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Intro
Justin Lowe - Sado - @zirak
Pete Trerice - Misenus - @petetrerice
Joshua Ogborn - Sleeper - @dhsleeper
Ben - Dover - @doverbs
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Pre-show
E3 Next Week
Segments
Friday Update: Trooper Progression Video
Community Pulse: The Solo Endgame
DevTracker Highlights For The Week of May 26, 2011
Revan Novel Synopsis Revealed
Lore Update: Weaponry in The Old Republic
Facebook Image of the Week 5.25.11
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Posted 6/7/2011 9:07:42 PMI agree 100% with Sado. If solo Raids go in, group Raids become unnecessary from a competitive & gear point of view.
I was listening to Dover describe what it was like to get a certain weapon and also I think Sleeper to get a certain mount. To me that is your Solo endgame. Why not have few things like this to do endgame. Not mention integrating solo-crafting with Raid content similar to what Vanguard tried to do.
There are so many solo endgame sandbox possibilities. They are really endless. Epic solo quest lines, housing, crafting, harvesting. All of this can be integrated into endgame somehow WITHOUT solo Raids.
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Posted 6/3/2011 9:34:44 AMTo go into it a little more maybe a solo player would have to do some extra stuff in that "solo tier" to make the enemy boss downable for him. But a raid large enough to move onto the next tier of content would just be able to "zerg" the boss and grab some "solo level loot" before hitting tier 2 of that raid.
Another bonus of this would be that a solo player would get a taste of the raid and have a bit of a carrot through the story of the raid to try and grab some other players and see what happens in the next tier.
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Posted 6/3/2011 5:03:26 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 6/1/2011 8:18:35 PMHaving extremely hard solable content is not endgame, only because there is still other content to do. You can only do so much alone, but in the end, to experience everything in the game (my opinion of what endgame is) then you need to group and raid and be apart of something that is not solable.
In a game like KoToR, you have solable endgame material where you solo the last thing in the game, but in MMOs if you have raid content that requires more than 1 person, then that the endgame since it is the last thing in the game.
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Posted 6/2/2011 10:55:16 AMEven solo or non-raiding players want to have a path to continued progression after the leveling portion of the game ends. Its also a good idea for the continued health of the game. Endgame is a retention mechanic and non-raiding players make up a large portion of the player base. Without a retention mechanic in place non-raiding players fall out the back end of your MMO.
Coming from a very large casual guild, the pattern Ive seen over the last 5 years is casual players flocking to the next big thing, level to cap, finding nothing at endgame for them de-subing and then waiting for the next big thing. The first game that puts an attractive non-raiding progression endgame system in then game wins the lottery IMHO
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Posted 6/2/2011 4:43:21 PMThis may take an expansion, but the devs did mention how they have no qualms doing it - they just won't be able to squeeze it in for launch.
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Posted 6/1/2011 9:46:01 PMI think the whole point of this discussion is centered around how you could break the paradigm that raiding/PvP is the only endgame simply because that's what has been done before.
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Posted 6/3/2011 11:34:24 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 6/1/2011 7:42:07 PMSolo endgame (aside from crafting, and exploring) should provide the best solo type rewards. Someone mentioned it, but this could center around your companion gear that gives you a buff, or your gear having special companion effects (shorter cooldown on their abilities, etc...). This way it'd be easy to differentiate from regular PVE gear, and wouldn't overlap with Raid gear or PVP gear. Additionally, solo play should result in slightly more money (given equal playtime as a raider). This would then allow them to buy the best crafted items, which would have these solo-specific type of focus. (read below on crafting for why crafting should be solo-PvE focused).
Other solo-endgame reward ideas could include advanced gear customization looks (color custization, facial features, etc..), special solo based companions, and other visual things that would identify a 'solo' endgame player.
In terms of what the content would look like, I think something akin to long questlines that have a combination of the solo players 'likes' while avoiding their dislike of grouping. By making the questline long, with moderate challenge, you could limit the pace of it being consumed. This could include quests that sent you across many planets and to the far corners of them (for synergy with the solo/explorer types), some objectives for the space games (clear a level with all additional objectives...etc...), as well as a single person flashpoint or two. Maybe I'm nieve, but it seems to me that 2 simple difficulty modifiers (on a 1.0 scale) could make a single flashpoint work at equal relative difficulty for all classes, whether they be DPS, Healer, or Tank. One modifier for enemy hitpoints, another for enemy damage. Playtest the modifiers (maybe healers would need enemy hitpoints at a .8, but enemy damage at a 1.2, for example to make it sufficiently difficult) to determine the optimal levels. Obviously, this would lead to FOTM builds and preferred companions for Solo PvE, but that's no different than endgame PvP, or endgame raiding, so in some senses it would actually aid in avoiding only 2 FOTM's. But even if a solo flashpoint was eaiser for one class than another, it wouldn't be a big deal, cause the reward is at the end of a long questline, of which that flashpoint is only one portion....the whole thing would be time consuming enough that it would keep the player involved for a good amount of time.
Crafting:
Crafting should obviously lead to both gear for the player, but also gear for others. IMO, since PvPers and Raiders hate to see crafters matching their aquired gear, crafted gear could be centered on the Solo player. Since (as i suggested above) the solo player would have a bit more money, they could afford to buy said gear over a typical raider who would otherwise have more of everything...Crafting should also center around crafting questlines and advancement that create crafting specific 'stuff', such as maybe items which increase crafting proficiencies, or open up the ability to have another crafting profession chosen, or a special companion with crafting bonuses, discounts to the cost of crafting missions, etc....
Explorers shoudl get speical explorer buffs. A non-combat speed burst is an idea for moving around the map quicker, or some sort of mapping/compass tools which help them find far-off locations on a map , for example, and the fastest mounts should be given to explorers, IMO.
With these itemizations, I think you'd have reasonable stuff for everyone to 'get' and at the same time, you'd have less overlap between the three different gameplay styles, and higher retention overall.
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Posted 6/1/2011 7:40:40 PMI don't know...I just don't think raids are difficult--they're time consuming, and there's a difference. Just by virtue of the number of players present, they're intrinsically far more forgiving than, say, an epic group dungeon that only allows in four people. In these smaller scale encounters, when one of your players goes down, you're boned. In a raid, you can lose 30 people and maybe still pull it out, even if it takes you two hours to DPS down the boss. *snore*
Similarly, solo encounters can easily be designed to, frankly, require a hell of a lot more player skill than a raid. I mean, I'm a social player who loves PvE and I won't raid, because raiding is, frankly, the most boring form of PvE available in my opinion.
I have this sneaking suspicion that a lot of people who think that solo players and players who prefer small group dynamics shouldn't be rewarded in the same way as raiders are just worried that the day it happens, they won't have anybody with whom to raid anymore. I've lost count of the number of players I've talked to who said they hate raiding and the only reason they do it is because they have to. And I'll never understand why it's considered the genre standard now to force players to do something they hate when there are other options.
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Posted 6/1/2011 9:41:14 PMNow I'm not saying solo'ers shouldn't have something to do at end game, but to think you're going to get something as in depth and challenging as a raid, solo is just not going to happen. The only way anything would even come close is to have class specific end content, which is a massive drain on resources.
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Posted 6/2/2011 11:06:47 AMI think when we think about classes in TOR we do it in WoW terms, however 6 out of the 8 classes in TOR have a Tank and Healer option, all classes have some form of crowd control and companion characters that can supplement any part of the trinity.
Solo players might find that they may need to use a hybrid build for solo endgame vs a more traditional strict trinity raid build, but I think TOR classes are going to be much more varied in build options that all classes will have the tools to survive a robust fight.
Hell, from level one they are putting you up against multiple enemies teaching you to switch targets and use your crowd control there most basic fights already have a more tactical appeal to them.
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Posted 6/1/2011 5:47:36 PMYou want a new raid patch or expansion every time such a patch is released. There will be vitriol if they release more flashpoints instead?
I get the raid thing, although the last thing I did was Trials of Atlantis in DAoC. However, I never found raiding to be that super amusing, waiting for people, disconnections, instructions over and over. I have always enjoyed taking raid group material with a small group/solo.
I take your point, but you are assuming there are more raiders than soloers, small groupers, and I do not believe that to be the case. So, if they are designing new post-release end game content for the most people, well, sorry to say that the raiders are not in that group.
Oh and as regards macros...well, all the gaming keyboards now have the ability to macro everything, so why worry about what's going on in the game? I had my Logitech run all my pally chants in DAoC.
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Posted 6/1/2011 6:00:55 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 6/1/2011 3:43:00 PMYou've got a poll of 500 or so people saying they want this content. How fast would that change when they figured out that only 25 of the people who voted for it would be able to complete it. If it's to be considered on par with top tier raiding. The problem is the super casuals and the overly entitled are rallying around this cause and once they realize it be just another system which they wont be able to actually get through they will once again throw a tizzy.
The last thing is the TIME FACTOR. Dover hit the nail on the head here. You have any idea how long it would take to make 16 ( one for each AC of each faction) scripted encounters that have voice acting, balance in difficulty, and are custom built for the abilities within each AC? If Bioware's team had unlimited resources this would be somewhat plausible.