over the years and an unwillingness to understand or admit past mistakes is why we have so few servers and why they keep making the same bad decisions over and over. They just don’t learn from them or consult the community in two way conversations. When they do ask us something, we get a yellow post asking for feed back and then nothing. We don’t know if they read it or misunderstand what we suggest because half the time they do the polar opposite. It’s like they ask us what we want, so they know how to make what we don’t want.

 

Some two way conversations to clarify things and have “real” discussions is what has been missing from this game since 1.2. There has been a complete disconnect with the player base or some break down in understanding the feedback. If there is misunderstanding, it comes back to the community managers over the years because they are supposed to pass on the info because devs rarely read the forums and the CM is supposed to be a filter between them and us. If they don’t understand what we mean or don’t pass it on info correctly, then the devs can be working from incorrect info to start with.

 

It’s not completely the CM’s fault, the lead producers over the year have a lot to answer for. I do think Keith is trying to change the games direction away from the old Ben Irving fiasco, but in doing so, is making his own mistakes because of poor two way communication between the community and him before they set plans for systems in stone.

No one wants an insight or be part of the story content planning. But if we had been consulted more during the earlier stages of figuring out the gearing and crafting systems for 6.0, then he would have realised that RNG isn’t what players want and crafting currently on the pts is horrendous.

I would consider all of the systems currently on the pts 3 to be early beta and not ready for launch. What was on pts 1 should have been early alpha to see what we thought and all the negative feed back would have told them to trash the RNG concept.

 

But I’ve digressed as usual. Anyone whose been here since the early years knows all of this and those who’ve come later can’t really relate to what we say about the old system. Hence they panic when they think of content being harder in 6.0.

6.0 is 11 days away. Nothing anyone can say or do now to change course. We will be stuck with what ever goes live in 6.0 and if it’s bad, they will have to spend the next two years trying to fix it (like they usually do) and players will leave and the game will flutter and more servers will die off.

6.0 is make or break IMO. There is no player “buffer” anymore to absorb mistakes like there was in the past. Fingers crossed it’s going to appeal to the masses more than it appealed to us pts testers.

Edited October 11, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

On a side note. Anyone else think crit crystals and crit, alacrity, Accuracy Augments will become the new BiS for people playing any lvl sync content because mastery and power are capped in that content? Pvp May also be that way, but I was unable to get games to test on the pts.

If so, time to clear out the mastery and power items while they are still worth something and stock up on crit crystals and those Augments while they are still cheaper.

Edited October 11, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[cmcougar]

I'll be honest I wanted a difficulty setting similar to KOTFE/ET for base stories and alike or at least in story phases increase enemy level to your level.

The reasoning behind this was a lot of encounters really didn't feel title worthy or ending worthy. e.g.

 

 

Sith Warrior killing Baras.

 

 

I can't remember how easy it was before planet syncing though, but I don't think it was as easy.

But a difficulty setting would fix it for everyone and it then pleases everyone still to this day the hardest solo content I have faced was The Championship Arena, god how fun is that probably the best part of the expansion really gave me KOTOR nostalgia.

 

 

I agree that the class stories are a bit simple, but once you get to the FE/ET content difficulty ramps up. If they do that again with the new content, us less than perfectly geared people are going to be hurting.

[TrixxieTriss]

I agree that the class stories are a bit simple, but once you get to the FE/ET content difficulty ramps up. If they do that again with the new content, us less than perfectly geared people are going to be hurting.

 

That’s the major issue with making the vanilla content so easy for so many years. Any newer player since then, end up running into a skill wall or culture shock when they hit FE/ET content because they’ve never learnt 90% of their abilities or rotation or tactics or strategy with dealing with certain situations. Which isn’t any fault of their own.

 

This is really apparent in pvp when you see people don’t know what a DCD or interrupt is or when you just see them spamming their AOE.

Dumbing down the vanilla game in 4.0 reduced players skills and then removing pvp Comms in 5.0 stopped people learning in lowbies and Mids

Then you have some come to the pvp forums and make rage threads to nerf classes they don’t understand because they are getting smashed by them.

 

Newer people have become so use to a game they can breeze through and never die or use more than a few abilities. That when they face harder content or the prospect of harder content, they panic, I know my wife does.

 

I think this maybe a reason they are rebalancing the whole games difficulty so that people don’t run into this skill wall.

But it doesn’t mean I agree with how they plan to do it or that it negatively won’t affect some people, because it will. I’m just providing some context for why they maybe doing this.

[jstankaroslo]

The lvl scaling we currently have was essentially to “speed up lvling” more and under the disguise of saying people could go back and do content again and it still be a challenge (which it isn’t). It’s not even a challenge the first time now.

(Which is so categorically the wrong thing to do IMO).

All it did was increase lvling speed and they made it super easy, plus gear stopped mattering. It also made it slower or impossible if you wanted to go back and do somethings you weren’t able to do as a solo player when you were at that lvl. ie, If you were a solo player and wanted to do the story from the flash points, you could go and do them easily when you were over lvl’d. I know of people who even did operations in pairs.

 

We are on the same page here, but I believe the first reason for level sync was to turn heroics into dailies.

Thing is there can never be enough new content to satisfy players. So with 4.0 they've come up with an idea to make old planet Heroics viable for end game players, by level sync. So that players were synced down to planet level (slightly above it actually) and could do Heroics daily for gear grind, credits and cxp (and whatever -I never jumped on that wheel really, so I don't really know what end gamers get exactly out of Heroics). And it kinda worked, end gamers got much more content to do. Before, there were few daily instances, like Black Hole, Section X and etc, now they got terminals that teleported them to Heroics.

In that way I see it not as a mean to level up, but to recycle old content for end game players, thus possibly satisfying their thirst for things to do at max level.

 

As someone else already pointed out. There were better mechanisms under the older system to allow you to decide to make the content easier or harder for yourself.

If you wanted it easier, you made sure you were over leveled for the planet and had the best gear for you and your companion.

If you wanted it hard, you tried your best to get to the next planet while all the quests were deep orange in colour and half would still be red. You could also relax how upgraded your gear was and your companions.

 

Bioware have demonstrated for the last 5 years that their priority is to get players to the “newest” end game as fast as possible. They’ve done this at the detriment of older vanilla content and even went so far as to turn of the side planet stories by default. Many new players don’t even know about them or even need to do them to lvl.

 

I do under stand that some players wanted to lvl faster than having to do all the side quests or grinding to be high enough. But dumbing down and even turning content off was not the way to do it. The best way would have been to make in game tokens available, like a reverse white acute module, to allow super fast lvl (aka, like double XP). They could have made it a prerequisite that you needed to complete all 8 stories or lvl’d 8 Alts to max.

 

Heh, I advocated for WAM to work this way when they first introduced super fast xp gain, but to no avail.

 

If we are talking about ways to balance game difficulty, I'd come up with a simple solution, and one easy to implement IMO.

Go back to 3.0 with open world, and just instance and level sync Heroics.

In this case, the vanilla planets would be unsynced, so that players can overlevel the content, max level payers can go back to planets and feel powerfully untouchable, This way even the worst player can beat any planet just over leveling it. Just as it used to be, the gear on vanilla planets would matter again.

But Heroics would be instanced and synced, so they would play as they do right now. People could still do them the way the do them now.

IMO this solution would be much simpler than scaling the whole huge vanilla game to different difficulty levels, and it would not scatter the population over different instances.

So on planet you could meet the whole population, the Heroics would be the place to meet players grinding them for levels, credits gear and etc.

 

As for the news on new difficulty. Putting some thought into it, I don't believe it will change much for me. I use WAM, so I always do the planetary content on level or slightly below it. And I never use companions on heal. And still one AOE kills whole groups of mobs,. So, if I understand correctly changes to companion healing will not impact me on vanilla content (but might in KOTFEE and newest content), and tuning down level sync will not change things either, as I normally am not synced down on planets.

What would make an impact would be returning to 3.0 era mobs (which I believe were also nerfed with 4.0).

 

But that's just speculation now, just wait and see when 6.0 goes live

Edited October 11, 2019 by jstankaroslo

[SerraShar]

The whole thing is rather depressing anyway .

 

when I joined, I never found the game hard . And I speak as someone who didnt join guild from the get go, and did everything on my own .

 

Then they add that damn level sync...without tweaking it or anything.....just go and add it...

 

then lot of incoherent stuff happen in between....

 

and now..they wanna up the difficulty .

 

Hell the other night, I was doing a heroic on Hoth.....and I lamented how it felt...empty . No more drop...no treasure..no nothing . everything is in a package with a random generated numbers....crap . Urgh...woe is Swtor...

 

My little rant aside, I don't think the casual should feel worried about the difficulty . Remember, Dark Soul is Hard..and it take competent peoples to make it hard . Bw...is nowhere near that competent...

 

and keep in mind, that unlike from back in the day..where you were stuck with a companion that doesn't heal you when you start at Lvl 1...nowdays...everyone can heal you . That's......progress.....I guess..

Edited October 11, 2019 by SerraShar

[RameiArashi]

I actually completed KOTET three times. Seems like Vaylin got harder between 1st and 2nd. I had to ask for help and was told a place to stand where I got healed every few seconds. That was on lightside. On darkside she was easier because I had a dead Sith Lord helping out. I have several other characters where I just skipped it even if it mean my lightside sith got darksiade defaults or darkside jedi got lightside defaults. How hard would it have been to actually look at your characters alignment and match to it instead of assuming Republic is light and Empire is dark?

 

s

[Unperson]

As a player who wants more challenge you do control your destiny.

 

Challenge is relative. Content that is challenging for me, other players have on farm. As a player who wants less challenge, you do control your destiny - learn to play. You're literally making a reverse L2P argument. I'm not offended, simply pointing out the hypocrisy.

 

And the only thing I've really endorsed is different difficulty modes for all instanced content, but that's apparently not doable with the current level of investment in the game. So a sort of middle ground needs to be found that works for a majority, not just the people that would rather just

It may not be the best solution, but it's better than a game that plays itself.

 

And much as I sympathize with disabled people, it's not reasonable to ask that the game is tailored to such edge cases, beyond accessibility aids perhaps.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Unperson

[IoNonSoEVero]

Challenge is relative. Content that is challenging for me, other players have on farm. As a player who wants less challenge, you do control your destiny - learn to play. You're literally making a reverse L2P argument. I'm not offended, simply pointing out the hypocrisy.

 

And the only thing I've really endorsed is different difficulty modes for all instanced content, but that's apparently not doable with the current level of investment in the game. So a sort of middle ground needs to be found that works for a majority, not just the people that would rather just

It may not be the best solution, but it's better than a game that plays itself.

 

And much as I sympathize with disabled people, it's not reasonable to ask that the game is tailored to such edge cases, beyond accessibility aids perhaps.

 

You're presuming that anyone who wants less of a challenge doesn't know how to play already, which is a stretch. I certainly do know how to play. You're also assuming that people who are only able to get to a certain level of skill CAN learn to play better and that isn't always the case, given things like connection speeds, disabilities, age and reflexes. Challenging content just isn't fun for some of us who would prefer to enjoy the story.

 

If you truly want challenging content, you already have places to go in the game to play it. You can set every chapter of KOTFE to MM. You can do NiM Ops, ranked PvP and the many other challenges that the game offers to players who want it. A player who finds the tuned up story too difficult will have no place to go, other than to leave.

 

It's as though the game is a ski resort that already has plenty of double black diamond, black diamond and blue square trails - but the players who enjoy those are now insisting that the resort needs to demolish the single existing bunny hill because everyone needs to learn to ski like them. If you're going to accept hat different players have different skill levels, then the bunny hill needs a place as much as the black diamonds.

Edited October 13, 2019 by IoNonSoEVero

[Tsillah]

Go back to 3.0 with open world, and just instance and level sync Heroics.

In this case, the vanilla planets would be unsynced, so that players can overlevel the content, max level payers can go back to planets and feel powerfully untouchable, This way even the worst player can beat any planet just over leveling it. Just as it used to be, the gear on vanilla planets would matter again.

But Heroics would be instanced and synced, so they would play as they do right now. People could still do them the way the do them now.

IMO this solution would be much simpler than scaling the whole huge vanilla game to different difficulty levels, and it would not scatter the population over different instances.

So on planet you could meet the whole population, the Heroics would be the place to meet players grinding them for levels, credits gear and etc.

I think you underestimate the effort involved in instancing the Heroics. Most are in the open world and would require new instances to be placed on various places, some of which are areas where other quests have to be done which then have to be changed as well.

 

Level sync is here to stay I reckon but to be fair, the bigger problem is that the game is just so easy now that it involves pretty much zero challenge. The problem with that is that people do not learn to play their classes in any way shape or form but do want to do group content l ike FPs and such and THAT is where it becomes problematic because they then make things more difficult for other players.

 

Overall the reality is that any expansion will bring back some people and chase others away. Change does that. But I think the biggest problem the game is suffering from is that there are too many unskilled players now because the game allows it and it has a negative effect on group content.

 

Story content is faceroll now and a lot of SM content is as well though that is clearly more demanding. But especially with the superfluous gear tiers we have people just feel like they can just walk in and win because they showed up. And when that fails with Master and Blaster for example they want the game to become easier rather than learning something and change their approach. Although I think it's good that there are different difficulty levels and not everything has to be hard, there is a fundamental flaw in enabling this attitude of not wanting or caring to learn.

 

It seems to me that when content is too easy overall people go through this content more quickly and the game will feel repetitive more quicky as well. I also think that the old set up without level sync on planets was more of a thing because it was actually not easy to go throughthe leveling content. So you could see it as a reward for conquering that content, or in other words for skill and effort.

 

People seem to mistake spending time with skill and effort. It's not the same and that's why content needs to be less faceroll than it is now.

 

I'm sure some people will disagree with me but that's where it's at for me. This attitude of rewarding showing up more than actually putting in effort and improving your skills is something that has been slowly sucking the sense out of many games. The groups in SM Ops today are dumber on average. Not because people have no brains but because they have been trained not to use them. If 6.0 requires people to get better even just to some degree, I think it will be a good thing and I'm sure some people will hate having to put in a bit more effort but others, like myself, will welcome it.

 

We'll have to see where the balance lies in that and how many people will allow themselves to adapt but 4.0 and 5.0 didn't do the game a whole lot of good. Whereas 4.0 initially brought back a lot of people and was successful then, it chased a lot of raiders away and even more when the chapter approach failed to impress people. Also the story, which was the major focus of 4.0 did not deliver for too many people. With 5.0 the story got noticeably better but Galactic Command chased a lot of people away. It resulted in server merges.

 

I think BW realised they needed to do something different to stem the tide and they have. Now I can't say for sure how 6.0 will be received in the end, but it was necessary that some things changed because in the end an MMO is about people spending time in the game regularly. Making content easy and thereby increasing repetition just isn't the way to go. We'll see how it goes soon enough.

[JainiaDral]

Been debating about saying anything, since I tried to raise the issue of the iRating buff in the PTS forum and it was ignored. Side note: I'm probably a mediocre player at best, so if I didn't have issues, you probably won't either.

 

Difficulty is a weird thing with this update. Planetary maximum health and mastery are capped significantly lower-- close to 50% in the content I had a chance to test. When you're doing open world stuff, honestly, combat doesn't feel that different. So long as your companion is about level 10, you're going to survive everything--including most heroics-- pretty easily at least on the starter planets. I got as far as Taris before feeling done with the whole experience.

 

There are some really tough spots here and there where you can tell Bioware hasn't examined the content at all before slapping a blanket stat nerf on everything. Most of those are in the class story encounters or instanced planetary quests.

 

After level 75, though, the whole system falls apart. Once you've geared up your level 75 toon in base 270 gear plus one upgrade piece, you start getting stacks of the iRating buff in flashpoints and heroics. For me, that meant I got about a 1% Endurance boost over the Balmorra cap running one of the collocoid heroics. And, apparently a Mastery boost too. That boost scales significantly upward as you go through the gearing grind, breaking level sync. From later information quoted below, the boost is an order of magnitude worse than I'd feared when I gave up on the PTS in disgust.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=969130

 

Check out the PTS Flashpoint Balance thread for more discussion, especially this comment:

The awkwardness of "Bolster" and its balance :

 

Note that we're all level 75 and this is HS Vet Mode via GF.

Me and the Merc were 306 IR, while the other two were sub 300 IR. Difference in HP and damage dealt was incredible. It took nearly a minute and a half for the Sin (Hatred if I'm correct) to kill off one of the big droids, while I was melting them in sub-30 seconds time.

I have no idea how I got level-sync'ed down to 70, and got more HP than what I actually have while not level-sync'ed and/or bolstered. Usually I max out at around 250-260k health pool.

 

Note that the lowest-geared player has 2.5x less health than the max geared player.

 

So, level sync is totally broken. Those who have access to easy sources of endgame gear are going to have massive advantages over those who don't in non-instanced heroic content and in flashpoints, especially new players and low-level toons. Your challenge is going to evaporate completely, while those with lesser access are stuck with far higher difficulty. SWTOR players are going to have radically different gaming experiences in non-max level content.

 

My advice: if you're looking for a challenge in vanilla content, use your white acute module. Everyone else needs to power level. FAST. Gift up your starter planet companions before you hit the fleet.

Edited October 13, 2019 by JainiaDral

[DreadtechSavant]

"Is change of difficulty confirmed? "

 

No. you'll need to wait until it go's live. If you remember the PTS for Ossuss it was a lot harder then the live version. As you were give ungraded gear to try PTS but was doable in 230 in live. Well maybe much below that, just 230 was the minimal gear I used for Ossuss.

That's not saying this time will be the same. It may well be as it is on PTS before it was taken offline, but it has not been confirmed as so many in this thread are saying. If you read the Dev Tracker it does not say confirmed anywhere that this is the difficultly going in the live version.

 

Healing companions have already changed in live, further changes may still happen to them in 6.0 once it go's live. May change, is not the same as will change.

Anything and everything is subject to change before it go's live and further changes may or most likely will happen as patches after it go's live once the general population of players start playing. Remember if you did go on PTS there were not that many there. That and the players that were there were from all 5 live servers, so very few in-fact.

Edited October 13, 2019 by DreadtechSavant