Livestream Thoughts and Feedback

[Antreya]

So, the livestream hit annnndddddd.... The whiners and criers and doomsayers were completely wrong.

 

Cannot emphasize how much I am laughing right now at just how pathetic and stupid this livestream made the whiners look whose assumptions were dead wrong on every account. Not only are ways being added in to target gear for both pve and pvp, both setups are completely reasonable and perfectly fine. Job well done Bioware on the fixes. Now YES, it should have been this way from the start, but hindsight is 20/20 and the fixes are just fine.

 

First I will say again.... LOLOLOL @ whiners being made to look stupid on "RNG forever no changes" assumptions.

 

Now, onto feedback to their questions.

 

The pvp valor requirements.

 

So to this, they wanted ideas to the valor level requirements on tiers, what I think is reasonable is this.

 

Tier 1: Valor 20

Tier 2: Valor 40

Tier 3: Valor 60

 

These levels are reasonable, still require actual work put into PvP, but nothing too extreme like valor 100 req or anything.

 

PvE Feedback

 

For the non master mode bosses. Well I think only thing you can do is just have a small chance to drop a piece of the tier 3 gear. I mean there's just not really any other ideas for that, at least none that I can think of. Maybe someone else has a wild idea out of nowhere for that?

 

Command Token Uses

 

So for these, add a full suite of "stuff" you can buy with them. Nice things I would like to see:

 

Weapon Tunings (3 tiers, based on command rank tier, upgrade to - tier 1, then 2, then 3)

Mounts (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Cosmetic Armor and Weapons (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Titles (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Decorations

Unique Color Crystal

 

These are my ideas and feedback to the stream, and hope it helps you devs out getting some neat stuff in. Looking forward to the fixes coming in but I have to ask this.

 

We need a dev response -------ASAP--------- to the current PvP and class imbalances and what changes are incoming as well as response to things such as the current PvP queues getting PvE'ers queueing into ranked, and afking and exploiting /stuck for fast cxp, at the rating loss at others expense.

 

-Antreya

[-Spc]

Also, how do perfered players get to do ops and wz's with friends ?

There was no mention of universal weekly passes or something like that.

 

Some of my best friends don't play this game very often, but sometimes they log in and wanna do some quick ops, or wz's.

That's why they're not always subscribed.

 

And now, they can't buy any passes because they got removed. I really hope bioware puts in some universal weekly pass that will give prefered players access to the whole thing for a week.

Edited December 15, 2016 by -Spc

[americanaussie]

I absolutely love how they're rewarding ops and pvp. (And yea the whiners that said I don't do ops or pvp so this is unfair what will you give me? And they're like *GC* LOL as it should be )

 

It's nice they'll be retroactively giving command point tokens too.

[Antreya]

Also, how do perfered players get to do ops and wz's with friends ?

There was no mention of universal weekly passes or something like that.

 

Oh, good question, something I didn't think of myself (I'm a sub so didn't even cross my mind).

 

Def something hopefully devs respond to.

[Eshvara]

Sad there was no Q&A at the end for general questions, should have been there for a last stream of the year.

[americanaussie]

Also, how do perfered players get to do ops and wz's with friends ?

There was no mention of universal weekly passes or something like that.

 

Well...since preferred does not have access to GC nor command points then they won't be able to do anything with the dropped items. They removed the passes because ops wouldn't give them any rewards. This still has not changed.

[HelinCarnate]

You realize those changes are only there because of the whiners and criers right? If no one complained then there would have been no changes.

[Antreya]

Sad there was no Q&A at the end for general questions, should have been there for a last stream of the year.

 

What better place for that than this thread then yeah?

 

Also, the response to your signature in the livestream (well what it says, not yours specifically), was LOL. Actually derailed his attention from the stream for a moment.

[ObiWanBaikonur]

Command Token Uses

 

So for these, add a full suite of "stuff" you can buy with them. Nice things I would like to see:

 

Weapon Tunings (3 tiers, based on command rank tier, upgrade to - tier 1, then 2, then 3)

Mounts (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Cosmetic Armor and Weapons (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Titles (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Decorations

Unique Color Crystal

 

These are my ideas and feedback to the stream, and hope it helps you devs out getting some neat stuff in. Looking forward to the fixes coming in but I have to ask this.

 

I think these are great suggestions, especially Weapon Tunings. You could even make them very expensive to keep them rare, but I think it would be wonderful to have another possible avenue to get a tuning.

[DarthSpuds]

So, the livestream hit annnndddddd.... The whiners and criers and doomsayers were completely wrong.

 

So what have they fixed?

 

Nothing.

 

They've added an even more complex system for gearing up and given no indication as to how many tokens, components etc will be required in total to complete a set of gear.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system being extremely grindy.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system locking out Alts and Alt-Specs.

 

They have NOT addressed the RNG issues of the base system - which they are retaining.

 

They have NOT admitted they were wrong to ignore the pre-release feedback.

 

They have NOT listened at all to the majority of concerns about this system.

 

They learned nothing.

They've done almost nothing.

What little they have done has done nothing to address the core faults with the system.

 

Oh, but they did promise "exciting stuff" next month.

Been promising that for a year and we still haven't seen it.

 

 

All The Best

[Eshvara]

What better place for that than this thread then yeah?

 

Also, the response to your signature in the livestream (well what it says, not yours specifically), was LOL. Actually derailed his attention from the stream for a moment.

 

The nasty romance between Arcann and Senya and the outlander? And nobody really answers questions on the forums. (devs)

[AshenK]

So what have they fixed?

 

Nothing.

 

They've added an even more complex system for gearing up and given no indication as to how many tokens, components etc will be required in total to complete a set of gear.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system being extremely grindy.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system locking out Alts and Alt-Specs.

 

They have NOT addressed the RNG issues of the base system - which they are retaining.

 

They have NOT admitted they were wrong to ignore the pre-release feedback.

 

They have NOT listened at all to the majority of concerns about this system.

 

They learned nothing.

They've done almost nothing.

What little they have done has done nothing to address the core faults with the system.

 

Oh, but they did promise "exciting stuff" next month.

Been promising that for a year and we still haven't seen it.

 

 

All The Best

this right here and you people need to wake up too it.

[killershrike]

 

Command Token Uses

 

So for these, add a full suite of "stuff" you can buy with them. Nice things I would like to see:

 

Weapon Tunings (3 tiers, based on command rank tier, upgrade to - tier 1, then 2, then 3)

Mounts (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Cosmetic Armor and Weapons (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Titles (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Decorations

Unique Color Crystal

 

 

Well, of course we will buy chance cubes with the tokens .

[Antreya]

I think these are great suggestions, especially Weapon Tunings. You could even make them very expensive to keep them rare, but I think it would be wonderful to have another possible avenue to get a tuning.

 

Ty for the compliment on my suggestions, and yes I agree on the cost. My idea to how it would work is not only do you require the command tier rank itself, you would also need command tokens - FOR EACH TIER -

 

So, say the weapon tuning for example

 

tier 1 - command rank tier 1 + command tokens

tier 2 - command rank tier 2 + tier 1 weapon tuning + more command tokens

tier 3 - command rank tier 3 + tier 2 weapon tuning + even more command tokens

 

This would be how the upgrades would work on everything I suggested, and tier 3 stuff having really high command token costs would keep them nice and rare on each piece, and something to work towards for people.

[LastBrood]

So I still don't get what's the problem with making galactic command legacy wide.

 

I guess raiders and PvPers got a decent compromise but still the grind must go on I guess.

[BarrinMarshall]

So, the livestream hit annnndddddd.... The whiners and criers and doomsayers were completely wrong.

 

Cannot emphasize how much I am laughing right now at just how pathetic and stupid this livestream made the whiners look whose assumptions were dead wrong on every account. Not only are ways being added in to target gear for both pve and pvp, both setups are completely reasonable and perfectly fine. Job well done Bioware on the fixes. Now YES, it should have been this way from the start, but hindsight is 20/20 and the fixes are just fine.

 

First I will say again.... LOLOLOL @ whiners being made to look stupid on "RNG forever no changes" assumptions.

 

Now, onto feedback to their questions.

 

The pvp valor requirements.

 

So to this, they wanted ideas to the valor level requirements on tiers, what I think is reasonable is this.

 

Tier 1: Valor 20

Tier 2: Valor 40

Tier 3: Valor 60

 

These levels are reasonable, still require actual work put into PvP, but nothing too extreme like valor 100 req or anything.

 

PvE Feedback

 

For the non master mode bosses. Well I think only thing you can do is just have a small chance to drop a piece of the tier 3 gear. I mean there's just not really any other ideas for that, at least none that I can think of. Maybe someone else has a wild idea out of nowhere for that?

 

Command Token Uses

 

So for these, add a full suite of "stuff" you can buy with them. Nice things I would like to see:

 

Weapon Tunings (3 tiers, based on command rank tier, upgrade to - tier 1, then 2, then 3)

Mounts (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Cosmetic Armor and Weapons (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Titles (3 tiers, upgrade as above)

Decorations

Unique Color Crystal

 

These are my ideas and feedback to the stream, and hope it helps you devs out getting some neat stuff in. Looking forward to the fixes coming in but I have to ask this.

 

We need a dev response -------ASAP--------- to the current PvP and class imbalances and what changes are incoming as well as response to things such as the current PvP queues getting PvE'ers queueing into ranked, and afking and exploiting /stuck for fast cxp, at the rating loss at others expense.

 

-Antreya

 

I could spend all day going over, point by point, how wrong and asinine your post is but i'll just hit a few highlights.

 

These rapid changes are due COMPLETELY to the negative feedback that players gave to the new x-pack, punctuated by the flood of cancelled subs to back it up, other wise they would not be changing it so fast, or they just would have released the CXP with the new changes from the start.

 

It's been 2 weeks since early access: In that time we've had 2 impromptu streams and a survey from EA about the game, the last stream being a knee-jerk reaction to peoples discontent and cancelling subs.

 

It's human history unfortunately, that sometimes, to bring about positive change, the masses have unite and surround the castle with torches and pitchforks to bring about a positive change. Or in this case, post the negative feedback and cancel the sub to halt the money flow..... then they listen. If reviews of KOTFE/KOTET would have just been neutral, these positive changes would not have come.... if BW intended them to be there, why didn't they just realse the x-pack with them already in place?

 

Anyways, the BW White Knight Brigade as well as their sister group the Forum Apologist Five group are the reasons why we have to go through this effort to bring about good changes to the game we love. Hell, I might even CONSIDER re-subbing at this point.... AFTER Jan.24th and the new changes land..... not before.

[Fardarter]

This is a massive improvement. i dont know what the guy prior to this post is talking about. Basically they made it so you can pool resources between all your toons. This is huge. They also made it so you can target gear, also huge.

 

The grind still remain but you can now just play a different toon if you get bored and still be earning LEGACY-WIDE tokens.

 

The drops in OPS are legacy wide so you can outfit alts that way. If you pvp often on an alt you have access to all the gear that way and you have access to your legacies pool of tokens which by the way will be added retroactively. As someone with half a dozen or more level 70s with anywhere between 10 and 55 CXP levels on them I can really appreciate these changes.

 

There will be issues in the future but this seems like a pretty well thought out addition to the cxp system.

 

Now if we can only get them to fix uprisings, single use heal stations in story mode needs to go. Story mode should be easy for new and less skills players to learn them. As it is now good players stay away because without a healer you need 4 people who know what they are doing and in this game in group finder..good luck.

[-Spc]

So what have they fixed?

 

Nothing.

 

They've added an even more complex system for gearing up and given no indication as to how many tokens, components etc will be required in total to complete a set of gear.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system being extremely grindy.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system locking out Alts and Alt-Specs.

 

They have NOT addressed the RNG issues of the base system - which they are retaining.

 

They have NOT admitted they were wrong to ignore the pre-release feedback.

 

They have NOT listened at all to the majority of concerns about this system.

 

They learned nothing.

They've done almost nothing.

What little they have done has done nothing to address the core faults with the system.

 

Oh, but they did promise "exciting stuff" next month.

Been promising that for a year and we still haven't seen it.

 

 

All The Best

I agree, they still haven't fixed RNG.

 

I was hoping they would remove RNG, give us back vendors and drops from bosses and introduce weekly passes for people / friends who are prefered.

Edited December 15, 2016 by -Spc

[Morrolan]

So, the livestream hit annnndddddd.... The whiners and criers and doomsayers were completely wrong.

 

Uh, these changes have clearly only been made due to players complaining and unsubbing.

[Alssaran]

I'll not join in on your rather childish paragraph about doomsayers because it is useless for the discussion at hand. Let's cut to the chase:

 

The overall idea behind those changes is positive. At least I get a way to run content for the specific gear I want and I am not that reliant on pure RNG luck to acquire better gear. If I'd want to equip an alt character, I can just send him Command Tokens and run operations with my guild to do it. Similarly, I can transfer Command Tokens to my main character that I do not need on my alt to unlock gear pieces, or decide to run a story operation to obtain baseline set gear with some leftover tokens.

 

Those changes (at least the way I understood them) make it less tideous to acquire rank 3 gear because there is no "Command Token 3" - I will be able to run HM content for HM gear and NiM content for NiM gear. There is no gate in Galactic Command levels. I don't need 300+ hours to grind tier 3 gear.

 

As for the PvP variant, I really do not see a reason to not treat this the same way commendations were treated prior to 5.0. At least not if the valor rank requirement is fullfilled on the character you're trying to get said gear to. Keep in mind that I am specifically talking about Unassembled Components here. I can see why the tokens itself might not be legacy wide, but the Unassembled Components should be transferrable to alt characters via a Component Grant. A similar system we enjoyed during 4.0. It shouldn't really matter on which character we decide to gather this secondary currency as long as we actively PvP on a character for it. I'll still need to unlock the primary requirement (Valor) on each alt, which means I have to prove that I did a baseline amount of PvP on said character.

 

The Unassembled Components should drop from Weekly/Daily quests too. The exact amount of how many those quests grant you should be adjusted based on how many you gain per warzone and how many you need per piece of gear. You see where this is going - I'd argue that the Unassembled Components should be the new warzone commendations, and then use Command Tokens to tie GC into the system.

 

How many Unassembled Components for one piece?

 

The answer to said question is influenced by how long a person (subjectively) can grind.

 

I'd argue that one medal rewards one component. Winning a warzone awards an addition three - five components. If you'd tie the components to a weekly quest, I'd put between five to ten into the daily and twenty to twenty-five into the weekly quest.

 

Those numbers are heavily influenced by how much the gear pieces should be per piece. I'd assume that gaining between 10-15 components for a single warzone, the gear pieces should be at a ~50-70 components per piece for the first (basic) set of PvP armour. This would mean that fourteen times an average of sixty pieces per gear item is 720 components in total. Putting a single item at sixty pieces:

 

I receive two components per medal. I average ~10 medals during my warzones as a Sage. That's ten pieces. If I win the warzone, I will receive an additional three pieces. That's 13 pieces per warzone on average. Sometimes I'll lose, and sometimes I'll outperform myself and gain a lot of defender/attacker medals. Let's stick with 13.

 

That's an average of five warzones for a baseline piece of set gear. Baseline. Subsequent tiers of gear should use slightly more components to upgrade. But not tremendously more. They should only create a baseline gear curve that requires you to PvP on a character to gain the BiS gear, but leaves the baseline gear open for every alt.

 

This is why components should be tradeable to. Every warzone you do on a PvP main above the supply needed to upgrade to BiS (tier 3) counts towards a new baseline/tier 2 character. No progress is ever lost. Even if you have already maxed out to BiS gear after a few weeks.

 

PvE seems very self-explanatory. The biggest issue here is how many Command Tokens you'll need for a single piece of gear. Assuming those pieces are complimentary in every GC box, and they do not replace the small chance at another set bonus item while drawing them, they should not be a 1:1 system. Going by all the posts I see about "I'm legacy level > 30", I think between five to eight for a single piece of gear is reasonable. Five levels on an alt are really easy to do. Espescially the first three levels. This is more difficult to answer depending on how complimentary the tokens should be. I'd say going into an operation and using five tokens for my guaranteed end boss drop is reasonable enough.

 

I was hoping they would remove RNG, give us back vendors and drops from bosses

 

Which is exactly what they are doing. You are never happy without getting EXACTLY what you want WHEN you want it, huh? Disgusting.

 

The idea that they'd just completely scrap GC was ridiculous from the get go. Everyone who believed that should've just ignored the live stream. It's now a matter of discussion and how tolerant the community is to grinds as to how many components/tokens we'll need. You need to grind three to four hours for a gear piece? Tough luck. Then unsubscribe and play a TCG. Oh, but you also need to grind for cards in hearthstone. Then go and play League of Legends. Oh, but wait. You need to play the game and earn Influence Points to gain champions.

 

You can go into an operation and get a guaranteed token drop from the last boss. I can actually go there and claim that set token if I need it. Then I can send five-ten command tokens from my alts and construct that piece. The progress of GC levels from my alts isn't lost. This is (at least for now) a very good start to adress the problem by keeping both parties in a good light.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system being extremely grindy.

 

You are not reliant on obtaining GC 300 on every character anymore. You are not reliant on gear tokens from command rank 200+. You are not required to grind GC overly much for gear. You can also take operation bosses and use the Command Tokens you make while playing the game to upgrade your gear. There is no need to grind GCXP for hours on end just to equip a single character. You earn command tokens as you go. They are a guaranteed drop.

 

They have NOT addressed the issue of the current system locking out Alts and Alt-Specs.

 

They did. See above. I can actually equip an alt by simply running an Operation/guild run with him and obtain the tokens I need. Then I spend Command Tokens I can send between characters. That includes my main, who will not need them after some point.

 

They have NOT addressed the RNG issues of the base system - which they are retaining.

 

Ridiculous. You get guaranteed operation tokens and guaranteed Command Tokens to assemble them from every crate. And you also have the chance to still get set bonus items. You can choose to ignore the GC system leave the bare minimum of Command Token acquisition if you want.

 

They have NOT admitted they were wrong to ignore the pre-release feedback.

 

They don't have to. This stream was supposed to be constructive. Not a witch hunt.

 

They have NOT listened at all to the majority of concerns about this system.

 

They did. They might not have listened to your concerns about the system, but the current suggestion is a good start at improving the system.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Alssaran

[DarthSpuds]

The grind still remain but you can now just play a different toon if you get bored and still be earning LEGACY-WIDE tokens..

 

But NOT Legacy Wide Command Ranks which is what is needed to gear up Alts.

 

The gear rating of the gear you create/get is wholly dependent on your Command Rank.

 

So my main having a lot of spare tokens I can use on my 2nd Toon doesn't help because the 2nd Toon's Command Rank means I'll only be able to get rubbish gear.

 

All The Best

[killershrike]

But NOT Legacy Wide Command Ranks which is what is needed to gear up Alts.

 

The gear rating of the gear you create/get is wholly dependent on your Command Rank.

 

So my main having a lot of spare tokens I can use on my 2nd Toon doesn't help because the 2nd Toon's Command Rank means I'll only be able to get rubbish gear.

 

All The Best

 

Not true.

Take your brand new Level 70 in a HM (sorry, Veteran) OP, get an unassembled Tier 2 gear piece , combine with legacy command token, buy Tier 2 set piece.

[AshenK]

Not true.

Take your brand new Level 70 in a HM (sorry, Veteran) OP, get an unassembled Tier 2 gear piece , combine with legacy command token, buy Tier 2 set piece.

you mean buy that tier 2 set piece that's stuck on that character that doesnt help alts at all.

 

stop white knighting.

[cyrusramsey]

PVE != ops

 

Won't renew sub.

Uninstalled.

 

Will hang around the forums a little while longer to see how people are responding to this, but I suspect that this is the end of swtor for me. Do not feel taken seriously. They applied a band aid for the people yelling the loudest, but only for the people yelling the loudest.

 

 

So long. Had a bunch of fun over the last four years, but am not having any more like this.

[WhiteOsprey]

Don't know what the OP is going on about. If it wasn't for the community backlash nothing would change, and I can hardly blame people for being skeptical about Bioware and what changes were going to take place. In terms of these changes i guess we'll have to see how they look when we get all the details but i can appreciate that they realize something needs to be done.

 

What i did find particularly hilarious though is how both Bioware and the few people constantly defending the new system talked about Galactic command being about streamlining and simplifying gearing. Say what you will about what was announced but i'd hardly call that simplifying gearing. Its more convoluted than the straight up token/comm/crystal vendor system we had before.

Edited December 15, 2016 by WhiteOsprey