Livestream Thoughts and Feedback

[merovejec]

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

 

This is a good thing indeed!

[Pateytos]

I still don't get it why this system have to be in the game in the first place. It is more like changes for the sake of changes without any strong justification from Bio rather than real analysis. People were coming and playing the game, accepting its rules and systems for a 5 goshdarn years. Commendations system was a turn off? Really? It took 5 years to "realise" that and place it as a reason behind this monstrosity of gearing?

 

I really wish they stop to make radical decision about the game as they did for the last 2 years, because it is more like trying make a snowman out of dirt.

[omaan]

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

 

No man,whiner just WON and they LAUGH at you. They weren't crying that it's forever,they demanded CHANGES so they could gear up their alts and work for individual pieces. So they are the winners,bw did what they asked lol

[ddttor]

The new system entirely depends on how many of those Command Tokens you need to get a gear piece. 10 is probably highest reasonable amount. Anything above won't really help with grind.

 

Also, did they mention, what gear would vendors sell: artifact or legendary quality?

[Wayshuba]

Wrong.

 

This will make it a lot less grindy, once you only need a couple of pieces you do the specific Ops to get those pieces.

 

The tokens will be legacy wide so it will be MUCH easier to gear alts in addition to putting stuff in legacy gear.

 

The base system was horrible alone, but now it is a base to get fun random stuff and this new system will fill in the pieces that you miss.

 

They were wrong to ignore the pre-release feedback but now they have.

 

They obviously have listened, seems dishonest to claim that they haven't.

 

First off, the poster you quoted is correct, nothing of what he mentioned was corrected.

 

Secondly, is anyone really paying attention to what was said:

 

- The Command Tokens will be legacy wide but, the Ops token from the end boss will be Bound (and not everyone will get one) to the toon that did it. Considering you need to combine the token with Command tokens to then have an item you can get from the vendor, it gained you NOTHING.

 

- What was offered was a consolation prize for doing the GC system. Did anyone stop to think if they just fixed the RNG and lowered the CxP for higher levels they wouldn't need this system.

 

- This new thing is a convoluted band aid that is doing nothing to fix the grind or the RNG. Nothing. I mean we have an RNG Ops token on the end boss (in 4.0 that was enough to get you gear), that you then need to have so many Command Tokens to combine with to then get an item to trade at a gear vendor. With PvP, you are going to get parts, that after so many you can combine to make the piece that needs to be combined with Command Tokens to get the piece you trade in at the vendor. Yeah, cause warzone commendation and direct trade in of pieces was so much more convoluted it was too complicated for us.

 

- No one, and I mean no one, knows how many of these command tokens are going to be needed to combine with the other piece to get one piece of gear. If they make it 50 tokens are you going to be jumping up and down about how the system was fixed when you are still required to grind 50 levels to get a piece. Like Ben said before, after you have done so much grinding, then we will considered you have done enough to get a piece.

 

- How did any of what was discussed fix the problem of opening eight crates in row to get nothing but stuff to disintegrate and feeling like you are on a hamster wheel going nowhere.

 

As a someone who is a regular raider, it did NOTHING to fix one of the the main issues we had with raiding.

 

It still did NOT fix how you help someone behind the gear curve (either a new player or an alt) catch up quickly in gear to be able to raid with a regular group - nope they still have to grind for CxP Command Tokens. So someone with low CxP levels who gets the end drop doesn't gain any benefit until they still have grinded out some arbitrary amount of levels to get enough Command Tokens to do anything with it.

 

For PvP, it only increased the problem of the gear disparity that will creep in as someone who has spent time grinding 100 levels will still be able to buy more gear than the person who has just dinged 70 and has only three levels. PvP is supposed to be about skill, not gear, which the old system accommodated well. This new proposal just made things worse.

 

Nope. Nothing was fixed except giving you a consolation prize for lousy RNG. It would have been far simpler for them to say they were fixing the RNG drops and tables, but no, we had to add another layer of convolution to an already convoluted mess.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Wayshuba

[Kalfridian]

Overall I think this is a step in the right direction since it address some of the concern about people who can't get that last piece of setbonus gear and to gearing alt if the token amount request will not be excessive.

 

For the solo player (like I tend to be, I do little group content for variety and only on my main, though still no OPS) not interested in OPS or Veteran\Master Mode or PVP maybe they can take another step back and add to the token vendor some 230\234 basic customizable armor set without set bonus which you can buy with token only, with low price for the 230 set and high for the 234 one. That will be more or less the same as 4.0, "vendor trash" gear weaker than endgame but a step up from anything you can get from story or the majority of random drops.

 

Obviously if I want (which I may, who knows, only the player know what he wants) setbonus and more powerful gear to show off, it will be RNG torture from me, but it's expected since the harder group content should be more rewarding than solo grind; still, it will be an alternative way to gear up the main and the alt, simply farm token on the main, pass it and then buy gear which while weaker than Purple RNG one with setbonus will still be more powerful than anything you can get from story (KOTET give 210 gear), random drops or mod and a decent reward for your time.

That way you get no penalty as a solo player, since we never had access to the top gear, reserved for OPS player or PvP or HM player, and the GC becomes a possible way to eventually get that top gear (well, if you want to torture yourself when you have a bad luck day) which we couldn't get before.

You'll get to choose (now you can't, it's grind or grind for everyone): by adding some token only gear the solo or simply not endgame player can choose to submit themselves to RNG torture (want the best gear in the game without doing hard group content? 300 level minimum of Korean grind for you, and it's still better than before when you couldn't get it) or doing a much shorter command level farm for a 230 set good for solo basic content (like the old 208 common crystal gear) or a 234 set awesome for solo baisc content (like the 216 one for glowing crystal). It may be a decent reward and a good "carrot" for ppl who doesn't want to farm for endgame gear (you don't need it if you don't do hard group content), but would want that little upgrade for the content they do and the next story expansion (which is... one year or so from now?) with their chara. Just some reward for the time they spent.

[Tsetso]

Wrong.

 

This will make it a lot less grindy, once you only need a couple of pieces you do the specific Ops to get those pieces.

 

you can't know that. it can be the same, less or more grindy, depending on the required number of tokens. at this point probably even they don't know the answer to that question.

[Tsetso]

This is a good thing indeed!

 

That's just a carrot to keep us subbed.

[Sshodan]

Well... To put it simply - they made GC trying to simplify the gearing process since they considered 4.0 to be to complected. What they are doing now is returning the same system with different names AND adding the command tokens to it. Making it MORE complected since now you need to both grind OPS or PVP for gear AND the CXP on top of that. The grind just got INCREASED.

People only welcome it because it is better than pure randomness... But it's in no way good or a step forward.

They added GC so ALL the activities you do can contribute to gearing process and be valuable to a player, and that was a great idea... Now we are back to flashpoints/upraising/heroics/starfighter/story being less value than OPS and PVP... Narrowing the choice of people who want to get gear and forcing them to re run the same OPS content for the thousands time... Instead of doing let's say uprisings - the NEW content that came out.

So is it better than random? Yep. Is it good or satisfying? No. It just turned the whole GC in to yet another useless, over-complicated, redundant system in the game the we could do perfectly without.

[Rheshalea]

I think this is a good first step in the right direction.

 

It still doesn't change the fact that the grind is a gigantic, looming mountain that even (some of) us casual scrubs that don't need the best gear feel we have to climb. Because it's there. And it's the only thing to work towards, the only way to progress our character.

I don't personally need or care about set bonuses. I'll gladly take them if RNGezus loves me, but I won't go out of my way to get them.

 

HOWEVER, with the new changes I'm still left with the feeling that farming CXP, no matter how I choose to do so, is THE thing to do. If I want to roll a new baby smuggler, because I love kicking Skavak in the ... butt, I'll feel like I'm wasting time I should be spending on my main, or at the very least a level 70 character who will gain CXP.

 

Would it be viable if all characters in the Legacy, regardless of character level, added a tiny amount of CXP to the level 70 characters? Something like 1% of the normal xp needed to level up each time the alt reaches a new level? A small enough percentage that it won't be viable to just farm lowbies up to level 15-20, but still enough so it doesn't feel so much as wasted time?

Maybe a Legacy's level 70 characters could work the same way, but the % would come from GC ranks.

 

As for what else, apart from set bonus gear, to use the Command Tokens on, I'm all for tunings and decos and mounts and pets and companions and all that cool stuff. Crafting materials too, maybe? Schematics for higher item level stuff?

AND CXP boosts in different variations - 1-hour and 3-hour boosts, CXP bonus items like the ones in FPs and Ops drop. Even better if the CXP bonus items could be traded, so those who already have everything could help fresh 70s and/or possible returning players catch up if they wanted to.

[Exocor]

Well... To put it simply - they made GC trying to simplify the gearing process since they considered 4.0 to be to complected. What they are doing now is returning the same system with different names AND adding the command tokens to it. Making it MORE complected since now you need to both grind OPS or PVP for gear AND the CXP on top of that. The grind just got INCREASED.

People only welcome it because it is better than pure randomness... But it's in no way good or a step forward.

They added GC so ALL the activities you do can contribute to gearing process and be valuable to a player, and that was a great idea... Now we are back to flashpoints/upraising/heroics/starfighter/story being less value than OPS and PVP... Narrowing the choice of people who want to get gear and forcing them to re run the same OPS content for the thousands time... Instead of doing let's say uprisings - the NEW content that came out.

So is it better than random? Yep. Is it good or satisfying? No. It just turned the whole GC in to yet another useless, over-complicated, redundant system in the game the we could do perfectly without.

 

I had the same concerns with complexity yesterday after the stream, but I changed my mind. You forget, that we will also get gear from the crates just like now. So, if you're a casual, you just can use this gear and don't mind... but if you want to improve your gaming, you have to learn, how the system works and you have to put some work into it.

 

So, I don't have concerns about the gear pieces dropping in ops. I'm just not sure about the tokens itself: Do we get 1 token per crate? Are these tokens all the same? Or do we get tier 1 tokens, tier 2 tokens and tier 3 tokens? Or do we get different amounts of tokens, increased with higher levels?

[Sshodan]

I had the same concerns with complexity yesterday after the stream, but I changed my mind. You forget, that we will also get gear from the crates just like now. So, if you're a casual, you just can use this gear and don't mind... but if you want to improve your gaming, you have to learn, how the system works and you have to put some work into it.

 

Learning how to play and do OPS is one thing, grinding through convoluted systems that Bioware is going to mess up and change a couple month down the line? Nope. Getting new people in to raiding scene is complected enough in this game having to explain that you get a CHANCE for token to drop, that you than ROLL for (RNG+RNG) and than you need to GRIND CXP in order to use it because no, you can't just use the token?

No other MMO requires you to grind to be able to use the gear you got in a raid. The idea is absurd.

[Divona]

Dont be fooled that this change makes everything much easier.

 

You still have to grind alot CXP ranks to gain command tokens. We dont know details how many tokens you need for each ops gear shell but i can already predict it will take many many ranks to even be able to convert gear item.

 

So its still huge grind.

[Exocor]

Learning how to play and do OPS is one thing, grinding through convoluted systems that Bioware is going to mess up and change a couple month down the line? Nope. Getting new people in to raiding scene is complected enough in this game having to explain that you get a CHANCE for token to drop, that you than ROLL for (RNG+RNG) and than you need to GRIND CXP in order to use it because no, you can't just use the token?

No other MMO requires you to grind to be able to use the gear you got in a raid. The idea is absurd.

 

Getting new members equipped will be easy enough, when we are able to craft 240 enhancements, implants, ears and relics. 2 VMC's and 3 Isotop Stabilazor per NiM-Boss. Around ~70 VMC's per full gear. Hope, you have some set-bonus-armorings left from 4.0. Everything else is coming by time.

 

On the other point, you are right. The system would be a bit more complicated as it was with 4.0. However, be open to new things. It just can't get worse.

[StarkHelsing]

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 honestly think SWTOR has spoiled kids in the terms of how easy it was to get their gear. Now it's been taken away and they have to grind it's now a huge issue. God almighty. Want grind? Try being someone who doesn't want to do Ops pvp etc and simply relied on the 'small amounts' of ultimate comms to get full 220 gear. That's grind. Stop complaining about bloody grind. As long as they fix the alt issue and have done 'partially' with the legacy drops - i'm happy to grind.

[Voblat]

I honestly think SWTOR has spoiled kids in the terms of how easy it was to get their gear. Now it's been taken away and they have to grind it's now a huge issue. God almighty. Want grind? Try being someone who doesn't want to do Ops pvp etc and simply relied on the 'small amounts' of ultimate comms to get full 220 gear. That's grind. Stop complaining about bloody grind. As long as they fix the alt issue and have done 'partially' with the legacy drops - i'm happy to grind.

 

Nothing to do with 'entitled'.

 

Remember, this is not just a new system, its a new, grindy system built onto 5 year old content.

 

You think the outcry would be this bad if there was a new operation, a new flashpoint and daily area for each new planet we have seen in the last two stories? Of course not.

 

When, for solo players who do not want to disrupt PvP players by standing around in matches for the easy CXP, one of the quickest ways of getting that CXP is doing heroics on Dromund Kaas, a place I first visited on launch day, with quests I first completed on the day after launch day, that is where the problem is.

 

You give people something new to work through, the grind is not really obvious, put it on 5 year old content, and you get boredom. It was obvious from the moment they announced it.

 

And lets be honest, progression raiders got it worse. They need 300 ranks of this nonsense just to have the gear to do the content they were doing last month.Its asinine, and an insult to paying customers it made it to the live servers to be honest.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Voblat

[Quraswren]

Dont be fooled that this change makes everything much easier.

 

You still have to grind alot CXP ranks to gain command tokens. We dont know details how many tokens you need for each ops gear shell but i can already predict it will take many many ranks to even be able to convert gear item.

 

So its still huge grind.

 

Thats exactly what I see. Too many people thinking what bw has suggested is some great change when it's only a half arse step step in the right direction. With the limited information we have on how many command tokens it will take per unasembled the entire new system added on to GC could still be as bad as what we started wtih and still worse than what we had in 4.0

 

If that cost is placed to high you are stuck with crafting if you were lucky enough to get some RNG schematics or the RNG system we already hate.

[DarthSpuds]

Try being someone who doesn't want to do Ops pvp etc and simply relied on the 'small amounts' of ultimate comms to get full 220 gear.

 

I don't do Ops or PvP.

 

What was that you were saying about grinding it out to get half decent gear - yeah, been there, done that.

 

The NGE just extends that grind with no guarantee that waht you get will even be worth it.

 

Sorry, I am smart enough to see through the smoke and mirrors; you seem happy to not want to see through them.

 

All The Best

[DarthSpuds]

You give people something new to work through, the grind is not really obvious, put it on 5 year old content, and you get boredom. It was obvious from the moment they announced it.

 

And lets be honest, progression raiders got it worse. They need 300 ranks of this nonsense just to have the gear to do the content they were doing last month.Its asinine, and an insult to paying customers it made it to the live servers to be honest.

 

^ This.

 

Grinding through old content in the NGE (New/Nasty Gearing Experience) for 6 months just to get back to where you were before the NGE went live is just unacceptable.

 

All The Best