I for one would be happy to pay for expansions that are, well, expansive in terms of content.

They did have a pre-recorded interview with Enuka Okuma (who voices Tau Idair) before the live stream started. I missed a lot of it because I wasn't aware of it beforehand but from what I saw she is a cool person and it was a good interview. For me, that was the highlight of the whole thing.

If the blue FP gear is as bad as the green gear that makes things worse, not better. Both sets will be worse in legacy content than current 306 gear.

Argh. Edited the link to hopefully work for everyone...

No. Not only will casual players be behind in irating, they lose out on optimization. The stat allocations are fixed, and the ones for casual players are the worst - and thanks to the level sync changes also coming, the new casual gear is worse than current 306 gear in ]'legacy' (e.g, under 80) content. As for the rest of your conjecture, many casual players do not do any raid content, much less HM, and barely get OEMs/RPMs now (generally they come from trading in 10k tech fragments). That will go from 'barely' to 'practically none' since the way gear is siloed forces players to concentrate on gearing in a single silo. For casual players that's likely to be Conquest simply because the materials from that are required for all silos.

I take the word of the devs, even though it's not on their official forums, as definitive. I wonder if you have trouble with the link because it's a discord link. Let me try this: (Edited to try a different link):

Let me start by apologizing. While I retain my personal interpretation of your posts, the manner in which I described them wasn't cool. I'm obviously frustrated, but there was no reason to take that out on you. You're not the cause of my frustration. While we disagree on some things, we agree on others, and clearly you are among those who care about what is happening in this game. Solo/casual players did not get gear 'at the cost of' progression raiding for raiders. Players are not responsible for the pace or content of releases. BW is, and they have never had a good pace, much less a practice of including regular content updates for all playstyles (though some periods were certainly worse than others). Like you, I used to raid in this game. My small guild used to be less small and we did have raid groups. But those that were interested in that content left long ago and it wasn't because the gearing wasn't vertical - at the time, it was. They left because of lack of regular new content (especially ops) - and I don't see any confirmed signs that the pace of that is changing. That's sad, because I do want everyone who plays the game to have content they want to play. It makes the game richer, even if I am not likely to see all of that new content personally. Likewise, players do not create the reward systems in the game - and remember, this is a game. There is no actual risk here, it's all pixels. Gear as a reward is going to be contentious, and not just because they are flipping 180 on their stated philosophy about getting rewarded for any playstyle you enjoy. Better gear makes all content easier, not just raids. It is not needed to clear vet raids, because you can't get it until you've already done so. I get it may be needed for the NiM versions of the same raids - but its utility is not limited to those raids. If it was, I think this whole debacle could be rendered moot. What better gear does is make content easier, period. And we've been through more than enough phases in this game where the HM/NiM crowd, bored after getting everything they can out of the little ops content available, come back and complain about how easy all the other content in the game is. Some of that feedback is in the form of demands that the rest of the content be made more difficult so as to be a challenge to them. And some of it is directed (in an unpleasant manner) at players who aren't as overgeared as they are and don't have the same ease with the non-ops content. This is part of why some casual players are unhappy. We've seen it before. This time, though, the gap will be larger because it's not just the irating, it's also the optimization and the gating of the ability to at least mitigate some of that via modding until some undefined future date with as-yet unknown further restrictions. Not everyone is unhappy solely about the irating aspect of the coming changes, and focusing on that is losing sight of the other aspects that come with it. I'm not sure how the current state of crafting will 'stay sort of relevant' with the release of 7.0. It's not relevant now, except a couple of small niches that can still make credits. Very little a non-raiding crafter can reliably get the mats to make outside of those is worth making (and getting those mats as a casual player is becoming harder with 7.0, not easier). So I can't share your optimism that they will, at some unnamed future date, make it suddenly relevant again - and especially not in terms of itemization, when their entire schema depends on the siloed vendors as the sole upgrade routes.

Except that is not how it's been described by the dev in charge: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/889962788095668234/908132263450013757/unknown.png The disparity in allocation is intended, with the best allocation for raiders and the worst for Conquest gear. It's specifically tied to the quality.

Telling people to be happy with the scraps they get is exactly what you are saying. Like here: Your own words show that you believe people asking for things like moddable gear (you know, like we've had since early days), or at least gear that is not abysmally optimized such that they lose power relative to the old content they have to play to get any rewards, should be grateful that what they get is 'good enough' for then in your opinion. Other people have different opinions on the matter, and that they disagree with you does not make them entitled or green with envy. Your posts convey an attitude of telling the plebes what they deserve, because you alone know best. It's tiresome.

Except that does matter the way level capping works in all older content at the moment on PTS. It's not a static cap, it's based on allocation. We will be dependent on doing old content yet again for 7.0 Conquest. The stat allocation matters, and without access to moddable equipment solo players will be stuck in cookie cutter green gear that is by intention poorly optimized (see the dev quotes from Discord elsewhere in this thread - it's by design). The gear across the silos is not equal even at the same irating. Stop telling people they should just be happy with what scraps you think they deserve.

You keep making claims about an influx of cash. Where are the receipts? Yes, they advertised for development resources - were those replacements? Were those slots filled? You claim they are suddenly interested in player retention. Again, where are the actual receipts? There has been no indication they are interested in retaining the player base you yourself admit has carried them the past couple of years. I'm not talking about them capitulating and giving solo/casual players the best gear, etc. I'm talking about simply even acknowledging their feedback and answering specific questions about the new systems (like timeframe estimates, etc.). They can't be retaining customers they don't have yet. As for attracting back other players - how, exactly, are they doing that? I don't mean the direction of the changes. I mean how are they reaching out to those players you claim are going to come flooding back/in? How do those players know to come back (or come try it for the first time)? And what, in an expansion that doesn't even launch with the vet mode of the only new op, is the big carrot? More solo story and solo FP content? You are optimistically speculating, but that is what much of this is - speculating. I mean, more power to you - I'm glad they are getting back players who left, and that you are optimistic enough to return. I genuinely hope you enjoy the game again! But why should your enjoyment come at the expense of others who already are here, enjoy the game, and supported it when you didn't? There are ways to accommodate everyone's playstyle that are neither just keeping 6.0 nor committing to all of the changes in 7.0 as given so far. It needn't be so binary.

All of your posts are based on this mythical ability to one-shot mobs as a reason why solo people don't need decent gear. And according to your other posts, it's all the gear numbers and not skill at all that makes one-shots possible. Which is it?

Maybe unicorns will fly down from the sky and drop goodies into our inventory... I mean, anyone can make up a possible solution. The only people who can actually tell us are BW. They have provided all kinds of information on the currencies required for each gear silo. Not once have they even hinted at the ability to convert those currencies. The only thing they have offered is that if you do, say, a FP in Conquest gear and a better irating FP piece drops you can equip it in place of the lower irating gear from Conquest. The path for upgrading that new piece of FP gear is still only available from the FP gear vendor for the requisite mats. They haven't changed any of their wording about how that works. Now if they would just come out and say that is their plan, that when other gear avenues can reach the magical 334 irating there will be a way to use the new (non-Ops) currencies to obtain mods, that would be something I think people could get behind (especially if they could also give a general ballpark figure of how long that wait might be).

Been here since launch, casual player in a small casual guild. We do not do ops at all (too small, different time zones, etc.). We've been subbed continuously. My observation over the last 10 years. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Gonna need a link to that 'data shared by devs.' A complete one.

Yes, they introduced WAY too much RNG with aspects of 6.0 with the explosion of minutely-varied mods and such - maybe that was their way of trying to keep a carrot dangling in front of the ultimate min/maxers. I mean, I guess Amplifier Roulette was another attempt, but it failed when too few people took the bait. As a casual player, I could afford to blow off the ultimate min/max and just look for the ones with the best Mastery (mostly play DPS) plus whatever balance of tertiary stat got me what I wanted on a particular character (e.g., accuracy target for the gunslinger or whatever). They could have just removed that aspect - which I don't think anyone enjoyed - but they chose to go much farther. Hmm. I wonder if this might be part of the explanation for moving to gate moddable gear behind Ops. If enough other casual players did as I did (or did even less messing with mods), we may not have meaningfully displayed min/max-ish behavior to BioWare. Maybe they then interpreted that as a lack of interest when really it was more a lack of desire/ability to devote time and credits to that particular sink given how ridiculous it was in 6.0. That is something I had not considered. Thanks for the nudge!

You might want to read some of the feedback from raiders in other threads, starting with the one on itemization. There is a fair amount of caring about other peoples' gear going on (though to be fair, there are also raiders who have spoken in favor of non-raiders also getting the good stuff). The idea that (some) raiders believe only they are entitled to BIS gear is not one formed in a vacuum.

Wrong. They are creating silos for gear for all play styles. If a casual player wants to be able to advance the gear they get from Conquest, they can only do so at the Conquest vendor. If that casual player also happened to like FPs, or GSF/PvP, they can only upgrade gear from that content at those respective vendors. There is no mixing the streams. Each vendor requires specific currencies. There is no carryover of weeklies, so no banking for later either. So the casual player will be shepherded into focusing on only one of those streams (most likely Conquest) if they want to upgrade gear because of the external constraints on their time that make them casual in the first place.

This issue is still happening. I received several main hand and off hand items while running FPs over the last week which had 'unidentified' mods in all slots and looked green in quality. They should have all gold mods (302-304-306) based on my characters' iRating of 306. I have characters with a ton of them in their cargo holds. I suppose BioWare's plan is just to keep giving broken gear until 7.0 comes out and it's rendered moot?

As the leader of a very small guild of very casual players, I am not liking the overall look of 7.0 based on the information available to me. It's not a matter of any one individual change - it's the cumulative effect of them on our game play styles. Pretty much all stick and no carrot.

And yet, they have specifically mentioned capping in PvP. Why only mention it there, and remain silent on PvE if they intend to mirror it there? Then again, asking why BioWare doesn't communicate is asking a rhetorical question, isn't it?

BioWare is simply being true to form here. Put something on PTS that they know is not close to their final plan but that is sure to cause a lot of player complaints. Withhold information while the 'feedback' reaches a crescendo. Come in and do some minimal 'splaining (that will probably open up at least as many questions as it answers). Eventually cough up a modified version of the thing that addresses whatever they had already planned to change. Take credit for being so, so responsive to player feedback. Rinse/repeat until actual release.

This was also my expectation, based on what they said in the livestream. The only thing that bothers me is the alignment limitiation on force users. I have a LS lightning sorc, and I do not want to have to be forced into the mirror Jedi class skills and animations.

Server: Star Forge Character: Hana-ko (75 agent) Completed: Terminal Injuries, Recruitment Character Hu'an (75 bounty hunter) Completed: Ancient Guardians, The First Commando's Call A guildmate who was on at the same time (Gerund, 75 bounty hunter) completed the *same* two heroics on Voss and got credit for the PO. So there is definitely something wrong here.

I had a similar experience last night on this mission. Neither of the two heroics I did on Nar Shaddaa nor the two I did on Voss counted, despite the list being Makeb, Nar Shaddaa, or Voss. None of these were the allegedly fixed one-time heroics. After completing four heroics that should have qualified with no awarding of the objective, I was not about to contemplate the pain that are the Makeb heroics on the off-chance they'd count... And since I'd already traded one out, I couldn't trade this one away either. Star Forge server, characters Hana-ko (75 agent) for the Nar Shaddaa heroics and Hu'an (75 bounty hunter) for the Voss ones.