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On May 09 2012 23:15 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2012 18:00 Executor1 wrote:
I read on gamespy today and there was an article about upcoming mmo's and the pitfalls of recent mmo's and one of the main things they said about swtor was how the lack of end game gear and the ease of getting it made the endgame significantly shorter and less replayable then it should be. Id like to add like I said above, it really doesnt help when on top of it being realy easy to get gear, they give you many avenues that are equally easy to get the EXACT same gear. So many things I like about swtor it just sucks they failed in one of the most important parts about end game. I also dont see the thought process behind "hey lets add new content, but lets give players the exact same gear they where getting before from running it" (im looking at you lost island and story mode EC) Even the new supposed "tier 2" from Hard mode EC doesnt give you a new set bonus it has the same set bonus as tier 1 (rakata columi tionese) I disagree honestly. I never stepped into a raid (ok 2 times EC Storymode with a random group which failed to defeat the 2nd boss) - therefor my only access to gear is 5man (I PvP so War Hero the obvious other choice^^). So something like Lost Island with Rakata is good for everyone who's not raiding (and using the guild summit number that's ~66% of the playerbase - though that has likely changed until now). I dont know what drops in EV/KP normalmode. If it's Columi I think it's also ok that EC drops Rakata. HM EV/KP drop Rakata (right?) so it's ok that EC HM drops Campaign. They only need to add a 3rd tier for the Nightmare progression. I dont see why you would need 3 different gear options for each raid. If you're a hardmode guild - get the hardmode gear, you shouldnt be doing storymode in the first place so they disincentivize it (since it would lead to repetition of content - so faster burnout, remember Colosseum). You can try NiM, but it's probably too hard for you anyway - so it's unlikely that you will have full NiM gear when the next content hits (so next contents HM mode will be upgrades). I personally also hated it in WoW, when you run an instance for 6months+ and still need items from it. But that leads me to: They need to add other stuff beside raiding (and pvp) which people can do. Space is fun, but I honestly only do 3-4 missions / week. There's no depth for space. Dailies are fun but also only for 2-3 times a week. The rakghoul event was fun - but it was too short. Imho they need to have events 1 week / month. So if the rakghoul event was the event for april & may - it should've lasted 2 weeks. Also something which would incentivize the use of a companion would be great. Setbonus I agree. Also they're not really adding new custom orange gear. 1.2 only added Warhero & BM as well as campaign/bh. Not a single look from world drops / social gear / low flashpoint sets is available in 1.2 And that's my main problem with them: They do small things in a lot of different fields - but they do nothing right. Looking at the latest minipatch (ok... the one from yesterday^^): "Custom (orange) moddable items that have no modifications installed can now be reverse engineered" corrected to: "We have some more details about this patch note - this change made more Custom (orange) items available for reverse engineering, but it currently does not include crafted Custom items. We will be adding the ability to reverse engineer crafted Custom items in the future, but that functionality was not included in this change. Sorry for the confusion; we're updating the patch note right now" corrected to: "As some of you have mentioned, endgame crafted Custom items (like Campaign and Black Hole gear) CAN be reverse engineered. Non-endgame crafted Custom items and social gear cannot be reverse engineered at this time - sorry again for the confusion; we'll make sure the patch note reflects this. We do still plan on allowing non-endgame crafted items to be reverse engineered in the future." No one seems to have a fucking clue what the other teams are actually implementing. And that's my main issue with the game atm. Could write more ... but I'm "mad" enough :D
your mixing the numbers up, it was 38% of fifties had never stepped into a raid. Also I think faster burnout of content comes alot faster when A) the raids are really short like they are in swtor no more than 5 bosses and B) You get the gear far too quickly and are geared within a few weeks because the amount of gear that drops and now because it takes your raid makeup into account (which is admittedly a cool feature)
I dont see how you wont burn out faster on the content if you get geared from it sooner , still needing gear fromm content gives at the very least an incentive to run it even if you do get bored, not to mention the shortness of the raids leads to a quicker burn out as you will probably end up running story mode and hard mode (story mode to gear out some of the lesser geared people in your raid) from the very start instead of just working on difficulty 3 days out of the week. The mixture of shorter raids (less bosses) and ease of gear (lots of drops) is like a snowballing effect, because of the amount of gear that drops you progress faster through the content and because their are less bosses (then examples mentioned above) you are fininshing the content at a greater speed leading to increased repeating of content leading to a quicker burn out. I understand what your saying about deincentivizing content so that story mode players are only playing story mode etc. I dont think they should do that for hard and nightmare mode though, i think that nightmare mode should be a part of overall progression guilds doing hard modes are mostly serious enough to be wanting to go through nightmare as well (at least fromm my experience).
And if I still played alot and the geared people from my guild actually all logged on at once i see no reason why we wouldnt be attempting / completing new hard mode or nightmare mode content. Weve only attempted EC 2 maybe 3 times since it came out and that was with either A) a few players in PVP gear or B) a few players with mostly tionese or worse and maybe a few columi pieces.
My point about the lack of gear is not that i want to see more progression in terms of progression between story / hard etc. its more that their should be a greater variety of gear within each of those. They couldnt give one new thing for people to go for in lost island? or they couldnt have made a slightly better (or even worse) set of different / new gear for the story mode raiders to go through? I just think its horrible gear progression to have every piece of loot that drops be a part of a set have no rare or unique items to go for and basically not many options. They are trying to have it both ways right now, they should either A. completely drop actual gear progression and change it to mod progression where only mods drop from bosses and have a greater variety of mods and then say have schematics with new orange gear recipes drop throughout the raid as well. or B) go back to the way it was before and add a greater variety of gear throughout the raids so that a player has more than 1 item to go for per boss (that is far to linear gear progression wise for my tastes). Because right now item drops from raids are nothing more than glorified containers for mods essentially, it just doesnt make a good gear progression system. Also i dont think its of good design to have (at least in previous raids i havent checked what blackhole comms get you) the commendations you get give you the exact same gear that drops from the content your running to get them, it just makes them virtually useless and leaves players with a bunch of worthless commendations that they end of using to gear out their companions instead of themselves, commendation vendors should be their outlet to provide choice in gear progression and give them the medium to step away from how linear gear progression currently is.
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On May 09 2012 18:00 Executor1 wrote:
Altaholics will only last for so long anyways, you said this game appeals to that variety of player, but i think most people will get sick of it before they reach their 8th toon and then that leaves them with the sub par PVE end game which you didnt even deny was present.
I agree altaholics won't last forever. The operations they do have endgame are fun, it's just not something you can solely play for I think, like you could in EQ.
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On May 10 2012 05:08 Executor1 wrote:your mixing the numbers up, it was 38% of fifties had never stepped into a raid. Also I think faster burnout of content comes alot faster when A) the raids are really short like they are in swtor no more than 5 bosses and B) You get the gear far too quickly and are geared within a few weeks because the amount of gear that drops and now because it takes your raid makeup into account (which is admittedly a cool feature) I dont see how you wont burn out faster on the content if you get geared from it sooner , still needing gear fromm content gives at the very least an incentive to run it even if you do get bored, not to mention the shortness of the raids leads to a quicker burn out as you will probably end up running story mode and hard mode (story mode to gear out some of the lesser geared people in your raid) from the very start instead of just working on difficulty 3 days out of the week. The mixture of shorter raids (less bosses) and ease of gear (lots of drops) is like a snowballing effect, because of the amount of gear that drops you progress faster through the content and because their are less bosses (then examples mentioned above) you are fininshing the content at a greater speed leading to increased repeating of content leading to a quicker burn out. I understand what your saying about deincentivizing content so that story mode players are only playing story mode etc. I dont think they should do that for hard and nightmare mode though, i think that nightmare mode should be a part of overall progression guilds doing hard modes are mostly serious enough to be wanting to go through nightmare as well (at least fromm my experience). + Show Spoiler +
And if I still played alot and the geared people from my guild actually all logged on at once i see no reason why we wouldnt be attempting / completing new hard mode or nightmare mode content. Weve only attempted EC 2 maybe 3 times since it came out and that was with either A) a few players in PVP gear or B) a few players with mostly tionese or worse and maybe a few columi pieces.
My point about the lack of gear is not that i want to see more progression in terms of progression between story / hard etc. its more that their should be a greater variety of gear within each of those. They couldnt give one new thing for people to go for in lost island? or they couldnt have made a slightly better (or even worse) set of different / new gear for the story mode raiders to go through? I just think its horrible gear progression to have every piece of loot that drops be a part of a set have no rare or unique items to go for and basically not many options. They are trying to have it both ways right now, they should either A. completely drop actual gear progression and change it to mod progression where only mods drop from bosses and have a greater variety of mods and then say have schematics with new orange gear recipes drop throughout the raid as well. or B) go back to the way it was before and add a greater variety of gear throughout the raids so that a player has more than 1 item to go for per boss (that is far to linear gear progression wise for my tastes). Because right now item drops from raids are nothing more than glorified containers for mods essentially, it just doesnt make a good gear progression system. Also i dont think its of good design to have (at least in previous raids i havent checked what blackhole comms get you) the commendations you get give you the exact same gear that drops from the content your running to get them, it just makes them virtually useless and leaves players with a bunch of worthless commendations that they end of using to gear out their companions instead of themselves, commendation vendors should be their outlet to provide choice in gear progression and give them the medium to step away from how linear gear progression currently is.
No you have the numbers mixed up 
"38% of level 50 players have participated in an Operation." s
And I personally burn out faster with 6months of farming the same boring content. With more breaks in between it just works out better.
Though the point is that my guild actually was a group of friends. We played other games together etc. So not an only "Meet in forum & during the one MMO we all share"-guild.
Might be difficult to keep those guys around for a longer period of time.
"(story mode to gear out some of the lesser geared people in your raid)" Dont really see that to be the case since we would have all complete gear from the previous tier. Another option would be to run 1-2x Lost Island with those people.
Your small incentive to run Lost Island is the weekly rakghoul quest with black hole commendations
I also dont recall any need to run Coloseum/ICC 5mans.
Also gearing a companion.
But that ties in with my earlier suggestion to make more content where you i.e. need a companion.
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On May 10 2012 07:59 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2012 05:08 Executor1 wrote:your mixing the numbers up, it was 38% of fifties had never stepped into a raid. Also I think faster burnout of content comes alot faster when A) the raids are really short like they are in swtor no more than 5 bosses and B) You get the gear far too quickly and are geared within a few weeks because the amount of gear that drops and now because it takes your raid makeup into account (which is admittedly a cool feature) I dont see how you wont burn out faster on the content if you get geared from it sooner , still needing gear fromm content gives at the very least an incentive to run it even if you do get bored, not to mention the shortness of the raids leads to a quicker burn out as you will probably end up running story mode and hard mode (story mode to gear out some of the lesser geared people in your raid) from the very start instead of just working on difficulty 3 days out of the week. The mixture of shorter raids (less bosses) and ease of gear (lots of drops) is like a snowballing effect, because of the amount of gear that drops you progress faster through the content and because their are less bosses (then examples mentioned above) you are fininshing the content at a greater speed leading to increased repeating of content leading to a quicker burn out. I understand what your saying about deincentivizing content so that story mode players are only playing story mode etc. I dont think they should do that for hard and nightmare mode though, i think that nightmare mode should be a part of overall progression guilds doing hard modes are mostly serious enough to be wanting to go through nightmare as well (at least fromm my experience). + Show Spoiler +
And if I still played alot and the geared people from my guild actually all logged on at once i see no reason why we wouldnt be attempting / completing new hard mode or nightmare mode content. Weve only attempted EC 2 maybe 3 times since it came out and that was with either A) a few players in PVP gear or B) a few players with mostly tionese or worse and maybe a few columi pieces.
My point about the lack of gear is not that i want to see more progression in terms of progression between story / hard etc. its more that their should be a greater variety of gear within each of those. They couldnt give one new thing for people to go for in lost island? or they couldnt have made a slightly better (or even worse) set of different / new gear for the story mode raiders to go through? I just think its horrible gear progression to have every piece of loot that drops be a part of a set have no rare or unique items to go for and basically not many options. They are trying to have it both ways right now, they should either A. completely drop actual gear progression and change it to mod progression where only mods drop from bosses and have a greater variety of mods and then say have schematics with new orange gear recipes drop throughout the raid as well. or B) go back to the way it was before and add a greater variety of gear throughout the raids so that a player has more than 1 item to go for per boss (that is far to linear gear progression wise for my tastes). Because right now item drops from raids are nothing more than glorified containers for mods essentially, it just doesnt make a good gear progression system. Also i dont think its of good design to have (at least in previous raids i havent checked what blackhole comms get you) the commendations you get give you the exact same gear that drops from the content your running to get them, it just makes them virtually useless and leaves players with a bunch of worthless commendations that they end of using to gear out their companions instead of themselves, commendation vendors should be their outlet to provide choice in gear progression and give them the medium to step away from how linear gear progression currently is.
No you have the numbers mixed up "38% of level 50 players have participated in an Operation." sAnd I personally burn out faster with 6months of farming the same boring content. With more breaks in between it just works out better. Though the point is that my guild actually was a group of friends. We played other games together etc. So not an only "Meet in forum & during the one MMO we all share"-guild. Might be difficult to keep those guys around for a longer period of time. "(story mode to gear out some of the lesser geared people in your raid)" Dont really see that to be the case since we would have all complete gear from the previous tier. Another option would be to run 1-2x Lost Island with those people. Your small incentive to run Lost Island is the weekly rakghoul quest with black hole commendations I also dont recall any need to run Coloseum/ICC 5mans. Also gearing a companion. But that ties in with my earlier suggestion to make more content where you i.e. need a companion.
You might be right with my mixup, i just remember them using the a % number in the thirties and not the 60's
Yea i just checked the number i used was right 38% but your right it was the other way around. Regardless that was a long time ago and that is still a very significant portion of the community and I would bet its alot higher than that now ( or was at least, im pretty sure more PVE players have quit then PVP players at this point so i wouldnt be surprised that with the current 1.3 million subscribers if it wasnt sittings between 40-50%.)
At least with the ICC 5 mans / coloseum they introduced new loot in those raids, and didnt the bosses give higher tier of badges? although swtor kind of does that it only rewards you for running them once a week, its hardly worth it IMO.
Basically i just dont like all these games shifts towards casual player bases, wow has lost subscribers since they switched to it in cata (and wow was already pretty casual) i didnt/ dont like how they made 10 and 25 mans the same and made it so that the loot was the same as well. Regardless of that though, the loot tables from any one of those bigger raids is larger than the old republics entire loot table was at launch so at least they still got a few things right. My point right now is that clearly the old republic isnt doing something right, and alot of their mistakes seem to be more on the PVE side of things, PVP still has ease of access through queues and a similair setup to other mmo's in terms of loot and progression, it also has some interesting battlegrounds and ranked warzones are going to be coming very very soon. Its looking like the old republic will have lost close to half of its playerbase once the free month they gave to level 50's runs out, i say this because clearly the old republic has sold at least some copies since they announced the 2 million in sales, they have launched in 2 new regions since that announcement, so id say the numbers are probably around 2.1-2.3 million , and i would say that the old republic will easily lose over 100k more subs after the free month is up if not substantially more than that , obviously these are just estimates but they seem reasonable and anyone would be kidding themselves to think that the numbers arent going to drop substantially more after that free month is up
85% retention that they had 3 months ago was really impressive, 50% or possibly even less 3 months later, not so much. The foundation of gear progression IMO drove PVE players away, alot of PVE players ive heard from / talked to have said that something just felt off about the end game but they couldnt quite put their finger on what was missing. Id bet that with a deeper gear progression system ,not even necessarily harder or longer just deeper with more variety something that would increase the replayability of things like flashpoints (which you can stop doing after about a week if you play a reasonable amount and operations as well. ), they would have kept at least some of those disgruntled PVE'ers. The problem with the whole alt thing in my mind, is that with any character you are leveling you realize that you are going to reach the end game, but if the end game isnt very fun or doesnt have much variety why would you be compelled or be driven to level up an alt. In wow people level up alts not only because they like the leveling process but because they want to experience a new class in the end game (which id argue is more of a reason why they are leveling up an alt then just for the leveling experience).
Basically I dont see swtor gaining much ground but more losing it in the coming months, maybe a few patches down the road when things have changed more significantly they will entice some players back but for the moment no 1 patch can fix the problems swtor is having. That being said though I will certainly continue my subscription for another few months in hopes of server transfers, i just dont know if server transfers alone are enough to entice the general masses back (maybe a full fleshed out space combat system and something like pod racing and pazaak will though)
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I definitely agree that SWTOR will lose a lot of players once the free month is over (myself included).
But I can basically only tell from the PvP perspective But that's a different story - according to the forums / our server thread about 75% of all PvPers will quit / have quit.
I also agree that they could offer more loot diversion in PvE. Especially the whole normalmode / hardmode Tionese / Columi stuff. I think we did 2 normalmodes when we hit 50 with the mindset "We're so bad, have bad gear, lets go normalmode". 0 challenge and 0 loot later we tackled the HMs.
I dont know if the statements like "EV SM is easier than FP HMs" are true but that was another problem with the loot system.
Oh and I dont know about the PvE gear, but with PvP gear I actually have to swap out mods/enhancements to perfect my stats. So I'm not done as soon as I get my full WH gear. Another incentive to run the content - but not really required.
Again with the coloseum/icc 5man I think I ran each 3-4 times at most. For the achievement and to just see the content (or help alts of friends). Gearwise there was no reason for me to run it.
And I think I would treat Lost Island in the same way. And my companions in rakata gear also seems to be very nice. Sadly, I couldnt find a group for it the last 3 weeks  Today I saw a tank looking for a group for it - and 60min later he has switched to "any HM fp". 20min later when I /whoed him again he was offline (and yes I did tell him, if he found a healer / another DPS I'd join him).
Also iirc there was a massive outcry in WoW about Crusader's Colloseum, because it was "run 10man nm, run 10man hm, run 25nm, run 25hm". And that was all the raiding you did and you did it because there was gear you could use. But 4 times a week the same bosses - again iirc - a lot of people cried. And I imagine the same outcry here in SWTOR if you're forced to run SM/HM/NiM.
And it's not about casuals / hardcore. It's about doing meaningless / unchallenging content. Only bads with too much time want such grindy systems.
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I quit swtor because it has almost exactly the same system that WoW perfected. There's only so much you can do with that type of system, and seeing it done better elsewhere made swtor kinda bland.
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On May 10 2012 11:19 Zocat wrote:I definitely agree that SWTOR will lose a lot of players once the free month is over (myself included). But I can basically only tell from the PvP perspective But that's a different story - according to the forums / our server thread about 75% of all PvPers will quit / have quit. I also agree that they could offer more loot diversion in PvE. Especially the whole normalmode / hardmode Tionese / Columi stuff. I think we did 2 normalmodes when we hit 50 with the mindset "We're so bad, have bad gear, lets go normalmode". 0 challenge and 0 loot later we tackled the HMs. I dont know if the statements like "EV SM is easier than FP HMs" are true but that was another problem with the loot system. Oh and I dont know about the PvE gear, but with PvP gear I actually have to swap out mods/enhancements to perfect my stats. So I'm not done as soon as I get my full WH gear. Another incentive to run the content - but not really required. Again with the coloseum/icc 5man I think I ran each 3-4 times at most. For the achievement and to just see the content (or help alts of friends). Gearwise there was no reason for me to run it. And I think I would treat Lost Island in the same way. And my companions in rakata gear also seems to be very nice. Sadly, I couldnt find a group for it the last 3 weeks Today I saw a tank looking for a group for it - and 60min later he has switched to "any HM fp". 20min later when I /whoed him again he was offline (and yes I did tell him, if he found a healer / another DPS I'd join him). Also iirc there was a massive outcry in WoW about Crusader's Colloseum, because it was "run 10man nm, run 10man hm, run 25nm, run 25hm". And that was all the raiding you did and you did it because there was gear you could use. But 4 times a week the same bosses - again iirc - a lot of people cried. And I imagine the same outcry here in SWTOR if you're forced to run SM/HM/NiM. And it's not about casuals / hardcore. It's about doing meaningless / unchallenging content. Only bads with too much time want such grindy systems.
I dont want grindy systems i want diverse systems that dont replicate content throughout every different aspect of them. In swtor's case that content is loot essentially but loot is a huge part of what makes end game content in a game like swtor where the only form of end game progression is gear progression. Youd think it would be important to have a diverse and non linear loot system in a game where that is the case.
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On May 09 2012 21:08 Redlol wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2012 20:30 Rah wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 09 2012 19:43 Redlol wrote:
The most recent end-game raid is fairly decent, the Hard-mode isn't particularly difficult. The guild I'm in killed all content in sub 20 hours of work, something like 10th in the world on a 3 day schedule.
However, the foundation is there for Nightmare mode to be a good challenge. The bosses are all pretty well designed and should offer a good challenge if the numbers are tweaked correctly.
I see only a few real problems with the game at this point, the first being that we're already hitting a point where they have to get creative with bosses because Tank mitigation scaling is too good.
My Shield Tech PowerTech has 26k health buffed, 55% shield, 67% absorb, 15% defense. Those numbers are unreal, we're already beginning to hit a point where bosses will have to deal Elemental Damage and completely bypass mitigation. On hard mode bosses in EC, 3 of the 4 encounters have bosses who deal damage which can't be mitigated by normal defensive stats. 2 of those bosses deal Elemental damage, the final boss has a huge portion of his damage come from a DoT, and then a 1 shot mechanic if a Taunt isn't hit by the other tank in a 1 second window.
There's only so much they can do to keep Tank damage reasonable, and they're exhausting those options pretty quickly. I am looking forward to how creative they are capable of getting though.
In PVE, Tank threat is literally a joke. Tanks have to abuse the fact that Taunting a target that's already on you still increases threat by 130% over the first place(yourself usually). Outside of Taunting, Tanks deal roughly 900 threat per second tops to DPS 1400+ threat per second. I'd like to see them fix threat generation for tanks vs DPS, probably by increasing the threat modifier on Tank stances, as increased Tank class damage could be game breaking in PVP.
As for PVP, I have two battlemaster characters, and am leading the PVP group of my guild, but two of the Warzones are flat out poorly designed for competitive play(Civil War/VoidStar), Huttball is plagued by Z-axis desync issues(although it's still amazingly fun), only Novarre Coast is reasonably well designed. Class balance in PVP is actually decent right now, but DPS PowerTechs might be a little bit too strong, they're tough to peel without using grips that are ideally used elsewhere, and do more damage than any class in the game. This also shows in PVE DPS as the class is literally untouchable by all available metrics(combat logging/parsers).
Overall though, the class is enjoyable, although that might be a result of the people I play with. We all quit MMO's after clearing all content in WoTLK, and some super casual(2-3 nights a week) play for 10 mans in Cataclysm for about 6 weeks or so).
Redlol
Recruiting, Melee, and PVP officer of Might
Mightguild.com
Very nice info on the PvE there. I didn't know taunt worked like that in this game. I think that powertech damage isn't too harsh if the group keeps a decent spread compared to say a sniper. You might be overlooking some tactics that can be played out to make Voidstar results less random, but I agree that Civil War sucks. Yeah, the Taunt/Threat mechanics really irritate me, Threat is nearly impossible to keep without abusing Taunt on cooldown. Threat and Taunt have even created situations where we have to math out exactly where to Taunt in the first 30 seconds of a fight or so, past the 3rd Taunt in a fight threat is almost a non-factor, but there's this window of time between about 15 and 19 seconds into a fight where DPS can pull. It's not like we can tell DPS to back too far off either because the enrage timers are relatively tight. Although the enrage timers are getting pretty easy with how DPS is scaling right now as well. Healer scaling is the only one that's relatively well done, but healers have their own issues. PVE Healers are locked into very strict rotations to maintain their resources, if a Tank gets low either a Healer blows through their entire resource pool or a tank cooldown is required so the Healer can keep up their rotation. It's not an ideal use of tank cooldowns because a lot of the bosses do have phases where they do extremely high amounts of damage. Basically, both DPS classes and Tank classes have absolutely ridiculous scaling at the moment, and while Healers aren't going to run into scaling issues where they're blatantly overpowered, their lack of "oh shit" buttons and their ability to change their style on the fly to fit fights might be a problem down the road. Despite these issues, the design team is fairly competent and creative and I really am looking forward to seeing how they handle these problems.
I actually really liked the way that the threat mechanic works in this game. Good tanks will pre-emptively taunt at the right times, and good dps will pre-emptively use their aggro-reducers at the right times. It was like another skill to have to be able to understand the best times to pre-emptively use a taunt.
For comparison, a friend of mine from WoW recently gave me a scroll of resurrection and I hadn't played in over a year. so I was reminded of how much different threat works in WoW compared to SWTOR. It's nearly impossible for a tank to lose aggro, and dps don't have aggro reducers, they have FULL aggro clears! It makes both tanking and dps far less interesting. SWTOR did something right - they made tanking, at least Powertech tanking, which I did, somewhat enjoyable by making them have to consider threat more and make smarter usage of their cooldowns.
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On May 09 2012 01:51 Executor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 22:02 EscPlan9 wrote:On May 08 2012 17:49 Executor1 wrote:On May 08 2012 17:40 bored01 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 08 2012 16:44 Rah wrote:
Star Wars is where it's at, and where it's going to be at for MMO's at least for a while. The last MMO I got into was EQ. WoW I felt was bad. People liked it because it catered to noobs, and most players started WoW as MMO noobs. I know that won't be a popular opinion because people talk like vanilla WoW was hard, but it was nothing compared to MMOs before it. Star Wars does the same catering to noobs at first, but the story and gameplay's interesting if you pick the right class, and the PvP is a huge improvement in the end game. Huttball especially has a lot of depth to it for MMO PvP.
Guild Wars 2 isn't even out yet and Tera has only been out a short time, I've already seen a lot of complaining about them and things that need to be fixed, bandwagoners will get bored of them just like every new game and it will turn into the new thing to complain about, they don't have the funds to fix things like Bioware does, especially with the GW2 model. Star Wars is continuing to offer free content upgrades to players, both pvp and pve, and the content they're already building on is very strong, and complimented by the legacy system. Hate it if you want, but it's the best option for the MMO genre right now. The game's got style mang. I wouldn't call it "free" content when it's subscription to play. Also, Guild Wars 2 has an in-game microtransaction store from what I've seen and if games like TF2 and LoL can get an income based on in-game microtransactions, I don't see why GW2 couldn't. So to say a big release like GW2 can't support updates or expansions (whatever GW2 decides to do) is just silly. Anyways, SWTOR was really not my thing. Saw gameplay vids and my brother play. It really felt like a single player game with the generic mmo styled combat and the occasional co-op. I guess this would play out differently with a very large guild though (hopefully). End game content for PVE worries me for guild wars 2, only 8 dungeons in the game , and only 3 of them are end game dungeons. Although I havent experienced a dungeons so i dont know how diverse they actually are , ive heard people say that you will rarely have the same experience twice in a dungeon thanks to dynamic events they added in there and multiple paths. I think with guild wars 2 though i will beable to get into the PVP fromm what ive seen and heard the WVWVW looks very satisfying and i could see myself getting into it. PVP content is alot easier to develop though as no matter what (since yoou are playing against other players ) you will never have the same experience twice making the replayability practically infinite. Look how long people have been playing that same 1 map in LOL for. There is no "end game" in GW2 in my opinion. And I don't say that in a negative light. What I mean is, there is no gear grind. There is no new tier of gear every expansion. You only do dungeons and the likes because you find them fun. Sure, you can get rewarded with newer looking gear, but there is no grind that you NEED that gear to clear content. (Similarly for PvP, there is no chasing carrot on a stick incentive). GW2 is substantially different than any other MMO out and thank god. So many players are tired of the grinds. Whenever I play GW2 it is going to be for the reason I play any other non-MMO game - just for some fun whenever I feel like it. And there's no subscription fee behind it either to make me feel like I need to play it x hours each month to get my money's worth. I guess so, i think thats just another "hype train" thing by arenanet. A kind of "it depends on your skill not your gear" that certainly isnt the case while leveling though you can get undergeared pretty quickly. And at the same time they have said that explorable dungeons (hard mode dungeons) will offer a greater challenge but also greater loot. I know that you just get gear tokens off boss's that you can trade in for anything (at least thats how i understand it) so i guess in some sense the gear grind is diminished but i beleive it will still be there, it just wont be a very deep gear progression system. Honestly though i think that is one of the things that really hurt TOR, was the extremely linear gear progression. When there is only 1 piece of loot at the pinnacle of the end game thats viable to you, you dont feel like you have much choice stats wise etc. And there is only so many variations you can get from replacing mods. I know Guild wars 2 is a dilfferent game, but alot of the excitement involved in running the same content dozens of times revolves around gear progression its still fun, but its fun because it feels like your progressing your character which i think is one of the main reasons MMO's have become so popular IMO, its that sense of progression and personalization of a character that is solely yours.. So i really hope Guild wars 2 doesnt miss the mark too far on that one.
I don't understand why you consider it "hype" that there is no gear grinding in Guild Wars 2. It's a fact, and in both PvP and PvE. In PvP you get the same stats as anyone else in your class, and same options for skills to choose from. You only need to concern yourself with outplaying your opponents through teamwork, tactics, preparation (like selecting the skills you'll use and similarly the weapons you'll use), and so on. In PvE, there is not going to be any major gear grinds. The dungeons are there to provide another method of obtaining gear that will have similar stats to be found otherwise, just look different, and acquired through different means. Some will be perfectly fine with crafting gear, or just the questing gear even.
I disagree on the "excitement" behind running the same content over and over. It isn't exciting to me. The fun part about clearing the content for me has never been the loot, it has always been on the figuring out and executing the mechanics for the fight. When you're only playing the game to get new gear, it's a pretty boring grind. Why do you want new gear? So you can raid more. Why do you want to raid more? So you can get new gear... I just fundamentally disagree that this is a "fun" system.
I agree I won't be spending countless hours feeling addicted to GW2 just so I can grind out new gear. It will not have that appeal for the majority of players. But unlike you, I consider it a good thing. I don't want another game like that.
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On May 10 2012 13:09 EscPlan9 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2012 01:51 Executor1 wrote:On May 08 2012 22:02 EscPlan9 wrote:On May 08 2012 17:49 Executor1 wrote:On May 08 2012 17:40 bored01 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 08 2012 16:44 Rah wrote:
Star Wars is where it's at, and where it's going to be at for MMO's at least for a while. The last MMO I got into was EQ. WoW I felt was bad. People liked it because it catered to noobs, and most players started WoW as MMO noobs. I know that won't be a popular opinion because people talk like vanilla WoW was hard, but it was nothing compared to MMOs before it. Star Wars does the same catering to noobs at first, but the story and gameplay's interesting if you pick the right class, and the PvP is a huge improvement in the end game. Huttball especially has a lot of depth to it for MMO PvP.
Guild Wars 2 isn't even out yet and Tera has only been out a short time, I've already seen a lot of complaining about them and things that need to be fixed, bandwagoners will get bored of them just like every new game and it will turn into the new thing to complain about, they don't have the funds to fix things like Bioware does, especially with the GW2 model. Star Wars is continuing to offer free content upgrades to players, both pvp and pve, and the content they're already building on is very strong, and complimented by the legacy system. Hate it if you want, but it's the best option for the MMO genre right now. The game's got style mang. I wouldn't call it "free" content when it's subscription to play. Also, Guild Wars 2 has an in-game microtransaction store from what I've seen and if games like TF2 and LoL can get an income based on in-game microtransactions, I don't see why GW2 couldn't. So to say a big release like GW2 can't support updates or expansions (whatever GW2 decides to do) is just silly. Anyways, SWTOR was really not my thing. Saw gameplay vids and my brother play. It really felt like a single player game with the generic mmo styled combat and the occasional co-op. I guess this would play out differently with a very large guild though (hopefully). End game content for PVE worries me for guild wars 2, only 8 dungeons in the game , and only 3 of them are end game dungeons. Although I havent experienced a dungeons so i dont know how diverse they actually are , ive heard people say that you will rarely have the same experience twice in a dungeon thanks to dynamic events they added in there and multiple paths. I think with guild wars 2 though i will beable to get into the PVP fromm what ive seen and heard the WVWVW looks very satisfying and i could see myself getting into it. PVP content is alot easier to develop though as no matter what (since yoou are playing against other players ) you will never have the same experience twice making the replayability practically infinite. Look how long people have been playing that same 1 map in LOL for. There is no "end game" in GW2 in my opinion. And I don't say that in a negative light. What I mean is, there is no gear grind. There is no new tier of gear every expansion. You only do dungeons and the likes because you find them fun. Sure, you can get rewarded with newer looking gear, but there is no grind that you NEED that gear to clear content. (Similarly for PvP, there is no chasing carrot on a stick incentive). GW2 is substantially different than any other MMO out and thank god. So many players are tired of the grinds. Whenever I play GW2 it is going to be for the reason I play any other non-MMO game - just for some fun whenever I feel like it. And there's no subscription fee behind it either to make me feel like I need to play it x hours each month to get my money's worth. I guess so, i think thats just another "hype train" thing by arenanet. A kind of "it depends on your skill not your gear" that certainly isnt the case while leveling though you can get undergeared pretty quickly. And at the same time they have said that explorable dungeons (hard mode dungeons) will offer a greater challenge but also greater loot. I know that you just get gear tokens off boss's that you can trade in for anything (at least thats how i understand it) so i guess in some sense the gear grind is diminished but i beleive it will still be there, it just wont be a very deep gear progression system. Honestly though i think that is one of the things that really hurt TOR, was the extremely linear gear progression. When there is only 1 piece of loot at the pinnacle of the end game thats viable to you, you dont feel like you have much choice stats wise etc. And there is only so many variations you can get from replacing mods. I know Guild wars 2 is a dilfferent game, but alot of the excitement involved in running the same content dozens of times revolves around gear progression its still fun, but its fun because it feels like your progressing your character which i think is one of the main reasons MMO's have become so popular IMO, its that sense of progression and personalization of a character that is solely yours.. So i really hope Guild wars 2 doesnt miss the mark too far on that one. I don't understand why you consider it "hype" that there is no gear grinding in Guild Wars 2. It's a fact, and in both PvP and PvE. In PvP you get the same stats as anyone else in your class, and same options for skills to choose from. You only need to concern yourself with outplaying your opponents through teamwork, tactics, preparation (like selecting the skills you'll use and similarly the weapons you'll use), and so on. In PvE, there is not going to be any major gear grinds. The dungeons are there to provide another method of obtaining gear that will have similar stats to be found otherwise, just look different, and acquired through different means. Some will be perfectly fine with crafting gear, or just the questing gear even. I disagree on the "excitement" behind running the same content over and over. It isn't exciting to me. The fun part about clearing the content for me has never been the loot, it has always been on the figuring out and executing the mechanics for the fight. When you're only playing the game to get new gear, it's a pretty boring grind. Why do you want new gear? So you can raid more. Why do you want to raid more? So you can get new gear... I just fundamentally disagree that this is a "fun" system. I agree I won't be spending countless hours feeling addicted to GW2 just so I can grind out new gear. It will not have that appeal for the majority of players. But unlike you, I consider it a good thing. I don't want another game like that.
Obviously the actual content is the most fun part the first time or few times through, im saying that after you have cleared the dungeons a few times, your main source of excitement or your main drive doesnt come from figuring out the mechanics that you have already figured out 3-4 times it comes from knowing you will get upgrades to progress your character. The reason why MMO's are popular to begin with is because people like persistent characters in persistent worlds that they can progress and improve. Maybe people dont realize the driving factor behind why they play mmo's but that is usually it, its never been the outstanding gameplay (so far) that has kept mmo players coming back for more, its been the persistent worlds and your persistent character in that world that you constantly improve in various ways whether that be leveling and getting new skills and gear or end game getting new gear. Im saying that for a game like SWTOR where gear progression is the only form of end game progression, having a non linear loot system that is diverse is really important.
On the other hand GW2's end game has yet to be seen, we dont know the driving force behind the end game for PVE players (its fairly obvious for PVP players). All im saying is that in a game, where end game progression is solely based on gear that game should have a deep and diverse loot system. Im not even saying that it has to be neccesarily harder to get loot, but that loot system should foster replayability in a way where your not just running a dungeon you have cleared many times already just for the sake of running it , in swtor i was doing that a week after hitting 50 and i kept running the dungeons for another week because they where fun, but after that the driving force behind me wanting to run them again would have to be character progression.
Trust me MMO's today are popular because people like progressing characters in a persistent world, and the only reason things are getting easier or less complex in that regard is not driven because players are not interested in that anymore its driven because more casual players are interested in it and want to feel that sense of character progression as well.
Im hoping GW2 will have something different in the end game to keep PVE players engaged beyond just gear progression, in guild wars 1 they had something there with skill points, and you could argue that swtor had that same thing with datacrons but datacrons just didnt take very long to get and that extra set of progression was over in a day or so for anyone that was driven to get it. Hopefully they will find a nice way to implement skill points in gw2 beyond what ive seen so far for the end game.
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On May 11 2012 05:38 Executor1 wrote: and you could argue that swtor had that same thing with datacrons but datacrons just didnt take very long to get and that extra set of progression was over in a day or so for anyone that was driven to get it.
You mean for everyone who used a guide.
Those people dont want to min/max and play for characterprogression.
But hey, farming the same boss for the 25th time is more challenging than looking in another area to find the hiddan datacron. Oh wait - no. It's easier. Only time time time - no effort - and get something out of it.
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Anyone fancy sending a refer a friend to myself to try the game? Would be awesome if someone did. Thanks
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Its official every single real life friend that i started playing the game with at launch has quit as of yesterday, and when we originally joined at release there was over a dozen of us. I think thats it for me too. Interesting content could definitely entice me to resubscribe but they need to add content with staying power. They need to have more Carrot in this game as someone put it to me a few days ago.
Adding new content and putting old rewards that any half dedicated PVE player would already have is unacceptable (lost island im looking at you) im not saying that the whole FP should have been littered with rewards for columi/rakata geared players but it would have been nice for it to even have some new different looking loot that could be RE'd to give players a new look or at least have the last boss drop something thats slightly better than Rakata or even give players tokens (beyond just a few commendations once a week) to run it everyday. Not that it would be very easy for me to even run that content anymore, my server was one of the most populated at launch and it is now a barren wasteland , 40-50 people on republic fleet during peak hours and from what ive seen in the past week its staying at "light"
I wish i liked the game as much as i liked the players I have met through my guild, but having a good guild community shouldnt be an excuse to play a bad game (i think the leveling is great in this game especially the first time through, but the end game is pretty bad lets be honest)
Im honestly thinking this game has less than 1 million subscribers, considering the 1.3 million figure that was used a few days ago during EA's financial earnings call is including all the level 50 players they gave a free month too, once that free month is up which will be sometime in the next 30 days depending on your billing cycle i think that number has to be quite a bit lower and probably hovering around 1 million.
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I've been investing my game time into fatman server exclusively since 1.2. Most players who like the game but are sick of dead servers have done the same. That server's definitly not going down, and they're planning to talk about character transfers very soon. I hope I can transfer my agent there, only for the pocket cash he'd bring with him.
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Does anyone has a friend invite left for me?
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When i quit on May 16 (see above post) my server and guild had a around 10-12 players that logged on everyday. I have logged on during peak hours over the past few days only to find that i am the only person in my guild that has logged in in over a week and that during peak hours the republic fleet has no more than 20 ppl, usually far less.
Its a huge snowball effect when a server dies, people leave so groups become harder to find and PVP queue's become longer, people get frusterated by that and even more people leave, until almost everyone is gone, either rerolled or quit. It seems as if they are going to be heading in the right direction for server transfers, they intend to increase the max server population further and then consolidate players on to those servers hopefully eventually closing down the inactive servers. The game could actually have the feeling of a vibrant community again across multiple servers with 1.3 instead of just 1-2. I dont know if that alone is enough to bring me back (in fact im sure it isnt) but we will see what else comes with 1.3 and what else comes for the future with 1.4
Layoffs at BW Austin is not a good sign though, a smaller dev team for new content means that the game will have less content less often, and that is never a good thing. It saddens me that this game failed so hard (at least in my eyes) I wanted to like it and i wanted it to succeed so badly but it just didnt have the staying power to keep me interested beyond the first few months. And thats not to say I have cleared all the content, but i most certainly would have had my guild still been as active during 1.2 as it had been months prior. Its strange how this game was developed mainly as a PVE game (and then later they refocused on PVP) and yet the PVE content has the least staying power, 4 bosses added every 3-4 months is not going to keep players interested for long especially knowing that if you are clearing say EC on hardmode no other PVE content is of any use to you progression wise, you dont need anything from any of the FP's or previous raids or from commendations if you are clearing EC HM on a weekly basis , meaning for a PVE player the only purpose to log in (at least in terms of advancing your character) would be once or twice a week to raid, and that simply isnt enough for most players and doesnt justify the monthly fee.
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http://www.twitch.tv/rahsun86
Now that I'm geared on the Fatman I'm taking my stream out of retirement. I PvP on a 50 Juggernaut (Rage), and a 50 Powertech (Pyro) daily, both wearing mostly War Hero pieces. I try to focus heavily on objectives. I run solo Q with music and premades using vent. I have a 43 Gunslinger (Dirty Fighting) and 24 Assassin (Madness) that I play in the under 50s bracket. Mute the music if you don't like it. Any questions/ requests/ tips/ insults hit me up.
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Lalalaland34483 Posts
On June 15 2012 09:55 Rah wrote:http://www.twitch.tv/broadcast/dashboards/rahsun86Now that I'm geared on the Fatman I'm taking my stream out of retirement. I PvP on a 50 Juggernaut (Rage), and a 50 Powertech (Pyro) daily, both wearing mostly War Hero pieces. I try to focus heavily on objectives. I run solo Q with music and premades using vent. I have a 43 Gunslinger (Dirty Fighting) and 24 Assassin (Madness) that I play in the under 50s bracket. Mute the music if you don't like it. Any questions/ requests/ tips/ insults hit me up.
You linked your dashboard mate.
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How is it playing the game after server transfers? I have a week left of playtime, but I can't be bothered to even start the game 
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EPT
