Hello everyone,
For those of you that played WoW back when it first came out, it was a neat feat to see those guilds that could venture into MC and get loot. It was something to be desired by other players, and truth be told it was a status symbol within the game. These groups of players had accomplished something that a large percentage of the player base could not.
Fast-forward, today devs and designers of MMO's say that the above is a bad thing. That everyone should be able to access all the content of the game. Then really weird and silly things happened like making every instance have two version (normal and heroic) and then they went one step further and made them all 10 and 25 man.
It seems that SWTOR is following this lead by Blizzard. They have already announced that each raid instance will have a 8 player and 16 player mode. They've also said that everyone will get a 'loot goody bag' after they kill a boss.
I for one think this is a very bad idea. Raiding should still be the ultimate end-game accomplishment. Now, if the devs want it to be assessable by all the players, then I would propose they implement a scaling mechanic into the raids. For example, upon the release of the new raid nothing is nerfed or buffed. It's how it's suppose to be played.
Let's say 3 weeks later, a guild on your server clears the first raid, the following week all encounters now have an OPTIONAL debuff applied to them (5% less HP, 5% less damage, etc). Now with this new debuff applied, 3 new guilds defeat and clear the encounters (bringing the total clear rate to 4 server wide). The debuff is now increase to 10%. This continues to happen until X is reached, where X is the max amount of debuff per instance.
I think this is the best system a game could use. First, the hardcore players are still able to enjoy the challenge and the thrill of being able to say they cleared the encounter first. By them clearing it, it will also make it easier for others on their server. This promotes server competition and support. Eventually everyone should be able to see the encounter, which is what the devs want.
Anyway, I thought this method would be a lot better opposed to the easy mode / hard mode / free epics to all that we are currently seeing.