Game Scaling Feedback

[Carba]

Starter planets do not feel sufficiently risky.

[AggiePunbot]

There is too much of a lack of new skills between levels 15 and 23. Makes combat feel really boring.

 

Also, Scoundrels/Operatives need to get the Tranquilizer Dart/Sleep Dart a lot earlier than level 35.

[bryanskrantz]

There is too much of a lack of new skills between levels 15 and 23. Makes combat feel really boring.

 

Also, Scoundrels/Operatives need to get the Tranquilizer Dart/Sleep Dart a lot earlier than level 35.

 

I agree with this. I WANT to do level testing but grinding till level 23 to gain a real skill seems boring.

[fire-breath]

Im slightly confused if I should post this in here.

My friends and I have tried out a few master mode flashpoints. We found that the scaling seems off the charts.

According to this post the MM flashpoints are balanced against 318 gear.

We all had the 318 gear from the PTS vendor.

 

Rakata MM

1st boss we went in with an assassin tank, jugg veng and sorc madness. We use a lv50 companion as healer.

Our companion could barely keep us alive while it took us AGES to kill the first boss.

on trash our tank had to rotate cooldowns like candy.

We skipped the bonus boss as it was just not dying fast enough.

 

We swapped the companion to dps and the sorc to healer for the 2nd boss (commander rand). We got a total of 3 tactical repositions with a few minutes of fighting afterwards in order to kill him.

 

On the DS vs LS choice we chose LS and were nearly wiped out by the sith ambush. Granted ... this was partially caused by me not being ready for the huge amount of damage taken.

 

Last boss we first gave it a go with me healing and the companion as dps. Sadly we wiped. Went in again but now with me AND companion as healer. This went allright.

 

Assault on tython (imp) MM

1 assassin tank, 1 sorc healer and 2 pugs. The damage output from the 4 adds was insane. DPS took forever to kill their 2 adds. Tried it multiple times but just gave up.

 

Korriban (imp) MM

1 *** tank, 1 sorc healer, 2 pugs. Mass dots eat through the group. Healer couldn't keep up.

 

Hammer MM

1 *** tank, 1 sorc healer, 2 pugs. At 4 stacks the tank is pretty much dead. Only way to get through was by selfcleansing the stacks and/or tankswapping with the dps.

Bonus frog the tank rotated through all cooldowns and wiped at 78%.

The 3 bossfriends were doable but the outgoing damage was again insane.

 

 

We have done more flashpoints but pretty much all resulted in cancellations due to the insane amount of outgoing damage. Next to this the healing done feels underwhelmed. (or at least sorc/sages). All in all the balance for these master modes doesn't seem to be balanced for groups in 318 gear.

We are aware that better gear will make it easier. But the current state seems a tad exessive

[SnEaKyMan]

With game scaling now available, we would like to compile feedback based off of your experience with the Combat Styles currently available.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

• How does this experience compare to live?
  
• Do you feel too strong or too weak? Please explain why.
  
• Do you notice anything off with your stats?
  

 

Please keep in mind the following:

• Game scaling is available only for planets, daily areas, story mode Flashpoints, and chapters.
  
• Game scaling is NOT available for old operations (Ops outside of 7.0), or Veteran and Master modes in Flashpoints
  

When providing feedback, please let us know what Combat Style you've chosen, and describe your experience in as much detail as possible to help us understand your thought process and line of thinking.

 

Thank you!

 

Where the explanation about what changes were made? What scaling means in 7.0?

 

What is this thread even for without even explaining what you expect to be tested?

[ThanderSnB]

Where the explanation about what changes were made? What scaling means in 7.0?

 

What is this thread even for without even explaining what you expect to be tested?

 

It's about the level-sync system, how your level goes down to the appropriate level for the planet and your stats are scaled down. For example, you could do Empire Taris heroics on live game with your character and then Empire Taris heroics on PTS with that same character you copied to PTS. Compare how long it took between them, compare how easy or hard it was, etc.

[GrandLordMenace]

Yeah, this is how scaling has been during almost every iteration of the PTS so I have to believe it's intentional. Essentially what's happening is that you're being synced to tertiary stat values that make sense for your synced level (on Tatooine that'd be like level 30-32 I think?) but you're being held to level 80 stat targets. So, for instance, you still need ~2700 Accuracy to have 110% Accuracy, which is outright impossible on most lower level planets/instances. This means your Accuracy, Crit Chance, Alacrity, etc, will all tank on synced planets.

 

Level sync and bolster are both in a bad spot in my opinion because of issues like this, would be really nice to see this iterated on and resolved before release.

 

To shed some light on this, this was how level sync was originally intended to be implemented when Level Sync was first introduced in 4.0 PTS. KeyboardNinja and I pitched the current live iteration with tertiary stats remaining at identical percentages as max level curves (if you have 9% alacrity at level 75, you have 9% alacrity on Tython). However that causes the side effect of primary stats being useless while level synced, since *SOMETHING* has to be scaled down. This was not a problem when the only level synced content was dailies, story, and non endgame content, but when endgame content now relies on Level Sync, it creates a ton of random problems.

 

My personal opinion is that not having accuracy cap feels awful, and having your alacrity shift on every single planet you visit is absurd from a game experience standpoint, let alone for endgame content that now requires level sync. The problem here is that on live, Tertiary stats are the only ones that are valuable, but on PTS, it appears we've gone back to essentially no stat being valuable. That isn't the solution.

 

The solution is to incentivize using primary stats.

 

My suggestion would be to hard revert level sync to the way it operates on live that incentivizes tertiary stats. Then, have the "gear ilvl" stacks buff be tied to total primary stats, rather than raw ilvl. It'd take some tuning to get it to work, but this way, SA and FR relics would now once again be useful in Level synced content, you wouldn't have DPS running Defense mods, full crit / acc augments, etc.

 

The current iteration on PTS described in the quoted post is nonsensical, it's not fun for anyone, and it actively takes control of your character away from you.

Edited December 16, 2021 by GrandLordMenace

[SnEaKyMan]

It's about the level-sync system, how your level goes down to the appropriate level for the planet and your stats are scaled down. For example, you could do Empire Taris heroics on live game with your character and then Empire Taris heroics on PTS with that same character you copied to PTS. Compare how long it took between them, compare how easy or hard it was, etc.

 

Okay thanks, fair enough. I just expected a bit more details about scaling if they made any overhauls from the current system. I'll give what you suggest a try.

[TrixxieTriss]

To shed some light on this, this was how level sync was originally intended to be implemented when Level Sync was first introduced in 4.0 PTS. KeyboardNinja and I pitched the current live iteration with tertiary stats remaining at identical percentages as max level curves (if you have 9% alacrity at level 75, you have 9% alacrity on Tython). However that causes the side effect of primary stats being useless while level synced, since *SOMETHING* has to be scaled down. This was not a problem when the only level synced content was dailies, story, and non endgame content, but when endgame content now relies on Level Sync, it creates a ton of random problems.

 

My personal opinion is that not having accuracy cap feels awful, and having your alacrity shift on every single planet you visit is absurd from a game experience standpoint, let alone for endgame content that now requires level sync. The problem here is that on live, Tertiary stats are the only ones that are valuable, but on PTS, it appears we've gone back to essentially no stat being valuable. That isn't the solution.

 

The solution is to incentivize using primary stats.

 

My suggestion would be to hard revert level sync to the way it operates on live that incentivizes tertiary stats. Then, have the "gear ilvl" stacks buff be tied to total primary stats, rather than raw ilvl. It'd take some tuning to get it to work, but this way, SA and FR relics would now once again be useful in Level synced content, you wouldn't have DPS running Defense mods, full crit / acc augments, etc.

 

The current iteration on PTS described in the quoted post is nonsensical, it's not fun for anyone, and it actively takes control of your character away from you.

 

100% agree.

 

The other option is to make everything LvL 80 and upscale everyone’s stats based on a bolster system. But that would cause even more head aches.

 

I would prefer if it was set up like it currently is on live servers.

[EHKodiak]

There is too much of a lack of new skills between levels 15 and 23. Makes combat feel really boring.

 

Also, Scoundrels/Operatives need to get the Tranquilizer Dart/Sleep Dart a lot earlier than level 35.

 

Yep, reported on the previous version but no change done. No backstab for ages on concealment, it's daft.

[klizilii]

Starter planet (Hutta): Felt a little strong on this planet, enemies were no threat

 

Using an irating 320 to do weekly heroics: Felt okay, but I definitely noticed I'm not quite as strong as Live, which is reasonable considering I haven't maxed out gear yet. I don't do a lot of heroics or daily areas, so I can't really make a nuanced comparison but things still died, I was able to solo them without noticing a big difference.

 

Difficulty scaling of level 80 content: it gets really weird. Sometimes I do level 80 content and it feels just fine at irating 320 and other times it's crazy difficult in comparison to what I'm used to. Sometimes certain enemies feel way faster to kill while others take longer. Then you get into master mode flashpoints and some of them are like "oh yeah, that was a fun challenge for our gear level" and others are like "***, how good does our gear need to be to get past this boss" and just can't progress (even with augmented 320 gear).

 

Uprisings we are level 75 and I'm not sure if that's just because unfinished? Didn't really spend any time in them

[Araberen]

Test Red Reaper

Sniper (later Sorcerer)

318 + tactical

50 lvl companinon

 

Vet: it's super easy, like solo on live. You need to scale it a bit up, something between your first iteration and what we have rn

MM: first mob pack is almost impossible to kill solo

[Vishantis]

Solo MM Red Reaper, Infiltration Shadow, level 80, 318 gear.

 

I couldn't kill the last boss, mostly because I don't have enough accuracy & power (I have 6.5k). My crit & alactity are also too low and it definitly feels like I am doing no damage at all. My highest crits are around 40k... which is way lower than my highest crit on the live server. It doesn't really make sense imo. Augments wouldn't fix that.

 

I don't see any gear scalling in PvP. My stats are lower than my teammates with higher gear tiers.

[Aethyriel]

The balance of MM FPs on fresh lv 80 characters is terrible.

 

We ran a group of 3 DPS (PT, Marauder, Sniper) with a Merc heal and while it wasn't exactly 'hard', the FPs took forever. Now, we all play Nim Ops on live and our group has an average of maybe 90% + clear on those, so I'd say we know how to DPS properly but you just hit for less than with 306 gear (slightly, but that's due to fully augmented gear) while the bosses have insane amounts of health. Trash has too much health as well. We got False Emperor FP and Malgus had 11.1 million HP. Never mind the provided gear didn't even allow us to hit the accuracy cap for that content level, but it took forever to kill him.

 

Then you can walk into a story mode operation where you have 2 extra DPS, sometimes 3 or even 4 extra DPS and the boss has 13 million health. You might say, MM FPs are supposed to be harder and you'd be right, that's a valid point, but they both give 220 gear level. So where exactly is the reward? The stats are slightly better on the blue MM gear but that's it. Both become obsolete when you enter HC operations and can get loot there.

 

It's just weird that we progress in levels, we're supposed to be stronger but the characters feel drastically weaker. Everyone is worse than what they were while enemies have gotten stronger. But the worst part is that it's not that they deal so much more damage, it's just that they have so much more health. It makes the game so goddamn slow. The current PTS iteration is simply not fun. And I don't see the average non-ops players who doesn't play all that well clearing most MM FPs in random groups either. Which means random grouping will be some sort of special hell once this goes live.

 

Meanwhile, you can still sleepwalk through any solo content like H2 missions on every planet or daily areas like CZ. The way the scaling and gear progression works out is that I feel like I'd need to grind for half a year through story mode ops, MM FPs and Vet Ops just to get back to playing what I actually want to play - Nim Ops.

[NormericanEagle]

- In the storyline: Same as live, more or less. Story mobs were generally not a challenge. Story bosses were sometimes a slight challenge, but definitely doable with only class abilities. Doing them as any type of Vanguard was slow and boring at lower levels, but that was not an issue as a Scrapper Scoundrel, so I put the blame on the Vanguard's lack of attacks. The only boss I would say is poorly scaled is Revan on Yavin 4, who took about 10 minutes to kill because of how much health he had.

- Heroics: Harder than live. I don't think the scaling itself has changed here, but the relative lack of abilities made it harder to do heroic missions at-level on the Chapter 1 planets. I could not complete some of the heroics without using Heroic Moment. This was not an issue when I came back at a higher level to redo heroic missions. This difference is not necessarily a problem, though, since heroics are intended for two players.

- Story flashpoints: I am not sure if there was any scaling. When I did the Shadow of Revan flashpoints for my story progress, I was one level below the recommendation and did not receive a bolster. Even after I got to the recommended level, they were still quite hard to kill at-level compared to the live servers. I don't mind a challenge personally, but I think a new player would be unable to clear some of them, particularly Blood Hunt. Boss health is fine, but the bosses are dealing too much damage currently.

- Daily areas: I only tested Yavin 4 and Section X, but they were perfectly tuned and exactly the same as live. No issues here, either at-level or at level 80.

- Experience and scaling: Even tougher enemies, like champion bosses or heroic elite mobs, sometimes do not grant XP to higher level characters that have been scaled down. I don't know if this is intentional, but it is annoying. I specifically ran into this with the heroic mission to kill Mandalorians on Dromund Kaas.

- Chapters: The scaling here is similar to live, maybe a little tougher. A few of the bosses seem to hit very hard, particularly the Overwatch Hunters on Zakuul, Valkorion in the Odessen Wilds, and the Gemini Captain during the phase where she spawns 3 copies of herself. It was particularly tough to survive long enough in that Valkorion fight, even on story mode. This was an issue for both of the disciplines I tried. I did eventually kill them, but those fights felt like they were scaled for veteran mode rather than story mode. None of these have been a challenge when I've done them on story mode on live servers.

 

I was playing mainly as Tactics Vanguard and Scrapper Scoundrel when testing, with either a healing or damage companion.

[merovejec]

The scaling in MM FPS is crazy! It takes ages to kill trash and bosses.

[Ramalina]

The way the scaling and gear progression works out is that I feel like I'd need to grind for half a year through story mode ops, MM FPs and Vet Ops just to get back to playing what I actually want to play - Nim Ops.

 

So from a developer's perspective:

 

You're planning to play for at least an extra six months before you think about unsubscribing due to boredom with 7.0's content releases? That's GREAT!

 

Game design working as intended. Oh, yeah baby.

 

 

 

Remember kids, always check your posts against your official SWTOR Dev-speak decoder ring before posting to make sure you don't send messages that don't mean what you thought they meant.

 

 

I jest a bit here, but there's an element of truth too. From the publisher's perspective, having a slower less pleasant game experience for the players might not always be an entirely bad thing.

[Aethyriel]

So from a developer's perspective:

 

You're planning to play for at least an extra six months before you think about unsubscribing due to boredom with 7.0's content releases? That's GREAT!

 

Game design working as intended. Oh, yeah baby.

 

 

 

Remember kids, always check your posts against your official SWTOR Dev-speak decoder ring before posting to make sure you don't send messages that don't mean what you thought they meant.

 

 

I jest a bit here, but there's an element of truth too. From the publisher's perspective, having a slower less pleasant game experience for the players might not always be an entirely bad thing.

 

That's why I wrote 'I would have to' not 'I will have to'. Meaning I'm thinking about letting my sub run out because what I'm being presented with for another 6 months of content does not seem fun to me. Because I'm playing nim right now and when the patch goes live, I would have to play story mode, then veteran ops just to to gear up. But those are boring for people who played nim. They have fewer mechanics and offer no engaging challenge nor fun.

 

I have changed my 6 months sub to a 3 month sub so it runs out in March. I'm playing 1 month of the update and then I'll decide whether it's still fun or they stick with what's currently on the PTS, which isn't fun. Gearing could also possibly be done faster when they stop gating the upgrade mechanism with absurd costs.

[NormericanEagle]

Finished the main content for all expansions and wanted to leave additional feedback:

- Chapter scaling: The wave battles on Iokath in the chapters 'Where Dreams Die' and 'Ascension' are much harder than live. The fight with all my allies in the museum took me 5-10 tries to avoid dying, and even when I killed it (using all my shields, crowd control, and heroic moment) i still nearly died several times. This was on story mode, and felt harder than the master mode fight was on live. The walker fight was more doable, I just felt like I had to stop and repair frequently. Their health is fine, but they either need to have less spawns or deal less damage. Vaylin also hits very hard in her final fight.

- Onderon and Mek-Sha: These planets are meant to be started at level 70, but I got no bolster or scaling up when I started the story at level 71, so I had to fight a bunch of level 75 enemies who avoided a lot of my attacks. I don't think this is intended, and once I was at level 75 I had no issues.

 

Overall, most scaling down, or scaling to player level, in the game seems fine. But I think it would be good for developers to play through the expansion content on several classes to test balancing of each encounter. Issues seem to be confined to specific fights or zones for the most part. I did however notice a pattern of there not being scaling up/bolster in zones that are meant to have it.

[Akea]

KOTET Chapter 4

Where Dreams Die

 

In the 10 years that I've been playing this game, I've never had a mission make me want to quit and uninstall until now. Expecting players to do this with quest gear, low influence companion and a nerfed class in a story mode that's tuned like a master mode is beyond ridiculous.

 

This is the worst scaling and tuning I've ever seen in SWTOR.

 

EDIT: I finally got past it with my KOTFE quest gear and an influence level 2 Vette. It was a pain in the neck instead of being fun and rewarding.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Akea

[Akea]

You can add Iokath to the list

 

I'm trying to do the quest "Shots Fired" and these elites are hitting harder than raid bosses. I feel bad for the players who come here and have no clue what's about to happen to them.

 

 

EDIT: Finally completed the quest by death pulling the elite enemies back into the NPCs and switching from influence level 5 Theron to influence level 16 T7.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Akea

[Pricia]

You can add Iokath to the list

 

I'm trying to do the quest "Shots Fired" and these elites are hitting harder than raid bosses. I feel bad for the players who come here and have no clue what's about to happen to them.

 

 

EDIT: Finally completed the quest by death pulling the elite enemies back into the NPCs and switching from influence level 5 Theron to influence level 16 T7.

 

That mission already sucks on live, lol. If I've died once on a character, it's on that one.

[AdsAillard]

Played through "Fallen"/Voss/Corellia/DK class-only missions on a copied level 75 JK - I wasn't particularly worried about leveling, so, I didn't put an XP boost and I didn't join any guilds (naturally), I finished the storyline without gaining a single level -- seems a bit much? Of course that we should get more XP for higher level quests, but finishing off Chapter 3 should have granted me AT LEAST 1 level?

 

Also, for the purposes of speedrunning (as I'm trying to get pts cheevos), I switched this toon from its original Sentinel style into a Shadow (which is my favoured class) and I will say this: the story, which isn't that hard, gets even easier. I have avoided combat to levels I couldn't in consular storyline (which noticiably has more stealth detection droids!), and sometimes it gets confusing on how to continue the story as it would've been triggerd by combat... That you absolutely ignored. So back you go, try to figure out where is the enemy you kill to trigger the story to continue... To me, it's fun. For a newcomer, might have been VERY confusing. I predict a lot of customer service needed if the markers/descriptions aren't made super clear.

 

Another funny side-effect comes from... enemies disappearing without you killing them? You triggered a continuation of the mission, and enemies around you - that you slept or bypassed - vanish into thin air. It's kinda funny, ngl! When I went to save Doc, I killed *only* the guards for the quest, but after I talked to him, the whole room was cleared... So I walked out, and ran into droids that were still living. Weeee! After a few encounters like that, I figured it was a thing... But when I finished killing the Emperor, got sent back to the middle of the temple and aggroed some guards I had previously ignored.^^'

 

So, what did I do? I came back on another copied character, boosted it to 80, and proceeded to complete the storyline between Tatooine & Fallen. Once again, I moved from my original combat style (Jedi Guardian) into a Infiltration Shadow. The whole experience of running story on a stealther in a class that wasn't expecting it was... INCREDIBLY quicker. I was completing Class Mission in 20 minutes give or take in planets such as Hoth, Belsavis & Voss that required a lot of driving around; closer by planets were even quicker. It's a bit nuts, not gonna lie.

 

 

Also with this toon, wearing my good-old augmented 306 set, I went in to finish the Vet FPs weekly: Legacy of the Rakata was very easy, as it was expected, and the other level-scaled fp was equally smooth, and finally I got Ruins of Nul for the last one. That was... less good! Malgus is incredibly buggy and we ended up with one dps soloing him. Luckily, it counted for me (I saw some people saying it DIDN'T!), so I just finished it.

 

On a side-note: KOTET 4 on Story seems to be broken, I tried running it with a copy of my HM raiding toon from Malgus and the ambush from droids simply isn't playable through; Vette was dying in the first wave, even if I stopped doing everything to keep her out of damage, drawing aggro from everything, and overall just being incredibly innefective -- and I gave her a commander's compendium that had happened to be on my copied bag, too! Just frustrating. Trusting Jackie's description of how the cheevo counting is gonna work, I simply got a copy of a toon that was further ahead and finished KOTET on it (the Malgus toon I used to finish KOTFE and started KOTET on PTS). Clearly, from other comments, this was not a "me only" problem. I feel kinda dirty that I ended up getting one of my level 75's on Live Server that hadn't yet started main story and thrown her deep into KOTET for sake of PTS cheevos, but, I'm a maniac like that. Now that character is bound to the trash... Once I can get another gunslinger without leveling, thanks.

[Carba]

Comments on Chapters

1. they seem a little too easy. In Ch XIII with Vetter and Gault, I could let Vette both heal and kill stormtroopers forever

2. too many times mobs hide underground and can kill but not be killed

3. too many times rotation is interrupted by system saying intended action is "not ready". If it's not ready I don't need an uninformative message giving me no information

[Ceinwyn]

Unsure if this is game scaling, gear feedback or both but I have never sucked so hard on the last three bosses in the Zakuul arena than just now and I have done this *a lot* on live. Smuggler/Mercenary, level 77, irating 318. Died twice. Couldn't even battle res my companion because some genius had the idea to nuke Onboard AED and the like Had to fight the droids that spawn in the middle twice on the Doom Droid, which never happens. Not great.