How to destroy GSF

[Verain]

The thing to remember about gear is that it matters relative to the player's skill level. I actually think it's more impatcful than people generally admit, a factor of two, maybe three. But this is applied to the player's performance, which is by far a bigger factor.

 

I mean, when I math out the blaster factor and show it to be 13-35%, it's fair to say that that's not ALL of it, because you have problems shooting and stuff. Defenses go up by even less than offenses by numbers, but all ships become more able to move about faster or be more maneuverable.

 

2x though? I think probably not that much.

 

I also think that it's worth pointing out what you have with a 10k ship, a 40k ship, as well. Some guy on another website was like "I played all week and only earned 2500 ship req on my bomber", which, I mean, that's literally impossible. You get 7750 just from doing all the dailies (this also gives you the weekly), and that's on EVERY ship.

 

I always get that barrel roll time down fast, then start working on other things.

 

 

I think the real reason people sometimes exagerate the importance of gear is that while you grind up your first mastered ships, you also gain experience and improve your skill as a player.

 

MAYBE, but it's hardly ever even people with mastered ships saying it. If I go to a new server and queue into their aces on my stock ships, I'll get slaughtered, but the gear difference is nowhere close to the team difference. In that game where the three of us pushed back a double premade on a guest server, I had to move all around the map because I was the only guy on the team with armor piercing, so every time a charged plating bomber went somewhere we had to call it and I had to intercept, moving another ship to wherever I was. That's a great example of something that is too boolean, and we all complain about it. The vast majority of the game is not that at all. Charged plating and armor piercing are "high income" trade skills, with distortion field missile break being "middle class", and those guys really stand out as being pretty wild.

 

It's been said and I'm paraphrasing, but why is it always the players who lack both gear and skill talking about how good the gear must be, how it matters time ninety zillion?

Edited October 21, 2014 by Verain

[MiaowZedong]

I mean, when I math out the blaster factor and show it to be 13-35%, it's fair to say that that's not ALL of it, because you have problems shooting and stuff. Defenses go up by even less than offenses by numbers, but all ships become more able to move about faster or be more maneuverable.

 

Defences make a big difference in the case of evasion (from 22 to 33% passive, 49 to 68% spiked on a T2 scout—the difference is relatively even bigger for a T1 GS) and Charged Plating, but is faily minor for other forms of defence. Don't forget, though, that new GSFers not only need to gear up their components, but also their crews—some classes have most of the good crew abilities out of the box (e.g. Jedi Consular), but others lack really essential abilities.

 

And the reason you can get 2-3x the performance is that all areas of gear help each other. If you can do x% more damage when you shoot and are y% more often in firing position due to more mobility and have z% more time in the fight because of fewer deaths (due to more survivability), all these bonii will stack multiplicatively.

 

To take an example with arbitrary numbers, if you improve all three major areas of the ship by 25%, you don't improve the ship by 25% (average) or even 75% (sum of the parts) but by 95% (product of the parts). Of course, this is really a simplified model: these aren't single stats and depend alot on the situation, you don't improve your "mobility" but things like your speed, engine regen etc...

 

The ballpark of twice or more though can be verified when you watch good players and aces play consistently a newer character with ships that are still stock (so a sample size of a few dozen games at the very least). The gap in performance is definitely somewhere in that ballpark from what I've seen, at least with the simple numbers available on the scoreboard.

 

Of course if you take, say, Maethon or Shayd, and halve his damage and kill numbers (something I've seen) with sub-par gear, he's still in a totally different league from John G. Newb (hell, you can halve my damage and kill numbers and I'll still be way ahead of John G. Newb, and I'm not on the same level as Maethon or Shayd). For the newbies the problem is that gear is just a factor on top of your skill, and skill for newbies is very, very low for obvious reasons.

Edited October 21, 2014 by MiaowZedong

[Verain]

Defences make a big difference in the case of evasion (from 22 to 33% passive, 49 to 68% spiked on a T2 scout—the difference is relatively even bigger for a T1 GS) and Charged Plating, but is faily minor for other forms of defence.

 

Well, some of those defenses are instead of other defenses, but yea.

 

Don't forget, though, that new GSFers not only need to gear up their components, but also their crews—some classes have most of the good crew abilities out of the box (e.g. Jedi Consular), but others lack really essential abilities.

 

Interestingly, I don't think crews are the biggest of deals.

 

Empire: You start out by switching Salana to copilot. At this point, you need Jaesa or Lt. Pierce for offensive, engineering can wait, and you are missing like one of the good defensives so you need like Vector and one other if you want to fly bomber. Salana is top tier and you start with her, so you are looking at 4500 fleet req to fly any ship properly, assuming you need to buy all three, and not much more than that to get EVERY good crewman- certainly less than 10k.

 

Republic: You start by switching Kendra or whoever their tactical queen is in. At this point you want Nadia Grell for defensive, engineering can wait, and you probably want Akaavi so you have Wingman. You are pretty solid for 3k, and done for 6k. It costs you maybe one more crewman to have every good crewman total. Republic starts out a bit stronger because the robot can actually aim, but they don't start with a top tier crewmember in their opening hand like Empire does.

 

 

Importantly, you have to pick a generally poor class to be really screwed here, or be a level 1. Both engineering crewmembers begin with +blaster pool (weakest) and +13 engine efficiency (strongest), and this actually makes them all the third best pick. 2VR8/Yuun and C2N2/Blizz are the superior picks (arguably, the starters are actually superior for certain special gunship builds). Since 2VR8 and C2N2 are for everyone of mid level and up, this upgrade can normally wait quite awhile.

 

 

The only real annoying things are MZ-12 trolling the heck out empire, and the annoying lack of wingman on Republic.

[Danalon]

I agree, the different combinations of passive and active abilities on Rep and Imp are annoying.

 

Picking a copilot separately from the rest of the crew would solve that problem.

 

Also there should be an option to mute the copilot.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Danalon

[Caernos]

Here's what I'm afraid the devs will do to destroy GSF

 

1. "Hey guys, we know that you all are anxiously waiting for some news on GSF, we just wanted to let you know that this increase in req gain is the first step in our multi-phase plan to improve GSF, look for more after 3.0."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and then there's nothing but the sound of crickets for 6 to 12 months.

 

That's what I'm afraid the Devs will do to unintentionally destroy GSF, a complete and total lack of attention or acknowledgment. Because as of right now, we can't even get the devs to post in "OUR" part of the forum about anything. They posted their news about "a multi-phase plan" in the General Discussion section which is galling. They could have at least linked the stupid thread and their post back to our forum! I would never have even seen it if I didn't check the dev tracker, and some of our forum regulars had linked the post.

 

 

please note that I'm not actually quoting the devs in this post, my words cannot be taken as fact they are meant to be more hyperbole than anything else.

 

I apologize if my response bothers or insults anyone, that was not my intent. I just really frustrated with the lack of movement we've had and while I am glad the devs did respond to something. I just wish they would give us an idea of some of the things they were considering, or at least show that they were aware of the issues. So yeah, my apologies, I know I'm getting bent out of shape over nothing, I'm just really irritated and tired.

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2014 by Caernos

[PlagaNerezza]

 

I'm saving everyone from reading your rants. Joysticks are not odd contraptions invented only 3 months ago for flight simulator games. SWTOR's floating mechanic is the oddity in flying games. Most flying games support keyboard and mouse players along with "gamepad" players who might use say an xbox style controller. Only SWTOR choose to cut out a segment of players by only allowing mouse and keyboard.

 

And to those saying you must PVE to PVP that is wrong! No one is saying that. What people are saying is that if you choose to PVE on the ground you get a ship or parts you can use in PVP that you can also earn by pvping. No one is asking for a superior item earned only in PVE should exist. I don't want to force spacers to come into PVE. I am asking spacers accept that PVE can get gear they can use in space by doing pve.

 

However, right now space has a tier model to ships and gear that is overly rewarding grinders.

 

Those stating their is a method to run and score in noob ships state this and provide examples of noob ships scoring against other ungeared players. They want to say its a skill based game and those with complaints about it are "noobs" that need to L2P.

 

We all admit their is L2P issues. Learning the gearing system. Learn the progression method. Learning the awful and unique swtor flying mechanics. The grind is giving you a nice statistical advantage and new players are severely limited to suitable ships and gear unless they want to grind out an overly large amount of space pvp to get what is a fairly reasonable ship. I'd like to see some method to balance this out by reducing the gap between the top tier and bottom tier gear while making the top tier more attainable and then having the developers focus on adding content over grinding gear.

[MiaowZedong]

And to those saying you must PVE to PVP that is wrong! No one is saying that. What people are saying is that if you choose to PVE on the ground you get a ship or parts you can use in PVP that you can also earn by pvping. No one is asking for a superior item earned only in PVE should exist. I don't want to force spacers to come into PVE. I am asking spacers accept that PVE can get gear they can use in space by doing pve.

 

I will support that the day I can get any PvE reward—decorations, gear, cosmetics, whatever—without ever having to do any PvE.

[caederon]

I Only SWTOR choose to cut out a segment of players by only allowing mouse and keyboard.

This is cutting nobody out. Everyone has a mouse. There is no Rule Of Game Design that states you have to do exactly what has been done in the past, and mouse-based space combat games do exist. Freelancer was an excellent example of that. Just because it does not cater to your specific idea of what amounts to a good control scheme does not mean it is cutting anyone out or is 'awful' to anyone but you.

However, right now space has a tier model to ships and gear that is overly rewarding grinders.

It's not that big a grind...particularly if you're a subscriber, in which case you start out with the T1 gunship (in addition to the T1 scout and T1 strike fighter), which is arguably the most effective ship in the hangar. If you play for a week, do the intro quest, dailies, weekly quest, and some more matches, you will have a reasonably geared ship if you ask a few people how to best spend your req or look it up. It is a short trip to the 5000 fleet req you need to get a T2 scout, the other most powerful ship in the game. Or, you can buy one with cartel $$ immediately (you could also buy a T1 gunship with cartel $$ immediately). With the 3.0 patch they're even going to make the req awards greater, thereby shortening your 'grind' to gear your ship. It's flat out lazy to ask for more than that.

 

The whole 'tier' terminology is misleading in that you do not have to get the T1 ships to unlock the T2 or T3, you can get any ship you want with your initial 5k fleet req (2500 for the T2 bomber) or get any of the cartel variants immediately, before you even play a single game of GSF. You can even find the cartel ships on the GTN and pay for them with PvE credits!

They want to say its a skill based game and those with complaints about it are "noobs" that need to L2P.

...

We all admit their is L2P issues. Learning the gearing system. Learn the progression method. Learning the awful and unique swtor flying mechanics. The grind is giving you a nice statistical advantage and new players are severely limited to suitable ships and gear unless they want to grind out an overly large amount of space pvp to get what is a fairly reasonable ship.

Guess what, learning is important! Do you really want a game where no learning or investment of time is required to do well at it? That would be a game you get bored of immediately and leave to find something else.

 

The biggest problem new players face is that they do not know what they are doing. If they knew what they were doing, they would not make many of the mistakes that cause them to be blown up immediately. The shocking revelation here is that it is not hard to learn how to be a productive player! With even the tiniest bit of self motivation and willingness to practice in order to gain skill, you can become productive. If you have any curiosity about the game, and ask veteran players for advice or look on this very forum, you will find an amazing amount of information on how to improve. There are discussions, lists, guides, videos, well-publicized Twitch streams, all there waiting to guide you on the path to success.

 

- Despon

Edited October 22, 2014 by caederon

[PlagaNerezza]

I will support that the day I can get any PvE reward—decorations, gear, cosmetics, whatever—without ever having to do any PvE.

 

See Fleet Vendor where you earn decorations and Orange gear, without ever stepping foot in PVE. I also think this universally needs to be expanded because gating in the game between space, pvp and pve is a big time sync.

 

They are forcing players to select 1 or the other in almost dedicated fashion. I might pvp today and want to pve in the raid tomorrow. I might want to fly space thursday on guild space night. It is very time consuming to gear for 3 different metagames.

 

I do not understand this mentality that PVP earns only pvp things. Pve earns only pve things and space only space things. So what if I want to spend my elite pve comm's on pvp gear? So? Or my PVP points on pve gear. Or my space points on pvp gear?

 

So what? Because I didn't que for 10 wz and instead pve'd the same time amount I don't get to treat the "currency" earned as currency and buy what I want?

 

Then what someone does dailies on each and spends all their comms on one set? They gear that faster? And what? They hurt you how exactly? They have to play x amount of time to earn the necessary swap between the comm's and you can give it a conversion ratio that favors playing the other, but overall what difference does it really make? How is this hurting you?

[PlagaNerezza]

This is cutting nobody out. Everyone has a mouse. There is no Rule Of Game Design that states you have to do exactly what has been done in the past, and mouse-based space combat games do exist. Freelancer was an excellent example of that. Just because it does not cater to your specific idea of what amounts to a good control scheme does not mean it is cutting anyone out or is 'awful' to anyone but you.

 

It's not that big a grind...particularly if you're a subscriber, in which case you start out with the T1 gunship (in addition to the T1 scout and T1 strike fighter), which is arguably the most effective ship in the hangar. If you play for a week, do the intro quest, dailies, weekly quest, and some more matches, you will have a reasonably geared ship if you ask a few people how to best spend your req or look it up. It is a short trip to the 5000 fleet req you need to get a T2 scout, the other most powerful ship in the game. Or, you can buy one with cartel $$ immediately (you could also buy a T1 gunship with cartel $$ immediately). With the 3.0 patch they're even going to make the req awards greater, thereby shortening your 'grind' to gear your ship. It's flat out lazy to ask for more than that.

 

The whole 'tier' terminology is misleading in that you do not have to get the T1 ships to unlock the T2 or T3, you can get any ship you want with your initial 5k fleet req (2500 for the T2 bomber) or get any of the cartel variants immediately, before you even play a single game of GSF. You can even find the cartel ships on the GTN and pay for them with PvE credits!

 

Guess what, learning is important! Do you really want a game where no learning or investment of time is required to do well at it? That would be a game you get bored of immediately and leave to find something else.

 

The biggest problem new players face is that they do not know what they are doing. If they knew what they were doing, they would not make many of the mistakes that cause them to be blown up immediately. The shocking revelation here is that it is not hard to learn how to be a productive player! With even the tiniest bit of self motivation and willingness to practice in order to gain skill, you can become productive. If you have any curiosity about the game, and ask veteran players for advice or look on this very forum, you will find an amazing amount of information on how to improve. There are discussions, lists, guides, videos, well-publicized Twitch streams, all there waiting to guide you on the path to success.

 

- Despon

 

I'll save you a lot of time. Is the GSF successful? Does it have a lot of players? So while I agree that you need to actually play it to get better and read up on it, you need to hear the peoples feedback on what is fundamentally wrong with the game and why its not being played more.

 

While I agree my opinion on no joystick is my own, it doesn't change the fact the GSF is rather unique in that regard and that it has the playing population it has doesn't speak well to the decision to not change to something more common to allow joysticks.

 

Back to the original thread and my points against lessoning the grind and integrating with ground. The original thread points stated this would Destroy GSF.

 

I don't agree that have some pve method to get the T2 scout is going to destroy GSF. Or that making you earn req faster is going to end the GSF by allow more people access to the better gear faster.

 

You indicated their is already methods to reduce this by paying Bioware cash. So what PVEing for the same thing is somehow going to destroy the GSF? Absolutely not.

 

As to the L2P, noob, that is all protection language to guard your gear gap that would not be so significant if it was easier to get. I understand that you don't like it. I didn't like the pvp reductions at one point after I earned the gear the hard way. Tough. It didn't destroy pvp. Lack of content is killing it. Same for GSF. Instead of saying we need content. More content. You've got a thread like this.

[caederon]

Is the GSF successful? Does it have a lot of players?

...

As to the L2P, noob, that is all protection language to guard your gear gap that would not be so significant if it was easier to get. I understand that you don't like it.

Ebon Hawk and Begeren Colony both have consistent queue pops throughout the day. I haven't been on Harbinger in a while but it had three matches of GSF running concurrently a lot of the time when I was. There are plenty of people playing and enjoying GSF. If there was a cross-server queuing solution of some sort, there would be no issues at all getting matches whenever you wanted them.

 

Your 'protection language' argument is baseless. I've got characters on Begeren Colony, Ebon Hawk, Bastion, Jedi Covenant, Shadowlands, and Harbinger. Only on BC imp do I have a full hangar of mastered ships. I started from scratch on every server, and my ships are in a wide range of geared-ness. I even have a character on Bastion specifically ungeared for the purpose of flying Stock Night competitions. Gear is not hard to get. You don't even have to win! You just have to play, get the daily/weekly req grants, and soon enough, you have capable ships. You're talking about it like it's months worth of grinding, when that is in no way the case.

 

How to destroy GSF: keep acting like there is some insurmountable, burdensome barrier to competency.

 

- Despon

[PlagaNerezza]

Ebon Hawk and Begeren Colony both have consistent queue pops throughout the day. I haven't been on Harbinger in a while but it had three matches of GSF running concurrently a lot of the time when I was. There are plenty of people playing and enjoying GSF. If there was a cross-server queuing solution of some sort, there would be no issues at all getting matches whenever you wanted them.

 

Your 'protection language' argument is baseless. I've got characters on Begeren Colony, Ebon Hawk, Bastion, Jedi Covenant, Shadowlands, and Harbinger. Only on BC imp do I have a full hangar of mastered ships. I started from scratch on every server, and my ships are in a wide range of geared-ness. I even have a character on Bastion specifically ungeared for the purpose of flying Stock Night competitions. Gear is not hard to get. You don't even have to win! You just have to play, get the daily/weekly req grants, and soon enough, you have capable ships. You're talking about it like it's months worth of grinding, when that is in no way the case.

 

How to destroy GSF: keep acting like there is some insurmountable, burdensome barrier to competency.

 

- Despon

 

The base ships are junk and the fact that you start out so gimped is silly. That having to buy access to classes is unusual. You don't get to play a class to start out.

 

I think its way to much grinding to a ship out. I am not alone in that assessment of the gameplay.

 

On my server GSF only pops during prime time. It is only popping more with the advent of conquest rewards. It's matching mechanism is placing fully geared ships against level 1 ships.

 

I come to the GSF board to ask a very real question: Why are you putting brand new ships into a match against a player fully geared out? It is like putting a level 10 into a 55 warzone and they didn't even bother to bolster the stats. The response from the "community" players is L2P its not that big a deal? Followed by I am as an Ace PVP pilot about 60% effective. Meaning the geared player has at least a 40% advantage to start against the player. Meaning your odds of winning are now something like 20%. That is an acceptable matching system to GSF players.

 

This isn't learn to play. Its a broken system. The fear geared players have is that a tier would mean less GSF pops since their isn't enough geared players, but when you say ok, lets get more geared players you get this nonsensical response that req. changes is going to Destroy GSF>

 

The game has no content. It has a gear grind on 2 maps. Its a flight sim without the ability to play with a joystick. Something I've done in flight sims since the 1990's. I am shocked to see this level of acceptance in its state.

[Verain]

I'm saving everyone from reading your rants.

 

I think you don't know what rant means.

 

Joysticks are not odd contraptions invented only 3 months ago for flight simulator games.

Would a mouse-only game be strange on an X-box? Like you had to go buy some expensive X-box mouse. To a typical MMO player- and I'm sure the system harvests EA does let them know roughly how many joysticks (not joypads) there are out there.

 

SWTOR's floating mechanic is the oddity in flying games.

It's not THAT odd... but if joysticks were supported, I think it would be the only MMO that does natively? It's a lot to ask of a company that can't fix an invalid XML character.

 

 

Most flying games support keyboard and mouse players along with "gamepad" players who might use say an xbox style controller. Only SWTOR choose to cut out a segment of players by only allowing mouse and keyboard.

 

You say SWTOR as if it is GSF. And as was pointed out, you aren't being "cut out"- you OBVIOUSLY have a mouse, and you SADLY have a keyboard. Arguably HOTAS support will cut out a lot of players that don't have that or aren't willing to pick it up for a side game in their MMO. I only play SWTOR for GSF, but I'm in the minority- most of the players in this forum play the ground game some, and even I did a time ago.

 

And to those saying you must PVE to PVP that is wrong! No one is saying that. What people are saying is that if you choose to PVE on the ground you get a ship or parts you can use in PVP that you can also earn by pvping. No one is asking for a superior item earned only in PVE should exist. I don't want to force spacers to come into PVE. I am asking spacers accept that PVE can get gear they can use in space by doing pve.

 

No, you're asking for free stuff. You want to go grind on some boars, get the best pvp gear, and then crap on pvpers with it. That's silly. Everyone else had to get req by flying in pvp, and you want a pve stream of it?

 

In fact, a very small pve stream of it could be acceptable. My concern is ships you can't get elsewhere, or it being a viable method of reqqing up a ship.

 

And also as has been brought up: can I get top tier raid gear by playing GSF? Can I get max tier pvp gear by doing GSF? If the answer to those is "no", then no one should be gearing their GSF ships by killing plastic puppets or smashing global cooldown buttons.

 

 

Those stating their is a method to run and score in noob ships state this and provide examples of noob ships scoring against other ungeared players. They want to say its a skill based game and those with complaints about it are "noobs" that need to L2P.

 

By being ungeared, the "noob ships" are running against ships with MORE req. In all cases. No one is claiming that gear doesn't matter at all, but the point is that unless you are able to pull Drako's (and others) numbers in your much BETTER geared ship, it's fair to say that the skill difference is so great you are literally not comprehending it. It's fair to say you don't really know what's going on, and from there it's no leap at all to assume that you are putting too much weight on gear.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, so to reiterate:

 

> No GSF powers/ships/whatevers from raids please.

> No GSF powers/ships/whatevers from ground pvp please.

> No deletion of req, but easier access to req for new players.

 

All of these appear to be the case.

 

 

 

Seriously man, fraps yourself flying sometime, even just to watch it side by side with any of the streamers. Not only will you improve dramatically, you'll understand a lot more of what we are talking about.

[Verain]

Or my space points on pvp gear?

 

If ship and fleet requisition could turn into TOP TIER (best in slot, not some crappy equiv ilvl thing, like the EXACT same pieces) raid pieces and pvp pieces at a rate that is not unreasonable, then the game would be integrated with currencies and this would be reasonable. But I think you know they wouldn't do this for SEVERAL reasons:

1> Gear is a huge motivator, and this would reduce that.

2> Gear is a huge motivator, so raiders would feel compelled to get req and turn it into raid gear, to better their raids.

3> Gear is a huge motivator, so pvpers would feel compelled to get req and turn it into pvp gear, to help their arenas.

4> The whole system is encouraging players to play a domain to get good at it, not have hard to understand cross linkages that need to be exploited. "Oh, see, the best healer implants are cheapest per hour if you play warzones, but if you are deeps you really need to GSF for those.". Everytihng would have to balanced precisely, and probably no one would actually be happy.

 

So what? Because I didn't que for 10 wz and instead pve'd the same time amount I don't get to treat the "currency" earned as currency and buy what I want?

 

Of course not. If you go do thing A, you get rewarded for A, not for B. It was a choice to do A over B, and if you wanted to do both, you'll have to actually do both.

 

 

 

See Fleet Vendor where you earn decorations and Orange gear, without ever stepping foot in PVE.

 

Orange gear means "a transmog". It doesn't have stats. It's not ANY piece, it's a specific one, and you can earn it without pvping at all. Same with the like six total decorations on both factions (out of a thousand decorations) that you can purchase with fleet comms- or instead just go ahead and GTN them.

 

Asking for req or ships is like me asking for best in slot raid gear AND best in slot pvp gear. That's the compare, full stop, no exceptions. Not "you can earn a mat which can sell for 200k and then buy something that someone built on the GTN". That's not that thing. BEST IN SLOT.

 

Unless your plan is to tier the upgrade slots, so there's like a lesser version of each weapon. Like Crapid Fire Laser, Cruster Missiles, Pocket Rods, Asthma Railgun, and all of them were crappy knock offs of the ones you could get for requisition. You could have those sand components, because that's what GTN and ALL free-to-trade items are compared to bindables, in all of these games.

[PlagaNerezza]

 

Asking for req or ships is like me asking for best in slot raid gear AND best in slot pvp gear. That's the compare, full stop, no exceptions. Not "you can earn a mat which can sell for 200k and then buy something that someone built on the GTN". That's not that thing. BEST IN SLOT.

 

Best in tier items have often come from a mixture of PVE and PVP gear in this game for both sides of the game. Whether that was set bonus configuration, relics, hilts the game has often had this occur.

 

However, no one is asking for best in slot gear on a ship. Just a way to earn a ship or some integration with the PVE game as the GSF is an add-on to that game. PVE is often a way to assist PVP. The best way to pass gear is to PVE to acquire legacy weapons/off-hands.

 

I understand not having best in slot coming from a requirement to win a loot roll on a NiM Boss for PvP or Space. I am not a fan of this design.

 

However, many game designers believe that giving a .5% bump for completing the hardest content in the game is a fair reward. If that item is for space or pvp or pve they dont care. Its the Excalibur item.

 

Its what keeps players chasing the end boss content. PVE is the king of this game. PVP and space are secondary content for the PVE'rs. So you can always expect them to get loving in aspects of the game like PVP and Space that help them participate in those secondary games.

Edited October 24, 2014 by PlagaNerezza

[DamascusAdontise]

Its what keeps players chasing the end boss content. PVE is the king of this game. PVP and space are secondary content for the PVE'rs. So you can always expect them to get loving in aspects of the game like PVP and Space that help them participate in those secondary games.

 

 

So basically your saying: Since I PvE, it must be the most important thing to everyone in this game and by extension I should be able to get EVERYTHING IN THE GAME BY DOING ONLY WHAT I LIKE.

 

Newsflash!: What you care about, is not what everyone cares about.

 

I for one only care about GSF and a smattering of ground PvP (and leveling at the moment) PvE is less than worthless IMO (and a HUGE waste of time) I literally hate it, and will never ever play a single op. You don't see me then asking for PvE gear / commendations from GSF.

 

Why you ask?

 

Because those are two DISPARATE things, sure you can wear some PvE gear in PvP but that certainly not the point. PvE gear is for PvE, the better the gear the better the raid you can accomplish. The fact that some of it works for PvP IMO is a happy accident beholden to the fact that both PvP and PvE use the ground schema and the same gear slots.

 

In this game nothing works as how you ascribe: PvE does not reward PvP gear, PvE does not reward PvP gear, and GSF does not reward either. They each are separate entities and if you plan on being successful in any of them you need to play THAT PART OF THE GAME.

 

Gearing for GSF through ground would be misleading and dangerous, people would not know what to do with their ships or components since they don't play GSF.

 

Also what is with your war on progression, its like you have never played a single MMORPG before. MMO's are literally ALL progression. First you progress through levels to the end game, then you progress through either A) PvP gear, B) PvE gear, or C) Both (if you choose to do both)

 

The progression in this game is very lite compared to other games, even in GSF. If your not willing to spend even a meager amount of time playing / progressing through GSF how can you expect to be any good at all, also with such a small investment how can you come here and claim to know the fix to endemic problems with a game you hardly play. IMO you don't know what GSF needs at all.

[tunewalker]

Best in tier items have often come from a mixture of PVE and PVP gear in this game for both sides of the game. Whether that was set bonus configuration, relics, hilts the game has often had this occur.

 

However, no one is asking for best in slot gear on a ship. Just a way to earn a ship or some integration with the PVE game as the GSF is an add-on to that game. PVE is often a way to assist PVP. The best way to pass gear is to PVE to acquire legacy weapons/off-hands.

 

I understand not having best in slot coming from a requirement to win a loot roll on a NiM Boss for PvP or Space. I am not a fan of this design.

 

However, many game designers believe that giving a .5% bump for completing the hardest content in the game is a fair reward. If that item is for space or pvp or pve they dont care. Its the Excalibur item.

 

Its what keeps players chasing the end boss content. PVE is the king of this game. PVP and space are secondary content for the PVE'rs. So you can always expect them to get loving in aspects of the game like PVP and Space that help them participate in those secondary games.

 

ANY GSF gear is Best in Slot Gear. IF you are asking for ANYTHING from GSF it would be like a GSFer asking for the current BiS ground PvP gear (which is different from PvE and can not be gained in PvE even the Relics since PvE relics cant proc in PvP) or asking for BiS PvE gear (again which can only be gained in PvE, while many use the PvP relic, it is only because they havent won the PvE BiS relic yet) so surprise, surprise you get gear for what you want to do, by doing what you want to do.

 

There is no "gear Progression" in the traditional sense in GSF, thus ALL gear that would be gained is theoretically "BiS" (I say theoretically cus you never know how the balance passes will change what every one uses.)

 

So Yes asking for ANYTHING for GSF without doing ANY GSF (and with out Cartel Purchases) is akin to GSFer asking for BiS raid, or Arena gear for JUST GSFing.

Edited October 24, 2014 by tunewalker

[Verain]

Best in tier items have often come from a mixture of PVE and PVP gear in this game for both sides of the game. Whether that was set bonus configuration, relics, hilts the game has often had this occur.

 

So has WoW, and the WoW devs are open about how this is never intended. I can't imagine the SWTOR devs are any different. If it was truly by design, you'd have seen announces to that effect, not "it promptly gets patched out".

 

Also, I'm really super feeling you are exaggerating "often". I remember a giant amount of drama when bolster made BiS PvE weapons better than BiS PvP weapons in warzones, and I think that even got fixed? And certainly they were never even briefly better for PvP outside of warzones.

 

However, no one is asking for best in slot gear on a ship.

 

Yea, you are though. Because requisition is the only gating mechanic. That's a big part of why it is considered more casual: players like me don't get exclusive access to gear that players like you can't get, or have a super ludic hard time getting. If the game had actual gear in it, then maybe they could hand you a crappy version of it for doing something unrelated, like showing up to a flashpoint, but it doesn't. It's meant to have a straightforward progression mechanic, and it does.

 

 

PVE is often a way to assist PVP. The best way to pass gear is to PVE to acquire legacy weapons/off-hands.

 

And do you feel that this is their design goal, or does it fall out of the very fiddly numbers? For instance, expertise has a cap, so gear with expertise beyond that point has been problematic at times, etc. Bolster was originally not going to be a thing at max level, and then it has gone through several iterations.

 

However, many game designers believe that giving a .5% bump for completing the hardest content in the game is a fair reward. If that item is for space or pvp or pve they dont care. Its the Excalibur item.

 

And thankfully, they don't seem to do that here. The problem is that Excalibur is the kingmaker (literally), and who gets granted that- be it one guy who has the hardcorest guild backing him, or some random diddlejerk who happened to open a great chest- tends to feel overspecial, and the others not as such. In fact, the few games that have kept these super rare items tend to get a lot of flack for that fact, and they are truly few and far betwixt.

 

Its what keeps players chasing the end boss content.

 

If the raid content doesn't self justify by rewarding for itself, and ESPECIALLY if you need to gain an edge in PvP by playing in PvE, then it's terrible design. Thankfully, modern devs mostly agree with this across all games: if you have to bribe the raiders by giving them PvP powers, it's a really poor decision, and it is absolutely at the expense of the other players of the game.

 

PVE is the king of this game.

 

I'm not really sure how true this is. I would say story is, because this game has more of it than any three other MMOs, despite having less content than any. But maybe over the course of the whole game this is true- certainly I can't imagine that raids are the king of the endgame player, something I could totally believe about WoW, who will pull out all stops to deliver top raid content (even to the degree of disrupting their PvP and changing the timing of their competitive seasons around raid drops).

 

PVP and space are secondary content for the PVE'rs.

 

And primary content for PvP and GSF players, and most certainly the raiders of this game should not get to crap all over the content they aren't personally willing to play in, just because hey, it's hard to hold a guild together unless you can bribe everyone with the ability to blow up other players.

 

 

So you can always expect them to get loving in aspects of the game like PVP and Space that help them participate in those secondary games.

 

I would expect- nay, demand- the opposite. If this game had launched with magical poop dropping for raiders, I would literally have never even tried it. If I thought I would have had to commit to a second whole raid schedule to grab all the items and ships, my interest would have been dead right then.

 

 

IF you are asking for ANYTHING from GSF it would be like a GSFer asking for the current BiS ground PvP gear (which is different from PvE and can not be gained in PvE even the Relics since PvE relics cant proc in PvP) or asking for BiS PvE gear (again which can only be gained in PvE, while many use the PvP relic, it is only because they havent won the PvE BiS relic yet) so surprise, surprise you get gear for what you want to do, by doing what you want to do.

 

Well said, and thank you for bringing in details I don't know because I don't play all the sides of this game atm. The fact that trinkets don't proc is a huge signaller of design intent.

 

 

 

Simply put, it has been years since an MMO was taken seriously by giving out PvP powers to their raiders. In some way, that is actually sad, because the whole of the game in those days was perceived as a kind of arms race, and if you got A Great Piece you might wear it for literal years. But what it bought them ALL was a real audience- the market is much bigger since the days of EQ and such.

[Verain]

And as a side note, I really want you all to picture charging up the Asthma Railgun.

[Ryuku-sama]

Why don't we stop saying gear guys??? 'Cause req looks far more like xp with ships and components being skills in an awesomely complicated tree everyone has full access to...

[tunewalker]

Why don't we stop saying gear guys??? 'Cause req looks far more like xp with ships and components being skills in an awesomely complicated tree everyone has full access to...

 

This is very true, and then PvE'rs and PvP'rs cant complain..... they get their equivlant from doing it.... XP...

[Verain]

I'll save you a lot of time. Is the GSF successful? Does it have a lot of players?

 

I would say yes and yes. But what standards are we using here? All of SWTOR is a failure compared to WoW, and a huge success compared to most games. GSF is built using the existing everything from inside the rest of SWTOR. But it's a trap. You can always claim that it's not successful (based on the billions of people not playing it). I mean, most nights have steady pops and some have multiple games at the same time, and the whole thing is divided by server.

 

I'll save YOU a lot of time- your plan is to claim GSF is a failure (based on nothing) and then claim it's because you have a bunch of ways to fix it (all ground level redesigns mostly, or deletion of core features without compensation), probably because you have a bad experience when flying against veterans.

 

I don't agree that have some pve method to get the T2 scout is going to destroy GSF.

 

Interestingly, this isn't what I said. I said:

"So this fear is, that they go the other way- reward loyal ground pounders with cool models, exclusive models, etc. Things I can't get without actually playing the non-GSF parts of the game."

I think delivering requisition in PvE would be generally terrible, but if you could, in some cases, unlock an existing GSF ship directly from some PvE situation, that would not destroy GSF. What I said would destroy GSF, would do that!

 

 

Or that making you earn req faster is going to end the GSF by allow more people access to the better gear faster

 

Lets play, what did Verain say, again.

"And for the MOST part, I think it's fair to say that the playerbase wants easier requisition, wants new players with more components and more ships... So while it is pretty uncontroversial to make stuff cheaper, I would fear a redesign of this."

 

Oh hey, looks like I'm a h uge fan of faster gearing too, huh?

 

 

As to the L2P, noob, that is all protection language to guard your gear gap that would not be so significant if it was easier to get.

 

Get Drako's numbers in stock ships or get a new opinion. Second one is a bit easier I bet.

[Verain]

The whole 'tier' terminology is misleading in that you do not have to get the T1 ships to unlock the T2 or T3

 

Whoa whoa, we call those "types" for a reason. The "type 1" gunship is the first one released. It's order of release, not implied power, etc. It's just so we can use a simple term to describe it, not imply power levels. I refused to use "tier" from the start because it implies that there's an intended hierarchy of power.

 

Stasie even refuses to use that in his guides, because he doesn't want to waste space reiterating all this kind of stuff.

 

I think that that devs should have had every ship cost the same fleet req as well- I know some players who assumed that the 2500 fleet req ones were designed to be weaker, because when you are first starting out you might think that 2500 fleet req is a lot of fleet req, and they want to be "more future oriented" and "get the better deal". If all ships had been 5000 (or 4500) then that would be more reasonable.

[tunewalker]

I garantee the second one is much easier, if you want Drako's numbers (first dont be in a Match WITH HIM) second memorize the DO spots, third and most importantly...... L2P....

[Ryuku-sama]

I garantee the second one is much easier, if you want Drako's numbers (first dont be in a Match WITH HIM) second memorize the DO spots, third and most importantly...... L2P....

 

I do all that.. And still, somehow, can't hit his numbers Now I'm a sad panda