Social Gear Only Light Armor *** !

[VisionStorm]

Pointless complaint

 

Why do you care what armor type the social gear is?

 

(and similar posts)

 

Just because you don't care about what your character looks like doesn't mean no one else does. I get that a lot of posters in this forum don't get appearance customization. But its something a lot of other people enjoy and it affects you in absolutely no way if we get better options to customize our gear appearance. Those that don't care what their characters look like, only the stats, don't have to customize their character's appearance if they don't want to.

Edited December 24, 2011 by VisionStorm

[Radiatonia]

Anyone that's arguing against fixing this clearly either doesn't understand the situation, is doing it to troll, or is in full on "screw you, got mine" mentality.

 

For the record, there were many heavy and medium social armors in beta. At some point, they were all removed. In fact, these medium, light, and heavy social armors were the carrot to the social point grind. You could find dozens of sets of gear for every class and armor tier at vendors like on Ilum. In order to get these (really cool looking) armors, you had to get your social level to anywhere from 5, to 10.

 

Now, all that's there is a credit sink speeder, and an item that makes everyone around you dance. There's pretty much no point for 9/10ths of the players in the game to bother with the social point grind as it is now, as a result.

 

I should also mention that, from what every tester was able to tell back during beta, and during release, these items simply don't exist anymore in an obtainable format. They were completely removed from player access.

 

 

Problem is from a design and balance perspective, alot of the old light armors are still in. And these armors don't scale to the other classes.

 

It is flat out wrong, no argument valid against this, that only two classes benefit from this.

 

Social armors were always intended to be used by every class in combat, and one of the loading screens in-game at the moment even confirms that. It says that by leveling up your social level it will grant you access to better gear. As it is, that is not possible unless you're a Consular or Inquisitor at the moment.

 

 

How is this an issue to be argued against? It needs to be fixed, plain and simple. If Bioware just re-added the old medium and heavy social armors, like the KOTOR Mandalorian BH armor set that was for sale on Ilum, or the class specific sets for each class on these vendors, it would be handled for the forseeable future.

 

 

Also, they should probably take a look at the CE vendor armor. They ranked the Imperial Stormtrooper armor as light armor. Which means that Agents and BH's, the two classes that would have a reason to wear it, can't wear it without taking a huge hit. The Republic Officer CE vendor set is also not only using the wrong armor graphics (Take a look at a Republic Officer NPC sometime.), but also is also ranked to the wrong class for the intended classes to use it.

 

Both CE sets are also clearly the sort of armor you wear into combat, to take hits, unlike the normal social armor. So it doesn't really make sense from that perspective for them to be light armor only either. They don't exactly appear to be a dancers outfit.

 

So far i've already seen a ton of Inquisitors and Consulars rolling around in warzones wearing this stuff, with a lightsaber out. So the intended purpose of it is completely missed as well.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Radiatonia

[Kibaken]

Just to try to quell the infighting, here. None of this will matter as, come end-game gear, social/custom gear will not be able to be made on-par with it at this time. There is currently no way to get raid-equivalent hilts/armoring for use in custom gear.

 

Say hello to CloneCraft /eyeroll

[Kibaken]

Social armors were always intended to be used by every class in combat, and one of the loading screens in-game at the moment even confirms that. It says that by leveling up your social level it will grant you access to better gear. As it is, that is not possible unless you're a Consular or Inquisitor at the moment.

 

Also, they should probably take a look at the CE vendor armor. They ranked the Imperial Stormtrooper armor as light armor. Which means that Agents and BH's, the two classes that would have a reason to wear it, can't wear it without taking a huge hit. The Republic Officer CE vendor set is also not only using the wrong armor graphics (Take a look at a Republic Officer NPC sometime.), but also is also ranked to the wrong class for the intended classes to use it.

 

NONE of this will matter at end-game because they won't be able to be made raid-worthy. Some higher-up decided that gear progression and class silhouettes were important and the entire point of the mod system was changed from 'allowing players to keep a certain look' to 'a formality to slightly better customize their gear.' Whether you choose to PvE or PvP everyone will be wearing the same gear at this point unless the system is changed.

 

That is the main reason why those armors were removed - they're not needed anymore because the system doesn't support their intended function.

[Radiatonia]

NONE of this will matter at end-game because they won't be able to be made raid-worthy. Some higher-up decided that gear progression and class silhouettes were important and the entire point of the mod system was changed from 'allowing players to keep a certain look' to 'a formality to slightly better customize their gear.' Whether you choose to PvE or PvP everyone will be wearing the same gear at this point unless the system is changed.

 

That is the main reason why those armors were removed - they're not needed anymore because the system doesn't support their intended function.

 

Uh. Yes you can use them as raid gear?

 

 

Have you even tried removing mods from that gear yet? It's entirely possible to slot mods from raid/PVP gear into other gear. In fact, that was the stated purpose of having orange gear months before release. And it's been working properly since a few weeks before release.

 

 

Edit: In fact, I can see some tier 53 purple hilts just in this vendor that can be removed right now. Which is actually more equivalent to a level 56 hilt, which does not even exist due to level requirements. Which is full on top of the line end-game gear.

 

 

Edit: And don't forget that crafters can pick up rare schematics for the same gear, to put in other gear.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Radiatonia

[Kibaken]

Uh. Yes you can use them as raid gear?

 

 

Have you even tried removing mods from that gear yet? It's entirely possible to slot mods from raid/PVP gear into other gear. In fact, that was the stated purpose of having orange gear months before release. And it's been working properly since a few weeks before release.

 

 

Edit: In fact, I can see some tier 53 purple hilts just in this vendor that can be removed right now. Which is actually more equivalent to a level 56 hilt, which does not even exist due to level requirements. Which is full on top of the line end-game gear.

 

 

Edit: And don't forget that crafters can pick up rare schematics for the same gear, to put in other gear.

 

Uh. No, you can't. Unless you want to be completely gimped, that is.

 

At this point in time unless an item is "custom" quality Hilts, Armoring, and Barrels cannot be removed. The only things that can be moved around in the PvE/PvP epic gear are Mods, Enhancements and Color Crystals, all of which have no bearing on Armor Count or Weapon Damage.

 

On top of that, PvE and PvP sets all include bonuses. At this point, there is no way to craft/buy raid/pvp equivalent Hilts, Armoring, or Barrels and even if there were I don't see any way to include set bonuses with them.

 

They killed custom gear being viable with the removal of extractable armoring/hilts/barrels and the inclusion of set bonuses on gear and not on specific "sets" of mods.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Kibaken

[Azzirith]

so let me get this straight... youre complaining because simple black sith robes dont count as heavy armour?

 

come on now, you cant have your pie and eat it... if you want to have high armour values, you have to have heavy armour...

if you want to dress in a robe, youre gonna have to accept that a simple robe isnt "heavy armour"

 

 

I have a Jedi Guardian who's wearing a traditional cloaked Jedi robe, it's a moddable orange chest plate that dropped off a quest reward, it's heavy armor. I don't see why they can't mirror that over to the Sith side for Sith warriors who prefer that particular look. The whole purpose behind moddable armor that you can improve as you go is to find that custom look that you absolutely prefer. Hell, I have three saber hilts I swap between depending on which I prefer the look of at that particular time.

 

I see no reason they can't have light/medium/heavy social armor, if we get social points to rank up so we can buy social gear, at least let us use it the way we see fit.

[MethodSZ]

You're not understanding that it's SOCIAL GEAR, which is to say that it's not the same as combat gear. So, armor rating doesn't matter. Complain is invalid.

 

Wrong. Learn how modding works in this game before you try to step up and be a keyboard warrior.

[Kibaken]

I have a Jedi Guardian who's wearing a traditional cloaked Jedi robe, it's a moddable orange chest plate that dropped off a quest reward, it's heavy armor. I don't see why they can't mirror that over to the Sith side for Sith warriors who prefer that particular look. The whole purpose behind moddable armor that you can improve as you go is to find that custom look that you absolutely prefer. Hell, I have three saber hilts I swap between depending on which I prefer the look of at that particular time.

 

I see no reason they can't have light/medium/heavy social armor, if we get social points to rank up so we can buy social gear, at least let us use it the way we see fit.

 

The funny thing is, actually, there are robes with armor underneath that are heavy armor for Warriors. In fact, there's no medium armor robes. The only medium armor we get are Vader-influenced full-plate looking gear. If you look at the Corellia commendations vendor that's EXACTLY what it is: heavy robes and medium full-plate.

 

Sith get EXTREMELY gimped when it comes to medium armor, case in point the Dark Side vendor on the fleet: there are about 4 heavy armor groups and 1 medium armor group, and the medium armor shares a model with the light.

 

Extremely. Gimped.

[Kibaken]

Wrong. Learn how modding works in this game before you try to step up and be a keyboard warrior.

 

At this point yes, it is social gear. It can be combat gear for awhile but they broke the system. See my above poasts.

[Reddum]

There's nothing wrong with a light armor being light armor. What they should actually do is create new Social Gear that are Medium or Heavy. There's no sense in a Dancer's Outfit being classified as Heavy Armor, unless they added extra stuff to it.

[Skodar]

They're looking into making the sets for heavy and medium armor. Patience.

[Radiatonia]

They're looking into making the sets for heavy and medium armor. Patience.

 

Read my post from last page.

 

 

They have sets for every class already done. The end-game social armor has been done since half a year ago. Some of them (Well, almost all of them, to be honest.) look leagues ahead of the horrible end-game armor we've got now, in fact.

 

They just took them out for some reason. Which is a shame, because not only is the game heavily favored to light armor only classes in terms of ease of play at the moment, but it also gives them a huge edge.

 

Nevermind that they appear to be adding new sets as light armor now, too. There's no reason at all the Imperial Trooper and Republic Officer CE sets, sets that are meant to fit agents, troopers, and bounty hunters, are only usable by inquisitors and consulars. Even visually, they're obviously medium armor or above.

 

 

As for the end-game sets. I recall seeing a number of top tier/near top tier end-game pieces that can be re-slotted to social and other orange gear. The catch is, is that I only saw them available for a special kind of mark at one of the end-game planet vendors. Ilum, I think, if I recall properly.

 

I can't tell you what mark type they require, since I don't have it to compare and contrast the image. But it's there.

 

There's also another way you can slot social and orange gear to be end-game compatible. There are rare drops at the end-game that give access to tier 53 and up modification items.

 

These items, when fully reverse engineered to purple (And more, if there's a tier beyond purple. Never seen it, but since I can RE them at that tier, I wouldn't say it doesn't exist.) boost other gear up to the equivalent to the best gear in the game. The catch is, you have to find these schematics first, and either know, or be a crafter that can actually make them.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Radiatonia

[Kibaken]

Read my post from last page.

 

 

They have sets for every class already done. The end-game social armor has been done since half a year ago. Some of them (Well, almost all of them, to be honest.) look leagues ahead of the horrible end-game armor we've got now, in fact.

 

They just took them out for some reason. Which is a shame, because not only is the game heavily favored to light armor only classes in terms of ease of play at the moment, but it also gives them a huge edge.

 

Nevermind that they appear to be adding new sets as light armor now, too. There's no reason at all the Imperial Trooper and Republic Officer CE sets, sets that are meant to fit agents, troopers, and bounty hunters, are only usable by inquisitors and consulars. Even visually, they're obviously medium armor or above.

 

I want it to be viable as much as the next guy, I just don't think they're going to support it any more. :\

[archifikoss]

The good thing is that it's moddable... So if you're doing some RP thing in a contested zone you will not be defenseless if attacked by marauding PvPers, and an unexpected and awesome brawl will occur

[Radiatonia]

I want it to be viable as much as the next guy, I just don't think they're going to support it any more. :\

 

This is my concern too, though from a different approach.

 

They're obviously adding in pretty much every new armor into the light armor class. Which is unbalanced, pointless for other classes, and more then anything else, renders the social point grind rather pointless to go through at the upper tiers.

 

Imperial Trooper armor needs a refit to be medium and/or heavy, for instance. As do many of the public non-CE armors.

 

Given the insane price of these armors, no-one is going to buy them that can't use them in combat. By the time you can afford to get the actual Trooper pieces, for instance, you're going to be dropping anywhere from 60-100K on gearing it out with modification items, and getting the full set.

 

 

Either they need to design alternate classed versions of these armors, or they need to make social armor adapt to the highest armor class you have learned. The latter is much easier to do, and less time consuming, then the former. A simple if check referencing a list of armors could probably do it, depending on how their item database is set up.

 

If people don't like seeing dancers in a slave leia bikini tanking, they can just avoid grouping with them. That's a minor concern compared to the much larger issue of balancing the feature, and making it so that everyone can actually benefit from it.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Radiatonia

[Isende]

what all of you stats-only folk don't seem to realize is that, for a GREAT many of us, how our gear looks and our ability to make our toon "ours" is at LEAST as much of the gameplay as the gear-grind at end-game for stats, etc.

 

right now i'm leveling, side-by-side, a sage healer and a knight tank. i have a FEW more options for my healer, in making her appear as i want her to appear (except of course for the fact that nearly all armor available comes in shades of mud, mud, or mud), but my tank? pft. forget about it. she has access to HEAVY robes, which show her legs which are covered in white or mud leggings. the robes are all, WITHOUT FAIL, hooded, so it doesn't really matter that i chose a hair style with earrings that's a bit edgy and punk -- cuz you can't see 'em. and to be QUITE frank and honest, this pisses me off.

 

MY immersive gameplay is AS reliant on my visual delight in my toons as it is in my toons abilities to succeed. their ability to succeed is driven by careful consideration of gear choices. guess what, folk? so is my ability to enjoy playing them driven by consideration of gear choices.

 

there is NOTHING wrong with saying, give us more choices, more options. there is NOTHING wrong with saying, this is a huge part of gameplay for many. further, there is NOTHING wrong with people getting word out there, so that, with ANY luck, bioware/ea sits back and says, "oh, well, if we want to keep these PAYING customers, maybe we need to consider that gear needs more than just stats to keep people happy."

 

and while they're (for who knows HOW long) limiting our ability to SEARCH forums and find these posts specifically ... i think a casual scan of posts will show that there are enough folk out there making this kind of request to merit its standing as an IMPORTANT TOPIC. cuz face it, folk. this game released in a VERY "unfinished" manner. between chat bugs, folk fighting with outta-the-blue lag issues, crashes to desktop occurring fairly rapidly, an enormously clunky ui that cannot be modified in any way, customer service that can't do more than say "we're working on it," and a trade network that (shudder) is annoying, at BEST, to use -- well, let's see. what's going to be the issue that breaks this camel's back, for these paying customers? hate to say it, but for me, visual enjoyment of my gaming is right up there with the rest of them.

[Radiatonia]

So apparently on the dev tracker there's a post that says that they're looking into making social gear scaleable sometime in the future.

 

Apparently it isn't a "priority", right now, however.

[Thalassicus]

The Social and Legacy systems are clearly unfinished. For now social points are only useful for Inquisitors and Consulars. I just ignore social points on other classes.

 

It's straightforward to provide identical-looking copies of the gear for each armor category. After all, much Sith/Jedi "heavy armor" is cloth robes, so precedent shows appearance does not have to match armor category.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Thalassicus

[spencer_]

I've seen a consular running around in the dancers outfit in PvP, she's pretty freaking effective, and probably a bit distracting to the opposing team as well.

[Thelgow]

Just found this thread after starting a different one.

I made a Juggernaut under the impression I could wear just about anything, Bounty hunter stuff, etc.

Then I saw the Pilot helmet and thought thatd be great to run around in for social points.

Only other thing you buy wit the fleet commendations are the other ship upgrades and those are spaced out at lvl 25, 35, 45 and 50. So I figure I can quick daily/grind and get some pilot stuff.

Then realized its all light armor.

I was thinking of doing an assassin tank initially but opted out instead due to all the light armor looking like robes.

Had I known about socials only having light for now, I would have chose differently.

The whole idea of tanking in light armor sounds odd but look at assassin and shadows.

They have a force ability supposedly that jacks up their armor ratings. Why couldnt such an idea extend to Juggernauts/Guardians, who specialize in combat.

An assassin couldn't say, Psst, Juggie, do this and get 150% more out of your armor.

I think the equip should just scale to what skill you have, vendor has 1 for each armor class, or you get an option on the ctrl-right click screen that you choose which armor category it falls under.

[lueckjathom]

As others have said, it's social gear meant to be worn for looks.

 

Yes, a light armor wearer can use this for combat if they mod it up.

 

Who cares? By mid 20's if you do anything right, all your gear with be orange moddable already anyway with any class. Armor has more or less no value in this game. It's all about the mods if you go the orange gear route.

[J-Sheridan]

Would have been so much simpler to do what Lord or the Rings Online does with costumes.

 

Special tab screen that allows you to put on the cosmetic effect of that item over the top of your actual equipment.

 

Result: You can put on any social armor you like and have the effect but still have your endgame super-set as your ACTUAL equipment.

 

No need to slot mods in things and it benefits everyone. LOTRO prevents you from wearing anything that you cant actually wear so light armor classes cant put on heavy armor for looks. Heavy armor wearers however can easily wear light armor for looks if they choose.

 

Suits everyone and lets people wear what they want to wear while keeping the incentive for those social sets intact.

 

The current system favors light armor classes for social items...

 

The female only dress on Coruscant is light armor...

 

Anyone who is a Collectors Edition got royally shafted as well because the CE Uniform is light armor...

 

Anyone who inputs a Security Key got royally shafted as well because the Dancer's outfit is female / light armor...

 

The female only dress on Coruscant is light armor...

 

Basically, a Female can get a full set of custom armor as soon as they hit Faction Fleet while males have to wait longer. The situation with social armor being available to everyone and effective for everyone needs to be addressed.

[Baizak]

Pointless complaint

 

Why do you care what armor type the social gear is?

 

Because it is not fair that those who have light armor proficiency have more choices in what they can wear than those that do not.

 

Your comment may stem from ignorance, so I will elaborate. Social gear is all orange quality which means it is also modable. So with proper modding social gear is just as viable as non social/ typical combat modded gear.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Baizak

[DuskD]

 

Your comment may stem from ignorance, so I will elaborate. Social gear is all orange quality which means it is also modable. So with proper modding social gear is just as viable as non social/ typical combat modded gear.

 

 

This