Yeah..this guy really really really hates raiders. Outside of calling all of us spoiled rotten babies who potentially eat babies he also is upset about groups selling runs to which he BiS gear is really for. Nigtmare raiders are the swtor version of "the coporate overlords". He doesn't want to understand, or accept, that his ideas are not 100 percent facts as he wishes them to be. He continually quotes WoW as the primary example of why BiS for top end content is an outdated philosophy yet ignroes that FF14 has 22 million players and is...you guessed it...primarily a raiding game. He doesn't want to understand, or accept, that nightmare raiders don't give two hoots if someone "beneath" us can acquire gear. We are simply pointing out that being really upset about not being able to get BiS gear for solo play will not negatively affect their experience. Which is absolutely true. It doesn't matter at all that NiM raiders don't need the gear either. He just REALLY wants to trash the nightmare raiding crowd as best he can. His reasons are his own. But, as I watch his assault daily I just laugh at him. He's become the clown of the forum. Speaking of gearing systems this is what I would love to see: The daily areas (all of them) get updated vendors that sell the PvE base gear (green, blue, purple or whatever color who cares as long as its upgraded), and crafting schematics for mods enhancements armorings etc. and you unlock it via reputation and credits. This gear helps you clear the next tier of content (vet fps, vet uprisings if you have green or blue, story mode operations for purple). Story mode operations drop tech frags and one actual unassembled piece per boss that everyone rolls on and this gear is gold moddable, and gear to clear hard mode operations and master mode flashpoints. In hard mode its rinse repeat except the gear is for nightmare. In nightmare you get exclusive titles, mounts, gear sets, weapon sets, color crystals, pets, companion unlocks, dyes, decorations, and materials for nightmare crystals (so that content becomes easier as they progress and clear as well as being able to really anger that guy who hates sales runs). Tech frags can drop from...everything still...so that there's a buffer and people can all get to their desired level. PvP would have two vendors who sold specifically PvP gear. Moddable. Ranked still has Girradda's rewards etc. That's what I would love to see.

Ermahgerd. The NiM community isn't happy with everything. We haven't been in years. Which is why there are so few of us left. It's also why there's so much talk of Final Fantasy next Friday. Truth be told, no community in this game should be happy. Nobody is getting nearly the amount of content they should be getting for an expansion let alone the 10 year anniversary one. Nobody is getting any real player systems update that makes good sense. Nobody is getting anything good out of this expansion outside of a Barbie doll upgrade in the weapon outfitter. This isn't an expansion. This isn't anything. This is a total waste of players time and money. Instead of always blaming a community steadily on the decline why don't we all do what Trixxie suggested in unsubbing to report feedback? That's SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful than saying the nim raiding crowd needs to feel special or that we approve of anything. We do not. Non moddable gear is dumb. Not having a raid is for x years and running now is dumb. Having to reinvent the gearing wheel every "update" is dumb. Trying to get excited for what amounts to a weapon outfitter update is duuuuuuuumb. This game, while we all love to remember the good times whatever they were for us, and that we still have great friends in game to pal around with, is literally not good enough for us. They purposefully make it not good enough for us fully knowing that what they give us doesn't matter at all. THAT is the true shame in all this. How big of "yes men" we all have become.

Can I vote for you for president of something?

That was for you since you seemed to have a need to include nightmare raiders in your scorched earth campaign

Final Fantasy is a better suggestion. And the majority of raiders here DO play that game.

1) The posts I've seen are pretty much more related to the need vs want argument. But please do show me the posts you're referring to. As an example, yesterday I was in a nightmare EC fun run. The consensus after hearing that solo players were upset about 7.0 gearing was definitely more of "oh, well it doesn't matter to us if they can get gear". But I will go back to the discords and make sure I hold a vote. Why not. I've already spoken to my friends and they all agree that nobody cares if a solo player, or a casual player, or a whatever that isn't a nightmare raider has the opportunity for gear. Regardless this is just another straw man since you don't speak for ALL solo players or ALL casual players. 2) This is why nightmare raiders do not gear check but achievement check first and foremost. Gear checks are much rarer than people assume. 3) Having communication with a person does not mean they're in cahoots to screw you over. And moreover, so what if a developer is communicating with the raiding population? Do you know specifically what was discussed? Maybe it was in regards to why Dxun was met with universal blah whereas Gods was met with universal yay!. Wouldn't a developer asking for feedback on raiding content best come from the raiding community? Don't the developers also have a totally public swtor discord for all players? Is that a thing? Honestly, I don't know. I don't go looking for the developers to talk to. I think they make foolish decisions like removing all companions and relegating them to faceless mindless husks even though they're supposedly making a bioware game. I will never not be bitter about that. Worst choice they have ever made.

What, exactly, does it mean to have "good gear"? If it's simply a higher number then you are very very mistaken. It's why you should be significantly more concerned with non moddable gear which ironically enough is what the "subset" of the population that you refer to is concerned about. Or at least what's left of the subset of the population you are blaming for zero reason. And you know what? Let's just be totally honest. Gear from 326 to 330 from a performance perspective won't be noticeable. At all. So to sum it up, nim raiders do not care if you have gear. We don't care if you have an avenue for it. And while it doesn't matter to us, it is still a complete and total fact of swtor life that if you ARE a solo player (strictly solo not casual which has a vastly different meaning altogether) then you more than likely have zero actual need for super bis gear. The only two pieces of content for a solo player that I could see needing "higher level" gear would be that Eternal Champion solo dungeon, verteran and master mode chapters. And NOBODY would care if you could get gear for that. The sad truth about all this is that most of the people complaining that they MAY not have IMMEDIATE access to top gear are guilty of the exact thing they're pushing onto my crowd. Greed. Entitlement. Now, it's COMPLETLEY valid to claim that the solo experience is negatively impacted by the new weekly mission system, or the doubling of conquest. But, sheesh. The idea that "because of nightmare raiders we can't have nice things anymore" is so utterly wrong. None of us care. This "crowd" that seems hell bent on blaming the nightmare raiding community just seems to need some avenue to vent. Vent towards the developers.

You can beat a Merc the same way you can beat a Jugg.... stun and let things fall off them...Patience is a virtue.

You can continually try the passive aggressive route to attack the population you think is responsible for your frustration, but just because you can do something doesn't make you right. But if it makes you feel super good and increases that dopamine flow then by all means keep popping off in ways that make you look foolish.

Being a founder or a legendary player doesn't mean anything. Regardless, you did hit on something that I think is worth expanding on. That is that this game is an RPG at its heart. And even though it is an rpg at it's heart, I truly believe that in 10 years of playing, this game has never really found a true identity. When they went hard into the RPG portion they were met with less interest (Kotfe Kotet), when they went for group play/balanced approach they were met with more interest (Shadow of Revan). But, ultimately they never REALLY just went all in to one philosophy for a long period of time, or enough time for the identity to actually settle. It was a little dabble here a little dabble there. Then to further confuse everything they made absolutely awful development choices that doomed the path they were trying to take (Kotfe Kotet removing companions, going generic introducing 78 million companions for no reason at all etc and for the sake of argument here non moddable gear and other gearing related issues). They've just never never never produced enough content of either "mode" to really move any needle. 7.0 does sound more like a return to something more akin to Shadow of Revan to me. Less content for sure, but from a framework perspective maybe it is right to say it's like SoR which was their most popular "expansion". And true to form, it sounds like they're stuck repeating the cycle of "good idea marred with horrible horrible design choices". So to tie it into the title of the threat I do get what Bioware is doing: they're trying to replicate their most popular expansion, but yeah continuing their amazing ability to make horrible design choices. They're at least consistent no matter what. edit: I also really do believe that if they had continued the Kotfe Kotet type game they'd have really been successful assuming they had never done the removal of companions and made them as they are now. the idea of monthly chapters was really really good. They just blew it. Bioware is not Empress Acina, but Minister Lorman.

You're right. I'm joking, and I'm the biggest dumb dumb out there. There's no point to play this game. We should all quit right now.

Your post here...I'm in agreement on I think. I'm extremely skeptical of non moddable gear. Extremely.

Thanks Casi, this is another good post. From the good posts I think I can actually have the ability to look beyond the the none sense. While it may not ruin the actual ability to play the content a solo player desires to play the problems could potentially be: 1) The gearing treadmill leads me to gear that's worse than my current gear which no matter what does not allow me to continue to progress my character 2) Time to reward could be too long and take the time effort ration to a place that's out of whack for a solo player I think those two points are probably hard to refute and definitely worth seeing if those get fixed when things go live. Oddly enough, neither of those revolve around the ability to get BiS gear. Or rather, it very well might not.

This is actually not correct. Collicoid was removed by the developers if my memory serves me this morning. How are TC groups being the only thing around any different than highlighted hardmode of the week? How is it any different than hs or rr spam? I don't see a difference in principle, and I don't know if that example should be used to describe how wide open the game is to everyone now. Regarding conquest: This is something I've really been up and down with. I have 3 characters I've been playing. I have 2 million conquest points or more between the three. Are we REALLY sure that the conquest changes are going to REALLY be that hard to achieve? Is it really that awful that we can't hit our weekly conquest goal on a character by logging in and breathing? I'm pretty skeptical of this attitude as well. Live will tell the tale for sure there. There is noooooooo way this is the most active community this game has ever seen. Nooooooo way. If you've been here since pre launch man how do you forget not even being able to log into a server due to how busy it was? Sure there were issues but strength of community back then was enormous. I'd say it lasted through 2.0, fell off a little bit in 3.0. A litle bit further in 4,0. And then cratered in 5,0 to now. Play your way is also a bit of a question to me. What does that ACTUALLY mean to players? I'm not going to lie here, this is sounding more and more like the pot calling the kettle black. Or at least potentially it could be the pot and kettle gig. Let's say the gear treadmill is long enough and satisfying enough for a solo player to be able to enjoy their content including conquest unencumbered. Let's just speculate (since realistically we are speculating a whole lot about the gear that isnt on live servers yet anyway) that all that is true, then this becomes a "I want bis rewards so when people look at me they see how good I am" and IF that's the actual case here then this whole argument is washed out and irrelevant. If it's more a statement of "I refuse to accept green or blue or even purple, gold or ****" then we should call that out as greedy and unnecessary just like people seem to want to do to the raiding community. or whatever is left of the raiding community that is. I do get what you're saying about progressing your character. But, I also kind of think that idea along with play your own way are more vague than we kinda need them to be. Like I can say "a solo player will be able to become more powerful by playing heroics and other solo activities by upgrading their gear via conquest vendor over time and upgrading that gear from that vendor will make that content easier" and be completely correct.

This is a very very good post. Thank you for this one.

I actually would very much like it if crafting had BiS gear on it. After all there was a time you could craft a lot of stuff that was absolutely relevant to raiding like relics for example. This was a hit back when the Gemini stuff was out. Raiders were all about this from what I can remember. Right now, you can craft absolutely relevant augments. You are right that crafting should be expanded to further fit into the solo play model. That's an absolute solution. Your name calling for no reason...takes away your credibility.

This is one of those BS arguments. Credits are rewards. You'll still receive those gear tokens, and you will still be able to upgrade your gear (I have not been on the PTS so what that gear may look like is for someone else to comment on). Nobody likes running any content for rewards that don't match their effort level. Correct? This also isn't answering the main question I've asked which was "in 7.0 will a solo player be able to run their desired content without issue". The answer is yes as stated by a previous poster saying the bar is so low that gearing doesn't even matter for solo content. If a solo player can play their way in 7.0 then this forum talk is an over reaction no matter what people may or may not want to see in the expansion. There's plenty I want to see, but will not get. Question to you (honest question here please actually think about it): If the gear treadmill for a solo player is long enough to keep a solo player striving for more while not ruining their ability to complete their desired content will that be satisfying? Or is it strictly "I want best in slot and nothing will matter unless I can get my hands on that" Not judging you either way,

screw social interaction! I want titles! and mounts! and decos!

Apparently you are now. Have fun and enjoy the cake. i swear, the cake is NOT a lie.

I miss expertise gear so much. P.S I did not expect to still see you here playing. Happy 10 year anniversary!

Well, it's a very direct question with a very direct answer. If the solo player has such a low bar where gearing progression could be completely removed then the idea that this new gearing treadmill will ruin their play is proven to be an over reaction. Trying to change the topic to raiders don't need it either doesn't change the answer to the question. This idea of best in slot being attainable by all, or else all playstyles will be ruined....is an over reaction. And...as I said...my bet is that non moddable gear does not affect my ability to raid the content I want to raid. So I don't really care about it. I'll just let it happen. As I play I'll gear up just as the solo player will gear up over time too. We are totally over reacting to this stuff.

Maybe it's the definition I'm looking for of what a solo player is. It was my understanding that a solo player does not group with other players in the game. If that's the true definition of a solo player (NOT A CASUAL PLAYER. A casual player will play all types of content but might not be in a guild or something. Not someone who refuses to group) then they won't be whispering to join that group not now nor in 7.0. If that's the case then their solo play experience remains unchanged. edit: What if (and I don't know the answer to this question which is why I'm asking it in a hypothetical sense) the gear treadmill, and the time it takes to level up, is long enough to give the solo player something to strive for. In that case does it really matter that the gear is not best in slot?

This has nothing to do with the solo player experience

I would disagree that the only relevant justification is for raiders to feel super awesome compared to the common man or woman. That's taking things a bit too far in my book. The question is really, to me, will the gearing system stop a solo player from playing the content they want to play. the answer seems to very well be "no" from a matter of fact honest examination. A lot of stuff that's being thrown around is nonsense. Just like the question i ask "will non moddable gear affect my performancein the raid content I want to raid " I bet that answer is technically no too even if I don't really LIKE non moddable gear. Just seems like people's motivations are super out of whack. I have a feeling this gearing system won't stop anyone from enjoying their desired content of choice.

This seems to be the most thought out post in this thread. Thank you.