A Letter/Thread for the Devs

[KerrikStarr]

Dear SWTOR Developers,

 

We've all read thread after thread explaining in depth why galactic command is a bad system. This is not that

thread. I'm making this to let you know how we all feel about the new system.

 

Its been POORLY RECEIVED at best. You have the few posts from people who are saying well I don't enjoy doing Ops or grinding PvP so this opens up gear for me. It shouldn't. Why do HM raiders and people who play casually have a chance to have the same gear? Then wheres the reward in doing the challenging content? Why should I spend 3 hours on a progression raid when I could sit on a point in PvP and get the same reward? You shouldn't.

 

I have played this game for 5 years. I'm that guy with 20+ max level characters. Now I have no reason to play all but one of them. My main is a shadow tank used as our guilds main tank in raiding. That toon is my priority. But with the new system, I cant PvP in DPS spec because ill get a box of DPS gear. I can only imagine what its like for healers who want to do something besides PvP. With the measly few pieces of gear I've gotten in 37 command levels, theres no incentive to keep grinding. And definitely not on an alt.

 

That brings me to RNG. WHY. Why is it that I've gotten the same earpiece 7-8 times in a row. My reward for grinding those 7-8 levels was effectively nothing. What if I had grinded the levels from an ops? So I just spent hours clearing endgame content for nothing? Yes I know it was possible to get bad rolls before and get nothing. But lets bring up a raid team of 8. say 4 Bosses in the Op. The widely accepted rules are one piece of gear per person per run. Lets go back to 4.0 and grab a group of 8 people in 208 gear doing SM. HALF. of the team is guaranteed an upgrade. 50% chance to upgrade a piece of gear per run. Now take 5.0 raiding. Not only will you have to do 2-3-4 ops to get a level up once youre in the 30's, but you have nowhere close to an acceptable chance of getting the gear piece you need. You could run 20 ops and never get the correct piece. That is not fun. That is not the thrill of gambling. That kills any desire to do endgame content.

 

You essentially said in the livestream that the gold mob cxp nerf was because you didn't think it was fun to grind golds. We all know what a BS reason that was. Its not your job to tell us what is fun. If some people want to go and grind golds for 18 hours in order to appease your new system then that is completely their prerogative. And then theres the glorious CXP boosts. Saw a great thread pointing out that you introduced a system that people will pay money to spend less time doing. Just think about that. People will spend money, to spend less time dealing with the new system.

 

In your livestream you said you are willing to listen to the community. This thread is for people to tell you what they want. I've seen plenty of great ideas, such as having ops continue to drop gear like they did in the old system, bring back tokens and introduce them into the GC crates so people can use them to buy the piece of gear they need after 5 levels or so. PLEASE listen to what people are saying. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE MONITORED FOR 2 MONTHS. This is something that needs attention now. Threads are filled with longtime subs cancelling. I'm positive once peoples 1-month sub for the new chapters run out you will see a drastic drop in subscribers. I have done all the content in the game. I don't want to spend 3 weeks repeating your new uprisings to get 1 gear upgrade.

 

 

I have spent hundreds of dollars supporting this game. I've always played as a subscriber. This is the first time I've wanted to pull my subscription. I love this game. I play it in all my free time. I want to keep on loving this game, but with the new system you have implemented, I dread logging on to grind. After I finished the story, I had nothing to do. The story was good. Ill give you that. But then what? You took away the reward to do real endgame.

 

I just really hope you stay true to your promise to actually listen to feedback. Some people believe you are purposefully trying to kill the game. PLEASE do something about this. Again, not 2 months from now. This is a system that needs attention NOW if you hope to retain the returning players who came back for the expansion.

 

Sincerely,

Someone who hopes to keep enjoying SWTOR.

 

 

Please leave your comments/thought about the new system that you would like to tell the devs below. I want them to see this thread, I want it to be filled with opinions and facts and reasons that Bioware can't ignore. We need to make it clear how we feel about RNG endgame gear.

[HelinCarnate]

Except before if you had no luck with drops from ops bosses you would still get some form of currency that could be turned in for the specific gear you needed.

[KerrikStarr]

Except before if you had no luck with drops from ops bosses you would still get some form of currency that could be turned in for the specific gear you needed.

 

I wouldn't mind if they kept the token gear on bosses, and the normal gear that dropped is now in GC crates. It should be supplementary at most, not the main way to gear

[Danery]

My problem with the whole Galactic Command System is basically we were sold a bill of goods as one thing and its turned out to be something completely different. In the 10/20/2016 Livestream we were told that we should expect to see at least one crate for every hour of content, maybe an hour and a half. It seems like that is ONLY true if you are doing PVP non-stop and even then only at the very early levels. My raid team did 2 Operations on Saturday Night, and after 3 hours of raiding most of us who had already been leveling GC were lucky to get 1 crate a piece. AFTER 3 HOURS. The next night, we did a HM Operation and took about 2 and a half hours because most of us were still undergeared and most of us didnt even get 1 crate.

 

A big part of that is no doubt the nerfing to the Elites Bioware did because they want us to play the game the way they think is fun but a system that is going to take at least 6 months if not longer to start getting into the tiers where we can actually start to see the real end game gear and not this crap we are getting now is not fun. My raid team wants to do PVE Operations because we find them fun but right now that is not the way to actually get gear. It's great that Bioware is going to raise the rewards for flashpoints and uprisings so that they are equal to PVP but from what I can see they are doing nothing to fix the fact that Operations take a lot longer than PVP and they have made it so that it is not beneficial at all to actually do that PVE content if you want to actually level your GC and get the gear you need to start doing HM and NiM Operations. Further why does it seem like HM Operations bosses still only drop the very small operation cxp boxes?

 

I do not mind the GC System in general, its not a terrible idea but the implementation of it and the way we were sold it are two completely different things and the Devs nerfed the one way to keep Flashpoints/Operations at least on par with PVP by nerfing the elite mobs the way they did. Who the **** cares if you get all your CXP from farming elites for 18 hours or not, especially when the way you fixed it directly harmed the rest of the PVE stuff we could do to gain CXP and made it so the only viable path to quickly leveling your GC was to just PVP all day long.

[Jamtas]

I wouldn't mind if they kept the token gear on bosses, and the normal gear that dropped is now in GC crates. It should be supplementary at most, not the main way to gear

 

I fully support this route. I'll even take it a step further and say that there are two ways they can implement this and slow down gear progression still

 

Option 1: The operation will drop tokens that are related to your Galactic Command Tier. I'd call this a compromise as it would mean SM/HM/NiM would drop he same token depending on the Tier the user has so harder difficulty would only reward more CXP for the kills, but the same tier token drop. Player still has to progress form SM gear to HM gear to NiM gear, no skipping

 

Option 2: Divide the Operations into tiers so players couldn't just farm EV/KP for the high tier gear. (well direct token gear - the GC RNG crate could still drop it)

 

Tier 1 - All SM and HM KP/EV,

 

Tier 2 - HM/NiM EC, HM TFB, HM SnV, HM DF, HM DP

 

Tier 3 - Nim SnV, NiM TFB, NiM DF, NiM DP, HM Ravengers, HM ToS

Edited December 9, 2016 by Jamtas

[kperrier]

I have played this game for 5 years. I'm that guy with 20+ max level characters. Now I have no reason to play all but one of them. My main is a shadow tank used as our guilds main tank in raiding. That toon is my priority. But with the new system, I cant PvP in DPS spec because ill get a box of DPS gear.

 

They said in the producers stream that the box contents are determined by your spec when you open them. Wait until you are done PVP-ing, swap back to tank spec and open them.

[UnmarkedFaith]

I wouldn't mind if they kept the token gear on bosses, and the normal gear that dropped is now in GC crates. It should be supplementary at most, not the main way to gear

 

EXACTLY. This is what I've been saying. GXP should be a "suppplement" to a system that WAS WORKING.

A raid team should leave a raid feeling rewarded that at least a couple ppl got upgrades, so that the next week their in there , they can kill that next boss they had trouble on.

 

Bioware's current team has lost sight of what makes endgame raiding content fun and worth while. I almost feel like their destroying this game on purpose.

 

Just wish a TRUE MMO with innovative ideas and true end game would be released!!

Edited December 9, 2016 by UnmarkedFaith

[americanaussie]

Nah. I like the fact that we can all get the top gear by doing what we enjoy. If you enjoy ops, fantastic. There are many other people who can't do ops because...either their server is dead or elitest snobs kick them. Now they can get rewarded by doing what they want. This is the best feature of the new system.

[KerrikStarr]

Nah. I like the fact that we can all get the top gear by doing what we enjoy. If you enjoy ops, fantastic. There are many other people who can't do ops because...either their server is dead or elitest snobs kick them. Now they can get rewarded by doing what they want. This is the best feature of the new system.

 

Found him. You do not deserve BIS gear for playing the story 70 times. You shouldn't get participation trophies. End game gear is for those who want to do the endgame. We expect you to have a decent understanding of not standing in stupid and know your class. If you don't know the boss, we will explain it. I've been raiding 2-3-4 times a week for the last year and I cant recall seeing anyone kicked unless they deserved it. If your server is dead and you really wanted to do endgame, switch servers. You also missed the point that there is vastly less reward for doing an ops vs doing literally anything else in the game for the time expended.

Edited December 9, 2016 by KerrikStarr

[americanaussie]

Found him. You do not deserve BIS gear for playing the story 70 times. You shouldn't get participation trophies. End game gear is for those who want to do the endgame. We expect you to have a decent understanding of not standing in stupid and know your class. If you don't know the boss, we will explain it. I've been raiding 2-3-4 times a week for the last year and I cant recall seeing anyone kicked unless they deserved it. If your server is dead and you really wanted to do endgame, switch servers. You also missed the point that there is vastly less reward for doing an ops vs doing literally anything else in the game for the time expended.

 

Oooh look a special snowflake that needs special gear that they think others shouldnt have. You probably kick people without giving them a chance because they dont know the mechanics. You're not a dev so therefore you have zero right to tell me what I deserve. You don't know how I play the game. If devs think you should be able to earn gear in pvp, or whatever you enjoy, then that's how it will be.

[Vinak]

As far as I'm concerned they can keep there GC CXP RNG boxes as is.

 

Just give us back Data crystals, warzone commendations, and gear tokens from op bosses.

 

Oooh look a special snowflake that needs special gear that they think others shouldnt have. You probably kick people without giving them a chance because they dont know the mechanics. You're not a dev so therefore you have zero right to tell me what I deserve. You don't know how I play the game. If devs think you should be able to earn gear in pvp, or whatever you enjoy, then that's how it will be.

 

Pot, meet Kettle. You're basically saying you "deserve" gear you haven't earned. That sounds exactly like what an entitled snowflake would say.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Vinak

[HelinCarnate]

They said in the producers stream that the box contents are determined by your spec when you open them. Wait until you are done PVP-ing, swap back to tank spec and open them.

 

Right. So either pay credits to unlock it so you can change spec anywhere or go back to fleet whenever you want to open your crates. Simple.... Not quite as simple as picking between tank/dps or healer/dps gear like on all the heroics that are in the game already but really only like 10 more additional steps, not bad at all.

 

-Just hit K,

-then click on abandon,

-then pick the spec you want your crates to drop gear for.

-then hit commit and ignore the pop up.

-Then open your crate, delete all the loot because it is the same belt you got the last 8 times.

-Then hit K again,

-click on abandon,

-pick your old spec,

-pick the 8 different utilities that you had before

-click on commit and you are all done. Wasn't that just as easy as letting us pick without having to change?

Oh wait forgot the last step. Resort out all your abilities because some of them are in different spots now after changing spec twice. But sure this is still way easier than having BW actually do work to make it easier.

Edited December 9, 2016 by HelinCarnate

[KerrikStarr]

Oooh look a special snowflake that needs special gear that they think others shouldnt have. You probably kick people without giving them a chance because they dont know the mechanics. You're not a dev so therefore you have zero right to tell me what I deserve. You don't know how I play the game. If devs think you should be able to earn gear in pvp, or whatever you enjoy, then that's how it will be.

 

"We expect you to have a decent understanding of not standing in stupid and know your class. If you don't know the boss, we will explain it. I've been raiding 2-3-4 times a week for the last year and I cant recall seeing anyone kicked unless they deserved it."

[Lordgrimley]

Dear SWTOR Developers,

 

We've all read thread after thread explaining in depth why galactic command is a bad system. This is not that

thread. I'm making this to let you know how we all feel about the new system.

 

Its been POORLY RECEIVED at best. You have the few posts from people who are saying well I don't enjoy doing Ops or grinding PvP so this opens up gear for me. It shouldn't. Why do HM raiders and people who play casually have a chance to have the same gear? Then wheres the reward in doing the challenging content? Why should I spend 3 hours on a progression raid when I could sit on a point in PvP and get the same reward? You shouldn't.

 

I have played this game for 5 years. I'm that guy with 20+ max level characters. Now I have no reason to play all but one of them. My main is a shadow tank used as our guilds main tank in raiding. That toon is my priority. But with the new system, I cant PvP in DPS spec because ill get a box of DPS gear. I can only imagine what its like for healers who want to do something besides PvP. With the measly few pieces of gear I've gotten in 37 command levels, theres no incentive to keep grinding. And definitely not on an alt.

 

That brings me to RNG. WHY. Why is it that I've gotten the same earpiece 7-8 times in a row. My reward for grinding those 7-8 levels was effectively nothing. What if I had grinded the levels from an ops? So I just spent hours clearing endgame content for nothing? Yes I know it was possible to get bad rolls before and get nothing. But lets bring up a raid team of 8. say 4 Bosses in the Op. The widely accepted rules are one piece of gear per person per run. Lets go back to 4.0 and grab a group of 8 people in 208 gear doing SM. HALF. of the team is guaranteed an upgrade. 50% chance to upgrade a piece of gear per run. Now take 5.0 raiding. Not only will you have to do 2-3-4 ops to get a level up once youre in the 30's, but you have nowhere close to an acceptable chance of getting the gear piece you need. You could run 20 ops and never get the correct piece. That is not fun. That is not the thrill of gambling. That kills any desire to do endgame content.

 

You essentially said in the livestream that the gold mob cxp nerf was because you didn't think it was fun to grind golds. We all know what a BS reason that was. Its not your job to tell us what is fun. If some people want to go and grind golds for 18 hours in order to appease your new system then that is completely their prerogative. And then theres the glorious CXP boosts. Saw a great thread pointing out that you introduced a system that people will pay money to spend less time doing. Just think about that. People will spend money, to spend less time dealing with the new system.

 

In your livestream you said you are willing to listen to the community. This thread is for people to tell you what they want. I've seen plenty of great ideas, such as having ops continue to drop gear like they did in the old system, bring back tokens and introduce them into the GC crates so people can use them to buy the piece of gear they need after 5 levels or so. PLEASE listen to what people are saying. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE MONITORED FOR 2 MONTHS. This is something that needs attention now. Threads are filled with longtime subs cancelling. I'm positive once peoples 1-month sub for the new chapters run out you will see a drastic drop in subscribers. I have done all the content in the game. I don't want to spend 3 weeks repeating your new uprisings to get 1 gear upgrade.

 

 

I have spent hundreds of dollars supporting this game. I've always played as a subscriber. This is the first time I've wanted to pull my subscription. I love this game. I play it in all my free time. I want to keep on loving this game, but with the new system you have implemented, I dread logging on to grind. After I finished the story, I had nothing to do. The story was good. Ill give you that. But then what? You took away the reward to do real endgame.

 

I just really hope you stay true to your promise to actually listen to feedback. Some people believe you are purposefully trying to kill the game. PLEASE do something about this. Again, not 2 months from now. This is a system that needs attention NOW if you hope to retain the returning players who came back for the expansion.

 

Sincerely,

Someone who hopes to keep enjoying SWTOR.

 

 

Please leave your comments/thought about the new system that you would like to tell the devs below. I want them to see this thread, I want it to be filled with opinions and facts and reasons that Bioware can't ignore. We need to make it clear how we feel about RNG endgame gear.

 

why do you people insist on making more of these ' the galactic command system is bad ' threads!

 

there is no point anymore! they aint gonna remove it, , they have seen what people have said and they are making changes, they have clearly seen it all and they arnt removing it, they are making changes! so stopwith the god damn threads already and grow up! realize its here for the long term and either deal with it or unsub and leave...

[americanaussie]

"We expect you to have a decent understanding of not standing in stupid and know your class. If you don't know the boss, we will explain it. I've been raiding 2-3-4 times a week for the last year and I cant recall seeing anyone kicked unless they deserved it."

 

On harb the people posting say they'll kick if you've not done it before and there have been experiences of players posting here that back that up. Thankfully I don't stand in circles that do damage but I steer clear of ops anyway because I only transferred from the bastion to harb and we never had enough on bastion to do an ops.

[djungelvraaal]

Nah. I like the fact that we can all get the top gear by doing what we enjoy. If you enjoy ops, fantastic. There are many other people who can't do ops because...either their server is dead or elitest snobs kick them. Now they can get rewarded by doing what they want. This is the best feature of the new system.

 

Question is though, why would you need that gear if you're not doing more difficult endgame stuff?

I can only speak for myself, and I'm a casual player, I get through the stuff I need just fine without the high end gear, I have no need for it. And odds are, that neither do most of the people who don't do things like HM Ops.

 

I can only imagine what the people who do those HM ops think of this new system, if even I as a casual think it sucks lol

[Izariel]

I agree. Get rid of RNG and bring back tokens that we can take and select the gear that we want/need. It would diffuse much of the angst out there right now and be far more fair.

[KerrikStarr]

Question is though, why would you need that gear if you're not doing more difficult endgame stuff?

I can only speak for myself, and I'm a casual player, I get through the stuff I need just fine without the high end gear, I have no need for it. And odds are, that neither do most of the people who don't do things like HM Ops.

 

I can only imagine what the people who do those HM ops think of this new system, if even I as a casual think it sucks lol

 

As a HM and progression raider, this is why I made this thread.

[Nkya]

The issue isn't the casual get the same gear than the elites.

The issue is nobody get gear unless very lucky or spending months of grinding.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Nkya

[KerrikStarr]

On harb the people posting say they'll kick if you've not done it before and there have been experiences of players posting here that back that up. Thankfully I don't stand in circles that do damage but I steer clear of ops anyway because I only transferred from the bastion to harb and we never had enough on bastion to do an ops.

 

Yes there are people who ask you to post the achievement that you've don't it before. Those are runs for people farming gear, not a run for people looking to progress and learn everything. I've organized plenty of ops, and I've joined plenty on fleet, on harbinger. The only person in memory I saw kicked was a guildy who decided to troll us and kite a mob and heal himself indefinitely while we were all dead, forcing us to just sit there. 99% of groups will give you an explanation of a boss if you say you haven't done it before, not kick you. HM is and should be a different story. You should know the fights and be geared appropriately. Doing neither of those things and trying to join a HM group looking for a role is a valid reason to be removed from the group

[casirabit]

"We expect you to have a decent understanding of not standing in stupid and know your class. If you don't know the boss, we will explain it. I've been raiding 2-3-4 times a week for the last year and I cant recall seeing anyone kicked unless they deserved it."

 

Not always true. I done operations and I had a friend that was a healer, who had her gear augmented and had the gear that the operation required and do you know what they told her. Sorry no, you haven't done this before so we not taking you and this was a stupid story operation. She made the effort to get the gear and she knew what to do as I taught her what to do on healer but they still refused.

 

After that day I stopped doing operations as my friends are more important to me than some "idiot" raiders who wouldn't even give her a chance when she had done everything she could to be prepared. So no not all people who do operations will help people.

 

So I can understand why some people would like the chance to get the gear without having to deal with some raiders and maybe then these people would consider taking them on operations but then again probably not as they "claim" they help people when in truth they don't.

 

Now I only do hard modes and the times I do operations are with people I know. Never again will I do operations with people who treat people like this.

[Vaerah]

As far as I'm concerned they can keep there GC CXP RNG boxes as is.

 

Just give us back Data crystals, warzone commendations, and gear tokens from op bosses.

 

 

 

Pot, meet Kettle. You're basically saying you "deserve" gear you haven't earned. That sounds exactly like what an entitled snowflake would say.

 

Well, if you think about it, RNG is all about getting gear one did not deserve. If fact you may deserve it and never get it, you may luck out and get everything quick.

[KerrikStarr]

Not always true. I done operations and I had a friend that was a healer, who had her gear augmented and had the gear that the operation required and do you know what they told her. Sorry no, you haven't done this before so we not taking you and this was a stupid story operation. She made the effort to get the gear and she knew what to do as I taught her what to do on healer but they still refused.

 

After that day I stopped doing operations as my friends are more important to me than some "idiot" raiders who wouldn't even give her a chance when she had done everything she could to be prepared. So no not all people who do operations will help people.

 

So I can understand why some people would like the chance to get the gear without having to deal with some raiders and maybe then these people would consider taking them on operations but then again probably not as they "claim" they help people when in truth they don't.

 

Now I only do hard modes and the times I do operations are with people I know. Never again will I do operations with people who treat people like this.

 

If you or your friend are on harbinger, I would gladly bring you with us and teach any fights that aren't known. That's how you increase the amount of people you have to form an ops group, you bring through the people who haven't done it before. So what if you wipe a few times. As long as you did better than the time before we'll keep on going until we get it down

[Andryah]

Not always true. I done operations and I had a friend that was a healer, who had her gear augmented and had the gear that the operation required and do you know what they told her. Sorry no, you haven't done this before so we not taking you and this was a stupid story operation. She made the effort to get the gear and she knew what to do as I taught her what to do on healer but they still refused.

 

After that day I stopped doing operations as my friends are more important to me than some "idiot" raiders who wouldn't even give her a chance when she had done everything she could to be prepared. So no not all people who do operations will help people.

 

So I can understand why some people would like the chance to get the gear without having to deal with some raiders and maybe then these people would consider taking them on operations but then again probably not as they "claim" they help people when in truth they don't.

 

Now I only do hard modes and the times I do operations are with people I know. Never again will I do operations with people who treat people like this.

 

PuG raid group, right? There is the problem right there. Many OPs are easy enough to PuG in this game, but PuG is a complete roll of the dice too. It is it's own RNG of endless uncertainty ... from picky requirements to join, to unfair loot management, to the leader "DCing" and taking all the loot with them. They are a train wreck waiting to happen unless you happen to join one with an experienced and reputable leader with good rep on the server.

 

Raiding within a good guild of players you trust.... night and day difference compared to random PuGs.

[Vaerah]

Question is though, why would you need that gear if you're not doing more difficult endgame stuff?

I can only speak for myself, and I'm a casual player, I get through the stuff I need just fine without the high end gear, I have no need for it. And odds are, that neither do most of the people who don't do things like HM Ops.

 

I can only imagine what the people who do those HM ops think of this new system, if even I as a casual think it sucks lol

 

If I am correct, starting with 5.0 PvE and PvP gear are the same.

 

You really don't want to join a competitive ranked team with crappy gear.