I guess I'm wondering why it should need to be dictated at all. There is no real justification in this game at this time for this sort of a grind. It serves no purpose but to attempt to artificially breathe life into years-old content. We've done this grind already. First, with conquest. Then with DvL. Now with GC. Defending this in any small way makes you look ridiculous.

Why feed the troll?

It will be extremely awkward at first. Alien even. Simply holding the mouse will feel weird since your thumb is now not applying real pressure to it. But as said, once you're comfortable with it (and a week sounds about right) it will be difficult to imagine not using one.

While you are certainly correct, IMO this is the fundamental problem with 5.0. Content should not need incentives. If it does, it isn't good enough to begin with. This is a bubble. Does anyone think this can last?

I have zero interest in it. And having played some Master Difficulty chapters on PTS I don't see them being a very big draw. That said, in a vacuum, it's not a bad idea. I think they were indeed tuned poorly and rely too much on number scaling. Had they been done correctly, and with a viable reward system, they (along with Eternal Championship) would have made a nice mechanism for solo gearing - instead of the disaster of GC.

No, there is indeed a Veteran mode. It's just not tactical.

IIRC they aren't tacticals

I logged in yesterday. I am not happy with the new system. That seems to be a tiny hole in your logic.

This is true. And it is horrible approach. Many players were FTP because they felt the new content wasn't worth a sub. Why would they suddenly think so now? And many players subscribed despite the new content. They've been pissed on. There's a simple answer to solve all the problems Ben is trying to solve. But he seems bent on making sure he tries every possible bad idea instead. Ben - create content. Real content. Content that has inherent replayablilty. True group content. Semantics aside, Uprisings do little (if not nothing) to make this game more attractive to people who were not already here. Focus on MMO content. Content that will help form, grow and sustain guilds. A community. You can dilly around this all day but at some point you need to face facts. This system is not going to have the effect you should be looking for. Your goal should not be to make this game more attractive to new players. You need to focus on retention. The content you have created in the last two years have done exactly nothing to bolster retention. Literally, nothing. It's done the opposite. Stop throttling old content. This is a subscription model. FFS If you can't get that single, simple thought through your skull you need to pass the baton bro. Sorry but the livestream today just cemented that. You guys just don't f-ing get it and it's clear you never will.

So essentially what you are saying is that you want to gate T3 gear behind a minimum of a 180-290 hour window. Why? What justification is there for this in the absence of new content? I will not argue what you propose is not better than what we have. But I will also not pretend it seems appropriate for this game at this point in time.

this is about right. many of the people I know log in 2 nights per week for 2-3 hours.

Because there is no *********** new content that requires gear. Why gate stale, years-old content behind a gear grind?

Are you seriously asking that question or just trolling? Regardless of what other games do, it is nonsensical in this game, at this time.

Absolutely not. You're implying that if somehow 230 gear allows a group to be on par in 5.0 as a group in 220 in 4.0 (which, btw, I don't even slightly agree with, but that's not my point) - then they can now.... do what exactly? Raid SM? They already could. Raid HM? I'm sorry, but I do not believe there is a meaningful sample of people that desired to do HM raiding but did not due to the difficulty of obtaining 220 gear. I call utter BS. And I am willing to wager a large amount of credits that anyone that struggled to obtain 220 gear will in any way be able to kill HM bosses in 230. PvP? They already could. Ranked? They already could. So the only other content in the entire game left is HM FPs which, being honest, we're talking about maybe three of them. So if the point of this entire loot system is to make 5 or 6 HMFP bosses easier, grats.

It's worth pointing out that relative tuning of new gear vs. new boss hp has exactly zero to do with validating this gearing system - which is how this tangent arose.

Yes, this is spectacular. We are doing the exact same thing. Farming VMCs with our raid time so that it will have only taken two months to work on the content we had on farm last month. You're not enlightening anyone. We know this already. No one I know is seriously trying to gear via CXP. The problem is that this is not even remotely fun. And once we get back to the bosses we still had left - Brontes/Terror - the VMC gain drops to zero. No one is saying gear is not available. We are saying crafting *********** sucks because you have to farm the mats and with 2 nights per week it means two straight months of farming four year old content. Oh - and alts? Lol.

Well said.

Likewise. The ability to actually quickly gear up characters to participate in whatever content a player chooses to was basically the sole good aspect of the game. Stale content gated? Pointless. I don't care that GC/CXP exists for players that want it. It should not be something shoved down everyone's throat though, as it has sucked the fun out of the game for me, and many others.

Your problem is you are looking at SWTOR as a game. It is not that anymore.

Technically.... I suppose if your goal is to split hairs you are correct. That does not make them any less of a joke. What I guess I do not understand, is how I've never - not once - spoken to a person in game that is happy with GC/CXP. I understand I really only talk to players in my guilds and random people I group up with, but it seems to me if this wasn't so bad someone would have had something nice to say. I do understand there is a group of players who, perhaps because higher-tier gear is available through a solo avenue, seem happy with their situation. I've never met one in game but I suppose that makes sense. But even here on the forums, I've only heard them say they like how it affects them. I've not heard a single good reason why PvP and Ops players had to have their gearing paths destroyed for GC to have been dropped in place. I guess I just wonder why I haven't heard one sensible response as to why GC couldn't have been simply added to the existing gear paths, instead of replacing them.

Lol no there isn't. Why do you continue to just make stuff up?

Musco (or Ben, I don't recall) actually made a post on the test forums and said they were most interested in using the PTS for feedback on: How enjoyable the content is Feedback on changes they can/should make How to make things more fun. The immediate, overwhelming response was that the system was horrible, no one wanted it, it was too grindy and it would make people quit. BW responded by tripling the amount of CXP levels. So let's be honest, they could care less if people like it or don't like it. That's not their problem. They just care about subs. And losing 10-15% of the sub base might very well be offset by gaining 10-15% of the old FTP base. We. do. not. matter. Regardless, the new system being proposed is garbage. It does not solve the fundamental problem of allowing us to play the game as we want to. Until they revert to the 3.0 gear system for Ops bosses, the game will not be fun for many players.

It would be great if you could defend this statement. Or try, at least.

This is essentially the best advice to a player or guild looking to explore Operations content. That said, as much as I admit my first reaction to a group wiping in EV to an enrage timer is to smirk a tiny bit - a more objective view would be to say it's a good indicator of something I've said many, many times. Operations really need to be 4-tiered in this game. I think most players that regularly consume Operations content - both currently and historically - would say they are pretty well done but poorly tuned. And the overarching structure of Ops play in this game is dated, at best. There is no LFR. There is no Flex. There is no ability to rerun content if players are willing to forego rewards, to assist their guild. If the structure of operations was more modernized, and player-friendly, the content would see a lot more play. OP is describing the main justification for a 4-tier system. "Story Mode" is poorly developed. This game needs a true "Story" level, one without enrage timers, inconsequential mechanics etc. What we have is an amalgam. WoW's LFR is a better example of what this mode ought to be. A literal button-mashing lolstomp. Without such a mode, there's really no effective way to incorporate a logical bridge into the harder-mode difficulties. Beyond "Story" there should be normal/hard/NM for the players that truly want to explore more deeply, and more seriously. Right now the floor has to be set low enough to let groups like OP's complete it, which makes the difficulty jumps into higher difficulty content too wide. That the studio went to a two-tier model, rather than expanding to four, defies logic.

Seems naive to me, that point of view.