Why was Hammer Station change a priority?

[Saeten]

Same as Athiss fix I guess, but why, really?  Just to throw up a roadblock and make it longer time wise? They server no purpose except for time sink. no content. I don't understand why this was a "fix".  Another blow to stealth classes. Another blow to those that like to speed run it. It's really a shame they thought this was a priority. I'd like to know the reasoning behind this and the Athiss jump skip "fix".  Next they will remove being able to LOS mobs, run through Cademimu and all the other fun things we find to run these FPs and other things fun to run not a nightmare time sink. Also, why this was a priority over other priority fixes according to the community.
 

Quote

Players must now defeat the security cannons in the Hammer Station Flashpoint in order to disengage the bridge in Section Zero.

 

[FlatTax]

Probably went something like this: "We noticed people were having fun, so we patched it out."

Which, to be fair, is better than: "We noticed people were having fun, so we monetized it, on top of their sub."

[LJ_Gibbs]

1 hour ago, FlatTax said:

Probably went something like this: "We noticed people were having fun, so we patched it out."

Which, to be fair, is better than: "We noticed people were having fun, so we monetized it, on top of their sub."

More like... people are doing content too fast.  Let's slow them down.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

The changes were to cater to newer players.   Basically the max level speed runners ruined it for themselves by being incredibly newbie/low level unfriendly.  Veteran flashpoints are for all players and for all levels that can queue for them.

That turret skipping wasn't even a thing until Malgus started doing it sometime mid 6.0 expansion.   Learn how to dps properly and those turrets won't take anytime at all to kill.

That Athiss platforming (and similar ones players keep trying to implement in flashpoints) was incredibly annoying, and I'm speaking as stealth main who could avoid having to do that jump.  Most times I ran that flashpoint it ended up taking longer to get everone up on that [expletive deleted] ledge then it would have to just kill the mobs.

Avoiding mobs by hugging a wall or sleep skipping mobs is one thing, but trying to force everyone to platform in a game that is NOT designed for platforming is just wrong. 

[jamiesafc]

8 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

The changes were to cater to newer players.   Basically the max level speed runners ruined it for themselves by being incredibly newbie/low level unfriendly.  Veteran flashpoints are for all players and for all levels that can queue for them.

That turret skipping wasn't even a thing until Malgus started doing it sometime mid 6.0 expansion.   Learn how to dps properly and those turrets won't take anytime at all to kill.

That Athiss platforming (and similar ones players keep trying to implement in flashpoints) was incredibly annoying, and I'm speaking as stealth main who could avoid having to do that jump.  Most times I ran that flashpoint it ended up taking longer to get everone up on that [expletive deleted] ledge then it would have to just kill the mobs.

Avoiding mobs by hugging a wall or sleep skipping mobs is one thing, but trying to force everyone to platform in a game that is NOT designed for platforming is just wrong. 

Datacrons in the game would suggest that game is designed for platforming. 

For people who struggle to platform there are abilities to help with this - Phase walk to quickly jump back and a pull/ jump.  As a sage healer, the amount of people I pull in group content who cant platform or cant corner pull is quite staggering really. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

2 hours ago, jamiesafc said:

Datacrons in the game would suggest that game is designed for platforming.

For people who struggle to platform there are abilities to help with this - Phase walk to quickly jump back and a pull/ jump.

The existence of something does not mean the engine is actually good for it.  They tried to make mass open-world pvp a thing, and the slide show that resulted when players tried it (and that still happens now if anyone tries) proves that the engine is not up to it.  I'll also point to the always present dsync problem in pvp for further proof that there are things in the game the engine is simply not equipped to handle.

Datacrons are also something you can do solo, if it takes you 10 or even 100 tries to get a jump then that's only your problem.  Fail 10 times on a platforming in a pug group and odds are someone will rage quit. 

Full disclosure, I am terrible at platforming, and got summoned to most of the harder to get to datacrons.   This is not ever going to change.  No amount of snotty brats telling me to 'git good' will help with that.  I play this game partially because it's one where my character has abilities and awesome reflexes, not me.  SWTOR is not a FPS.
 

Quote

As a sage healer, the amount of people I pull in group content who cant platform or cant corner pull is quite staggering really.

I think you are proving my point here.  Platforming should never be expected of players in group content.  Corner pull is a matter of communicating, but platforming is not something everyone is, or should be expected to be, capable of.

 

Edited September 13 by LD_Little_Dragon

[Otowi]

The game is certainly not good for platforming. It's very hard to get jumps right, and when you do, you have a big chance of just sliding of whatever you tried to jump to.

The datacron on Makeb is a prime example of how bad the game is for platforming. Some of the jumps there are so hard to do, and it's very easy to misjudge jumps and fall to your demise several times. Think it took me a couple of hours to get it in the end, and many many deaths due to how easy it is to slide of a beam or terrain, and have to start all over again.

Some parts of the game are "better" for platforming, but there's not many places that are.

I think some are expecting this game to be like the Super Mario games, but those games are made with platforming in mind, and SWTOR is not. And not everyone is good at platforming at all.

[Traceguy]

Honestly, as bad of a change as this is, 99.999% of Satele Shan players killed those cannons anyways. I'm told skipping them was a Star Forge thing.

But seriously, they wasted time fixing something that wasn't broken, when they could have fixed the server ping.

Edited September 13 by Traceguy

[BulbulusTheGreat]

as gibbs said this is simply to make it longer its also technically a glitch so they have justification to patch it up, honestly though? this doesn't bother me nearly as much as Athiss, i know this was unecessary but at least it makes sense, the station defenders would logically probably put some kinda barrier alongside turrets, one could even argue its good content for first time story mode but its obviously unecessearly time consuming for vet or MM fp runs however as others said those turrets are pretty easy at least on vet runs.


but Athiss? now THAT was unecessary and illogical time consumption like why exactly wouldn't we be able to jump on those walls? there wasn't anything that made it bad, it made realistic sense AND it made runs go faster, i've heard people defend it with reasons such as people being toxic to people who didn't know how to jump but this wasn't my experience at all, i was taught this technique by others and then i happly and patiently taught others, it took good 15+ mins or so for some to figure it out or be able to do it but eventually they did and teaching others something felt nice even though it was time consuming at times, also there were often sorcs who could just pull people.

tl;dr at least HM change makes some sense, Athiss one just doesn't.

[BulbulusTheGreat]

41 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

Honestly, as bad of a change as this is, 99.999% of Satele Shan players killed those cannons anyways. I'm told skipping them was a Star Forge thing.

But seriously, they wasted time fixing something that wasn't broken, when they could have fixed the server ping.

it was also definitely a Darth Malgus thing, in my three years of playing vet fps i can think of maybe four or five times someone actually fought them, all other times we ran across.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

2 minutes ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

but Athiss? now THAT was unecessary and illogical time consumption like why exactly wouldn't we be able to jump on those walls? there wasn't anything that made it bad, it made realistic sense AND it made runs go faster, i've heard people defend it with reasons such as people being toxic to people who didn't know how to jump but this wasn't my experience at all, i was taught this technique by others and then i happly and patiently taught others, it took good 15+ mins or so for some to figure it out or be able to do it but eventually they did and teaching others something felt nice even though it was time consuming at times, also there were often sorcs who could just pull people.

 

It was definitely my experience that people were toxic about it. The amount of times I saw people melt down in group chat because somebody couldn't make that jump was waaaaay too high considering how little time it actually saved. It got to the point where I hated rolling Athiss specifically because of that jump, and I could actually usually make it after a couple tries, I just got sick of the toxicity over it.

 

Honestly, your example of spending 15 minutes teaching it to somebody is a great example of why it needed to be fixed. Did it make runs faster? If everybody knew how to do it and got it quickly, sure. But if you ever spent 15 minutes teaching somebody how to make the jump, you wasted so much time and I would have been very annoyed if I was part of that group. Like, genuinely, I'd get it if this skip bypassed a decent portion of the map or something, but it didn't. You skipped a whopping two packs of mobs by that doing that jump. Yes, the droids were a bit tougher, but not by enough to warrant spending that much time to skip them. It saved maybe a minute total if the group was competent, and if they weren't, they probably weren't making the jump either, certainly not in enough time to justify trying it.

 

This was made worse by the common situation of the person "teaching" the trick (and I don't mean to imply this applies to you, but I saw it a lot) refusing to move on when the rest of the group just wants to fight the mobs normally and get it over with. Those people would then stand on the ledge and watch while the rest of the group fights the two packs of mobs, making them take longer (especially the droids), and then drop down to fight the boss afterward. That kind of behavior sucks and this skip prompted it so often, because some people just couldn't accept the possibility of fighting those two packs of mobs. They had to skip them, even if it made the entire run screech to a halt.

 

I can't speak on the Hammer Station thing, I don't remember it, but the Athiss skip was stupid and should have been fixed years ago. I would wager that random Athiss runs are probably faster on average now that it's gone, and the more structured group runs with players that know what they're doing aren't having much added to their time, because those groups can easily handle the two packs of mobs that were skipped.

[HypSpec]

I am fine with this and looking into other possible scenarios but not as a priority compared to other fixes players could benefit from. I think this boils down to so many players feeling they need to complete an FP as fast as possible. HS used to be the go-to gear grind in 6.X but not how I would guide players today. VM FPS can be a good leveling tool, but anyone who is looking to grind levels doing the same 'fast' FPs over and over should not expect other players (especially newer ones the content is intended for) to adhere to all the possible skips and then outrage if they do not. Save us all the aggravation and buy a boost lol. I would like to see experienced players doing VM FPs go with the flow, or just solo them (or via a premade), so less experienced players have a better experience consistently.

Edited September 13 by HypSpec

[Otowi]

10 minutes ago, HypSpec said:

I am fine with this and looking into other possible scenarios but not as a priority compared to other fixes players could benefit from. I think this boils down to so many players feeling they need to complete an FP as fast as possible. HS used to be the go-to gear grind in 6.X but not how I would guide players today. VM FPS can be a good leveling tool, but anyone who is looking to grind levels doing the same 'fast' FPs over and over should not expect other players (especially newer ones the content is intended for) to adhere to all the possible skips and then outrage if they do not. Save us all the aggravation and buy a boost lol. I would like to see experienced players are doing VM FPs, go with the flow or just solo them (or via a premade) so less experienced players have a better experience consistently.

See this is where I am of two minds. HS can be done very quickly by just running to the first boss and ignore the enemy, and go from there as normal, and it's no doubt far faster than fighting the mobs. On the other hand, new and inexperienced FP players might want to do that to get kills, and by doing that get more xp, which is understandable.

What can be annoying with new players is that they want to see the cutscenes or read stuff, which takes a long time in some FP's. BT and Esseles in particular is often brought up, and it's true, they are long enough as is without the added time cutscenes take. 

There's no good way to do both, and so experienced players want to get it done fast, but not all new players want that. so basically a no win scenario.

[juliushorst]

16 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

The changes were to cater to newer players.

I'm sure they'll come in droves, just like they did for 7.0.

[khamseen_air]

Personally I hated the Athiss jump and was not sad to see it patched out. Most of the time it just caused things to go slower than killing the mobs. Between new players, ping issues, lag spikes etc. And if you got stuck more than once you had to wait for a 90 second cooldown on the stuck command... It was just annoying.

For the Hammer Station change, again I prefer that it's gone. Skipping the turrets made no real sense other than shaving some seconds off the time to complete. They die super easy if you're in any way competent at DPS and if you're on a class with no speed movement abilities (or low enough level not to have access to them yet) it was just annoying being stuck in combat til the final boss. 

[ronin_chi_lao]

It will surely blow up in the devs faces if they put walls up on maelstrom prison. Let's never see that one get that patch.

[Sonicphoto]

12 hours ago, BulbulusTheGreat said:

but Athiss? now THAT was unecessary and illogical time consumption like why exactly wouldn't we be able to jump on those walls? there wasn't anything that made it bad, it made realistic sense AND it made runs go faster, i've heard people defend it with reasons such as people being toxic to people who didn't know how to jump but this wasn't my experience at all, i was taught this technique by others and then i happly and patiently taught others, it took good 15+ mins or so for some to figure it out or be able to do it but eventually they did and teaching others something felt nice even though it was time consuming at times, also there were often sorcs who could just pull people.

tl;dr at least HM change makes some sense, Athiss one just doesn't.

Most of the time people would get stuck on the Athiss shortcut because of not being intended, getting stuck, and stuck cooldown waiting, all that time we could have just blasted those enemies. Don't get me wrong the shortcut can be amusing to do, I enjoyed it but it ultimately led to a lot of wasted time most runs in my experience and you can't really blame any player for not mastering it or glitching because it was never intended to be.

[DeannaVoyager]

14 hours ago, The-Kaitou-Kid said:

It was definitely my experience that people were toxic about it. The amount of times I saw people melt down in group chat because somebody couldn't make that jump was waaaaay too high considering how little time it actually saved. It got to the point where I hated rolling Athiss specifically because of that jump, and I could actually usually make it after a couple tries, I just got sick of the toxicity over it.

This was my experience on the Athiss skip as well. If only the sorcs/sages in the group would have at least waited to see if everyone can make the jump, but no. They never did.

I personally fixed the problem by running ahead to pull all the mobs before anyone got any ideas of trying to skip them... 

[Liarrrra]

Athiss - Seemed like a waste of effort to patch and there was really nothing special about the jump. While some were "toxic" and didn't wait, others were patient and waited. Biggest problem with that one afaik was when people got stuck on multiple tries resulting in being unable to /stuck due to cooldown. 

HS - I agree that the turrets needed a patch. While there were a minority of people that made sure the turrets target them when they decided to skip, others simply ran by and turrets swapped targets to the last person to cross the bridge, more often than not being lowbies. Few runs of HS with skips and you can repair your gear, which for new players isn't ideal either, unless they own the Carrick/Vaiken VIP section access for gear repairs or access to guild repairs. Plus, when I look back on my recent experience from both PvP and PvE, community nowadays has problems with killing simple silver mobs, so I think it's only a good thing to make them put an effort into it, especially in groups consisting of low level characters. 

In any case, no matter from which point of view I look at this, it will always be an issue. 
People that want to skip will complain if it's not skippable and people that don't want to skip will complain when the skip is there. 

I choose to look at it the way that benefits me more. If I force people to improve by making them fight unnecessary "harder" fights, the less likely I'll be frustrated by people trying to make things as easy as possible. They'll improve from harder encounters, making my own experience better. Call me selfish, I don't care.

[juliushorst]

4 hours ago, Liarrrra said:

I choose to look at it the way that benefits me more. If I force people to improve by making them fight unnecessary "harder" fights, the less likely I'll be frustrated by people trying to make things as easy as possible. They'll improve from harder encounters, making my own experience better. Call me selfish, I don't care.

Alternatively they will quit - either this type of content or the game entirely.

Those turrets aren't difficult in any way, it's just a time waster.

[Liarrrra]

7 minutes ago, juliushorst said:

Those turrets aren't difficult in any way, it's just a time waster.

True, they're not hard. But they are no time waster either. It doesn't take even 30 seconds to defeat them.

[tsteenburg]

I do wish they had kept a "legitimate" way to bypass like if you have a scoundrel or operative combat style in your group who has opted into smuggle/infiltrate. (Or by luck an all stealth group) Maybe if they had added a range based buff, perhaps beyond 10 m, so there is a massive damage boost that will one shot you. If you don't trip them, you're good. But if you trigger them and try to run, they will cut you down. And yes I recognize there would be an issue with ranged players, but the Esseles bonus boss has ranged-based mechs, so it would be something that a player should have seen before and will have to deal with later in the game.

[denajii]

On 9/13/2024 at 10:12 AM, Traceguy said:

Honestly, as bad of a change as this is, 99.999% of Satele Shan players killed those cannons anyways. I'm told skipping them was a Star Forge thing.

But seriously, they wasted time fixing something that wasn't broken, when they could have fixed the server ping.

I wouldn't even say it was a big star forge thing, at least not for the majority of the playerbase

I've gone through HS with groups killing the turrets more than actually skipping them - that only started happening more frequently in the last year, and it took several runs for me to even understand why people did it since it felt like it barely cut any time and you had to kill yourself just to get out of combat so you could leave

Edit: Someone mentioned the dreaded athiss skip - I'm genuinely so glad they cut that one, becuase I could rant for hours how that 'skip' would end up wasting more time than saving it so many times

Edited September 15 by denajii

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, juliushorst said:

Alternatively they will quit - either this type of content or the game entirely.

Those turrets aren't difficult in any way, it's just a time waster.

They are not difficult for people who already have all their abilities and know what they are doing, but they are difficult for people who have never heard about LOS, stun abilities, self heals or defensive cooldowns. When they have to kill the turrets they will learn to use those abilities. If understanding their abilities and some basic tactics makes them rather quit the game than learn what to do, it's probably for the best. Both to them and the rest of us.

[WaffleQwop]

14 hours ago, denajii said:

On 9/13/2024 at 11:12 AM, Traceguy said:

Honestly, as bad of a change as this is, 99.999% of Satele Shan players killed those cannons anyways. I'm told skipping them was a Star Forge thing.

But seriously, they wasted time fixing something that wasn't broken, when they could have fixed the server ping.

I wouldn't even say it was a big star forge thing, at least not for the majority of the playerbase

I've gone through HS with groups killing the turrets more than actually skipping them - that only started happening more frequently in the last year, and it took several runs for me to even understand why people did it since it felt like it barely cut any time and you had to kill yourself just to get out of combat so you could leave

I was a pure Satele player for years, virtually every group skipped the turrets. I was actually amazed when I went to Star Forge when I found that most groups didn't skip the turrets. Weird but sort of made sense to me being that Star Forge has like five times the population as Satele.

Anyways, I don't really care that they changed the turrets. As Liarraaa said, they don't take but 30 seconds to defeat anyways. I think I would just rather the Devs spend more time on additional story, PvP, or Operation content.