Bioware, tonight's stream is your last chance.

[Drew_Braxton]

Can you PLEASE pass on to the PVP/Gearing ( whoever comes up with these idea ) team that they now need to consider PVE when making these sort of changes

Now expertise is gone and you have 1 set of gear you have to balance out how gear is earned via the activities because right now PVE players can earn gear far faster than PVP players and thus get an advantage at PVP.

 

That may be true for tier 1 and some tier 2 gear, but not tier 3 gear. When was the last time you beat HM Revan? What about nim operator IX? Would you pug most hardmode or nim operations? Exactly. Tier 3 will be unobtainable for most non-pvper's unless you are in a progression hm/nim team. Otherwise you have to soley depend on the gambling cxp game.

 

Both pvper's and pveer's have to grind a ridiculous amount now, but only by doing pvp gives regular players an actual chance of getting tier 3 gear outside of hoping and praying the next "disappointment pack" will contain a 242 piece. There should be a way PVE players can use command tokens instead of components to upgrade gear pieces.

[Andryah]

maybe as an alternative and this only a suggestion eric, giving Lana a classic Shadow of Revan customization, as well as utilize the customization slot on many of the other Kotfe/Kotet companions

 

I would imagine that this is in their work queue.

 

I say this because they have been quietly adding customizations tokens for the animal and mechanical companions for some time now. Need Jawa scraps to buy them for these particular companions, but they are putting them into the game.

 

I have a feeling they are veering away from companion customizations via gear, even though the Shae bug shows us that they clearly can continue to do so. I suspect that they develop companions during design with gear slots on them so they can mix and match gearing until they find the look they want... and they just forgot to convert Shae before they went live.

[ArostheJedi]

I quit already. I'm tired of being the back up dancer for their clown show. These guys are freaking clueless. Like really. Who would have saved the shells for their gear when there was no need to? Do they think we are Jedi in real life and supposed to use the Force to sense that they will change their gearing system in the future? Like I said. Clown show gone bad.

 

Bad enough, the gear looks like crap anyhow. Barely anything they put out now looks good. Love those dark and light vendors with re purposed dread gear. gg

[ArostheJedi]

You don't need to wait for data on that. It is clear that it will take months to equip a single character via PvP. Clearly, this was not designed in a way to benefit the players, but to slow down the gearing. Some explanation on why you want to have such a long grind is still missing. Dedicated players like myself who play this game more than is healthy can get full 242 gear within a few weeks, while casual players will need over a year. You have done nothing to address this, nor explained why such a long grind is necessary in your eyes; previous expansions had a much shorter grind. Player response has been absolutely negative, no one wants such a long grind.

 

Your post is just another cop-out answer that doesn't address player concerns at all.

 

cause we were all duped...again.

 

Remember when a expansion would come out for a real game. And they would say you're getting all this stuff? Yea pepper ridge farms remembers. Its cause our 2 new planets, weren't done. Period. Our raids weren't done, period. Cause there isn't enough people working on this fail game anymore. I have posted tickets for so many things, nothing. All you get a bs answer that never tells you anything, let alone answers it. As most say, were the fools hanging in there, cause we love Star Wars. This 5.0 lying garbage they gave us, I am so close to throwing in the towel. ugh. When you tell people something, and that they will get things when a expansion is released, at least try to do that. Not say, oh yea, each couple of months we ll give you what already should of been there. What a joke.

[mike_carton]

Stream Link: https://www.twitch.tv/swtor

[Drew_Braxton]

Did anyone notice that in-game tickets identify customer service names instead of "protocol droid "xx"" like they used to?

[DenariusJay]

Why would you save the shells in 5.0, there was no indication of them bringing back the old vendor system, so players sold the shells to make some credits or clear out room in there inventory. Then a few months later zomg vendors are back guis, hope you saved your shells.

 

Wait, what?

 

It's not carelessness on the players part - its carelessness on the development team. That's purely on them.

 

This entire gear overhaul in 5.0 is completely unnecessary. 4.0 gearing system needed some minor tweaks to make it alittle more friendlier towards non-ops players, but this debacle of RNG gearing is so not what this game needs right now. It's totally messing up the flow of the game.

 

SWTOR is an alts game. If you really enjoy this game, you probably play multiple characters on both the republic and empire side. 5.0 has totally screwed up the flow of play and has made gearing really really clunky and unenjoyable. I have three purple set piece bracers on 1 character. THREE. THREE f***king set pieces that are all bracers. THIS is what is stupid about 5.0 and is what people were screaming about the hour we found out 5.0 was going pure rng. Dev's didn't care, did it anyways.

 

The only positive thing I see going forward from 5.1 is **atleast** the devs are trying to alleviate it somewhat, so that is positive, but at this point a lot of players are done. The only reason I still play is because I do actually enjoy the game enough to not care about gearing too badly, I do other stuff in the game where gear isn't too big of a deal, and I'm content with 230's and crafted gear to make my alts competitive in HM's/FP/PvP. I made peace with the fact that I won't beable to min-max during this era of SWTOR.

Edited January 26, 2017 by DenariusJay

[menofhorror]

Right now the stream looks pretty good!

[MeNaCe-NZ]

That may be true for tier 1 and some tier 2 gear, but not tier 3 gear. When was the last time you beat HM Revan? What about nim operator IX? Would you pug most hardmode or nim operations? Exactly. Tier 3 will be unobtainable for most non-pvper's unless you are in a progression hm/nim team. Otherwise you have to soley depend on the gambling cxp game.

 

So you would have no issue with guilds who can farm NiM, gear up then premade rolling through PVP? I'm not implying everyone can do it but the fact that some can means there is disparity there that needs to be considered from now on whenever they make any changes between how gear is gained.

 

Both pvper's and pveer's have to grind a ridiculous amount now, but only by doing pvp gives regular players an actual chance of getting tier 3 gear outside of hoping and praying the next "disappointment pack" will contain a 242 piece. There should be a way PVE players can use command tokens instead of components to upgrade gear pieces.

 

Providing you can trade in op shells for pvp unassembled gear ( assume you can ) then purely doing PVP isn't the best bet to 242 - doing operations to get either the T1/ or T2 pieces ( depending on your ability to do operations ) and then PVPing just to get the unassembled components to upgrade that the final step is the best way. Again, providing you can't do NiM which is by far the best way now.

[Evensong]

Why not to utilize the seeker droids more. Give a chance to drop rare purple gear, unique decorations etc. I bet people would have fun looking for locations. Exploratory quests were always strong part of MMOs, not sure why devs forget about it.

My last drop yielded 100 credits.... LOL, never got back to it again.

[Christie_Swift]

They threw a bone for OPS lovers who now seem content being led like sheep.

 

The GC system will remain broken until they apply a fix sometime whenever they decide to do so. Just pure hearsay and if you are a end game player...there is nothing new since yesterday. End game gear is STILL broken and will remain so until they decide otherwise to tweak it some more or not.

[Darkside]

They threw a bone for OPS lovers who now seem content being led like sheep.

 

The GC system will remain broken until they apply a fix sometime whenever they decide to do so. Just pure hearsay and if you are a end game player...there is nothing new since yesterday. End game gear is STILL broken and will remain so until they decide otherwise to tweak it some more or not.

 

Yeah, i'm not sure why there isn't more disgust. The one staged op after 2 years is a total joke. Pvp is now shambles, and the devs don't care one whit about the rng system being an endless grind.

[DanNV]

Yeah, i'm not sure why there isn't more disgust. The one staged op after 2 years is a total joke. Pvp is now shambles, and the devs don't care one whit about the rng system being an endless grind.

 

Oh, they care about the grind. That's what is supposed to keep you subbed. And the op spread out over a year is supposed to keep you subbed. Spreading things out worked so well for KotFE, after all. Nothing they said will keep me paying them $15 a month, it's not worth 5.

 

Now, if I could find the deal a guildie did, it might be worth it. He fond a 180 day code for $17. That MIGHT be worth it.

[Avicii]

Yeah, i'm not sure why there isn't more disgust. The one staged op after 2 years is a total joke. Pvp is now shambles, and the devs don't care one whit about the rng system being an endless grind.

 

Exactly their lack of swift action to address issues that can be fixed asap that are of high concern to plays is so frustrating. They openly acknowledge players really dislike GC and RNG gearing and know alts can't be geared. This shouldn't take months to fix. We shouldn't have to give suggestions.

 

They say they play the game they know it is unrewarding and not fun. Up the drop rates 50%, up the CXP amount rewarded 50%. Take real action to fix the problems of a gearing system that is a 180 from 4.0, which I wish we could go back to nothing has really improved with 5.0.

 

The move to ninja nerf bolster just adds to the cluster they've created.

 

They note we are concerned about the bolstet change and tell us 'ah shucks' our bad but that was a bug. you have to grind to enjoy pvp on an even level.

 

It is so mind boggling a minor compromise here of placing bolster at 238 would've been applauded by players that are unsubbing. There is no negative to doing this except it dulls the rng grind.

[FrozenGoalie]

3 - The intent of using this method to purchase the upgrade is that it would work almost identically to how it worked before with Warzone -> Ranked upgrades. Again, we are keeping our eyes on costs and the rates of earning Components to see where changes need to be made.

 

The problem isn't needing the shells; I, for one, couldn't care less about having to have the shells in my bank. The problem is needing the shells after two months of playing, earning gear, and throwing out shells. Now we have to grind another two months to earn all those shells back by RNG, then also grind warzones for all the components we need.

 

Meanwhile, PVE players can't upgrade gear the same way, even though it's all the same gear now. So if you're a PVE player who wants to upgrade, you have to hope and pray for RNG in Hard Mode (err... veteran?) operations to get better gear. (Or command crates, but the point in the 5.1 changes was to make gearing easier, wasn't it?) So as a PVEr, I'm now inclined to spend all my spare time playing PVP, because uprisings, FPs, etc don't help me gear and ops are few and far between these days because the player base is gone.

[Damedius]

 

Meanwhile, PVE players can't upgrade gear the same way, even though it's all the same gear now. So if you're a PVE player who wants to upgrade, you have to hope and pray for RNG in Hard Mode (err... veteran?) operations to get better gear. (Or command crates, but the point in the 5.1 changes was to make gearing easier, wasn't it?) So as a PVEr, I'm now inclined to spend all my spare time playing PVP, because uprisings, FPs, etc don't help me gear and ops are few and far between these days because the player base is gone.

 

With this patch it is much easier for PvE players to gear than PvP players.

 

I got 3 pieces in 2 days from story mode ops. That took maybe 5 hours. Playing warzones for about 12 hours(maybe more) got me 150 components. Enough for one and a half tier pieces.

 

A good raid guild should be able to gear their raid team within a month. PvP players will be grinding for the rest of the year.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Damedius

[Asroha]

For tonight's stream, we really want to focus in on what is coming in the future (content especially). With that in mind I want to try to address the questions you raised since they may not come up on the stream.

 

1- Right now we are not planning on changing Bolster back as it was an intended change. I posted our reasoning here.

2 - We are definitely looking at all of the GC gearing changes we made yesterday to see where our next steps are. The rate of components earned from PvP is one of those areas we are investigating.

3 - The intent of using this method to purchase the upgrade is that it would work almost identically to how it worked before with Warzone -> Ranked upgrades. Again, we are keeping our eyes on costs and the rates of earning Components to see where changes need to be made.

4 - Shae being able to wear armor was a bug, which is why we changed/fixed it. We do know that there is a desire for characters like Shae, Lana, etc to be able to be customized like other Companions and we are always looking at when/if we could implement this.

5 - Components can be most easily compared to WZ Comms and although WZ comms weren't legacy, you could move them around through the BoL consumable. We are talking about Components and the possibility of making a similar change in the future. No promises, but it is definitely a part of the discussion!

6 - Command Rank being Legacy wide creates some problems at the same time that it is solving some. We know that we need to help out players Legacies in Galactic Command and are looking at a lot of different options. I am hoping to have some information really soon (I was trying to avoid saying that word). Potentially on the stream today, but more likely next week.

 

-eric

 

This post right here is why the game is in serious trouble, and proves that EA/Bioware is completely out of touch with what the player base as a whole really wants. Get rid of RNG, get rid of the aberration that is "Galactic Command" , stop adding mini-flashpoints and make some moves to get new content into the game.

 

Anything else is a Band-Aid, and if I were in charge of the team, I'd fire the lot of you.

[Christie_Swift]

With this patch it is much easier for PvE players to gear than PvP players.

 

I got 3 pieces in 2 days from story mode ops. That took maybe 5 hours. Playing warzones for about 12 hours(maybe more) got me 150 components. Enough for one and a half tier pieces.

 

A good raid guild should be able to gear their raid team within a month. PvP players will be grinding for the rest of the year.

 

That looks horrible in terms of grinding. I guess grinding PvEs might be better in the short term until they fix this horrible fiasco.

[Damedius]

That looks horrible in terms of grinding. I guess grinding PvEs might be better in the short term until they fix this horrible fiasco.

 

I would go with Story Mode op's to get your tier pieces if you don't have them yet. Then I would go with crafting for mods and enhancements. The only pieces that can't be crated are the armorings which have the set bonuses tied to them.

 

For crafting it means getting the rare mats and getting a Tier 3 crafter to craft them for you or buying them straight off the GTN. The latter will be fairly expensive. Your looking at 4-5 million per piece/mod/enhancement. Though prices will start to come down as more crafters get to Tier 3.

 

PvP is useful for the dailies and weeklies which have a chance to drop rare crafting mats. Though you can also farm flashpoints and operations to get them as well.

[ekwalizer]

[color=#f9d648

4 - Shae being able to wear armor was a bug, which is why we changed/fixed it. We do know that there is a desire for characters like Shae, Lana, etc to be able to be customized like other Companions and we are always looking at when/if we could implement this.

-eric

[/color]

 

Of course there is a desire for this. Thinking there isn't is just silly. Why would you guys template them to NOT be customizable in the first place? IMHO, one of the best part of (most of the) vanilla companions was that each player could dress their companion how they wanted them to appear. You already had the code in place for companions to be customizable .... you decided for whatever reason to disallow it.

[AscendingSky]

Of course there is a desire for this. Thinking there isn't is just silly. Why would you guys template them to NOT be customizable in the first place? IMHO, one of the best part of (most of the) vanilla companions was that each player could dress their companion how they wanted them to appear. You already had the code in place for companions to be customizable .... you decided for whatever reason to disallow it.

 

I still don't know how they can say "We don't know how we can implement customizable companions" when ALL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY COMPANIONS WERE FULLY CUSTOMIZEABLE! I mean... how disingenuous can you get? It sounds more like they're not ALLOWED to let them be customizeable; that some higher-up in the company has declared all the companions from the two "expansions" had to have the same 'iconic' look for every player or whatever.

[Deewe]

I still don't know how they can say "We don't know how we can implement customizable companions" when ALL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY COMPANIONS WERE FULLY CUSTOMIZEABLE! I mean... how disingenuous can you get? It sounds more like they're not ALLOWED to let them be customizeable; that some higher-up in the company has declared all the companions from the two "expansions" had to have the same 'iconic' look for every player or whatever.

Here's some food for thoughts:

 

Emmanuel Lusinchi himsleft said (before leaving) that they were not happy with companions kits and were looking forward something more like the character customization. (source)

 

Q: Any plans for customization of your companions?

A: Funny story, we planned to have customizations with your companions from the very beginning but the we changed our mind. Players then asked – why don’t you have customization? Yes, you are right. We are going to continue to introduce new skins for companions but it is not a great system – it is a ok system we introduced into the game very quickly (actually I implemented it so I can brag about it a little bit). We are working on a much better system but it is not the highest priority atm although it is very important. There is a cognitive dissonance when you have two sith warriors meet up with identical Vette.