I play in 2 different servers, 2 different guilds, saw more than 5 players on each guild leave the game already.

It's people that plays 2-3 days/week, and it's a lot of people.

Reason 1: The game is not a casual friendly anymore.

Reason 2 - Bioware killed pug groups that used to do comms run, they loved the SOCIAL part of 16m groups while clearing STORY mode content. Since TFB/SnV/DF/DP doesn't drop comms anymore, why bother doing it?

Reason 3 - Casuals can't beat the new Ops, period.

Reason 4 - Casuals won't "L2 hardcore" just to kill Bulo or the Walkers whitin 2 second split. They don't bother trying to learn the perfect rotation or how to move out of AoE's in 0.2secs.

Reason 5 - Casuals doesn't have a $5,000 rig to run Swtor 3.0, 16m ops are a performance nightmare.

 

The new ops are WAY overtuned for SM. I'm NOT talking about HM, please don't misread.

 

If you have a HM progression group you may or may not understand what I'm saying.

 

I know some players will say "do HM old ops", well if you find a CASUAL pug group that can beat HM Calphayus, Op 9, Draxus or even Corruptor Zero, I'd love to pug with them... I'm not new to the game I've seen every bad and good move from Bioware and I can afirm, you have hurt the vast majority of your player base.

As a "casual" I have no problem clearing content, old or new. A lot of people say these bosses are too hard but then they acted the exact same way with Styrak for S+V.

Run a story mode version of the old ops. There isnt anything stopping people from doing that.

Why is "causal" now a synonym for "willing victim?"

 

And why is "casual audience" now code for "pander to my fear of challenge?"

 

Apropos of...well, nothing else whatsoever, really...that's just something I've been wondering of late :/

1. I kind of feel that by 'casual' you mean 'I want to be able to faceroll content half-asleep and still get rewarded'.

 

2. Because level 55 Operations should not be a way to gear up at level 60. Besides, comm run is all about speedrun. Maybe we've had different experience, but in all comm runs I've been in, people just want to get the run done ASAP and talk very little in chat.

 

3. Casual here. Struggling in SS and Underlurker a bit, but smoothly sailing through Ravagers.

 

4. It's not really BW's fault; it's the players. The leading cause of death in raids - especially DPS - is standing in stupid, or/and not knowing they have defensive cooldowns if, for whatever reason, they can't move out of stupid. (Or doesn't want to, insisting that they can't move because they are channeling a skill and then blame the poor healers when they die.) If by level 60 you haven't figured out that stuff on ground = bad (pretty much all bosses), or not knowing which is right and left (Underlurker), maybe raiding is not for you.

 

SM drops token 192. To me, it makes sense that to get the best second gear tier in the game, you have to work for it. I hope this doesn't happen, but if current SM got nerfed to glorified tactical flashpoint like Lost Island did, they better remove token 192 drop.

 

5. SWTOR has a pretty low requirement as far as spec goes. Run 16m smoothly on medium, though I have to lower it to Low on TOS. Never liked 16m anyway, half of the group tend to know very little about what they are walking into and only regular raiders survive in the end. Might as well running 8m.

 

They're called HM for a reason. Just because everyone is level 60 and geared with 50k HP, it doesn't mean that you can walk in and expect it to be smooth sailing.

 

For example, I tanked DP SM this week. Everyone is level 60 and geared, great, this would be a fun run. Wrong, we wiped on Tyrans multiple times. Positioning was so awful we ran out of tiles, and people who fell had no idea how to come back up. Again numerous wipes on Calp, because the team that went into left portal in the second phase had no idea what to do. In Raptus, people didn't get crystals, didn't kite him properly, and failed challenges.

 

That was storymode.

 

It's not the mechanic that is difficult, it's the 'casual' players that, frankly, need to step up their game, rather than demanding that content be adjusted to level they deem acceptable.

Edited February 28, 2015 by iusCogens

I play in 2 different servers, 2 different guilds, saw more than 5 players on each guild leave the game already.

It's people that plays 2-3 days/week, and it's a lot of people.

Reason 1: The game is not a casual friendly anymore.

to quote from another thread

Bioware has given plenty of things for casuals to do in this game: leveling, dailies, bounties, GSI, Dread Seed missions, datacrons, world bosses, conquest, world events, space missions, strongholds, flashpoints, etc, etc, etc. We hardcore raiders only have our raids. Please don't take that away from us.

Reason 2 - Bioware killed pug groups that used to do comms run, they loved the SOCIAL part of 16m groups while clearing STORY mode content. Since TFB/SnV/DF/DP doesn't drop comms anymore, why bother doing it?

There was nothing social about those runs which were just speed runs as was pointed out, second the nature of pugs is that, if you want social with raids join a guild

Reason 3 - Casuals can't beat the new Ops, period.

If you mean average people who know how to play average then you are wrong. However, can't help those who refuse to learn though. There is no such thing as a naturally bad player only players that refuse to learn anything

Reason 4 - Casuals won't "L2 hardcore" just to kill Bulo or the Walkers whitin 2 second split. They don't bother trying to learn the perfect rotation or how to move out of AoE's in 0.2secs.

If tanks can't hold aggro and no one is running bombs on time and standing in red then yes they can't

Reason 5 - Casuals doesn't have a $5,000 rig to run Swtor 3.0, 16m ops are a performance nightmare.

I run fine off a Mac laptop running Bootcamp, Checkmate PC master race

The new ops are WAY overtuned for SM. I'm NOT talking about HM, please don't misread.

 

If you have a HM progression group you may or may not understand what I'm saying.

 

I know some players will say "do HM old ops", well if you find a CASUAL pug group that can beat HM Calphayus, Op 9, Draxus or even Corruptor Zero, I'd love to pug with them... I'm not new to the game I've seen every bad and good move from Bioware and I can afirm, you have hurt the vast majority of your player base.

Answers in red above.

Solutions to problem: Don't rely on pugs for raids until over leveling occurs. 2) Join a guild (many guilds welcome any play schedule) 3) L2P 4)???? 5) Profit

Tired of this whining.

Edited February 28, 2015 by FerkWork

Casual vs. hardcore refers to the amount of time one will dedicate to the game, imo. What you're actually saying is that Bioware is losing bad players as customers due to content being too tough.

 

That may or may not be their goal; only time will tell with nerfs and future content.

 

#5 is a valid complaint although my 3.5 year old PC I spent << $1k on is still doing fine.

Edited February 28, 2015 by bdatt

Apparently from what I'am hearing from the "progression" raiders, Bioware no longer feels "casual" players belong in current OP's. They have leveling, GSI, Dread seed missions, SM FP's, and oh right, the old ops that they have done a million tmes before. Dont mind with each expansion of content a new OP comes out, remember OP's are no longer for you and do not forget you "casuals" do not belong in HM flashpoints either. You casuals will now exist in the box that Bioware and the "progression" raiders want you to exist. If you "SM warriors" soon to be called "Leveling warriors", want to do OP's you better L2P. Bioware does not seem to want or need your money and are searching for a "new customer", from what I have been told. Hope that new customer has deep pockets, because once the casual player base leaves, which does not matter apparently, the game will be better off, right? WRONG! Edited February 28, 2015 by Island_Jedi

Storymode is not hard

 

We just full cleared 16m SM (both ToS & Ravagers) with 2 tanks, 2 healers, one of which is barely 186 comm geared and never plays his healer, and 12 DPS, most of which were random pugs and only a few were fresh 60s. We did this to gear up the 186 comm geared healer. We full cleared in a little under 1.5 hours.

 

I think the OP is confusing casual with bad.

 

I will agree with 16mans being FPS killers, although I can't think of a game that has much larger raid sizes that doesn't kill FPS.

Edited February 28, 2015 by Akam

If a huge percentage of your games population are "bad" then you simply let the "bad" players leave, because they are a cancer to the game. Once the cancer that is "bad" players leave, even though they represent a huge number of paying subscribers. The game will be better off underfunded and lower on population, right? WRONG!

 

If you want to have a top tier progression crowd grow in your game, you simply make your HM's and NIM content approprietly challenging for your top tier raiders. Once players from other games find out that the content is challenging at the HM and NIM level they may come across. Think of HM as storymode for progression raiders, and stop thinking about SM all together, because guess what "elitist" folk, they do not concern you. SM should never have been designed for progression raiders. Players that want to get better will close the gap between SM and HM on they're own. Players that are "bad" will stay "bad", because they do not care about being "bad". I would perfer to have "bad" players helping pay for the game and if all it takes is giving them a few bloody SM ops to keep them busy, then I am fine with that.

 

Also lets flip the tables a bit, lets have all you "progression" raiders go get some old campaign gear, put it on and go do NIM EC and TFB. Its old, but in the old gear it would be fine for you right. A challenge you have not touched in a while right? WRONG! You progression raiders would not touch the old NIM's, with undergearing yourselves, why? Because its "old" content, even though half of you would wipe, because you are now unfamiliar with the mechanics. Why would you be so hypocritical and prejudice to think you deserve new content and "bad" players dont?

Edited February 28, 2015 by Island_Jedi

I play in 2 different servers, 2 different guilds, saw more than 5 players on each guild leave the game already.

It's people that plays 2-3 days/week, and it's a lot of people.

Reason 1: The game is not a casual friendly anymore.

Reason 2 - Bioware killed pug groups that used to do comms run, they loved the SOCIAL part of 16m groups while clearing STORY mode content. Since TFB/SnV/DF/DP doesn't drop comms anymore, why bother doing it?

Reason 3 - Casuals can't beat the new Ops, period.

Reason 4 - Casuals won't "L2 hardcore" just to kill Bulo or the Walkers whitin 2 second split. They don't bother trying to learn the perfect rotation or how to move out of AoE's in 0.2secs.

Reason 5 - Casuals doesn't have a $5,000 rig to run Swtor 3.0, 16m ops are a performance nightmare.

 

The new ops are WAY overtuned for SM. I'm NOT talking about HM, please don't misread.

 

If you have a HM progression group you may or may not understand what I'm saying.

 

I know some players will say "do HM old ops", well if you find a CASUAL pug group that can beat HM Calphayus, Op 9, Draxus or even Corruptor Zero, I'd love to pug with them... I'm not new to the game I've seen every bad and good move from Bioware and I can afirm, you have hurt the vast majority of your player base.

 

Question for you, at what point during 2.0 did these people begin clearing the 2.0 operations and what gear level were they in? If the answer is anytime after the release of 2.4 (1.5 years ago) then they are in the same cycle as before and will be waiting for everyone to be over leveled again but I seriously doubt any of them remember that.

Casual does not equal bad. It sounds like OP is complaining bad players are leaving.

Because its "old" content, even though half of you would wipe, because you are now unfamiliar with the mechanics. Why would you be so hypocritical and prejudice to think you deserve new content and "bad" players dont?

 

So? Forgotten mechanic can be relearned, problem solved. Wiping would not deter them either; they will keep going until they nail it. This is the thing that separates 'progression raiders' and 'casual who can clear Rav/ToS' from bads; a progression team would learn the mechanic and execute it perfectly, less perfectly but nevertheless correct by a team of casuals, while bads would cry for nerf and demand they could ignore mechanics, instead of getting better and following instructions. Case point, the DP run I went into this week. What do you want BW to do, remove Calp mechanic completely? If your group wipe, the question that you need to ask yourself is "Where did I do wrong?" and not "Was it too difficult?"

 

'Deserving content' should not be thrown around with implied 'effortlessly'. Buying Shadow of Revan doesn't automatically make you a level 60; you have to spend 6 - 8 hour through Rishi and Yavin. Do you deserve content for buying SoR? Absolutely. Can you skip old content FA and finish the storyline underleveled and undergeared? Maybe, but it would be a lot easier if you weren't. Same thing in SM Ops, replace 'undergeared and underleveled' with 'not knowing what their class do' and 'not knowing what to do in ops', and the consequence is far more punishing than respawning on medcenter.

 

Give it time. Once enough people have learned the mechanic and overgeared content, it would be possible to carry people again.

Edited March 1, 2015 by iusCogens

BW knows what they are doing. Their metrics are foolproof.

Casual vs. hardcore refers to the amount of time one will dedicate to the game, imo. What you're actually saying is that Bioware is losing bad players as customers due to content being too tough.

 

[...]

 

Wrong:

 

Casual v. Hardcore is a mindset, not an artefact of what numbers the chatbox shows when you type in "/played."

 

As for the rest of your post:

 

I hope so. I really bloody well hope so! Maybe after that happens, our community can become less of a clogged toilet of pandered-to lowest common denominators?

Raiding is not catered content for 'casuals'. Ultimately raiding is about progression, period. There are about 1000 things in this game you can causally do, raiding current top content isn't one of them. Further, removing U-comms from level 55 content was the absolute right answer so that fresh 60s weren't maxed on U-comms when they ding.

Raiding is not catered content for 'casuals'. Ultimately raiding is about progression, period. There are about 1000 things in this game you can causally do, raiding current top content isn't one of them. Further, removing U-comms from level 55 content was the absolute right answer so that fresh 60s weren't maxed on U-comms when they ding.

 

Casuals can do raids. It's bads who refuse to learn who can't. You can raid casually on SM at top tier you just can't be a dingus and stand in stupid.

Casual or no casual, Bioware ****ed up when they only left two, monotonous, raids at 60. They lost my sub when they were too stupid to scale up.

 

Good luck to you guys that stay to clear content in two nights then only log on to craft until reset.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Ardusnyc

Casual or no casual, Bioware ****ed up when they only left two, monotonous, raids at 60. They lost my sub when they were too stupid to scale up.

 

Good luck to you guys that stay to clear content in two nights then only log on to craft until reset.

 

Then do the old raids. No need to scale as how can old content be any different from the monotony now. How long did people do those raids for? Why make old content new instead of asking for new content. This happened at 2.0 too why would you expect it to be different in 3.0.

 

As for clear in 2 nights well maybe SM, but we still got HM to go . Unless you've beaten Revan and Coritanni on HM then you still have content to clear. If you have congrats, now gear up for NiM.

While leaving the question who is "casual" and who is "hardcore" (I really hate those terms) I agree that some fights in new OPs are just poorly designed.

 

I am here for 3 years. I have been in every operation that was released (sooner or later)

But I haven't seen anything more melee unfriendly as the Walkers.

 

I feel totally useless for my group because either I run like crazy to avoid the damage (that is shot way too often and for way to long) or I stand in the distance and do minimal damage to the boss. in both cases - it means I am a burden, not a help.

 

Did someone at Bioware think about it while designing the fight?

 

Having said that I agree with OP - it is an invitation to leave for those who:

- do not like voice chat

- have gazzilion other things to do and play game in their free time

- are not members of "progression teams"

- just want to beat the content and move along.

 

Stating that those have "old ops, FPs, planets, GSF and whatever else" is just selfish, elitist and shameful approach.

Those people PAY for the game too.

And they PAID for an access to the new content, that they cannot because the fights are designed such a way that many of them are unable to cope with.

And, please, stop with L2P mumbling.

Walkers or Underlurker ARE really melee unfriendly. Punto.

But I haven't seen anything more melee unfriendly as the Walkers.

 

I feel totally useless for my group because either I run like crazy to avoid the damage (that is shot way too often and for way to long) or I stand in the distance and do minimal damage to the boss. in both cases - it means I am a burden, not a help.

 

Stating that those have "old ops, FPs, planets, GSF and whatever else" is just selfish, elitist and shameful approach.

Those people PAY for the game too.

And they PAID for an access to the new content, that they cannot because the fights are designed such a way that many of them are unable to cope with.

And, please, stop with L2P mumbling.

Walkers or Underlurker ARE really melee unfriendly. Punto.

 

The contention that SM fights are melee unfriendly is false.

 

Sword Squadron

The only time you have to move (if you're not the bomb runner) is either to dodge Ground Burst Missile (red circles), if you get Huge Grenade (big white circle), or to switch between walkers. Dodging red circles only requires that you shift several meters. Basically, getting the white circle is the only thing that constitutes a potential dps loss, but everyone has a chance of getting it and it will result in a dps loss even if you're ranged dps.

 

If you are running around like crazy, then you are doing the fight incorrectly. It's better that you actually observe the fight, as the mechanics are very predictable.

 

Underlurker

There is no reason why a melee dps can't perform well in story mode. The only disadvantage here is that melee can take more damage from the Lurklings if they have aggro. However, this is not the melee dps's problem. Tanks can taunt off adds, which eliminates the problem of extra damage. It is your responsibility to kill adds as quickly as possible. If you take unavoidable damage in doing so, then it is not your fault. If you find your group failing at this boss, then it's because someone is not doing enough dps. That's a problem with their not knowing how to play their class, not with the boss fight itself.

 

Everyone who has either subscribed has access to the content. Access doesn't equate to accomplishment. Arguing that content should be made easier on the basis of money paid for it is basically arguing that you should pay to win. Furthermore, you are basically asking that the content be changed to suit your needs when other people are enjoying it as is. Doesn't that sound selfish to you? People who enjoy the difficulty of operations don't demand that the other content be made harder. What gives you the right to demand that operations be made easier? How does your $20 give you more say than their $20?

Edited March 1, 2015 by soowonlee

Sword Squadron

The only time you have to move (if you're not the bomb runner) is either to dodge Ground Burst Missile (red circles), if you get Huge Grenade (big white circle), or to switch between walkers. Dodging red circles only requires that you shift several meters. Basically, getting the white circle is the only thing that constitutes a potential dps loss, but everyone has a chance of getting it and it will result in a dps loss even if you're ranged dps.

 

If you are running around like crazy, then you are doing the fight incorrectly. It's better that you actually observe the fight, as the mechanics are very predictable.

 

This.

 

DPS and Healers should take very little damage in this fight. Popping defensive cooldown will significantly reduce damage from Huge Grenade, Ground Burst Missile is avoidable and Rolling Mines should be taunted by tanks (even if they hit DPS/Healer, it shouldn't be more than 8k damage). The only damage taken should be from Rain of Missiles which hits for 6k-8k; if someone's health suddenly dropped, they must've stood in stupid. Moving too much is actually detrimental in this fight for melee DPS; if one moved too much they accidentally might wander into the "tank area" and be oneshot by Rapid Fire/Missiles.

The contention that SM fights are melee unfriendly is false.

 

Sword Squadron

The only time you have to move (if you're not the bomb runner) is either to dodge Ground Burst Missile (red circles), if you get Huge Grenade (big white circle), or to switch between walkers.

(...)

Underlurker

There is no reason why a melee dps can't perform well in story mode. The only disadvantage here is that melee can take more damage from the Lurklings if they have aggro.

 

It's unbalanced, but still doable. A good melee DPS can perform better than an average ranged one. You have no tactical advantage to replace a ranged DPS for a melee while you make it harder by replacing ranged by melee.

 

In the sword squadron, ranged don't have to run from the Huge Grenade and can keep DPS until it explode. If all your DPS are ranged, their red dircles don't bother the other. It's pretty much different if 4 DPS (or 10) DPS are melee. Also DPS have to spread out, ranged can do it naturally, while melee arent.

 

Underlurker, Melee take more damage but also can't DPS the remaining lurkling (or even the boss) while hidding behind a rock.

 

There is many other bosses, such as chasing Pearl at Coratani's. As ranged, I just stand on a cosy blue disk and do my rotation without moving but I'm constantly out of range when playing melee. With Coratanni can also press the console without losing too much DPS while melee DPS would have to run back and forth. Ruugar cast AOE that random PUG don't cleanse (even if they do, they can't cleanse all because the extended cooldown), stacked melee DPS take damage. Stacking AOE also are an issue, for melee only, on Master and Blaster.

 

It's not a new issue. It was already addressed in the past: Tyrans in Dread Palace had the bad habit to cast Inferno on random raid members, disadvantaging stacked melee players. It was rebalanced for he casts them more likely on remote players.

 

Why such a thing wasn't done for the new ops? Why is it still like this 3 months after the public release?

Edited March 2, 2015 by Nkya

I play in 2 different servers, 2 different guilds, saw more than 5 players on each guild leave the game already.

It's people that plays 2-3 days/week, and it's a lot of people.

Reason 1: The game is not a casual friendly anymore.

Reason 2 - Bioware killed pug groups that used to do comms run, they loved the SOCIAL part of 16m groups while clearing STORY mode content. Since TFB/SnV/DF/DP doesn't drop comms anymore, why bother doing it?

Reason 3 - Casuals can't beat the new Ops, period.

Reason 4 - Casuals won't "L2 hardcore" just to kill Bulo or the Walkers whitin 2 second split. They don't bother trying to learn the perfect rotation or how to move out of AoE's in 0.2secs.

Reason 5 - Casuals doesn't have a $5,000 rig to run Swtor 3.0, 16m ops are a performance nightmare.

 

The new ops are WAY overtuned for SM. I'm NOT talking about HM, please don't misread.

 

If you have a HM progression group you may or may not understand what I'm saying.

 

I know some players will say "do HM old ops", well if you find a CASUAL pug group that can beat HM Calphayus, Op 9, Draxus or even Corruptor Zero, I'd love to pug with them... I'm not new to the game I've seen every bad and good move from Bioware and I can afirm, you have hurt the vast majority of your player base.

 

 

Yep they killed it, one one of two, they are planing to close the game or they are just plain retarded. No more money for you EA this year, maybe for the next expansion in December, maybe.

As a "casual" I have no problem clearing content, old or new. A lot of people say these bosses are too hard but then they acted the exact same way with Styrak for S+V.

 

Since when do you know the game ? Maybe you know it a bit too good ?

 

And I often wonder when people defend OPs like they are now - do they know the game too well and falsly assume that everyone who is an casual players does have the same amount of knowledge about the game ?

 

It's as if an Formulöa 1 car racing pilot was saying to Joe Public : "It really isn't that difficult to drive an Formula 1 racing car !"

Edited March 2, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer