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Why wasn't 336 the "Power Ceiling" in 7.x?

LJ_Gibbs

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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That is it... that is the question.

If HM R4 isn't getting a bump to 344+, why is this 7.2 PC (Power Ceiling or whatever you wanna call it) happening?  Or I guess I should ask... why did non-HM raiders have to go to 330 ... only to NOW have to go to 336?  If the answer is "blah, blah, get it more in line with blah blah", why wasn't the PC 336 in 7.0?  7.1?

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Gokkus

Gokkus

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Well you know, it is important that Nim raiders can feel vastly superior to the rest for as long as possible.

 

Also, this way the progression takes longer so players have more to do and are engaged over a longer period of time. The gear grind is a motivator in game after all. It is for me anyhow

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xordevoreaux

xordevoreaux

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1 hour ago, Gokkus said:

The gear grind is a motivator in game after all.

Unfortunately a common one among MMOs. Some grinds are more tenable (and make more sense) than others.

It would take seriously creative talent indeed to create a role-playing MMO in which there was no gear grind at all yet had spectacularly attractive features for players to stick with it long term, so gear grinds are a generic fallback for an MMO.

Pumping out content / story requires a constant investment in resources (people / money), so while content is being delivered at whatever rate the gaming house can accomplish and its bean counters allow. Generically speaking across MMOs, gear grinds keep people moderately if not wholeheartedly motivated in between.

Everquest 2 is usually deserted, but yesterday with a new expansion out there were three instances of a mid-level zone, which was fantastic and hasn't happened in years, which shows there's still an audience for a game originally published 18 years ago, but that audience crawled out of the woodwork for content... not to grind.

That says something about this game in which we're forever obsessing about gear because new content is sprinkled few and far between.

The content locusts, the people who don't play day to day because they're bored with what they've already achieved, who then sweep out of the sky in a huge cloud, drop down on the new crop of content, devour everything in sight in minutes, and then fly off again until the next content harvest, are obviously not happy with just the gear grind. I'll hazard more of them would be playing full time were they.

Decades ago, I played an online multi-player text adventure game called Gemstone III (by Simutronics, the same company that supplied SWTOR's original HERO engine). I asked one of the GMs in the game one day what platform Gemstone III had been built on. He said TADS. I downloaded TADS and looked at it. A complete beast of a game engine and completely asinine in its implementation. Tedious as hell to get anything built. A far finer (and far more modern) text adventure engine (albeit mostly single player) is Quest. Programmable, clean, decent GUI, manageable. Far easier to create pathing for NPCs, room descriptions, player choices, and other content in that than TADS. Quest's desktop version has more powerful features than its web-based version.

So, just conjecture on my part, I have to wonder how much easier it might be for SWTOR's development team to crank out content were they using Unreal 5 rather than HERO, if that platform lends itself far more easily to doing so (Note: EA is adopting Unreal 5 for its default platform, not that doing so affects SWTOR).

The game engine itself might be stymieing the release rate of new content. Again, conjecture on my part, but all we have to do is remember Frostbite.

Looking from the outside in, all we see are content release dates and can only make assumptions.

Meanwhile, time to grind to 336...

 

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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I guess part of my issue is that we just got 330 a little bit ago.  It's not like we were at 330 for a year were we?  It would be different if we were stuck at 330 for longer.  It's almost like they knew they were going to give the lower tiers 336 and started it off with 330 so there was "something to do" after a while. 

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xordevoreaux

xordevoreaux

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1 minute ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

I guess part of my issue is that we just got 330 a little bit ago.  It's not like we were at 330 for a year were we?  It would be different if we were stuck at 330 for longer.  It's almost like they knew they were going to give the lower tiers 336 and started it off with 330 so there was "something to do" after a while. 

I don't have the thread in front of me, but the devs said at the advent of 7.0 that they'd progressively release near gear levels.

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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20 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

That says something about this game in which we're forever obsessing about gear because new content is sprinkled few and far between.

 

 

Nah... it doesn't.  if this game wasn't the Star Wars IP... it would have been dead 7 or 8 years ago.

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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1 minute ago, xordevoreaux said:

I don't have the thread in front of me, but the devs said at the advent of 7.0 that they'd progressively release near gear levels.

Did they ever explain WHY? 

Why did gear HAVE to start with a PC at 330?

 

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Toraak

Toraak

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Just now, LJ_Gibbs said:

I guess part of my issue is that we just got 330 a little bit ago.  It's not like we were at 330 for a year were we?  It would be different if we were stuck at 330 for longer.  It's almost like they knew they were going to give the lower tiers 336 and started it off with 330 so there was "something to do" after a while. 

I think that depends on the player. 330 for green or blue gear was only around since 7.1, but for those that had grinded rakata pieces and Op-1 mats 330 has been around since 7.0. Remember not everyone is doing HM R-4 to get 340 gear.

 

For some of us that aren't doing serious raiding any longer (R-4 HM), this will be the 1st gear upgrade since 7.0 came out.

 

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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19 minutes ago, Toraak said:

For some of us that aren't doing serious raiding any longer (R-4 HM), this will be the 1st gear upgrade since 7.0 came out.

 

Fair enough... and I am NOT gatekeeping with this comment... but what do you need a gear upgrade for?  What I mean I guess is that what is going to compel you to "like" this gear upgrade? 

My raid group is still banging our heads against SM R4 because of the stupid 24 hour reset.  We only get to be able to play an hour and half one night a week.

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Toraak

Toraak

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3 minutes ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

Fair enough... and I am NOT gatekeeping with this comment... but what do you need a gear upgrade for?  What I mean I guess is that what is going to compel you to "like" this gear upgrade? 

My raid group is still banging our heads against SM R4 because of the stupid 24 hour reset.  We only get to be able to play an hour and half one night a week.

true enough, but since 336 isn't BiS, does it really matter? Not to mention if I did decide to get back into raiding, it may not actually be directly into R-4 HM. and any additional gear can help on other bosses.

 

R-4 still gives BiS, so I don't see any issue with increasing the ceiling for others. Those that want newest or hardest content to give out BiS still have that, while others get a very minor bump that may give a goal for others to keep playing.

 

PS: consider this then. Since your group is working on progressing sm R-4 still, won't the increase to 336 help you out some as well?

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Char_Ell

Char_Ell

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44 minutes ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

I guess part of my issue is that we just got 330 a little bit ago.  It's not like we were at 330 for a year were we?  It would be different if we were stuck at 330 for longer.  It's almost like they knew they were going to give the lower tiers 336 and started it off with 330 so there was "something to do" after a while. 

Yes, BioWare made it clear they would be adding new gear tiers in 7.0.  Eric Musco stated it again in the SWTOR 7.1 livestream. 

As for why, I think it's obvious BioWare wants to retain SWTOR players and gear grind is one of the methods they use towards that goal.

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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26 minutes ago, Toraak said:

true enough, but since 336 isn't BiS, does it really matter? Not to mention if I did decide to get back into raiding, it may not actually be directly into R-4 HM. and any additional gear can help on other bosses.

 

R-4 still gives BiS, so I don't see any issue with increasing the ceiling for others. Those that want newest or hardest content to give out BiS still have that, while others get a very minor bump that may give a goal for others to keep playing.

 

PS: consider this then. Since your group is working on progressing sm R-4 still, won't the increase to 336 help you out some as well?

Only HM R4 gives BiS.... doesn't it?  And they are not getting a bump at all... they are 340.

No... our problem with SM R4 is TIME.  We have less than 2 hours a week to raid... and because no one has the time to get us to Lady Dom earlier in the day (with the 24 hour resets) we have to go through the first 3 bosses every week.  It would be so beneficial for us to be able to start right at Lady Dom for those two hours.  Especially since Boss 1 can be finicky.

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Dein_Cathair

Dein_Cathair

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3 hours ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

That is it... that is the question.

If HM R4 isn't getting a bump to 344+, why is this 7.2 PC (Power Ceiling or whatever you wanna call it) happening?  Or I guess I should ask... why did non-HM raiders have to go to 330 ... only to NOW have to go to 336?  If the answer is "blah, blah, get it more in line with blah blah", why wasn't the PC 336 in 7.0?  7.1?

Class balance is tricky.

Dps is the same

Many other balancing issues are even harder

They probably took a look at how much content was 'failed' #data and  bolstered players based on numbers aggregated over a period of several months.

Testers tend to know mechanics and how to dps.

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LJ_Gibbs

LJ_Gibbs

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18 minutes ago, Dein_Cathair said:

Class balance is tricky.

Dps is the same

Many other balancing issues are even harder

They probably took a look at how much content was 'failed' #data and  bolstered players based on numbers aggregated over a period of several months.

Testers tend to know mechanics and how to dps.

 

Then the announcement of planned gear increases doesn't hold water.

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MaximusRex

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6 hours ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

That is it... that is the question.

If HM R4 isn't getting a bump to 344+, why is this 7.2 PC (Power Ceiling or whatever you wanna call it) happening?  Or I guess I should ask... why did non-HM raiders have to go to 330 ... only to NOW have to go to 336?  If the answer is "blah, blah, get it more in line with blah blah", why wasn't the PC 336 in 7.0?  7.1?

Because they decided to move the game from having all content available to work on in the 6.x cycle, because you only had to gear once, to it being a loot grinder in 7.x where you need to keep waiting for them to add new gear to grind out to be able to do the content you were doing in 6.x again.

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Dein_Cathair

Dein_Cathair

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6 hours ago, MaximusRex said:

Because they decided to move the game from having all content available to work on in the 6.x cycle, because you only had to gear once, to it being a loot grinder in 7.x where you need to keep waiting for them to add new gear to grind out to be able to do the content you were doing in 6.x again.

Not sure how you're doing it, but I went from 330/331 on 14 toons today to them all  being 335/336

Grinder? easier than 6.x imo :)

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Dein_Cathair

Dein_Cathair

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8 hours ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

 

Then the announcement of planned gear increases doesn't hold water.

Sure they do,  you can plan based on static numbers generated from a small skillful pool and not have the numbers match the results generated by a general population.

 

The argument that they're stretching content also fits but balancing tends to fit better as people develop new strategies

 

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Xhuuyaa

Xhuuyaa

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10 hours ago, Dein_Cathair said:

Class balance is tricky.

 

It's not. There were some points where we almost got it. At the end of 6.x  it was not perfect, but with some minor changes it could have been very close. But instead listening to feedback and doing little improvements they decided to prune and revamp all classes. If 7.o has a class balance problem than because the devs decided to create one. 

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Dein_Cathair

Dein_Cathair

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13 hours ago, Xhuuyaa said:

 

It's not. There were some points where we almost got it. At the end of 6.x  it was not perfect, but with some minor changes it could have been very close. But instead listening to feedback and doing little improvements they decided to prune and revamp all classes. If 7.o has a class balance problem than because the devs decided to create one. 

I appreciate your POV but continue to disagree based on historical game dsta based on many games.

People find new ways all the time to fluster game devs causing them to change balance PLUS, PLUS! :)

PLUS! :) Devs purposly mix it up to spice up games on a regular basis,

This is why sometimes your class seems strong other timers it feels weak

 

The best balanced game I ever saw was EnB  (an EA title)

Anyone could easily see it all on a spreadsheet.

 

TBH class balance has graduated into a science of the group mechanic

Solo is just a base measure nowadays

 

 

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