Maintenance: February 13, 2020

[RussellRichter]

Wouldn't it be called "master's edge" if it was meant to be in master mode?

[Opiklo]

so people who want those stacks seem to forget, that mm is meant to be hard, and not a walk in the park...

 

e.g: raptus nim didnt even do a second challenge with stacks.. you skipped 1 whole phase because of too much dps...

people were killing brontes without trigggering a single hand

1 dps and 2 tanks can match the dps check at machine core at revan

 

those stacks are like a crystal and if you need those stacks ... then use a crystal... i know its less cool but please dont make the game so easy again that the remaining decent players get sooo bored they leave the game.

 

and you know what.. if people say get guud they are right, if you have problems in nim even with stacks, then you are wrong in nim...

 

dont screw the game for players who want a real challenge because you want to tell your friend look i cleared a nim op....

 

i suggest removing the stacks from vet mode and fps too, so people who are raiding nim and having trouble can go back to hm and have a challenge appropriate to their skill level.

 

it seems the people who want those stacks dont care about challenge they seem to care about bragging rights.

even if here the vocal majority of the anti stacks fraction may seem arrogant and elitist... they also pay for this game.

 

and those "elitist" guys are the ones who really understood the boss mechanics and their classes.

you can ask those people what to do if you struggle. but it seems that there is a lot of ego stuff going on.

 

how many times did i hear people say "i know my class i dont need any tips" but were doing stuff fundamentally wrong.

 

the get good statement isnt a offensive one... its just the truth...

 

do you think those ""elitists" fell from heaven and could do everything?

 

they worked to get to the point where they are, and if you make nim so easy that a trained baboon can clear them, then this work is wasted.

 

aditionally: most of the guides and videos out there come from those "elitists"

you use their work for your advantage and say: they dont matter.

 

who is writing your guides if they are gone?

 

can you people please think at least from 11:59 to noon?

 

if you want a real challenge and not just some "look i cleared something, which supposed to be hard" bragging rights

then you would agree.

 

Conclusion: get rid of those stacks in any content, this would narrow the gap between hm an nim.

people who arent able to clear nim would have hm to progress.

[Eriamea]

Removing all the stacks is too much in the circumstances. The issue is that there is not enough content to keep some players busy and not as many players as before to form/fill new groups. Most content is pretty old and and it gets boring to just repeat things without a challenge, whether it is hm or nim. Let’s not even talk about story as most ops were purged of mechanics.

 

There were several groups doing NiM content and enjoying the progression that will suddenly find themselves blocked from progressing old content that they were already doing. Sending them back to square 1 and getting them bored too is not an appropriate way of doing things to satisfy a very small minority. Adjusting the stacks to something like 15 would have been more balanced and in line with 5.0.

 

Ideally bosses should be scaled to level 75 and we shouldn’t have our stats nerfed (unless you are running Dxun, a lot of gear/stats are useless) but I doubt this will happen. Maybe Just make a 4th tier or make stacks toggable (with an extra achievement for running Nim content without VE for those that care about achievements). That way no one loses anything and players can continue to have fun playing the game and continue progress more or less where they were.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Eriamea

[Opiklo]

Removing all the stacks is too much in the circumstances. The issue is that there is not enough content to keep some players busy and not as many players as before to form/fill new groups. Most content is pretty old and and it gets boring to just repeat things without a challenge, whether it is hm or nim. Let’s not even talk about story as most ops were purged of mechanics useful to learn in view of doing hm content.

 

There were several groups doing NiM content and enjoying the progression that will suddenly find themselves blocked from progressing old content that they were already doing. Sending them back to square 1 and getting them bored too is not an appropriate way of doing things to satisfy a very small minority. Adjusting the stacks to something like 15 would have been more balanced and in line with 5.0.

 

Ideally bosses should be scaled to level 75 and we shouldn’t have our stats nerfed (unless you are running Dxun, a lot of gear/stats are useless) but I doubt this will happen. Maybe Just make a 4th tier or make stacks toggable (with an extra achievement for running Nim content without VE for those that care about achievements). That way no one loses anything and players can continue to have fun playing the game and continue progress more or less where they were.

 

so you are bored of having a challenge.... thats why there shouldnt be challenges for others...

 

i sense a special snowflake

[Eriamea]

That’s not at all what I said. I am suggesting to reduce the stacks but not to zero and make them toggable for groups that want an extra challenge (with an extra achievement for those that care). Sending people back to HM on old content makes no sense. Edited February 15, 2020 by Eriamea

[Opiklo]

That’s not at all what I said. I am suggesting to reduce the stacks but not to zero and make them toggable for groups that want an extra challenge (with an extra achievement for those that care). Sending people back to HM on old content makes no sense.

 

just use crystals then???

[MJSCHNEIDER]

You can also turn around the arguments - if it was too boring why are you still here ? WoWs Mythic raids seem to be what some people want so why not just go play that ? Want a challenge ? Just raid naked.

 

No matter if people like or dislike the removal of stacks, we can all argue back and forth about which faction has more people (and since everyone is paying the same sub fee thats all that counts, right?).

The devs decided to take the side of one group, alienating the other, before a discussion even took place.

That stuff may work in AAA MMOs with milions of subs but in a game that is only still around because its Star Wars that move may have been the wrong one. Time will tell.

Edited February 15, 2020 by MJSCHNEIDER

[Sandrosw]

just use crystals then???

 

Do crystals work now in scaled content? Did anyone test them? Afaik they add something like 30% health/dps/healing, but since now some things like adrenals that are percentage based do not work, I wonder if those crystals do... or of they do only some things (like increasing damage and healing, but not health).

I mean, I would not be surprised if they did nothing at all, and I am not rich enough to test it on live server... so since you are telling everyone to use those, do they work?

[Terro_Fett]

just use crystals then???

 

I keep seeing people suggesting this, ignoring the insane cost that comes with it. Assuming a group raids two nights a week, that's 30 encryptions per week, per person. Yes let's tack on a weekly 20 million credit cost to raiding for these folks.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Terro_Fett

[JattaGin]

Good. It's about time that master mode operations are a challenge. I've been falling asleep at my keyboard playing them lately.

 

,,Casual'' players who will cry about it are players who should never even enter nims. And not to sound as like a elitist, but Nim is supposed to be fu*king hard, and it is now

 

MM's should be intended for Masters not Memers.

 

Maybe instead of complaining you should focus on improving. If you dont agree with me discord: Barrman#1337 :>

 

Try to be NiM players, not Master Mode pepegas.

 

You didn't have to do that when they were actually hard, much less now. Get good, you have several more abilities than we had when world firsts were in contention.

 

Sings: "You're so 1337, you probably think this post is about you."

 

(Ontopic I have nothing to say. I stopped raiding in this game. Not because of difficulty, but because of the people.)

[Anyaka_Jedi]

Sings: "You're so 1337, you probably think this post is about you."

 

(Ontopic I have nothing to say. I stopped raiding in this game. Not because of difficulty, but because of the people.)

 

 

You are a legend! The toxicity of this Elite is effectively killing raiding, just so that they will feel awesome about clearing for the umpteenth time old content. And after doing so complain that there are no ppl to pug with. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.

[RikuvonDrake]

Maybe just introduced a console inside of the instance that gives back the veteran stacks but removes the loot, gaining achievements, lockout and titles, that would allow groups to practise, do the fights as per usual and then have the opportunity to do Nightmare once they get the mechanics and strategies for the fights down.

 

That way groups that are new to nightmare don't have to struggle with the DPS and HPS requirements for their damage dealers and healers or the cooldown usage for tanks while at the same time understanding the mechanics, learning how to strategies around these and execute the fights. Naturally, all the other loot with tech fragments, decos, gear and so on should still be in the instance and drop from bosses to provide incentives for players to take this step up from Hardmode operations before they venture into Nightmare.

 

love how this thread has ended up being mostly name calling at this point, guess it explains why some of you aren't part of the raiding community anymore

Edited February 15, 2020 by RikuvonDrake

[FerkWork]

Finally some new content, salt.

[Rion_Starkiller]

Without these VE stacks some of the raids don't seem to be balanced. Why is 4/5 DP easier than TFB? Is this a work-in-progress? Was the removal of VE supposed to coincide with some other gearing change?

[OrdinaryImperial]

@devs

 

The gap between hard mode and nightmare is huge now, can you remove stacks from hm as well?

[sharkfishman]

Thanks for the update, Eric.

 

I've got mixed feelings about the change, but overall harder NiM ops is a good thing, even if the problems in 6.0 are compounded by it. Please proritize balancing the classes and specs for ops in the next major patch, because imbalance has never been so glaring and will now get noticed a lot more without the stacks.

 

Also, can you confirm that NiM bosses are now balanced with amplifiers in mind contrary to statements made pre-6.0? Balancing content around available gear power isn't a bad thing, but it runs contrary to what BW has claimed in the past and makes raiding a pasttime only the in-game rich will be able to afford.

 

I actually went back into the Onslaught pre-launch dev threads and whatnot to check.

 

It looks like the devs always said that amplifiers would be taken into account in MM operations.

 

So, basically, unless you're min/maxed with gold amps, you shouldn't be able to complete NiM stuff anyway.

 

That may be one reason for the change. Maybe they saw that players weren't caring enough about amps. They need their carrot to work properly! At least for the small percentage of players who have the time and money to spend on those kinds of runs.

 

I have no idea whether this is a good decision or not, since I stick with Vet runs. I dislike Discord, so NiM obviously isn't for me.

 

One thing I will say is that many MMOs have this struggle between increased rewards for a tiny minority of the players and the rest of the subscribers, and only the devs have the numbers of who's paying the bills around here. The same thing happens with ranked vs unranked pvp discussions.

 

Only your wallet can speak in a way the devs actually care about.

[sharkfishman]

Without these VE stacks some of the raids don't seem to be balanced. Why is 4/5 DP easier than TFB? Is this a work-in-progress? Was the removal of VE supposed to coincide with some other gearing change?

 

I think you'll find that over the history of the game, the devs have continually taken away power to sell it back to you in some form. I'm sure they wanted to take advantage of 6.2 to make you feel weaker again, because maybe players are starting to stop caring about the gear grind.

 

I suspect they'll also release some new "OP" tacticals and set bonuses in a few weeks, just in time for them to "adjust" the ones that have been "OP" so far.

[NepomukLP]

Maybe just introduced a console inside of the instance that gives back the veteran stacks but removes the loot, gaining achievements, lockout and titles, that would allow groups to practise, do the fights as per usual and then have the opportunity to do Nightmare once they get the mechanics and strategies for the fights down.

 

I agree in the basic idea. Devs should aim for a system that satisfies elite raiders, "new-to-nim-proggers" and wannabes like me .

As a huge civ fan I remember that devs made only-awarding-boni for civ5. I liked that positive approach a lot, bc everyone comes out with some positive feeling. Imho, they should not remove loot, chievos lockouts with removing stacks. They should instead add extra chievos and maybe a 100% drop of mounts (EC/TFB/S&V) and/or extra titles for ppl who clear it without stacks. But pls no surviving chievos

 

However, they should remove stacks from hm as well and adjust spike damage a bit in nim mode while not having stacks.

 

Edit:

Probably just add another level above nightmare. It's easy to copy/paste the code and do new chievos for it and easy to adjust mounts etc... :-)

Edited February 16, 2020 by NepomukLP

[Eriamea]

They have made Nim more accessible a long while ago with 258 gear, opening it to new groups...now several of those groups would see their progress halted and they would be locked out of old content that they were already doing. That is is not a very good display of marketing sense and a terrible way to address the lack of new content as essentially they are taking content away from those groups that have beaten all HMs and were enjoying nim prog but are not quite at the absolute top because they are carrying a few weaker or less experienced elements (the player base is not what it was and finding committed players willing to prog or reprog and wipe on content they know for newcomers is becoming harder).

 

And don’t mention Nim crystals: at that cost they are good for timed runs but for regular prog they will just break groups (assuming they even work as intended die to capped stats).

 

As for the suggestions to remove loot completely they don’t make sense as easier content gives loot. One can gear just fine doing FPs.

 

There is no need to take anything away from anyone to satisfy a more hardcore base: grant the wish of those that want harder old content by giving the option to remove the stacks and add an extra achievement (or tier) for completing it without stacks. It will even add more content and a new challenge for some groups once they have progged it with stacks. Most of the old titles don’t mean much anyway given that there are many players that got the achievements in 3.0 when it was even easier than it has ever been since then.

 

As for new content, well just make it harder: it’s not like you are sending anyone back to square 1.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Eriamea

[Aulus_Claudius]

I actually went back into the Onslaught pre-launch dev threads and whatnot to check.

 

It looks like the devs always said that amplifiers would be taken into account in MM operations.

Interesting, I seem to recall during PTS days they promised that amplifiers would not be taken into account for any aspect of PvE balance or boss scaling, but don't have the quotes in front of me. Care to post what you found?

 

If true, then of course it really does mean they intend raiding to be something for the rich elite alone, which I find sad. Augments are bad enough in terms of cost (or time investment, which boils down to the same thing), but at least the old 228 augs are almost as good to the point you can barely tell a difference in downscaled content. There are no old, cheaper amps to fall back on, and they set the player back tens if not hundreds of millions.

 

Glad I had a reserve to tap into for 6.0, but it's no wonder the credit sellers are making a killing. Seems like every time I get mail from them their price goes up.

[sharkfishman]

Interesting, I seem to recall during PTS days they promised that amplifiers would not be taken into account for any aspect of PvE balance or boss scaling, but don't have the quotes in front of me. Care to post what you found?

 

If true, then of course it really does mean they intend raiding to be something for the rich elite alone, which I find sad. Augments are bad enough in terms of cost (or time investment, which boils down to the same thing), but at least the old 228 augs are almost as good to the point you can barely tell a difference in downscaled content. There are no old, cheaper amps to fall back on, and they set the player back tens if not hundreds of millions.

 

Glad I had a reserve to tap into for 6.0, but it's no wonder the credit sellers are making a killing. Seems like every time I get mail from them their price goes up.

 

I should've copied the exact post, but is was during the Reddit Q&A. I'll look for it again in the Dev Tracker. They said that amplifiers would not be taken into account for balancing of any content except for MM operations.

 

I totally hate amplifiers, as far the credit costs, rng, etc. are concerned. It would be different if we're talking about a totally F2P game such as Warframe, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking SWTOR is f2p.

[sharkfishman]

Question - "If amplifiers won't be included in balance targets, will that make progression of the new operation too easy? Will top teams just agree not to use them? Or will the stat increase be too small to make a difference?

 

Also, interesting to know that Eric has been on the SWTOR team for 40320 years. Looking good for his age."

 

 

Answer -

They are not captured in any PvE balance targets except for Master Mode Operations. They don't make a huge difference to your character but they give you more options for really min/maxxing.

I have been graying since I was like... 17

 

Found it.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=9735252

[SoyChulo]

I'm sorry, is that MR Mathematically Impossible Fridge of Death and Taxes telling people to get good? THAT IS RICH

I've just returned to the game a little over a month ago. Am a founder from launch and was leading a progression raiding guild on that server, Pot5, and remember these infamous words.

 

Thanks for the reminder and the chuckle it brought me to hear them again. Fond memories of a fun time.

[Aulus_Claudius]

I should've copied the exact post, but is was during the Reddit Q&A. I'll look for it again in the Dev Tracker. They said that amplifiers would not be taken into account for balancing of any content except for MM operations.

 

I totally hate amplifiers, as far the credit costs, rng, etc. are concerned. It would be different if we're talking about a totally F2P game such as Warframe, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking SWTOR is f2p.

Thanks for digging it up! Interesting, sounds like a question posed after they said they wouldn't be used for balance targets.

 

Agree completely, amplifiers were just a credit grab intended to get money out of the system by punishing those who can least afford it and leaving the rich with most of their fortunes intact. Poor and new players now have a huge hurdle to entering NiM raiding or competitive PvP, and that's not even considering the experience they don't have and need to gather. It's just sad that they chose a paywall to endgame content like that as the big credit sink for 6.0. The only ones who profit are the credit sellers.

[RikuvonDrake]

I think that the game really needs more credit sinks and making one that is more targeted towards the endgame nightmare raiders population is most likely a good idea since these players are subscribers and most likely have a fair chunk of change to spend. Taking a bit of those credits out of the circulation will have a positive impact on the games economy which in turn will be a great thing for all players, sure some of the absolute richest players are gonna have to pay the price for that but in the grand scheme of things, credit sinks like amplifiers are a good thing for the game.