End Game Progression... thoughts?

[Eezee]

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.

[Deleted]

I have raided 5 nights a week for 4+ years in WoW. I only continue to do it out of loyalty to my guild. If I were to quit WoW when TOR comes out, I would try to avoid getting locked into a hardcore raiding environment again.

It seems that the ability to have companions out doing the farming for you while you are offline, or in a raid, will help many people with balancing their RL with their raiding. The need for people to spend so many additional hours outside of doing instances, to be able to spend so many hours inside them, is what causes so many people to burn out. If TOR can do things that makes raiding at all levels less time consuming, then it will be very successful.

Also, I think BIO realise that people are not going to devote all their game time to just one game anymore, and if you try to force them to, they'll quit. Allowing me to play TOR, while still having time for other games (Age of Empires online is a good example) will likely increase the longevity of the game in the long run.

[Deleted]

Normal mode gives goody bags, and is designed for pugging. Hard mode is designed for organised groups, and doesn't have the goody bag system. Along with the fact that better items are dropped. Keep this in bloody mind however, SWTOR appears to be a LOT LESS gear focused that WoW. WoW was focused on gear more than anything else pretty much. Anyway, I give the finger to all these people who believe a game's raids should only be accessessible to the most leet of the leet. Whats wrong with a group of friends getting together to run a raid and see the story? Nothing. I'm not suggesting that it should be made so easy that even five year olds could run it, but when you demand rubbish such as 'Optimal Specs' and 'Must have X, Y and Z Gear" I just roll my eyes.

[Moriarty]

I still don't see why it matters that someone else of a lower skill level than you gets to have fun in the game. Who wants to spend all that time and money into designing raids that only a small percentage of players get to see? I actually think the very easy level of raiding (like WotLK-Naxx) is quite necessary to keep MMOs healthy because it promotes pugging, which is a very good way of keeping a server's community healthy. Unless every server is a huge high-pop progression server like Blackrock or Mal'Ganis, there was basically nothing you could do to kill some time and have fun in a relaxed manner when you don't feel like running 5-mans or doing dailies/archaeology. A healthy pug community encourages more players to roll alts and just generally increases a server's activity level. My server was maybe medium-pop, and with Cata, 25-man pugging died, and we barely had one or two 10-man pugs per week if we were lucky. We now have just one 25-man guild running, with mostly 10-man guilds, and when it's not a raid day, no one logs on anymore.

I do agree that a gradual buffing system, with players being allowed to select their buff level if they still want to retain a sense of challenge, would be a better system than the three different modes of super casual/normal/heroic modes. Although the WotLK model of increasing 5% per month is more reasonable, because you don't want to have certain servers upping the buff way faster than other servers, which can cause population imbalance.

I wonder how the two difficulty levels will work out. Do we know if there is a shared lockout or not? I feel like one of the things that has made WoW less fun this expansion was the shared lockout between 10s and 25s. People who wanted to play more couldn't, everyone got a "grass is greener on the other side" syndrome, which made recruiting for 25-mans especially difficult, and it really decreased the amount of pugging that went on.

[painweaver]

Itt: bads that are worried that the game will be too hard.

Don't troll. -3clipse

[vizzle]

If you are "hardcore" you will still clear the content first before anyone else, so I don't really see why raids need to be hard only to be nerfed the next week.


This is a good thing. If you spend 3 months creating a raid only for 3-4 guilds per server to see your awesome creation it would have been a waste. Why create fun content for only 2% of the population?

See, this doesn't make sense to me.

There is a reason they make normal modes and hard modes, right? Normal modes are so that everyone can experience the content, and hard modes are for people who want a challenge. Why do they nerf hard modes? I don't understand it. They've already developed content that everyone can see (normal mode content), why do they have to take the challenge out of the hard modes over time? They should keep the challenge in the hard modes, there really is no reason to take the challenge out.

Besides, especially when the difference between hardmodes and normal modes is like in WoW, where there is absolutely no difference to the fight other than a few added/changed mechanics, the people who can't do the hard modes don't really miss out on anything.

There is no reason to nerf hard modes.

[Karteli]

I'm OK with the difficulty getting nerfed if need be. The nerfing would surely get more players involved, get them comfortable with the encounters, and ultimately allow them to be more capable to do a flashpoint/ops without the "optional" nerf.

However, completing the nerfed content should not reward the same gear quality, but a lesser version to be more in line with the difficilty level. Also any achievements earned (when SWTOR gets achievements, someday?) should indicate completion on an easy mode. Perhaps even a little caption under the achievement saying "10% buff".

Access to upper tier difficulties should also be dependent on previous accomplishments .. such that to do tier 2 on normal, you need tier 1 on normal.

If a guild can only do a raid with a significant nerf/buff, then that's how it should be done, until geared sufficiently to start doing it without the nerf.

I understand that time constrained players want to see the whole game, but I hope SWTOR never gets to the point of just handing out top quality gear without really working for it (like WoW is currently). See the whole game if you like, but put some time into it if you want the perks.

[Hardy]

You only get loot bags in normal mode not heroic mode, and i see flaw's in the way you said, they have gone with the best possible i think

[Tomhvk]

This all depends on how they are looking at their player base.

The will keep the normal gamers happy with the leveling and storyline, its a very fine line between too hardcore and too casual, as Blizzard have been finding out.

This thread could go on for years (and I hope it does) and im sure some people would think something is wrong.

If they get this right this could make the AAA mmo into AAAAAAAAAA (more A's required)

[Deleted]

I
This is a good thing. If you spend 3 months creating a raid only for 3-4 guilds per server to see your awesome creation it would have been a waste. Why create fun content for only 2% of the population?

This argument still puzzles me. This whole"Seeing content"-thingy is probably the worst thing that happened to wow. Subscription-based games make a living out of content you DON'T get to see. It's the carrot you're after. No company makes money because people are seeing content. This train of thought was invented by Ghostcrawler and he probably got this out if some 101 game design class. There is absolutely no correlation between people seeing every piece of endgame and the success of the game. Seeing content destroys progression and forces the hole playerbase into the exact same content which creates a shitload of problems.

The endgame part of SWTOR has me more than worried by the way. Have you actually seen some footage of flashpoints and operations? It's a zergfest and bosses are a complete tank and spank. It'll maybe fun the first time through, especially the leveling experience where Bioware is probably better than any company out there when it comes to story telling. But as every MMO out there, this game will have to deliver with endgame-content.

Also if you can get a hold of the latest beta-patchnotes, there are a lot of things that have me scratching my head. Obviously we can't discuss that here anymore. My pre-order is still up, but my expectations have been lowered substantially.

[vizzle]

I'm OK with the difficulty getting nerfed if need be. The nerfing would surely get more players involved, get them comfortable with the encounters, and ultimately allow them to be more capable to do a flashpoint/ops without the "optional" nerf.

However, completing the nerfed content should not reward the same gear quality, but a lesser version to be more in line with the difficilty level. Also any achievements earned (when SWTOR gets achievements, someday?) should indicate completion on an easy mode. Perhaps even a little caption under the achievement saying "10% buff".

Access to upper tier difficulties should also be dependent on previous accomplishments .. such that to do tier 2 on normal, you need tier 1 on normal.

If a guild can only do a raid with a significant nerf/buff, then that's how it should be done, until geared sufficiently to start doing it without the nerf.

I understand that time constrained players want to see the whole game, but I hope SWTOR never gets to the point of just handing out top quality gear without really working for it (like WoW is currently). See the whole game if you like, but put some time into it if you want the perks.

That really over complicates it. Just never nerf hardmode content. If people want to do hard mode content, they have to work hard for it. If they don't want to do the challenging content then fine; you can still do the normal mode content.

[Sevantha]

I really hate this whole normal/heroic mode stuff. Not because I don't want all players to be able to see content or something like that but I find it very hard to motivate myself to kill the same boss, that i have already killed, again, this time making it harder, just so i get better loot.

I would prefer if there was just one difficulty and that would get harder from boss to boss. I don't see why everything needs to have a super easy mode so that every casual guy can clear the instance in a pug. If they want everyone to see the content its enough to nerf it after a while in my opinion. The way raiding was done in tbc is the way i would prefer it in swtor as well.
Nerf old content when new one comes out so players can easily catch up.
But that is most likely not going to happen

[Karteli]

That really over complicates it. Just never nerf hardmode content. If people want to do hard mode content, they have to work hard for it. If they don't want to do the challenging content then fine; you can still do the normal mode content.

My response was mainly geared towards the normal mode nerfs that generally happen in other games.

I don't know details of SWTOR hard modes, but I'm sure they will be very cool and graphically intense. If a hardmode nerf happened, sure it would be more complicated, but it would provide a nice stepping stone for a non-hardcore guild to get into it (if a guild needed a stepping stone).

I just would appreciate nerfed perks to go along with nerfed difficulties, in any case.

[Kambei]

I really hate this whole normal/heroic mode stuff. Not because I don't want all players to be able to see content or something like that but I find it very hard to motivate myself to kill the same boss, that i have already killed, again, this time making it harder, just so i get better loot.

I would prefer if there was just one difficulty and that would get harder from boss to boss. I don't see why everything needs to have a super easy mode so that every casual guy can clear the instance in a pug. If they want everyone to see the content its enough to nerf it after a while in my opinion. The way raiding was done in tbc is the way i would prefer it in swtor as well.
Nerf old content when new one comes out so players can easily catch up.
But that is most likely not going to happen

I would agree; I really liked the raiding model WoW had in TBC. You had smaller 10 man raids that offered gear that was slightly lower quality than the current 25 man raid. Kara 10 man > t4 25 man > ZA 10 man > t5 25 man > t6 25 man.

Was this model perfect? No. But it was a challenge to tackle the content. I was very proud when our guild got the Hand of A'dal title. I liked that things were hard and that some content was out of reach. You had to spend the time to improve to move up to the harder raids.

The lowering of all the standards to derp level is probably the main reason I'm leaving WoW. In Wrath, we smashed our faces on the Hard modes, got the drakes, killed H LK and had fun with it. We were not a world top guild and it took some time to get there, but it was fun.

Now you can face roll and get all the titles and mounts that were once an actual accomplishment. Should people still be able to go back and play the old raids? Yeah, it can be a lot of fun. But I hate how WoW has fallen to the point of just handing out everything to anyone with a pulse.

I snowboard and love it. I'm not bad, but I'll never complete with the pros. That's just life. Dumbing things down doesn't make things better, it just takes away any desire to strive forward and improve.

[Deleted]

In my opinion it comes down to the availability of content. When i would start playing WoW now i would have two tiers of raiding at maximum level and i would need to invest time in the first tier to get some gear and to get to the second which would be firelands atm. Now lets have another tier of raiding with the deathwing raid. If i would start playing then i would have to at least tackle all the tiers ( at least i hope so) with well skilled companions, to get into the last raid.
when i startet playing in bc my casual guild didnt have karazhan on farm and they were progressing in a slow pace.
after a nerf patch we had kara on farm and began to progress into the 10 man troll raid. after that we could have gone into the next tier .
i think its clear where i am pointing at.
people always need a tier they have on farm and that is needed to be done before you can progress into the "normal" tier. and beyond that you need at least one tier of raiding that you look up to and that is your aim. at least for 95% of wow players.

when cataclysm launched we had a dozen bosses to progress and after that the same dozen bosses with slightly different skills. but still the same bosses.
in the middle of doing hardmodes we got into firelands and we didnt even need to equip all raid members with 372 items to progress well in the next tier. and this is the sad thing for me.
creating content you do not even have to do if you want to progress further but sell it as additional content.
you can basically do all normal modes, gear up in 359 and still progress into firelands with ease if you have good buddies.
this is totally ruining it for me atm.

thats why i hope bioware does not make the same mistake of providing "content" in the form of hardmodes that are not actualy content but rather something to spend your time on when you wait for the next real content.

[Gavan]

Threads like these make me laugh.

The people wanting tough exclusive content are going to be in shock when they see people in half epics at level 40, gonna be sooooo funny.

[Osskssa]

I just hope that there isnt a welfare epix fiasco like in WotLK....in wow vanilla anyone who had top gear, you knew they had ''earned'' it by raiding a fairly difficult place. I hope the ''epic'' quality gear only comes from raids and top end crafting, im not one for all the free gear for ''casuals''

[Gavan]

I just hope that there isnt a welfare epix fiasco like in WotLK....in wow vanilla anyone who had top gear, you knew they had ''earned'' it by raiding a fairly difficult place. I hope the ''epic'' quality gear only comes from raids and top end crafting, im not one for all the free gear for ''casuals''

It doesn't, there are multiple ways to gear out, raiding is only one path.

[Marxman]

I have no interest whatsoever in hardcore progression raiding anymore. The hard mode philosophy of WoW since the beginning of Wrath has simply left a bad taste in my mouth, and I am well-known within my progression guild as "that casual guy who refuses to do hard modes on principal". I see no satisfaction out of killing a boss a 2nd time with some meaningless mechanic tacked onto it to make it artificially difficult.

If SWTOR wants to have hardcore raiding, it needs to follow the vanilla/BC WoW model. No hard modes, just 1 difficulty with bosses getting more difficult the deeper into an instance you get. Hard modes killed the "prestige" from raiding. That feeling you got after killing a new boss and going to stand on the ironforge bridge to show off your newly acquired gear. WoW has lost that entirely, and I'm hoping SWTOR brings it back.

... I kinda got off topic. Whatever.

[conscript]

I have no interest whatsoever in hardcore progression raiding anymore. The hard mode philosophy of WoW since the beginning of Wrath has simply left a bad taste in my mouth, and I am well-known within my progression guild as "that casual guy who refuses to do hard modes on principal". I see no satisfaction out of killing a boss a 2nd time with some meaningless mechanic tacked onto it to make it artificially difficult.

If SWTOR wants to have hardcore raiding, it needs to follow the vanilla/BC WoW model. No hard modes, just 1 difficulty with bosses getting more difficult the deeper into an instance you get. Hard modes killed the "prestige" from raiding. That feeling you got after killing a new boss and going to stand on the ironforge bridge to show off your newly acquired gear. WoW has lost that entirely, and I'm hoping SWTOR brings it back.

... I kinda got off topic. Whatever.

It likely won't be bringing that back. They already said there will be the normal difficulty which is meant for the "lower" end groups like PUGs and then there will be the hardcore heroic mode. I wouldn't expect to see the "one mode" raid system in any mainstream MMO in the near future as it simply isn't want the playerbase wants. The majority of the playerbase wants to see the content regardless of ability. Bioware would be incredibly stupid to do that. WoW knows that they have already alienated many people with how hard they made normals in T11. They reeled that back in with T12's reduced normal difficulty and now even more with T13's intro of LFR.

And lets be honest, the prestige of raiding is hardly on boss kills now. It is on the number in line you were for that boss kill, the number of ilvl's your gear has, and the numbers that show up in the DPS report. TOR isn't stopping those from continuing. Sure raiding could return to "I've killed 4H so I am better than you will ever be" days of Vanilla WoW, but why alienate 95% of the playerbase?