Level Sync Update

[DurdensWrath]

additional note on companions and their effectiveness: the Presence base stat does scale in Level Synced content to reflect the amount of base Presence a player would expect to have in that level range. This would apply to Presence earned through character level-up and from equipment. However, the system does not scale any bonus Presence earned from raising the influence levels of companions, so companions with high influence levels will always be more effective across all content where companions can be used.

 

Does the "untouched" bonus presence include what is gained from human and class completions? I believe you still have bugs there. You might want to double check that level 50 influence are REALLY better than level one.

 

And when are these "future updates" going to come? YOU BROKE STUFF ALMOST TWO MONTHS AGO, and are just getting around to admitting it. ESPECIALLYWHEN EVERYONE ON THE PTS TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE WRONG.

 

We were able to address lots of balance feedback back then

 

Well that is a lie. Otherwise we wouldn't be living with your screwups. The game gets older, and the devs more incompetent.

 

In the 4.0 release, we introduced the concept of Bolster throughout the wider game. It was previously launched to specifically address PvP Warzone balance in order to help undergeared players, but the 4.0 release brought the feature to PvE content.

and I hated it then, too. Edited April 1, 2022 by DurdensWrath

[DrakoOnasi]

Hey Thanks for the open communication,

As someone that works in DevOps whoever ran this update messed up.

You guys did a lot of work but when you were done you didn't do anything the subscribers asked for! I don't want to be that guy but I have to.

1st of all we didn't ask for aa complete overhaul of the gearing system how it works or the additional grind we have to do 5 times to get the best gear in the game. SWTOR was fine with 306 gear and the way the gear system was. We asked for more PVP maps, story content, Operations and Flashpoints. Nowhere have I ever read since 6.0 someone ask for an overhaul of the gearing system. If you wanted to add more gear/ gear levels/ levels to the game fine, no one asked to remove set bonuses for an implant bonus that you had to grind for, as mentioned players now you literally have to grind for gear, 5 separate times to get the best gear in the game. We also didn't need to have the skill tree revamped but it did come with the secondary Combat styles the 1 good thing about the 7.0 update. The time wasted messing with gearing system, you could have added more than 2 hours of story content and a flashpoint. with the time it took there should have been at least 6 hours of story, 2 or 3 flashpoints and 1 or 2 Ops not to mention 4 or 5 new PVP maps.

You notice I am not even bringing up the amount of bugs or the way someone forgot to put /stuck back into PVP cause I know it was not left out for abuse, it was left out by accident when someone was compiling the code that's why it is slated to be added back in 7.0.2

I just think you guys wasted time on things no one wanted or should have been implemented in a more gradual way once they were completely tested.

Edited April 1, 2022 by DrakoOnasi
re word it

[Exly]

I started playing two weeks before 7.0. Loved the game and subscribed immediately.

I wasn't even aware that a new expansion was coming. Just found the game randomly and started playing.

 

Since the update I got skills that I already had unlocked pushed several levels forward. I had my companions that I upgraded to 50 just perform badly at each update and the more I grinded for gear, the weaker I got. At each update it took more and more time to complete the CHORES that compose the new late game experience. Couldn't make money nor have fun crafting late game items anymore because the developers simply forgot to include those.

 

This month (my second subscription month) I played less than 15 days. I came here to read this post expecting to find that you fixed the issues, not that you are finally aware that they exist.

 

I just reached the conclusion that this game doesn't respect my time. I already have a job.

Good luck. I'll take my money, time and attention elsewhere.

 

The sad thing is that they said they made the changes in 7.0 to attract new players, and all that they did was upset a lot of old players and give a bad first impression to those just starting to play.

[Flying-Brian]

Chris.

 

Please address and fix the XP boost from the Victorious Pioneer armor set from the DvL event.

 

The lame duck excuss of "working as intended" comes across as a coverup that updating the set bonus to work from level 75 - level 80 was forgotten about, and it was just easier for you to say that is was intended to not work anymore.

[MaximusRex]

Thanks for all the information, Chris.

 

I have to wonder, since the last several expansions adding levels and fixing bolster/level sync for that purpose seems to be such a major task, and they really make additional level progression less important, and further makes the leveling experience worse by increasing the time it takes to get to end game content and spreading out fewer and fewer abilities out over an ever-expanding distance, why are BioWare still adding levels?

 

It feels like an outdated design philosophy that just doesn't make sense anymore and consumes a ton and time and effort that could otherwise go toward game systems that players can actually get excited about.

 

Making all content level 80 and syncing players up also seems like it would add the benefit of opening up more content to new players sooner in their progression and sets one level of expectations to measure against when parsing combat logs to get an idea of how well one is playing.

 

Some games have decided to forgo constant rebalancing of the game by adding a horizontal progression path at level cap, and those games seem to be able to do very well with this kind of system.

 

I hope BioWare isn't sticking to some ideas because that is what faltering market giants have done in the past, even if it doesn't make sense anymore.

 

Honestly, I'd love to see more time go to other systems in this game that feel like they can be so much better with more refinement top notch in the MMO space, then adding levels that at the end of the day don't really make me stronger, but instead is just acting like a short term reset switch.

Edited April 1, 2022 by MaximusRex

[Arsq]

Hi Chris/SWTOR team/Whomever it may concern,

 

I've played the game on and off since launch, in part thanks to real life and in part thanks to the state of the game at the time, or combination of the both. I'd like to say I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and the great of SWTOR thus far. Relating to this post specifically, I applaud the choice to investing in new coding and easier maintenance. It's important for most applications to be as scalable as possible.

 

At this point, I'd like to refer to an older post regarding design philosophies of class balance: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9333043#edit9333043

 

How do you think the class balance listed in the above post entails to the current iteration of SWTOR? According to 3rd party sources, such as Parsely, IO mercenary at least is vastly underpeforming compared to the "target DPS percentile" as shown above. And based on personal experience, the gameplay of IO mercenary has also degraded significantly from 6.3 expansion (even at full 330 gear).

 

I would like to ask can we expect class balancing and perhaps tweaks to improve the gameplay experience of these underperforming classes (there are more than IO merc)? And if so, when could we expect them? I know many teams who were progging MM Dxun towards the end of the previous patch, and many quit due to the current state of their class or game balance.

 

I'd also like to ask if you think you have correctly balanced MM operations to 330 gear? I recall seeing a post where someone stated that amplifiers would be gone, because players would already be "more powerful than ever before", but realistically I'm not feeling this effect, not yet at least. Perhaps when we move on to R-4 gear?

[TziganeNZ]

Great, you've explained the problem. That's a great first step.

 

But as the level sync system stands, players are not rewarded for increased levels and improved gear with increased effectiveness. Period! Do you think another 10 mastery on a planet is something players really feel compared to the older system where we'd at least always feel our tertiary stats making a difference? You suggest that the old system "set the wrong expectation for game balance" and that's somehow a problem because the experience wouldn't match up "facing other players in other modes such as PvP, or NPCs in Operations, and Master Mode Flashpoints" - seriously? Is that a problem? The community is siloed! Different segments of the community focus on class stories versus PvP versus operations versus MM flashpoints! Did that really justify this awful new system that punishes everyone "equally?" And, no mistake, this is a punishment. This system punishes people for investing extra time into their characters, levelling them up, getting extra gear, by making sure that *isn't* reflected by an improvement in actual in-game performance. So the old system had a few wonky outliers. So what? It was *significantly* better than this.

 

You're punishing players for playing your game *more.* How is that a good business model?

 

In this system, colour crystals people paid money to get don't work. The entire aug system doesn't work. Relics don't work. Oh, that's fine because at least those aren't WAI? It's okay because you might actually fix those within six months to a year of release? What about the friggin datacron bonuses? Pointless now under your new terrible system, and that's WAI according to your post. Presence bonuses granted from completing all companion conversations from the class stories? Pointless. That's really the sum of 7.0 for a great portion of the player base: you don't seem to care one bit about the work people put in to get specific rewards prior to whatever latest fad you've adopted. We're seeing it in level sync, people who worked for set bonuses like the XP bonus gear are seeing it, anyone sitting at level 80 with an unused weapon skin is seeing it.

 

You're so much more eager to stop players from playing the "wrong" way than to enable players to play at all - or, heaven forbid, have fun playing - that undocumented nerfs come in faster than a simple fix for desynced mission content!

 

The general baseline content in this game is a joyless slog right now and it's horrifying to hear from you that this is working as intended. What is wrong with your priorities that your response to plummeting concurrent player counts is to tell the players that they're the ones who are wrong?

 

I shouldn't have to tell you this because you *should* have player data of your own to look at, but inside of the siloed playerbase, there is a significant segment of players who just play the class stories over and over. That's it, that's all they care about; the expansions never worked for them, flashpoints are a slog, operations are inaccessible, they just like the class stories that much. That segment of the playerbase is so easy to please because they're insulated from all of the later game's development. They only need the gear that can make the base game playable, crafting is more for flavour than anything else, the occasional pretty outfit is nice, but they have what they need. PvPers, raiders, late game PvErs, they're very sensitive to new changes and it's hard to weigh their disparate needs against each other, but at least SWTOR has that cushion of casuals it can always rely on to take what they're given with no complaints. And somehow this update managed to upset literally everyone for no discernable benefit to any distinct group. Yes, even the people who only play the damn base game class stories, who have now found the new level scaling turning every enemy fight into an annoying HP sponge slog with literally 0 discernable benefit. Because, apparently, you didn't like how niche exploiters in different communities were cheesing some out of the way loopholes?

 

Was that *really* worth it?

 

+1000 (especially the highlighted sections)

[MagSul]

Thank you for that insightful post, Chris!

[DurdensWrath]

Additionally, I feel I have to explain this to you like a small child, Chris, but any stats gained from datacrons or from legacy should be added on top of your level sync goals. These were worked hard for, and should alway be bonus on top of whatever nerf you have applied to us.

 

Additionally on the PTS, the companions are still presence capped, and it makes little difference if they are 50 influence or not. FIX THIS.

 

ALSO, TREEK IS 100% STILL BROKEN.

 

also like to ask if you think you have correctly balanced MM operations to 330 gear? I recall seeing a post where someone stated that amplifiers would be gone, because players would already be "more powerful than ever before", but realistically I'm not feeling this effect, not yet at least. Perhaps when we move on to R-4 gear?

 

There are bosses in HM ops that are way overtuned for 326 gear. Whatever they think they did, they were wrong.

Edited April 1, 2022 by DurdensWrath

[omaan]

Hi folks,

 

I wanted to chat about the history of Bolster, how it’s evolved over the years into what is now known as our new Level Sync system, and how we’ve been tuning and adjusting Level Sync based on your feedback. One note on terminology: I’m going to refer to Bolster as the pre-7.0 technology and Level Sync as the post-7.0 technology. We’ve used several terms interchangeably over the years, but for the purposes of this post I’m referring to the technology difference between the two.

 

In the 4.0 release, we introduced the concept of Bolster throughout the wider game. It was previously launched to specifically address PvP Warzone balance in order to help undergeared players, but the 4.0 release brought the feature to PvE content. When your character visited a planet they had completed the story on, we shifted the character level down to a range we expected players to be in for that planet. Bolster enabled the game to give better and more relevant rewards for high level players going back to older content. We could finally reward max level characters with useful items or currency, whereas previously they would receive rewards far below their actual level.

 

The reverse was also true: we could Bolster players upwards in order to give more content options to lower level players. This mostly occurred in PvP Warzones in order to keep the queues more active and provide a better Warzone experience for those players in the lower levels.

 

Unfortunately, this implementation of Bolster brought a host of problems with it. To peel back the curtain a bit, that system relied on applying an ability on the player, and that ability would dictate the level and stat scaling to apply to the player. All of this data was defined by hand in tables, with specific stats defined per planet or per difficulty level per piece of content. Not only was this difficult to maintain and update, but it introduced a host of bugs and undesirable problems that we worked hard over the years to address. Sometimes lower level mods would actually provide better stats in PvP, for example. Or the Bolster ability would fail to apply in Operations or Flashpoints leaving one or more players over leveled for the content, and introducing exploits that allowed players to reliably force the bug and easily complete content balanced for several levels below their own.

 

This implementation also limited the ideas we had for the future of repeatable content, so for 7.0 we invested in modernizing our Bolster system, and effectively removed it and replaced it with the current Level Sync system.

 

Level Sync works from a new codebase that is more predictable and less prone to exploitative behavior. Designers can effectively enter item rating ranges per planet/piece of content, and the NPCs in that content are using the same scaling and stat ranges, making the balance relationship more predictable. This was a large change, so it required lots of per-content testing and iteration. We made this change last fall and it went through several PTS iterations. We were able to address lots of balance feedback back then and continue to do so to this day across the game in order to get the system feeling better with each iteration.

 

With this new system came a few side effects that removed some of the quirks of the older Bolster system. One oddity we solved was the way primary stats were scaled in the old Bolster system, especially when leveled down. They were far from accurate, and the system merely capped stats, so everyone over the defined thresholds had identical stats. With the Level Sync system, primary stats are actually scaled downwards according to how much of each stat characters have equipped. So if you have a high Mastery build, you should see more Mastery than another player who is running a high Endurance build in the same scaled content.

 

One side effect of the new system is all stats are scaled down when Level Synced. Under the Bolster system, tertiary stats such as Accuracy, Critical Rating, and Alacrity were never scaled. This had both advantages and disadvantages to how players would experience content. The plus side is Accuracy and Alacrity thresholds that players had taken care to optimize would be maintained when playing lower level content. But stats like Crit not scaling made older content more trivial than intended, which set the wrong expectation for game balance when facing other players in other modes such as PvP, or NPCs in Operations, and Master Mode Flashpoints.

We intend to update the new system to maintain Accuracy and Alacrity thresholds when scaled up or down in a future update. This would be very similar to how the old system worked for Accuracy and Alacrity specifically.

 

Another side effect involves Relics. These typically provide extra stats when they are activated or trigger on their own. As all stats now scale in Level Synced content, there currently isn’t a method to scale the extra stats provided by Relics, so they currently provide no stat bonuses when activated or triggered while Level Synced. We’ve been working on resolving this problem and intend to address it in a future update.

 

There is similar behavior with Augments and Color Crystals. We identified some issues both internally and thanks to your feedback on the PTS servers where it was possible to manipulate Augments and Color Crystals to provide huge stat bonuses outside of the bounds of the system. We have identified the root cause of these bugs, and have been working on solutions to both, to be introduced in future updates.

 

Finally, we’ve had a couple of issues prevalent in PvP modes that we’ve identified and fixed incrementally over several updates.

 

PvP Warzones and Arenas in 7.0 introduced a valid item rating range in level 80 matches. The Level Sync system was intended to allow players with gear from 318 through 326 to compete and upgrade their gear, while synching down players with higher gear (such as 330 gear) to the ceiling of 326. The system was also intended to reduce the stats and effectiveness for equipped gear below the 318 minimum threshold, such as 306 gear.

 

Once 7.0 launched, players noticed they were not less effective wearing 306 gear in level 80 Warzones and Arenas, and in fact in some cases their equipped stats were the same or better than 326 gear. We found the root cause of this bug and resolved this odd behavior in the 7.0.1 patch.

 

We have also determined the root cause of a bug that was causing item ratings in Level Synced content to be inaccurately computed. This didn’t result in major stat changes, but was the cause of some stats appearing to be worse after the 7.0.1 update in content that was Level Synced, and also that players with better than 326 gear in Warzones and Arenas had a slight stat advantage. We have a fix to this bug coming in the 7.0.2 update.

 

One last thing I wanted to address is companions, and their effectiveness in combat. The root cause for companions suddenly becoming worse tanks or not drawing aggro or dealing damage as expected was a bug in how their base stats were applied when loading into a planet or area. This caused some of their stats to be missing or inaccurate, which made things like their taunt ability or area of effect damage abilities miss their target NPC every time. The fix for the companion issue is also coming in the 7.0.2 update.

 

An additional note on companions and their effectiveness: the Presence base stat does scale in Level Synced content to reflect the amount of base Presence a player would expect to have in that level range. This would apply to Presence earned through character level-up and from equipment. However, the system does not scale any bonus Presence earned from raising the influence levels of companions, so companions with high influence levels will always be more effective across all content where companions can be used.

 

All of the fixes described above for the 7.0.2 update can be currently seen on the PTS, and we continue to keep an eye on your reports and experiences both in the live game and the PTS server. We made over 100 balance tweaks and adjustments to existing content thanks to your feedback in the 7.0 PTS cycles, and continue to address any areas as they are reported by players, our internal testing, and our own playthroughs of the game.

 

Hopefully this post sheds a bit of light on some of the issues and resolutions with Level Sync in the game. We’re still very excited about the content possibilities unlocked by modernizing this huge and fundamental system of the game.

 

Thanks!

-Chris

 

Guys i hope you really understand how it is extremely important to restrict stats of pve gear in both team and solo ranked. Ranked pvp is highly competetive and depends on many factors including skill, gear, right stats etc. If someone who plays pve will have advantage in ranked it will fully ruin the balance, scare out pvp players from this content since no one likes to be forced to play types of content they doesn't enjoy.

 

SO please, make sure your system will keep stats in pvp under control because from our previous experience bolster can not be trusted...it's an unreliable system which always FAILED to manage stats in ranked properly

Edited April 1, 2022 by omaan

[ReveredDead]

Hi folks,

With this new system came a few side effects that removed some of the quirks of the older Bolster system. One oddity we solved was the way primary stats were scaled in the old Bolster system, especially when leveled down. They were far from accurate, and the system merely capped stats, so everyone over the defined thresholds had identical stats. With the Level Sync system, primary stats are actually scaled downwards according to how much of each stat characters have equipped. So if you have a high Mastery build, you should see more Mastery than another player who is running a high Endurance build in the same scaled content.

 

One side effect of the new system is all stats are scaled down when Level Synced. Under the Bolster system, tertiary stats such as Accuracy, Critical Rating, and Alacrity were never scaled. This had both advantages and disadvantages to how players would experience content. The plus side is Accuracy and Alacrity thresholds that players had taken care to optimize would be maintained when playing lower level content. But stats like Crit not scaling made older content more trivial than intended, which set the wrong expectation for game balance when facing other players in other modes such as PvP, or NPCs in Operations, and Master Mode Flashpoints.

We intend to update the new system to maintain Accuracy and Alacrity thresholds when scaled up or down in a future update. This would be very similar to how the old system worked for Accuracy and Alacrity specifically.

 

Another side effect involves Relics. These typically provide extra stats when they are activated or trigger on their own. As all stats now scale in Level Synced content, there currently isn’t a method to scale the extra stats provided by Relics, so they currently provide no stat bonuses when activated or triggered while Level Synced. We’ve been working on resolving this problem and intend to address it in a future update.

 

There is similar behavior with Augments and Color Crystals. We identified some issues both internally and thanks to your feedback on the PTS servers where it was possible to manipulate Augments and Color Crystals to provide huge stat bonuses outside of the bounds of the system. We have identified the root cause of these bugs, and have been working on solutions to both, to be introduced in future updates.

 

 

Then what the hell is the point of having max gear?? If the developers are just going to level synch all of the stats? Why should I work hard to get 330 gear if it won't give me an edge in synched content. I can tell you right now that in a lot of content on story planets is overtuned. Either that or the system is scaling to give me too little power and mastery and it's my stats that need a boost. On planets I will find myself with 118% accuracy. Why? That 8% could be poured into critical stat or mastery to give more damage. I don't know why you guys care so much about lower level content. Pvp i understand but story planets and story flashpoints don't even give rewards worth anything. So why would you guys care if it was trivial to play through. There is nothing to be gained in story content other than enjoying the story and ripping through your enemies. I liked when tertiary stats were not scaled in pre-7.0 content. Now that they do in 7.0. I almost don't even want to bother gearing cause I get no benefit from stats or by using augments. When 7.1 comes out there will be absolutely zero benefit to modding gear cause the tertiary stats will just get freaking scaled in lower level content. I almost want to just find a new game to play and halt my subscription for a year until you guys finally figure out that the system you had before actually worked before now...

[Gyronamics]

Accuracy being crippled on sub-80 planets was unnecessarily irritating, it will be some relief to cross that annoyance off the list.

[arunav]

So... at some point in the future, players will be able to maintain their accuracy and alacrity numbers.

 

And, at some point in the future, PVE-geared players with ratings over 326 won't have an advantage over PVP-geared 326 players in WZs and arenas.

 

And augments will eventually work. And relics, too.

 

But you can't say when.

 

And we still have no idea what will be included in 7.1 or when it will be released, basically the only updates that would have actually expanded the game and were supposed to be included in 7.0, aside from a FP that is still broken more than 1.5 months after its release.

 

No comment on the mountain of bugs, which affect basically every type of player and game mode, that 7.0 introduced, or when they might be fixed, even the fraction that are actually documented as known issues here on the forums.

 

As someone who has played the game since the earliest days of 1.x, you should be embarrassed about your current work on SWTOR and what went into 7.0. No other update so severely damaged what used to be an enjoyable game.

 

SWTOR has sincerely become a joke compared to its competitors in the genre. If only it were possible to sell it to a publisher that actually cared to do something positive with it...

Edited April 3, 2022 by arunav

[fushnchips]

But you continue to want people to pay for this game when it's in the worst state ever give all subscribers 90 day codes because we deserve it.

[DarthSpekulatius]

Pvp i understand but story planets and story flashpoints don't even give rewards worth anything.

 

if they don't give reward no one is "forced" to Grind them against their will,

but with how overtuned XP gains are (don't get me wrong tons & tons of XP are necessary to alleviate the changes to when Abilities are gained) you'll always over level Content -> you would be able to just hit 1 over and over (or maybe do nothothing at all if you bought your companion up to lv50) then suddenly you hit max level and suddenly you are so bad you can't kill world mobs even outside of Group content areas anymore.

 

if you want story mode I'm all for porting SWTOR as a single player Game, but please move that trash off the multiplayer servers.

[DakhathKilrathi]

First of all, what I want to say first isn't related to the post per se, but this is as good a place as any to get it out there: thanks for the time you put into the game. I know you get a lot of thankless responses everywhere you go, but I really do appreciate SWTOR, and any criticism or complaints I have come from a place of wanting the game to be fun.

 

Thanks for the work you put into GSF, too. It's probably the best part of the game, even if the audience in an MMO doesn't have a lot of crossover with the type of audience that would enjoy it.

 

The rest is totally related to the post though and I apologize if I've wasted time on the above. Moving on.

 

But stats like Crit not scaling made older content more trivial than intended, which set the wrong expectation for game balance when facing other players in other modes such as PvP, or NPCs in Operations, and Master Mode Flashpoints.

 

 

This is the only part I want to address specifically. No one - myself included- wants old content to be anything but trivial. Making it take longer does not make it more difficult, but it does make me consider if I should be playing SWTOR at all.

 

No one ever had any expectation that master mode flashpoints would be easy just because the content on old planets was easy. That's silly. Before level sync the old planets didn't even scale and people didn't get confused by that either. World content in other games (even ones that have scaling too!) in old content is trivial, but no one has any expectation that endgame content will also be trivial. I don't know where this reasoning comes from, but it is quite frankly wrong and this approach is not a helpful one imo.

 

Level sync is not the reason that the player base in this game struggles with content. People struggle because the game doesn't teach them how to play at any point. There is no reason to learn to use an interrupt or a stun. No reason to learn their rotation, and in fact many aren't even aware that they have a rotation, since the game explicitly does not explain this concept.

 

Based on what you've said above, content is harder now than you intend it to be since there is some problems with how things are scaling. That hasn't resulted in a great increase in people learning how to play, just based on what I've seen in random groups.

 

If that really is the goal, there are better ways to go about it: The Eternal Championship was a great idea since it did teach what people were missing, but as it scales currently the people who most need to learn can't even complete it solo. Something like that would be great, and then you wouldn't have to worry about people having the wrong expectations in endgame content, especially if you made completing it once per legacy a requirement to queue for operations or master mode flashpoints.

Edited April 2, 2022 by DakhathKilrathi

[SteveTheCynic]

When your character visited a planet they had completed the story on, we shifted the character level down to a range we expected players to be in for that planet.

This statement is blatantly incorrect. "Bolster"(1), as you've decided to call it, did all that as soon as you were over-level, whether or not your character had ever even set foot on the planet.

An additional note on companions and their effectiveness: the Presence base stat does scale in Level Synced content to reflect the amount of base Presence a player would expect to have in that level range. This would apply to Presence earned through character level-up and from equipment. However, the system does not scale any bonus Presence earned from raising the influence levels of companions, so companions with high influence levels will always be more effective across all content where companions can be used.

This doesn't align with the reported behaviour of the Presence stat in level-synced areas, where it's capped (or appears to be), and doesn't reflect the full range of the companion's Influence rank.

 

(1) The word "bolster" implies something to **help** the player, which was accurate for gear stats in PvP when Expertise was a thing, but is of no relevance at all and a grotesque misnomer for clipping stats *down* in over-levelled content.

 

Or it implies a particular sort of pillow.

[HiltoftheDragon]

Hi folks,

An additional note on companions and their effectiveness: the Presence base stat does scale in Level Synced content to reflect the amount of base Presence a player would expect to have in that level range. This would apply to Presence earned through character level-up and from equipment. However, the system does not scale any bonus Presence earned from raising the influence levels of companions, so companions with high influence levels will always be more effective across all content where companions can be used.

 

I am confused by the last line of this paragraph. If the system does not scale bonus Presence earned from raising the influence level of companions, how exactly are companions with higher influence levels more effective? Is that bonus Presence supposed to be 'passed through' straight up? Current performance would seem to indicate otherwise. Or do you mean that this is not actually happening and will be fixed with 7.0.2 (or another patch)?

 

Great question.

This is also a point i would like to see some clarification.

Edited April 2, 2022 by HiltoftheDragon

[Nee-Elder]

Then what the hell is the point of having max gear?? If the developers are just going to level synch all of the stats? Why should I work hard to get 330 gear if it won't give me an edge in synched content. ??..

 

QFE ^ , and while i've already stated my appreciation for Chris' detailed info with my earlier post on page 2, still i'd really like to hear someone (preferrably BIOWARE ) answer that rather important question ^ please.

 

I'm always so baffled by why Dev-coders seem to think all this 'gear & stat' GRIND is something worth spending (and revamping) soooooo much time on. Why bother with coding so much 'rating & levels & numbers' OH MY , if there's barely any NEW fresh story content to actually use it on?

Edited April 2, 2022 by Nee-Elder
please don't just post ONCE and then never respond again to imporant questions from Community

[Stellarcrusade]

Noticed the issues right away, when 2 high level players with level 50 companions were getting owned doing makeb heroics as if we were in master mode operations on the boss. Hope a HUGE adjustment goes in to fix that.

[Ruvalie]

This is the only part I want to address specifically. No one - myself included- wants old content to be anything but trivial. Making it take longer does not make it more difficult, but it does make me consider if I should be playing SWTOR at all.

Disagree. I don't want any content to be trivial. That doesn't mean I agree with all of Bioware's choices here - there seems to be a problem now such that a level 80 character can be weaker in scaled content than a character of the appropriate level, which is backwards - but I agree with their general idea that it should not be trivial.

[Damask_Rose]

I'm not a math person, so let me get this straight:

 

Level sync wasn't perfect and was too hard/time consuming for your skeletal crew to keep updating, so you spent a lot of time re-working the code so it would be wonderfully even and easy to update in future expansions. But you messed up the maths and made everything significantly worse and now you are having to spend lots of extra time fixing it to hopefully make it less messed up. And it's only taken you half a year to realize that you messed up the maths and threw everything way out of whack even though players have been telling you over, and over and over again that you got it all wrong?

 

Then what the hell is the point of having max gear?? If the developers are just going to level synch all of the stats? Why should I work hard to get 330 gear if it won't give me an edge in synched content.

 

According to Bioware's stated gear philosophy, the point of your 330 gear is to give you an edge in the raids that you earned it in. You earn the gear for the content you are playing. Raid gear having better stats than conquest gear in solo/story content would be giving part of the player-base an unfair advantage. Raid gear should have synched stats that is identical to conquest gear in the content that rewards conquest gear.

[TerraStomper]

Thank you Chris for the post. A very good read.

 

As with Accuracy and Alacrity, please consider capping Shield, Absorb, and Defense to the player's level percentage. So if a level 80 player has say 50% shield, 40% absorb and 15% defense on Fleet they stay at that percentage regardless of planet. Some of the more difficult World Bosses assume that tanks are end game geared. Level Sync is currently leaving tank characters extremely squishy on some planets such as Voss with Nightmare Pilgrim or Section X Dreadtooth with multiple stacks.

[OlBuzzard]

I personally appreciate any time someone from the team at least making an attempt to communicate with the clientele. That much is needed. What is also needed is to see just how these "facts" interpret to "fixes". By that I mean .. I will see if we are able to resume the game on a level of expectancy and performance pre 7.0 These areas would be reflected in:

** the effectiveness of 306 gear

** the ability to (grind) for new gear at the new level

** interact with our companions effectively regardless of what planet or aspect of the game we are playing (heroics, FP's, OPs , solo or group).

 

I personally look forward to reviewing the upcoming changes and will see how all of this actually translates into daily application.

 

Thank You

Best Regards

Ol Buzzard

[DakhathKilrathi]

Disagree. I don't want any content to be trivial. That doesn't mean I agree with all of Bioware's choices here - there seems to be a problem now such that a level 80 character can be weaker in scaled content than a character of the appropriate level, which is backwards - but I agree with their general idea that it should not be trivial.

 

What possible reason could you have for wanting stuff you played through seven to ten years ago to take 3 - 4x longer than it took just two months ago? It's still not hard, but it is time consuming. Why would you want the grind?

 

That's a serious question. I don't get it.