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RocketWoofus

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  1. Another crafter voting against this proposed update. It could be renamed the Chinese Gold Farmer Full Employment Act. These mats will trade at tens to hundreds of millions each and the finished augs near a billion. And the pvp folks will pay, while the NiM raiders will farm these for fortunes. I already sell every purple 286 aug I can make in minutes for millions, yet my best toons wear the blue 276 augs to accomplish virtually all game content. Sales of the 286 augs have been brisk for months, with little drop in price. At 70 million+ to equip a standard toon, many are already turning to the farmers. This proposal will have them needing multiple booths on Fleet. It also appears that rather than learning from the grade 11 crafting fiasco, we are repeating it here on a grander scale. Tons of mats, most at inflated prices, for minimal improvement. Making the critical pvp or pve mats interchangeable, cutting the numbers to 3 to 5, from 45+ proposed, and offering them as drops in the content the want-to-be raiders or pvpers could do, if that is in fact, the target market. Dropping them in vet mode, or non-endgame pvp is how the folks who would need the help are going to get it.
  2. Well, the stupidity of this proposal and the 300 level aug finally got me to reply after years away from the forums. Nerfing CZ-198, planetary kills, and other simpler ways to make Conquest makes no sense other than to require more grinding. The larger guilds have already beat you to implementation in that regard. I have toons in major guilds on both American severs. The Ponzii scheme that is grinding Conquest to stay in the larger guilds' good graces continues to be ratcheted upwards. What used to be one toon earning conquest every three weeks is now every toon, every week. 25k used to be ok, then 50k, this week grew to 100k by Sunday mid-day. No slack for how many months or years you have been in. Insta-boot for failure to meet the new goal. Recruit noobs, they make more than vets. CZ-198 and planetary kills allows simpler/non-dps focused toons, such as healers, or tanks to get their weekly quotas along with the more powerful dps, who can solo the tougher or longer weeklies. One toon per day is not an exploit, and does not need to be nerfed.
  3. Wow there is enough e-peen in these recent taunts to impregnate a bantha herd. Whether the difference between 220 and 224 is 3 %, 1%, or .1% the fact is, it seems to matter to you greatly or we would not be 15 pages into this ego exercise, whining the peasants are getting their hands on items only I should have. I may be able to get through content with significantly less than the best gear, but that doesn't mean I can't want or use the top gear effectively. I'll take a +5 sword over a +1 any day. I ran with several pug groups in the recent rotation of EC HM where the other folks had a peen-fest where they posted their accomplishments of HM, then NiM EC. We wiped on every mechanic. Every mechanic. Twice I decided that sleep was a better alternative than listening to each profession rant at the other by the second boss, but none of them bothered to actually explain the mechanics, except the one we just wiped on, guaranteeing we would on the very next one. Sure, I love a good NiM run with a tight team. Being the last party member standing with 2% health just as the boss goes down right before enrage is a rush that is hard to beat. Real life says these teams are together for limited periods of time with family, job, school, or whatever taking one after another out of "the team". Those folks have to be replaced. Helping a newer player through the final Jedi Knight story encounter they have tried over and over is a similar jolt when they thank you sincerely. I put them on a friends list and see them playing for months afterwards. Having been a raid lead since beta, sometimes we run NiM, and other times we train folks through SM and HM. I don't put my NiM gear on the shelf, I pull the newer team members through with it while they learn. Selling the gear or a run to get it, and then saying average gamers shouldn't have a crack at it is hypocrisy. The devs have done a great job getting extra mileage out of the older content and have given all of the ops value rather than just one or two. I am typing this so when the next round of levels and gear are determined, hopefully there will be a stepping stone that can get average players a chance to touch the higher gear. Sure we need new ops, but the large number of pug EV and KP runs will hopefully demonstrate that there is interest in the larger gaming community to do PVE and group content, rather than just the solo focus we have now. We went through this at level 50 with EV and KP, then at 55 with those ops, and so on. The most recent being 192 vs.198 gear. Small deltas in performance, bigger egos fretting over who got access to it. I had a martial arts sensi from Japan who chuckled at Americans and their fascination with awards and recognition for every minor accomplishment. In Japan, there was white belts and black belts. In America, there was a rainbow of belt colors. In the recent update, we had 192. 198. 208, 212, 216, 220, and 224 gear. For performing the runs 220 would be just fine, but I am an American and I'll take the 224 any way I can get it. Measuring worthiness in the number of times you must die to get it would make my sensi smile and shake his head.
  4. OK, so the trolling finally made me comment on this issue. I like the fact that one HM op drops the top gear per week, and that there are two easier ops in the 9 week cycle. It makes the game FUN, not a grind, not a job, not you must put up with some self important SOB of a raid lead and gather enough points to maybe, just maybe get a piece of nice loot. You get to have fun playing a Game. This not how you survive in the world, or something that is important to anyone else in the world other than a few other gamers. Gamers that can ride giant mounts and drive around in rare vehicles or carry glowy unstable, tuned weapons if they really want to show off their "wealth" and "power". No, these are simple higher stat items that help modest players play to a slightly higher level. It doesn't transform them into gaming gods, nor does it keep you alive for standing in stupid. It doesn't give you killer rotations or any other special advantage over lesser mortals. It just takes away one more excuse for why you can't play with the big boys. What most of this whining seems to be about is e-peen, and the fact that the "elite" are worried that the great unwashed are going to get the cute girls to look at them instead of you, when we all know really this is supposed to be about you. Sorry to break it to you, but the cute girls don't bother looking at stat slots unless they know what they are doing, and then "gasp", they know what they are doing, and they don't care what you wear, it's how well do you perform, and how polite and friendly are you, and did we actually have fun in that run? Oh yeah, there's that word fun again. I ran EV HM 8 times last week, and had fun. I won five 224 items, which if they did fit all on one toon, would equip one third of one toon. Big ^%&^ deal. I ran melee dps, ranged dps, heals, and tank. On harder weeks I main ranged dps, but I gain experience with other classes to better respect them and have toons ready to fill in when I raid lead. There are still many challenges out there, but to keep my raid team filled, I have to bring up newer folks and get them gear. The EV and KP weeks are great for that. Life moves on, folks constantly leave and enter the game, and I am always looking for good new talent. Fun runs help find that.
  5. To the original poster: You are definitely starting off on the right foot to be aware or gear levels and fight rotations. My friendly suggestion is to a starting PVE dps is to download a parsing tool and use it on a test dummy for a while. Nothing shows you the value of a good rotation and gives you a measure of your performance like a real time tool will. There are many boastful folks spouting how little gear they did a run with, or how great they know their toon, but nothing separates the good from the bad like a short enrage timer. SM ops can typically be done with 2k+ dps, but to do HM ops, being over 4k is preferred. Now there are a lot of e-peeners out there that will tell you they do 5k or 6k in the nude, but EV and KP HM are great for getting gear and do not have the performance requirements the others do. Many whine about this, but it is great for starting folks to get into the big leagues faster. The two most important slots on your dps toon are the mainhand and offhand barrel or saber slot. If you afford it, craft it, or trade a guildie for it, those slots should have purple 216 or 220 items before moving from SM to HM. I am so tired of dragging some person's 22nd alt through runs with greens or blues in those slots. They may know the toon or the rotation (usually not that well), but they are a drag on the team's performance. When the blame starts flying on why a group wiped, if you know your dps was good, you are not the problem. Have fun!
  6. Wow, such doom and gloom amongst the raiding community. I think ending the Infinite Empire with an Op would be a natural. I see two ops would be great endings to the current chapter set and be a springboard to the next. Ops 1 Assault on the Drakul Crystal Palace. A mixed faction team (hey, they are going to allow it on the pvp side, and it would be a challenge to balance properly, but a mixed final pve assault makes perfect sense) prepares for the final take down of the Emperor and his offspring. Boss 1 - Your Alliance companions have softened up the area and readied your insertion into the Palace Base area. Wade through oceans of Star Troopers to get to their leader. Fight off strong counterattacks (waves of adds) to gain entry to the Palace. Boss 2 - Since the Star Troopers and Fleet are droids under some kind of central control, fight to destroy or conquer the control center. Again, determined resistance must be overcome with any remaining Star Troopers being thrown at the fight. Boss 3 - With the automated systems shut down, now the elite guard (what is left of them after the amusements of the children have thinned and weakened their ranks) fight for their charges. Boss 4 - The children of the Emperor. My money is on the sister killing the brother when she gets a chance, but whomever is left in the final chapter becomes the battle royal. Fight should be in the Throne area, with knockbacks or throws plunging folks to their deaths. Boss 5 Valkorian - If he is truly immortal, let's get SOA's old digs spruced up for a new occupant. Fire up the Rakatta energy chambers, and put the prison together while being whooped on by the galaxie's biggest baddie. Victory is when the blue green energy shell envelopes him! Ops 2 So the King is dead, Long live the new King! Fly the Gravestone to a new system in the Infinite Empire and convert the planets to your faction! This fight is strictly for one faction or the other. Boss 1 - While the Gravestone takes on portions of the Infinite Empire's Fleet, the players jump into their Galactic Starfighters and have a Grand 'Ol Furball (yes, this boy can dream Big!) Boss 2 - I can still hear the sniveling from the first GSF fight, but now it is time to take out the AA defenses on the ground. Strafing runs, smart bombs, and a command and control center takedown to soften up for the ground assault to come. Boss 3 - Once the skies are clear, it is time for the aerial assault. Riding in assault transports, players leapfrog the planet clearing areas of strong resistance leading to a ground commander fight. Boss 4 - Planetary boss fight. A really big ugly to take down to win over the locals. Boss 5 - Winning their hearts and minds. So you blew it all up, now you have to put something you can rule back together. (This is the part we still haven't figured out in the 21rst century) For added giggles install one of your companions as Supreme Leader of the system and keep them alive long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Hey, the chances of it happening are slim, but so is winning the lottery, and all kinds of folks play that. You asked and I just had a creative burst I had to type in.
  7. Sly of the Rebel Guild that held Keren from the Imps is now Slyy of the Republic still killing Imps on Harbinger
  8. As a PVE player around since beta, who grows ever more tired of seeing forum posts ranting about the lack of new content for PVE, I am painting a target on myself and posing the question - How could we make this more fun while we wait for new ops? Given that new MMOs take hundreds of millions of $ and years of development to do well, and that the limited resources our gaming company has available to write new things are focused on story for the foreseeable future, what we can we do with low bucks for the maximum fun? Since 4.0 we have been given new levels, several new tiers of gear, and reasons to run most heroics and ops for crystals and gear, but no serious challenges as to what to do with all this new potential. One idea I have is that if you can kill any boss you want with the right group or solo, maybe the next challenge is how fast can you do it? The whole op, start to finish. With our parsing tools we have timers. Bioware could add at minimal programming cost/time a button to hit at the start and one to hit at the end, or the parsing tool might be able to do the same if the developers are too busy. Titles could be given for fastest 8 person and 16 person runs, by difficulty level, by server, by faction (it might even be fun to allow companions to run in the ops group for added e-peen and variety, or to fill in for DCs along the way). One tank, three tanks, swaps at each boss, naked save a weapon, whatever strikes your fancy, the mission is get to the big button at the end of the run (that only illuminates when the last boss falls). Whether one person presses it or all have to press it could vary by the run. Rewards could be your toon glows for a week, or gets to be 2X size, so that all on Fleet can marvel at your uberness (and you instantly gain 250 influence with your romance companion ...wait I haven't seen my romance interest in 5 years, throw us a bone as to when/if they are coming back Bioware!). We could throw in reasons to keep playing like one try per op per week (lockouts), or just keep running till you are so sick of it, you never want to see it again. I work in a world where every expenditure of time by employees must be cost justified (Rants about how much you should get for you $15 a month don't amount to spit when computer programmers get charged out at hundreds of dollars per hour, so please don't reply with what you think you should get, but keep it constructive with what we might be able to create ourselves). Putting a timer function on existing ops would take a minimal capital investment, but given elite guilds an incentive to keep playing for a while longer. Dole out the ops with the feature to a few per month and you can help bridge the gap to new content. I am not taking a stand on the gaming company's business decisions, I am asking for positive suggestions on how the player community can offer ideas for the near future.
  9. My experience in the first round of EV HM was every PUG group I ran with , except the one I ran, had the Group Lead ninja the 224 Mainhand. Subsequent weeks with much more challenging bosses have introduced many creative loot distribution schemes, none of which seemed to improve on having a trustworthy Lead. While I agree the best would be to gather all the loot and distribute it at the end, I have rarely seen even the 220s and the DMCs get handed out fairly at the end. Under the guise of a rage quit or accidental DC, the Lead disappears along with the gear. Need/Greed runs devolve to greed = pass. Even decos get needed by folks who have won three or more. The tougher runs see folks come and go like a pro football or basket ball team. I have seen S&V runs with seven bosses still have 5 folks rolling for the final gear items due to so many drops and replacements. Now the wheel has come through a full rotation and it is EV HM time again. I ran a group Tuesday night. We cycled through 13 folks to get an 8 person raid started (DCs, mom called, guild called, flakes, etc.). I had to type the loot rules 6 times, as the last guys over and over demanded to know what the rules were. Just keeping the raid trinity ratios straight, trying not to have the twitch monkeys start the fight before everyone arrived, looking for lock-outs, explaining to the woefully undergeared that HM does not bolster, having the pvp geared remember to switch to pve, etc. makes repeating the loot rules that many times a royal pinta. I found the best way to earn raid trust was to hand everything out as soon as well got it with the warning that if you leave the area too soon, you are not eligible for the loot (because chasing you down to hand it off while the twitch monkeys are string pulling the trash mobs, or finding out you rolled an 89 in an area I can't see is another royal pinta). I pug because as a guild raid lead we only have time for one run a week, and I can get multiple toons through these runs. I pug because my reward for the run was a single 220, and I have starving alts at home who need the gear. I pug because I enjoy the game, and when we all work as a team and blaze through the op, I Have Fun. I agree with the folks that a need/greed system where need is greyed out after a win would be the fairest, but ML will be my run method of choice until the upgrade occurs.
  10. In the last week, I did three EV HM runs. The Master Looter ninja'd the 224 MH in 2 of the 3 runs. In the one that didn't ninja, I was the leader/group former/cat herder/DC replacer/hankie holder. I was ML and gave it to the roll winner (not me). I agree with the original poster, another system could/should be considered. With the top gear being offered at more accessible levels, my alts are running with pugs and all the joy that brings. With tanks being the rarest commodity, anyone calling out for a dps gets instant replies. For the weekly highlighted HM run, my guild have taken it up a notch. one 224 per person, one 220 set piece, and one Dark Matter. I am furiously scribbling notes at loot hand-out time, but we end up with a much happier team (fewer folks go home empty handed).
  11. I can confirm that by focusing my Influence tokens on one companion, who now exclusively runs the rich slicing mission, the influence pays dividends. I converted my 900 or so basic comms (or whatever the lowest crystal equivalent is now called) to Level 5 purple Influence tokens at the fleet vendor (one companion vendor sells Level 1 and 2 tokens, the other sells blue and purple Level 5s). This raised the Influence from 10 to 30 or so. The companion went from rarely returning purples to returning with the top mats on most runs. The runs were considerably faster as well. Similar results have been had focusing on influence for two companions to run rich Diplomacy missions for Biochem as well.
  12. Participated in weekend surge testing Beta events, subbed continuously since, on most nights after work for companion tasking, raid lead on the weekend on Harb. Still in it because I keep it fun, not a job, or a "Look at me, I'm uber!" fantasy.
  13. Typically the game has allowed crafters to reverse engineer the second tier of gear currently available. With the latest update to Ziost, the HM boss is dropping 204 level items. Has anyone been successful crafting 198 items yet? Having scavenged and harvested top tier bosses on the planet, I see that no new mats appear to have been created. If you have crafted 198s, what mats did it take? Thank you
  14. I agree with the core of what is being said here, learning new ops works best in a guild group, especially when you are a new tank, as tanking is the most critical role mechanics-wise. Having a mentor-minded main tank makes life much easier, especially if you can be in voice to hear the calls for tank swaps. Having said that, I have pugged Ravagers and ToS successfully several times, but as ranged DPS, where the main mechanic is don't stand in colored circles. I run a raid group in guild, but I also pug on alts, partially for the gear, and partially to see how other folks do things. The good tactics I take back to my team. I run on Harb and find the best pugging times are Tues-Wed evenings when the main raid groups are pugging to fill holes in their raid line-ups or on Sun-Mon evenings for folks who were gone over the weekend and are willing to try almost anything to get a few comms and a chance at set piece gear. I will grant you, there are far fewer pugs than in the past, and the level 60 ops are not very newbie friendly. Your best option is to read up on the missions, watch videos, get your gear up to at least 186 standards (especially the weapon hilt/barrel, and for a tank, the chest/head/legs armor slots). Similarly, a tank survives on armor and health, so having as many augs as you can, really helps you be survivable. When the tanks die, the raid typically wipes. And can someone explain to me why so many dps pugs have great looking outfits with 192/198s and a sub 186 mainhand? When someone calls in general chat for 1 tank, jump on it, but when they ask for 2, be sure to bring lots of credits for clones, and repairs. Cloning and Kolto are the staples for pugs.
  15. The original poster has a good point. It would not take much developer effort to clean up crafting missions and it would make it much more fun for the serious or casual crafter if we could filter the mission types. Most of my crafting toons can now do 6 companions at a time (after a similar long forum thread about how it would ruin crafting), but I rarely send more than two, as the purple mats are typically the only end game interest, and are only worth doing as bountiful or rich. Logging a character in and out multiple times, every time, to finally get the rich missions is simply a time wasting grind. The second poster's classic whine of No No No, translates to me as: I have found a money making niche hidden away in a mindless chore and you are not allowed to touch it for fear I will make less money. Grow Up! The vast majority of crafters in the game do it primarily for their own toons, and could care less about the latest market quotes. Making the materials take more time and trouble to get does not add fun or value to the gaming experience, it just makes it annoying. It also means the "do it yourself" folks are typically undergeared for endgame content. They will be better able to join the mainstream if their crafting experience is entertaining one. Putting in random companion kidnappings, arrests (especially for dark missions), illnesses, or strikes could add a similar effect, but with a little fun factor. As silly as that statement sounds, keeping a task broken or annoying to justify a market price is even sillier. The phone app, with a timer or status meter to show you when they are ready again would be quite clever, but likely beyond the budget allotted for the Very small fraction of the gaming community that could make effective use of it. Add a feature that limits them to 8 hours of missions per day with overtime bonuses or labor laws and we can have it be even more engaugeing.
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