I wasn't expecting an actual expansion, but I was still surprised when I didn't have another quest in my log after the flashpoint. That felt like it would be a decent introductory arc to a short expansion story, but having that be the released content was surprising even given my low expectations.

I recently ran into someone with <The Judean Peoples Front> guild and was quite amused. My personal favorite is the <Guild for Pub Alts we Never Use>.

Some of the people posting clears have been raiding a long time and cleared content previously while it was tough. I haven't. I'm newer to the raiding scene, but have also been clearing some content without stacks still. I haven't gotten to clear everything again yet, but since the removal of VE stacks I've cleared dp again and made it through several bosses on some of the others. It isn't just people that have run the content for a long time that are happy with the change. There are some of us that haven't been raiding all that long (less than a year in HM/NiM raids here) that still want content that tests us and makes us get better at our roles. There's definitely more of a difference between NiM and HM content than there was before the stacks were removed, but it seems like a much smaller gap still than the one between HM and SM content. From the runs I've done so far with a couple groups and pugs I've really enjoyed the removal of stacks. Content is still clearable even for some of us that aren't nearly on the level of failure or farming components, but it's tough enough that I feel a need to get better to make sure things can go smoother in future runs (I haven't gotten a timed run since the removal of stacks, which is fine because a bunch of us were messing up a lot in each of the runs and timed runs should be tough and require at least pretty good play).

I was in the pug mdtk mentioned and thought it was a ton of fun. I'm a newer raider (joined my first HM team in 5.10) so I didn't get to see the content previously when it was tough. Despite not having seen the content when it was hard before it wasn't too tough to adapt to having run it in 5.10 and 6.0. At least as a dps I've been very bored with the old raids where we were ridiculously overpowered and dps checks didn't exist. We had some struggles on a few bosses (mostly Bestia while we got used to not being stupidly overpowered), but it wasn't bad. After the pug tonight I'm incredibly glad they removed the stacks. The difficulty (at least for DP) isn't excessive and I'm really excited to run the other ops again and see what they're like.

For vengence jugg I propose The Useful Damage set bonus: 2 piece increases presence by 2%, 4 piece plays the hutt barge noise everytime a dot crits (to help the jugg keep track of their smash timer of course), and the 6 piece summons a 10 million hp enemy any time vengeful slam is used to passively follow the jugg around until killed.

I've played some more on PTS 3.0. Compared to what I saw previously some things seem less atrociously bad, but I've found things I hadn't previously realized were as bad as they are as well. It seems like the vendors are tending to give much better ilvl gear than I had previously gotten, which is a nice minor improvement. Even with the infinite tech fragments we have it took a while to get from where I was (somewhere 290ish) to 306 ilvl, but that wasn't too bad. What was terrible was trying to find decent gear once I was 306. It seems that the gold pieces I got from the vendor with a few exceptions like the weapons were not moddable, so in order to use the set pieces we can buy (which for some reason don't come with mods despite the kindof absurd price) I had to buy mods, armorings, and enhancements. The variety in these is staggering and needlessly complex. I decided it was *FAR* too much effort to min-max gear and resigned (read: this was disappointing and I felt defeated) myself to just trying to get decent-ish stats. Even doing that took quite a few rolls and playing with mods a bit. I expect that this will be atrociously grindy when we don't have infinite tech fragments and that getting actually min-maxed gear for even one set of gear will be a massive undertaking. I had not expected from the previous PTS build how terrible this process would be. I hope this changes dramatically. If we had choice then the existence of the different mod, armoring, and enhancement types would be unnecessarily complex, but kindof nice. Given the RNG acquisition this is awful. I hope something is changed massively as this system is *incredibly* frustrating. I don't play the game for the gear, but the systems I've seen since I've started playing sometime a few years ago have been fine and rather non-intrusive to my goal of actually playing the content and raiding with friends. This system is awful and *strongly* detracts from a game I enjoy. As far as amplifiers, I think the interface has improved a lot since last I used it. Rerolling was easy enough to do, though was rather frustrating in terms of the time investment required. Rerolling was also quite expensive after a short while, but that seems intended. It wasn't at all clear that the amplified champion pieces would not roll high tier amplifiers and I think that should be communicated (unless something weird was going on, but I rerolled one until it cost about a billion credits without seeing a gold other than unlucky). The life stealing one also doesn't seem to be functioning. I will play with these more later, but don't care as much about them as I do about how atrocious the primary gearing setup seems to be. I have only slightly tested gameplay in the new patch, but intend to do so soon. Overall, I am glad that some of the changes implemented have been made, but the system still seems a *massive* step back from the perfectly decent system we currently have. It seems like an incredible amount of frustrating complexity is being added while reducing the avenues for clear gear progression for people that want to play the game instead of focus on gearing as a primary part of the game.

Thank you for listening to our concerns and at least partially addressing them. Even with these changes I am not looking forward to the new gearing method at all and expect it to be a much worse system than we've seen previously (for my goals -- get good enough gear to get back to raiding asap), but the changes announced were a massive step in the right direction. Even if some of the changes aren't implemented yet, it's very nice to know that they're coming. I'll definitely provide more feedback once I've played with the changes some/once they are implemented, but expect that this will help make gearing in 6.0 a lot more tolerable, which might be the best that can be hoped for given that shoving rng into as many things as possible seems to be a design directive.

You have my upvote. I'd suggest that other pets grow or shrink around him, occasionally everyone in his proximity gets knocked up by the scyva knockup, and people get bad/not bad buffs periodically.

I'm going to hop in with the crowd here and say that nothing here addressed the most consistent feedback we have given: we hate rng gearing. It wasn't good at the start of 5.0 and it isn't good now. The reason a lot of us view Kai as a primary source of gear is that it is the least rng method of attaining gear around, even if it has far more rng than any of us are happy with. You said that your "intention is that Kai is meant exclusively as a supplementary system. If [we] feel like [we] need to look to Kai as a primary mechanism to get gear then we believe there are clear problems we need to work out in the rest of Spoils of War." I think that's completely correct: rng is a clear problem you need to work out in the rest of Spoils of War. As a supplementary system it can work fine, but we want a clear non-rng system we can progress through. We want a way to play the content we want quickly. Some of us are locked out of the content we play the game for until our gear is at least pretty good... and in this system that seems like it'll be completely infeasible to augment gear until max rating that point is higher than usual. The ability to take a token to a class specific vendor and turn it in for a piece we wanted was such a nice, elegant system. Why can't we keep that instead of having a system where even the vendor that seems like it's trying to protect us from rng has two layers of rng thrown in?

Yeah, I've been in the new op a number of times now and Matt has been in there interacting with people mast of the time. When there are a number of instances running he tends to be busy, but the first night it was out my group was the only group in there and he chatted with us, listened to feedback, trolled us relentlessly, helped with a few bugs, teleported us back to the last two bosses since the shortcuts were broken, and other stuff like that. As much as I (and I think most of the community) absolutely hate what is happening with gearing in 6.0, Dxun is awesome, Matt is really cool, and I'm very glad we have something to look forward to in the expansion. Matt is definitely the MVP this expansion. P.S. I highly recommend leaving some pet out while running -- they might just happen to grow giant, which can be pretty amusing.

I think the pricing seems quite high given what we get from running content and the fact that unfortunately, while we are able to choose a set bonus, the mods in it are still rng. The list of items is long and I have no idea why it was all put in a single merchant instead of separated into different class vendors (and a general one) to make finding things much easier. That sort of separation is implemented with the MUCH more player friendly (non-rng) vendors we currently have in that area on live. I was hoping this vendor would be a good way to circumvent a lot of the stupid rngfest that gearing in the expansion looks like it'll end up being and am very dissapointed that it is yet more rng on top of not having everything available at once.

This vendor seems massively frustrating and annoying. The cost of buying a piece of equipment is incredibly high to usually be getting unmodable trash. I think the pricing would be reasonable, though still not overly generous, if it guaranteed an upgrade. In its current form it seems to be worth about 2-3 min of time in vet hammer station, possibly less since the upgrade rate on the vendor seems comparable or worse to that from vet hammer station. Given how slow the tech fragments are to acquire by intended means this seems like awful value in addition to being frustrating rng.

I strongly agree with speedphlux here. The drop rates taken together seem quite slow at the moment. I think that's likely a matter of most content not giving drops and my getting bored of hammer station/kp quite quickly (though I didn't feel like they were giving much gear either... but I guess each run only takes a few minutes). The renown crate acquisition feels pretty slow even when running through areas with LOTS of ops trash (dxun is wonderfully evil and Matt is amazing). I think the majority of drops I've gotten so far either from the content or crates have been sidegrades and mostly useless. I have gotten one drop that was substantially better than currently equipped piece though.

I'm concerned about how rng heavy the gearing sounded. Having the reroll system available will be nice, but only having a limited set of items available for targeted purchase at once sounds very disappointing, especially if the reroll system requires anything other than credits and the item you want to reroll (since the Charles points or whatever other currency was required could be a limiting factor in how much we could reroll). The main things I haven't liked about ossus gearing are that it is entirely separate from raiding and that the pieces we receive in the crates are rng determined and can't be traded in for other types of pieces. That seemed like a huge step backwards from the 230-248 vendors where we could get a useless earpiece and upgrade it into a good one without any rng involved.

Yeah, I sent a pm to him yesterday, so hopefully there will be some response eventually. Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, it was on master loot. I think there were 10 or 12 of us and no other players.

I agree with what Steve said -- excessive use of support for frivolous things would be problematic. Additionally, becoming rude or angry in my tickets would have been problematic. I had initially typed a rather sarcastic and rude third ticket, but didn't submit it figuring that it would be rather counterproductive. Instead what I ended up submitting was as follows, which while it could have been made more professional and neutral I think was not too bad in that regard. 'This is again in response to tickets [redacted]. The instanced hive queen boss did not drop the 6 loot crates it was supposed to. Master looter allows the operations lead to assign loot as they see fit and does in fact work in instanced bosses, unlike the customer service rep indicated. The queen in story mode is intended to (and usually does) drop 2 of each of the three kinds of 252 boxes which are allocated according to looting mode (if round robin, which is the default, by rolls, and if master looter by assignment by the ops lead). This feature has functioned correctly previously. The information the customer service rep handling these tickets has provided does not correspond with prior behavior. Their account of what should have dropped has also changed between ticket responses from "rewards all the group members with the same Arftefact lootbox ( upper)" to "Artifact Lockbox (Lower Body )". Additionally, in the more recent ticket they indicated that one of these boxes has been restored. This is as far as I can tell not the case. Even if it were, that is not the appropriate loot for the boss unless every other completion I (or anyone I know) has always provided loot incorrectly. [later ticket update] I found the box that was granted. In addition to still not being but one in six drops that was supposed to have spawned, it was applied to the wrong toon. I have not collected the loot.' While I can see ways to edit this to make it more professional, I don't think it is sufficiently rude or abusive to warrant threats of disciplinary action on that front. I'm very glad to hear that Kodrac has previously gotten responses from different reps when submitting followup tickets. I think it would be reasonable to tell someone to stop submitting tickets on an issue if it has at least been reviewed by a different support rep and the situation has actually been resolved to the best of support's abilities using correct information about the game, but that isn't the case here. I was unaware there was someone to ping if stuff like this happened. I'll try to search for confirmation of that and if I find it will message them. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hello, I've had a very negative experience with a customer support representative in game over the last four days over a loot issue. A group of friends and I killed the 16 man geonosian queen in order to help gear one of my toons and none of the loot boxes dropped for us. While the lack of loot is very disappointing, I am more concerned by the customer service interactions over 3 tickets which were all responded to by the same individual in which they provided multiple incorrect pieces of information. Per the first ticket, "Since klling the only-one-boss rewards all the group members with the same Arftefact lootbox ( upper), and that I could verify they have been created in-game to everyone, I am afraid I can only take your feedback as a comment as to why the master loot can be set-up in such situation, which is frankly just good common sense." I am not quite sure what this means, but had not previously known of any issue with using master loot settings rather than round robin in instanced bosses or open world settings. Additionally, this indicates that the loot drop from the boss should be one of the 252 crates for each party member, which doesn't match with prior experience of either 1 of each type or 2 of each type in 8 and 16 man respectively. In the second ticket, I was told "I checked agin my logs and the : Artifact Lockbox (Lower Body ) is shown as created but not looted as I could not see any such artefact in your inventory, nor in your galactic command stash. I have restored one for you as it is intended you get one. The game mechanic does not allow you to get all artifact lockboxes for all other members though, as in this speccific instance one is rewarded for every member." I suppose I have never seen someone get all the drops from queen, so it is possible that that is prohibited, but I didn't think it was. Additionally, the restored box was given to a different character than the one used to complete the instance (though one with a very similar name, so I can understand this mistake) and since it isn't the same class isn't particularly useful in gearing the class we were doing the run for. They also indicate that the lower body box was created when in the previous post they said that the boss should only generate upper body boxes, though my guess is that their understanding is that the boss should provide each party member with their own random type of box. In my third ticket I mentioned that 16 man queen usually drops 3 of each type of box to be distributed among the group as well as stating that the single box did not appear to have been restored. I later updated the ticket when I found that a different toon had been given that box and that I wasn't opening it until I heard back about what to do. The third reply I only received as an email which only reiterated some of the incorrect information they had previously provided, made no mention of the box being "restored" to an incorrect toon, and threatened potential disciplinary sanctions for abuse of support. I think that my tickets were reasonable, relevant, and not abusive. I would like very much for them to be looked over by a different representative. If any of my conduct in submitting the tickets was wrong, I would very much like to know what. I also hope that the representative can be informed of how the relevant features involved function so that other individuals don't have a similarly negative experience in the future.