My Concerns about Galactic Command

[MaximusRex]

Hey Musco, Ben, Charles, and the SWTOR Dev Team. Hope everything is going well at BioWare Austin.

 

With Knights of the Eternal Throne coming and the new Galactic Command system announced, I just wanted to share some concerns I have as a long time SWTOR player and MMO gamer.

 

First, I think that at a basic level Galactic Command is a great idea. One gear path with a variety of ways to obtain that gear, favoring harder group content for time is great way to make the game accessible to players of all types. Raid or Die has never been a great system for including the entire community in a variety of activities, as there is virtually no value for Raiders to do old content with no rewards, and it is hard for players who are historically non-raiders to step up into raiding since they don’t have the gear needed. That said, if a system like Galactic Command isn’t properly balanced, it will do more harm than good.

 

One of the biggest issues with Galactic Command is it’s “per character” design. SWTOR from launch day has been a very Alt friendly game, probably the most Alt friendly MMO I’ve ever played personally. This makes it vital to try and keep as many systems as possible tied to Legacy. Everyone I know and play with has a slew of alts. A rank based system will be very difficult to work across a dozen alts. My suggestion is that the Rank Level should be Legacy based, while crates are rewarded per character filling up the bar.

 

RNG of gear is also a major concern. While it is nice that the system allows you to trash gear you don’t need to help accelerate earning the next crate, that doesn’t help people with bad luck. It also means that gear can’t be used to help supplement gear for an alt, though since you don’t have any choice and gear is based on Discipline (great change, thanks for listening on that) that is a much more limited option anyhow. When SWTOR launched pulling Armor Mods from set gear meant you lost the set bonus, as it was tied to the Shell. That was changed later, but when it was it was made so that Armor mods were bound to the slot, boots could only go in boots, chest only into a chest. The reason given for this was to prevent farming an easy boss, and then pull the Armor mod until you got the full 6 set bonus. Since under Galactic Command this is no longer an issue, the Armor mod slot restriction should be removed, this would allow someone with bad luck additional options. Making it possible to learn to craft mods and non-set gear that is equivalent rating to the best gear would also help RNG issues. The most ideal solution would be a vendor that you could trade items for other items of the same rating for.

 

Crafted Gear for Alts and Catching up new players needs help. Under the current system, if you have legacy bound shells you can get a gear token and then claim it for another Class/Discipline, then move it via mail or legacy bank. Or if an Ops team brings on a new player, they can run them through the Featured Op and give them all the loot to quickly gear them. Under Galactic Command they have no choice but to rank up their Galactic Command rank and hope for the best. It was offered that the plan for this is to allow for crafted gear to fill in the gaps, but crafted gear won’t have set bonuses, and won’t be as high a rating. Just not having the set bonuses already makes crafted gear inferior, so having it be lower rating as well is a bit of a double whammy, so hopefully some of that can be reconsidered.

 

The idea of targeted content for a points bonus is good, but it switching daily isn’t so great. Harder content tends to be scheduled ahead of time so people know when to show up, and Ops players especially tend to have a set schedule. Having the bonus objective changing daily makes it hard on players with a set schedule to be able to hit on the content they like. I think a weekly focus would be better overall.

 

Progression raiding under a points system could work, but it could also have some very undesirable side effects. Gearing is vital for an Ops focused team, and the path of least resistance will ALWAYS be followed. If grinding out EV trash, then resetting the phase will the best way to progress the bar, that is what people will do. If speed running as many easy ops as possible is the best way to gear up, that is what players will do. Tie this in to the difficulty in speed gearing a new raid team member and a Guild can very easily get stuck in a very boing rut of speed farming easy content while ignoring harder content. Ways to help offset this could be to continue to have a Weekly Focused Ops in addition to the Focused Galactic Command and adding in additional non-power rewards to bosses.

 

Thanks for reading, and may the Force be with you.

[DanNV]

The biggest complaint I am hearing is that the Command levels aren't legacy wide. If you play 2 or 3 characters in a Raid group, depending on what is needed that night, that is going to make it really suck. I expect that means my team will do well to run one night a week. I DPS, heal and tank as needed. I don't see that continuing in the new expansion since crafted gear requires conquest mats (meaning it will take months to fully gear one character in crafted gear, once you manage to find recipes.) I'm not impressed, to say the least.

[star-forge]

i for one will be trying kotet and if it is not alt friendly then i will most likely be ending my sub because i did not spend all the time i have leveling my 19 toons (red eclipse) to max level and not being able or having the time to level them then SWTOR is not the game for me anymore.