Comments on: [SWTOR] Effects of LFG and ranked warzones, and deciding whether to make the mental switch to endgame

By: Learning the Metagame – Personal First Thoughts « Why I Game

Learning the Metagame – Personal First Thoughts « Why I Game — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:07:05 +0000

[...] But the game specific stuff can already be quite tedious a task to take on, as Spinks posits while trying to decide if she wants to join the SWTOR raid endgame: …there comes a point where if you want to be competitive or complete cutting edge content, [...]

By: Iyeri

Iyeri — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 02:41:43 +0000

I love so much of what Turbine has done with the solo/small group story instances in LOTRO too. They really have good ideas that I wish would become a bit more mainstream.

By: Iyeri

Iyeri — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 02:39:01 +0000

My computer won’t take a log and run the game properly at the same time, so I am fortunate that neither of my two guilds require a set DPS number as I’ve got absolutely no idea whether I’m hitting it or not. I’m not running high end progression, but I’ve taken my DPS character to Hard Mode Eternity Vault, Hardmode Karagga’s Palace and normal mode Eternal Conflict and have not had trouble with enrage timers at all nor have we come out ‘uneven’ on split-dps fights, so I can only presume I’m doing acceptable damage that’s comparable to other raiders’. The procs issue (I’m also a DPS sage, Telekinetic spec) begins to come very naturally with practice.

By: Werit

Werit — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:48:22 +0000

I don’t really have any plans on using the LFG, except to do one thing. Story mode operations. I really just want to see the content. As for gear, I expect to make due with the highest crafted.

By: Delurm

Delurm — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:53:24 +0000

So after hitting 50 and finding that the ‘pvp free set’ was 100% better than anything I had on… will I be laughed at trying to queue up for normal runs to learn the content?

I almost feel like it was a catch 22 – the PvP set being so much better than the end rewards from the class story – but then being in a full PvP set and wanting to run the instances…

blarg…

Ohhh… that reminds me – honestly – one feature that DDO has put in (to much crying about making the game mega easy) that other MMO’s *should* copy.

Casual mode dungeons.

Seriously – this is a mode you can select that makes almost any dungeon soloable (or doable with your companion) but has money/item drops that are like 80% crappier than doing it even on normal mode.

But they let you learn the dungeon.

This type of ‘solo but you’ll only find an item that is decent 1 out of 100 runs’ difficulty lets some of us go in and get a feel for the dungeon and how the encounters work without having to be ‘that guy’

I really wish we’d see this type of thing in other MMO’s.

By: Kring

Kring — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:39:04 +0000

“Reacting to the environment” could be something else but dance. Like… I don’t know… decursing at Lucifron?

But the dance “reacting to the environment” runs against the nature of WoWs combat system, at least for casters. (Can’t comment on melee.) Casters are designed to stand in one spot and cast their long cast time spells. Sure, that changed a lot in the last 8 years. We got many instant spells and the cast time was reduced but in the end you can still feel that the WoW combat system was never intended for “reacting to the environment” fights but for “perfect rotation fights”.

It’s the same for tanks. You are very limited on how you position the boss. All you can do is “retreat and pull it your way”. You can’t push a boss. All your parry and block doesn’t have an effect on your position. If you hit a boss it doesn’t effect his position. WoWs combat was designed to stand in one spot for 10 minutes.

I think if you really want to replace “perfect rotation fights” you would have to replace the combat system first. (Or create a game that doesn’t copy WoWs combat system.)

By: Boxerdogs

Boxerdogs — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:41:00 +0000

“I think there is also a concept of metagame fatigue where you spent so much time theorycrafting or practicing your minmax spec in one game that you need a break from that intensity of gameplay, or don’t want to switch to a game with another involved metagame.”

A couple of people mentioned this as being especially relevant to them; I’ll add a “me too”. The metagame in WoW snuck up on me as it does so many, by my wanting to be a good “contributor” to the raid. But learning a metagame like that is quite taxing. I kinda got suckered into learning one, and I don’t regret it at all, but I have found with SWTOR and Guild Wars 1 that I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to learn a new, complex game. I have pre-ordered GW2, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if I have to work too hard at understanding the mechanics, then I’ll pass after the levelling experience. It’s not that I fear hard work and research, more that having “done it” once I don’t feel the urge to prove it to myself again.

By: spinks

spinks — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:28:05 +0000

I personally think that’s a decent model. especially if the devs can’t balance melee vs ranged dps and there are a lot of environmental mechanics in the fight to consider also. There is also a more subtle point around how much extra difficulty it would add to a class to get — say — 80% of theoretical max output compared to 60%. (Assuming that 60% requires you should know a solid rotation even if execution isn’t perfect.)

By: Rohan

Rohan — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:59:15 +0000

It was more that all the fights in Normal Mode T11 and T12 seemed to balanced around roughly the same raid DPS mark. I estimated it at about 60% of theoretical max. Depending how close to that mark a guild ran made a huge difference in the difficulty of the fights.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:06:18 +0000

Ha ha, oh well, that’s the end of that line of socratic reasoning.