A Plea for Sanity

[Zhedzaban]

For those that need it, they are stuck in a grind for hours before getting the needed gear.

 

Right now, a progression raid group can get a full set for 8 people in 40 hours of gameplay doing EV HM, KP HM and S&V SM or HM depending on the skill of the group. They can gear up someone new, in 3–4 hours doing those three operations in one or two raid nights and start doing either HM or NiM progression. For PvP, a solo player can get a full 208 set in 20 to 30 hours of WZ play.

 

This is less time than to get to the 2nd tier of gear with CXP and on top of that, you got a RNG grind to fill in all the pieces with at least green gear (35+ crates) or purple (130+ crates). If there was 2–3 new operations, 4–6 FP and 1–2 PvP maps it would go better since they add content. But all they announced is that people need to spend a lot of time to get back to the same place that they are. The uprising won't keep people occupied since I'm sure that they will be completed at Veteran level the first day since the Devs managed to finish it at Veteran level.

 

I've never been a progression raider (it's boring to me) but was curious. Are you saying that if one of your members needed a specific piece of gear you could just go and get it from a certain boss in a certain op? Is the gear a definitive drop or is there rng involved? And if it doesn't drop, isn't there like a weekly lock out?

[RedBaronYale]

In response to your remarks "I've never been a progression raider (it's boring to me) but was curious. Are you saying that if one of your members needed a specific piece of gear you could just go and get it from a certain boss in a certain op? Is the gear a definitive drop or is there rng involved? And if it doesn't drop, isn't there like a weekly lock out?"

 

Yes we go get what they need and its a known who dropped which pieces and levels in 4.0. So we would go kill a boss who drops the item they need and give it to them its that simple. A good progression team can gear a char out in no time because they work as a team not as individuals. So the team gets gear for the individuals in the team no rolling just pass it out and everyone is content that its going to build up the team.

Edited November 20, 2016 by RedBaronYale
I copied instead of quoting and it looks out of place

[Swtorevolution]

Seriously, I am amazed that you have enough brain power to remember to breath as much as you apparently do. Stop telling people their own business. If you like the stupidity that you do, that's fine, your entitled to see it your way, but you act like you have some superior point of view, as if you know more than everyone else. You don't, and by the looks of things, far less than many. The irony of that is dumbfounding, as with each new response you make you only compound the idiocy you display.

 

I agree, you don't need BIS gear. But than again, you don't need to play this game either. No one is playing this game out of need, they are playing it out of want. And in case you hadn't noticed, MMOs are all about getting better, getting more, and doing more damage [or healing]. You don't feel moved to get BIS gear because the content you do can be done by a blind paraplegic, but people who engage in the hardest content this game can throw at you do need BIS gear to be competitive and to give the group of people they are playing with the best chance at clearing the hardest content or winning their Ranked match.

 

They're called opinions for a reason. There is no such thing as a wrong opinion or preference. Stop being an assO to everyone who has a different opinion or preference from you. You look like an idiot.

 

Looks can be deceiving, but sometimes, they're right on the money.

 

Very well then. I wish you all the misery in the world while playing this obviously terrible game for the sake of raising some numbers. Who am I to tell you that you might have a better time playing the game if you weren't so focused on reaching the end goal that you forget to enjoy the rest of the game.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Swtorevolution

[Swtorevolution]

Good advice. Now, why is the level cap being raised, and why is the system for acquiring gear being changed?

 

Oh that's right. It's because once you're through with the story, the entire goal of the game becomes "obsessing about BiS gear." If they don't force a reset of gear and introduce an even grindier system for acquiring it, then players will say "that's it?" and be gone in a month. Unfortunately, they're still going to do that, once they realize how unrewarding and supremely grindy the new system is, just to get back to where they used to be.

 

It's fine to say "don't worry about the gear" except that if I'm not worried about the gear, then why the hell would I want to grind out the same old content 100000 more times? The answer is: I wouldn't, and I don't. Once I've done the story and seen the uprisings, I'll cancel sub. Not as a protest or an angry gesture, but simply because there's no reason to be subscribed.

 

Yeah, you keep on grinding out that oh so terrible content for higher numbers on your character sheet. When you get all BiS you can finally quit because you've won the game! No more need to play this terrible terrible game!

[Zhedzaban]

Yes we go get what they need and its a known who dropped which pieces and levels in 4.0. So we would go kill a boss who drops the item they need and give it to them its that simple. A good progression team can gear a char out in no time because they work as a team not as individuals. So the team gets gear for the individuals in the team no rolling just pass it out and everyone is content that its going to build up the team.

 

Wow, so every boss dropped the exact same gear every time. No wonder raiders loved the system, no rng at all. No wonder raiders got bored so quickly. At least in pvp you could go do ranked once you max geared. Still, hopefully the new command crate system will slow you down a bit and you won't get so bored so quickly.

[Toraak]

Wow, so every boss dropped the exact same gear every time. No wonder raiders loved the system, no rng at all. No wonder raiders got bored so quickly. At least in pvp you could go do ranked once you max geared. Still, hopefully the new command crate system will slow you down a bit and you won't get so bored so quickly.[/quote

 

The problem is, Raiders are already bored because we've done the content for now 2 expansions for Rav/ToS, and some of the other Operations we've done for up to 5 years.

[Krazhez]

Yeah, you keep on grinding out that oh so terrible content for higher numbers on your character sheet. When you get all BiS you can finally quit because you've won the game! No more need to play this terrible terrible game!

 

I don't speak for every raider, but I feel like this will ring true with most. It's not about getting the gear, its about doing the hardest content, for fun, for completion. My raid team never even finished gearing in full 224s, most of us are half. We care about working towards a common goal, taking on difficult fights and strategizing different ideas to complete them if we hit a wall.

 

The problem is there are dps checks, tank checks, heal checks, things you need gear for. When most of the people I raid with can only play a couple hours a week and its projected to get just full mid tier set bonus to be 90 hours or more, that will stifle our fun.

 

Maybe its not your cup of tea, but it is why most of them even touch the game. I play almost everything personally, but they like raiding. They aren't interested in the other things, and none of us are interested in sm operations anymore.

 

If people want to be competitive in pvp they will have to dump hours in to keep up with others. If they want to continue to raid with their team and get back to where they were, they have to put hours upon hours in. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have some kind of time investment, you definitely should. 4.0 was way too easy to gear, but if everything projected is right, 5.0 will be way too time consuming. Middle ground would be nice.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Krazhez

[DanNV]

I've never been a progression raider (it's boring to me) but was curious. Are you saying that if one of your members needed a specific piece of gear you could just go and get it from a certain boss in a certain op? Is the gear a definitive drop or is there rng involved? And if it doesn't drop, isn't there like a weekly lock out?

 

Each boss drops a specific piece of gear. No RNG for the set piece token. Get the token, go to fleet, buy the piece for your set with the token. (Or get the correct relic or implant, etc.) The only RNG is in the non-set piece drops, which can be elpful for min-maxing but otherwise tend to get the mods sent to alts or get vendored.

 

That's the problem with the new system, it's all RNG and it's a crazy long grind just to get to where the RNG might give you a piece of gear for the op you want to go back to working on. If this mess is only half as bad as it looks like ti will be, I expect my raid team will fall apart and most of the players will move on to WoW or some other game. My guild lost 14 raid teams with 4.0. We're down to 1. We used to need 4 Rep guilds and 2 imp to hold all the characters. Now, we could do with the old guild numbers and still only need one Rep side guild and 1 Imp for alts, but I seldom see anyone logged on in the Imp guild. That's how badly BW has already screwed over the game and now it's just getting worse.

[Khevar]

Wow, so every boss dropped the exact same gear every time. No wonder raiders loved the system, no rng at all. No wonder raiders got bored so quickly. At least in pvp you could go do ranked once you max geared. Still, hopefully the new command crate system will slow you down a bit and you won't get so bored so quickly.

You know ... I do believe you are purposefully crafting statements like this to "poke a stick" at the raiding population just to see what kind of response you get.

 

You couldn't possibly be <expletive> stupid enough to believe that a) raiders had no RNG at all and that b) raiders became bored because they got geared "so quickly".

 

Both concepts are so far from reality it could only be representative of a deliberate attempt to rile others up in an argument.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Khevar

[Zhedzaban]

You know ... I do believe you are purposefully crafting statements like this to "poke a stick" at the raiding population just to see what kind of response you get.

 

You couldn't possibly be <expletive> stupid enough to believe that a) raiders had no RNG at all and that b) raiders became bored because they got geared "so quickly".

 

Both concepts are so far from reality it could only be representative of a deliberate attempt to rile others up in an argument.

 

Not poking anything, genuinely surprised. Only ops I've done in swtor are pug sm groups, and if a piece of gear dropped that I needed I had to roll for. I never knew bosses dropped the same gear over and over and you could farm it as required. In my raiding experiences in WoW and Rift you had to hope the boss dropped something you wanted, then hope the loot master was kind enough to give it to you. Good ole RNG.

 

At least, that is how I'm interpreting what people are telling me in this thread.

[Khevar]

Not poking anything, genuinely surprised. Only ops I've done in swtor are pug sm groups, and if a piece of gear dropped that I needed I had to roll for. I never knew bosses dropped the same gear over and over and you could farm it as required. In my raiding experiences in WoW and Rift you had to hope the boss dropped something you wanted, then hope the loot master was kind enough to give it to you. Good ole RNG.

 

At least, that is how I'm interpreting what people are telling me in this thread.

First of all, with 8 people, ~5 bosses and 14 gear slots, RNG is primarily "did I win the roll"

 

It used to also include "was the drop for my class", but that was changed later.

 

Second of all, most people that raid do so because they like large group content. The ACTIVITY of large group content. Gear is a bonus. Are you the type of player that would quite the moment you had good gear? Is that's your ONLY motivation?

 

Gagibool said it best in another thread. We didn't raid for gear. We geared for raiding.

 

Third of all, your comment about "no wonder raiders are so bored" so pretentiously overlooks the fact that TWICE now we've had a gear reset with no new large-group content. Up until 4.0, when the level cap was raised with a gear reset (requiring a new grind all over again), it was accompanied by new operations.

 

Not anymore.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Khevar

[ShawDou]

First of all, with 8 people, ~5 bosses and 14 gear slots, RNG is primarily "did I win the roll"

 

It used to also include "was the drop for my class", but that was changed later.

 

Second of all, most people that raid do so because they like large group content. The ACTIVITY of large group content. Gear is a bonus. Are you the type of player that would quite the moment you had good gear? Is that's your ONLY motivation?

 

Gagibool said it best in another thread. We didn't raid for gear. We geared for raiding.

 

Third of all, your comment about "no wonder raiders are so bored" so pretentiously overlooks the fact that TWICE now we've had a gear reset with no new large-group content. Up until 4.0, when the level cap was raised with a gear reset (requiring a new grind all over again), it was accompanied by new operations.

 

Not anymore.

 

This exactly. A lot of raiders dont do operation specially for Bis gear, but do it for he fun and operation itself. Our guild raid few times a week. We are not near best raiders in game and we dont claim to be. We managed to beat most of nim/hms, but we still miss some scalps.

 

So imagine our situation, we have whole group of people geared in best gear (simply because we cant do it without that gear) you can get and we are learning and practicing mechanics on not defeated bosses so we could one day beat them and feel the accomplishment.

 

Now they introduce new level and new gear system with pretty much no new group content. So we have to stop our tries and start to gear our toons once more. (to get to same place as before expansion) Eventually we will have almost whole team geared, but one will have bad luck and will not be getting gear he need. Rest of the group will not be able to help him in any way than praying and will have to wait and wait and wait until RNG finally give him his blessing. (While in current system you could go into operation with friends a simply give the gear that drops to person who needed it most)

 

Right now no one have real data to know how long gearing will take. But most people are afraid of RNG because the situation i said above can happen with it and there is nothing you can do to increase your chance (to get gear you need) with it.

Edited November 20, 2016 by ShawDou

[Vaerah]

This is an old strategy, based on artificial scarcity.

 

They create the problem (gear grinding), they'll create the solution, which is probably going to be based on $$ coins.

[Swtorevolution]

This is an old strategy, based on artificial scarcity.

 

They create the problem (gear grinding), they'll create the solution, which is probably going to be based on $$ coins.

 

Or you could solve the problem yourself with a little patience. And the best thing about patience is it's free!

[ShawDou]

Or you could solve the problem yourself with a little patience. And the best thing about patience is it's free!

 

Ohh so swtor will be free while i will grind gear? Thanks for the new informations, in that case it will be awesome.

 

Sarcasm off.

 

If you play as preferred/f2p you will get nothing. So no it is not free since you can farm CXP only if you pay them => you spend time and money to get into same state as you are now before expansion, because there will be no new content that require BiS gear only the old one.

 

It is simple. Now people who are geared and want to Raid or PvP have gear and do what they want. After expansion these people have to grind gear for no idea how long to be able to do same thing as they did before expansion. There is NOTHING new for them (except maybe few more abilities and class changes, but it is not expansion).

 

So these people have right to be pisses, because this expansion gives them NOTHING but BLOCK them for some time from the same content they can do now.

Edited November 20, 2016 by ShawDou

[LastBrood]

Can you withhold opening any crates until higher levels so you can get loot at high levels?

 

One thing I enjoyed doing in the game is I played the class stories and then Lv65 after I was I bought the level 208 gear with the common crystals and started doing flashpoints. I hope I can do that still with the new system, just play along and level up and then at high level can be rewarded with high level gear to do things at a good pace.

[curulz]

Can you withhold opening any crates until higher levels so you can get loot at high levels?

 

It looked like the crates themselves were tiered, so a Tier 1 crate would theoretically still give Tier 1 loot, even if you are at Tier 2 rank when you open them. Somewhat of a guess, but I don't think stockpiling would be helpful.

[Swtorevolution]

Maybe you should tell us then instead of flat out dismissing everyone that is critical of GC.

But if you can't see how it affects players other than yourself and some in a very negative way, there is no point in arguing with you.

 

The only people this effects negatively are people who don't enjoy the game in the first place. Raiders who have to do SM ops for gear. Still doing ops, but not hard enough ops. BooHoo.

 

My preferred playstyle? I guess it would be PvP. GC allows me to gear for PvE doing the part of the game I enjoy the most, PvP. Now here is my only complaint with GC. It removes gear progression in areas of the game you wouldn't normally play. I can get top PvE gear just doing PvP, and then when I decide I might start doing PvE content, I've already got all the gear. All I'd have to do then is just do a token run through fps and ops and I'm done.

 

In all honesty, I'll play anything. But I find PvP (regs, not god awful arena) more dynamic than PvE.

 

But it does. Nim guild group could go straight in to HM ops with 224 gear and skip SM ops to start gearing towards lvl cap Nim ops.

With this system Ops bosses don't drop gear so they are forced to grind stuff they normally wouldn't do. Also gearing alts will become much worse for people who play several different toons with different roles.

And one thing, I haven't seen anyone stating that is the new gear going to have command rank requirement? Like if you have lets say 2 marauders, can you use same gear for both of them or are you required to grind command rank for both of them.

 

What's the difference between doing a NiM in BiS and doing a SM undergeared?

[keimox]

What's the difference between doing a NiM in BiS and doing a SM undergeared?

Nim is still harder even with bis than Sm ops undergeared.

[ivanhedgehog]

Not poking anything, genuinely surprised. Only ops I've done in swtor are pug sm groups, and if a piece of gear dropped that I needed I had to roll for. I never knew bosses dropped the same gear over and over and you could farm it as required. In my raiding experiences in WoW and Rift you had to hope the boss dropped something you wanted, then hope the loot master was kind enough to give it to you. Good ole RNG.

 

At least, that is how I'm interpreting what people are telling me in this thread.

 

Bosses in wow used to have a set group of possible drops. you used to farm a specific boss for a specific drop. dont know if that is true in legion, I am pretty sure they have gone rng.

[ivanhedgehog]

Can you withhold opening any crates until higher levels so you can get loot at high levels?

 

One thing I enjoyed doing in the game is I played the class stories and then Lv65 after I was I bought the level 208 gear with the common crystals and started doing flashpoints. I hope I can do that still with the new system, just play along and level up and then at high level can be rewarded with high level gear to do things at a good pace.

 

crystal will be going away

[ivanhedgehog]

The only people this effects negatively are people who don't enjoy the game in the first place. Raiders who have to do SM ops for gear. Still doing ops, but not hard enough ops. BooHoo.

 

My preferred playstyle? I guess it would be PvP. GC allows me to gear for PvE doing the part of the game I enjoy the most, PvP. Now here is my only complaint with GC. It removes gear progression in areas of the game you wouldn't normally play. I can get top PvE gear just doing PvP, and then when I decide I might start doing PvE content, I've already got all the gear. All I'd have to do then is just do a token run through fps and ops and I'm done.

 

In all honesty, I'll play anything. But I find PvP (regs, not god awful arena) more dynamic than PvE.

 

 

 

What's the difference between doing a NiM in BiS and doing a SM undergeared?

 

 

just where do you plan on getting pvp gear? no more comms

[DenariusJay]

I been keeping my peace but I can't any longer...

 

Having to regrind for gear and another 5 levels ontop of that just to get back to doing what I like to do is non sense. The fact that gear is being handled by RNGesus is also non sense. This is why MMO's are dying off, the illusion of progression.... you get more powerful but they keep up'ing the bosses HP and damage as well, so no one is really getting more powerful - the time it takes to complete an OPs or a FP at level 50 when the game came out is the same amount of time it takes today - the only difference is the numbers are bigger, wowweeeee.......

 

And PvP is going to be a cluster F at lvl 70 - if LvL 70 pvp is non-bolstered then we have come full circle, the person with the most amount of time to grind for BiS: wins in pvp. It's launch all over again. BW is going backwards with these change, but oh well, it is what it is... one of the reasons why I came back this year and have continued to play is because I love the fact I could spend most of my time pvping and getting set piece gear doing what I like to do, pvp. I was able to gear out multiple alts and stay competitive in pve and pvp and that made the game worth playing IMO. Now we are going back to "Focus on 1 character for 3 months to get BiS" meh.... to each there own.

 

I will continue to play because I do enjoy the game enough to continue to play, but a lot of the changes in 5.0 seem unnecessary and are implemented to get people to regrind for crap we already have,... and to get back to doing what we are already doing, minus the new 9 chapters of cutscenes... ahem, I mean "gameplay"

[Tsillah]

What's the difference between doing a NiM in BiS and doing a SM undergeared?

 

There are 3 main differences:

 

1) Bolster

2) Mechanics

3) Class knowledge

 

Bolster makes being undergeared no problem. Bolster exists in all SM operations. Unless I missed something that will still be the case in 5.0

HM and NiM have additional mechanics that add challenges that groups have to overcome as a team that do not exist in SM. Team coordination and knowing how to beat these mechanics is something that is hardly relevant in SM but definitely in NiM.

Most SM boss fights can pretty much be won with your eyes closed. So it requires very little knowledge of your class to beat the bosses. This is not the case in NiM. Without understanding your class and its rotations you will never beat the enrage timers either and parties will not survive. In NiM some gear is of course required but the determining factor is player skill and in SM it's not.

 

The differences between SM and NiM are huge. Doing SM undergear is easy, doing NiM in BiS gear is not that easy at all.

[ivanhedgehog]

There are 3 main differences:

 

1) Bolster

2) Mechanics

3) Class knowledge

 

Bolster makes being undergeared no problem. Bolster exists in all SM operations. Unless I missed something that will still be the case in 5.0

HM and NiM have additional mechanics that add challenges that groups have to overcome as a team that do not exist in SM. Team coordination and knowing how to beat these mechanics is something that is hardly relevant in SM but definitely in NiM.

Most SM boss fights can pretty much be won with your eyes closed. So it requires very little knowledge of your class to beat the bosses. This is not the case in NiM. Without understanding your class and its rotations you will never beat the enrage timers either and parties will not survive. In NiM some gear is of course required but the determining factor is player skill and in SM it's not.

 

The differences between SM and NiM are huge. Doing SM undergear is easy, doing NiM in BiS gear is not that easy at all.

 

To be honest, we have gotten used to clearing sm easily with at least half the raid in 220/224 gear. of course it is a snap. we will be going into sm runs in greens or 65 gear, expect a lot of sm groups in the first month to struggle. expect some to fail. people that spend 8+ hours a day will be geared in a few weeks to a month if they are lucky. most players however will not be able to spend anywhere near that time.