Gearing Changes in Eternal Throne

[Tsetso]

So let me get this straight. the best way to earn gear will now be bot farming and win trading????

 

{They have to suck as much money as they can from the horde of new players coming with the release of Rogue One}

Edited October 18, 2016 by Tsetso

[Nuverious]

Well what do i say? I guess thank you for killing this game. I have been subbed since launch and each time things changed i dealt with it hoping it would be good. But ever since you decided that ops were too much for you to deal with the game has been on a decline. Don't get me wrong, i like the story, but I do ops. I have done every thing this game has. not some things. every thing. I have been die hard. Now I don't know how long i will give money to a company that keeps putting more effort into cartel market crap then into content. Now content will give me crates. not some gear that i can chose or modify not some thing i can earn and share on my 27 toons. No i am supposed to only play 1 toon to level. If i dont i will fall behind? This is by far the dumbest thing i ever heard. It was not to hard to figure out how toy que get gear or anything in this game. I don't mind galactic command as a premise but i am not doing this on 27 toons.

[Kingsbount]

Hey, Bioware!

I have a nice and awsome idea:

 

Instead of all of this non-sense you dumped on us, you could simply said "We'r closing the game! Thanks for playing SWTOR"

It could save us time and nerves

[Morrolan]

Will the gear from Galactic Command will be moddable or static stats? Aside from Relics and the usual suspects, that is.

 

Just wondering since I like having legacy gear to transfer between characters as needed. I'd hate to be stuck only being to use the gear (again, aside from Relics, etc.) I earn on a single character.

 

Yeah this is another thing, given that everything about this system is regressive I wouldn't mind betting that they'll revert to non moddable.

 

Another thing is what about crafting? Will we no longer be able to craft top level mods, enhancements etc?

Edited October 18, 2016 by Morrolan

[Nevaeh-Heaven]

NM. Posted in wrong thread, lol should not have so many pages open at once. Edited October 18, 2016 by Nevaeh-Heaven

[BigDumbViking]

With all due offense Eric... This was not very well thought out.

 

1. For those of us that don't put in 100's of hours a week, you basically are telling us to pound sand, we will no longer have access to the best gear without a crazy grind.

 

2. As one of the few remaining people who only pvp (yeah, you've done so little everyone who enjoyed that part of the game left) I hate ranked 4's... now you tell me I gotta play 4's go gear up and be competitive. The casual pvp'ers i play with aren't going to pay to be frustrated with a gear grind like this.

[KyaniteD]

Yeah this is another thing, given that everything about this system is regressive I wouldn't mind betting that they'll revert to non moddable.

 

No, no, you got it all wrong! It's not "regressive", it's streamlined.

[Kaze-Yama]

I found a way to remedy this problem maybe. Keep gear vendors but make galactic command rank be a requirement to purchase the gear. You can still have the RNG crates but once you reach a certain command rank you can then just buy the gear with credits in case you got unlucky or somehow didn't get a drop you need.

 

So lets say from rank 1-30 you get tier one gear but once you hit rank 30 you can then just buy as much tier one as you want. Then once you hit rank 75 you unlock tier 2 and once you hit 100 you get tier 3. And then you can have an additional tier for rank 100 only through rng boxes like how 224 gear got introduced in kofte.

 

There needs to be a separate path to get gear aside from RNG. It is a major step backward and will really hurt any player motivation if there is only a single RNG path for gear acquisition. I know you mention crafting but most crafted items on par with gear from vendors requires millions of credits which will still lock out f2p and preferred players unless items will be much easier to craft and have lower prices than currently. As it stands you are going to alienate all f2p and preferred players from end game since they have no reason to play as well as drive motivation for subs down since they have nothing to work towards with everything depending on RNG. This system needs to be fixed before launch or else you are going to have a month of activity and then dead servers once everyone finishes the story since there isn't even a reason to keep playing.

[OneHit]

Frankly I'm tired of everyone giving bioware and specifically the devs a pass in this game. You guys talk about how you were gamers at heart and that's what got you into the industry. If EA has got your hands so tied then quit. how can you enjoy making garbage like this? If i worked for a company that killed my creative genius then i wouldn't work for that company.

 

So maybe its not EA. maybe you're just bad at what you do. make no mistake. this is BAD

 

"we don't want to make the game feel like a grind" so lets make everything one big grind and rewards are based on RNG

 

I can see why you guys waited till the last minute to break the news to us all. Now we just have to figure out a way to nicely disband all our guilds and stop paying for this garbage

[TheMayno]

Will GC rewards be character specific or legacy wide?

[TUXs]

So let me get this straight. the best way to earn gear will now be bot farming and win trading????

BINGO! Yes it will be.

[IanArgent]

I don't see how this is catering to casual players. They're going to go through the same RNG hell that everyone else does.

 

The more I read about all this, the more I think that the RNG idea needs to be scrapped, if not seriously reworked, though it's probably too late for them to do it now, in time for KOTET release. For cosmetics and such, that's fine. Make people go through RNG. Yeah, it's annoying, but at least it doesn't affect gameplay stats.

 

For normal gearing, bundling it all into RNG might be appealing on the "players won't be confused" level, but on virtually every other level, it's a bad idea.

 

Off the cuff, I would say:

 

Give people two different command crates. One crate lets you choose the item type and you can choose whether you want tank or dps gear, or heal or dps gear, depending on your class. The other crate is RNG and includes whatever stuff is already being put in the crates (I think there was a much of other stuff on livestream, or I imagined it), along with a piece of end-game gear that is random.

 

It's a bit of a compromise that way. You get your consistent piece that you can choose and you get a random piece, so there's still that wow factor from surprise RNG.

 

It's not perfect, but I think it'd be a far cry better than what the system is looking like right now.

 

Just pointing something else out - the rewards for <61 heroics grant a choice of gear boxes. They could do a "staged" reward whereby leveling in GC grants you a choice of one of two from "tank/dps/heal" as appropriate for your AC. Again, I'm not sayign they're going to, but they could.

[Fistori]

So if I PVP my Sorcerer up to get gear can I still share that gear in a legacy set with my Sage and compete at same level in PVP or do I have to re-earn that gear on the Sage? Is this system killing legacy gear?

[Nevaeh-Heaven]

You will still get gear from all of the normal sources pre-70. Flashpoint bosses, Mission drops, etc. The only exception is that you can no longer get gear for Commendations. The planetary vendors which sold mods for Commendations will now do so for credits instead.

 

-eric

 

Ok, this pretty much answered one of the Q.s I had. What about gear we have already in cargo/legacy/guild banks?

 

Have to say I am disappointed in GC a little. I had subbed on 3 extra accounts short term mainly to get Shae but also access to KotET. Now only to find out I won't get that. Also in the stream you said you would look a servers soon, sorry but as such I will play until then but not spending anything extra on this game. Playing on a full server is not fun to me, if its not fun its pointless playing.

[peter_plankskull]

Soooo... do we get to pick what gear it is... or is it all RNG dependant??? I mean... when farming operations we could at least pick which bosses drop what to kill to possibly get, will the crates have a similar function?

[MTCason]

I think this is the best thing to happen to SWTOR in a long time. This will add not only longevity to the game, but it will keep players engaged and active long into the future. That's clearly the purpose and in that regard I think they are succeeding with flying colors. Many of us don't do Ops. We don't want to do Ops. We've had to resort to buying end-game gear and mods off the market (which I assume will still be possible, as nothing was said to suggest this stuff will be BOP). Now we can get it in our own right without having to spend untold millions of credits or slog through Ops that require a raid-level commitment in time. This is a perfect solution and I'm quite pleased about it.

 

PLEASE, Bioware, do NOT let the raiders hold the endgame hostage as they've done for so long in the past. Don't crumple under the pressure of a few shouty voices in here. Carry on with what you are doing and the vast majority of the playerbase will love you for it. The only ones who disagree with this are the elitists who want Ops to be the sole means to acquire end-game gear. Their capacity to raid isn't diminished, they simply don't like other people having the nice, shiny things they do. Either that or they resent the opportunity for others to acquire the same gear without having to pay hundreds of millions on the market for it. Thank you, and carry on!

[gabigool]

Frankly I'm tired of everyone giving bioware and specifically the devs a pass in this game. You guys talk about how you were gamers at heart and that's what got you into the industry. If EA has got your hands so tied then quit. how can you enjoy making garbage like this? If i worked for a company that killed my creative genius then i wouldn't work for that company.

 

So maybe its not EA. maybe you're just bad at what you do. make no mistake. this is BAD

 

"we don't want to make the game feel like a grind" so lets make everything one big grind and rewards are based on RNG

 

I can see why you guys waited till the last minute to break the news to us all. Now we just have to figure out a way to nicely disband all our guilds and stop paying for this garbage

 

This isn't EA, this is Bioware.

 

Look at how ME3 Multiplayer crates worked. Even PvP in this game used to be like this.

 

They actually think this will be an incentive for people to play.

 

I can promise though, getting a belt when I already have 3, and I need bracers, isn't fun. It's not incentive. It just sucks.

 

This is lost on the studio since they don't do this sort of content.

[Tsetso]

Soooo... do we get to pick what gear it is... or is it all RNG dependant??? I mean... when farming operations we could at least pick which bosses drop what to kill to possibly get, will the crates have a similar function?

 

Of course not. It's RNG boxes like the PVP ones in 1.0

[LeyDrewid]

Will the new gear that comes out of these crates consist of a shell with armorings, mods, and enhancements that can be removed and placed into other shells?

 

You can see a command stash in the preview images. Are the items in that stash available to your entire legacy?

Edited October 18, 2016 by LeyDrewid
additional question

[gabigool]

I think this is the best thing to happen to SWTOR in a long time. This will add not only longevity to the game, but it will keep players engaged and active long into the future. That's clearly the purpose and in that regard I think they are succeeding with flying colors. Many of us don't do Ops. We don't want to do Ops. We've had to resort to buying end-game gear and mods off the market (which I assume will still be possible, as nothing was said to suggest this stuff will be BOP). Now we can get it in our own right without having to spend untold millions of credits or slog through Ops that require a raid-level commitment in time. This is a perfect solution and I'm quite pleased about it.

 

PLEASE, Bioware, do NOT let the raiders hold the endgame hostage as they've done for so long in the past. Don't crumple under the pressure of a few shouty voices in here. Carry on with what you are doing and the vast majority of the playerbase will love you for it. The only ones who disagree with this are the elitists who want Ops to be the sole means to acquire end-game gear. Their capacity to raid isn't diminished, they simply don't like other people having the nice, shiny things they do. Either that or they resent the opportunity for others to acquire the same gear without having to pay hundreds of millions on the market for it. Thank you, and carry on!

 

I think you are missing the problem here. I could care less if they mailed casual players a full set of gear. That's not the issue at all. It's about how we spend our time in game. We'd like endgame raiding not have an RNG-based gearing system. It's archaic. We should not have to spend our time grinding meaningless content because we can't seem to roll a helmet.

[Sunyavadin]

This isn't EA, this is Bioware.

 

Look at how ME3 Multiplayer crates worked. Even PvP in this game used to be like this.

.

 

Everything about ME3 multiplayer, right from its very existence up, was EA. This is classic EA.

 

Every single game with this kind of system to encourage repeated play with limited chance of reward, and to push more monetisation, is a publisher decision. They're the ones who insist on it.

[Mdgshorty]

I really do not like that you are making the galactic command sub only. If you are going to do that, a least change the current weekly passes we currently have in game to sub tokens. Being preferred and level 70, means that you have contributed toward the expansion.

[LordTurin]

I think this is the best thing to happen to SWTOR in a long time. This will add not only longevity to the game, but it will keep players engaged and active long into the future. That's clearly the purpose and in that regard I think they are succeeding with flying colors. Many of us don't do Ops. We don't want to do Ops. We've had to resort to buying end-game gear and mods off the market (which I assume will still be possible, as nothing was said to suggest this stuff will be BOP). Now we can get it in our own right without having to spend untold millions of credits or slog through Ops that require a raid-level commitment in time. This is a perfect solution and I'm quite pleased about it.

 

PLEASE, Bioware, do NOT let the raiders hold the endgame hostage as they've done for so long in the past. Don't crumple under the pressure of a few shouty voices in here. Carry on with what you are doing and the vast majority of the playerbase will love you for it. The only ones who disagree with this are the elitists who want Ops to be the sole means to acquire end-game gear. Their capacity to raid isn't diminished, they simply don't like other people having the nice, shiny things they do. Either that or they resent the opportunity for others to acquire the same gear without having to pay hundreds of millions on the market for it. Thank you, and carry on!

 

So out of curiosity, what end game do you do that requires full BiS gear?

 

Also, as another poster mentioned, none of the raiders left in this game care about gear. I don't think we'd be that fussed if they completely took gear away at this point, they already made gear meaningless as a status symbol by making EV/KP priority ops anyway. We just don't want to spend weeks or months grinding heroics and fps to get good enough gear to do HM/NiM content.

[Wafflenator]

I'll be honest Eric, I'd seriously think about revising this whole gearing system from the ground-up.

 

Non-subs are excluded from it. Raiders will hate it. People in between will quickly become abjectly disgusted with RNG grindfest slot machines for their gearing.

 

Psychologically-manipulative reward loops for something like non-cosmetic gear have a point where they reach and diminishing returns start kicking in. People aren't stupid. Currency-based gearing and crafted gear give people a way around back luck and also a guaranteed way they can plan their own gearing. Self-determinism is important.

[tythorundilian]

Hey Eric! First of all, thank you for all the time you invest in an awesome community!

 

I just had a quick question. I read earlier in the forums that mods sold for commendations will now be sold for credits. My question is: Will this also affect the gear we get from the commendation vendors at the Alliance Base and on the Fleet for 208, 216, 220 gear and such? Also, do you plan on removing commendations as a currency type in favor of credits in other areas regarding gear?

 

I'd really appreciate if you could get back to me on these questions.

Thanks!