There are two things in the works.

1. Coming in March is a skill revamp. Currently people are just a bit more overtuned than intended since some builds are skipping the Weapon Specific trees and going straight to Combat Tree only builds.

2. World Bosses will have 3 tiers of Difficulty.

I lied, 3 things. Hard modes of the OG Heroics are in the works. The regular OGs will stay somewhat easy as that is intentional.

Keep in mind, NOTHING in game right now is End Game. This is all content we've all done for over a decade now. The hard modes I mentioned and World Bosses will be the End Game of Evolve.

Bump,

From what I've seen on TC, the skill revamp + core stat upgrades + combat formula roll changes will make PvE will be even easier.

Respectfully, I'd push back a little on leaving OG content as it is. I would at least hope to see them a comparable difficulty to SOE Live. Half the people I know can solo most Heroic and Mustafar instances. It was a rare badge of honor on live to do before.

Letting group content be solo-able reduces the most important aspect of an enduring MMO like SWG - community. Having to get help to kill the Storm Lord, or sweating through an IG-88 run barely succeeding with two people creates amazing experiences that I just want more of. People love helping each other, feeling needed, and being inspired return favors, pay it forward, be a friend to others like others were to them.

There might be some very low effort ways to do this too. We have like twice the health, DPS, and healing anyone did on SOE Live. Maybe even as simple as giving level 85+ NPCs a flat 100% increase in damage would do!

Right, post: 1018, member: 909 wrote:

Bump,

From what I've seen on TC, the skill revamp + core stat upgrades + combat formula roll changes will make PvE will be even easier.

Respectfully, I'd push back a little on leaving OG content as it is. I would at least hope to see them a comparable difficulty to SOE Live. Half the people I know can solo most Heroic and Mustafar instances. It was a rare badge of honor on live to do before.

Letting group content be solo-able reduces the most important aspect of an enduring MMO like SWG - community. Having to get help to kill the Storm Lord, or sweating through an IG-88 run barely succeeding with two people creates amazing experiences that I just want more of. People love helping each other, feeling needed, and being inspired return favors, pay it forward, be a friend to others like others were to them.

There might be some very low effort ways to do this too. We have like twice the health, DPS, and healing anyone did on SOE Live. Maybe even as simple as giving level 85+ NPCs a flat 100% increase in damage would do!

Heroics have always been soloable and easy to do even on other servers. They are not meant to be challenging content in 2024. Soloing is still a drag compared to grouping in terms of effort and time it takes. Groups will still always be sought after to make it a little bit enjoyable at least. No one runs heroics as a form of challenging content on any other server that exists. It’s a “try and get through this as fast as we can” type deal and should remain that way. Future content will be the thing to look forward to as far as challenging. Once you start making heroics hard people will stop doing them altogether because, from my experience once someone has every 10/10 they have no reason to run them other than helping out friends and wanting it to be over with.

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Griffy, post: 1019, member: 386 wrote:

** from my experience once someone has every 10/10 they have no reason to run them other than helping out friends and wanting it to be over with.**

THIS 1,000,000% please say it louder for the kids in the back

As a few have stated, the current base pve content isn't end game and there is stuff on the horizon that will be challenging and rewarding pve content exclusive to Evolve. I think the better approach would be incentivizing that rather than trying to find another reason to do yet another OG run.

World Bosses will be more challenging and something that will need more test cycles after the combat revamp.

Hardmode instances are also something slated and Reedux has been at work completely reworking the scripts behind instances to make them less buggy. We not only want the mobs to be harder to kill, but we want to add more mechanics to fights so that it isnt just a dps race.

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Rezec, post: 1022, member: 1 wrote:

World Bosses will be more challenging and something that will need more test cycles after the combat revamp.

Hardmode instances are also something slated and Reedux has been at work completely reworking the scripts behind instances to make them less buggy. We not only want the mobs to be harder to kill, but we want to add more mechanics to fights so that it isnt just a dps race.

DPS checks are fine, as long as there are other mechanics involved and the whole thing doesnt turn into 1 giant one. Same with Heal checks and Tank checks.

There are tons of mechanics and ideas to glean from other games if they are at all possible to implement into swg. That said though, adding a twist onto them would also be a cool idea.

Griffy, post: 1019, member: 386 wrote:

Heroics have always been soloable and easy to do even on other servers. They are not meant to be challenging content in 2024. Soloing is still a drag compared to grouping in terms of effort and time it takes. Groups will still always be sought after to make it a little bit enjoyable at least. No one runs heroics as a form of challenging content on any other server that exists. It’s a “try and get through this as fast as we can” type deal and should remain that way. Future content will be the thing to look forward to as far as challenging. Once you start making heroics hard people will stop doing them altogether because, from my experience once someone has every 10/10 they have no reason to run them other than helping out friends and wanting it to be over with.

Live and Legends are not even close to how easy it is here.

Vikingmando, post: 1020, member: 223 wrote:

THIS 1,000,000% please say it louder for the kids in the back

Yes, but they are still the best PvE content, and offer the most sought after rewards in the game. Why relegate them to a snooze fest. They have even been directly being made easier even though they already are a cake walk. I love that Tusken experts actually run now and that more spawn, no need to make instances a test in patience. Thats QoL for sure. But definitely surprised by Kav and experts being invulnerable - its one of only strategic elements in Tusken, but I guess someone said its too hard or annoying? Common.

NORD, post: 1021, member: 16 wrote:

As a few have stated, the current base pve content isn't end game and there is stuff on the horizon that will be challenging and rewarding pve content exclusive to Evolve. I think the better approach would be incentivizing that rather than trying to find another reason to do yet another OG run.

Rezec, post: 1022, member: 1 wrote:

World Bosses will be more challenging and something that will need more test cycles after the combat revamp.

Hardmode instances are also something slated and Reedux has been at work completely reworking the scripts behind instances to make them less buggy. We not only want the mobs to be harder to kill, but we want to add more mechanics to fights so that it isnt just a dps race.

Vikingmando, post: 1030, member: 223 wrote:

DPS checks are fine, as long as there are other mechanics involved and the whole thing doesnt turn into 1 giant one. Same with Heal checks and Tank checks.

There are tons of mechanics and ideas to glean from other games if they are at all possible to implement into swg. That said though, adding a twist onto them would also be a cool idea.

I'm very excited for the new content! Still - Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. DPS/Tank/Heal checks are the foundational mechanic which others get layered on to. Without them, you basically have created a non-combat puzzle. Or worse yet, most of the interesting existing heroic mechanics are literally completely ignorable because they are so incredibly easy. Creating hard mode instances and world bosses is expensive relative to what I'm talking about here. Give yourselves some easy wins here by leveraging even more of whats in place. Its time tested, and has kept us all coming back for more. I'm not suggesting letting heroics be the final end game content, just making them more rewarding by focusing on low effort, high return on investment tweaks.

And I (and I think Quillian too from how I read his post) are not just talking about heroics. All PvE: Corellian Corvette, Champion of Mustafar, Secrets of Syren, Avatar platform, basically the entirety of Kashyyyk, Meatlump/Jabbas/rebel/imperial theme park, Azure Cabal, the list goes on and on of cool shit in this game thats a walk in the park right now. And many of these things already have some neat rewards tied to them that don't require you to introduce new incentives for. Designing hard mode versions of this stuff would be very time consuming, or maybe impossible for the open world stuff.

Look you guys already know theres a balance between easy, challenging, and grindy. From my experience here, there has been a relentless pursuit to make everything easier at almost every opportunity (travel, resource collection, crafting, leveling, gearing, questing, etc.). Don't get me wrong, some of those changes I absolutely love! But from some others, the short term high fades into less playability, and less rewarding achievement. I liken it to pay-to-win games where people essentially buy cheat codes that cut their play time in half. There is an audience that demands to make such payments and thats why the model thrives, but its not maximizing enjoyment. There will always be people telling you stuff is hard plz make easy. But sometimes its an unsustainable, populist approach that needs to be checked against guiding principles. Similarly, making things harder is like nerfing something thats OP, its rarely a popular move. But most every live service game has to do it for long term health and prosperity.

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