The Future of SWTOR: Don't bother trying anymore

[OlBuzzard]

39 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I think we all agree that 6.x gearing had its issues. Some of them were pretty major too. But there was an easier & better solution to the gearing problem than starting from scratch in 7.0

They could have reduced the variety of mods/armor/enhancements/etc down to a more manageable number of say 8 instead of 19-21 types. 

They could have removed the RNG factor entirely at the vendors. And if they wanted to keep amplifiers, they could have made then grind based instead of RNG based to increase their lvl. 

Of course they would have had to reduce the number of drops because there would be less RNG & less types to extend there gear grind for content game design. But they could have solved their time gate problems by reducing Tech frag drops & increasing there costs. 

Exactly!  Well .. pretty close at least!  At the end of 6.XXX (whatever the last revision was) ... the RNG was a bit ridiculous!  Let's face it 7.0 was a disaster on several fronts.

UGH!!  I suppose that until the lesson is learned, and the game reflects that we'll probably be discussing this for a bit longer.  IMO the team is trying to patch up 7.0 (in an odd sort of way) ... but still holding on to the old foundation and framework.  And yes ... you are also correct that they system could have been streamlined as well.

In the end ... there has to be a better solution.

A nice slice of double chocolate cake to EAT with this fresh pot of BRC dark roast would be excellent!

[xxSHOONYxx]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I think we all agree that 6.x gearing had its issues. Some of them were pretty major too. But there was an easier & better solution to the gearing problem than starting from scratch in 7.0

They could have reduced the variety of mods/armor/enhancements/etc down to a more manageable number of say 8 instead of 19-21 types. 

They could have removed the RNG factor entirely at the vendors. And if they wanted to keep amplifiers, they could have made them grind based instead of RNG based to increase their lvl. 

Of course they would have had to reduce the number of drops because there would be less RNG & less types to extend their “gear grind for content” game design. But they could have solved their time gate problems by reducing Tech frag drops & increasing there costs. 

Not really the point i am trying to make if 6.0 or 7.0 gear is better/worse/same.
6.0 gear and gearing however you want was not so casuals would be happy, same as 7.0 was not the devs listening to some elitists/raiders.
Since 4.0 included the devs have been playing a tug of war with the player base on how to make the gearing take as much time as it can for the players while not getting too much pushback and even releasing it as "content" in 4.0 and now 7.4 with no new content. 

If they really cared about a good gearing system they would have continued with how gearing worked and improve on it, not totally scrap a gearing system to create a new one each expansion. If 8.0 ever comes out, 7.0 will be scrapped and a new one will come out, specifically designed to keep players as busy as they allow the devs continue with this jokes of decisions

[ZUHFB]

18 hours ago, xordevoreaux said:

I'll be sure to pass that tidbit of insight to my NIM ops folks in my guild

While you do not realize it, this is exactly what his point is. Going to by your signature and checking out the latest Operator IX kill, I can tell you that he is right. DISCLAIMER: I respect everybody progressing any NiM boss HOWEVER skill is a subjective thing. From all the context and what I read from @xxSHOONYxx his perception of skill seems to be a different one. To you the MM team from your guild seems very good, but from presumably his and my PoV they aren't. There really just isn't any reason to progress a 8 year old boss? The execution of the fights is laughably easy compared to other MMO raids, playing the classes properly is the bigger issue in SWTOR. Even that isn't exactly by the book, considering other teams kill that boss in almost half the time it took your guilds team. 

I respect everybody proging, but I am not going to deny reality. Objectively speaking they are not as good as you think. From clicking abilities to wasted offensives, there is room for improvement. If you want to pass any insights towards that team it should be to start using keybinds and stop clicking. Literally could press any ability, any, and just keybinds would increase the damage by more than any rotation or class or fight knowledge ever could. 

[xordevoreaux]

2 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

If you want to pass any insights towards that team it should be to start using keybinds and stop clicking. Literally could press any ability, any, and just keybinds would increase the damage by more than any rotation or class or fight knowledge ever could. 

You must be confusing my average level of skill with the highly skilled people in my guild. I am the clicker. I am the one weak in rotation. That's why I stick to the story mode ops. The more-than-capable NIM folks in my guild prog.

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by xordevoreaux

[ZUHFB]

25 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

You must be confusing my average level of skill with the highly skilled people in my guild. I am the clicker. I am the one weak in rotation. That's why I stick to the story mode ops. The more-than-capable NIM folks in my guild prog.

Again, its cool they prog. But if someone progs NiM in the current day and age they aren't good. If they were good they'd clear it.

And now that I think about it even that is a stretch. What you define as good and what I define as good are just two different things, and you mixed those up in your original response, which was also written in a very condescending way. Then I check out the kills and its... its rough dude, its rough. But sure enough, why shouldn't people progress bosses, I'm not gatekeeping raiding, but calling that good is just delusional. Just don't get the attitude of "we have people progging NiM so they're really good", it's not how it works.

[xordevoreaux]

12 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

What you define as good and what I define as good are just two different things,

And we will leave it at that.

[BulbulusTheGreat]

just reading entire NiM conversation makes me confused as hell, let alone if i tried it, honestly considering how story focused this game is + lack of endgame stuff and pvp changes + NiM being simply confusing to someone new all results into NiM simply not sounding appealing or interesting to anyone new, i wouldn't say its lack of skill, but more like not even wanting to get said skills since NiM seems to be dying out, there are also always cases of rude/elitist players which will naturally drive people away, sometimes pro's can't even agree with each other on what is best way to do something and that can drive someone new away as well, devs don't seem to think NiM stuff is priority either and i think that all these things combined simply resulted into nobody new being interested and NiM dying out. hell i remember before (not that long before only half a year or so ago) there were constantly NiM groups being formed on fleet and there would be people saying they're interested in trying it and now fairly recently there are little to no such groups or people.

[Toraak]

18 minutes ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

just reading entire NiM conversation makes me confused as hell, let alone if i tried it, honestly considering how story focused this game is + lack of endgame stuff and pvp changes + NiM being simply confusing to someone new all results into NiM simply not sounding appealing or interesting to anyone new, i wouldn't say its lack of skill, but more like not even wanting to get said skills since NiM seems to be dying out, there are also always cases of rude/elitist players which will naturally drive people away, sometimes pro's can't even agree with each other on what is best way to do something and that can drive someone new away as well, devs don't seem to think NiM stuff is priority either and i think that all these things combined simply resulted into nobody new being interested and NiM dying out. hell i remember before (not that long before only half a year or so ago) there were constantly NiM groups being formed on fleet and there would be people saying they're interested in trying it and now fairly recently there are little to no such groups or people.

Your probably thinking of the NiM Nefra, and NiM Dashroo'de runs people were doing at the start of 7.0 for the gear tokens, since it was the only way to get rakata (Non earpiece, or relics).

 

I haven't seen that many fleet NiM groups other then those in years. In the Operations channels on SF, and SS sure, but not really on fleet.

[OlBuzzard]

2 hours ago, Toraak said:

Your probably thinking of the NiM Nefra, and NiM Dashroo'de runs people were doing at the start of 7.0 for the gear tokens, since it was the only way to get rakata (Non earpiece, or relics).

 

I haven't seen that many fleet NiM groups other then those in years. In the Operations channels on SF, and SS sure, but not really on fleet.

I think you're right (or at least on the right track).  Gear and group participation seemed to be the primary motivation behind it!

[ZUHFB]

6 hours ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

just reading entire NiM conversation makes me confused as hell, let alone if i tried it, honestly considering how story focused this game is + lack of endgame stuff and pvp changes + NiM being simply confusing to someone new all results into NiM simply not sounding appealing or interesting to anyone new, i wouldn't say its lack of skill, but more like not even wanting to get said skills since NiM seems to be dying out, there are also always cases of rude/elitist players which will naturally drive people away, sometimes pro's can't even agree with each other on what is best way to do something and that can drive someone new away as well, devs don't seem to think NiM stuff is priority either and i think that all these things combined simply resulted into nobody new being interested and NiM dying out. hell i remember before (not that long before only half a year or so ago) there were constantly NiM groups being formed on fleet and there would be people saying they're interested in trying it and now fairly recently there are little to no such groups or people.

I actually agree! The community is dying, the entire gamemode is dying, people who play NiM play it for the other people - not for the game, not for the content. I've known multiple raidteams disbanding and all people going to FFXIV, they want to raid together, but at the same time they decided they want to play a good game for once - but only if thats not at the cost of losing each other. Then there is what happened to me, teams disband, 3 people move to WoW a few to FF the rest disappears for now. 

It's funny, in the recent event I joined I talked to some people who said they'd quit the moment they get all PvE achievements. But then why bother? I don't quite get it either. The only reason they do not quit is sunk cost fallacy, the sooner they realize the easier it will be. 

The game being story focused is like.... its not like story gets any playable content either, its a cartel market focused game if anything. And even if, you play it once for 30minutes each year - which is about accurate and then repeat that on all 76 toons just so you can get every single decision that changes nothing. Doesn't sound appealing either.

[OlBuzzard]

7 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

I actually agree! The community is dying, the entire gamemode is dying, people who play NiM play it for the other people - not for the game, not for the content. I've known multiple raidteams disbanding and all people going to FFXIV, they want to raid together, but at the same time they decided they want to play a good game for once - but only if thats not at the cost of losing each other. Then there is what happened to me, teams disband, 3 people move to WoW a few to FF the rest disappears for now. 

It's funny, in the recent event I joined I talked to some people who said they'd quit the moment they get all PvE achievements. But then why bother? I don't quite get it either. The only reason they do not quit is sunk cost fallacy, the sooner they realize the easier it will be. 

The game being story focused is like.... its not like story gets any playable content either, its a cartel market focused game if anything. And even if, you play it once for 30minutes each year - which is about accurate and then repeat that on all 76 toons just so you can get every single decision that changes nothing. Doesn't sound appealing either.

Oddly enough I agree.

IMO there is a big difference between someone who is just after the achievement/acknowledgement or gear piece and someone who is there to play that aspect of SWTOR passionately.  

That being said it is also EQUALLY important that each aspect be developed with the same commitment to excellence:  PvP / PvE / GSF ...  Story ?  Veteran?  Advanced?  

While some think that might be an unrealistic position to take ... I don't think it's unreasonable at all.  Maybe one day someone far enough up the food chain will figure it out ... that the old man ain't off his rocker!

[DreadzKaiser]

I only came back to the game recently, having skipped 6.x entirely.

I'm actually fine with this current gearing system. I'll happily take this over need/greed rolls that I never win (assuming gear I can even use drops to begin with) which was the method when I left.

to my understanding this 7.x gear system lets me gear up via any content and I love that.

I do miss bosses having meaningful loot to drop, can we at least get more decos to drop or something? some fancy weapon/armor shells?

[eabevella]

Guess I'll never be good since I'm proggin NiM now because I only developed an interest in doing it recently.

Thankfully my guild was willing to amuse me when I said I want to try it. It's pretty much the only reason why I'm still a subscriber now because this game has no real story contents and our character/class flavors don't matter at all in the small spoiled bread crumbs of the story we get. The old NiM raids are new stuffs to me at least.

[Spikanor]

13 hours ago, DreadzKaiser said:

I'm actually fine with this current gearing system.

then you are only one of the few that like it since a lot of players hate it and wane go back to the crafting mods system like it has been for a long time.

 

13 hours ago, DreadzKaiser said:

to my understanding this 7.x gear system lets me gear up via any content and I love that.

sadly a lot of other players that have left the game thanks to it are not happy about it at all.

[Whykara]

5 hours ago, Spikanor said:

then you are only one of the few that like it since a lot of players hate it and wane go back to the crafting mods system like it has been for a long time.

Gearing in general is not fun to me. I don't want to grind gear, I want to play the game. Finding the right mods in 6.x was a struggle, I had a cheat sheet laying at my desk while gearing in 6.x. It was exhausting at times. In 7.x gearing is way more straightforward and most importantly, it's faster.

[Spikanor]

11 minutes ago, Whykara said:

Gearing in general is not fun to me. I don't want to grind gear, I want to play the game. Finding the right mods in 6.x was a struggle, I had a cheat sheet laying at my desk while gearing in 6.x. It was exhausting at times. In 7.x gearing is way more straightforward and most importantly, it's faster.

maybe it was harder for you since for DPS/heal and Tank you need 3 compleet diffrend mod type's then its sure not easy.

but if you only have one of the 3 then it was super easy to remember what for mods you need.

7.0 gear is more worst in farming for a lot of players then it was back then in the 6.x era.

players that give compleet notting about PVP or running ops have it harder now then before.

sure there are droping now on other PVE place's also but its to late for a lot of people that have left the game for good all thanks to the 7.0 screw ups the damage has been done there cant fix anymore.

and thats why the compleet gearing system from 7.0 is compleet worse and bad thing for the game.

[xxSHOONYxx]

57 minutes ago, Spikanor said:

but if you only have one of the 3 then it was super easy to remember what for mods you need.

No it was not, just by the simple fact dps classes needed different amplifiers so you needed whole different sets for not only classes but specs too. Without counting you needed 6 different set pieces for each class + a general one that was amplifier specific for a class/spec. 

For tanks it was more of the same if you wanted to really min max, general one was aoe dr amplifier but you could go one step further and get amplifiers with specific damage types for some fights if you wanted. Which goes even further because the 3 different tanks need different stats too

[xxSHOONYxx]

7 hours ago, eabevella said:

Guess I'll never be good since I'm proggin NiM now because I only developed an interest in doing it recently.

Thankfully my guild was willing to amuse me when I said I want to try it. It's pretty much the only reason why I'm still a subscriber now because this game has no real story contents and our character/class flavors don't matter at all in the small spoiled bread crumbs of the story we get. The old NiM raids are new stuffs to me at least.

While i agree what @ZUHFB said, i do disagree partially at one point, unless i misinterpreted his words.
If you are now progging NiM right now your skill level compared to the people i am/was used to run with is very bad. But is also to be expected because i have been doing NiM content for years and probably did each nim op hundreds of times so it's not fair to compare. 

Then there is the point of ops being easier now than they were because of new skills/balancing/guids widely spread with exception of gods that has a somewhat gatekeep-y nature because guides for it are not out there for the masses and it makes it extra hard for people to do because of it.
Balancing is a huge issue too, as an example this expansion for me. In 7.0 i actually had fun doing legacy nim because they were not free, but with the hp reduction of every boos and 340 gear added they became so boring and they feel so free.

If you are progging NiM right now even with all that, you are probably on the top 5-10% on skill of the people left in the game though. And hope you enjoy the time you spend on them, if anything like me happens to you, you will look back in time and remember all the awesome times you had but most importantly the bond you created with those other 7 people rather than the clears itself

 

[Spikanor]

10 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

No it was not, just by the simple fact dps classes needed different amplifiers so you needed whole different sets for not only classes but specs too. Without counting you needed 6 different set pieces for each class + a general one that was amplifier specific for a class/spec. 

For tanks it was more of the same if you wanted to really min max, general one was aoe dr amplifier but you could go one step further and get amplifiers with specific damage types for some fights if you wanted. Which goes even further because the 3 different tanks need different stats too

the compleet amplifiers stuff is something i really give no damm about so if that was something good or bad there have done back in 6.0 is more something the people that use then can tell then about.

what i mean more is back in 6.x it was easy to upgrade your armor since you can farm the craft materials your self by sending companions on crew skill missions to get the grade materials you need and you can craft then self also.

now in the 7.x era you need to run contant you never do to farm the upgrade materials you need for you new armor system.

thats the compleet problem with it why the armor system before 7.0 was better and easy and also fair in all type play style the players have since it not force you to run contant you not like to get the stuff.

and if you look is back now at the compleet 7.x era how many time's the new armor system not has been chance what still keeps its core problem.

in 7.3 there chance it compleet since you can get the PVP and opps upgrade materials now also as drop in daily and heroic place what is all something there need to be done from the start all but still keeps it core problem.

now in the 7.4 update there chance it again by remove the ops, flashpoint and PVP upgrade's to make then one.

and i bet for sure its going to be chance again in 7.5 that there remove combine upgrade tokens from pvp/ops and flashpoint and combine it again with the Medals of Commendation to something new again to make it more easyer for some player groups.

[xxSHOONYxx]

5 minutes ago, Spikanor said:

the compleet amplifiers stuff is something i really give no damm about so if that was something good or bad there have done back in 6.0 is more something the people that use then can tell then about.

This just supports my idea that casuals don't really care about gear and just care about having the max iRating even if their stats are awful either because the don't care or understand how stats work

[Spikanor]

9 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

This just supports my idea that casuals don't really care about gear and just care about having the max iRating even if their stats are awful either because the don't care or understand how stats work

if you wane focus on stats thats more for ops or PVP type players.

there are a lot that run never ops or never do PVP so there not need perfect stats to play the other PVE contant.

why you think the devs ignore the PVP community's for a long time and focus more on the story and PVE contant and less on group contant's like PVP and ops.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Spikanor

[Whykara]

41 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

For tanks it was more of the same if you wanted to really min max, general one was aoe dr amplifier but you could go one step further and get amplifiers with specific damage types for some fights if you wanted. Which goes even further because the 3 different tanks need different stats too

Please don't trigger my PTSD

[BulbulusTheGreat]

On 10/30/2023 at 1:50 PM, Toraak said:

Your probably thinking of the NiM Nefra, and NiM Dashroo'de runs people were doing at the start of 7.0 for the gear tokens, since it was the only way to get rakata (Non earpiece, or relics).

 

I haven't seen that many fleet NiM groups other then those in years. In the Operations channels on SF, and SS sure, but not really on fleet.

yep, that was the one, used to be pretty common on fleet.

 

22 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

I actually agree! The community is dying, the entire gamemode is dying, people who play NiM play it for the other people - not for the game, not for the content. I've known multiple raidteams disbanding and all people going to FFXIV, they want to raid together, but at the same time they decided they want to play a good game for once - but only if thats not at the cost of losing each other. Then there is what happened to me, teams disband, 3 people move to WoW a few to FF the rest disappears for now. 

It's funny, in the recent event I joined I talked to some people who said they'd quit the moment they get all PvE achievements. But then why bother? I don't quite get it either. The only reason they do not quit is sunk cost fallacy, the sooner they realize the easier it will be. 

The game being story focused is like.... its not like story gets any playable content either, its a cartel market focused game if anything. And even if, you play it once for 30minutes each year - which is about accurate and then repeat that on all 76 toons just so you can get every single decision that changes nothing. Doesn't sound appealing either.

i agree with you as well but i have so say that the game is pretty story focused, it has a good even sometimes great stories to tell, class stories and (at least to me) most DLC's are good, especially for an MMO, the thing is though they don't have replay value, when i just started the game as a first timer pretty recently i had a looooooot of the game to play and it took me almost 2 entire years to finish it all but now as you've said theres just nothing, old content doesn't have big replay value and anything new we get is like 30 mins long or is a complete disaster from story telling perspective like the newest GS,

[xxSHOONYxx]

46 minutes ago, Spikanor said:

why you think the devs ignore the PVP community's for a long time and focus more on the story and PVE contant and less on group contant's like PVP and ops.

Because they fumbled it big time o 4.0 and seems they have no idea what an MMO is supposed to be and the player numbers tell it all when the two biggest mmos with smaller ips than starwars produce group content and do hundreds of time better.
 

47 minutes ago, Spikanor said:

if you wane focus on stats thats more for ops or PVP type players.

there are a lot that run never ops or never do PVP so there not need perfect stats to play the other PVE contant.

Then you are perfectly fine with conquest gear and very easy to get

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Then there is the point of ops being easier now than they were because of new skills/balancing/guids widely spread with exception of gods that has a somewhat gatekeep-y nature because guides for it are not out there for the masses and it makes it extra hard for people to do because of it.
Balancing is a huge issue too, as an example this expansion for me. In 7.0 i actually had fun doing legacy nim because they were not free, but with the hp reduction of every boos and 340 gear added they became so boring and they feel so free.

If you are progging NiM right now even with all that, you are probably on the top 5-10% on skill of the people left in the game though. And hope you enjoy the time you spend on them, if anything like me happens to you, you will look back in time and remember all the awesome times you had but most importantly the bond you created with those other 7 people rather than the clears itself

Fully agree with the rest but: Ops are waaaaaaaaaaaaay harder nowdays than they used to be. But it does feel like they're easy, this is because after all these years we surrounded ourselfs with really confident and strong players - years of experience also help. Ops used to be easier, objectively. Players also improved so massively from back in the days, its really insane.

For gods this is true too, nahut got killed once pre 240 augs (iirc) and by 3 teams once they got released. But keep in mind that the fights where new, people didn't know how to handle adds, what setup is best - but we had things like forcespeed DR to offset it. If the fights would be like they where during that period it would be very easy. G'damn people didn't even understand scyva, first kills where done with 4/3 stack, but nobody ever bothered to destack - but also nobody ever questioned why not just go 7/7, it would've been possible like people just didn't know its a thing! Or at least we didn't.

The ops aged pretty well all in all, I remember a PTS version, they tried scaling things to max level (back when it wasn't) and they just added numbers - it was unplayable. On denova tanks the motar volleys damage got scaled, but the shields HP value didn't. The motar volley ended up killing the shields in 1 hit and then everybody died. What i'm trying to say is: considering how bad it COULD be, the ops scaling isn't that bad atm.