SWTOR SALVATION INITIATIVE

[JMNeves]

So, after the livestream on the 14^th, I’ve decided to take it upon myself and list things the community actually wants. Please don't take me wrong, the whole date night thing looks really neat. But Cutscene-only missions? And while there are so many easy things that could be done to improve the game, too... I want the whole date night experience, I really do! It soulds great. But it should be an added bonus on top of other things and not main content. 

But before anything, it's paramount to point out how happy everyone looked on the live stream and how refreshing it is for me to see something like that. Eric, Jackie, Ashley, Caitlyn, and Keith. All 5 of them looked very excited to share what's coming on the next patch, and that really makes me think about how much enjoyment you all must get from your work. Keep it up! And I just about lost it with Jackie's costume, it looked fantastic! Just thought I had to say that before anything. 

I'd also like to say it again, most of what I’m going to list here is already in the game. It’s only a matter of organizing and releasing, which makes it extra easy to capitalize on it. And on this post, I go over extensive details of what I notice to be people’s biggest frustrations in the game and how to easily fix them. None of these suggestions are meant to be taken literally. They have been detailed extensively to serve as example of what would better suit the game's current needs. But without any further ado, let’s get to it: 

1 - Group finder needs to be revamped. Having different sets of operations rotating on a weekly basis isn’t optimal, it doesn’t encourage players to do anything, but it discourages everyone in general to use the in-game tools to find groups. Better than making only certain weeklies available each week, give us a set of focused operations – that’d be on essentially on the same rotation as the weeklies are today, but the focused operation would give double rewards for tech fragments.

Players should ALWAYS be allowed to respec inside flashpoints and operations, even if the group has been created by the group finder. I understand why we can’t do it inside warzones, but for other forms of group content we should be able to do it. We should also be able to invite our friends to a group finder activity if we have a player drop. Hey, sometimes life happens and someone has to leave, or maybe we get someone who has lost connection. We ask in guild or on discord, and we invite a friend who’s available. It’s thousands of times better than hoping that group finder will give us someone who plays well. 

Group finder should have a separate tab for operations, and one tier for every mode. Want to queue up for a DF SM and get some tech fragments? Go ahead. It’s time to prog Dxun NiM with your guild and you don’t feel like walking? Use the group finder to take you there! And on top of it, the group finder itself could give us more incentives (extra loot, money, tech fragments, etc). Everybody wins! 

Raise your hand if you’ve been in the following situation before: you’ve been waiting for a flashpoint pop for the last 30 minutes and it finally happens. But when everyone accepts the pop, it shows a buggy or wicked hard flashpoint like the Ruins of Nul, and the result is one or two players leaving before they even zone into the instance. This has happened to me countless times, and I bet to most players too. Flashpoints are fun, reasonably quick, and most of them are interesting. But you cannot with a straight face tell me that Shrine of Silence and Hammer Station are on the same level of difficulty. One has an incredibly hard healing check at the end, the other is a walk in the park that doesn’t take longer than 20 minutes. 

There should be categories of flashpoints, like there were during 2.0 – I remember that there was a general category with most flashpoints being around the same level of difficulty, and a separate one with Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island because they were a lot more difficult than the others. There should be 2 tiers of flashpoints again for Master Mode. 

So patch-notes style:

Spoiler

• All operation weeklies should be available every week.
• New weekly focused operations list.
• On a datapad on the fleet, there will be a tooltip that changes every week saying which operations are currently offering double techfragments rewards from bosses – Kinda like the “high Priority Target” system back in 4.0.
• Players should ALWAYS be allowed to respec inside flashpoints and operations.
• Warzones and arenas would not allow respecking inside matches for the sake of keeping teams mostly balanced.
• We should also be able to invite our friends to a group finder activity if we have a player drop.
• Group finder should have a separate tab for operations.
• New Master Mode flashpoint tier system based on flashpoints difficulty. Players are able to queue for tier War-bound, War-veteran, or both!
• War-bound flashpoints: Athiss, Battle of Rishi, Blood Hund, Boarding Party, Cademimu, Czerka Core Meltdown, Czerka Corporate Labs, Depths of Manaan, Directive 7, Hammer Station, Korriban Incursion, Maelstrom Prison, Mandalorian Raiders, Legacy of the Rakata, Red Reaper, The Spirit of Vengeance, Taral V, Battle of Ilum, Black Talon, Esseles, False Emperor, Foundry.
• War-veteran flashpoints: Assault on Tython, Traitor Among The Chiss, Crisis on Umbara, Kaon Under Siege, Lost Island, Objective Meridian, Ruins of Nul, Secrets of the Enclave, Shrine of Silence, The Nathema Conspiracy.

2 - Why do we not have a cartel market option to respec our characters into different combat styles? I imagine there are technical difficulties in the way, but I know for a fact that I regret a few of my secondary combat style choices. Hell, I would even change some of my primary ones. Give us a cartel market token to reset our combat styles, some for primary and some for secondary. These should be tradeable tokens.

Another idea that would be amazing and a very effective way to combat gold sellers would be to finally allow subscription tokens in-game. For a price slightly more expensive than purchasing from the website, a tradeable in-game token could be a way to get more people buying subscriptions – think something like the WoW token system here.

Imagine someone who doesn’t want to or can’t spend real money on subscriptions. This person would have, combining galactic seasons and security key, enough cartel coins to buy a subscription token, and after they become a subscriber their credit cap is lifted, allowing them to farm dailies for more credits so they can buy more subscription tokens on the GTN from other players. Broadsword would have one more subscriber that would otherwise never have subscribed in the first place. Everybody wins.

Patch-notes style:

Spoiler

• New combat style tokens. Several types of tokens broken into two main categories: primary and secondary.
• Primary Force Combat Style Reassignment Token – 1500CC
• Primary Tech Combat Style Reassignment Token – 1500CC
• Secondary Force Combat Style Reassignment Token – 1000CC
• Secondary Tech Combat Style Reassignment Token – 1000CC
• New 30-day Subscription Token – 2200CC (You could make it so this token can only be tradable in game through the GTN to force players to pay taxes... This price point has been suggested because buying this amount of cartel coins from the SWTOR website is slightly more expensive than buying a 30-day subscription directly from Broadsword. Players who are able to do it, are encouraged to buy it their subscriptions directly from the website since it’s a little bit cheaper)

3 - Gearing system must be reworked. We currently have basically one type of gear that comes from each section of the game. There’s a gear that comes from conquest, another from pvp, another from flashpoints, another from each operation mode… Not to mention the mess that currencies have become. I remember the transition (I think from 3.x to 4.x) when commendations were eliminated from the game and the justification for it was that they were too convoluted and SWTOR would try to streamline things going forward. I guess that went out the window, eh?

And since we’re on the topic of gearing, we understand why static pieces of gear have become the norm, it makes it easier for the vast majority of players and it’s a good thing. But we need to have moddable gear that’s on-par with static pieces and not a tier below. Mods have been a cornerstone of the game since launch, and a fantastic feature that allows players to min/max their gear to best suit their playstyle. Not only that, but it’s also a feature exclusive to SWTOR! Embrace it! Take it and run with it! Don’t cast it in the fire.

And with the reworking of the system, there would be an opportunity to create incentives for players to venture in content outside of their comfort zone. I remember during the 2.x era, I would queue up for flashpoints and get these living legends, nightmare players and ranked PvP beasts, in my groups. Do you know why? Because flashpoints gave commendations that would be traded in for the sentinel pants on the fleet vendor, and those pants contained the best-in-slot power mod. I’m not saying we should go back to those, but it’s a good frame of reference for what worked to get people involved in content they wouldn’t typically find interesting and bringing the community together.

So here’s a list, patch-notes style:

 

Spoiler

• Gone are all sets of gear. Instead we have a new tier called “War-bound”. It’s only available as artifact, starts at 320 and comes from basically any content that already drops gear.
• Conquest and story related things will drop gear up to level 330, flashpoint and pvp related drops will go up to 340. SM ops drop up to 336, HM ops drop up to 340, and NiM ops drop up to 344. These items can be taken to a vendor and upgraded using tech fragments only.
• And completely gone are the other currencies. Of course, harder content drops more tech fragments, and the gear gets progressively more expensive to upgrade as it reaches higher levels. This change would ensure that a player’s effort would never be in vain, and the gear someone has can always be upgraded if they decide to start doing a different type of content.
• Queuing up for random flashpoints, finishing warzones dailies, completing operation weeklies, finishing story chapters, even doing uprising weeklies should give players a mystery box. This box would have a chance to contain: 50% an upgrade to one of your pieces; 45% a handful of endgame crafting materials, and 5% one random cartel market item bound to legacy.
• Hyde and Zeek are gone and mods are inaccessible from any vendors. However, the same vendor that carries “War-bound” pieces also carries empty shells called “War-veteran”. These shells can be populated by mods crafted by players. The schematics would be as follows: greens can be learned from the trainer; blues can be learned from reverse-engineering the greens, and purples can be learned from reverse-engineering the “War-bound” pieces.

For example, if a player reverse-engineers a 338 War-bound headpiece that contains alacrity as the tertiary stat, there would be a chance of learning something useful from it. If the player is a cybertech crafter, he’d have a 30% chance of learning the 338 artifact versatile armoring from it, 30% chance of learning the 338 artifact power mod from it, and 40% chance of failure. If he’s an artificer, he’d have a 30% chance of learning the 338 artifact alacrity enhancement from it, and 70% chance of failure.

These mods should be crafted using materials that drop from endgame content (warzones, flashpoints, operations, even chapters). It should also be possible to purchase them with tech fragments, similar to legendary embers. The higher the level, the more materials it uses. It could start at 1 legendary ember at 330 and go up 1 every two levels. So 330 and 332 would cost 1 legendary ember to craft, 334 and 336 would cost 2, 338 and 340 would cost 3, and so on.

4 - Crafting needs to be given some love! It’s an aberration that we’re still using the same augments from 6.0, and that we don’t have new medpacs, adrenals, or grenades. Another thing was the barrier for entering crafting that was created. “You need ingredients X Y and Z to craft a green thingy!” – Ok, neat. But then you need 2 of the green thingies and a bunch of blues to craft a blue thingy… And 2 of those and a bunch of purple mats to craft a purple material. And then you need those purple materials to craft legendary ones… And FINALLY you can craft… one medpac. Yay, what a waste of time.

And since I’ve touched on legendaries for crafting: reusables hurt the economy. Period. As a raider, I love them as much as the next guy, but I have to recognize that they give zero incentives for people to get other crew skills besides biochem.

Grenades should be given more thought as well. Outside of PvP and some very rare and specific instances, they’re nearly useless in most of the game. New types of grenades would have some people use them offensively, some defensively, and some strategically.

Crafting is also a great opportunity to use the players’ greed to remove credits from the game. Here’s a proposal: automatic toggleable missions. Let’s say I send my Lana Beniko to gather some grade 5 bioanalysis materials I need for conquest related crafting. There should be a toggle next to Lana’s name on the crafting window that allows me to tell her to keep repeating the mission for a pre-defined number of times. If I tell her to go repeat that mission 20 times, she'll do it 20 times or until my character runs out of credits. This would make my game much more enjoyable, since I’d be able to fire up SWTOR after a hard day at work and just get to my crafting instead of tediously sending out missions. Slicing missions that reward credit lockboxes would be excluded from this system for obvious reasons.

Maybe the use of this toggle should cost jawa scraps, giving those items yet another very useful possibility. This toggle should be exclusive to subscribers, and there should be a warning of the total amount of credits that would be used by sending a companion on that mission N number of times.

Finally, there should be a cartel market unlock for extra crafting/gathering slots. The current maximum is 8 at level 80, but we should get an unlock (let’s say, for 1000CC each) that give us the opportunity to add more slots at a maximum of 16. It would finally give us an incentive to reach higher levels of affection with those companions we never use, it would also be a great QOL change for crafters, and it would be another easy way to make money from the cartel.

Patch-notes style, here we go:

Spoiler

• Crafting goes back to what it used to be. Green materials crafts green items. Blue for blue, and purple for purple. Gone are the assembly components, cyber assemblers, armor processors, bonded crystals, and cell grafts. Let them be forgotten by history as the sad mistake they were.
• Older crafting schematics don’t have to be changed. But the newer levels of crafting would follow this new pattern.
• New toggleable option to tell companions to keep repeating a gathering mission while the character still has credits.
• New cartel market unlock for more crafting and gathering slots. Up to 16 companions should be unlockable at a cost of 1000CC each.
• New tier of crafting. New augments, new medpacs, new stims, new adrenals, new grenades.
• The new augments can be learned from the trainer in their green variety. Reverse-engineer them to get the blues, and reverse-engineer these to get the purples. Simple, as it should always have been.

The new medpacs, stims, and adrenals should be completely different from the ones we have nowadays.

Spoiler

• War-bound Premium Medpacs. Obtainable from the vendor. Heals the player up to 10% of their health. Gives a 10% speed boost for 10 seconds. Unusable in PvP areas.
• War-bound Prototype Medpacs. Obtainable from RE-ing green ones. Heals up to 20% of the player’s health. Gives a 20% speed boost for 10 seconds. Unusable in PvP areas.
• War-bound Artifact Medpacs. Obtainable from RE-ing blue ones. Heals up to 30% of the player’s health. Gives a 30% speed boost for 10 seconds. Unusable in PvP areas.

New stim variants! These give bonuses instead of stats. Green stims give 3% bonus, blue stims give 5% bonus, and purple stims give 7% bonus.

Spoiler

• Endurance War-bound stims: give endurance and armor rating bonus.
• Accuracy War-bound stims: give accuracy and damage bonus.
• Triage War-bound stims: give alacrity and healing bonus.

New adrenal variants. These give temporary bonuses. Greens give 8 seconds, blues give 10 seconds, and purples give 15 seconds. They do not share a cooldown with each other, allowing all players to benefit from them at different moments during the same fights without having to sacrifice damage output for survivability.

Spoiler

• Defensive War-bound Adrenal: give 10% defense, 10% shield, and 10% absorption. Cooldown of 120 seconds.
• Offensive War-bound Adrenal: give 15% critical rating, 10% damage bonus, and reduce healing done by 10%. Cooldown of 120 seconds.
• Triage War-bound Adrenal: give 15% alacrity, 50% resource regeneration, and reduce damage output by 10%. Cooldown of 90 seconds. This cooldown is intentionally quicker since it's supposed to be a healer one.

New grenades. Different grenades share cooldown with their counterparts.

Spoiler

• Hellfire War-bound Grenade: puts a dot on the target and increases their damage taken by 5%. Green lasts for 5 seconds, blue lasts for 10 seconds, and purple for 15 seconds. Range of 10 meters and radius of 8 meters. Cooldown of 120 seconds. Does not share cooldown with any grenades. Affected targets get a “Fire-proof” buff giving it immunity to the effects of Hellfire grenades for 120 seconds.
• Seismic War-Bound Grenade: stuns up to 4 targets inside the area of effect. Stun breaks on damage. Green lasts for 2 seconds, blue for 4 seconds, and purple for 6 seconds. Range of 10 meters, and radius of 5 meters. Cooldown of 240 seconds. Players get bastioned buff. Shares cooldown with electro-stun grenades.
• Electro-stun War-bound Grenade: stuns up to 3 targets inside the area of effect. Stun does not break on damage. Green lasts for 2 seconds, blue for 3, and purple for 4 seconds. Range of 10 meters, and radius of 5 meters. Cooldown of 240 seconds. Players get bastioned buff. Shares cooldown with seismic grenades.
• Smoke Bomb War-bound Grenade: Reduces the accuracy of the targets inside the area of effect for 10 seconds. Green reduces by 15%, blue by 20%, and purple by 25%. Stacks with other accuracy reducing effects. Range of 30 meters and radius of 10 meters. Cooldown of 120 seconds. Shares cooldown with Kolto-filled grenades. After the Smoke Bomb’s effect wears off, targets affected by it get a “Keen eye-sight” buff making it immune to Smoke Bomb effects for 100 seconds.
• Kolto-filled War-bound Grenade: Increases healing received by all targets inside the area of effect by 10%. Green lasts for 6 seconds, blue for 9 seconds, and purple for 12 seconds. Range of 30 meters and radius of 10 meters. Cooldown of 120 seconds. Shares cooldown with Smoke bomb grenades. After the Kolto-filled’s effect wears off, targets affected by it get a “Kolto Resistant” buff making it immune to Kolto-filled effects for 120 seconds.

5 - On the topic of operations... Why not give us what we already had not too long ago? Recently it’s been patch out of the game a way to glitch us into nightmare EV/KP/Rav/TOS. It had to be patched, of course, because on top of being unintended, it also allowed for exploiting of other things in the game. Not to mention it caused problems for players not getting appropriate rewards from some nightmare instances. But… What if we had them for real? Give us nightmare everything. Add EV/KP first with The Infernal and The Unyielding titles. Small changes to HP, damage, heal checks, extra adds spawn, myabe one or two debuffs, but largely the same operations. Then on the next patch give us Rav/TOS. Same treatment, HP and damage tweaks on top of one or two extra mechanics. Make Revan Great Again!!! Bring back the hell on earth experience that was Revan at launch and make it Nightmare. Add some titles, maybe a cool mount, and call it a day. Same thing could be done to lair bosses too: give them a nightmare mode, make the fights incredibly more challenging, and give us a title for completion. This kind of low-hanging fruit is so easy for the taking and would shut the raiding community up for quite a while.

And a page has to be taken out of the R4 book: these new nightmares shouldn’t have 16M availability. Creating 16M content is extremely counterproductive – Nobody does it, game performance isn’t great, and it only adds nearly unobtainable achievements since the community isn’t large enough to justify investing the appropriate development time into these. So forget 16M.

Also, this opens up the possibility for a new/old addition to the game: old gear sets with their actual names. Make it so every nightmare boss drops one token piece to be traded in a vendor on the Operations Fleet (Gav Daragon on the superior side, and Ziost Shadow on the inferior side). Use one of the unused doors on those ships and add a room with vendors that accept those tokens. One for Kell Dragon, and one for Dread Master. Make them reverse-engineerable too! So to give crafters some love. Specific bosses would drop these cosmetic-only tokens, and only one per kill to encourage players to come back to those fights. Excluding, of course, Nightmare EV/KP from these loot tables because they would be too easy to make these cosmetics worth fighting for on other content.

So let’s put it together nicely patch-notes style:

Spoiler

• New vendors on the fleet that carry Kell Dragon and Dread Master cosmetic-only pieces. Tokens are obtained from NiM bosses and randomly from weekly crates.

New nightmare mode for EV. All bosses have their HP and damage increased.

Spoiler

• Annihilation Droid XRR-3 - turrets respawn on a 60s timer and deal a lot of damage.
• Gharj - adds continuously spawn during the entire encounter and apply a healing output reduction debuff similar to the countermeasures on Sisters in Gods. These adds should be Strong (silver) so they don’t get easily stunned to death.
• Ancient Pylons - adds drop a key upon death (similar to EC’s minefield) and only the player with the key is able to click the console. Make it much quicker too to eliminate the popular “all left” strat.
• Infernal Council - shouldn’t have to change much, just make it hurt like hell.
• Soa – Make it so mind traps are more frequent and start on the first floor. When a mind trap is destroyed, one of the circles on the first platform disappear. On the second floor make it so Elite Rakatan Warriors spawn frequently and they put a healing output reduction debuff. On the third floor make the pylons fall more quickly with less time to adjust and make adds continuously spawn. Also, give Soa an ability to put a stacking debuff on the tank similar to Sparky on Ravagers, this debuff would increase damage taken. It’d be uncleansable, but it would have a 60s timer on it to encourage a tank swap. Also, Soa never stops attacking on the third floor.
• Upon completion of the 90-minute timed run, a Gharj mount is given to a random player, and “The Infernal” title is given to everyone in the instance.

New nightmare mode for KP. All bosses have their HP and damage increased.

Spoiler

• Bonethrasher – Make his SuperSmash ability debuff last for longer and happen more often. Also, mark a player for death and make it so the boss will very slowly go after them to eat them up! If the player is caught, he’s instantly killed and the boss gets a buff identical to the one it gets when it eats one of the Gamorrean guards.
• Jarg and Sorno – Make the bosses take a healer hostage (similar to Ruugar on Ravagers) when they jet up to the second floor. The healer is released when the carbonizer probe is destroyed, and the player has to jump down from the second platform to rejoin the group. To discourage players from staying on top of the platforms, light them on fire when the hostage situation ends!
• Foreman Crusher – Adds are more frequent and put a permanent healing output reduction debuff. They also spawn from all corners of the room instead of just the exit gate.
• G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator – Make the other pipes useful! When one of them is used, it becomes unusable again until the other two pipes have been used. This way the puzzle must be assembled and completely disassembled differently each time.
• Karagga – The boss puts a stacking armor debuff on it’s main target. This debuff lasts for 45 seconds and is also renewed by taking cleave damage from the boss. Make it so 2 Immortal Guardians spawn at the same time during the fight every 45 seconds as well.
• Upon completion of the 90-minute timed run, a Karagga mount drops to a random player, and “The Unyielding” title is given to everyone in the instance. (This mount is the same model used by Karagga himself during the fight, only smaller, about the size of the current Acklay mounts)

New nightmare mode for Ravagers. All bosses have their HP and damage increased.

Spoiler

• Sparky – add spawns are more frequent. All debuffs in the fight are permanent for the encounter.
• Bulo – His scattershot ability goes on three different players and adds put a damage output stacking debuff.
• Torque – The ship goes down if the second console is ever destroyed by wookie rage. Sick of you debuff happens more often.
• Master and Blaster – let’s not kid ourselves, it already exists in the game.
• Pirate Captains – During the first half of the fight, while fighting Coratanni, the fire debuff dot stacks up quickly, encouraging players to get rid of it. Being near a player that has a fire debuff increases the damage you take and spreads the fire around similar to Contagion on the Apex Vanguard fight. During Ruugar’s half of the fight, pirates keep spawning and they hurt a lot to encourage players to deal with them quickly. Being near his pirate allies buffs Ruugar’s damage output.
• Upon completion of the 90-minute timed run, a Sparky mount is given to a random player, and “Dunderhead” title is given to everyone in the instance.

New nightmare mode for TOS. All bosses have their HP and damage increased.

Spoiler

• Malafar - adds spawn more often and their cleave puts a cleanseable stacking dps output debuff. Their presence alive also puts a raidwide stacking healing output reduction debuff.
• Walkers - targeting droids have less health, but they can spawn from either unit. When they spawn, they randomly target someone other than the tanks and force the other unit to attack that person. This effect  only ends when they're killed.
• Underlurker - 4 adds instead of 3, and raid also have to swap sides like the tanks do.
• Revanite commanders - downtime between bosses is greatly reduced, and add spawn is made more frequent. This fight is perfect for an alternative drop. It should have a 100% weapon drop rate, being 33% for each main hand of each commander. Similar to the corruptor blade.
• Revan - it already exists. Revan is an interesting fight because it’s a perfect opportunity to give it a special loot, too. Make him drop an HK-51 customization that looks like the original HK-47.
• Upon completion of the 90-minute timed run, an Underlurker mount is given to a random player, and “The Returned” title is given to everyone in the instance.

New nightmare mode for all lair bosses. They have their HP and damage increased.

Spoiler

• Golden Fury – Isotope-5 buff lasts for half as long, and the boss’s attacks become zero damage one-shot during burn phase if you don’t have the buff. Also canisters should take longer to respawn.
• Geonosian Queen – Guards and Caustic drones spawn together on every wave of adds. In addition to it, Caustic drones put a raid-wide stacking debuff that reduces damage output to encourage the DPS to kill these adds more quickly. The debuff should fall off immediately when the adds die.
• The Eyeless – The boss moves much faster to negate the popular kiting strategy and force the group to use two proper tanks. Also, the boss should put a stacking debuff on the tank that increases damage taken by 5% per stack and falls off after 40 seconds.
• Colossal Monolith – Once the “wounds” debuff falls off, the player gets a “deep wounds” debuff that increases direct damage taken by 100% for 30 seconds. This is to discourage strategies that use only one tank instead of two.
• Xenoanalyst II – Every add in the fight becomes a Rancor. The boss’s cast during the core phases becomes quicker and, in case of failure, he insta-kills two players with zero damage.

Marks of mastery of all operations. Some obtainable in SM, some in HM, and some in NiM

Spoiler

• EV SM - Killing Annihilation Droid XRR-3 within 3 minutes
• EV HM - killing the Gharj at or before he has time to reach his 5th platform
• EV HM - Finishing the Ancient Pylons in under 4 minutes
• EV HM - killing each infernal council member once. It gives a legacy title called “Council Destroyer”.
• EV NiM - Finishing the Soa fight without having anyone inside a mind trap for longer than 20 seconds
• EV completionist - upon unlocking all EV marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Vault Buster” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• KP SM - Killing all the enemies in the instance, including the adds that are almost always skipped. Gives the legacy title “Cartel Banisher”.
• KP SM – Finishing Bonethrasher with one or more band members alive.
• KP HM - Finishing Bonethrasher without allowing it to eat any Gamorrean guards
• KP HM - Finishing Jarg and Sorno without having any players taken hostage or carbonized for longer than 15 seconds
• KP HM - finishing the Fabricador fight using each pipe at least once to burn the boss.
• KP NiM - finishing the fight with Karagga without taking any damage from fire or any of his cleaves.
• KP completionist - upon unlocking all of KP's marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Deadliest Weapon” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• EC SM – Finishing the first boss having Zorn and Toth stacked together for at least 60 seconds.
• EC SM – Finishing Kephess’ walker with only one bomb. Gives the legacy title “Walker Destroyer”
• EC HM – Finishing the Firebrand and Stormcaller bosses while taking no damage from outside the shield during defensive systems.
• EC HM – Getting across the minefield in under 4 minutes.
• EC NiM – Finishing the Kephess fight without allowing any of the droids to gain a stack.
• EC completionist – Upon unlocking all of EC’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Chosen One” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• TFB SM – Finding and killing all the extra champions scattered around the map, the ones popularly called money mini-bosses.
• TFB HM – Finishing the Dreadguards fight with 5 or more unused green circles on the floor.
• TFB HM – Finishing the Operator IX fight killing both cores of every wave of cores within 5 seconds of each other.
• TFB HM – Finishing the Kephess fight with Corrupted Nanites debuff still on you.
• TFB HM – Killing the Dreadful Entity on 8M. Gives the legacy title “A Chilling Presence”. The Dreadful Entity fight should be made available on 8M to justify this.
• TFB NiM – Finishing the first phase of the Terror fight without allowing any of the larvas that come from the lake to be alive for longer than 15 seconds.
• TFB completionist – Upon unlocking all of TFB’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Black Obtuse” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• S&V SM – Finishing the Titan 6 fight before he has a chance to rocket into the air a second time.
• S&V SM – Finding and killing all the extra champions scattered around the map, the ones popularly called money mini-bosses.
• S&V HM – Finishing Dash-Roode without using more than one shield generator.
• S&V HM – Finishing the cartel Warlords fight 4 times, one with each boss dying first.
• S&V HM – Finishing the cartel Warlords fight 4 times, one with each boss dying last.
• S&V NiM – Killing the Hateful Entity on 8M. Gives the legacy title “Ghost Buster”. The Hateful Entity fight should be made available on 8M to justify this.
• S&V NiM – Finishing the Styrak fight with one or more adds still alive.
• S&V completionist – Upon unlocking all of S&V’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Shadow” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• DF SM – Finishing the Nefra fight without having any of the debuffs lasting for longer than 5 seconds on any player.
• DF HM – Finishing the Draxus fight without taking avoidable damage. (subteroth explosions, guardian cleaves, and afflictions)
• DF HM – Finishing the Grob’thok fight without having the boss smashing the floor more than once per pipe-smash ability.
• DF HM – Finishing the Corruptor Zero fight while 5 or more adds are still up.
• DF NiM – Finishing the Brontes fight without any party members getting to 8 stacks of supremacy.
• DF completionist – Upon unlocking all of DF’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Gate Commander” to all character in his legacy.

 

• DP SM – Killing all the adds in the hallway before starting the Bestia fight. Gives the legacy title “Ready for anything”
• DP SM – Finishing the council fight 4 different times, each one having one of the bosses dying first.
• DP SM – Finishing the council fight 4 different times, each one having one of the bosses dying last.
• DP HM – Finishing the Calphayus fight having all Crystals destroyed in the past.
• DP HM – Finishing the Raptus fight without failing any challenges.
• DP NiM – Finishing the Tyrans fight with more than 8 squares left on the board.
• DP completionist – Upon unlocking all of DP’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Dread Enhanced” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Rav SM – Finishing the Torque fight without allowing more than 1 panel to be destroyed.
• Rav SM – Finding all 5 codex entries, one about each boss.
• Rav HM – Finishing the Sparky fight without allowing any of the adds to live for longer than 18 seconds.
• Rav HM – Finishing the Bulo fight having every player clicked a barrel at least once. Gives the legacy title “Quartermaster”
• Rav HM – Finishing the Master/Blaster fight without having any mines blow up from touching another mine.
• Rav NiM – Finishing the Pirate Captains fight twice, once with Coratanni dying first, and the other with Pearl dying first.
• Rav completionist – Upon unlocking all of Ravager’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Mutineer” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• TOS SM – Finishing the Walkers fight using 3 or fewer bombs.
• TOS HM – Finishing the Underlurker fight before the 4^th wave of adds spawns.
• TOS HM – Finishing the Revanite Commanders fight 3 times, one with each boss dying first.
• TOS HM – Finishing the Revanite Commanders fight 3 times, one with each boss dying last.
• TOS NiM – Completing the plaforming challenge and reaching the top during the Revan fight. Perfect opportunity to call this achievement “Stairway to Revan”. Gives the legacy title “The Zeppelin”
• TOS completionist – Upon unlocking all of TOS’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Savage” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Gods SM – Dodgeclaw already exists.
• Gods HM – Par Three already exists.
• Gods HM – Super Dodgeclaw already exists.
• Gods NiM – Finishing the Scyva fight without killing any of the turrets.
• Gods should have their “Miscellaneous” achievements renamed to Marks of Mastery for consistency’s sake.
• Gods completionist – Upon unlocking all of Gods’ marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Non-believer” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Dxun and R4 already have all marks of mastery they need and are great as they are.

 

• Golden Fury SM – Finishing the fight with every player having the Isotope-5 buff at the end.
• Golden Fury HM – Finishing the fight without using any Isotope-5 at all.
• Golden Fury NiM – Finishing the fight using eight or fewer Isotope-5 cannisters.
• Golden Fury completionist – Upon unlocking all of the Golden Fury’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “Golden Hero” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Eyeless SM – Finishing the fight with 10 or more adds alive.
• Eyeless HM – Finishing the fight without taking damage from any of the boss’ circle attacks.
• Eyeless NiM – Finishing the fight without having any players reaching 5 stacks of damage taken increased from the boss.
• Eyeless completionist – Upon unlocking all of the Eyeless’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Visionary” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Queen SM – “Secrets of Geonosian Lair” already exists.
• Queen HM – Finishing the fight without having any players reaching 3 stacks of “Reft” debuff.
• Queen NiM – Finishing the fight with one or more Caustic Drones still alive.
• Queen completionist – Upon unlocking all of the Queen’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Exterminator” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Monolith SM – Having each color at least once during the fight.
• Monolith HM – Taking over 1000 ticks of damage from the Wounds debuff. Gives the legacy title “The Pin Cushion”. Tracking of this achievement persists after the fight ends so a player would be able to work on this one over time.
• Monolith NiM – Finishing the fight without allowing the boss to channel any of the rifts for longer than 8 seconds.
• Monolith completionist – Upon unlocking all of the Monolith’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Colossal” to all characters in his legacy.

 

• Xenoanalist II SM – Finishing the fight without allowing the boss to complete his cast on any of the cores.
• Xenoanalist II HM – Finishing the fight with 3 or more adds still alive.
• Xenoanalist II NiM – Finishing the fight having all cores destroyed.
• Xenoanalist II completionist – Upon unlocking all of the Xenoanalist II’s marks of mastery, the player is given the character title “The Great Bisector” to all characters in his legacy.

6 - Changes to Operation mounts! All mount drops from operations should be legacy-bound to encourage players to come back to the same instances multiple times a week. Oh, so you didn’t get to win the drop for the Titan 6 mount on your main character this week? No problem! Come back here on an alt with your friends and try again. Then just transfer the item to your main character and be happy!

All mounts should have 100% drop rate on NiM, 5% on HM, and 0,5% on SM. This would give players a chance to see these drops on very rare occasions dropping on easier content, which would engage them in looking into ways of getting these items. The idea would be to encourage players to participate in operations in general.

All operations mounts should have a flourish animation, too. Here are some ideas:

Spoiler

• EV – Gharj should stomp the ground and cause camera shake.
• KP – Karagga’s Mount should release explosive mousedroids.
• EC – The Avalanche Heavy Tank should shoot up similar to Firebrand’s animation after the end of defensive systems.
• TFB – The Hyperpod should have some of its pieces detach and spin rapidly around the player.
• S&V – The Titan 6 mount sort of already has a flourish with the red button, but it’s not tied to the flourish key. It’d be nice if, on top of the random red button, it also had a flourish animation of spinning around like at the end of the Titan 6 fight. Also, please fix this damn mount and make it centered with the screen.
• DF – The Wings of the Architect should turn to the front of the player and do an animation similar to Brontes’ Fire and Forget skill.
• DP – The Dread Enhanced Rancor should do a pipe smash that causes the camera to shake.
• Ravagers - Sparky should do an animation similar to a bull rider machine.
• ToS – The Underlurker should do a rage storm animation that causes camera shake.
• Gods – The Wings of the Dragon already has a flourish.
• Dxun – The Bantam Dxun Reaper should flair its flames out like a hot rod car.
• R4 – The Wings of Nirot should flap slowly like a butterfly.

7 - Where are the set bonuses we have been promised? At one point it was said that over time more set bonuses would be added, and some of the old favorites would make a come back. We didn’t exactly have many of those so far. He’s a list of set bonuses that would be greatly appreciated:

Spoiler

• (Shadow) Rebuking Assault – For each target that gets hit by Cleaving Cut, the duration of deflection is extended by 2 seconds. This is a returning set bonus from 6.0, but to make it more versatile, it should also reduce the cooldown of Cleaving Cut itself by 3 or 4 seconds.
• (Scoundrel) Expansive Cloud – Kolto Cloud now consumes a stack of Upper Hand, but its cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds and it spreads the effect of Slow-release Medpac.
• (Guardian) Stalwart Warden – Each use of Warding Strike reduces the cooldown of Warding Call by 2 seconds.
• (Vanguard) Stock Shield – Stockstrike reduces the cooldown of Reactive Shield by 2 seconds.
• (Sage) Overloaded Waves – Force Wave heals allies for <same ballpark as 6.0 utility that did this> and finishes the cooldown of Wandering Mend.
• (Sage) Altruistic Concentration – Using your cleanse ability makes the next ability activate instantly and crit automatically.
• (Gunslinger) Deadly Hemorrhage – Hemorrhaging Blast refreshes the duration of your Vital Shot and Shrap Bomb dots.

8 - The ability pruning was necessary, but it was too extreme. At this point it’s clear that some of the ability choices aren’t really choices at all. In general, having to choose some abilities over others only makes some classes less enjoyable to play.

As a sage you have to choose between having a CC with Whirlwind or being mobile with your Phase Walk. It gets worse if you’re a DPS, you have to choose between survivability with Valorous Spirit (Force Mend DR) and being viable as a DPS with Metaphysical Alacrity (Force Speed cooldown reduction). As a vanguard you have to choose between being viable as a tank with Hold the Line or having a stun with Cryo Grenade. And don’t even get me started on commandos, we get the worse deal possible. We have to choose between having a stun with Cryo Grenade, having some measure of defensiveness with Echoing Deterrence, or being mobile at all with Propulsion Round – Effectively this means that no commando has a stun, some are a little mobile while being made of glass, and some are a little resilient but move like potatoes. It’s infuriating.

And the fact that Vigilance Guardians have recently lost the cooldown reduction on Plasma Brand is mind boggling. The goal was to nerf the usability of the Cut to Pieces tactical – ok, that’s understandable since it is extremely overpowered in situations with multiple targets. But all that change did was nerf everything else because Cut to Pieces still functions exactly the same. The critical chance utility had to be nerfed, and not the cooldown reduction one. This is yet another example of a disconnect between what’s happening in the game and what Broadsword staff needs to do to improve it.

We don’t need to go back to the number of abilities we had at the end of 6.0. Although I believe most players would enjoy this, I also believe it’d go against the overall goal of streamlining and simplifying gameplay in general, so that new players don’t get overwhelmed. However, some of these abilities need to go back to being baseline and not choices. It’s game breaking for me as a shadow tank, for example, having to choose between my Force Wave and my Force Lift in PvP. An think about it for a second: which commando DPS in their right mind would choose having a threat drop with Diversion over getting more DPS potential with Overclock? That’s right, nobody would do that! Bring back some abilities!

9 - Can we get high-resolution images or the in-game abilities? This wasn't going to be in my suggestions list at all, but the whole crafting kit for cosplayers made me think: hey, how nice would it be to get some high-res icons for stuff like discord icons and avatars. Please make it happen, Jackie! 💙

Finally, all these things I’ve listed could be done over time. Let’s say new crafting and group finder changes come in December along with new NiM EV and KP, and new marks of mastery achievements for EV/KP/EC, and some bits of story. Three months later we get the revamped gearing system with NiM Ravagers with marks of mastery achievements for Ravagers/DF/DP, more bits of story. Another three months and we get cartel market tokens for combat styles and subscriptions along with NiMs for lair bosses (Eyeless, Xeno, Queen, Golden Fury, and Mono), their marks of mastery, and also marks of mastery for TFB/S&V, some new stronghold. Another three months and we get NiM ToS, a story-tied flashpoint, and the rest of the marks of mastery achievements. Every small patch bring in another implant set bonus or a new tactical to keep things fresh – small constant changes go a long way! This is over a year of constant and very welcomed changes that the community would love! Not to mention a lot of it is already in the game, so there wouldn’t be even that much work to do.

I don’t expect to get an official response from any Broadsword staff on this post. I understand why it could be potentially problematic to publicly engage directly with a post like this. But I love this game, and its best feature is waning: the community.

The endgame community is slowly fading away. The pvpers are mostly gone, the raiders are quitting, even the conquest legends are fading out. Instead, what we have is a seasonal community – some people come back for galactic/pvp season and are gone as soon as those end. For someone like me who has been here since launch, has over 74 thousand achievement points, over 5200 hours of gameplay on my main character alone… it’s saddening. But it can be fixed.

This has been a lengthy post, the word document I typed this on is 16 pages long. Thank you for taking your time to read it, and may the Force be with you.

[DeannaVoyager]

Wow, that was a long post, but a really good one too. Thanks for taking the time to write it all out! 

 

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

1 - Group finder needs to be revamped. Having different sets of operations rotating on a weekly basis isn’t optimal, it doesn’t encourage players to do anything, but it discourages everyone in general to use the in-game tools to find groups. Better than making only certain weeklies available each week, give us a set of focused operations – that’d be on essentially on the same rotation as the weeklies are today, but the focused operation would give double rewards for tech fragments.

Yes. And while we are at it, remove the requirement to kill all bosses on one character. It's incredibly stupid and unfair for people who HAVE to change characters because mechanics. Or if you don't want to do that, then undo the ability pruning so that more classes are viable for more bosses.

 

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

2 - Why do we not have a cartel market option to respec our characters into different combat styles?

I would buy those. 

 

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

3 - Gearing system must be reworked.

Yes. Especially since we need to pick different armor pieces from different class sets to get correct stats for one set. Moddable gear wouldn't have this issue.

 

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

4 - Crafting needs to be given some love!

Yes and no. It should be returned to what it was before 6.0, when you didn't need a million different mats, phases and their mother to craft something simple. We should be allowed to craft endgame gear. But as a raider I don't want reusable medpacs, stims and adrenals touched. I use them a lot and if I would have to pay for each and every time I use them, I would stop using them and blame the healers instead. Repair bills are enough of a credit sink already. 

 

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

5 - On the topic of operations... Why not give us what we already had not too long ago? Recently it’s been patch out of the game a way to glitch us into nightmare EV/KP/Rav/TOS.

I'd love to see those.

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

6 - Changes to Operation mounts! All mount drops from operations should be legacy-bound to encourage players to come back to the same instances multiple times a week. Oh, so you didn’t get to win the drop for the Titan 6 mount on your main character this week? No problem! Come back here on an alt with your friends and try again. Then just transfer the item to your main character and be happy!

All mounts should have 100% drop rate on NiM, 5% on HM, and 0,5% on SM. This would give players a chance to see these drops on very rare occasions dropping on easier content, which would engage them in looking into ways of getting these items. The idea would be to encourage players to participate in operations in general.

I like this idea too. 

[DeannaVoyager]

2 hours ago, JMNeves said:

8 - The ability pruning was necessary, but it was too extreme.

And this. Ability pruning needs to be undone. 

 

(sorry for the double, I hit submit too early)

 

[Engeopathichero]

I won't go into detail on what I agree and disagree with on this post, but I think there are definitely some good ideas in here. Bonus tech frags to certain ops is a much better idea than the current system I think, it would get people running specific ones again. Make it so only veteran and master ops do, like the NiM gear dropping from HM from certain ops back in the day. That would encourage some variety, and people to learn and run ops. 

 

Also agree the ability pruning was done horribly. Not to mention the currency nonsense we have now too. Both were digressions from good changes in the past.

Edited February 17 by Engeopathichero

[gubao]

Thanks for the work of writing it all down and anything that comes out of it its better than what we have right now. I hope the Broadswoard team takes the time to read it all and think about implementing anything based on all this feedback + whatever people respond to that topic. The content that already exists can be reused to make all level of players busy for a while and anything that happens will be better than nothing to get players hyped up

[Darcmoon]

8 hours ago, JMNeves said:

2 - Why do we not have a cartel market option to respec our characters into different combat styles? I imagine there are technical difficulties in the way, but I know for a fact that I regret a few of my secondary combat style choices.

Since they haven’t updated us since before 7.0, technical difficulties is the only thing we have to go on. I also imagine, since I don’t know how to code, that the game doesn’t see a difference between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ combat styles so those difficulties apply to both. 

[NokkeR_BR]

Took me a while to read everything, but this is genious!! This is the kind of guy we need on broadsword, that hears the endgame community, talk to people and hear what people wants and need. Haven't heard anything from bioware/broadsword for the endgame community in the last 4 years, SWTOR is losing for other MMO's because they just think about the casual players and give things nobody ask, Make SWTOR Great Again! Hire this guy

[Toraak]

8 hours ago, Engeopathichero said:

I won't go into detail on what I agree and disagree with on this post, but I think there are definitely some good ideas in here. Bonus tech frags to certain ops is a much better idea than the current system I think, it would get people running specific ones again. Make it so only veteran and master ops do, like the NiM gear dropping from HM from certain ops back in the day. That would encourage some variety, and people to learn and run ops. 

 

Also agree the ability pruning was done horribly. Not to mention the currency nonsense we have now too. Both were digressions from good changes in the past.

By this I take it you mean the Hardmode of the week like they used to have in 4.0 that would drop BiS pieces? If so, I like that idea. Remove EV, and KP from that however.

[kinhoandrei]

Great text! I intend to read your suggestions more carefully, but I've already found several interesting points. I'm not sure if the idea of buying subscriptions with in-game tokens would be feasible for them, but it would certainly be beneficial for players. The revamps in the group finder and equipment/crafting system are long overdue and I would welcome them.

Congratulations on the contribution!

[Toraak]

Op I like many of the things your suggesting, however I wouldn't do them all.

 

1) your Idea on Stims I would not touch. By doing them by % base it would make it even harder to Min/Max like it is now. Keep it at a stat amount, just increase it from what we currently have.

 

2) for your number 5 I have no issues with putting in NiM of the current Ops, however I'd still put in 16 man mode options for those that like doing 16 man content. There are people that still do that. I'd also not do the Marks of Mastery for every Operation. Those were horrible for the raids they did them on, and I wouldn't want that on the rest. Wasn't a fan of those in Dxun or R-4. Those Marks just seemed to be very elitest achievements, and fully unnecessary.

[MishraArtificer]

Thank you for reminding me that Cybertech grenades actually exist...I haven't heard about those in years.

[Kufuffelupagus]

20 hours ago, Toraak said:

1) your Idea on Stims I would not touch. By doing them by % base it would make it even harder to Min/Max like it is now. Keep it at a stat amount, just increase it from what we currently have.

 

2) for your number 5 I have no issues with putting in NiM of the current Ops, however I'd still put in 16 man mode options for those that like doing 16 man content. There are people that still do that. I'd also not do the Marks of Mastery for every Operation. Those were horrible for the raids they did them on, and I wouldn't want that on the rest. Wasn't a fan of those in Dxun or R-4. Those Marks just seemed to be very elitest achievements, and fully unnecessary.

I agree with you also on #1. Not only would not having a static number increase make it difficult to min/ max, it would also see minimal gains unless the iLVL is decent already.

I respectfully disagree with you on the Marks of Mastery though. It gives players who are capable something extra to do, if they wish. And those who are interested something more to aim for.
Although I agree with OP that 16-man runs are rare, especially for Vet or NiM modes, I would also like to see them continue to be added with each new operation. Both of these are more content, therefore more longevity.