Galactic Command Ranks - Is Anyone Happy?

[Gallandaeus]

This RNG system has turned the game into a slog that defies all previous expectations of gearing. When I re-subbed for 5.0 I didn't exactly explore the command ranks side of things because i never imagined that BioWare would introduce a system like this, wherein the player is not rewarded for doing content but is instead gambling for gear AFTER they complete content. At least with crystals I felt that every little thing I did somehow contributed toward something relevant to my interests: gear, gifts, etc. But now when I do content I just feel fatigued and wonder what exactly my motivation is for doing ANY content for CXP. At this point I question why I subbed when all I'm really getting for my money is new story content, and even then that's not enough to keep me around.

 

I'm just confused; this system doesn't reward you.

[DarthFletcher]

Lv28 now and apart from 5 pieces of 230 gear I have had little to no value goods in the remaining 23 packs last night opened up my 28th box and got 2 purple Jawa scraps and 2 ***** items that got trashed, and even the trash value wasnt helping the bar move along

[HarrisTheHeckler]

At least with crystals I felt that every little thing I did somehow contributed toward something relevant to my interests: gear, gifts, etc.

 

This.

[AscendingSky]

In before the charge of the EAWare white knight brigade.

 

Other than the aforementioned white knights, I personally do not know anyone who likes the GC system. Among my in-game friends and guild mates, results range from indifference (from people who just RP and don't care about gear or levelling or endgame anyways) to annoyance to "Screw this, I'm done" quitting. None of the reactions have been positive.

[Tessie]

We went from being able to buy a specific gift we needed and wanted, to having a random chance to possibly get a gift. And, even if we do get a gift, its most likely not legendary. And then there's the bugged courting gifts still in the loot table.

 

Edited:

I have 48 characters on Harbinger and 30 characters on Prophecy of the Five. Whenever I play an alt I feel like I'm wasting my time. I'm rank 86 on my main, and 12+ on 3 alts.

 

I'm so frustrated with the GC I couldn't bring myself to play the last couple of days. I feel nothing but dread and desperation when I think about the remaining levels. I cancelled my 6 month recurring subscription last week, but still have 4 months left. I can't wait for ESO's housing launch in February.

 

I've gone from a huge fan to a hater with this system.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Tessie

[Hichitsuki-hime]

dunno about all u guys, but i personally can't do more than 1 GC rank a day. it just becomes too boring after that. Mobs in flashpoints and uprisings need to drop more CXP lol.

like:

regular mob - 1CXP

silver mob - 2 CXP

gold mob - 10 CXP

boss - 50 CXP

 

also, the quest reward for groupfinder is ridiculously LOW.:D:D

[americanaussie]

I don't mind it but I think it'll get tedious after awhile. I'm not all I NEED TO BE 300 LIKE YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! or anything. I've 3 level 70s. My highest is like level 13. I am getting relatively good stuff from it with only 2 crates being entirely worthless out of 13 levels on main, 7 on alt 1 and 3 on alt 2. I think making cxp easier would be better along with token drops for people to buy missing pieces. Im actually regular pvping now and trying to do more overall in general. I'm not focused on leveling up cxp as hardcore grinding bores me.

[Drunken_Ewok]

It's human nature to expect some kind of reward for completion of a task. The old system gave players a guaranteed expectancy of the reward and encouraged players to keep playing and work towards enough crystals for a piece of gear etc. The current Command Rank / RNG system has no guaranteed reward (jawa scrap and empty shells are no reward) and the risk outweighs the effort, so players are not motivated. Edited December 15, 2016 by Drunken_Ewok

[Airehn]

I'm so frustrated with the GC I couldn't bring myself to play the last couple of days. I feel nothing but dread and desperation when I think about the remaining levels. I cancelled my 6 month recurring subscription last week, but still have 4 months left. I can't wait for ESO's housing launch in February.

 

I've gone from a huge fan to a hater with this system.

 

I'm in the exact same boat. During the last year I spent nearly every waking moment on this game after I was done adulting for the day. Bills, laundry, dishes, then SWTOR till I started to fall asleep. But with the way the game is now, I haven't even logged in since Friday. That was 5 days ago, and I don't plan on logging in today either.

I also cancelled my sub. Have a month left, not I'll actually do anything, maybe get some 65's to 70, but after 70 the game just really blows.

[wainot-keel]

It blows dog ****, lmao

 

I used to play all 3 roles on different toons. Screw that. Now I only play 1 role on two characters. That'll be it. If that much.

[Nomaad]

Nope, not at all, I got to command lvl 15 on 1 toon, my main, and decided to not level any more toons, I won't be supporting a game which devs troll the hell out of us.

[kimiko_tomiyama]

I can tell you, I'm a whole lot happier since I just started shoving the crates in an empty character vault and crafted some 228 mods to put in my augmented gear. It works regardless of if it's my main two, or the alts.

 

I'll grant you file and forget will eventually come to an end when I hit command rank 81 and the vault tab is full, but given that I cycle through my alts, I might be lucky to get 10 ranks in a month on any one toon. That likely means I'll not have to worry before August. And I'm not convinced I will be subbed that long anyway.

 

So, am I happy with the command system. Sorry, Tait and Musco. The government got there first. They offer the same excitement when I open packs from their older 'Command Property Tax Assessment' system.

[ZETA_SCORPII]

The devs did all this intentionally. You can't tell me they didn't know the **** storm they were leading us to. It's really too bad because the game still has a lot of nice features.

[Radzkie]

Didnt really bother me till I got 10-15 (around that) garbage crates in a row. Then I lost motivation and stopped grinding. Ill get levels still but without trying too hard. Ill probably gear up mostly through crafting if nothing changes.

 

Playing on a low level character atm for story but im getting bored again

Edited December 15, 2016 by Radzkie

[evodude]

Im not rank 10 on any toon, i have zero interest to "grind" an hunt for gear

 

SWTOR is a really really bad game to feel rewarded in for me, an i think thats the problem, you need to feel rewarded an well crates dont do it, at-least with crystals i could plod along doing *** i wanted an know i was accumulating something that ended in a guaranteed piece of gear. i could plan, i could make a route an say "right if i do this an do that then that buggers mine" thats been took away from me, now all i got is well if i do xyz it will reward pretty poor xp an i will see a bar slowly fill until its filled an then i will have a box that lets be honest will be filled with rubbish.

 

Cmd xp/crates dont bother me, what bothers me is my goal has been took away from me, all i can work for now is an imaginary reward not an actual reward, cmd xp/crates is actually a no bad system but only a no bad system that has to be in place on top of another system another system that allows ppl to look at it an go, "right if i do xyz i can work towards getting what i want but in meantime while doing so i have a chance to maybe get it in a crate"

 

Never make your game feel like it is not rewarding, it will fail

[ShardODarkness]

I'm a fairly regular player and have only had "time" to GC level one toon to 12...leveling more than one toon is just WAY too time consuming, they need to make GC levels apply to the legacy as well. Edited December 15, 2016 by ShardODarkness

[ForceShaman]

I'm rather indifferent - I don't necessarily like it, but I don't particularly dislike it either. I think it's a different perspective based mostly on my play-style.

 

Prior to 5.0 - I ran Heroics and some Flashpoints, maybe took some time to go scout around for HK parts and worked on building up Alliance commander influence. Most of these rewarded credits and some of these rewarded Green crystals that I used to upgrade my gear to 208's. Once I had all my 208's (and the 208's for my tank spec) I really didn't have anything to do with the green crystals so I started buying 208's to send to a different character and kept earning credits and Alliance crates for the cosmetic gear (most of which is really ugly, but there's a couple gems in there that are worth looking for.) I never really have the time to push for much of the content that would garner Blue or Purple crystals in quantity enough for being worth buying gear upgrades to the 216's or 224's, so i really didn't bother. Found that I enjoyed lowbie PVP while getting Valor for the DvL achievements, but once I hit 65, end-game PVP was nothing but a stun/slaughter-fest that I couldn't do anything for 20 minutes, so I stopped bothering.

 

Post 5.0 - I run Heroics and some Flashpoints, tried an uprising - these activities still get me credits, and some earn me Alliance crates. I don't get Crystals any more, but I get a ton of Blue 220 gear from drops in the Heroics. Some of these are upgrades to my current gear, some are upgrades to my Tanking gear, some get sent to other characters to upgrade their previous 208 gear. I also randomly get these Command Crates that sometimes have blue and purple 230 gear in them, and even have picked up a couple with nifty set bonuses (something I would have never seen pre-5.0 based on the game activities I normally do.) The random cosmetic stuff in the Command Crates has mostly been either ungodly ugly or just basic bland and nondescript, so it gets disintegrated, along with most of the pets. I pull out any mounts I get to either collect or save for the GTN later (I should be doing this with the pets, too, but that's only just occurred to me for some reason.) One thing I will say, since gear seems BiS gear seems to be mostly non-existent at this point, max-level PVP has been a lot more interesting and I've been able to get in and learn some of what I'm doing to the point that I actually enjoy and look forward to queuing, now.

 

tl;dr - Command Rank and Command Crates don't affect me one way or another, based purely on play style. I do the same things in game now that I did before 5.0 and get roughly the same rewards from it. If you've been around a while and already have all of the Rep from the tokens or focus on "end game" Ops and hard Mode/Nightmare stuff, I can see where you would be negatively affected by this system, however.

[Storm-Cutter]

I got a couple of early set bonus pieces, but now the drought has set in- 8 command ranks and nothing but worthless trash that hardly moves the bar along. - I'm not looking forward to a guild reunion at the weekend....I can feel a lot of qq-ing coming off them already over this.

For varying reasons PvP and GSF haven't been great either this last couple of weeks.

Even the uprisings are a mixed bag - over in a flash or complete idiots, who need hand-holding on basic mechanics. - I lost count how many times I had to tell them to target the droid without the shield..... I can't see them holding people's attention very long, personally.

[-Spc]

dunno about all u guys, but i personally can't do more than 1 GC rank a day. it just becomes too boring after that. Mobs in flashpoints and uprisings need to drop more CXP lol.

like:

regular mob - 1CXP

silver mob - 2 CXP

gold mob - 10 CXP

boss - 50 CXP

 

also, the quest reward for groupfinder is ridiculously LOW.:D:D

Same here, about 1 GC level per day which means 300 days if i want to hit level 300.

I just gave up on GC, so i'll go play another game, eve online i think.

Until they bring back gear to vendors and drops on bosses + weekly passes they'll not see me anytime soon.

[Tsetso]

I am mostly happy. If it wasn't for it i would have probably never tried WoW.

[nhsknudsen]

No, I just stand around in my 1 SH decorating it while chatting with people.

 

I ran to around lvl 20 GC on main toon but after getting several earpieces (or was it implants?) in a row of the same variety I gave up.

 

I don't mind grinding if I can set the goal for my grinding and know the exact end of my grind. I can't with this system, I could get it immediately or I could get it in 2 months. It is not satisfaction to finally get that piece of gear when someone else got it in first crate.

 

The game caters to the lowest denominator now, people who can't be bothered to learn or understand their abilities. But they can get the same piece of gear by drooling over their keyboard, if only they do it long enough.

[Quraswren]

I can't I'm happy about swtor and the RNG used just so bw could create GC and say, "Do any content for gear."

 

The negatives of RNG - casino slot machine gearing, the massive grind of extremely old content, the alts that have no reason to be played is too much bad game design for the only positive GC brought - being able to play any content for gear.

 

It's not good gaming as you are encouraged to play the system to the best you can and not the game.

[psandak]

I am of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am definitely playing more and participating in more varied activities.

 

• When I cannot group (mainly because I will have to leave quickly) I am doing heroics because they generate CXP. Before 5.0, I would only run heroics when they were for conquest and only when my guild was actively trying to win.
  
• I am doing more PvP because I do not have to worry about having "PvP gear". Getting yell at for not having gear was a real turn off
  
• I am doing more GSF because it is a good source of CXP.
  
• I am doing uprisings because they are new and quick
  
• and flashpoints because they are the "highlighted activity" and generate good CXP.
  

 

That being said, I HATE IT when someone in my preformed group says: "Let's do X over and over because it is the fastest way to get CXP." The KP Trash thing, I could not stomach more than 3 or 4 passes before I left. I LIKE varied activities. I would rather spend a little more time getting a little less CXP doing varied activities than doing the same thing over and over.

 

I used to play all 3 roles on different toons. Screw that. Now I only play 1 role on two characters. That'll be it. If that much.

 

This is my biggest complaint. While I do enjoy playing my scoundrel healer, I feel like I cannot play anything else until I get that character into at least full 230 gear because that is the character my raid team expects me to play. If all of a sudden my raid team needs a tank....I cannot provide one because that character will not be geared up. So my Scoundrel healer will be geared and I can legacy most of that gear to my operative healer; two characters one role .

 

That being said, crafting can and will be filling in a lot of gaps. If I can get enough materials (which are relatively abundant), I will be able to get that tank most of the way geared up through crafting (230 mods and enhancements and 230 left side, with 224 set bonus armorings, should be sufficient for at least the easier HM OPs)

 

We went from being able to buy a specific gift we needed and wanted, to having a random chance to possibly get a gift. And, even if we do get a gift, its most likely not legendary. And then there's the bugged courting gifts still in the loot table.

 

You do realize that the gift vendors still exist, on fleet and Odessen. The grade 6 at 250k a pop are not worth it, but the grade 5 purple for 10k each might be (FYI you need 2.91 grade 5 purple gifts to equate to 1 grade 6). The grade 1 and grade 2 for 200 and 600 credits each respectively also still exists. So you can get a companion from 0 to 17 for 60k as it has been since 4.0 and the new influence system came into play (prior to that one could get to 6k affection for that same 60k credits).

Edited December 15, 2016 by psandak

[Pirana]

I've been fairly fortunate on my characters. Tank and dps are almost all in 230 gear with the dps having two set pcs. My healer got three set pcs in the first ten boxes. None of my characters are beyond level 20 rank yet, and the grind is starting to exponentially get worse. More than likely canceling soon.

 

The way I see this is: When I go to work, and put in a weeks worth of time/hours, I expect a paycheck, not the possibility of one. Of course this is a game, and we know that loot was never guaranteed, but atleast if you put in the effort, you were rewarded with the bare minimum of comms/crystals. With the current format, there's almost no incentive to log in.

 

As mentioned in another thread, the game is transitioning from running content for fun to finding the quickest way to farm CP. My guess is, this is not the direction EAWare wanted their game to go, which is why we're having a second podcast in a very short span.

 

To answer your question, no.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Pirana

[Vember]

At least with crystals I felt that every little thing I did somehow contributed toward something relevant to my interests: gear, gifts, etc.

 

If anything, that's even more the case now than it was before.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Vember