Bad combat design makes the game unnecessarily frustrating

[StrikePrice]

The over-use by the developers of controlling effects on the player has gone too far. It seems that every NPC in the open-world has at least one (and sometimes multiple) stun, blind, push, pull, slow, knockdown, or knockback. I'm not talking about ops or fps where these things are strategic and require the players to work as a team to overcome. I'm taking about normal mobs in the open world. For example, do the heroics on DK from end to end and count how many times you lose control of your player. Stun, blind, push, pull, knockdown, knockback. Again and again and again. In every single encounter. Playing for multiple hours, you will spend much of that time without control of your toon.  You're often pushed and pulled in the same combat -- by the same mob!

This is all for no reason. I know these original combats were designed to slow the player down when the level cap was 50 and there was very little content. But now, it's just absurd. 

Possible solutions ...

1. Remove all cc from normal mobs in the open world
2. Prevent normal mobs in the open world from controlling players > 10 levels higher than they are
3. Implement some sort of resolve system in the open world

Any one combat is not a problem, but when taken in totality, it's quite frustrating. 

[Toraak]

37 minutes ago, StrikePrice said:

The over-use by the developers of controlling effects on the player has gone too far. It seems that every NPC in the open-world has at least one (and sometimes multiple) stun, blind, push, pull, slow, knockdown, or knockback. I'm not talking about ops or fps where these things are strategic and require the players to work as a team to overcome. I'm taking about normal mobs in the open world. For example, do the heroics on DK from end to end and count how many times you lose control of your player. Stun, blind, push, pull, knockdown, knockback. Again and again and again. In every single encounter. Playing for multiple hours, you will spend much of that time without control of your toon.  You're often pushed and pulled in the same combat -- by the same mob!

This is all for no reason. I know these original combats were designed to slow the player down when the level cap was 50 and there was very little content. But now, it's just absurd. 

Possible solutions ...

1. Remove all cc from normal mobs in the open world
2. Prevent normal mobs in the open world from controlling players > 10 levels higher than they are
3. Implement some sort of resolve system in the open world

Any one combat is not a problem, but when taken in totality, it's quite frustrating. 

Not at all. Those abilities from the NPC's, were to prepare you for max level content. Teaching you how to use Stuns, Knockbacks, and interrupts as you level. With how people have been playing since 4.0's level sync, nobody bothers to learn to use these anymore, 

[denavin]

1 hour ago, Toraak said:

Not at all. Those abilities from the NPC's, were to prepare you for max level content. Teaching you how to use Stuns, Knockbacks, and interrupts as you level. With how people have been playing since 4.0's level sync, nobody bothers to learn to use these anymore, 

That would be true if BW had not removed most to all of player CC's and made most NPC Stuns and Knock-backs uninterruptible. The way it is now there is NO defense for NPC knock-backs or stuns. Your only choice it to stand there and take it since you can not interrupt it or escape it.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

55 minutes ago, denavin said:

That would be true if BW had not removed most to all of player CC's and made most NPC Stuns and Knock-backs uninterruptible. The way it is now there is NO defense for NPC knock-backs or stuns. Your only choice it to stand there and take it since you can not interrupt it or escape it.

This so much.  They take things away from players, then add or don't remove them from NPCs.  

I do not know what bioware was trying to do with the 7.0 combat/levelling/ability overhaul, but it didn't make the game more fun to me.

They took 10 years of tweaking and balancing, and threw it all out the window for some grand plan.  I would be nice to know what the grand plan is beyond 'nerf everything and make combat more tedious'.

[StrikePrice]

3 hours ago, Toraak said:

Not at all. Those abilities from the NPC's, were to prepare you for max level content. Teaching you how to use Stuns, Knockbacks, and interrupts as you level. With how people have been playing since 4.0's level sync, nobody bothers to learn to use these anymore, 

There's plenty of stuff for this elsewhere. Story mode FPs and the championship thing that's specifically designed to teach mechanics. There's 0 instructive value for a pleeb on makeb to stun you for 8 seconds. It's only frustrating. It does noting to add to the game. 

Edited March 15, 2023 by StrikePrice

[eabevella]

8 hours ago, denavin said:

That would be true if BW had not removed most to all of player CC's and made most NPC Stuns and Knock-backs uninterruptible. The way it is now there is NO defense for NPC knock-backs or stuns. Your only choice it to stand there and take it since you can not interrupt it or escape it.

And just in another post someone thinks our player characters have way too many abilities lol

I second to give our CC/Stun back and not as an option over other better options in most PvE situation.

Let us players who actually can handle more than 3 hotkeys handle them.

If I want to hit 1 single skill like a mad woman, I'll jsut load my KOTOR2 save and spam Force Storm.

PS: on a side note, it's super stupid that operative only has their sleep dart at lv30* while assassin has their mind trap at lv25* in 7.0 on top of the fact that stealth classes all had their "sleep" skill at lv20 in 6.0.

*Can't remember the exact lv number but they are terrible.

Edited March 16, 2023 by eabevella

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

This so much.  They take things away from players, then add or don't remove them from NPCs.  

I do not know what bioware was trying to do with the 7.0 combat/levelling/ability overhaul, but it didn't make the game more fun to me.

They took 10 years of tweaking and balancing, and threw it all out the window for some grand plan.  I would be nice to know what the grand plan is beyond 'nerf everything and make combat more tedious'.

Not only that, but they let some classes keep all their good stuff, while other classes lost theirs, or they were made optional. 

 

- only sin/shadow tanks now have passive speed buff, they also have force speed. pt/vg has hydraulics/hold the line. guardian/jugg has nothing.

- sin/shadow tank has force wave which also roots, pt/vg has carbonize and whatever the rep side skill is called. jugg/guardian has an "option" to take awe, but with that, we can't have reflect or blitz. I havent been able to pick awe at all since 7.0 because of the options so I called it pruned.

 

Just to mention a few, and those were just tank specs. Dps specs aren't any more balanced.  The only thing they managed to prune was fun and variety from some classes.

 

[Ardrossan]

meh to me the problem is the combat isn't difficult enough. It used to be that you could die quite easily on the starting planets--they, not the championship 60 levels later, were what taught you about game mechanics. Now you can go through and never die unless you gimp yourself really badly (I managed to get killed on Korriban against the Terenterak in the SI class story last week). 

So I'm fine with the stunlocks and all that other stuff, but only if NPC damage is also sharply increased. Yes, being stunned for a few seconds is pointless...if the npc is attacking me and not doing any damage because my healbot is covering for me. That defeats the whole point of stunning. Again, this applies throughout the game, on the early planets, even if you don't have a comp out you're never in any danger. What are all these lvl 5-16 medpacs for then? 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Ardrossan

[xordevoreaux]

22 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

The over-use by the developers of controlling effects on the player has gone too far. It seems that every NPC in the open-world has at least one (and sometimes multiple) stun, blind, push, pull, slow, knockdown, or knockback.

Then I suggest avoiding the Everquest franchise, both EQ1 and EQ2, or you'll be rooted, slowed, silenced (can't cast), and debuffed (drained of stats) before the mob does its first point of damage to you. We have it easy in SWTOR.

Edit: Oh yes, I forgot mesmerized (stunned).

Edited March 16, 2023 by xordevoreaux

[Shayddow]

It is pretty silly to have the mobs be able to have all these things that are uninterruptable. Getting so the only time you can use interrupts are in PVP.

 

[AJediKnight]

On 3/15/2023 at 4:36 PM, denavin said:

That would be true if BW had not removed most to all of player CC's and made most NPC Stuns and Knock-backs uninterruptible. The way it is now there is NO defense for NPC knock-backs or stuns. Your only choice it to stand there and take it since you can not interrupt it or escape it.

I particularly loathe the NPCs that open with some massive, uninterruptable knockback/knockdown (sometimes both as one ability). And example can be found in the last area of Tython, with the strong Flesh Raider Captains - the first thing they do upon aggro is smash the player character with some kind of upward sweep. This throws you into the air, knocks back, and knocks down. It is 100 percent undodgable - you just have to eat it, and hope it doesn't knock you into another group (which it can). In pulls with multiples of these mobs, you get swatted 3 or even 4x in a row.

Edited March 18, 2023 by AJediKnight

[Sundown]

At least I know why the Dread Guard Commanders on Oricon (H2) are called that, as I really dread those fights. „Punish and repell“, stun, whirlwind companion, repeat. So annoying.

[denavin]

8 hours ago, Sundown said:

At least I know why the Dread Guard Commanders on Oricon (H2) are called that, as I really dread those fights. „Punish and repell“, stun, whirlwind companion, repeat. So annoying.

It sort of make you want to go and knock the Devs off their feet every 2 seconds and see how they like it.....

[Ominovin]

14 hours ago, Sundown said:

At least I know why the Dread Guard Commanders on Oricon (H2) are called that, as I really dread those fights. „Punish and repell“, stun, whirlwind companion, repeat. So annoying.

To be fair, that is a Heroic 2+ mission:  It's annoying, but it's probably supposed to encourage actual teamwork.

Of course, no one bothers to group for it because it's not really necessary and it's unlikely there is actually someone else on the planet ready to do the mission when you are. (mixing 'group' and 'solo' content in the same weekly mission rarely works well).

My personal pet peeve are the healer mobs on Onderon:  Between their heals and their insta-stun, they are just really annoying...

[TrixxieTriss]

On 3/16/2023 at 8:38 AM, LD_Little_Dragon said:

This so much.  They take things away from players, then add or don't remove them from NPCs.  

I do not know what bioware was trying to do with the 7.0 combat/levelling/ability overhaul, but it didn't make the game more fun to me.

They took 10 years of tweaking and balancing, and threw it all out the window for some grand plan.  I would be nice to know what the grand plan is beyond 'nerf everything and make combat more tedious'.

And then those same people who had this “grand plan” either got sacked, pushed out of Bioware or left of their own accord after they completely F’d everything up.

And we know these were the same people they brought over from BioWares failed Anthem game to give them a job. That’s the underlying problem here. Its that they brought failed developers over from a failed game, put them into leadership roles & then let them do to swtor what they did to Anthem. 

This was a people mismanagement problem at the highest reaches of Bioware. Those people should never have been given any decision making power. But they were & their bad ideas & concepts from Anthem have filtered all through swtor & the game is worse for it.
 

If it wasn’t an actual SW game, 7.0 would probably have led to the game being cancelled. 7.0 year drove player lvls to the lowest the game has ever seen. It wasn’t until they started trying to fix all the things players warned them about that players stopped leaving & some came back. 

Sadly, they made too many changes in 7.0 that would now cost way too much to try & undo. Parts of the game are wreaked because of it. All we can hope for is that BioWare continue to Band-Aid as much of those bad design choices as they can until they hopefully do another expansion & can undo them or modify them enough that they aren’t as noticeable or relevant. 

[Sappharan]

On 3/15/2023 at 2:37 PM, StrikePrice said:

The over-use by the developers of controlling effects on the player has gone too far. It seems that every NPC in the open-world has at least one (and sometimes multiple) stun, blind, push, pull, slow, knockdown, or knockback. I'm not talking about ops or fps where these things are strategic and require the players to work as a team to overcome. I'm taking about normal mobs in the open world. For example, do the heroics on DK from end to end and count how many times you lose control of your player. Stun, blind, push, pull, knockdown, knockback. Again and again and again. In every single encounter. Playing for multiple hours, you will spend much of that time without control of your toon.  You're often pushed and pulled in the same combat -- by the same mob!

This is all for no reason. I know these original combats were designed to slow the player down when the level cap was 50 and there was very little content. But now, it's just absurd. 

Possible solutions ...

1. Remove all cc from normal mobs in the open world
2. Prevent normal mobs in the open world from controlling players > 10 levels higher than they are
3. Implement some sort of resolve system in the open world

Any one combat is not a problem, but when taken in totality, it's quite frustrating. 

Of all the myriad problems that this game has, that is not one that particularly bothered me.  Perhaps I do not play enough.  Perhaps I do not do enough open world stuff.  The worlds where I notice it the most are Oricon and...well, I forget the name of the second world (Yavin I think...the second part of the Revan story arch).  I simply avoid those fights where possible on Oricon (which are all of them) and on Yavin I simply interrupt or use Force Camouflage. 

On second thought...Black Hole has a lot of that nonsense too.  I hate being the target of a leap, I loathe being pushed, and being pulled makes me apoplectic.  Yeah, on second thought, you're right.  Of course, the only time it's an issue is when I am in instances on Black Hole...and you're referencing the open world stuff.  Still, I agree.  There is a bit too much of it.