Why the 7.0 Era just does not work (A Follow up Post)

[SentinalMasterWW]

This is kind of a Follow-up on a post I made at the beginning of this year called "Why 7.0 Era just does not work" in that post I critiqued the Design choices for 7.0 and how they were hurting the game. 7.0 Launched last year on the 15th of February, and I want to see how the game has changed since than and since I made my post in January at the Start of this year. 

This is a post Critiquing the Game and is meant to offer feedback to the Dev's of many issues I and perhaps some of you are noticing. Again this is NOT to Put down the Dev's of the game in any way or form, merely addressing issues that still persist in this game.

Ability Pruning/Combat Styles 

One of the points I made was that Combat Styles was dumbed down and just locked abilities behind a tree without meaningful player choice. This is an idea I still have, one the major issues is that players lack a lot of the toolkit they need behind this tree. Mercs/Commandos have their Key Defensives and Mobility locked in this tree, Sniper's have a lot of their toolkit locked away, etc. Locking key abilities and making players choose between needed movement abilities or defensives is a bad idea. Players should not have to give up a key defensive ability just to be able to move around more efficiently. The other issue is that while some classes were hit hard others got off relatively light, Sorcs for example, really didn't have much of their abilities locked away and thus don't have to give up key abilities to be efficient. 

Since 7.0 Dropped there has been little to no work done on improving the Combat Styles tree, I understand that it takes a lot of work and time, but there has been no info or anything on Bioware refining the Tree and making it better. I would take an update on the CS Tree over a story content update because if the foundation of the class is not fun, than I'm not having fun in the game. 

What would I suggest Bioware do? 

#1. Give back all the abilities to all the classes 

#2. Replace the empty spots where abilities were with either old Passive Mod's that were removed in 6.0 (Like Roll heal and heal in cover for snipers), I would also do Cross abilities that players could pick from. For example, in SWTOR's early days a Commando could have a melee jab ability with its cannon  that was cross pulled from Vanguard, this was later removed. Add this ability back, and other similar. Obviously it would be overpowered to say have Sins with Sorcs Phase walk, thus it would have be thought out on who gets what cross ability. 

#3. More ways to change how abilities work, Some Classes mainly DOT ones have a mod that lets them change their ability entirely to a new one, like Deathfield to deathbrand, etc. I'd love to have Gunnery a spec that suffers from poor sustained DMG be able to transform Grav round into a DOT. This in turn lends itself to more build Variety. 

Progession/Levelling 

One of the big complaints that lends itself to the first point is levelling. Levelling feels unrewarding in the 7.0 era, Players will go 12-14+ levels without getting any abilities or even Passive mods. Back in 6.0 every 4-8 levels you either got a new Passive ability or a Mod Ability to put into your specialization tree. The poor progression is evident the moment you start a new toon, The first Specialization ability is locked until 15, after that you don't get your second for another 20 LEVELS, Depending on if you do side content or not, that would mean your 2nd mainline ability is locked until the end of chapter one/Beginning of Chapter 2 of your class story. In 6.0, I'd have my Second ability usually about the time I hit Tatooine/Alderaan, which was around level 26-28 and you got your first mainline at level 10 right as you leave the starter planet. 

Doing a new toon in the 7.0 era means you are constantly running out of your classes energy pool because you have to use the trash starter abilities for the first 1/3 of the Class Story. In 6.0, by the time you hit level 10, you basically have almost all the basic abilities in your toolkit, and when you hit 40, you have almost all of your abilities. 

I'd Rework leveling, Give the player the basics by level 10 including their mainline, I'd introduce the second at level 27 than the modifier at 35, Than level 39 can be the free game tree for passives or abilities. What this does is it makes the first half of the character much better for levelling and it gives the player a bit more to work with than just the filler abilities.

Gearing 

Gearing is still a mess, Why does PVP gear cap at 332 yet flashpoint goes to 336? This causes issues when it comes to gear balancing as you will have people in PVP with 340 Gear having a clear advantage over people in 332. I think PVP and PVE gear should be capped at 336 and the VM/HM Operation should go to 340. Like these weird gear Caps make no sense why does PVP go to 332 and PVE 336? This is not to mention the numerous currencies needed to upgrade gear and buy gear, You need a form of Tokens and Daily Resource Matrixes to get gear. 

PVP 

Premades: I do appreciate Bioware at least noticing that premades were an issue and they did make it so Premades have a higher chance of being put against other premades, but I'm still noticing Class Stacking, Guild Premades, etc. I think there should be a separate Q for groups, or they need to lower Group Q's to just two people. 

Class Balancing: One of the biggest grievances right now, This lends itself to the first point with the lack of abilities players have and key passives they need. Madness Sorcs are everywhere in PVP, they will beat basically any Ranged Spec in the game right now. Deception has CC's out the Wazoo alongside two Cloaks. I've made Posts about this numerous times but it has to be brought up again, Poor Class balancing and broken Meta Specs are driving Players away from PVP and are causing players to quit Matches mid game. 

PVP Seasons: I will give Bioware credit for this one, they did seem to listen to feedback and improved Season 2. Progression feels better, and the new Samurai inspired armor is great. The Weekly Reqs are much better now instead of the insane 25 they were originally. However I do think they should Offer more ways to get PVP Tokens in a season.

Arena Weeklies and Daily:   One of the things I think needs improving are Arena Weeklies and the Daily. 2 Wins for a Daily compared to getting just one Warzone win for their daily is not worth it. For Comparison Warzone needs one win for their daily and 4 wins for their weekly, Compare that to Arena which needs 2 Wins for their daily and 8 for their weekly. I get Arena's are shorter but I've noticed the Q does not pop that much for Arena's anymore because it is much better to do Warzones since they need less wins to complete them. 

Tacticals: Some people may not agree on this but there are a few tacticals which I think need to be nerfed or changed like Defel was, Ionic is the big one, it has no place in the current meta and ruins the flow of the class, No class in the game should be able to get 150K crits that easily. Two Cloaks, just ups the stealth meta even more, It's not like Defel where they can keep popping stealth every 30-60 Secs, but having up to three Stealth including the initial stealth in a match is easily exploitable. I think Two cloaks should be reworked to reduce the cooldown via X Action of Cloak out rather than making the class have two free charges. 

The other which I'm noticing more recently is the Shard of Mortis, this one is 50/50 for me.  One the one hand I think its fine where its at, on the other I think the Crit stacking could be reduced even more. 

Ranked PVP: I understand that Ranked was controversial for reasons, But I do think Bioware should start looking at Re-implementing some form of Ranked PVP, a lot of the hardcore PVP scene left when ranked was removed. I also understand that Combat Styles make this difficult to track on who is performing best etc, But I do think Bioware should take consideration in Re-implementation of some form of Ranked so we can get some of the Vet PVPers back in the game. 

Listening to Player Feedback: When it comes to this, I do think Bioware is getting better at communicating with us and implementing changes, but I still think they can communicate more on needed Bugfixes and Balancing. 

Bugs: There are still numerous bugs in the game, with the change to 64 I am noticing graphical issues especially in PVP like Voidstar where the world around me disappears. Or bugs that been in the game like Hololocate/Phasewalk not working, Deathbrand reapplying itself after death, Rocket out trapping the player in one spot, etc. These are bugs that have been reported for a while but no action has been taken to fix them. 

Conclusion: This post like the Original was meant to offer a good faith Critique of the game. I want to give feedback to the Dev's so they know that me and perhaps a lot of the player base feel the same way on these issues. Like I stated in the Original 

Quote

SWTOR in its current state is not unplayable I still find it enjoyable however there are Design Choices that I question or that just makes the game more frustrating to play. If you are enjoying the game right now, I'm glad you are finding fun in this game

This post and the Original do not come from a place of contempt or Hate for the game. I first played SWTOR at launch Post Christmas day all those years ago when the Game Launched, I was just in my first Year of Junior high when the game launched. My PC had poor hardware at the time and really couldn't run the game well, plus I couldn't keep up on a subscription payment for the game (this was back before F2P launched). Flash forward to before the launch of war for Iokath I came back to the game and played it on a Toshia Laptop, again the game couldn't run well but I could play it at decent frame rates on very low settings. Now I obviously play on a dedicated PC Rig and can play at very high settings. 

I and many others Care about this game and want it to do better, but there are design choices that is holding this game back from what it once was. Why is there a tax on Quick Travel now? If the point was to combat inflation, This doesn't effect me or others who have billions of credits. Rather this harms new players just starting out. The Dev's need to focus on the Core issues of the game rather than temporary band-aid fixes. 

SWTOR is not a bad game, far from it. I think a lot of the issues stem from a lack of "where is the game going". If bioware can re-orient themselves on a clear path for SWTOR, I think this game can make a great comeback. 

As always If you have any Opinions you wish to share, or frustrations with the game please share it but please be respectful of each other's opinions. I want this to be a constructive thread with ideas and thoughts on how we can improve the game we all love to play.

[xordevoreaux]

Quote

Why the 7.0 Era just does not work

Opinion. It's working fine for me.

[MortenJessen]

Without going into every detail, I agree with OP. The game is in a sorry state. 

As for the "why does quick travel cost credits" thing? I personally dont like the reason they did it, but I like that they did it, so that new players are forced to slow down. The "get to endgame in 8-10 hours (12 if you screw up) spacebar stealth class story-only mentality" is bad for the game, and most new players (even many "veterans" with more than 20k legacy) dont even know their class and its abilities, much less other classes (just play pvp and see what I mean) when most players dont know about interrupt, stun break, the like (seeing 6-7 players stack on a bubble in pvp.... I give up) because 1) they dont have to learn because game is too easy with no challenge what so ever until veteran chapters and championship. And 2) companion plays the game for the player, so they never learn the need to use their abilities, instead crying out for a need for ability pruning.

As for gear, you are right. It is a lost cause, so I will not even go there with my own opinion.

Listening to player feedback?? They actually did, at last, this time, but look and behold... IT WAS THE WRONG PLAYERS THAT WAS ON PTS, and now the forum is on fire because all those who was not there have visual problems. BW really cant win, even when they do good.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

4 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The other which I'm noticing more recently is the Shard of Mortis, this one is 50/50 for me.  One the one hand I think its fine where its at, on the other I think the Crit stacking could be reduced even more. 

#Nerf Carnage some more.

It's been a few months since the last nerf. =]

[xordevoreaux]

48 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

IT WAS THE WRONG PLAYERS THAT WAS ON PTS,

I'm sure Bioware will, after your post, make sure those wrong posters never log into PTS again, how dare they.

/sarcasm

Calling anyone a "wrong" player is just... wrong.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

46 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

Listening to player feedback?? They actually did, at last, this time, but look and behold... IT WAS THE WRONG PLAYERS THAT WAS ON PTS,

What last time are you talking about?  If you actually read the pts feedback, then it's pretty clear that bioware ignores anything but basic bug reporting.  A lot of the bugs that are reported go LIVE too, so they ignore, or decide it's not worth fixing, a lot of the bugs too.

It's not the wrong players, it's just that the PTS is basically for bug hunting.  Any actual feedback on changes is ignored.

[MortenJessen]

32 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

Calling anyone a "wrong" player is just... wrong.

I take it you forgot to write /sarcasm after that, or that you did not read my post.

 

32 minutes ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

What last time are you talking about? 

Read English please. 

Both of you learn to read before putting words into peoples mouth. But it is on you, because I wont take the bait (really, one cant write  b i t e  or  h o o k, line and sinker, because of censor??). My point is, and was, that because people focus on the wrong things, e.g. this time Nvidia drivers causing havoc, it is all the fault of BW devs, instead of thinking. Second, the lost case of PTS testing where if people had been there they would have seen that their very low settings was gone, and also is still not there live. But look and behold, of all those who tested on PTS (not many) NONE had any problems with that, but fire started all over the forums the second 64bit went live. So was it the right people who was on PTS and sent feedback??

[Toraak]

34 minutes ago, MortenJessen said:

I take it you forgot to write /sarcasm after that, or that you did not read my post.

 

Read English please. 

Both of you learn to read before putting words into peoples mouth. But it is on you, because I wont take the bait (really, one cant write  b i t e  or  h o o k, line and sinker, because of censor??). My point is, and was, that because people focus on the wrong things, e.g. this time Nvidia drivers causing havoc, it is all the fault of BW devs, instead of thinking. Second, the lost case of PTS testing where if people had been there they would have seen that their very low settings was gone, and also is still not there live. But look and behold, of all those who tested on PTS (not many) NONE had any problems with that, but fire started all over the forums the second 64bit went live. So was it the right people who was on PTS and sent feedback??

I was on the PTS for 7.2.1, and the PTS had Very Low graphics settings for me at least. Graphically nothing was different from before the patch went live. 

 

[MortenJessen]

1 hour ago, Toraak said:

I was on the PTS for 7.2.1, and the PTS had Very Low graphics settings for me at least.

Not the last 2 or 3 weeks. The patch notes for 7.2.1 states that the very low option was removed, and that very version that went live was what was on PTS for at least 2 weeks. The last updates to hit the PTS was some combat changes and a few fixes and changes here and there.

[juliushorst]

With improvements for gearing and scaling it's much better than it was. Not as good as 6.0 but playable.

[Ardrossan]

Gearing is really bad. Aside from the inflation that's probably my biggest complaint. It just seems like a giant step backwards from the horizontal gearing touted in 6.0. 

PVP isn't great but while yes they could force premades to play against each other, that would also slow queues. The only real decision to improve pvp imo is how long it will take them to do another server merge. PVP seasons still bad but I barely pay attention to it. The dailies and weekly still pretty ludicrous as well; I don't think i've ever reached the arena weekly, and rarely the warzone weekly...these weeklies need to be streamlined with the equivalent numbers for the daily/weekly GSF, as well as including GSF alongside pvp for Seasons counting.

It seems like more than ever the skills are intended solely for the benefit of endgame and a de-emphasis on the vanilla, class story experience and leveling process. Lol the vanilla story is really the only reason I still play this game. 

I feel like you missed a golden opportunity to title your thread WHY THE 7.0 ERA STILL DOES NOT WORK or perhaps WHY THE 7.0 ERA JUST DOES NOT WORK: RETURN OF THE CRITIC. These little touches may not get bioware's attention (they won't read it either way) but they would have made it more eye-catching and less bland 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Ardrossan

[ThanderSnB]

One thing they could do for leveling is give the actual abilities earlier in the levels and then give passive bonuses at later levels. Each ability would have two passive bonuses given at +10 and +20 levels. The last ability would be given at level 60, with its passives at level 70 and level 80. These passive bonuses would be given automatically and be separate from the tree. They wouldn't take up space in the ability screen, the ability tooltip would include them. For example, Snipe would be given at level 1, then its first passive at level 11 (-0.5s activation time, 2s -> 1.5s), then its second passive at level 21 (+5% damage). The Snipe ability tooltip could appear similar to this:

Snipe                                                            Level 1
Activation: 1.5s
*description text*
Passive Bonuses:
- Level 11 - Quick Aiming (made up name): Activation time reduced by 0.5 seconds.
- Level 21 - Accurate Shots (made up name): Damage increased by 5%.
Passive Mods:
- ...

The passives would display even before unlocking it, so players can have something to look forward to, but they would be dimmed to make it clear it's not unlocked yet. Also, they could add a section for Passive Mods from the tree. This section would only appear when one of the Mods for that ability was chosen in the tree. The description text would incorporate all the bonuses. The passive listing would just help players feel their character growing in power. They could also have the expanded tooltip only show on the Ability screen and not when hovering over the ability on the bars.

Edited April 13, 2023 by ThanderSnB

[xordevoreaux]

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

It just seems like a giant step backwards from the horizontal gearing touted in 6.0. 

In 6.x, I went to fleet to the commendations vendor where the RNG demons held sway, and clicked and clicked and clicked again until I got what I want.

I don't miss 6.x.  Far better with the vendor quests we have now to target specifically what we want to create rather than hope we don't run out of commendations before the RNG god runs out of amusement.

[cach-x]

13 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Ability Pruning/Combat Styles

To put it simply: ability bloat is worse.

Sure, some classes are more negatively affected by the current trees and there's some room for improving in there but there's nothing inherently wrong with having to make sacrifices/choices while creating a build.

Tacticals and Implants are kind of doing that bonus stuff but the current implementation leaves something to be desired. It's too costly and restrictive right now, I think. no room for experimentation.

13 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Progression/Leveling

I have recently started 2 fresh characters and while I'm not advanced enough yet to have a full opinion on progression so far I don't see too many problems. Mostly because the story beats are what keeps you engaged and the pace is nearly at ludicrous speed. So far the new quick travel costs have been a bigger PITA than anything else.

13 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Gearing

Gearing is still a mess, Why does PVP gear cap at 332 yet flashpoint goes to 336? This causes issues when it comes to gear balancing as you will have people in PVP with 340 Gear having a clear advantage over people in 332. I think PVP and PVE gear should be capped at 336 and the VM/HM Operation should go to 340. Like these weird gear Caps make no sense why does PVP go to 332 and PVE 336? This is not to mention the numerous currencies needed to upgrade gear and buy gear, You need a form of Tokens and Daily Resource Matrixes to get gear.

Yes gearing is super messy, can't argue otherwise.

It's pretty obvious they don't want people to reach purple item cap just by playing pvp. I can do that and I don't even PVP, just occasionally suck at GSF.

Edited April 14, 2023 by cach-x

[Toraak]

12 hours ago, xordevoreaux said:

In 6.x, I went to fleet to the commendations vendor where the RNG demons held sway, and clicked and clicked and clicked again until I got what I want.

I don't miss 6.x.  Far better with the vendor quests we have now to target specifically what we want to create rather than hope we don't run out of commendations before the RNG god runs out of amusement.

I wish more people felt like this. I truly hated the RNG nonsense of the 6.x gearing system. Now I know what I need to do to get the gear I want, and can plan my gaming sessions around that. Or just play and have fun depending on the mood I'm in that day.

 

Also I don't mind BiS being in NiM Ops (or in this case Vet mode R-4). I don't really raid much anymore, so I don't need or deserve that BiS, so I am content with the 336's I currently have. BW did make the gearing system a lot better when they added the Hyde/Zeek quests in 7.1

Edited April 14, 2023 by Toraak

[DawnAskham]

Lack of content continues to be the biggest miss - take everything added since 7.0 and it doesn't even come close to a quarterly update in something like ESO, FFXIV, or WoW. Pushing out a bunch of changes for change's sake, resetting gear, and increasing the level cap does not make an expansion - hell they were too cheap to even update crew skills for 7.x.

Updates are still few and far between - when something is missed or unbalanced or buggy or just needs a bit more work, we wait for months and months hoping for an update rather than weeks or days as with the competition.

Focus on pointless crap or the least impactful changes possible - more development time went into stuff like the silly currency bloated gear grind or screwing up level sync and companions than actual playable content, UI is constantly updated and usually in a negative way while actual play like combat isn't touched, actual problems like inflation get lip service and nonsense changes over meaningful changes.

 

 

[Balameb]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

Focus on pointless crap or the least impactful changes possible - more development time went into stuff like the silly currency bloated gear grind or screwing up level sync and companions than actual playable content, UI is constantly updated and usually in a negative way while actual play like combat isn't touched, actual problems like inflation get lip service and nonsense changes over meaningful changes.

So true. BW constantly waste resources on pointless stuff. On top of all of that, simple things that should require little to no effort they manage to add a layer of complexity/change that no one asked for. Like incresing repair cost. They could just flat out increase it and be done with it; no real code needed, just update a couple values. But no, they have to come up with new formulas and on doing so even annoy one of the roles that the games need more players to take.