Producer Livestream 12/15

[AshenK]

So what I gather, is that the last boss of an operation will drop a guaranteed unassembled token of a specific type.

 

Since the earlier bosses won't drop unassembled pieces reliably like the last boss, I expect people to get a lock on the last boss and teams just doing multiple runs on the last boss only using locks so they can bypass the rest of the operation to gain loot reliably.

 

Now, I am sure that some people would want me to shut up about that and maybe even you would wish I hadn't posted this here but I asked the question like 7 times during the livestream to no avail. But I'm pretty sure this will happen and I'd rather that you guys at BWA think about this before this happens rather than after and you do some crazy nerf because you freak out over it like you did with the people grinding Champions in KP again ticking a lot of people off. I think it's the right time to be smart about these sort of things.

 

Overall though the changes you propose are very encouraging and I am going to think about whether I will resub and when. I think this might do the trick but not sure if I trust things enough yet to resub before the patch in January, but if I do resub I will post it as promised in another thread.

i wouldnt resub i'd stay away it doesnt solve anything

 

no new ops no new gsf no new pvp. those are the three things ppl want. gc needs to be removed and new content not single player story needs to be added. this game needs to start being more like swg pre-cu

[eriksarcasm]

So what I gather, is that the last boss of an operation will drop a guaranteed unassembled token of a specific type. This token will then buy you gear like before with an added price in the new command tokens that all GC crates will drop.

 

Since the earlier bosses won't drop unassembled pieces reliably like the last boss, I expect people to get a lock on the last boss and teams just doing multiple runs on the last boss only using locks so they can bypass the rest of the operation to gain loot reliably.

 

Now, I am sure that some people would want me to shut up about that and maybe even you would wish I hadn't posted this here but I asked the question like 7 times during the livestream to no avail. But I'm pretty sure this will happen and I'd rather that you guys at BWA think about this before this happens rather than after and you do some crazy nerf because you freak out over it like you did with the people grinding Champions in KP again ticking a lot of people off. I think it's the right time to be smart about these sort of things.

 

Overall though the changes you propose are very encouraging and I am going to think about whether I will resub and when. I think this might do the trick but not sure if I trust things enough yet to resub before the patch in January, but if I do resub I will post it as promised in another thread.

 

I personally hope you do, I enjoy your posts. I saw you ask that on the chat. As far as lockouts, would that be any different from the way people farmed bosses pre-5.0? Was that considered an exploit then, and would it be now, are the questions?

[Ceinwyn]

More than I hoped for (a way to gear outside command crates) and exactly what I expected at the same time (****** system stays ******). Unsure if I"m happy about these announcements; I think I'll wait until they're implemented and/or more info is announced to decide.

[NuSeC]

Please just add a gear vendor and make cxp legacy bound so that all the gearheads will stop ruining the forums with their negativity and bullying.

 

I like the new system. I feel like it's more fair to people who aren't keen on PVP or multiplayer content. We can actually get good gear now and I've had great luck.

 

Not everyone feels that way (the very vocal minority for example in this forum) and they deserve to be heard (even though most of them are beyond rude and entitled with the way they "share their opinions"). Putting a vendor down and legacy locking cxp will shut them up and allow those of us who DO like getting cxp for doing story content to continue doing so.

 

Also, please feel free to ban every single player who is threatening you guys, personally insulting you guys, and saying you should be fired or they wish you'd drop off the face of the earth. That's uncalled for and pathetic.

 

OR compromise by removing green gear from the crates entirely and giving a GUARANTEED set piece with every rank up or guaranteeing a set piece when our side is winning the dvl event or something like that.

 

Give the PVP meatheads some new PVP.

Put some new plans for Ops forward, new FPs, and all that jazz.

 

Fix some dang glitches.

Fix the Life Day Glitches (seriously, the event is unplayable for anyone who is on a dead server since we can't target NPCs without the uber expensive cannon)

Oh and while you're at it, please talk about possibly merging some of the dead servers. I love my dead server but my experience won't be changed much by being merged to a more populated one.

 

lol... just wow. Can not tell if troll or not.... If troll 10/10

[Toraak]

Thank you for making Ops bosses give gear. I want to encourage you to put some tokens in for those that do GSF as their personal playstyle as well. Some of us only want to do GSF, and Operations, and want both to be able to give us gear like what your doing with PvP. make it where medals and wins give more.

[NuSeC]

Thank you for making Ops bosses give gear. I want to encourage you to put some tokens in for those that do GSF as their personal playstyle as well. Some of us only want to do GSF, and Operations, and want both to be able to give us gear like what your doing with PvP. make it where medals and wins give more.

 

You need gear to do GSF?

[OneHit]

I like the fixes, but this all could have been avoided if you listened to the feedback you have been given since the announcement of RNG.

 

To me its still a very simple problem with a simple solution. Unfortunately swtor created the problem but ill try an get past that part.

 

Go back to comms. This whole thing were people who don't need end game gear getting end game gear is still a waste. You want OPS gear do an ops. You want PvP gear then pvp. You want story mode gear then do some story stuff. You want OPS gear but you have a 1000 excuses why you can't get it. TOUGH! I want to be a billionaire but i didn't do anything to make a billion bux so i don't have it. That's life

 

This whole catering to story mode pro's is really costing the game. This expansion has pushed away more players then it has brought back. I think it's becoming clear since NOW the devs are open to changes and offering bonus CC to refer friends. The reality for most of the players still here is a lot of our friends have left and there is no getting them back.

 

If you are serious about saving the game then i suggest bringing back comms and leaving cxp in place but solely for cosmetic gear. That way the story pros can continue to play dress up. Lets face it that's all they are here for. They don't need stats their companions do all the work. If you had an in game meter they would know that.

[OneHit]

Real quickly. This new system is simpler compared to the old system??? I don't recall needing a flow chart to figure out the old system.

 

You know what really chaps my ***. When i warn someone of impending danger and they totally ignore me. Then come to me for help when they didn't listen.

 

Hows that for some feedback

[LogicalPremise]

This whole catering to story mode pro's is really costing the game. This expansion has pushed away more players then it has brought back. I think it's becoming clear since NOW the devs are open to changes and offering bonus CC to refer friends. The reality for most of the players still here is a lot of our friends have left and there is no getting them back.

 

This, pretty much, is the core of the problem.

 

People who play the game only for PVP, raiding, crafting, or guild activities are mostly gone. A lot -- twenty seven by last count -- of people I know have either unsubbed or now are gone to preferred. I've unsubbed before, and stayed that way for quite a while before giving the game a chance again...and being disappointed and unsubbing again.

 

Many people -- including myself -- probably won't bother coming back. The people who are being called 'white knights' like what they see. But they fail to see it's alienating literally everyone else.

 

This isn't going to bring most people back, because the focus is clearly on tuning what they have, not realizing that it's made a lot of people give up completely. To be fair, as soon as they moved in this direction I realized my time with the game was over, much like when the NGE hit. I'm not saying it's not fun for some people.

 

But not for me. And watching the livestream I realized that I was no longer the customer they wanted. See, PVP people and raiders and guild people require a constant stream of new and inventive content. That's not what they're going to be doing, apparently.

 

There's some people who admit they aren't ever going to be good enough (regardless of gear) to do NiM, or to be in the top 100 ranked. Neither am I. But I could at least be a good off-tank, or heal people, or hold a point in PVP. The story was interesting but once you've done it ... it's over. There's nothing there. PVP, Ops, flashpoints were what was challenging.

 

Not everyone is the same, and for those who think this is a move in the right direction I wish you well. But for the rest of us, the message from the livestream is clear.

 

This is the way things are. We'll adjust it... but only in ways that still serve the same purpose. PVP is not important. Operations aren't important. Flashpoints aren't important. Tacticals, uprisings, and regrinding story chapters on alts is your future.

 

Congratulations, white knights! You've won the game.

[DansbyRotten]

A 100% drop rate of an unassembled gear token for every boss defeated will be necessary to motivate players to resume "progression" raiding.

 

The changes announced in the livestream are certainly an improvement but do not go far enough.

Edited December 16, 2016 by DansbyRotten

[Jedi_riches]

I will admit I could not get to see the stream could anyone confirm whether none ops players still have to gamble on sb gear or has it been removed from GC entirely for those command tokens which players will still need to combine with ops and pvp to make useful?

[OasisKid]

The last two bosses need to be guaranteed loot drops. A character takes 14 piece with relics and implants times two per. So you need 12 bosses to drop different loot.. There is only 9 operations unless you are counting Golden Fury and Monolith but with those that gives you 11 so you are still missing one piece. Personally I believe the best way is to make the last two bosses drop gear 100 percent of the time i.e. specific that would give 18 pieces which is more then enough for Tier 1 and Tier 2. However when you get into Tier 3 you only have 5 NiM Operations or Master now so you have only five pieces. Again I think if you look at 2.0 you had DF and DP have the last two bosses drop Underworld Gear which was HM TFB and SNV gear. If you think about it EV, KP, TFB, DF, DP, Rav and TOS all have 5 bosses so the last three of those raids could drop pieces and the last two of EC drop pieces and SNV has 7 bosses so make the last three in that one drop a piece of gear. I just think there should be more then just the last boss personally the last two bosses should be fixed and guaranteed at least but you run the risk of people leaving a pick up group to save the last boss lock out.. Lastly I think in HM and NiM every boss should drop a guaranteed piece even if it's random. Make it worth doing harder content for the few raid groups that still play. Edited December 16, 2016 by OasisKid

[OneHit]

I personally hope you do, I enjoy your posts. I saw you ask that on the chat. As far as lockouts, would that be any different from the way people farmed bosses pre-5.0? Was that considered an exploit then, and would it be now, are the questions?

 

Nah man. It's the same way guilds farm conquest points currently and Dev's have never had a problem with it.

[jimmorrisson]

I noticed up to say Rank 10 you would get front-loaded purple gear/blue gear/orange gear with blue parts inside. After that green gear and occasional duplicates.

 

I outright purchased purple 228s parts (hilts/armor/mods/enhancements/barrels), relics, implants, aug kit mk-10s and augments for my legacy gear to make up for gear not gotten from grinding for command rank level/crates.

 

One solution I would like see is more crates awarded outside of moving up each rank. Investing time in a Uprising/Chapter/Operation should reward one or more crates upon completion. Because as of now, for myself and many others, I have been just grinding PvP for CXP

 

Also remove green gear from crates.

[Tsillah]

I personally hope you do, I enjoy your posts. I saw you ask that on the chat. As far as lockouts, would that be any different from the way people farmed bosses pre-5.0? Was that considered an exploit then, and would it be now, are the questions?

 

There is one essential difference right now. BWA seems pretty convinced of wanting to reduce the gearing speed. Before 4.0 all bosses were equal also. They all droped unassembled tokens. So if you skipped 4 bosses to get to the last one, well you sacrificed the other ones.

 

Now, the earlier bosses in an operation are not equal. They set it up so that advancing through an operation is progressively more profitable as with each boss the chance of an unassembled item, though random, increases. Only the last boss drops a reliable unassembled token.

 

This tells me that they have another way of look at operations. Also look at how they nerfed gold and champion mobs for the same reason: too efficient for their liking. My fear is that they do not realise that people will do this boss lock business, foregoing the rest of the system they implement and creating runs that make sure everybody gets a piece of gear...reliably as long as you have a group of people with enough alts. Just make sure that when it's your turn to loot, you're on the right character. This way guilds can support their members, so I expect people to do this.

 

It's also what makes their new ideas viable for progression gearing in pve from a player point of view, but I think that they're trying to avoid that each boss kill drops loot. This way players can bypass it if they so choose. BWA may feel that this is too efficient again and nerf it after bringing it into the game.

 

And their nerf hammer is just too big. They have little nuance in their modus operandi and I guess you can say that I am sorely lacking trust or faith in them at the moment and whereas I've been able to bounce back quite easily before, it's not that easy this time it appears.

[eriksarcasm]

There is one essential difference right now. BWA seems pretty convinced of wanting to reduce the gearing speed. Before 4.0 all bosses were equal also. They all droped unassembled tokens. So if you skipped 4 bosses to get to the last one, well you sacrificed the other ones.

 

Now, the earlier bosses in an operation are not equal. They set it up so that advancing through an operation is progressively more profitable as with each boss the chance of an unassembled item, though random, increases. Only the last boss drops a reliable unassembled token.

 

This tells me that they have another way of look at operations. Also look at how they nerfed gold and champion mobs for the same reason: too efficient for their liking. My fear is that they do not realise that people will do this boss lock business, foregoing the rest of the system they implement and creating runs that make sure everybody gets a piece of gear...reliably as long as you have a group of people with enough alts. Just make sure that when it's your turn to loot, you're on the right character. This way guilds can support their members, so I expect people to do this.

 

It's also what makes their new ideas viable for progression gearing in pve from a player point of view, but I think that they're trying to avoid that each boss kill drops loot. This way players can bypass it if they so choose. BWA may feel that this is too efficient again and nerf it after bringing it into the game.

 

And their nerf hammer is just too big. They have little nuance in their modus operandi and I guess you can say that I am sorely lacking trust or faith in them at the moment and whereas I've been able to bounce back quite easily before, it's not that easy this time it appears.

 

Understood.

[TebrynStorm]

I have posted a streamlined solution in another thread, that should adress problems the new gearing fix would be creating (e.g. uprisings, GSF, FPs missing out on unassembled gear, doing lockouts on final bosses with multiple alts to wholly equip in one week), etc.) I think my solution is pretty elegant, someone in this thread had an idea along similar lines.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9173597#post9173597

 

Please give it a try, it is a long read, but when it is about gearing it should be worth it. Devs, please also give this a thought. It is not a rage rant, it is a constructive solution with a lot of suggestions, where you can tweak to your liking.

Edited December 16, 2016 by TebrynStorm

[Avinler]

Please just add a gear vendor and make cxp legacy bound so that all the gearheads will stop ruining the forums with their negativity and bullying.

 

I'm not trying to ruin anyone's forums. I'm just trying to get BioWare to realize they're ruining the game before it's too late. I wouldn't consider myself a "gearhead" I just want the game to be fun and have a healthy population, neither of which the Galactic Command system does.

[PlasmaJohn]

There is one essential difference right now. BWA seems pretty convinced of wanting to reduce the gearing speed. Before 4.0 all bosses were equal also. They all droped unassembled tokens. So if you skipped 4 bosses to get to the last one, well you sacrificed the other ones.

Yep, that seems to be the case. The normalized operations were good in theory but it created this "gearing is too fast" issue.

 

The problem with slamming the brakes on without any new content is that it knocked people too far back out of their current progression levels and it clobbered the existing (and very necessary) catch-up mechanics. Their grindcore implementation trivialized how progression works. The way I've seen progression work is that the team hones their skills and slowly gets gear until skill and average gear level converge to where the team can down the boss they're working on.

 

GC isn't all bad, it does offer a route for those unwilling or unable to do progression or ranked pvp a path to getting top tier gear. But that's all it should have been. There shouldn't have been a gear reset or level bump. The 4.0 system should have remained in place.

 

Of course it wouldn't have solved the "too fast" problem but you cannot do that without fresh content to chew on. Gear rate should be controlled by how fast it takes to beat the new content not some artificial grind mechanic that frustrates enough subscribers to put the studio and corporate finance team in a sheer panic.

 

If and when they do develop a new raid, then they should offer new gear tiers. But only for those new instances. When the next raid is introduced, then everything gets renormalized to the previous raid's ilvl while the new one introduces higher ones.

[LordArtemis]

I would like to add an additional comment, or addendum if you will.

 

I can count on one hand the amount of times Bioware has reversed or drastically altered bad decisions in the past IMO.

 

One of those times, most notable to me was the companion balance issue a while back. At first, companions were quite powerful (and that was great IMO), then they were nerfed far too much, then Bioware dialed back on the nerf to make them as they are today.

 

Though I would have liked a slightly stronger dialback from the nerf, especially from level 40 to 50, I have to admit that they are in a reasonably good place at the moment.

 

They have demonstrated IMO, from time to time, that they are capable of taking feedback into account and make adjustments accordingly when a bad decision has been made. I think this qualifies.

 

Unfortunately they have also demonstrated stubbornness and/or apathy as well.

 

I am encouraged by the change announcement. Surprised as well to be honest. I think it was a smart move, I think it would be even smarter to tweak it a bit further....but that is where they most often fall down.

 

We will have to see the particulars, and I still hold on to hope that they will make finer adjustments here and there to the system, but I think this is an encouraging step in the right direction.

 

Now, I doubt that this system and its implementation represents some evidence of lassitude on the part of the devs. I think it is more likely some kind of internal goal or move to simply armor progression moving forward...perhaps even a database purge of some sort.

 

Either way, i think this system has massive potential....unfortunately I expect that they will NOT seize that potential.

 

I would love to be wrong about that.

Edited December 18, 2016 by LordArtemis

[RegulatorVarda]

I myself find it strange that those in charge have decided to make this game worse off than it was instead of better. For example what good does GC do when you have no chance to customize your own gear setup, other than running useless so called endgame repeatedly. No while I don't mind farming for my gear i.e. data crystals or WZ comms. That fact you have decided to make multiple new Uprisings but not one new Operation or WZ, tells me you have nothing new to offer and therefore have decided to make as much money as possible without any concern or consideration for the actual player or game. I truly love playing this game I have spent several hundreds of dollars and years enjoying it, but now I feel as if the game has become more of a play as we say and not as you like. You promote it as our own personal SW saga but it is anything but that anymore. RNG doesn't allow for customization of gear and lack of new or even better endgame options, to me just says you no longer care. So from me to you, I am saddened by this I truly love and enjoy SWTOR but given your lack of listening to the players/Customers I don't think I will be playing much longer. Well at least not as a subscriber.