Break free of your conditioning - gearing, OPs, ...

[VirtualMorrigan]

Gear doesn't have to be the best in order to be usable. As a casual player, it's likely that every single command crate got you least one piece of usable gear at those early levels. Compare that to the crystal system where you had to play a while just to afford a non-set glowing/radiant crystal piece. Or the token system which required you to run the most casual unfriendly content in the game.

 

And I was fine with earning my radiant sets, slowly, at my own pace. The difference is that with the new system, there is no earning. You put in effort, and may or may not get something in return. None of the crates I have opened so far has given me anything I could use. So yes, I am worse off than I was.

[rlionherz]

as i watched my nephew playing tablet and handy games over the holidays, i know now where that "open rng boxes for rewad" crap comes from....

one could say BW is slowly changing the game to get mobile device ready

[LogicalPremise]

So, the argument seems to be that if one does not enjoy 5.0, it is due to their own inadequacy as a gamer. Expecting an MMO to reward group content that actually requires coordination instead of button pressing is old-fashioned. RNG's are somehow now 'evolution', and anyone who dislikes the game is a troll and should quit. Oh, and the game is doing fine.

 

Congrats! You have successfully logic-chopped.

 

Implying the player base needs to learn to play a new game -- one they did NOT ask for and one that does NOT address issues important to the bulk of customers -- is exactly why SWG and WAR went offline.

[Eli_Porter]

None of the crates I have opened so far has given me anything I could use.

Even 228 gear is useful since the max gear in 4.7 was 224, so you're saying you got none of that?

[stoopicus]

Even 228 gear is useful since the max gear in 4.7 was 224, so you're saying you got none of that?

 

In PvP (presumably ops too) 228 bolsters generally worse than 208. There are threads analyzing this in detail via experimentation minmaxing at the bolsterizer. So yeah, people are disappointed in the 228 drops because they do better holding on to their old gear.

Edited December 27, 2016 by stoopicus

[Red_rocks]

I disagree with the premise of your post, my idea of fun and how I want to play the game is not for you to determine.

I play RPG games to see my characters improve, do more dps, tank harder enemies or heal tanks on harder challenges.

OPs are where I get my fun and if I only have time for a few ops a week and not much grinding, then I expect there to be an OPs progression path in order to gear up and do the ops I was able to do a month ago. At this rate I'm looking at months of work before I can get back to doing... what I was doing last month.

Does BW not understand that taking away our ability to do the same old stale content by adding an enormous gear grind as a prerequisite isn't fun? i would have preferred this expansion never happened if that was the case, I was enjoying doing hm ops on all my alts and gearing them up.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if CXP was simply an ADDITIONAL system, on top of the traditional gearing provided by ops, it would be universally praised as amazing... thats all we require... an ops gearing progression path, in parallel with the cxp system. What theyre bringing in, in another month if theres anyone still around then seems flawed with more RNG. The final boss of an ops fight is generaly the hardest one, and if you're unlucky you get no gear upgrades while getting to the final boss, so you can't "gear up" for the fight by doing previous fights.

 

Lets take HM DF for example, the gear requirement difference from the first boss to the final boss is ENORMOUS. Brontes is a whole different ball game to nefra, and you need a gear progression path to beat her. Not all of us are in those top guilds who can beat her in 224 gear, we need the gear crutch.

 

Go ahead with this stupid system at your peril bioware, there's still more of us to leave.

[Sargrith]

Even 228 gear is useful since the max gear in 4.7 was 224, so you're saying you got none of that?

 

Also the 228 green stuff is hardly optimized and doesn't contain set bonuses if such are available for the piece. Another issue is the relics are often the on use ones not the 30% chance of ones, which some people have prefences on and wont use the other. 228 sometimes has advantages over 224 sometimes, most times not so much so. But more to the point after 30 crates of 228s you kind of just hate seeing any more. Now I haven't receive 30 straight crates of just green junk but I have seen at least that many in total and after a while you hate knowing you wasted anther level.

 

Look I couldn't care less if they keep the system as an alternate method of gearing, but as the primary method its trash and should never have been used.

 

As for them listening, them going down the road of 5.1 is to me not proof they listened, actallly the opposite. They said they would come out with a method to get that "one missing" piece, that is all 5.1 is. It is not a replacement or fix for the system based on any feedback. It is them doing what they always planned to. If converting those UA into pieces takes more then a trivial amount of command tokens it totally defeats the change as even slightly helpful.

[Suzsi]

normally i'm not much annoyed by the typical forum whining (with their usual doom & gloop + "i quit" extortion attempts) that comes with every change in every game that has a forum. yeah, that's the nature of forums.

 

but with 5.0 gearing change i see some old veterans clinging to a (computer-) stone age gameplay system that prevents the game from evolving. and that clinging to a past long gone is eventually bad for everyone.

 

seriously, why do players focus so much on grinding gear as their main activity? don't they know that playing games can actually be fun out of itself? how can repeating/grinding through content that plays the same every single time just to get stats so one can play the next higher 'difficulty' which is mostly the very same gameplay with increased mob stats to undo the gear progression previously made be considered... fun? how much conditioning have MMORPGs inflicted onto these player that they cannot break free from it? that (skinner box) system may have worked for the very first online games where technical and financial limitations didn't allow for much more. but today?

 

and what's all the fuzz about having no new OPS if all they they are is just upsacled FPs. i mean just scale down mob stats appropriately and you could play them with 4 players as FPs. the gameplay would stay nearly the same with the biggest change being a better FPS rate. the number of player just doesn't feel meaningful in any way. but worst of all their replay value is next to null once you figured out the mechanics (or googled it to begin with to save yourself being kicked by a vet).

 

maybe it's because i am from a different generation of gamers that didn't play these first online games and i got too used to the pure entertainment value of the raw gameplay of modern games that i so despise the concept that i need a reward for everything i do in order to do it because the core MMORPG gameplay itself is just... not fun.

 

but with all the uproar on the forums with every change made i fear the dev are being too distracted to be really able to focus on that most fundamental problem. without it fixed i don't see how new generations of gamers can be won over to play this genre if they have experienced how fun games (on their own without counting social elements) can be? without adapting to these new players the games of old cannot last.

 

yet with the uprisings in 5.0 i saw that the rigid combat system can be tweaked to be somewhat interesting. still far from perfect but it's a start. now imagine the devs iterating on this with constant feedback. imagine combat encounters becoming more dynamic and less repetitive/predictable and therefore more immersive such that even fighting a lot of trash will be enjoyable (regardless of rewards). yeah, i find the current skipping of trash is the blatant depiction of how broken MMORPG gameplay is!

 

and perhaps even imagine this game bringing back a very old element of tabletop RPGs: the "dungeon master". the person responsible for making every run onto a dungeon a unique experience (by partially controlling mobs/environment placements and their reactions to player actions) may sound hard to implement but there is already one game that did just that: Left4Dead. yes, to shame all the MMORPGs it was a shooter that managed to revive this core idea of RPGs and it had incredible success with it. imagine how OPs, FPs and perhaps even the open world could be fun if we had that. a system, where all your small actions would suddenly matter - not story wise, but through gameplay (e.g. killing that black sun boss for loot might have been a bad idea with all the goons that are now constantly sent after you.. . oh and skipping all the mobs in the last FP run was perhaps also not so wise with the final boss managing to call upon them for help. hmpf)

 

 

I have been playing MMO's since one of the very first MMO's ( the original everquest ) and have been battling for that many years to change the mindset of people and developers alike

 

The fact is though, there are people who like grinding, raiding, repeating the same over and over again. That's fine for them.

 

However, there are also other players who SHOULD be able to play the game how they wish to play it, MMO or not, and still be equally rewarded for their time and efforts.

 

I've always said and will continue to say that the best MMO, the one that will do the best overall is the one MMO from this point onwards that decides to cater to ALL players and all playstyles.

 

Soloers? No problem. In a game like this, more story, more story modes on group content (uprisings for example where story mode is currently NOT solable). More solable heroics, more daily repeatable quests etc.

 

Story players? Speaks for itself.

 

Groupers? More operations, more hard mode flashpoints.

 

PVPers? More WZ obviously.

 

Don't give any of the above groups more than what the others can also achieve by playing the game they way they want to play it. No one is more special. No ones time is more special. Everyone should be rewarded equally for playing how they enjoy playing the game.

 

Removing BoL and BoP on all items would be a good start.

 

Raids - Hardmode Flashpoints - Put in cool new looking adaptive armor sets without stats that are available only in raids but allow them to be sold on the GTN. Raiders can happily raid said items and then sell them to others who don't want to raid. Same with Décor and what not.

 

Grinding: Command system: Again remove BoP, BoL. Those who enjoy grinding, can happily grind away on this system and sell their excess off to those who don't wish to do the grind.

 

Warzones: The weekly and daily WZ boxes could also drop different armor sets, décor items and what not again with no BoP or BoL so said people can sell them off to those who don't wish to do WZ's while they happily WZ away to get said items..

 

Soloers: More heroics, daily quests, story modes that are sololabe for operations, flashpoints and uprisings, granting them credits to go towards buying items off the GTN that the others collect. And of course, more story.

 

and so on...

 

Let people play the game how they want to play it, allow all to be rewarded equally for playing how they wish = Happier player base overall. I don't see why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

[Eli_Porter]

Look I couldn't care less if they keep the system as an alternate method of gearing, but as the primary method its trash and should never have been used.

 

It's going to be the secondary/complementary method of obtaining set armorings in 5.1 (unless you get really lucky or don't mind the grind). For every other slot, you already have crafting and GTN if RNG fails you.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Eli_Porter

[DanNV]

Even 228 gear is useful since the max gear in 4.7 was 224, so you're saying you got none of that?

 

Some of the 228s have worse stats than the 224s and are only a little better than 220s. Also the 228 stat mixes tend to be really strange.

[ShardODarkness]

Sound the trumpets, unfurl the standards, unleash the shower of flower petals...the WHITE KNIGHTS have arrived!

[Sargrith]

It's going to be the secondary/complementary method of obtaining set armorings in 5.1 (unless you get really lucky or don't mind the grind). For every other slot, you already have crafting and GTN if RNG fails you.

 

 

How do you figure? You will be reliant on tokens to get the gear still, which means you need to rise in command rank and even so you are only guaranteed 1 piece for an 8 man op, so one person out of 8 gets a piece. That's not a primary gearing method, that's hope and prayer gearing. I am ignore crafting since they made it by default weaker. You have noticed that crafted 230 purples are only equal to blue 230 pieces from the random boxes right? And crafting isn't a primary method either. So what would the primary method be still...oh the random crates which we need to grind to level to get tokens anyway.

 

Take the tokens off the board and have every op boss drop a UA and you might be right. What we have now, no not so much so.

[DanNV]

I disagree with the premise of your post, my idea of fun and how I want to play the game is not for you to determine.

I play RPG games to see my characters improve, do more dps, tank harder enemies or heal tanks on harder challenges.

OPs are where I get my fun and if I only have time for a few ops a week and not much grinding, then I expect there to be an OPs progression path in order to gear up and do the ops I was able to do a month ago. At this rate I'm looking at months of work before I can get back to doing... what I was doing last month.

Does BW not understand that taking away our ability to do the same old stale content by adding an enormous gear grind as a prerequisite isn't fun? i would have preferred this expansion never happened if that was the case, I was enjoying doing hm ops on all my alts and gearing them up.

 

(snip more good stuff)

 

 

IMO, they would have been better off to have never done 4.0 or 5.0. The story really went off the rails with 4.0 and the game itself really went sideways with 5.0. The longer they wait to actually get rid of the stupidity they have built into the game the harder it will be to fix and the harder it will be to get their players back. The more time invested in other games the less likely they'll be to ever come back.

[stoopicus]

Some of the 228s have worse stats than the 224s and are only a little better than 220s. Also the 228 stat mixes tend to be really strange.

 

Have any examples? Not disagreeing but this is the first I have heard of this. For mods, hilts, barrels, armorings, and enhancements the progression 220-228-230-234 have all been as expected, stat-wise, that I have seen so far.

[Eli_Porter]

How do you figure? You will be reliant on tokens to get the gear still, which means you need to rise in command rank and even so you are only guaranteed 1 piece for an 8 man op, so one person out of 8 gets a piece. That's not a primary gearing method, that's hope and prayer gearing.

 

The numbers aren't finalized, but the average Op will yield about 2 pieces (1 is the minimum) from the last post EricMusco made about it. Running Ops will be a faster way to get set armorings than getting command levels, and you will be getting command levels from doing Ops as well. There's also PvP which should help with getting that last piece.

 

I am ignore crafting since they made it by default weaker. You have noticed that crafted 230 purples are only equal to blue 230 pieces from the random boxes right? And crafting isn't a primary method either. So what would the primary method be still...oh the random crates which we need to grind to level to get tokens anyway.

 

Though the schematics aren't easy to get, 240 pieces are craftable and being sold on the market.

 

Take the tokens off the board and have every op boss drop a UA and you might be right. What we have now, no not so much so.

 

I suggest you wait to experience 5.1 before passing the final judgement.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Eli_Porter

[RobertFKennedyUS]

I would agree with that if they improved the CXP gains or set the levels of the ranks at a static amount instead of ever increasing amounts of CXP required per level.

 

If the Command Rank levels required 1000CXP per rank, and they increased the rewards for running content such as Heroics to 200CXP (and all the other content to be comparable for time to CXP gain, so an Operation provides roughly 2-3k CXP etc), then I think the system would be doing what BioWare themselves stated. By that I mean gaining a Command Crate roughly every 30-60 minutes of playtime, so players actually feel like they're being rewarded for running the content.

 

As the system stands currently, if you are attempting to gear, not only do you have RNG with zero mitigation included, but the actual CXP gains and the ranks themselves are an issue. That doesn't even include the problem with alts or legacy.

 

I still think CXP gains should be legacy wide, as well as making the Command Stash legacy wide, at least that way you would be able to hop onto a new character and open those Command Crates on the character you want to play and start gearing right away. It also means you don't get penalised for spending time on any particular character and gaining ranks when you could have been spending time gearing a different one.

 

The whole system itself is flawed, even for a casual player who is fine with the RNG aspect, it certainly detracts from playing more than one or two characters. It definitely doesn't deliver on what we were told about gaining x amount of crates per hour. It definitely doesn't fit into the legacy system itself.

 

It feels like a rushed system designed to extract the maximum amount of money from players. For me it's had the opposite effect to the stated goals of the system. It isn't exciting, it feels worse than the old Crystals / Commendations systems, it doesn't fulfill the design goals that we were told about.

 

I do find myself wondering if BioWare listened to the feedback they were given in closed testing, instead of letting it go live before polishing it properly.

 

It might not be wise to have CXP level be legacy-wide. A major reason that GC exists is to slow down players from burning through old content too quickly.

 

GC is a means towards an end. So what is the necessary end for BW? To incentivize you to play content more often than you do, and allow some of your characters to be really well geared so they can play at their full potential. It's no good if people burn through the levels in 3-6 months and then really start to slack off for the remaining 6 months of the cycle.

 

What I have advocated for is something like the way SH's and Conquest Points work, so you get a 25% boost to legacy wide cxp gains every 75 levels maxing out at 100% legacy cxp boost to all other characters outside your most leveled character. That forces you to keep grinding your alts, but it's not nearly as tortuous as it is now.

Edited December 27, 2016 by RobertFKennedyUS

[Eli_Porter]

Making CXP legacy wide means that you get less overall crates to roll for set armorings, making the system's biggest problem of getting set gear for your alts even worse.

[Sargrith]

The numbers aren't finalized, but the average Op will yield about 2 pieces (1 is the minimum) from the last post EricMusco made about it. Running Ops will be a faster way to get set armorings than getting command levels, and you will be getting command levels from doing Ops as well. There's also PvP which should help with getting that last piece.

 

 

 

Though the schematics aren't easy to get, 240 pieces are craftable and being sold on the market.

 

 

 

I suggest you wait to experience 5.1 before passing the final judgement.

 

No. Right now ops are one of the worst ways to grind command ranks and there was nothing in their 5.1 drivel that suggests that will change at all. There are no numbers to go on at all, those that Eric posted were fictitious and not to be taken at face value. I can't use the silly low numbers to hammer away at the worthlessness of 5.1 anymore then you can to say look on average you will get X number of pieces. We don't know the numbers and they could be silly low or really high. Either way the only promise we have is 1 piece, just 1. Even if it were 2 ....that's for 8 people to share....so per person that 1/4 of a piece....yeah fun times.

 

I'm not looking to get that last piece...how about that second piece, that would be nice. How about all my pieces since I don't want to rely at all on command ranks.

 

What actually comes out with 5.1 we shall see. What they said would...is near enough to worthless as to be worthless. So lets see if they alter their plans based on feedback or do the usual and just ignore the community. I know what their track record says they will do. My dream is I am surprised and they listen.

[curulz]

Have any examples? Not disagreeing but this is the first I have heard of this. For mods, hilts, barrels, armorings, and enhancements the progression 220-228-230-234 have all been as expected, stat-wise, that I have seen so far.

 

For those things, yes the 228's are better. Some of the enhancements are not though based on their itemization.

 

But for ear pieces and implants, the 230's I've seen are not better than the 220 token pieces. I'm going from memory, but the 230 MK4 purples are something like +70 mastery +20 crit and -20 power compared to the old 220 token pieces. You still gain mastery, which is good. But you swap power for crit which is not a good trade off in my opinion. But for an item 10 rating levels higher, I would expect a better upgrade than just mastery.

[omaan]

normally i'm not much annoyed by the typical forum whining (with their usual doom & gloop + "i quit" extortion attempts) that comes with every change in every game that has a forum. yeah, that's the nature of forums.

 

but with 5.0 gearing change i see some old veterans clinging to a (computer-) stone age gameplay system that prevents the game from evolving. and that clinging to a past long gone is eventually bad for everyone.

 

seriously, why do players focus so much on grinding gear as their main activity? don't they know that playing games can actually be fun out of itself? how can repeating/grinding through content that plays the same every single time just to get stats so one can play the next higher 'difficulty' which is mostly the very same gameplay with increased mob stats to undo the gear progression previously made be considered... fun? how much conditioning have MMORPGs inflicted onto these player that they cannot break free from it? that (skinner box) system may have worked for the very first online games where technical and financial limitations didn't allow for much more. but today?

 

and what's all the fuzz about having no new OPS if all they they are is just upsacled FPs. i mean just scale down mob stats appropriately and you could play them with 4 players as FPs. the gameplay would stay nearly the same with the biggest change being a better FPS rate. the number of player just doesn't feel meaningful in any way. but worst of all their replay value is next to null once you figured out the mechanics (or googled it to begin with to save yourself being kicked by a vet).

 

maybe it's because i am from a different generation of gamers that didn't play these first online games and i got too used to the pure entertainment value of the raw gameplay of modern games that i so despise the concept that i need a reward for everything i do in order to do it because the core MMORPG gameplay itself is just... not fun.

 

but with all the uproar on the forums with every change made i fear the dev are being too distracted to be really able to focus on that most fundamental problem. without it fixed i don't see how new generations of gamers can be won over to play this genre if they have experienced how fun games (on their own without counting social elements) can be? without adapting to these new players the games of old cannot last.

 

yet with the uprisings in 5.0 i saw that the rigid combat system can be tweaked to be somewhat interesting. still far from perfect but it's a start. now imagine the devs iterating on this with constant feedback. imagine combat encounters becoming more dynamic and less repetitive/predictable and therefore more immersive such that even fighting a lot of trash will be enjoyable (regardless of rewards). yeah, i find the current skipping of trash is the blatant depiction of how broken MMORPG gameplay is!

 

and perhaps even imagine this game bringing back a very old element of tabletop RPGs: the "dungeon master". the person responsible for making every run onto a dungeon a unique experience (by partially controlling mobs/environment placements and their reactions to player actions) may sound hard to implement but there is already one game that did just that: Left4Dead. yes, to shame all the MMORPGs it was a shooter that managed to revive this core idea of RPGs and it had incredible success with it. imagine how OPs, FPs and perhaps even the open world could be fun if we had that. a system, where all your small actions would suddenly matter - not story wise, but through gameplay (e.g. killing that black sun boss for loot might have been a bad idea with all the goons that are now constantly sent after you.. . oh and skipping all the mobs in the last FP run was perhaps also not so wise with the final boss managing to call upon them for help. hmpf)

 

While i agree with pve part you can't say the same for pvp.... people here want to kill other players who are always trying to get better gear so for your success you need two things:1) skill, 2)GEAR. Especially in swtor where player base is not big enough so you always see same players on warzones and you just can't let yourself become weaker than that assassin who was killed by you 1 week ago. So yeah MMO (esp. pvp part) is all about learning and getting better gear...

[Sargrith]

Making CXP legacy wide means that you get less overall crates to roll for set armorings, making the system's biggest problem of getting set gear for your alts even worse.

 

I will agree. I don't see the value in legacy wide command rank/crates except that it will slow gearing down in an awkward way. You will go from no gear for a fresh 70 and slowly add on top end gear with no middle ground once your legacy hits a certain point. Not sure I see the value in that.

 

Their system is not very alt friendly. Another reason to move away from it as a gearing system.

[Vember]

Oh don't strain yourself too much over your white knighting, OP. People are breaking free ... by unsubbing. In droves.

 

Not seeing that in game.

[TUXs]

Oh don't strain yourself too much over your white knighting, OP. People are breaking free ... by unsubbing. In droves.

Yes they are!!! They 100% absolutely are.

[Jamtas]

Not seeing that in game.

 

in game you see FTP and subs.

[Vember]

Some of the 228s have worse stats than the 224s

 

No, they don't.

 

in game you see FTP and subs.

 

You know very well what the implication was.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Vember