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JaeOnasi

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Everything posted by JaeOnasi

  1. These proposed changes in the first post do nothing to stop those folks who've amassed billions. What's 800 credits to someone with 100 billion? Nothing. What's 800 credits to a new player? A LOT. The quick travel costs will hurt new folks and have zero effect on billionaires. This stronghold/guild ship travel costs punish roleplaying and travel costs, especially for new players. My guild roleplays 4 times a week with some players doing side roleplay on the guild ship and strongholds. If you institute costs for travel to strongholds, some of our new players aren't going to be able to travel unless someone gives them credits. Things you can do that won't disproportionately affect newer players or those with few credits: 1. Be more aggressive on banning RMT. You can't control the economy while RMTers are pouring credits into the economy. You may as well pee into the wind if you don't enact any changes without dealing with the gold sellers. 2. Raise the credit cap on the GTN. People are selling outside of the GTN because those items currently exceed the allowed GTN amount. 3. You need to find a way to incentivize high-credit purchases and put in high credit sinks. You could start by doing what Guild Wars 2 does by allowing credits to be exchanged for cartel coins. Make the credit cost high, but put it there. Add in a lot more dyes, cosmetic items, different armors, mounts, weapons, crystals, decorations, hairstyles, hair colors, facial styles, etc that can be bought with credits. Fashion is the true end game for many, and players will spend a LOT for it, if it's anything like I've seen playing Guild Wars 1 and 2 and Final Fantasy 14. 4. Perhaps re-institute amplifiers, but don't build the amplifier numbers into NIM/Master Mode content to the extent that those become required. These don't have to be high percentages, but the min-maxxers like me will love the extra couple of percent so long as you make it so it's not required to clear content for newer raiders/PvPers. And yes, I know a bunch of us will gripe about the cost, but it certainly was a huge credit sink for me. 5. Allow us to buy more gear mod/left size max items. I'd pay a lot of credits to gear out a bunch of my alts just so I wouldn't have to stick my one set of min-max gear into legacy bay to transfer it to another toon all the time. I could live with needing to have to turn in the first item I acquire in order to unlock it for the rest of my alts. Maybe you have to have a certain item level in order to talk to the vendor, or put more items for sale with Zeek and Frik (or whatever their names are) for the current 336 armor mods. 6. Increase the amounts of grade 11 mats for augments, stims, and medpacs gathered from nodes, and put out more nodes. Increase the supply and the demand goes down. 7. Make crafting relevant. Let the crafters make items that are close to equivalent to end game gear. Allow them to make cool-looking outfits, dyes, weapons, tunings, and crystals that are crafter-only. 8. Allow us to dye weapons in addition to gear, or offer more color skins to current weapons. 9. Sell some of the Grade 11 mats for credits in addition to scraps--make those mats bind-on-pickup so they can't be resold for more on the GTN. People will pay for the convenience.
  2. Nearly spit out my drink laughing at you saying BW continuing "bringing this vision to life" could only be viewed as a threat. You're not wrong, though. At least they made it crystal clear that they've chosen the "My way or the highway" method of interacting with players. I guess for me in 44 days it'll be the highway.
  3. Perhaps this is why since Jan 1 alone, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson has sold 20,000 shares of EA stock, COO Laura Miele has sold 9,300 shares, CFO Blake Jorgensen has sold 6,630 shares, CPO Vijayanthimala Singh has sold 1,600 shares, and CLO Jacob Schatz has sold 2,000 shares.
  4. Thanks for the update. The cinematic trailer was fantastic. Best part of 7.0 by far. Understatement of the millennium. When are you fixing the glaring gearing problems and the weapon outfitter? When is 7.1 coming?
  5. For those of you wanting to run KOTOR on Win 10--run it in compatibilty mode for XP SP2. Check out Deadly Stream forum--they have some tips on running on different systems like Linux. Also, check out the KOTOR subreddit (I found a thread here with different tips that might help ) As for 7.0....ugh. Just ugh. Some nights, I have time for an Op. Some nights, I might only have time for a flashpoint or heroic or two. Before, I could do any content and get BIS gear. Now, if I want dedicated (eventually moddable) BIS gear, I can _only_ get it doing NIM Ops. In 6.0, I could get upgrades for my gear doing flashpoints and heroics and conquest. 7.0 is definitely not "play your way". It's "play our way--and we're making it a grind to keep you subbing longer." I have 3 toons with the conquest reward that I can't claim because I don't have enough tech frags to buy an upgrade that also consumes the commendations I'll need. The currencies are wildly out of sync because I like to play my way--but BW's insane gearing system makes that impossible. No thanks, BioWare. This buggy, awful mess isn't fun. My sub's good for another month, and sad to say, I'll probably not be renewing after that--after playing this game since beta.
  6. Yep, we were unpaid testers and our testing was completely ignored. I won't waste my time ever again, either--and I tested for game beta and at least one other time for sure, maybe more before this last time. I had a feeling my time was going to be wasted, although I had hoped something might come out of my efforts. The state 7.0 was released in certainly confirmed that almost none of the critiques were in any way remotely considered, much less acted upon. You, me, and dozens if not hundreds more testers told BioWare the same thing: Gearing was awful, the whole thing was a buggy mess, the UI was atrocious (I can't even read which of the 18 million different currencies are needed for gear piece upgrades at the vendors--and I have a large monitor), the weapon outfitter wasn't even available for testing. After being told for the last 7 years that BioWare was 'looking at implementing' the weapon outfitter but that the coding is extremely complex, I highly doubt we'll ever see a weapon outfitter, although I'd like to be wrong. At least give us back weapon mods while you work on the weapon-outfittter-that-will-be-pushed-back-to-8.0. Maybe I'm being too optimistic that there'll even be an 8.0, but I can dream. As for the problems we see on 7.0 live, BioWare? I told you so. In several detailed posts. As did many other of us testers. We warned you releasing 7.0 with all the bugs, bad UI, insane gearing, and non-working weapon outfitter would be an unmitigated disaster. You ignored it. You get to live with the logical outcomes we warned you about. Unfortunately, we have to live with it, too. And many are simply choosing not to live with it anymore and are leaving for other games. Some of the other posters in this thread are correct--you, BioWare, show incredible disrespect for consumers and public testers when you ask for feedback and then do absolutely nothing with constructive critiques that very clearly show you the severe problems. I can't decide if that's sheer hubris, foolishness, lack of interest in even reading the feedback, or just plain bad decision-making. Ignoring severe problems that mean people can't even equip cartel market weapons and still be able to do the gear grind certainly is a monumentally stupid business decision. I love this game. I want it to succeed so that my friends and I can continue playing it. I've been extremely happy with many BioWare games over the years, and I'd love for BioWare to have continued success for years to come. However, the quality control that this company had even 5 years ago obviously is now gone. This isn't the company that Drs. Ray and Greg built and ran at all. What a shame to see it falling apart this badly. SWTOR is unplayable in some areas (Primal Destroyer, Revan in TOS, the new fp, etc). My guildmates are dropping subs like crazy because they want to play end-game, not grind-game. Enough other people drop their subs, the game dies. I'd prefer that not happen--I don't want you all to lose your jobs, and I still want the game to be successful and profitable. I have absolutely no desire to hear the standard PR garbage of "we're reading the feedback." First, I don't believe you anymore--you didn't read and then act on the feedback on PTS, so it's clear only sub numbers and cartel purchases have any impact on your decision-making whatsoever. Second, I don't want to know you're _reading_ the thousands of bug reports and complaints. Any five-year-old can read the comments. So, please, stop with the verbal parsing. I want to know you're _fixing_ the problems and what concrete, actionable steps you're taking to deliver on your promises of more playable content, bug fixes, readable UI, and a working weapon outfitter (or just go back to weapon/off-hand mods, for heaven's sake). I want a realistic timetable for those fixes and details on what you're implementing. There are ways to do that without giving away your trade secrets. That would be real communication, not this "we see your comments" nonsense.
  7. While I’m the guild leader for 2 mostly-family guilds and can’t unsubscribe until we decide how to handle those, I certainly can stay logged out most of the time to play other games that actually appreciate paying customers and thus not see the flash sales for all the CC weapons for sale…that we can’t equip anyway in 7.0. I might not unsubscribe right away, but I’m switching down to 1 month and won’t be buying any other cartel market items until BW fixes this nightmare. You don’t have to unsubscribe to have a financial impact. It will be fascinating to see the EA quarterly report the first quarter after the subs bought for 7.0 release run out.
  8. Believe me, I don’t like thinking this is a possibility, but seeing negative change after negative change after negative change based solely on their game metrics, when BW _knows_ from player feedback those are profoundly bad moves that will drive players away? It’s hard to come to any other conclusion, no matter how hard I try. At some point, mere incompetence at/mistakes with 7.0 design stop being options. If I didn’t care about this game, I wouldn’t bother posting, but I do care. Not that I think any of us players have any impact anymore, as is clear from a 100 credit “refund” for items that cost 3000 tech frags to replace. The money isn’t the issue. The time spent to grind tech frags to get the new tactical is a significant time burden to those affected, and we can’t even “stock up” on more than 11,000 tech frags ahead of time. I’m losing tacticals on at least 15 of my toons. Grinding tech frags will take a lot longer in 7.0, so replacing those will require a substantial amount of time. The grind involved on the PTS made me realize it’s not worth it—at least at 7.0 launch. And that’s just the tactical problem alone. Maybe BW will discover that ignoring players doesn’t work after thousands of people unsubscribe. Maybe they’ll even learn that before the game dies. Hard to believe they don’t already know this, however, hence the conspiracy theory.
  9. Yet more things being removed? I have a lot of tacticals being removed from my many alts. Are you reimbursing me for the tech frags of all of those, or am I screwed over six ways to Sunday on that front? Serious question: are you/EA trying to sabotage this game into failure? Sure looks like it to me, especially given EA loses its exclusivity license in a year. (Edited spelling)
  10. Can we equip and use this dual saber after 7.0 with the weapon outfitter not working? No? :slow clap:
  11. You're very welcome. Like you, my guilds have a significant number of members who've said, "I can't equip my CM weapons that I paid good money for after the 14th? BioWare's taking away moddable gear? I'm not even able to do Ops lockouts? I have to grind multiple places just to get one set of gear, and it's an insane grind to gear my alts? I'm out. I'm going to go play another MMO where I'm not going to get screwed over in so many directions it makes my head spin. Is BioWare _trying_ to kill this game?" The ones who plan on coming back are telling me, "I'm going to do the story and then unsub until BioWare fixes this crap. If they fix it quickly, fine. If they don't fix it quickly and I end up liking another game even more? Well, bye, SWTOR." What distresses me is that I'm hearing this kind of thing from a much higher percentage of fellow players and guildies than I did with the change from 5.0 to 6.0. And this was before BW made the very quiet announcement that the weapon outfitter won't be available until 7.1 (and a high probability of that never happening, frankly, because they've been working on this unsuccessfully since the outfitter option came out before 6.0). Usually, I've found a number of things to be positive about in updates. I can't find a single thing to be positive about in 7.0 except for the small story content and new flashpoint. I don't know how many more of us can tell BioWare that there are some glaring, severe problems that need to be fixed really fast for the game's financials to stay in the black. About all I can do is what I've done--voice my thoughts. After that, I'll just pull out the popcorn on Feb. 15th while watching social media explode with angry players, check out the half-hour of story content, and then log into FFXIV for a while until the mess here is (hopefully) fixed.
  12. Thank you for the concession (being serious here, not snarky). I think you might be mistaking what I mean by "handicapped" or disabled. I'm not calling casual players handicapped. I'm talking about people with actual, real, physical and/or mental handicaps--my friends who have had strokes or have cerebral palsy and can't move their hands or fingers quickly, my other friends who are legally blind or severely hearing impaired, others with fibromyalgia or severe arthritis who experience real pain when playing, some others who've had traumatic brain injuries, those with severe ASD, etc etc etc. I'm not "preaching" anything. They do find the game physically harder to play as a result of the disabilities. They experienced trouble doing heroics and even story-mode KOTFE/KOTET with 270 gear but found optimized 306 gear allowed them to be successful. Surely, you remember how annoying it was to do MMFPs or even vet content in generic, non-optimized 270 gear and how much easier it is to do it in min-maxed BIS 306. Why in the world would we want to return to foisting sub-optimal gear back on people who have trouble just playing the game at all? This is one of the biggest reasons why I think limiting top gear to a tiny fraction of gamers in 7.0, after promoting BIS availability to everyone in 6.0, is such an awful idea. I'll happily give up stat-point exclusivity if it helps my disabled friends enjoy this game more. My more casual-style friends jumped into Ops and dabbled in vet mode content once they geared up to BIS. They didn't feel confident enough to take it on with 270 gear. Their enjoyment=more subscriptions=SWTOR servers stay open longer. It's 'popular' because it's true. I think I've proven that BIS helps casual players and causes no harm to NIM raiders. Let me know when you can show evidence for your claims besides "I want NIM raiders to be the only ones who can get NIM gear because that's how they do it in WoW, and I like the feeling of exclusivity." What's not working is the development of new content on a much more frequent schedule than one Op every 3 years because BioWare wasted time and resources screwing around with armor _yet again_. And if you stayed around to play the game through the "era of the casuals having BIS gear," then apparently it didn't distress you much at all that Nim raiders didn't have exclusive raid stats, or you'd be playing WoW instead. (snipped for brevity). I'm glad you're not an elitist jerk. (That's a serious comment, not a sarcastic one, to be very clear). I think I've very clearly shown that for a number of players, this is just patently false. I remember how annoyed I was to go to green, non-moddable, non-optimized 270 gear in 6.0 after having min-maxed gold 258 gear in 5.0. I challenge you to go put on 322 green gear once you've obtained Nim gear and see how much you like playing in gear that 'is enough for story and solo players'. If you even do try that, I'm sure you'll be putting your best gear back on right after the first boss because the time it takes to kill even a heroic boss will make doing that content extremely tedious. All .002% of you? Nearly 100% of the feedback expresses testers' intense dislike of non-moddable gear. Go look at the ratio of posts of people expressing dislike vs like of the new gear. And I do take into account that people complain more often than they praise, but even factoring that in, the number and percentage of dislikes is overwhelming. I'm not saying it's hard to process. It's not. What I am saying is that this is going to be an extremely unpopular move once it hits live, and angry/frustrated players don't re-subscribe. No subscriptions=SWTOR servers get shut down faster. No mmo lives forever, but I like this one enough that I'd like to play it a little longer. Influencers depend on their positive relationships with BioWare to keep getting fed exclusive information from the company. You'll see very little negative press from social media influencers because too much negativity means they'll get cut off by BioWare, and that ends their streams. Yes, there will be some who dare to say some negative comments, but by and large, most of them will post only positive "Rah! Rah! This is great!" posts. They know which side their bread is buttered on. The fact that the weapon outfitter alone won't be working in 7.0 and people have to equip non-moddable weapons to gear up I can guarantee is going to infuriate a whole lot of players. They've paid a lot of real money to buy cartel market items they now won't be able to use without nerfing their ability to gear up. It's an insane business decision to remove the ability for players to use Cartel Market items, even temporarily. I shook my head at the irony of a CM weapon being on sale in game the other day that a buyer won't even be able to use after the 14th. And that's just one problem. Does that sound like a winning financial strategy to you? It sure doesn't to me, and I foresee a substantial player exodus from the game until BioWare fixes the gear problems. Whether players return once it's fixed remains to be seen. It's irrelevant how you or I feel about Nim-exclusive gear if a bunch of players leave the game because of it. In any case, if you have any other reason for your support of Nim-exclusive gear besides "I like it having better stats than the casuals and WoW does it that way," then we have more to discuss. Otherwise, there's nothing left to debate.
  13. What the hell, I'll reply. Since you appeared to be answering me, I assumed you thought my post was controversial. You clarified your point here, so now I understand you more clearly, and thank you for that. I'll certainly concede that others have made comments that are rude or at the very least inelegant. None of my disabled/handicapped (whatever word you prefer to use) guildmates thought that getting gear more easily in 6.0 was hurtful to them in the least. In fact, I heard repeatedly that they enjoyed the game substantially more with BIS gear. It certainly didn't hurt me or the whole game to obtain BIS easily, as you assert. If you have data to back up your assertion here, I'm happy to see that. Otherwise, I have Starparse proof that obtaining BIS through any method helped my disabled friends (they stayed alive better, were able to play the game longer (which is good for seeing EA cartel market ads and thus bottom line), they experienced less pain playing). That's a pretty damn significant improvement, not "more hurtful" to them as you claim. I understand your point entirely. Your point was clear enough. I don't agree with your point. Your opinion is based solely on what you alone want. My statements are based on factual stats, my experiences professionally and in game, and experiences with hundreds of guildmates over the years--perhaps starting to get into the thousands at this point, I don't know. But a lot, anyway. So, let me take a moment to clarify my experience in and out of the game, since you made a completely incorrect assumption about my skill level. I generally don't post my resume since I don't honestly care who has better dps, who has more achievements, etc etc etc. I don't think achievements make me better than anyone else, or anyone else better than me as people. Since it's important to you, however: a. I've played this game since beta, and I'd love to play it for years more--which is why I'm very vocal about the 7.0 changes. I think BioWare risks angering enough players that they'll leave the game after completing the new content, and fewer players mean a lower chance of this game staying viable, which means it closes down sooner. b. I wrote the consular column for TORWars back at launch until the owner shut down the site because she was contractually required to for her new job at NCSoft to prevent conflict of interest. c. I've cleared every Op at SM 8m and 16m, nearly all of them at Vet 8m and 16m, and have done some NIM raiding. d. I main infil shadow/deception assassin well enough to be in the top 25 on the dps leaderboards for those specs on my server. e. I've gotten just about everything done in SWTOR that can be done in the PVE realm at master level. f. I can quote theorycrafting numbers by heart at this point and can explain why they're that way in great detail. g. I took the time to go to the PTS and test out the gear and then compared actual statistics. g. I work with partially and completely blind people on a regular basis as part of my profession, and I follow Able Gamers, too (GREAT organization, by the way, folks. They help people with all sorts of disabilities be able to get into and enjoy more games). You can call me "Casual lover Andy", which as an apparent insult is mildly amusing, but you're obviously incorrect. What benefit is there to putting non-elite players and disabled folks at a disadvantage in a story-driven mmo? That's a serious question, not rhetorical. I'd really like to know why you think it's ok to make the game harder for disabled folks so that you and other Nim raiders can have some extra stat points. No, jumping from flashpoints to Ops won't work the same, because people can't trade in flashpoint gear for equivalent Ops gear. It's on a completely different gear track--and that's one of the problems. You can have 326 maxed out for MMFPs, but you can't use that to trade up to 328 Ops gear. You have to start at 320 green crap for Ops, no matter what you have elsewhere. The grind to get to gear that is remotely close to decent is annoyingly long and complex. I've made a spreadsheet just to figure out what gear combos will be best for accuracy (subject to change when 7.0 is live, of course). Pro-tip--if you have to have a spreadsheet to figure out optimal gearing, it's probably still too complex. But I'm a numbers junkie, I actually like that kind of thing, so I deal with it. My actual experience with gear grinding in 5.0 (which is what 7.0 basically is returning too, now improved with even MORE iLvls!!11!!!) was just the opposite of what you _think_it will be in 7.0. The elitists did the grinding for their gear quickly, and then promptly refused to raid with anyone else who wasn't fully geared. That was a significant problem that BioWare was trying to fix and indeed was substantially mitigated with the 6.0 gear changes. That problem will return with 7.0, unfortunately. Elitist raiders have no patience to help newer raiders gear up once a critical mass of NIM raiders has been reached. They'll only raid with other NIM raiders. I can't tell you how many times I was told by guildies that they'd been kicked from a PUG vet mode Ops group because "you don't have enough (then-max) 258 gear". The nim raiders made no offers to help that person get that gear, either, of course. No. I'm saying BIS gear should be obtainable no matter where one games--provided someone puts the work into obtaining it in game. NIM raids certainly can and should have special, unique rewards--Brontes wings are a good example of an exclusive reward. Mounts for getting to the top of the leaderboards in PvP are another example--and none of those have anything to do with gear stats. Since f2p/preferred can currently get BIS gear without paying, your assertion is incorrect. However, it will be "pay to win" in 7.0 since f2p and preferred won't ever even be able to access BIS gear since that's restricted to NIM ops only, and preferred players can't do Ops at all. F2p and preferred won't be able to switch to the second combat style, either. And this is exactly the kind of elitist comment that many find offensive. You think it should _only_ be obtained through Ops and that it should be exclusive. You've made no effort to say how that benefits all players, and I've noted it will make it harder for a lot of players. There are any number of other things that NIM raiders can use to flex their achievements for the world to see besides gear. I'm not wasting time on your other obvious ad hominems. What smear? Show me where that is. I DID help my disabled guildmates. I ran a lot of SMOPS and FPs with them to help them gear up, and then helped them select the correct tactical, gear sets, armorings, mods, enhancements, and left side pieces. I wrote a gear guide for my guild. Every single one of my disabled friends said it was easier to survive with BIS gear over non-BIS gear--there was more endurance so they could survive hits better, and optimized stats helped them kill things faster. Understand that it takes my disabled friends longer to even _see_ puddles of poo on the ground, react to attacks, and my folks who've had strokes or have problems with movement like cerebral palsy take longer to kill things because their APM is substantially lower due to their inabilty to be able to hit keys quickly. Having BIS gave them the max stats which helped them do what you or I could do normally with 270 gear. They had trouble completing some things with "casual gamer" level gear as you might call it. Now do you understand my point? (not being snarky, I'd really like to know if my point is clear to you). I never said you were narrow-minded. I was very precise with my wording. How many other people think like you? 2? 3? .0001% of the raiding community? I assure you, it's a much smaller percentage than you might think, and a much larger percentage of my guildies and friends have expressed sharing my opinion on gear--including other NIM raiders. Yes. Been gaming since Atari 2600 days. Long live the gray dot in Adventure. So what? I could care less what's done in WoW. And that "sick looking piece of gear" could be done with a simple skin without affecting any stats. A number of other MMOs DON'T use this type of elitist gearing, and they're arguably more successful than SWTOR is at this point, which is sad, because I love this game and want it to be super successful. In any case, your preference is categorically NOT how mmorpgs "should work". It's only how _you_ think they should work, and it's an outdated mode of gearing. So, let me get this straight. We should make it harder to gear for others so that you can have the satisfaction of other players...envying you. I don't care about someone envying me in the least. I care about successfully completing a vet and Nim Ops. And I don't envy other players who've achieved top things. I'm happy that they had success doing something they clearly enjoy. However, there are plenty of other items that can incentivize NIM raiders--mounts, special outfit and weapon skins, minipets, more stronghold decos, etc etc etc. Gear stats, which don't show up anyway unless someone actually knows to inspect your gear, should not be one of those things. I think Brontes wings are far more cool than the fact that your crit might be 2900 instead of 2852. The max, moddable gear PER BIOWARE is ONLY available in Nim Ops. They've stated "maybe" moddable gear will come at a later time--no timetable whatsoever, and based on long experience with BioWare's definition of "a later time," I'm not holding my breath on that. Show me the quote where BioWare said moddable gear will be available for anyone besides NIM raiders in 3 months. I'll wait. In the meantime, raiders will say, "Huh, this gear is crap right now, BioWare said I can get moddable gear in 8 months (or however many months from now BW fixes it)--I'll just skip the CF right now and play another game for 8 months until they fix this mess. Then, I'll hop back in." In the meantime, BioWare has lost the subs of all those people during that time--possibly permanently. Considering that I raid several times a week, all I'll say to this is that this entire paragraph is simply wrong. I don't waste time on ad hominems otherwise.
  14. Snipped for brevity. My reply was to Xenaul's claim that the average casual player's performance would improve in 7.0 from 6.0, and my reply was to show why that line of thinking was incorrect based on PTS stats. I wasn't debating any of the points you raised, so I'm not entirely sure where you were going with your post. If casual players don't care about gear, that's fine, but the gear BioWare does offer at the vendors should at least give casual folks who know nothing about gearing a fighting chance at being able to kill overland bosses and champs and do vet FPs and SMOPS in a reasonable time frame. Inadequate and poorly optimized tertiary stats are going to make it that much harder for casual players in 7.0, and it's absolutely going to make it harder for my handicapped guildies and friends. There is no controversy here. Constructive critiques are not controversial. The math is the math, the gear is not optimized at all, and the changes BioWare is making are going to cause howling on the forums and in social media--particularly the weapon outfitter not working yet requiring people to equip non-moddable weapons in order to gear up. I love this game, and I want BioWare to have success because their success means that a 10 year old game continues longer. BioWare wanted testers to give them their opinions--I tested and gave mine. I don't like the changes (see reasoning in my other posts; I'm not repeating them here to save space) and neither do most of my guildmates. I see problems down the road with bringing these changes live, and I explained to BioWare why. That's not controversial. That's being honest, and I've been polite in my critiques. Gushing over these changes like a star-struck fangirl does BioWare a huge disservice and is disingenuous. Why do you care how other players gear up? No one is stopping you from using only Nim Ops and taking 2 years to gear up if you personally want to have that challenge. Who said gearing has to work your way, and ONLY your way, for everyone else? Just because _you_ think it should be difficult, time-consuming, and confined to elitist gameplay doesn't mean that's the correct or even desirable way for everyone else. In fact, restricting BIS gearing to elitist levels is an outdated mode of thinking that frankly belongs in the dark ages of 2004 mmo gameplay. Allowing people to get BIS gear through a variety of means allows them to have some more confidence to take on higher-level content. In fact, more people in my guild started doing vet mode ops for the first time in 6.0 _because_ they were able to use flashpoints to get BIS gear before jumping into the harder content. We went from having one vet mode team to multiple vet mode teams and a couple of teams starting to prog hardmare and NiM-difficulty content when they'd previously gone to other NiM-only guilds in 5.0. BioWare has just killed that with the gear changes and removing lockouts. I don't play hard mode to get gear. I play hard mode because I like the challenge of the gameplay itself and the achievement. I use BIS gear as a tool to let me play vet/Nim level to work towards those achievements, not an end in itself. I go to an Operation to complete the operation, not to say "Hooray! RNGesus finally blessed me with that belt after 2 years!!11!11!!" Again, just because you play it to grind gear doesn't mean everyone else wants to play that way. At least in 6.0, we had both options--you could choose to get gear via Ops only if that's what floats your boat, while I could use flashpoints to get gear for Ops to hop into vet/Nim and work on learning the boss mechanics and getting achievements. My option is gone in 7.0, and BioWare is now incentivizing elitist-only gameplay once more. PUG raiding on my server is not dead in the least--it's quite active, and there is no trouble at all finding players in allies chat in game or on discord servers devoted to doing ops/mmfps/harder content. Pug raiding isn't dead--you're just probably not hooked into the right channels to see people grouping up. Some people get legacy-ignored by so many other players that they can't get a group to pop. Hopefully, that isn't your case. To spend time with my friends in game trying to improve my skill and just enjoy the challenges of learning the mechanics and eventually beating a difficult boss or Operation. Grinding gear need not be involved at all to do that. Pro-tip for BioWare: Grinding is not fun for a lot of people. I might have taken offense at this if I actually cared enough to do so, because I and many others actually do many different things besides Spammer Station. I just finished a master mode run of Kotfe/Kotet with a guildie, for instance, and BIS gear made some of those boss battles survivable where conquest or flashpoint gear would not have. Thank God we finished those achievements before 7.0 dropped. Suffice it to say that having BIS gear in 6.0 has allowed me and many other guildies to jump into vet/Nim content that we weren't able to do in 5.0. Again, why should I push myself your way just because _you_ say I should? I pay the same monthly sub you do. There's no reason to restrict content that I pay for just to make the elitist 0.00001% happy. Again, if you want to grind gear doing only Ops, you're more than welcome to do so. No one forced you to do TC and Hammer station for gear. Don't expect the rest of us to share your definition of a good time. There's a tremendous amount of narrow-mindedness and arrogance in that statement. Do you know I have a number of handicapped guildmates who depend on BIS gear just to survive overland story content? Being able to get BIS by playing however we wanted to play--which was something BioWare hyped 2 years ago and was a phenomenally positive change--made their ability to game even normal content far more enjoyable for them and even less physically painful for some of them. Just because _you_ don't need 334 gear to do story content doesn't mean other people don't need it. BioWare is now taking BIS gear away from my handicapped friends in 7.0 and making the game less accessible for them. Do you think it's appropriate to make the game less accessible for handicapped people? I sure don't. The elitist attitude of "gear should be for Nim raiders only!" makes it harder for BioWare to understand that not everyone who wants BIS wants it just to go do a NIM raid. There are plenty of other reasons why someone wants BIS gear, and it's not because we want to stand around on fleet and flex. BIS gear does not need to be, and should not be, reserved for elitist Nim raiders only. I am so tired of hearing this narrow-minded and frankly selfish view from raiders that BIS gear should be obtained only through NIM content.
  15. Actually, your conclusion that casual players’ average DPS will go up makes no sense whatsoever. It does not square with testing, and it certainly does not square with the math of tertiary stats. I suspect you didn’t look at the gear on the PTS. You honestly think that decreasing accuracy percentages and poorly optimizing all tertiary stats will IMPROVE a casual player’s performance? Here’s what’s most likely to happen. A casual player will not know that they need to buy pieces from multiple vendors to achieve anywhere close to 110% accuracy. I’m not even sure if you can get 100% accuracy with a single set. Many of us told BioWare that there was not nearly enough accuracy even mixing sets on 318/320 gear. I and others suggested increasing the amount of tertiary stats on the current sets to bring stats more in line with what’s needed. BioWare’s answer? Don’t change the stats, create more sets so that we can mix and match, even though I and others had—you guessed it—mixed and matched during testing. Let me explain better why casual players will have even less DPS than raiders and min-maxxers since I suspect this might be a point of confusion. If you do not have enough accuracy (110% for bosses) you miss hits. Every single miss is an absolute DPS loss. Alacrity and crit have no bearing whatsoever on a missed hit. In fact, if you have a high alacrity and low accuracy, you just miss faster. I know how to get accuracy up so I miss as close to 0 hits as possible. The casual player doesn’t know this. When that newer Consular dps player selects all Force Lord armor as the game suggests s/he should do at the vendor (because NOWHERE does BioWare suggest mixing sets to maximize accuracy), that player will experience an absolute dps loss. The percentage loss of accuracy will be even greater for a casual player than it will be for someone who understands the basics of theorycrafting. I’ll be missing 2% of my hits with unaugmented gear. The casual player will be missing closer to 10%, possibly more if they don’t take any left side accuracy pieces or use a proficient stim. So, casual players’ DPS will be overall lower, arguably even quite a few percentage points lower, and definitely not higher as you suggested. On top of that, bosses have more health. Now, you should understand why I think—based on PTS testing and data—that casual players will have a dps loss, perhaps even more percentage-wise than those who do understand the tertiary stats.
  16. It's not fine at all. I already had done just that on PTS because I took every accuracy piece in Force Lord and every accuracy piece in Targeters that Force Lord didn't have, along with all left side accuracy pieces--which was everything except hands/saber/focus. Those plus max proficient (accuracy) stim still gave me an accuracy rating below the 110% threshold at 218 and 220. Of course, that meant I had only hands, saber, and focus left for crit and alacrity, so those stats were complete crap, and it showed in parses: 17k dps vs my current normal 21k on an Ops dummy. The devs know exactly what numbers are required to meet the accuracy and alacrity thresholds, and they could simply have added more to the tertiary stats of what's at the vendors so that the game is semi-playable in 318/320/322 gear _without needing augments_ and without needing to use two different gear sets instead of this craziness we're going to get at the start of 7.0. You might say, "But Jae! 17k is great! That's more than enough to take down bosses!" And yes, 17k is pretty good by objective standards, even though I find it unacceptable for myself. But I play my main at the very top tier for that class. I'm not THE top, by any means--there are people who play infiltration shadow/deception assassin even better. The point is, most players don't play that class at that top level, and also my DPS is dropping by 4,000 points. I parsed a full 24+% less at 320 than I do on live currently. Doing 25% less DPS on vet mod Ops bosses who'll have substantially more health in 7.0 will be frustrating at the least. Now, imagine the casual player who doesn't know what an optimal rotation is, doesn't min-max armor, won't know that s/he needs to buy pieces from two different gear sets to get to 110% accuracy, doesn't even know what utilities to use to maximize DPS, and who, on top of that, will likely keep that cool cartel market lightsaber equipped rather than the fugly generic 318 one because the weapon outfitter doesn't work. That player might pull 5k now for DPS in full 306 gear. Drop that by 25% in 7.0, and he or she will suddenly be unable to take down certain bosses overland, in flashpoints, and in some Ops. That's going to be a huge problem for a lot of casual players. How do you think that will play out for casual players in group finders for MM FPs and harder SMOPs if they get into a group that's partly filled by elitists doing speed runs to gear up? Getting kicked midway through an activity for insufficient gear/ability is always a problem in any MMO, but it will be magnified in 7.0.
  17. I guarantee you that BioWare does know--the formulas are in the code, after all, and at least one of the devs is very familiar with theorycrafting. I did mix and match while testing, and even with every piece available (mixed Force Lord and Targeters, and all left side Accuracy), and the max proficient stim, it wasn't enough for me to reach 110% without having to do an augment or two. And of course, using all that accuracy meant I had, what, 4 or 5 pieces left spread between alacrity and crit, so you can imagine how low those were at 318 and 320. Ugh. The thought of having to augment gear I'm going to throw away at the vendor for an upgrade is making me gnash my teeth in frustration. I can't even save it for an alt, for heaven's sake. I didn't get a chance to see the very latest gear before the PTS went down. Maybe they made it a little better?
  18. Piggy-backing on this--I volunteered to test out content on the PTS--but that was my choice. However, I'm not paying to test it live where I have no choice. Adding in the additional gear sets--WHY??? Just optimize the stats on the pieces you're going to release, for God's sake. It's not like you don't know what the heck those numbers are. I did the mix-and-match of gear sets on PTS to try to get to 110% accuracy. It was IMPOSSIBLE at 318 and 320, even with taking EVERY accuracy-granting piece and left side items and using a max stim. I needed augments to get to 110%. My sub is up in March. BioWare has until then to fix this CF of an "update" for me to continue it. Even then, I think I'm going to go hang out in FFXIV for awhile because I don't want to waste time paying to "test" this mess on live. Certainly, I don't want to bother doing Seasons 2 when I can't even equip the stuff. I have plenty of other games to play and activities to do that don't involve useless grinding for poorly optimized non-moddable gear. I'll check in now and then to see if it's fixed. If not? Well, you won't earn my sub that month. Last week, I had at least 3 guildmates who've let me know they have already or will be unsubbing because they don't want to deal with the BS unmoddable gear. I have even more people howling today about the weapon costume slot not going live in 7.0 and being forced to use the butt ugly 318 vendor weapons. BioWare, "monitoring the feedback" is entirely meaningless if you don't DO anything substantial with that feedback. I can monitor the liquifying lettuce in my 'refresher' drawer in the bottom of my fridge, but it does no good if I close the drawer and leave the moldy mass there. You're parsing words, and we all know it. And despite the pages and pages in thread after thread of overwhelmingly negative feedback, you're moving forward with this "update" (I use the term loosely) anyway. What you will be doing is monitoring the drop in subscriptions that's going to happen after February. I'm sure the EA quarterly earnings statement for the quarter after everyone discovers they can't even equip their lightsabers and blasters while gearing anymore will be fascinating. We've warned you repeatedly this isn't going to go well because we WANT you to fix it so that you succeed. We can all continue gaming here when you succeed, so we have a vested interest in that success. You've managed to reach my breaking point this time after 10 years. Congratulations.
  19. If you can't manage to get the weapon outfitter to work, and you can't allow us to even mod our existing weapons to upgrade them to 318 and above, CANCEL THE UPDATE. I do not want to carry around some fugly-arsed lightsaber when I've spent hundreds of dollars on this game to unlock all the weapons and other items I like. The vendor 318 double lightsaber looks like crap.
  20. Yeah, I have 28 toons geared up right now (I play a LOT, and what the heck else was I going to spend tech frags on before we could buy OEM/RPMs?)--only a few min-maxed, though. I HATE trying to remember which of my 10 shadows/inquisitors has the gear set today. I tried the 'put the gear in legacy bank and transfer to new toon' thing, and always forgot to put the set in the bay or whatever. It's also annoying because I'll switch toons around for an Operation or master mode FP to work around what other guildies bring, and having to take the stuff off, put it in the bay, log on to the new toon, get it out of the bay, put it on business takes time, especially with my long load screens. This new gearing system is terrible for any of us who play multiple classes regularly.
  21. Prefacing this by saying this is not intended as an attack on anyone, so please don't take it that way. I love this game, and I appreciate what the Devs do. I'd like to keep this game around quite a bit longer to continue enjoying it. So, I have a very vested interest in making sure you understand what this gearing change will do to this game. PTS 7.0 gear has taken the absolute worst aspects of grinding pre-6.0 gear, combined it with the absolute worst aspects of grinding 6.0 gear, and then added additional time-gates, currencies, and tier gates to create a monstrosity of a gearing system that somehow is even worse than any previous version. This is already infuriating my guildmates and me to the point that some have already un-subbed or are letting their subs run out rather than grind for weeks on end through old content and what little new content there will be. Let me put this in financial terms for EA. Frustrated players unsubscribe, log out, and don't come back to a 10 year old game. And the proposed gearing is going to frustrate players enormously. Let me be even more blunt: this new gearing system is an unmitigated disaster. The worst of pre-6.0: 1. Non-moddable gear (until 5.0) 2. Had to turn in the previous gear piece to get the next higher gear piece 3. Certain stats were available only on certain pieces (e.g. accuracy only on boots and gloves) 4. Impossible to min-max DPS without buying multiples of the same piece for both healing and dps enhancements 5. Time-gating the currency needed to purchase set bonus pieces 6. Character bound items 7. Set bonus drops in Ops were heavily RNG-based. 8. Ops was clearly favored over other modes of obtaining gear 9. You couldn't exchange a set piece of one type for the next higher set piece of a different type--you could only exchange an initiative implant for the next higher initiative implant rather than any kind of implant. 10. You had to know what 258 pieces you needed in order to pick your 248/252 pieces correctly so you didn't waste currency buying the wrong thing at the lower levels. Worst of 6.0: 1. iLevel meant equipping pieces that weren't ideal stats in order to get better iLevel drops. When I started gearing my tank, I had to put on 306 dps gear just to get 302/304/306 tank pieces. 2. We had to go through nearly 20 item levels to get from 270 to 306 rather than the 3 item levels in 5.0 (248/252/258) 3. Set bonus, tactical, and modding options were so numerous that they were somewhat confusing unless someone consulted guides/theorycrafters for BiS suggestions. Currently on PTS: 1. Non-moddable gear is back (WHY?????) 2. Stats are not in the least optimized on non-moddable pieces--I can't reach 110% accuracy at all with 318/320 gear even with the max proficient stim and every available armor piece/implant/earpiece. My alacrity and crit are also laughably low. 3. Have to turn in the previous ilvl piece for the next ilvl piece at the vendor--which means you can't even use the lower ilvl item for an alt 4. Can't exchange one piece for a different version of the same piece at the next ilvl--e.g. I can't exchange a 320 initiative implant for a 322 adept one--I'm stuck with choosing only a 322 initiative one--this will have major implications for gearing the final ilvl if I pick the wrong thing at the beginning ilvl. 5. Both types of required currency are time-gated at such a high degree that it's going to be impossible to gear up alts to any significant level--you need at least 5 different sets of a single type of gear to get BIS if you play every spec--tank, heals, and _three_ DPS (to account for the alacrity differences in classes with alacrity boosts as an inherent part of the class). The BIS gear I have for infiltration shadow is most definitely not BIS for TK sage or Gunnery Commando--you need 3 different alacrity amounts to get to the correct GCD for those. 6. DPS from 318 and 320 gear is WORSE than my min-maxed 306 gear--but I'm stuck using the 318 stuff because I won't get an decent ilvl drops if I don't equip those. 7. Have to grind through SIX ilevels of gear at a glacially slow pace to get 330 Ops gear--and Ops players will be stuck augmenting non-moddable gear that isn't even top iLvl just to be able to get enough dps to do vet/nim Ops. 8. Can't use a single currency like tech frags to buy other higher iLvl pieces--have to have TWO currencies PLUS the lower ilvl set piece PLUS credits to buy a piece. 9. There are FIVE tracks of gear (WHY????) 10. Gear for Ops can only be obtained in Ops--which means that if a player like me who has time to do a few flashpoints after work but not a full Ops is stuck either committing a lot more time doing just Ops or missing out on important gearing. Some of my guildmates hate Ops and just want to do flashpoints/uprisings/overland content, and we want to game together. I want to be able to play with ALL my guildmates, not just the ones interested in only Ops. I definitely don't want to be stuck doing only Ops to get BIS gear. Despite the inordinate amount of time I've put into this game over the years, I still do have to work at a non-gaming job to pay for my SWTOR addiction, and some evenings, I'm just too darn tired to take on a full Ops. 11. Have to know what BIS gear pieces you want at 330 so that you can select the correct 318 pieces--even if those are clearly sub-optimal stats at 318, unless you just love grinding for useless pieces ad nauseum. In 5.0, if you screwed up and picked the wrong 258 piece, at least you only had to go back 1 ilvl to 252 and work on that to get to the best piece. Now, you have to know exactly which helm you need at 330 in order to pick the correct one at 318. That's unreasonable at best. 12. Top gear is Ops-only (WHY?????)--and it outranks PvP and other gear. I guarantee you are going to have HUGE complaints about that once it hits live. 13. Set bonus moved from six pieces to a single legendary. That's actually a good move--but I get no set bonus for a very long time while I wait to unlock the legendary on every single toon. At least with the 6 piece set, I can benefit from at least part of the set when I have 2 and 4 pieces. The grind to get to the legendary on every single toon is extremely long and tedious. 14. Almost no explanation of how this all works. I can figure it out fairly easily since I understand the theorycrafting underpinnings and stat pools--but I'm the extreme outlier exception and definitely not the rule. I also don't have the most efficient method of currency acquisition figured out yet. When I tried to explain this new gearing system to my family (who all also play), their eyes glazed over and they said, "We'll just ask you what we need to pick when it hits live." If you need an outside influencer guide or Geeky Theorycrafting Mom to explain the gear, you're not explaining it well enough for the average player. 15. Lower tiers of gear are definitely under-tuned for certain parts of the game, e.g. vet/master mode Kotfe/Kotet. So, bottom line: we've gone backward not one but two full expansions to sub-optimal, non-BIS gear that requires not one, but two separate time-gated currencies to obtain, lower levels of which can't be transferred to other toons, and requires 6 or more grind levels for the BIS version which is obtainable only in Ops. All of this coming after you spent the entirety of 6.0 exclaiming "Play as you like--you can get the best, moddable gear doing ANY content in game!" 7.0 is most definitely no longer a "Play the game as you like" system in order to obtain gear. Ungodly, insanely slow, especially compared to 6.0, which admittedly was extremely fast once you got a single toon to all 306 gear. It is impossible as a DPS to reach 110% accuracy without an accuracy augment, even with selecting all available accuracy pieces (both Force Lord gloves/boots, Targeter's helm, and initiative implants/earpiece) at the vendor and using the max proficient stim. I did some flashpoints with a guildmate on PTS. I got a single blue drop that was 320. He got absolutely no gear. We didn't get enough of the new currency to do more than upgrade 1 or 2 pieces--and that was after I made conquest on that toon. Neither of us came anywhere close to the required currency to unlock the legendary. This is markedly slower--exponentially slower. Time-gating two separate currencies (Why TWO??? No previous expansion had more than one) certainly accomplishes your goal of slowing down gear progression, if by slowing down you mean "Speed of molasses in the arctic winter cold" slow. Slugs could travel across the US faster than we can obtain decent gear. Others have stated quite well that this gearing system is atrocious for solo players. I understand wanting to reward group play, but penalizing solo players and small guilds is a singularly terrible way of doing that. This PTS version makes gearing much, much more difficult for solo players or small guilds who can't or don't regularly participate in Ops or even MM flashpoints. You're penalizing solo/small group play by making it extremely difficult to impossible to earn the currencies needed for legendaries and higher ilvl gear. Moving the set bonus to the legendary is an interesting move that I think people will like eventually--but the cost is way too high right now. Gating gear to specific activities is unwise. As I noted above, in 6.0, if I wanted some gear pieces but didn't have time to do an Op that day, I could run a flashpoint or two with a couple of guildmates in our small guild to work on gearing up and preparing my toons without committing a full 2+ hours to an Op. That way, I was fully geared and ready to go to take on the challenges of vet mode Ops. We also didn't have to fight over gear pieces, either, except for 2 sets. If I didn't get the piece I wanted, well, I at least got tech frags so I could buy the piece at the vendor (or wait for pieces of the 2 sets to show up on Kai). I play a lot of alts. When I do flashpoints and Ops, I do often use my main, but because I'm one of the more experienced players in any given guild group and have geared toons, I will switch from DPS to tank or from melee dps to ranged dps depending on what our other players have available. I'll obviously also switch if I have a lockout on my main. I have every main toon I play outfitted in his/her own set bonus because it was impossible for me to remember which of the 20-odd toons I regularly play had the set bonus gear on. I have 9 deception assassins/infiltration shadows that I play regularly for conquest because I like that class, and switching the gold-augmented, min-maxed armor and remembering later which toon had it was too much trouble. I needed a darn spreadsheet to keep track of who had that armor last, so I finally just got each one of those toons his/her own death knell set and threw blue augments into the toons I didn't regularly take to Ops. I was OK with that, because I had enough tech frags/weekly crate gear drops to do that. So far, the only thing I'm seeing is BioWare taking away anything remotely positive in gearing-- *ability to obtain BIS gear doing ANY content *ability to mod gear and min-max it to squeeze out the very best DPS/heals/threat--No, I don't just want to play my best only in Ops--I want play to my highest level in ANY content, be that heroics, MM flashpoints, or PvP. I practice rotations on flashpoint bosses because that's far more interesting than standing in front of a parsing dummy for hours. *ability to purchase pieces with tech frag system *ability to gear up multiple alts to allow those of us who are in smaller guilds to switch classes quickly to adjust to the needs of our guild group--transferring the armor from toon to toon to toon and remembering just which toon has the armor set is a pain in the arse. *ability to earn a SINGLE currency fairly quickly doing any content in order to buy gear pieces and get the set bonus. I'm going to hit the currency cap on one of the currencies before I can get enough of other currency to buy the needed items, and I need a darn spreadsheet to figure out which kinds and how much of each currency I need for what gear. If I wanted to play a spreadsheet MMO, I'd go play Eve Online. *ability to even earn a set bonus equivalent (legendaries) relatively quickly. *ability to use amplifiers to squeeze out a little more dps/survival/heals/etc I"ve never seen this game take so much away from players in something that is supposed to be an expansion. My suggestion: Dump this gear change entirely. There is absolutely no reason to reinvent this wheel when you have a limited staff to begin with. Gear sets too confusing? Fine, decrease some of the gear set options. Some of the gear sets too powerful? Fair point--but adjust the abilities of the overpowered sets down and boost some things in the underpowered gear sets. Enhancement/mod/armoring options too confusing? Get rid of the types that are never used. You could get rid of about half of the enhancements (the versions that aren't BIS) and still leave tons of options for min-maxers. Want to add iLvls? Fine, add more iLvls to the armorings/mods/enhancements/implants/earpieces/relics. Gearing too fast? I prefer not to slow that down, but you can decrease the tech frag drop rate and/or increase the tech frag cost for set pieces and armor modifications. You could even keep the tech frag cost low for, say, 322 gear, and increase the tech frag cost for the very highest ilevels if you feel the burning need to slow down gearing progression. If figure if I'm going to gripe about it, I'll suggest a few solutions. If you're hell-bent on going through with this gear change, at least do these things: 1. Make all levels of the gear moddable 2. Go back to needing only 1 currency 3. Significantly increase the rate that that currency drops 4. Significantly decrease the currency cost for a gear piece 4. Collapse the gear options down to one single track. There is absolutely no reason to separate conquest gear from flashpoint gear from Ops gear from PvP gear. Adjust the modification iLvls if you have to, but don't penalize solo players and small guilds for not being able to do large group activities. If someone decides they don't want to get BIS gear to do conquest, fine, they can just cap themselves out at 320 and decide individually not to pursue higher gear ilvls. You don't need 5+ different gear sets to do that. 5. Allow gear to be earned from completing any activity--"play as you like" was one of the best things to come out of 6.0. 6. Don't take the gear piece to get the next higher ilvl at the vendor. Let people use that lower piece for alts at least. I get "grinding for gear is an MMO thing"--but the PTS gear grind in its current form is a nightmare that belongs in the dust heap of the Jurassic era of gaming when developers were just starting to get a handle on what makes an MMO fun. Other MMOs have figured this out. Grinding for weeks on end for gear, especially crap gear you won't keep, is Not Fun.
  22. Loadouts aren't saving correctly for me, and changes in utilities are reverting to the original--which is enormously frustrating. Also, I have Auld Pharte eyes. If you could make the glowy border around utilties glow brightly, preferably with a light yellow border instead of faint white so that I can know for sure what I've selected, that would make them much easier to see. And yes, I made sure I had the utilities I wanted set correctly. The system didn't save those changes.
  23. Menitioning taunt reminded me that one of the problems in 6.0 was even with appropriate threat drop use on cooldown, I can easily pull threat off of tanks unless they play their class very well. That's partly a skill issue, but the threat table needs to be updated in 7.0 to account for the crit spikes that infil/deception can do. I've documented a nearly 100k crit spike on this class and have a friend who plays the class even better than me who's gotten spikes over 100k. If infil/deception DCDs are being cut substantially, it is critical that the threat issue be addressed so that we don't get one-shot by bosses after a crit dps spike.
  24. About my play-style: I play only infiltration (best class, not that I'm partial or anything....) and don't play Serenity or Kinetic combat, so I'll only address Infiltration here. I play very little PvP because I pretty much suck at it, and I'm just plain too slow due to a. arthritis and b. "life experience." The testing I did was to get to level 80 asap to see how gearing went and how the class played at end-game. I was not able to gear beyond 318 (limited time in PTS), and I never got to try out the legendary stuff--hope to do that at some point. I was limited to flashpoints since there weren't enough folks on to try out an Ops. I tested vet flashpoints with a companion. I main infiltration shadow/deception assassin and have for years. I play this class in the top 5%-ish of infil players and can pull very good numbers in vet mode Ops with it, despite the fact that this class is not the 'meta' or even remotely close to it. That's not to brag (I'd love to see more people beat me, because this is hands down my favorite class and seeing other people succeed at it also is very fun). It's just to give you perspective. The parse I did on the PTS is not the "perfect" rotation by any means since I wasn't going for a dummy parse and had to do a few mechanics since I was soloing the bosses. You'll probably be able to find better examples, definitely so with better gear and a legendary. https://parsely.io/parser/view/615865 I did not check 'known issues' so if any notes are redundant, well, then they're redundant. I don't have time to look at the known issues right now. I missed being able to run around on fleet buffing random newbies with my force valor/force might/lucky shots/fortification since it got moved to a passive. While it's super convenient for me to have it as a passive since I have all 4 class buffs, it'll suck for party members in Ops who don't have all 4 yet. The difference between having some of those buffs and not can mean the difference between a wipe or not when you're running with groups who are learning VMops mechanics. 5% is a lot when your margin of survival is at the 1% mark during a tough boss fight. To answer the questions: 1. Since very little was changed ability- and utility-wise, how the class played didn't feel much different at end game other than noticeable GCD change causing lower APM and thus lower dps, which I address below. 2. If you call throwing a rock and saber-striking ad nauseum at level 1 interesting, sure. I haven't been new to the game since open beta, so my perspective is skewed. Force breach early on helps, but of course the cooldown was longer than it took to kill stuff for me since I ran with a companion and my goal was to get to fleet asap to level to 80 anyway. The class doesn't really come into its own until you get Stealth, Shadow Stride, procced Force Breach, and procced Shadow Strike, and 7.0 certainly won't make that somehow better. The utility choices are either laughably simple (there usually is only 1 obvious choice for each utility point for someone who plays Ops with this class), or we're given the choice between 2 that are extremely useful in Ops that made the decision (relatively) tougher. That being said, I can live without Force Wave and the lift. 3. Defeating enemies at a reasonable rate: For the average player, probably yes. To my VMops+ standard at level 80? Going from a 1.3/1.4 GCD (with/without alacrity clicky) back down to 1.5 GCD rotation a la 5.0 sucks rocks hard. It feels substantially slower to me, and it will markedly decrease this class' DPS. The inability to reach 110% accuracy meant I had misses, and that noticeably negatively affected my boss kill time because those misses were on important DPS/proc-building skills like Psychokinetic blast and Shadow Strike. I didn't get to test out the utility that allows stacks to get used on more damage skills yet to see how much damage I could do with that. That was on my to-do list, although theorycrafters probably already have me beat to the numbers on that one. 4. Do the abilities feel like they work well together--eh, I can do the rotation without thinking about it a lot. Since you didn't add any skills and the utilities are pretty much just 're-arranging the deck chairs', it didn't feel different other than being noticeably slower. That being said, I didn't get to try some of the new utilities. Obviously, maintaining 2 stacks of Clairvoyance will be absolutely critical in 7.0, not 'extremely super-important' as it is now in 6.0. Note: The utility "Maul Spike" needs to be renamed "Shadow Strike Spike" and any other maul references need to be updated to the Shadow counterparts. From an Ops standpoint: This class already suffers from limited raid utility--no raid buffs, and it's a spike dps class instead of DoT dps--you started to address that a bit in 6.0 by adding The Awakened Flame tactical which added the DoT, but none of the legendaries I saw had a DoT (although I might have missed something). The one big advantage Infil has was being able to stay alive with decent DCDs, Force Speed damaged reduction (dr), and stealth allowing us to able to reset the medpac, and the Death Knell set allowed quite good DPS. Not dirty fighting/annihilation/lethality levels of DPS, to be sure, but decent, and we could at least contribute a stealth rez. Losing stealth rez and medpac reuse puts more pressure on the healers. Losing force speed dr, maul/shadow strike dr, and aoe dr to do stuff like mitigate NiM tentacle slams is also going to make it harder to stay alive in NiM. Couple that with mediocre, non-dot DPS? No regular NIM raid group will want to have any shadow dps in the group, especially if they're doing speed clears. It's already a problem now, and 7.0 will only make that worse. This class is one that is HIGHLY dependent on being able to min-max stats to tweak the accuracy to exactly 110% so that you can get the required alacrity for the 1.4 GCD and then put the rest into crit to take advantage of the bonus crit damage to keep up with Anni and dirty fighting specs. Non-moddable gear is a nightmare for any class, but especially this one, and going from the freedom of completely moddable gear that I could min-max to my heart's content in 6.0 to non-moddable gear where I can't even exchange an initiative implant for an adept or nimble one of the same level at the vendor when upgrading is a design error of monumental proportions. I understand that this class is crazy powerful in PvP, but it's middling at best for Ops, and the design changes you're implementing with gearing is going to make that even worse for PvE. I've been asked before in 5.0 and less often in 6.0 if I can come to an Ops "on a different class that does more DPS and has more raid utility," and that's despite my parse numbers being pretty damn good. 7.0 is going to make that problem worse if this class is left in its current PTS iteration. Since you're already moving set bonuses over to left side items and you have tacticals, if you're worried about PvP balance, instead of going back to the insanity of non-moddable, non-optimized stat gear, consider making PvP zones use PvP-only tacticals/left side items and use those to fine tune PvP dps and skill balance. Right now, you're tuning down the class to make it more on par with other classes in PvP, but you're causing a significant under-tuning for PvE in the process, unless you make some substantial improvement in PvE DPS tacticals/legendaries/utilities. You're also taking away some of the class' ability to stay alive during Ops boss fights and stealth rez on top of it. Will I still play this infiltration in 7.0? Absolutely, because I love the spec. Will I be able to play it in hardmare Ops content? Probably not if it's left in its current form. Even playing it to perfection, I just won't be able to generate the same dps as other classes, I'll have a harder time staying alive with the dr skills being nerfed/eliminated, and I'll have even less raid group utility as a Shadow than I do now without stealth rezzing available. And with all those issues, no progression raiding group is going to want an infiltration shadow.
  25. So, let me bullet-point the problems with 7.0 "itemization." How gearing is in 6.0: 1. 6.0 was advertised as "play as you like." You could get any gear set, any tactical you want, and mod it any way you want. Yes, a meta, best-in-slot (BIS) build developed. That happens in every single MMO. But that's irrelevant. We still had the ability to min-max to our heart's desire. 2. One gear set could be theoretically used anywhere in game--flashpoints, Ops, PvP, heroics, planetary quests, conquesting, etc. I could switch out left-side items quickly to go from Ops to PvP to adjust my accuracy percentage from 110% (for Ops) to 105% or less (for PvP, which doesn't require as much). I don't PvP much, so I didn't worry about building out a separate PvP set with optimized amplifiers. 3. Because I min-maxed my Ops gear, I was able to pursue full VMOps in 6.0 and then even a few more NIM Ops bosses besides just Nefra. I don't pursue NiM raiding outside a few of the easier bosses because I have a Real World job to pay for my subscription to this game, and I don't have the time to spend with a dedicated group for multiple, multi-hour sessions a week for months to learn the needed mechanics. I don't want a second job, I just want to enjoy the game with friends helping them do Ops. What happens in 7.0 which I loathe, despise, and otherwise bear negative sentiments towards: 1. I will need multiple sets to do everything I want to do. PvP? Gotta have the PvP set. Conquest? Conquest set. Flashpoint? Flashpoint set. Ops? One set for SM/VM. Another one for NiM. Not ONE set, now I need at least FIVE, and TWO just for Ops. That's not counting what I'll need to get for left-side items to try to get better stats. That's insane. 2. Stats are unmoddable in any gear except NIM. If BioWare doesn't optimize the stats right out of the gate with 110% accuracy, correct alacrity for the different GCDs, and crit, then that armor is substandard. Since BioWare hasn't optimized past unmoddable (or even moddable) gear, I highly doubt they'll do that this time, and PTS information confirms my doubts. And I won't be able to do jack about modding my gear. That's insane. 3. If I do want to mod my gear, I'm now required to do NIM raiding instead of SM/Vmops/Conqust/etc. to earn the items to min-max my gear. I don't have months to spend learning NIM raid mechanics because that would be a second job for me, and I have a Real World job I need to do to pay for my subscription to this game. 4. My other option is to do what we did in 5.0 for Nim gear: grind Nefra over and over and over. Because that sounds like so much fun to do again. Congrats, BioWare, on moving the gear grind from flashpoints/Smops/Vmops/PvP/Starfighter--where at least those of us who were gearing could help bolster the group-finder numbers in flashpoints and SMops--back to endless rounds of NiM Nefra. (yes, that's sarcasm). 5. Once a certain level of NiM raiders get all of their gear, we'll once again see what happened in 5.0 and earlier: calls from players for full-NiM-geared only raids, and anyone un-geared or under-geared is locked out. Good luck to anyone new to higher level Ops trying to join after the hardcore NiM raiders gear up completely. (yes, that's sarcasm). So let's get to the bullet-point recap here. 1. My min-maxed BIS gear will be gone. BioWare can't even make set bonuses remain useful until level 79, they have to kill the set bonus at 76. 2. I will have to have 5 or more different sets of gear per spec instead of one per spec. You're taking away my ability to have just 1 set per spec (with a few extra left side pieces). 3. The stats aren't optimized so I can't even maintain 110% accuracy on sub-NIM gear--that will make doing master mode flashpoints and other Master Mode activities substantially harder since we won't be able to maximize DPS. You're taking away my ability to play my dps spec to the best of my personal skill, it's now dependent on your arbitrary assignment of stats to the gear. 4. The stats aren't even moddable except for NIM gear. You're taking away my ability to min-max any of my gear. 5. Instead of gear-grinding anywhere in game, I now have to gear grind 900 bazillion runs of NiM Nefra. You're taking away my ability to gain max BIS gear anywhere and limiting it to one single elitest activity (let's face it--NIM requires much better than average/elite skill playing a spec). 6. Once a threshold of NIM raiders are fully geared, I and every other raider not fully NIM geared will be locked out of hard-core NiM and even harder VMOPS until we can get all min-maxed NIM gear--which can only be obtained in NiM raids....You're taking away my ability to join hard mode/Nightmare activities until I grind out enough Nefra raids to get the gear. 7. It is far more difficult to find NIM Nefra gearing runs than it is to find group-finder at times convenient to my schedule. I can find group finder activities virtually any time. I can't find NIM Nefra grinding runs at virtually any time. And my reward in 7.0? Being able to have glowy lightning effects instead of rock-throwing effects for my sages? Whoopdy-do. I've had 2 guildmates already tell me they're not going to continue subbing due to this gearing change ALONE. I'm even re-considering continuing my sub--and I've been subbed the majority of the last 10 years. I have heard many more people in the various swtor guild discord groups I'm in saying the same darn thing. BioWare, you need to rethink this gearing decision and rethink it fast. This is a huge mistake. You've seen that already on the PTS, you've seen it in these threads, you've seen it on Discord. Don't go through with this change as it is currently.
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