Gearing Changes in Eternal Throne

[aeterno]

Imho system only has a chance of not peeving most people off if the conqueset level ding time is appropriately short.

 

I'd venture to guess that if we're talking above a couple of HM operations run to re-ding max level and people will be seriously peeved by the combination of too much grind with RNG being the only carrot on the end of the stick. I mean at least in a current run you tended to end up with *something* for an alt, if nothing else. If an evening's ops run nets people only 15% of a golden progress bar that's goingto be just soul crushing...

Edited October 17, 2016 by aeterno

[Transcendent]

Personally speaking, the more RNG involved in a game, the greater the sense of agitation I feel while playing it. People with good rng will be happy, people with bad rng will be unhappy, neither of them at the system itself but the results of the system.

 

Of course I understand why games do this, because psychologically a player will grind for longer for RNG rather than a guaranteed reward with a longer path. It doesn't mean I enjoy or like it.

 

Quite the opposite on that last part, if the RNG system is terrible (and it nornally is for me) then I just stop playing. Being able to pick and choose rewards or my own gear has been one of the strong points in this game over others. They're essentially removing that, which removes one of the plus points in the game for me personally.

[KevinQCowart]

F2P and Preferred players will be unable to earn end-game gear since they will not have access to Galactic Command (GC). If they were a subscriber who went preferred and had earned gear through GC we won't take it away, but they will be unable to earn additional gear (through Command Ranks) until they subscribe. They can still get gear through Crafting, that is unchanged.

 

-eric

 

Eric if this is the case weekly operations and warzone passes are meaningless and the "F2P" label is false. You have changed the games monitization system.

[Florrentius]

Not only that...But I fear any new group content they add will be less important...unless they make the new group content really hard, why should we repeat it? On the plus side, we could be seeing a new diffcullity in new ops (master)

 

 

 

master = nightmare

 

expert = hardmode

[wainot-keel]

 

 

 

 

[*]Yup, the drops will be random.

 

you have got to be kidding... :rolleyes:

this is just ********

[Kingsbount]

Bioware... Or i can call you Biofail?

 

In the all possible ways to IMPROVE the game, you choose to ruin it...

 

What the hell is WRONG WITH YOU?

 

WHY are you DOING THIS?!

 

Why are you trying ti KILL the game we love?!

 

Im done...

If this pile of s***t will go Live - im done.

Enough of this bu***t.

If you want to kill the game - fine. But im definatly not gonna pay for this garbage.

[IanArgent]

I'm going to reserve judgement until we know:

 

How many items are in a command crate, and how much CXP per item we get for "disintegrating" an item, and if it varies based on what type of item it is. How many "gear item" disintegrations get us a new crate at GCap?

 

What the acquisition rate of Command Levels at Command Level Cap is, based on what activity? Will the number of bosses in an op or flashpoint factor into how much GXP we get? For FPs, will The False Emperor produce more GXP than Esselese/BT? How about KDY? Will Rav/ToS produce more GXP than EV/KP. (All other things being equal, that is).

 

Whether there is a daily/weekly cap on GXP gain.

 

What's going to happen to the existing event and story tokens and their vendors (TEC, completed bounty contracts, Ziost holos, Rakghoul event tokens, those sorts of things)?

 

I'm not thrilled by RNG gear generation; but if the disintegration system allows for a quick "redraw" I'll be able to live with it.

 

Things I'm not worried about:

Transferring the items that are not Left Hand Side. Unless they start giving out fixed-stat items in these crates or massively redo the modifiable gear system, you will still be able to rip and place the items in your existing legacy shells. Hopefully crafters can make items statistically equivalent to the end-game drops; or even (heresy) you have to go to crafters for Left Hand Side gear; it won't drop in these crates.

 

PvP and PvE gear being normalized. Expertise has been a deprecated mechanic since the Expertise Bolster went in. As long as GXP can be earned in PvP at the around same rate as for Ops based on time invested, so dedicated PvPers can gear up at the same rate as dedicated raiders. (I'm neither, so...)

 

Finally

 

Will Galactic Command crates benefit GSF?

[Tsillah]

Not only that...But I fear any new group content they add will be less important...unless they make the new group content really hard, why should we repeat it? On the plus side, we could be seeing a new diffcullity in new ops (master)

 

I also think it will increas elitism because gear requirements will become a thing again and since it's RNG dependent you might find yourself ostracised for not having full set bonuses for example. Or people being kicked from groups for not having the right gear.

 

I just really hope the RNG element here doesn't negatively affect group play in these ways, but it looks like it might sadly.

[Florrentius]

you have got to be kidding... :rolleyes:

this is just ********

 

we got 16 pages here alone on these mistakes, in two hours or so after this came out....

 

one would stop and think, hey guys did we drop the ball here?!

[ShadowLordIV]

I also think it will increas elitism because gear requirements will become a thing again and since it's RNG dependent you might find yourself ostracised for not having full set bonuses for example. Or people being kicked from groups for not having the right gear.

 

I just really hope the RNG element here doesn't negatively affect group play in these ways, but it looks like it might sadly.

 

I would definitely kick people in full gear that didn't know a single thing about a Master (NiM) Operation. Those are difficult for a reason.

[Tsetso]

we got 16 pages here alone on these mistakes, in two hours or so after this came out....

 

one would stop and think, hey guys did we drop the ball here?!

 

Of course not. They'll be patting each other on the backs, commenting how great they are.

[Florrentius]

I'm going to reserve judgement until we know:

 

How many items are in a command crate, and how much CXP per item we get for "disintegrating" an item, and if it varies based on what type of item it is. How many "gear item" disintegrations get us a new crate at GCap?

 

What the acquisition rate of Command Levels at Command Level Cap is, based on what activity? Will the number of bosses in an op or flashpoint factor into how much GXP we get? For FPs, will The False Emperor produce more GXP than Esselese/BT? How about KDY? Will Rav/ToS produce more GXP than EV/KP. (All other things being equal, that is).

 

Whether there is a daily/weekly cap on GXP gain.

 

What's going to happen to the existing event and story tokens and their vendors (TEC, completed bounty contracts, Ziost holos, Rakghoul event tokens, those sorts of things)?

 

I'm not thrilled by RNG gear generation; but if the disintegration system allows for a quick "redraw" I'll be able to live with it.

 

Things I'm not worried about:

Transferring the items that are not Left Hand Side. Unless they start giving out fixed-stat items in these crates or massively redo the modifiable gear system, you will still be able to rip and place the items in your existing legacy shells. Hopefully crafters can make items statistically equivalent to the end-game drops; or even (heresy) you have to go to crafters for Left Hand Side gear; it won't drop in these crates.

 

PvP and PvE gear being normalized. Expertise has been a deprecated mechanic since the Expertise Bolster went in. As long as GXP can be earned in PvP at the around same rate as for Ops based on time invested, so dedicated PvPers can gear up at the same rate as dedicated raiders. (I'm neither, so...)

 

Finally

 

Will Galactic Command crates benefit GSF?

 

disintegrating crates into CXP

no rerolling or anything.

 

thats it.

[Alexandrozingsw]

Current Commendations will be going away, we will have more details in the coming weeks on their conversion.

• Yup, the drops will be random. The item type is determined by your Advanced Class and the item rating is determined by your Command Rank (higher rank = higher item rating). Keep in mind that you can always earn more Crates and that you can disintegrate any duplicate or unwanted items into CXP to get your next Crate faster.
  

 

So we can expect more DPS queing with tank gear and more Tanks with dps gear? those things happened a lot last weeks on HM flashpoints

[Tsillah]

I would definitely kick people in full gear that didn't know a single thing about a Master (NiM) Operation. Those are difficult for a reason.

 

Well that's the other side of it and I see this system potentially increasing such things.

[Kaze-Yama]

Need to know if gear is based on mods and can be transferred via legacy shells. Your galactic command and legacy systems will work against each other if you can't extract the mods from new gear and transfer it. Why even play on alt characters if you have to max out galactic command on each one and get no benefit from playing on your main once you have full gear.

 

Also there needs to be a better system in place besides just random drops. You should be able to disintegrate items you don't need in order to get ones you do need rather than just having RNG dictate everything. Also please tell me the game knows if you are tank spec or not so you don't get worthless gear because that means any class with tank or heal spec will gear up slower than dps spec if you get the wrong type of drop.

 

I play pretty much only heroics and tacticals right now so I actually like the system but it also seems to have some big flaws in that this is the only way to get gear. There should definitely be a secondary path of some kind from comms, boss drops or other means. Having gear being entirely RNG based from boxes is guaranteed to cause unhappy players. I mean why would I want to grind heroics, fp, or ops for my next level only to get total trash drops. It makes people want to quit playing if there is no guarantee you will get the gear you need/want eventually. That is why games implement commendation systems to begin with and you are taking a step back.

[casirabit]

I know I'm not the first and will not be the last to say that while this is obviously a financially motivated decision (I'm not buying the "we want to reward our subscribers" marketing language that Ben used), it's not good for the population health of the game and I'm disappointed that you guys are only doubling down on trying to force this as a sub game, rather than improving the F2P model.

 

It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of wanting to improve queues by having daily activities linked to GC, but not even allowing non-subs the possibility of participating in this incentive, thus cutting out a swath of the queue activity you would get from it.

 

I am guessing this is a way for them to keep people sub as they were probably losing a lot of subs due to the way they had it but I am not sure if this is really going to work for a lot of people. Some will just quit and move on.

 

The gear situation was discussed in the past and they never wanted to do like they are doing now. My guess is this is something to keep people subbing and they hope people will continue to play, I don't see that really happening in the long run.

[wainot-keel]

I also think it will increas elitism because gear requirements will become a thing again and since it's RNG dependent you might find yourself ostracised for not having full set bonuses for example. Or people being kicked from groups for not having the right gear.

 

I just really hope the RNG element here doesn't negatively affect group play in these ways, but it looks like it might sadly.

 

Getting a full set might prove the most frustrating thing you can come across with the new system, no matter how much you grind **** over and over, you can still end up empty-handed...

ugh....

[ZeridanShear]

Current Commendations will be going away, we will have more details in the coming weeks on their conversion.

 

Not to put too fine a point on this, but I sincerely hope this will be a very generous conversion. With those of us that have insane numbers of crystals and warzone comms banked right now it would be bad form not to.

 

This also raises the question of how we'll be able to purchase Rank 6 companion gifts if these are being phased out.

[casirabit]

I would definitely kick people in full gear that didn't know a single thing about a Master (NiM) Operation. Those are difficult for a reason.

 

Please, half the people I have ran across can't even do a solo flashpoint. I heard a number of people over the weekend that just couldn't do it. They complained that their droid died and then they just stopped doing it.

 

I did False Emperor on Solo mode yesterday and lost my droid twice (once with HK-he pulled us across the area, which is the first time that happened to me but I went with it. The droid died by me and Koth managed to kill HK and all the other droids and turrets around).

 

Then recalled my droid got to the final fight with Malgus and my droid gets knocked off the walkway. No droid so I moved Malgus back up the stairs into the little area and fought him with just me and Koth.

 

Defeated Malgus, took a while but I did it. Part of the problem is they rely on the droid too much.

[Fyckis]

Unmitigated Disaster to us Raiders! Edited October 17, 2016 by Fyckis

[mastersdr]

I also think it will increas elitism because gear requirements will become a thing again and since it's RNG dependent you might find yourself ostracised for not having full set bonuses for example. Or people being kicked from groups for not having the right gear.

 

I just really hope the RNG element here doesn't negatively affect group play in these ways, but it looks like it might sadly.

 

one way they can do it too, is have the sm ops not drop anything and then have expert and master ops have drop the best gear.

[Rolodome]

I am guessing this is a way for them to keep people sub as they were probably losing a lot of subs due to the way they had it but I am not sure if this is really going to work for a lot of people. Some will just quit and move on.

 

The gear situation was discussed in the past and they never wanted to do like they are doing now. My guess is this is something to keep people subbing and they hope people will continue to play, I don't see that really happening in the long run.

Yeah, it doesn't exactly give me warm fuzzies for the future of the game. I was willing to believe that some of the existing restrictions were made at a different time in the game's history and there was a possibility of them moving in a less forceful direction, but this is just redoubling the restrictions of the past. So now I'm like... zero faith in them doing anything other than steadily making sub more and more required until the day they announce that F2P is no longer an option or something. I mean, end-game gear? For reals yo?

 

I'm not even mad. Just like shoulders shrugging, baffled. They can't not know the message that sends and what it'll do to the people who aren't subs.

[HomerMorisson]

Another question springs to mind:

 

- Will our Alliance Leader-levels factor in in any way when deciding our initial Command Rank?

Or will each and every player start at Rank 0, no matter if they had levelled all of their alliance faction leaders to level 20, no matter if they had played through the entirety of KotFE and thus already spent a lot of time being the Commander and commanding a respectable alliance and army?

 

I would be very disappointed if none of that would be taken into account since from a lore and roleplay/continuity perspective, this would be a major break in continuity and a major logic flaw... I have commanded the alliance, taken on the mightiest empire the galaxy has ever known, and I am still a level 0 Command n00b in the new system?

 

Please say it ain't so.

[TUXs]

Oh wow lol...I remember how well the PvP crates worked at launch...this sounds precariously similar.

[Otchiver]

Execute Order 66

 

Hey folks,

 

One of the things we talked a bit about on the stream is that there are gearing changes happening with Knights of the Eternal Throne. This thread is meant to give you a few more details on some of the things that will be happening in KOTET, along with being a place that I can address questions or concerns you have with these changes. First, here are the details on how gearing will work at level 70:

• Once you hit level 70, the source of end-game gear will be Command Crates from Galactic Command.
  
• Most activities in the game will earn Command Experience Points (CXP), which will earn you Command Ranks. Each time your Command Rank increases, you earn a Command Crate.
  
• The higher your Command Rank, the better gear that will drop from your Command Crates.
  
• The highest difficulty Operations and Uprisings, along with Ranked Warzones are intended to be the fastest ways to earn CXP. This means they are the fastest way to get the best gear.
  
• Both PvP and PvE gear will come from Command Crates. Their gear is now shared as Expertise is being removed (head to this thread to discuss PvP/PvE itemization specifically).
  
• Gear will no longer drop from bosses as all gear will come from Command Crates. All cosmetic/unique drops will still remain on those bosses (Stronghold Decorations, Wings of the Architect, etc.).
  
• Players will be able to craft comparable item level gear without set bonuses.
  

That should cover most of the basic changes coming to itemization in KOTET. I know this is a lot to take in, so please ask any questions you may have in this thread and I will work to answer what I can!

 

-eric