Make the game harder during class stories

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 hour ago, Diamaht said:

Was doing content on DK last night.  About an hour in I was already getting bored mopping the floor with everything.  

I can simply Suppression Fire the entire planet, and I mean that literally.  Death is impossible.

Yeah, I have to agree with this. Suppression Fire is ridiculous. It mows down everything. And I agree with DWHO when he said it needs to be toned down.

[Diamaht]

2 hours ago, DWho said:

You're right on this one. Suppressive fire is way overpowered even with a low level character. It gets downright scary with a high level one. It is arguably the best AOE in the game (as is the Smuggler equivalent Sweeping Gunfire). This is one that does need a tone down.

 

2 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Yeah, I have to agree with this. Suppression Fire is ridiculous. It mows down everything. And I agree with DWHO when he said it needs to be toned down.

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest.  There's really not much mobs can do about us.  They could nerf SF but in the current state it would just take longer to do everything.  I would just slowly cut each tree down one a time, while still being in no real danger.  In the current state that might make things worse.

Now a dps buff for the mobs on the other hand would give me something to push against.  In that scenario I need to do things correctly or they'll get me.

[Shayddow]

Quote

To teach gameplay, what you want is something more like specific attacks that are cooldown limited that impose a big but recoverable hit, (say 25%, 33%, or 50% of expected player health), that can be avoided by LoS or cooldowns, or interrupts, etc.   Also some burst DPS windows "Mr. Bad Dude is feeling queasy, hit him now," type stuff.   Some "don't stand in the stupid," as well.  In short, PvE mechanics.   

They have this. It is called the Zakuul Championship series. Problem is, it is only taught after at least KOTFE 9. Which is after those who don't know that sort of thing should learn it, which is during class story.

[Shayddow]

Quote

Edit: Not that long ago I got a Czerka crate as a mob drop. A very rare occurrence. Does that mean there is something wrong with the loot table

yes. Because "I" should have gotten it too!  🙂

I have gotten the Dressler mount on CZ-198, but only with 2 of my Pub characters. That place hates imperials. (Mutters)

[Shayddow]

29 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

 

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest.  There's really not much mobs can do about us.  They could nerf SF but in the current state it would just take longer to do everything.  I would just slowly cut each tree down one a time, while still being in no real danger.  In the current state that might make things worse.

Now a dps buff for the mobs on the other hand would give me something to push against.  In that scenario I need to do things correctly or they'll get me.

 

[DWho]

30 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

Now a dps buff for the mobs on the other hand would give me something to push against.  In that scenario I need to do things correctly or they'll get me.

The not dying problem is related to your health and the comps healing ability not the damage output of the NPC (Bioware in fact increased the damage output of all NPCs with one of the 7.0 patches).

[Shayddow]

Quote

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest

To be honest, the only characters I go thru the Black Hole heroic solo with without dying, or dying only once, is my Tank Bounty Hunter. The others all die more than once while doing it.

And the Belsavis Section X heroic one I can get thru the heroic solo but only with stealthers, and without doing the "bonus" mission. And those 2 missions aren't considered "end game content" anymore. 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

32 minutes ago, Diamaht said:

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest.  There's really not much mobs can do about us.  They could nerf SF but in the current state it would just take longer to do everything.  I would just slowly cut each tree down one a time, while still being in no real danger.  In the current state that might make things worse.

Yeah, I hear ya. But the faster things die, the less damage they can do to you so it is kinda related.

But yeah, in the end it's not gonna make a big difference. You're still gonna kill the trash.

For me though, trash are trash, and they're not really intended to be a threat, they're just there to make take things a little longer and make the missions not be over in a minute and half.

[DWho]

15 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Yeah, I hear ya. But the faster things die, the less damage they can do to you so it is kinda related.

But yeah, in the end it's not gonna make a big difference. You're still gonna kill the trash.

For me though, trash are trash, and they're not really intended to be a threat, they're just there to make take things a little longer and make the missions not be over in a minute and half.

Three things determine survivability against mobs:

1) your level (if you are 10 or more levels above the mob level you take next to no damage). This is leftover code from game launch where out-leveling content was how you solved difficulty issues. It used to be the trick to soloing heroics and flashpoints (and even World Bosses) before Level Sync but the effect is still there.

2) Your health which is determined by your level, your endurance stat, and any bonuses from various abilities. Some classes have baked in damage resistance which can overwhelm the damage output of the NPCs if the character is high enough level

3) Your gear (which directly affects your stats and may have built in damage resistance). With the change to level sync since 7.0, there is no longer a hard cap on any ability so better gear = better stats always (even true when comparing "level 10" gear to "level 20" gear).

Your Presence stat can also have a large impact as the companion healing keeps you from losing hit points (and most of them have a damage resistance ability which also increase in strength with your Presence stat). The higher your Presence the less damage your take.

These items can be adjusted for you specifically without impacting players with lower levels of them. If you just boost the damage to the point it is "pushing" a high level (or high stat) character, lower level characters will start to fail regularly and will be hit with extremely high repair bills (which they are also likely not to be able to afford).

Edited May 24, 2023 by DWho

[BlackSilverRoar]

-1 Strongly Opposed, Not Signed. 

 

Many of us older players/ Founders have played and leveled up hundreds of toons and the monotony of having to play an arbitrary unnecessary harder leveling up all of a sudden and after all this time is ridiculous and offputting.  Leveling up alts to level 80 is already a huge pain it is.  More players need to get to endgame, not delayed to.  -1 to OP - No just no.

[Advocatis]

For me, it’s not that the game needs to be harder per se, I think it would be better for the players if the game got players using more of the defensive cooldowns and mitigation more consistently.  There’s many times I see a mob starting to channel an attack, and I don’t bother to interrupt it or respond with a defensive ability because I know I don’t need to.

At the same time, learning the discipline of when to interrupt or mitigate attacks would smooth transition to multi-player or PVP content.  Yes, play would have to be harder (or a tutorial more detailed) to teach and reinforce the necessary discipline, but it’s more complex than mob hits harder or has more HP.  The mobs would need to be more responsive and more intelligent.

Never going to see the resources spent, but if the goal is to move players from the solo class story to multiplayer FPs and OPs, BioWare needs to do a better job of teaching the players to use the game mechanics needed for that content.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Advocatis
Just cleaning up the text.

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, Shayddow said:

To be honest, the only characters I go thru the Black Hole heroic solo with without dying, or dying only once, is my Tank Bounty Hunter. The others all die more than once while doing it.

And the Belsavis Section X heroic one I can get thru the heroic solo but only with stealthers, and without doing the "bonus" mission. And those 2 missions aren't considered "end game content" anymore. 

I like this comment because it shows the wide variation in player ability that hasn't come up much in this thread. I find the black hole heroic pretty easy. It's slightly more difficult on pubside but mainly because of the door bug at the end. Unless your comp is set to dps it 'should' be easy to survive. I agree about the section x heroic though, it's very difficult and I don't think I've ever beaten the champ at the end, just gone around. But the thing is that I've heard players on the forum who claim to regularly do the Section x weekly in 10 minutes. 

A lot of the endgame content post-SoR is quite difficult. No more JesusDroid for FPs, harder to stealth through, overtuned mobs that respawn quickly or cause aggro, and forcing you to use story comps that aren't very good or ranked high. I always wonder how the people who are comfortable with the level of difficulty in the class stories are coping with the difficulty throughout the current storyline.

The point is that what is difficult for me may be easy for others and vice versa. Also that what is easy for me may not be so easy in reality depending on gear, comp rank and role, and extra stats from datacrons. And the problem is how does bioware make more difficult default story content that is still manageable by the majority of players, or enjoyable. Fighting Baras or Thanaton would be great if they used different mechanics and forced you to think about your strategy. They wouldn't be fun if they were just bullet sponges. 

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 hour ago, DWho said:

Three things determine survivability against mobs:

Some interesting stuff. I wasn't ware there was a change to level sync with 7.0.

I was vaguely aware of the Presence stat's effect on companion output, but not the specifics.

[DWho]

30 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Some interesting stuff. I wasn't ware there was a change to level sync with 7.0.

I was vaguely aware of the Presence stat's effect on companion output, but not the specifics.

There were quite a few changes. I think there was a Dev Post back around when 7.0 launched that explained the changes and the rationale behind them. A bit of a summary:

1) Prior to 7.0 only Mastery, Power and Endurance were adjusted (and they were hard capped at a specific value per planet/area). After 7.0 all statistics except Alacrity and Accuracy are scaled back based on how much of the ability you have so a high mastery build is still a high mastery build after level sync is applied. (Originally Alacrity and Accuracy were also going to be synced but that was changed before 7.0 launched.

2) Since abilities were hard capped prior to 7.0, stims, procced relics, and other temporary increases to abilities were ignored if you were already over the cap. 7.0 changed this and those items now add on top of your synced stat.

3) Presence was initially hard capped (when 7.0 launched) making all companions regardless of influence more or less exactly the same performance-wise. This was changed for 7.0 to recognize that at the time, getting a comp to level 50 required a significant amount of resources. (Its a lot easier now to get level 50 comps with Galactic Seasons)

4) Datacrons only added up to the cap and anything over that was not applied prior to 7.0. In 7.0 all legacy adjustments to stats are applied in full (with the exception of crit I believe)

There were a couple other things including the lowering of the level sync "level" for the planets and some gear penalties if you were using old gear that applied before the level sync stat calculation. Primarily this targeted the old 306 gear to get people to stop using it and grind the new gear (removal of gear bonuses based on how many pieces you had were also removed as part of this process)

All in all, the current level sync system is quite different from the old system.

Edit: One other thing that happened was that all color crystals no longer add to your stats. They are cosmetic only.

Edit 2: Here is the Bioware Post: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/921183-level-sync-update/

Edited May 25, 2023 by DWho

[Bigfallenstar]

3 hours ago, Diamaht said:

 

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest.  There's really not much mobs can do about us.  They could nerf SF but in the current state it would just take longer to do everything.  I would just slowly cut each tree down one a time, while still being in no real danger.  In the current state that might make things worse.

Now a dps buff for the mobs on the other hand would give me something to push against.  In that scenario I need to do things correctly or they'll get me.

So you used an ability that's supposed to do aoe damage to mobs and are surprised that said mob dies to it. And you want to nerf it because it did what it's suppose to do and you find it boring that everything dies to it so quickly? All in the sake of seeking a so called challenge.  Just don't use the ability. Why punish others just because you want it to be harder and can't be bother to use any other ability because combat takes 1-3 seconds longer?

[eabevella]

7 hours ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Yeah, I have to agree with this. Suppression Fire is ridiculous. It mows down everything. And I agree with DWHO when he said it needs to be toned down.

Leave my supressive fire alone let me live in the false sense of superiority of mowing down mobs in sm ops with 80k dps ;w;

PS: supressive fire is not sustainable (burn too much energy) and not that useful when it's out of vanilla planets where it's faster and safer doing proper rotation attack. It isn't even effective in mid-vanilla planet H2 missions (some of them are weirdly balanced). It's more of a situational nice trick than an actual op skill.

Edited May 25, 2023 by eabevella

[LD_Little_Dragon]

5 hours ago, Diamaht said:

 

The not dieing is the bigger concern for me to be honest. 

Is your companion set to heal?

If yes, then it is a YOU problem.

Stop using a heal companion.  Better yet, stop using a companion completely.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

2 hours ago, DWho said:

All in all, the current level sync system is quite different from the old system.

Edit: One other thing that happened was that all color crystals no longer add to your stats. They are cosmetic only.

Edit 2: Here is the Bioware Post: https://forums.swtor.com/topic/921183-level-sync-update/

Thanks for sharing that. I really didn't pay much attention to what Bioware was saying about 7.0 prior to it dropping, I've been so disappointed with new xpacs for the most part I kinda just look at the broad strokes and things related to class and balance.

Why be disappointed ahead of time I guess was the logic. =p

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

47 minutes ago, eabevella said:

Leave my supressive fire alone let me live in the false sense of superiority of mowing down mobs in sm ops with 80k dps ;w;

Hahaha Fair enough.

And as an after thought and thinking about it after my post about it, Snipers are a pure DPS class, and I play a Carnage Marauder so I can respect a fellow pure DPS class's right to strong DPS in a given area. And like you said, it's situational and has its limitations.

So yeah, leave it be.

Edited May 25, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

24 minutes ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Is your companion set to heal?

If yes, then it is a YOU problem.

Stop using a heal companion.  Better yet, stop using a companion completely.

I always use my companion as heals.

As a Carnage Marauder, I have no heals, if I didn't use my comp as a healer, I'd be a dead man sometimes for sure.

Without that, it would most certainly make things more challenging and that option is there for anyone who may wish to use it (or not use it, as the case may be).

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I always use my companion as heals.

As a Carnage Marauder, I have no heals, if I didn't use my comp as a healer, I'd be a dead man sometimes for sure.

Without that, it would most certainly make things more challenging and that option is there for anyone who may wish to use it (or not use it, as the case may be).

Don't you have hundreds of medpacs stacked up from drops? My cargo bays are full of them, and they're next to worthless to sell. 

Generally I put my comp on dps for 1-50 combat, tank for post-50, and heals for especially difficult combat, which includes post-ossus story content.

I assume most people complaining about 'game too easy' solely use their healbots lmao. This comes into the same category as "why don't they use green mods to level?" and "why don't they use the WAM to slow their leveling?" According to this thread it's apparently too complicated or something lmao 

[Shayddow]

for me I have companion 99 % of the time heals. Except for a very few exceptions.

For instance, the quest on Oricon for the mission at the extreme north of the map, I try to use Kira or Xalek as DPS (depending on which side I'm playing), throw on heroic and go. That's the only way i've found to be able to take out the tenacles before the boss self-heals, plus using my interrupts.  But that was found out mostly by trial and error until I got it down to a system.

[Diamaht]

4 hours ago, Bigfallenstar said:

So you used an ability that's supposed to do aoe damage to mobs and are surprised that said mob dies to it. And you want to nerf it because it did what it's suppose to do and you find it boring that everything dies to it so quickly? All in the sake of seeking a so called challenge.  Just don't use the ability. Why punish others just because you want it to be harder and can't be bother to use any other ability because combat takes 1-3 seconds longer?

 

3 hours ago, eabevella said:

Leave my supressive fire alone let me live in the false sense of superiority of mowing down mobs in sm ops with 80k dps ;w;

PS: supressive fire is not sustainable (burn too much energy) and not that useful when it's out of vanilla planets where it's faster and safer doing proper rotation attack. It isn't even effective in mid-vanilla planet H2 missions (some of them are weirdly balanced). It's more of a situational nice trick than an actual op skill.

I didn't say anything about nerfing anything.  That's a you defensiveness issue.

What I said is buff the mobs dps.  Keep the time to kill the same.  Just make me kill them before they kill me.

Outside of heroics healing companions are not needed for any class.  Hell we don't even use healers (or tanks) for Flashpoints.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

1 hour ago, Ardrossan said:

Don't you have hundreds of medpacs stacked up from drops? My cargo bays are full of them, and they're next to worthless to sell. 

Generally I put my comp on dps for 1-50 combat, tank for post-50, and heals for especially difficult combat, which includes post-ossus story content.

I assume most people complaining about 'game too easy' solely use their healbots lmao. This comes into the same category as "why don't they use green mods to level?" and "why don't they use the WAM to slow their leveling?" According to this thread it's apparently too complicated or something lmao 

Yeah, I got plenty of Med pacs, but If I'm soloing say Nathema Conspiracy on Veteran, which I do alot because I sell decos to make creds, , with no heals as a Carnage Marauder, med pacs ain't enough. I make a mistake or two, on occasion I die, and that's with a healer companion. Generally I don't, but it does happen on occasion.

Without a companion on heals, I'd stand no chance, I'd die a lot.

Like in Galactic Seasons, sometimes as one of the objectives it says "Kill 25 enemies without a companion".  I can't go immediately from one mob to another, I generally need to heal in between. I  don't think I could do 3 or 4 mobs without healing in between without dying. Certainly not on higher level planets. Low level planets 15 or 20, yeah probably, but not the mid to high level ones.

I'm generally okay, but if I pull too many adds at once in a Heroic for example, my health goes. Golds without a healer, they'd hurt me.

So for example, I just did Wookie Revolt Heroic on Corellia just to refresh the experience, that's full of golds.

Vs 2, with Cloak of Pain DCD, they get me down to about 75%

Vs 3 about 55 - 60%

vs 4 about 25-30%

vs 5 I nearly died.

With no DCD vs 4 or 5 will probably kill me.

Obviously there's a little but of variance if you get some nice crits, than it goes abit better.

When I get some ranged in the mix, that makes it a bit worse because there's no splash damage going on.

Should also be noted, that while Carnage has decent AOE, it isn't great,  so I'm doing these mobs single target, so I stay on one till it's dead, than I switch to another and rinse and repeat.

I'm sure specs that have good AOE, DOT spreads and the like, especially with refreshes in the mix probably would fare abit better.

I'm not sure how that'd go if you had some self heals, like if you played a Madness Sorc or an Operative, they might be able to do it without any severe health lose.

But like doing Star Fortesses without a healer, no way. Even the trash have alot more health and they hit harder.

But soloing flashpoints, without a healer companion, I'd definitely die alot. I'd stand no chance against bosses.

So there are definitely ways to increase the challenge of content as is.

Edited May 25, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[eabevella]

1 hour ago, Diamaht said:

 

I didn't say anything about nerfing anything.  That's a you defensiveness issue.

What I said is buff the mobs dps.  Keep the time to kill the same.  Just make me kill them before they kill me.

Outside of heroics healing companions are not needed for any class.  Hell we don't even use healers (or tanks) for Flashpoints.

I was replying to WayOfTheWarriorx

Also this is not direct at you but imo people should just go do ACTUAL HARD MODE/MASTER MODE/NIGHT MARE CONTENTS OR PVP instead of complaining about how "easy" the open world mobs are and want to make it harder with total inconsideration of actual new/solo players who are LEARNING THE BASICS/IN IT FOR THE EXPERIENCE NOT "CHALLENGE" FROM TRASH MOBS.

Or just go naked and legacy punch everyone on DK or something.

Edit: Yes, it would be nice if there are HM/NiM planet instances that would make it win-win for all, but if that's not gonna happen, the open world difficulty should stay the same as now.

Edited May 25, 2023 by eabevella