Feedback regarding CXP rate with backup reasoning

[FerkWork]

Currently I am playing again and the 5.1 changes are enough for me to be able to play again. I still think the system is a terribly convoluted system but I get that they want to save face and make sure GC isn't shot down completely with these changes.

 

However, even though I can enjoy raiding again and some nice stuff is coming in March/April, there is one thing that still persists here on this topic: GC is really just a side effect and exists as something that happens while I play and forces me to disintegrate most of what comes out of those crates.

 

Why is that?

 

Well, we know that the drop rate of actual exciting gear (purple/gold with set bonuses) is very low. Also we get command tokens that annoyingly I have to indicate that I want all 5 of them that are beside the point. They only exist to give BWA the opportunity to link any success still within the GC set up. So that's not exciting, it's a nuisance and I'd rather just get them added automatically to my total when I level in GC rather than have them drop in the crates. They disintegration reward for them is tiny so it's pointless to have them in there really.

 

Then there is the green and blue gear. Honestly, I'm sure that it can be useful to someone but in the end I have to question their very presence. You have 90 levels of tier 1. Within those levels you will never get a tier 1 set completed and in tier 2 and 3 you even have an additional gold level. So there are blue, green, purple and gold items and also in tier 2 you will never get a tier 2 set together. It just makes no sense to have all those colours when you just won't even get a proper set together for endgame.

 

Then there are the reputation tokens. Well, I completed most of the reputations. There are 3 left so occasionally I get one that works for me. That's actually something useful IF it's one of those. Most of the time it's not of course.

 

Then there are the armour sets. This has got to be one of the biggest mistakes of all. I have no idea what these armour sets look like. So when I get a belt or gloves, do I keep them or disintegrate them? I have to make that choice because I cannot disintegrate them after I put them in my inventory and I cannot keep them in my command stash because it's extremely limited. So I gave up on that and disintegrate all of them.

 

And then the jawa junk. Really? We have one area for rank 10 mats that is overfarmed and in a rank 9 area. It's no good to go there most of the time and jawa junk doesn't get you rank 10 stuff. So they're effectively pointless for crafting because, well, they still drop from cartel packs too and personally I have 8k green ones sitting in my storage because I can't use em for rank 10 mats. So I disintegrate all the green ones.

 

Schematics? The static gear ones are a waste of time. So I disintegrate them. The others occasionally can be useful but mostly not.

 

Bottom line. I keep the command tokens because they are a currency I need for gear and the occasional lucky gear piece...for the rest I pretty much disintegrate EVERYTHING. How does that rate as exciting to you?

 

When a boss drops pieces, that's exciting. When I get a crate I get annoyed because I probably won't get anything useful and have to disintegrate everything to clear my stash and get rid of the crate, only speeding the process up to the next household moment. GC is a storage cleaning event. It's not fun because outside of the occasional lucky drop nothing in there is of interest to me.

 

I really wish to have fewer boxes with better rewards. Stuff to really get excited about. I'm surprised there's no decorations in there btw. Could've been useful. With the rewards in 5.1 for CXP I'd say GSF is in the picture but no rewards that relate to GSF. A shame. And yeh armour sets could've been cool but not in the way it works now.

 

Increasing the CXP rates is by itself good because it speeds up the chances of getting something useful but it takes a lot of annoyance in between. So what I really would've preferred is a system where you get better rewards. Because at the moment opening gear crates rates more as an annoyance than something exciting to me.

 

You speak thoughts exactly sir. My thought when I get a Crate is what garbage did I get today. I got more pieces this week alone from running Ops than all my GC levels in the last month. And that's the supplementary way lol.

 

Remove greens and blue gear from the crates and make it so when I leave a tier I have a full set of that previous year plus some. Especially since the first tier is entry level gear.

Edited January 28, 2017 by FerkWork

[Sargrith]

I did read it. It's tying the end game gearing to GC tier that is the problem regardless of where that gear come from.

 

 

 

They'll eventually remove it or "tweak" it until it looks like they removed it and it mysteriously matches the old style of gearing. It's just how long it will take and how many people are left by the time they do it.

 

 

Removing rng is the only real fix. If the dev goal is to continue to punish players they can continue to insist on rng. If otherwise they will drop it.

[DanNV]

You speak thoughts exactly sir. My thought when I get a Crate is what garbage did I get today. I got more pieces this week alone from running Ops than all my GC levels in the last month. And that's the supplementary way lol.

 

Remove greens and blue gear from the crates and make it so when I leave a tier I have a full set of that previous year plus some. Especially since the first tier is entry level gear.

 

Two nights of ops and I got nothing. One night was wipe after wipe on the second boss. So, very little CXP and no drops at all. The system is totally broken and that's why I won't support it or play it. All it is is frustrating at best and infuriating most often.

 

Over 50 GC levels on my main and 1 set piece, from one of the first few boxes. Oh joy... I am sure it is working as intended, but that is not satisfactory from a player's perspective.

[DanNV]

Removing rng is the only real fix. If the dev goal is to continue to punish players they can continue to insist on rng. If otherwise they will drop it.

 

Agreed.

[Elssha]

I did read it. It's tying the end game gearing to GC tier that is the problem regardless of where that gear come from.

 

It only ties one of the three arms to the GC tier, the one that would only restrict casual (non-PvP/Ops) players... and it removes RNG from all but Ops (where it keeps only the same /roll RNG it had in 4.0) replacing it with the cosmetic RNG we already got (and didn't really mind) in Alliance crates with some throwaway blue/green gear mixed in.

 

All set bonus items would be attainable through a currency that we got at a promised rate (GC tokens, as they are now), unassembleds that work like they did in 4.0 from Ops or comms-like components.

 

 

 

They'll eventually remove it or "tweak" it until it looks like they removed it and it mysteriously matches the old style of gearing. It's just how long it will take and how many people are left by the time they do it.

 

I doubt it, since those that don't Ops/PvP are actually (though not as vocally) happy that they're no longer "forced" (sic) to do Ops or PvP just to get gear. I won't get into the "well they don't NEED it" argument, but I did want to point out that for a part of the population GC is actually good. No, I am not part of it and I'd love to go back to the 4.0 system... but our ideas have to be good for as much of the population as possible, not just for those of us who do Ops or PvP.

[gabigool]

It only ties one of the three arms to the GC tier, the one that would only restrict casual (non-PvP/Ops) players... and it removes RNG from all but Ops (where it keeps only the same /roll RNG it had in 4.0) replacing it with the cosmetic RNG we already got (and didn't really mind) in Alliance crates with some throwaway blue/green gear mixed in.

 

All set bonus items would be attainable through a currency that we got at a promised rate (GC tokens, as they are now), unassembleds that work like they did in 4.0 from Ops or comms-like components.

 

 

 

 

 

I doubt it, since those that don't Ops/PvP are actually (though not as vocally) happy that they're no longer "forced" (sic) to do Ops or PvP just to get gear. I won't get into the "well they don't NEED it" argument, but I did want to point out that for a part of the population GC is actually good. No, I am not part of it and I'd love to go back to the 4.0 system... but our ideas have to be good for as much of the population as possible, not just for those of us who do Ops or PvP.

 

I like your idea, except for requiring the unassembled found in ops to also require GC tokens.

 

If you kill a boss, that boss should drop a gear token worth one piece of gear, not something that also requires an external timesink.

 

The players on my team that kill a boss should not have to have their gear throttled by how much free time they have outside of raid time.

 

Period.

 

GC/CXP should have nothing - literally nothing - to do with Operations gearing. If that is somehow inequitable with gearing via the rest of the game, then the rest of the game is the problem.

[Muljo_Stpho]

IComponents for GSF need to go. I cannot see any real justification for a form of play that requires no gear and uses no gear to earn that gear. OR make it use the gear. One or the other,

 

Add in an option to use components to purchase requisition grants? That would tie them into GSF's gearing of ship parts / upgrades (it doesn't use player gear or the class ship's gear but it does have its own system of gear!), and it's a lot more obvious and straightforward than trying to shoehorn in some sort of weird way for GSF to start pulling stats from player gear for something.

 

Although to be fair, they could have just as easily offered this option with Fleet Comms.

 

Hmmmm... Remove the Fleet Comms and change current fleet comm rewards to components... Add option to obtain GSF requisition grants with components... Change current fleet comm vendor for the forgotten solo on-rails space mission gear to ask for components instead... This sounding like a reasonable idea? GSF and solo space missions would then be integrated into the same reward system as at least some other parts of the game (side note: I agree with sentiments throughout this topic that it would be nice to see PVE options with component rewards too), and GSF's gear grind could seem a little less daunting to newcomers since they could just throw some spare components in to get some extra requisition to spend on upgrades.

[Forren-Midosea]

You want feedback? Here we go.

 

Remove RNG from cxp. Leave the system but instead of random item (or not) make a unassambled token for item that we would exchange for whatever item we want. Rate? 4 current cxp packs for one unassambled piece.

[jimmorrisson]

I am convinced because 4.* was the most simplified and quickest way to get gear - 5.0's purpose was to slow down gearing.

 

I am now of the belief that CXP and command crates are not meant to be the main source of gear. Either purchasing crafted gear or crafting outright is. (Note that the new DMC: Void Matter Catalysts along with Refined Isotopes are dropped regularly with Void Matter selling over 2m credits at times.)

 

Below is a CXP leveling rate table provided to Dulfy.net:

 

http://i.imgur.com/WzdoZ9c.jpg

 

Notice how the amount needed to progress to next level increases with each new rank. (I know this is a common practice in Gaming however that doesn't make it right)

 

When you reach between say rank 30 to 300 it becomes a lengthy grind. When you do finally reach the next rank you open up your command crate and see green gear with green parts. or orange gear with blue parts.

 

Even if you give up on CXP/command crates there is still DvL: The Expansion (presumably due to the popularity of last summer's DvL: The Event). Even during warzone matches the DvL banner will take up a good portion of screen real estate along with the fanfare sound blaring.

 

I am ok with nine chapters, replayable chapters, uprisings, one operation slowly released over the year, the new menus and even the pvp bolster reduction.

 

I am not ok with CXP rates, command crates, DVL, and the solutions to each which usually involve reducing CXP more or adding CXP boosts in the store.

Edited January 30, 2017 by jimmorrisson

[Kurfer]

Among the different changes/options we are looking at, Weeklies is definitely one of the things we have been talking about. Good thread, keep the feedback coming.

 

-eric

 

Can you PLEASE tell us what benefit this system brought us vs 4.0? If you take away the new story which is a completely different sub single player campaign then all this "new" expansion ended up being was a huge nerf to the existing player base. What benefits are there? You basically took the exact mirror copy of 4.0 and added a massive gear grind to it. We are essentially grinding all over again to do the exact same content as before minus these very small and underwhelming uprisings.

 

How did a group of decision makers come up with this solution and think it would be a good idea to spew onto an already bitter player base? It's hard to love this game, and I can forget about even thinking about trying to bring my IRL friends back to it. You make it hard to argue in your court...

[jozinkopucik]

Great post, agree with OP!!

[Divona]

Removing rng is the only real fix. If the dev goal is to continue to punish players they can continue to insist on rng. If otherwise they will drop it.

 

This is only thing that can solve this mess. But i have doubts devs will do that. This was already planned ahed long ago and now we are conditioned to accept this while offering "feedback to make grind little less rng".

[Morteficare]

If we go for the teori that the more you do difrent the more you gain.

That would meen the more dailys and weeklys you complet the bigger reward.

 

Now take a look at the comand screen. We have

planetery

chapter

upprising

flashpoints

pvp

gsf

ops

 

What we need to ad is Daily and weekly for planetery and chapters.

 

If i use pvp for anexample it would look like this.

I have Daily unranked, solo ranked, Group ranked and gsf. if i complet 1 of them im rewarded now whit 20 cxp.

It should look like this 1 Daily 20cxp, 2 Daily 40 cxp, 3 Daily 60 cxp and all 4 100.

Now for weekly. 1 weekly 500, 2 weekly 700, 3 weekly 900 and all 4 1500.

Now for next stepp. For each Daily you should also be rewarded whit unassembled tokens.

1 Daily 2 2 Daily 5, 3 Daily 10 and all 4 15. Now and same to weekly.

 

Now you benefit to play more content instead of just grind same thing ower and ower.

[omaan]

Among the different changes/options we are looking at, Weeklies is definitely one of the things we have been talking about. Good thread, keep the feedback coming.

 

-eric

 

Why don't you answer to pvp players about unfair,super long components farming?Stop thinking only about pve and start to LISTEN PVP PLAYERS

[Sargrith]

This is only thing that can solve this mess. But i have doubts devs will do that. This was already planned ahed long ago and now we are conditioned to accept this while offering "feedback to make grind little less rng".

 

 

In the end we can accept this lesser product they are offering or we can demand better. Many have and left, the servers aren't empty for no reason. 5.1 wasn't a fix it was PR. 5.2 isn't a fix its still just PR. Yes we finally after two years get an op....well by the time we have a complete new op it will be three years but finally we have that. But without a decent gearing system its still broken. Dropping RNG is the only answer for that. Even the OP seems to imply that but he wants to comprise, I don't. Adding back just 1 companion isn't helping with all those companions still missing, heck at the rate of 1 returned every six months you are looking at literally years before the one you want is on the list. That too is unacceptable.

 

I like the idea of a new op, a new daily area and all. I even like getting a companion back. But its all so little, and its all still poisoned by RNG.

 

Please drop RNG, let us get back to playing the game we want to play not fighting a system we hate.

[Sargrith]

Why don't you answer to pvp players about unfair,super long components farming?Stop thinking only about pve and start to LISTEN PVP PLAYERS

 

Here's the thing. Right now PvP is one of if not the best methods of gaining cxp. Its hands down better then OPs. Not even close. And its totally risk free. You enter a match win or loss you get a huge amount of cxp. Enter a HM op and what do you get if you can't best the first boss after an hour trying? Well you get massive repair bills and a whole lot of nothing. Enter a PvP match and die 20 times and you get some credits and lots of cxp......

 

You want balance between PvP and OPs....fine you die you pay repair bills.....you loose no cxp for you. Then lets talk about balance.

 

Be realistic here. As long as we are playing this broken RNG stink fest PvP is a great way to earn cxp and at no risk. It also allows you to build toward exactly the piece you want. In many ways that's better then OPS. GSF is right now totally out of control good both for cxp and more components....I can't and won't defend that. But while you are angry about OPs getting pieces how fair is it that HM FPs get nothing, they should be what you run to gear up for OPs and yet they are useless for that as they stink to high heaven both as a method of gaining cxp and they give nothing toward gear.....

[TUXs]

It might just be you and me, but I'm with you on this one. Make it a Weekly Pickup mission for 100 Golds, maybe add one for 250 Silvers too. I know they see me when I scoot by, they just don't wanna die. Give me a reason to take them out...you know you wanna...

I just wanna throw this out there...I love this idea of random things like this, but I think that if they do this, we need to up the number of missions players can have active (25 up to 35?). I hit the cap with just standard stuff I get daily/weekly - PvP missions x 2, ranked PvP missions x 4 (solo+grouped), GSF mission x 2, Legendary FP weekly, Legendary Uprising weekly, GF weekly, WB weekly...I'm all in favor of making a new mission(s) for CXP, but I think they need to address the mission limit before they add anything.

[Zhiroc]

As I said before, I am not totally opposed to RNG in gearing.

 

However, a system has to be able to mitigate the issues that RNG has. I just wrote a VERY simple gearing siumluator. I take the 14 slots, and pull from a pool of N items, and count how long it takes to fill every slot, discarding (but counting) duplicates. I do not take into consideration that the 2 implants might be 2 of the same, and currently, I don't count that there are variations of gear that one might not want, e.g. ear and implants come in 2 varieties for a healer, or 3 for a DPS, and both DPS and healers really only want 2 types of the various varieties of relics. I also presume that each item is equally likely to drop.

 

Another caveat is that I am only counting the "token" drops, ignoring how often one gets this out of a crate. So, in other words, when I say it takes N rolls to fill all your gear slots, I am ONLY saying it takes N crates THAT DROPPED TOKEN GEAR, I am not saying that by rank N you will have filled your slots.

 

Also, here, I am ONLY counting "token" drops, which is gear at the top of the tier, which at T1 are called, I think, MK-3 and are purple items at rating 230. These are armors with set bonuses, and all such gear typically has the desired itemizations (for DPS and healers, non-lettered mods for gear, highest power for left-side static items, etc.).

 

Also, I am ignoring the fact that you probably only need 6 of the 7 armor pieces to drop--you can probably easily pull together that 7th piece in reality by using a blue armoring you get dozens of (which aren't slot-restricted), and mods and enhancements from duplicate gear.

 

So, on to the numbers:

 

Trials: 100000, # of possible items: 14

Rolls: avg = 45.6, SD=16.3, max = 188, min = 14, median = 42.0

Dups: avg = 31.6, SD=16.3, max = 174, min = 0, median = 28.0

 

This is a simulation of 100,000 characters rolling for gear, with the presumptions I stated above. The average number of token gear crates it takes to fill all your slots is 45.6 and the median is 42 (the median is the 50th percentile of the results--meaning that half the characters took 42 or less crates, and half the characters took 42 or more crates).

 

So, let's talk about this. It seems to me that after getting 50 crates, I've gotten 6 or 8 token pieces. So, the rate I get them is one in about 6-8. Thus, it could likely take more than 300 crates to completely fill my slots, from the simulation.

 

Is this accurate? I have 6 slots filled with token gear, but I can't recall precisely if my main/offhand slots came from a drop I got, or one another char got them where I just stripped the mods and used legacy gear to transfer it. I just quickly made a modification to my simulation, and asked how many rolls would it take to get my 6 pieces, and the average seems to be 7, which is somewhat in line. (As you can expect, the more pieces you have, the more likely are dups).

 

So, talking about dups, the above suggests that on average, you will get around (or more) than twice the number of dups as usable gear (31.6 avg., 28 median).

 

So, in my opinion, the current system does not seem "rewarding" enough--irrespective of the rate of advancement through the ranks. My expectation is that the average character should be able to complete their gear tier before advancing to the next, or at least maybe close. While my simulation isn't designed to answer this question, it seems that if one assumes that you will get somewhere like 14-16 token drops in a tier of 90 ranks, then the number of unfilled slots will be around 4-5.

 

Also, since there will be so many duplicates, it is not surprising that people will feel shafted as they get more and more, which gets worse as slots fill.

 

So, based on this, it would seem to me that the rate of token drops has to be increased, if nothing else changes. If you got one every 2 or 3 crates, then at least it feels like if you have a duplicate, the next chance is not so far away. But even still, I have to wonder if crates should just use the PvP system where they drop unassembled components so that nothing is ever wasted--and maybe augmented by the occasional unassembled gear token that ops drop.

[jimmorrisson]

Dailies and Weeklies should drop command crates.

Chapters, Uprisings, Flashpoints and Operations upon completion should drop command crates.

PvP matches upon completion should drop command crates.

Edited January 30, 2017 by jimmorrisson

[Zhiroc]

Thinking about my simulation some more, I decided to simplify it further. Let's face it, the only thing one really, truly wants is set-bonus armor--most everything else can be very nearly obtained via crafting (not sure about T3 stuff though?). I haven't looked extremely closely at the stat distribution of crafted left-side gear, though.

 

So, let's just say, how many set-bonus-gear drops does one need to get in order to fill 6 of the 7 slots (since 6-piece is all you need, and getting a non-set-bonus armoring seems easy to me). The short answer is:

 

avg = 11.1, median = 10, max = 45

 

Remember, this is now only counting drops for one of the seven armor slots, no weapons or left-side (excepting the wrists). From my current experience, I've gotten 3 drops in my 50 ranks, including one duplicate. So, if we say the avg is 1 drop per 17 ranks, it would on average take me about 187 ranks to get my 6-piece. This means I'll be almost getting T3 gear before I'd finish my set. Of course, it's hard to say what the chance of these drops is. My 1/17 may not be the average drop rate at all.

 

Oh, that max = 45 means that in at least one trial, it took that many drops to get a 6-piece. So at 1/17 drops per rank, that poor unlucky sap would have taken 765 ranks to have finished their set.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Zhiroc

[ButeoRegalis]

Dailies and Weeklies should drop command crates.

Chapters, Uprisings, Flashpoints and Operations upon completion should drop command crates.

PvP matches upon completion should drop command crates.

 

With the current drop rate, I can't quite disagree with this. Even with the boosts in the latest patch the CXP rate is disappointing, and the RNG crate just compounds this.

 

If they add weeklies for each type, or add a crate reward to each weekly, that would be nice. Maybe someone would run the Black Hole dailies again! LOL

 

In a similar vein, can we also get a few unassembled components thrown in for PvE content? Say 5 for a weekly, 1 for a daily, 2 for heroics. Nothing spectacular, but something that allows even PvEers to stock up on them slowly. Hey, if you have 90 components sitting in your bank, the temptation to get the few missing for the upgrade could entice some to try PvP and bring in more people.

[Elssha]

I like your idea, except for requiring the unassembled found in ops to also require GC tokens.

 

If you kill a boss, that boss should drop a gear token worth one piece of gear, not something that also requires an external timesink.

 

The players on my team that kill a boss should not have to have their gear throttled by how much free time they have outside of raid time.

 

Period.

 

GC/CXP should have nothing - literally nothing - to do with Operations gearing. If that is somehow inequitable with gearing via the rest of the game, then the rest of the game is the problem.

 

 

I initially thought the same, but I would say that the odds are anyone who does any Ops will have *more* than enough tokens to assemble the items they get. I would say the only way you could run out of tokens is if you got all the unassembled items in an Op and that was the first thing you did after hitting 70 (though an SM should still get you 2-3 lvls, which would be enough to assemble a few items) ,or if you stockpiled them *before* you hit 70 (not sure if you still can, actually). It's a minor concession, and like I previously said it's better to push for 80% of what you want and get 70% than push for 100% and get nothing.

[Zhiroc]

GC/CXP should have nothing - literally nothing - to do with Operations gearing. If that is somehow inequitable with gearing via the rest of the game, then the rest of the game is the problem.

 

I do ops (SM at least) and so while I appreciate being able to get gear a bit faster this way (though I ran two this past weekend and didn't get any of the 6 tokens that dropped...), I personally feel that it's not a bad thing that you can't just play one narrow aspect of a game for all the rewards. I don't support a huge grind either, and I do hope that BW mitigates that on GC as time passes. And I think they are increasing ops rewards somewhat, so getting some ranks while doing them will come naturally. And I figure most ops players do some heroics as well for cash and/or conquest, and those are pretty good now for CXP too.

[FerkWork]

I do ops (SM at least) and so while I appreciate being able to get gear a bit faster this way (though I ran two this past weekend and didn't get any of the 6 tokens that dropped...), I personally feel that it's not a bad thing that you can't just play one narrow aspect of a game for all the rewards. I don't support a huge grind either, and I do hope that BW mitigates that on GC as time passes. And I think they are increasing ops rewards somewhat, so getting some ranks while doing them will come naturally. And I figure most ops players do some heroics as well for cash and/or conquest, and those are pretty good now for CXP too.

 

Your speaking of SM as a casual which makes your argument from a point of view of a progression raider irrelevant to our gearing. Naturally is all bosses dropping gear otherwhise you aren't competive when the new boss drops. If your doing actually progression getting gear through bosses is what raiding should be not random lootboxes that contain garbage. Most progression players don't farm Heroics either so wrong on two accounts.

 

And that's nice if you want that system for yourself but for others like me they can take that system where the sub don't shine. Stop shoving things down our throats we never wanted. Give casuals gear but stop messing with Ops gear.

Edited January 31, 2017 by FerkWork

[Ozrinom]

I'd love to see a legacy system where each time you reach command level 300 on each class (8 total) you get a 25% cxp boost on all toons (permanent), up to 200%. Kind of like the legendary status but for galactic command