Feedback regarding CXP rate with backup reasoning

[FerkWork]

Not everyone enjoys grinding for weeks or months on end. In fact, the majority here don't want that. RNG is already broken. I for one, and I can safely say that I speak for most here, don't want to grind for a whole year just to get a full set of endgame armor and weapons.

 

No need to wast words on a obvious troll. Give me a wag of the finger, put them on the naughty list and lets get back to the conversation at hand. No need to feed their pathetic existence. Same few people just different accounts.

Edited January 28, 2017 by FerkWork

[ludoviccb]

One change that I would make is increase the total Cap of UC to 10000. That way, someone can gather enough to get a full gear set. Without that option, some people will get the piece that they just bought from a crate.

 

Also, I would put a way to exchange a drop for another of the same level using Command tokens, that way, it would enable people to use the useless/duplicate drops from the command crate. About half the 230 purple gear (around 15 pieces) that I got were useless since they were duplicate, had the wrong stats or didn't work in PvP area. Things like 4 pair of tank boots on the same toon, 3 implants/earpiece with accuracy on a PvP concealment operative which doesn't need any accuracy, click relics that don't work in a PvP area on a PvP toon...

[YlliyaXor]

Mobs should give cxp based on their hp, a mob with 900k hp should not give the same reward as one with 10k hp or less.

 

Chapters and class/planetary missions give too little cxp, all of these take longer than the average heroic and give a worse reward, at the very least chapters should reward the same as solo flashpoints (including the boss cxp drops).

 

Disintegrating gear should give at least 1/3 of the cxp needed for the next level, ideally it would give half a level.

 

All command crate gear should be BoL, that way something you don't need on that char can still be used on another, i guess this is already true for gear with mods, but streamlining the process and opening it up to relics/implants/ears would be nice.

[Elssha]

Here's an idea;

 

 

• Keep or increase the amount of command tokens we get in each box.
  
  
   
  
  
• Remove all Set Bonus gear from the boxes, leaving only cosmetic shells/schematics/pets etc.
  
  
   
  
  
• Add a *chance* to get green/blue armor with rating based on tier.
  
  
   
  
  
• Increase the amount of shards (whatever you actually call them) you get from PvP or reduce how many it takes to make an unassembled.
  
  
   
  
  
• Let each boss in an Op drop an item, please, or at least make Ops repeatable (say IF you complete the Op start to finish, you can do it again... if you don't there's a weekly hard reset - or once per day with a weekly hard reset).
  
  
   
  
  
• Add a vendor that sells Set bonus items directly for GC tokens, but will only sell you the ones for your current tier and only for your advanced class (and spec, if you insist on idiot-proofing gearing).
  
  

 

 

This will keep the grind alive while removing RNG (the annoying one), and will still make the armor available to all at different rates. PvPers and Ops people would still be able to get gear the fastest, and those that play a little of everything would still be the best off.

You can even make SB gear a super rare drop from the crate, just as an extra bonus.

 

 

As an example (given present prices/drop amounts);

 

 

• A 230 chest unassembled from PvP would cost you 100 shards (or whatever you call them), plus 10 GC tokens to assemble it.
   
  
• A 230 chest unasembled from Ops, assuming you win the roll, will cost you 10 GC tokens to assemble it.
   
  
• A 230 chest from the GC vendor will cost you 80 GC tokens, and you can only get one for the toon you're playing on now.
  

 

 

That way Joe Heroics can say "if I do two more planets, I can get that belt!", and play in green/blue gear until then or if he wants to save up the tokens for CXP boosts or other goodies; some exclusive pets/vehicles, maybe a way to directly purchase armor shells that otherwise drop via RNG from Command and GC crates (there is a wrist that I swear you rigged to never drop for me XD).

 

I would suggest that you should make a small conversion for CC (say 100 GC tokens gets you 1 CC) as a way to give those that don't care about gear a big incentive to grind CXP levels. Maybe even a way to earn a way to buy sub time if you do enough work. That way pref players who can't afford a sub would have a way to earn it (after buying a month and working hard to get enough GC tokens or CC, obviously) by being active and doing things with subs, which would help fill group finders and pops that would boost the population.

[Ramalina]

This is sort of a expansion of stuff I put in another thread, but this is more of a constructive suggestion thread and people can comment on whether it sounds like a good idea or not.

 

It's pretty clear that a massive increase in the amount of playtime required per character to reach the top level of endgame gearing is one of the design goals of the Galactic Command system and the current Ops drop rates.

 

It's also clear that it is doing an extremely good job of this, or at least is now that some loopholes have been closed.

 

However, as a whole the GC system is not particularly efficient at using tiers of gear to prolong the grind. The grind extension has come almost entirely from taking the nerfbat and nerfing loot drop probabilities into the ground. The result is that people aren't likely to grind 3 tiers worth of gear. They're going to grind maybe 1.3 to 1.8 or so tiers. By the time you would have finished getting a tier 1 set, a lot of players will be past GC level 300. The drop rates are so low that you'd actually have to deliberately work at it to go through full sets of all three tiers of gear. In a rather odd outcome, the less luck you have with RNG, the less of tier 1 and tier 2 you'll wind up grinding. You won't have much endgame gear, but the endgame gear you have will be mostly tier 3.

 

This leads to a proposal, buff the snot out of the tier 1 and tier 2 drop rates for Galactic Command crates. A very carefully targeted buff that you've run past someone who is not rusty when it comes to probability theory.

 

The general idea being to let people feel like they're making progress on completing a set of gear, and also making it so that set bonuses aren't so far out of reach. There will still be grousing to be sure, but I think that if people feel that a 4 piece set bonus is reasonably obtainable in tier 1, and maybe a 50% chance of making it to the 6 piece set bonus by the end of the tier 2 zone, then they might be a bit more forgiving of the long grind to the stats of a full tier 3 set. Especially if the chance of getting a full 6 piece set bonus by the time you hit GC 300 is very high ( 75 to 90% ?). For a lot of classes the set bonuses are big deal, and if people are holding on to set bonuses from the last level cap, I'd consider it a red flag that the current gearing system has critical functional flaws.

 

The difficulty of completing the low tier and middle tier of gear is sort of weird for an MMO gearing system. Usually a part of the grind strategy on the developers' part is to run players through multiple gear sets on the way to best in slot. In 5.0 you're not really doing that. You're just starting us out on BiS and making the grind to get there egregiously long. There are 14 gear slots, is having two pieces of tier one, two pieces of tier two, and ten pieces of tier three really the logical gearing progression you were aiming for in the case of fairly casual players?

 

I mean, serious raiders will fill that in somewhat for sure, but they can also skip all of tier one and most of tier 2 if so inclined, and given the tendency to optimize, I suspect that most of them will be so inclined. If tier 1 and 2 aren't aimed at people who are relying heavily on GC crates for gear, then who are they for?

 

I can do, "raiding is srs bzns," as I have in the past, so I'm not feeling especially hampered by GC droprates (just by the incredibly low Ops drop rates), but this gearing system design looks like it has some serious logical holes in it even if you assume that turning gearing into a tortuously slow grind is a desirable outcome.

 

Give away tier one to make people happy and distract them from the statistical fine print on the horrors involved in grinding a full set of tier three.

 

 

[sarcasm]

 

Why cheat your customers out of the joy of grinding out 3 full sets after all?

 

[/sarcasm]

 

 

 

 

CXP reward increases are one possible solution to the current gear system mess, but they're not the only possible solution, and may not be the best solution if you're trying to preserve some of your initial design goals for Galactic Command.

 

Wanting to feel like progress is being made in gearing up is not the same as handing out BiS gear like it's candy at Halloween. In the past tiers 1 and 2 of gear have been accessible fairly readily, and tier 3 has been rough to obtain. Thinking about returning to that model a bit might be a better fit than opening floodgates on CXP so we can all stampede merrily to BiS gear. I think that CXP should pay out faster, but I think that CXP payout rates are not your only problem with the gearing system for 5.0.

[Ecaja]

I dislike the current CXP system, because i am doing nothing that gives CXP throughout my week.

 

I tend to play through the Story and do questing, usually with my wife. Last time we reached level 70 before we even reached Correllia in the story, doing all the exploration missions and whatnot together.

 

I really don't get why i do not get command point for every mob in the game. Give 1 for weak enemies, 2 for silver, 3 for gold. At least i'd get something and not just the occassional 20 meager points to remind me that i probably shouldn't be wasting my time doing what i actually enjoy.

 

It also wouldn't punish me when i am going to collect resources for my crafters. I usually am slaughtering my way through the zones as i pick up resource nodes... and i get no CXP for it. I can spend 2-3 hours doing that a week, with no rewards. To me that is not "play how you want to play and be rewarded for it".

 

In my opinion i should get enough CXP from killing trashmobs to level up in an hour. If Bioware is serious about the whole "play how you want to play", then why am i being punished for enjoying farming for drops like Datacrons and whatnot on regular planets and doing side missions and go back to do the extra missions and whatnot?

 

 

When i first heard about CXP i though you were gonna go and just rename the XP you got and people would just keep on getting exp under a different name. Why didn't you use this option? Everyone could have played the game how they wanted, because everything already has an exp value. Ops are already designed to be more rewarding in terms of exp, heroics are designed to give more exp... why did you have to mess with this? Now i don't get exp for doing what i want to do.

 

 

And why not consider helping the crafter out a little? Or even if you do not want to raise the CXP gain you get from regular content... why not give the option to use the disassemble and get a few command points from disassembling items you looted off of enemies? Give 1 point for trash, 2 points for green, 3 points for blue and so on and so forth. Maybe a bonus for Custom grade gear. At least i'd get something from playing the game how i want to play it.

 

I don't want to grind heroics, i don't want to play OPs or PvP... i want to have fun with my wife.. play through the story content, roleplay our characters... that is what i want out of this game.. to be able to play with my wife and just my wife.

[IstariZen]

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

 

RNG is not really a problem. I know people say it is, but it has been common in RPGs forever. I think if you expand the components to include other activities equal to unranked pvp and gsf, you will achieve the vision of GC. You want people to feel rewarded from playing all content, so keep them in line just so players don't funnel into one activity or others get neglected. CxP can go up a bit as well, just enough to feel exciting. I am an fan of your game to the highest level, I love it and I think you guys are doing a great job responding to reasonable post.

I think GC is going to be copied from here on out, it is in fact brilliant, but it is lacking. Even with all the boost it does not feel exciting enough. It is an exciting system, but asking too much neglects that excitement. It has to be fun. An hour (for the easier activities and higher for the harder ones) for 1 rank absolutely would though. Keep us ahead of your upcoming releases. You guys are awesome! Keep up the hard work.

 

With all of that said T3 should NEVER change. Keep it the challenge. That is the only one that must remain difficult. Even if you make T1 easiest, T2 easy, go ahead and make T3 Harder. Its BiS and should be treated as such. By that, I mean up the component cost of T3, but only T3. Leave RNG the same. People will hate on me for this, but have you ever seen a kid get an XBOX one when he wanted a PS4? (Brat) Trust me, that needs to remain tough.

Edited January 28, 2017 by IstariZen

[DanNV]

Here's an idea;

 

My issue with your idea is it continue sot tie gear to tier which means we can't get back to doing HM ops until we get to the right tier to be getting gear to improve doing it. So, you only solve part of the problems. The GC needs to be totally removed as an end-game gearing method. I realize hell will freeze over or EA will start firing people before that happens, but it is what needs to happen.

[IstariZen]

My issue with your idea is it continue sot tie gear to tier which means we can't get back to doing HM ops until we get to the right tier to be getting gear to improve doing it. So, you only solve part of the problems. The GC needs to be totally removed as an end-game gearing method. I realize hell will freeze over or EA will start firing people before that happens, but it is what needs to happen.

 

I have no idea what you are responding to here, because the quote failed. Nothing to do with you. But why do you need tier 3 for heroics?

[DanNV]

I have no idea what you are responding to here, because the quote failed. Nothing to do with you. But why do you need tier 3 for heroics?

 

I was responding to a post farther up the page. Who said tier 3 for heroics? Who said tier 3? I was talking about HM ops and he is suggesting a vendor that sells gear based on GC tier.

Edited January 28, 2017 by DanNV

[Rabin_Lorac]

What is CXP?

 

Once you hit level 70 and you are a sub you do not gain regular exp any more. The exp bar gets replaced by your command exp bar. You still gain legacy exp if you have not reached legacy level 50. Now most missions in game and gold+ difficulty mobs give you command exp. There are 300 command ranks as you earn each rank, ranks have replaced exp levels, you get a command crate. In this command crate is random gear and other stuff. You should get gear that is inline with your discipline when you actually open the crate.

 

We all abbreviate it as cxp.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Rabin_Lorac

[Halinalle]

Regular Weekly Mission for Daily Areas – 20 CXP // 500 CXP

Planetary Heroic WEEKLY - 0 (doesn't exist*) // 500

 

Dailies already give you 450 (w/o bonus) every day. Only rarely you have to do all of them

Heroics (except Tython/Korriban/Hutta/Ord Mantell) already give you 450 (w/o bonus) every day.

[Costello]

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

 

The level of communication has vastly improve and I apologize that this is going to be long but since you asked for feedback

 

Its seems, and I hope I'm wrong that the budget is not as vast as it could be, with the development team required to devote a significant amount of resources to the Cartel Market. How many vehicles are now available 200 or 300 with 90% being ugly junk, fair to say that every ugly model gets reskined 6 times or so it does inflate the numbers. However the same could be said of weapons or armour, it feels like its part of a cheap knock of toy production line where copious amounts of market stall trash is churned out. How many resources are wasted producing stuff nobody wants just so it can be filler in a cartel market pack, leaving the purchaser feeling ripped off. At some point you have to take stock and say we may have flooded the market with ugly outfits.

 

But with those remain game resources it seems unlikely you will ever be able to produce content of sufficient length to keep people stated till the next update. 5.2 is possibly 3 months away, I don't doubt you will get it out in April but I suspect it will be mid to late April. The new story will probably be a day's worth of content (could be wishful thinking could be an hour but I think it will be longer than a chapter) then the daily area. Which is strangely the kicker if its 2 hours of content that would make it useless for CXP as it would be two hours for 450 cxp + 20 a mission. That would put it up there with story chapter as nice but not effective. Then there is the new operation boss, if people can be bothered to do him, that would be possible 15 mins for a 10% chance of some random loot. So what do people do from then on out go back to the grind until 5.3 which I suspect will be significantly less content and the next operation boss.

 

So we now have 2 to 3 months of back to the CXP grind, on what can be fairly described as a dead lifeless catroonish worlds (no not just Ziost). Please go and play Elder Scrolls Online to see what the difference graphics can make and the difference having movement of npcs and items and hell what having an intractable environment can do to the experience. I can be ridding along, watching the sun set admiring the view and come across a travelling merchant, bandits or any number of random events all of which add to my experience. When I leap into combat there is a really physical presence to the combat, dodging or blocking and I'm watching the combat not my cool downs. If your going to spend a large (in almost all cases majority) of your time repeating content that experience has to be as enjoyable as possible. It seems the original design had been to put out content so fast that people wouldn't notice that nearly all content was static. But now the plan is to grind out the same content 1000 times or so its made very appearant that all NPCs either stand there waiting for you to kill them or stand there waiting for you to run past. I'm sure I you can see the parallels that one experience feels like your part of an online world and the other feels like your in a lobby waiting to go into your next instance that may be 2 or 3 months away.

 

Don't get me wrong I love the focus on Story, I just wish it hadn't been Keeping up with the Valkorians and so full of plot holes that made so much of encounters with Valkorian painful. I fully believe the game needs an end game progression system, I just think it should have been tied to stat or ability progression and not rng loot boxes. I fully agree that you can't gate end game content behind operations and PvP any more, with the former because we have been playing some of those ops for 5 years and the later cause nothing but 8v8 pvp and 4v4 pvp meaningless warsims (I've never seen any number of victories ever have any effect so they must be sims) as a waste of time and the worst type of PvP. However making the only reward from a massive end game grind a random loot box that will probably be disintergrated is bad.

 

There are of course things not being done, we have ability blot and stat blot, as far as the abilities goes you can fill up 4 task bars with various abilities on various cool downs. The combat becomes more about rotations than anything else, which means a macro would be better off playing the game. With stats I was optimizing my tier 2 gear so a long way to go (if I ever get there) and there are diminishing returns. Does that mean by the time I get to tier 3 I'll be grinding out 20 boxes get a useable piece of gear Horahh! Only to equip it for 00.03% increase to crit that will probably be rounded down by the system. I'm a dps and I have over 100k health which is pretty meaningless cause I doubt much at level 70 does less than 100 damage a hit. But nothing is done about this. Just as nothing is done about hyper inflation and the vast majority of content quickly gets ignored i.e. Eternal Championship (months of resources) completely pointless, GSF saw one new map and a few paint jobs now ignored, PvE space had a high level update and now ignored, Ziost tokens and all reputation in the game get their shop with a few items possibly and then ignored the list goes on and on. As for class balance seriously, have you taken mdps through an uprising. As rdps I can stand in the middle and just spam attacks on the trash (and possible off heal) as an mdps I have to run to the trash and then waste time off target running to the next. As for AOE I generally have a very short range in front of me as opposed to a position aoe attack I put anywhere in 30 meters (and pretty much spam).

 

In short if people are to enjoy the end game grind the experience needs to be more immersive and less tedious as grinding out 1.23 million CXP isn't going to make it fun.

[Zhiroc]

First off, in principle I have nothing against GC and CXP, and even randomized gearing. And I say this even though I do ops with my guild (though we're only at the SM level of things, and haven't even cleared them all). I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark, and guess that only about 10-20% of the playerbase does raids even to a small extent, and probably no more than that do PvP too (I do zero of that--never been in a WZ, and will *never* go into a WZ). So, when this first came out, I kinda felt like the new system was acknowledging these facts--SWTOR's playerbase, and probably most MMO's as well nowadays, no longer have the "raiding/PvP" demographics of the past, if it ever did.

 

So to this, I am looking at this from the perspective that SWTOR wanted to make gearing accessible no matter what you did in the game. But this is obviously tricky--as much as people complain about the slow grind, there are already a number of characters at 300, which shows how dedicated some can be at the grind... Personally, I'm a little under 50 on my main, with 5 other chars averaging about 10 ranks apiece. My main has 2 set-bonus pieces, an earpiece, and main/offhand. I think I got at least one dup, if not 2. So, I'm getting roughly one fully usable "token" piece per 10 ranks or so.

 

So, that is one problem--the rate one obtains set-bonus gear seems too slow, and particularly if you want to gear up both DPS and Heal/Tank, if you have that option. I would certainly approve of having this gear be dropped as tokens, so that you could pass it around to either a different spec, or an alt. Token gear is too valuable to waste on a dup, or a stat-itemization you don't want. The alternative to this is to have it drop almost every other rank, so that you wouldn't feel bad at disintegrating it... The new ops drops help out a lot here, for me at least, but remember, I think the ops/PvP playerbase is extremely limited.

 

But the other thing I see people struggling with is the "very casual player" and the "alt-aholic"... At first, I thought that legacy-base CXP was the way to go (along with token drops, rather than specific gear). But I saw a comment from Eric (?) that it had its own problems. I'd love to hear what those are, but if I had to guess: 1) it doesn't help the very casual and 2) it probably only helps out alts at maybe around the 4 or so number.

 

So, I've been toying around in my head for a solution that mitigates these issues, without ramping up CXP generation to rediculous levels. I've seen some folks talk about making more weeklies, and making them be worth more, or maybe tying this to a large conquest reward, but I think there are problems here as well, depending on how time consuming this is (FYI, it's not extremely easy for a non-guilded primarily PvE player to make conquest, especially if they don't have a 125% SH bonus, given the limited number of infinitely repeatable PvE objectives, and the ones that are repeatable are time-gated, like the GF FP ones).

 

So, my idea has revolved around the idea to have CXP be rewarded on a sliding scale. And SWTOR already has something like this--rested XP. It rewards chars who haven't been played for a while with extra kill XP. My thoughts so far would be to have this work in two ways. One, characters get rested CXP based on how long it's been since one last logged into it, very much like rested XP. Two, every character in a legacy earns some fraction of the CXP earned by a character being played as rested CXP. And three, there is a limit to how much rested CXP one can bank. When a character earns CXP, they transform a portion of their rested CXP to real CXP. Also, while only L70 chars have rested CXP, missions performed by any level character add the appropriate amount of rested CXP to any L70 char.

 

This system helps casuals as the little bit they play gets their CXP magnified. It helps alts, as play helps boost the CXP gained in the legacy. It's not really "free CXP" as you have to earn CXP to convert the rested CXP. And even if you're leveling a char, you are contributing to your other char's ability to get more CXP later. The limit on rested CXP I think limits exploitive farming.

 

I might also suggest that F2P/Preferred players be able to accrue CXP "in escrow". This would give them an incentive to sub at some point--maybe for only a month every few, or less, but to me, I don't think that GC and CXP in itself will "force/convince" them to sub otherwise. But seeing a pile of 5-10 ranks or so available to their chars might be. I could see there being a limit on the escrow, however.

 

I'm sure my ideas have issues too, but I think it mitigates a lot of the worst aspects of how alt-unfriendly GC has turned out to be.

[NomadFifteen]

Here are my ideas.

 

1) Change the Legacy CXP Bonus cost.

A) If you want to keep it per character, reduce it significantly - at least by half. Current cost is outrageous per character. I am not one of the ultra rich or one of the just getting by, but I will not spend this per toon for the bonus.

B) If you want to retain the current cost, make it actually legacy wide. Current cost to cover the boost for all of your legacy is high but reasonable.

 

2) This is for all of the Alt-aholics out there, and the single character players may not like it. In several games I have played/play there is a xp boost for the account for the number of max level toons you have. Make an account based bonus for the number of max level toons, say 2% per. To be fair a max cap could be set - for example 20% (10 max level) so that you get a bonus for having alts, but you do not start getting a GC level every time you do a daily or warzone if you are someone with 20+ max level characters.

 

3) This may sound odd, but get the devs and designers to actually read these forum posts. A lot of people are posting good ideas with solid numbers. Have these looked at and talked about by people who want to improve the game. If an idea has merit, look further into it. If you can narrow down some ideas to usable and implantable projects, let the players know. Do not keep saying 'We have something in the works, but can't tell you.' The players want the game to improve and they want to keep playing. Getting us involved in doing this will bring back good will, and if an idea looks good but needs work, what better group to ask for suggestions than those who actually play the game and have an investment in it.

[DanNV]

So to this, I am looking at this from the perspective that SWTOR wanted to make gearing accessible no matter what you did in the game.

 

Unfortunately, your entire argument is based on a fallacy. The gearing design had nothing to do with accessibility of gear. It has everything to do with EA telling BW they needed to retain subs. So, now all endgame is behind a sub wall. But you also need to keep those subs around longer, so the gearing is designed to be a year long grind with RNG thrown in so every so often someone gets something and everyone else thinks they might get something too, so they keep on going. (Works just like slot machines in a casino.) BW promised EA shareholders this would keep subs longer, and get more subs. Everything after that is excuses, spin and out right lies to try to sell the system to people playing the game that BW thinks aren't smart enough to see through the smoke and mirrors.

 

5.1 is just more smoke and mirrors but is also designed to keep the grind as long as possible. 5.2 is a single ops boss and they'll trickle those out over the year in hopes it will keep people subbed all year. They mention focus groups, etc. Those groups didn't say, "trickle the op bosses out over a year and we'll stay subbed." They said, "if you bring the op out in December, we'll resub then to give it a try." BW took the latter to mean the former but it's the same mistake they made with KotFE. Some people will sub another couple of months, but if the boss is too easy, the'll be out the week after it drops and if it's over tuned like ToS when it launched, they'll be frustrated and out a week later.

 

BW can't win because they refuse to actually listen to and engage with their paying customers and the people who play the game. If they took the time to really engage and listen to what they are told, they'd have a game that was doing very well and being mentioned in EA reports for how well it's doing, not how poorly it's doing. BW should give that some thought, but unfortunately, I don't think they will. It's too counter to the managerial culture at BW.

[DanNV]

Here are my ideas.

(snip)

 

As long as end game gearing is tied to CXP and RNG, you can't fix it.

 

3) This may sound odd, but get the devs and designers to actually read these forum posts. A lot of people are posting good ideas with solid numbers. Have these looked at and talked about by people who want to improve the game. If an idea has merit, look further into it. If you can narrow down some ideas to usable and implantable projects, let the players know. Do not keep saying 'We have something in the works, but can't tell you.' The players want the game to improve and they want to keep playing. Getting us involved in doing this will bring back good will, and if an idea looks good but needs work, what better group to ask for suggestions than those who actually play the game and have an investment in it.

 

Every manager and senior developer should have to lay the game as a customer would. No cheats, no private servers, no special dev vodoo. They should play as players in guilds, playing all the facets of the game (PvP, Ops, Heroics, FPs, etc.) They would have a much better understanding the player's issues and feelings if they did. Further, they need to check their egos at the door and actually look at,m listen to and consider the feedback they get, particularly when it's "the game isn't fun anymore", "the games is like a job", "you've blocked us from the content we want", etc. That is the feedback that means people are unhappy and if they are too unhappy they leave. Also, keep in mind it's the people who don't say anything who leave first. They just unsub and move on. They don't come to the forums, they don't PM community managers, they don't write letters. They tell their friends in their guilds that they are unhappy, what they don't like, and then they just leave. Look at server populations year over year and you'll see how much of that has gone on already.

[Zhiroc]

Unfortunately, your entire argument is based on a fallacy.

 

We can argue about the exact motivations. But I still maintain that the previous end-game gearing based around ops and separately for PvP did not engage more than a small minority of players, and I would bet even money that it didn't even engage a majority of the subscribers. Our guild (on the EH, a fairly active server) had around 80-90 qualifying accounts during 4.0, and the active ops players numbered about 10-12, and PvPers maybe around 5-10 (if even that). Obviously, I can't speak for the population at large, but I don't have any indirect evidence that ops were wildly popular. The few times we tried to find a replacement for an op in progress or when we were down one, advertising on fleet and/or the Allies channel was very hit and miss, which is not indicative of lots of people being interested in it.

 

And I won't argue that the point was to increase subscriptions--I'll only say that I'm less cynical about it, in that they hoped that opening up the gearing would get more subs, and they were short-sighted on the drawbacks. I'll say this also: I'm old (over 50) and I've been in the software industry (non-gaming) for almost 30 years. And I can say with certainty that lots of people in charge (as well as developers themselves) make ill-formed decisions all the time. I find it amazing at times how little foresight goes into predicting the outcome of a process change. Unintentional consequences happen, a LOT.

 

As for RNG gearing, I'm used to it playing other games, like Destiny on consoles, where gear is not "just stats" or even set bonuses, but where everything has combinations of stats and abilities that make or break that piece of gear, and where rewards are not guaranteed either.

 

My ideas are centered around improving the system for casual and alt-aholic players. They can be used in combination with other changes, but the point is to put the rewards on a curve.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Zhiroc

[Wraithwarr]

Well written OP! Totally agree with you, the CXP rate feels very poor when you're doing anything except Vet uprisings.

[Radzkie]

GCs pure RNG is certainly the biggest reason it's not fun. Recently I switched to merc healer, and in 32 levels I got ONE set bonus piece... my bracers. What an utterly crappy system. That's 1/3 of my tier one finished with only one meaningful reward. Luckily I have a raid group that basically begged me to come with them, and they plan to get me my full set bonus.

 

At this point, I'm only opening my crates for the tokens and because I have to disintegrate for the CXP. I wish they had an option to get my tokens and disintegrate everything else without opening the create. I get annoyed when I have to open a create now.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Radzkie

[Dbohrius]

It's a simple deal for me. Either:

 

a) Ease the grind, whether by significantly buffing CXP rewards or cutting down on Command levels (and it's easy to do the former)

 

b) or ease the RNG sting, by increasing the odds of a good set piece and allowing us to exchange duplicate pieces for unassembled pieces.

 

And while you're at it, please, PLEASE allow schematics to be sold at the GTN. I want crafting to be a good substitute, but crafting 230 level items is absolutely pointless, so I need to reach at least Command Tier 2 to start getting the interesting stuff.

[Elssha]

My issue with your idea is it continue sot tie gear to tier which means we can't get back to doing HM ops until we get to the right tier to be getting gear to improve doing it. So, you only solve part of the problems. The GC needs to be totally removed as an end-game gearing method. I realize hell will freeze over or EA will start firing people before that happens, but it is what needs to happen.

 

I was responding to a post farther up the page. Who said tier 3 for heroics? Who said tier 3? I was talking about HM ops and he is suggesting a vendor that sells gear based on GC tier.

 

 

 

If you re-read my idea, only the gear bought directly via the tokens (replacing the RNG items we get now) would be tied to tier. The PvP and Ops options would remain as they are - independent of tier and bought as they are now, with a push to lower the PvP cost and increase the drop rate in Ops to all bosses.

 

 

These are three separate points;

 

* Increase the amount of shards (whatever you actually call them) you get from PvP or reduce how many it takes to make an unassembled.

* Let each boss in an Op drop an item, please, or at least make Ops repeatable (say IF you complete the Op start to finish, you can do it again... if you don't there's a weekly hard reset - or once per day with a weekly hard reset).

* Add a vendor that sells Set bonus items directly for GC tokens, but will only sell you the ones for your current tier and only for your advanced class (and spec, if you insist on idiot-proofing gearing).

Between giving a non-RNG way for solo players (or non-PvP/Ops) to get non - RNG gear and lessening the costs of upgrades/Ops drops it should make it less painful for everyone.

I forgot to add that they should make the PvP shards (components) legacy, along with Jawa junk and maybe even D/L tokens.

 

Don't kid yourself into thinking the Devs will take GC out - if we offer them ways to make it okay for us, we might get a good middle ground. If we insist they drop it and push far past what they might consider they'll ignore it and keep things as they are.

 

My idea is meant to present a possible middle ground that makes it more alt friendly and lets those in dire need of higher gear (PvP/Ops ppl who the gear was originally designed for) a quicker way to get gear, while keeping it attainable for Joe Heroics.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Elssha

[DanNV]

If you re-read my idea, only the gear bought directly via the tokens (replacing the RNG items we get now) would be tied to tier. The PvP and Ops options would remain as they are - independent of tier.

 

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.

 

Don't kid yourself into thinking the Devs will take GC out - if we offer them ways to make it okay for us, we might get a good middle ground. If we insist they drop it and push far past what they might consider they'll ignore it and keep things as they are.

 

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.

Edited January 28, 2017 by DanNV

[DZechman]

I have to agree wholeheartedly with those who've already posted that RNG is the problem. With that in mind here are my suggestions to the devs. Some could be mutually-exclusive, and so some choices will have to be made.

 

But as the devs are fond of reminiding us: Choices Matter.

 

To address the RNG factor: (with the underlying assumption that RNG will remain)

The fundamental problem is that, as I just mentioned, Choices Matter, but the RNG factor takes choice away from the player. So to address that, it needs to be made LESS random.

 

1) Substitutions

Give us a new UI interface tied to the Galactic Command page that lets us express our preferences. At a minimum, we need a Character-sheet-like interface showing the 14 gear slots and checkboxes for DO NOT AWARD ITEMS FOR THIS SLOT plus GIVE HIGHER PRIORITY TO THIS SLOT. Then you do a simple check each time a crate is awarded: If a gear item would have been randomly dropped for a slot with the DO-NOT-AWARD flag, then replace it with the comparable item for the HIGHER PRIORITY slot.

 

This addresses the issue of being handed multiples of the same item, and allows a simple but effective way to work towards a specific item. (This could have completely replaced the complicated 5.1 system.)

 

2) Increased CXP rates without increasing CXP rates.

If making the system less random is not an option, then make randomness less relevant.

 

Make each crate drop 5 times as many items, and make the CXP gains from Disintegration one-fifth what they were.

Super-easy to implement -- Changes nothing about CXP gains.

(Or alternately, drop multiple crates each level.)

 

This goes a long way towards mitigating the problem of not being able to collect a full 230-rated gear set (let alone a 2nd set for a different spec/role such as Healing AND DPS) before hitting Tier 2 by significantly increasing the number of chances you get to "roll the dice" for that item. If you're REALLY REALLY in need of that one particular item, then having many more chances to get it will significantly reduce the number of players who don't hit it. (Obviously, since it IS random, there will always be SOME.)

 

3) Tokens in Command Crates

One obvious problem with RNG and the Command Crates is the very real possibility of getting duplicate items. Since v5.1 (re-)introduced Unassembled tokens to the game, why not drop THOSE instead? If you get a 2nd identical item that you otherwise wouldn't need, you can just turn it in for a different spec or even an entirely different class. This would be super-easy to implement and well-received by the community.

 

To address the issue of CXP accrual and make the game more alt-friendly:

 

1) Rested CXP

It's a good system for regular leveling XP, it would be a good system for CXP, and should be easy to implement.

 

2) Legacy Character Perks: Skip to Tier 2 / Skip to Tier 3

This should of course be gated so that you have to raise at least one character to the given tier to unlock the ability to buy it. (Gate it behind a high Legacy Level even.) But purchasing this perk allows the 2nd and subsequent characters to receive crates of the same tier as the player's main.

 

3) Daily Reward

Wanna encourage players to play the game more often? Give each Level-70 character a free crate once per day just for logging in--or perhaps for logging in and completing a single mission that rewards CXP (Uprising, Heroic, Warzone, Op, Story Chapter, etc.) Don't log in that day? No reward.

 

This would encourage players to play more often and to play all of their characters rather than just one--even if just a little bit.

 

4) Legacy Level equals Legacy CXP boost

Wanna reward long-time players in a meaningful way? Make every Legacy Level a 1% CXP boost. LONG-TIME players who have already demonstrated their loyalty would get a significant boost, while new players will see that there is another way to improve their CXP accumulation rate for staying with the game. This also serves as an equalizing force against the increasing number of CXP required to reach each Command Level. Is a 50% boost really game-breaking for the few who'd qualify?

 

It could of course be modified to something more like "for each 10 Legacy Levels, you get a 6% CXP boost" or ramp up the percentage as the Legacy Level rises.

 

Okay, honestly, I don't see this happening since we already have the CXP boost legacy perk. But it would be helpful to do SOMETHING that's tied to Legacy Level.

 

And finally: a tiny QoL change that I'd like to see:

When claiming or disintegrating GROUPS of items (Command Tokens, Jawa Vendor items, etc.), set the slider on the pop-up window that requests HOW MANY? to claim/dump to the maximum value rather than 1. Honestly, what are we more likely to do here? All of them or just the one? This is a no-brainer.

[Tsillah]

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.