So, why exactly are people grinding the best gear?

[DPswfan]

Although I have been playing Swtor off and on for a couple of years now, I have never bothered with endgame much. I'm pretty much in it for the story. That said, the new gearing changes that everyone has been complaining about don't really mean much to me because I pretty much quit playing my level 70 Jugg until new story content is released.

 

There seems to be a general consensus that getting the latest gear is a huge grind (I hate grind). However, I am wondering what exactly are people grinding for? This is a serious question, there does not appear to be much endgame content to grind for. There's Heroics that are nothing to write home about, Flashpoints that can be played solo, some short uprisings and some old Operations. I am genuinely baffled, are people grinding gear for that? or did I leave something out? If it is pvp people grind for than I suppose that makes sense but besides that I'm not sure what the point is in getting the best gear. There's not much PvE content to use it for, unless I am mistaken.

[rantboi]

I just want the red speeder but the boxes keep giving me gear

[bgstranger]

Faster kills.

[benmas]

there is a new operation boss coming out and people still run the old ones

also people gear for PvP and others simply because they want the new shiny stuff.

[Ralei]

I like doing heroics for the money and rewards to sell on the gtm - and better gear helps me do them faster. That means more unlocks and decorations to buy. Also, Uprisings are fun and I like to not be a complete drag on my group when I pvp.

 

The thing that gets me with GC is that I don't feel any sense of progress. I disintegrate almost all of what I get, and since I don't do any ops or much pvp, I probably won't be able to get many specific pieces. It's just kind of a drag. I don't need the best gear in the game by any means, it's just nice to be able to feel a sense of achievement. Otherwise, there's not much point in playing.

 

I know people will hate me for saying this, but I'd be happy if the crates dropped cm decorations or cm adaptive armor and weapons. I know all would be forgiven on my end if I got Senya's saber in one of my packs Or maybe some black and black dye. Instead, we get some ugly ***, non-legacy, unpreviewable, waste of inventory space, orange junk that was probably added just so we would feel something when we disintegrated it and the little bar moved up an inch.

[Kurfer]

I'm doing it for heroics and pvp but the grind is such a drag i'm sure i'll end up getting burnt out and lose interest long before I even hit tier 2.

 

I am really disappointed with the fact that this system made it out of a meeting with legs. I don't have much faith they have critical thinkers and the proper decision makers over there in Austin anymore. The entire dev team should feel ashamed this was even thought of. It's all negative with ZERO benefit to the players vs what we had in 4.0

 

There is literally ZERO benefit to players; I am at a loss for words.

[Lium]

Although I have been playing Swtor off and on for a couple of years now, I have never bothered with endgame much. I'm pretty much in it for the story. That said, the new gearing changes that everyone has been complaining about don't really mean much to me because I pretty much quit playing my level 70 Jugg until new story content is released.

 

There seems to be a general consensus that getting the latest gear is a huge grind (I hate grind). However, I am wondering what exactly are people grinding for? This is a serious question, there does not appear to be much endgame content to grind for. There's Heroics that are nothing to write home about, Flashpoints that can be played solo, some short uprisings and some old Operations. I am genuinely baffled, are people grinding gear for that? or did I leave something out? If it is pvp people grind for than I suppose that makes sense but besides that I'm not sure what the point is in getting the best gear. There's not much PvE content to use it for, unless I am mistaken.

This is an excellent question.

[jozinkopucik]

This is in fact the one million dollar question.

 

Its a habit in MMOs to get the latest and best gear, but overall, yes, when you look at it, there is no real point for it. Unless you are doing the hardest content in the game which is Ranked PVP (bolster now is lower so you need better gear, but its sill no big difference), HM and NiM operations, Master KOTFE Chapters, soon to come Master Uprisings and lastly unscalled instances (Star Fortress, Eternal Championship.....)

 

But yes, the GC system was "apparently" developed so that any player can get their hands on 242 gear since you get ranks by doing anything. However, we know that its meant to keep ppl subbed as much as possible. So overall all the people the system is apparently meant for dont actually need the gear and people that need the gear complain it takes long to get it

[JattaGin]

OP, very good and legit question. This is exactly what I was wondering about as well during the last few months. I see GC pretty relaxed, because there is no need for me to get top gear. I'd actually hope for more fun stuff drops like pets or so.

[Gelious]

Cause it's in human nature to look for progress, to strive for more?

 

I, for example, realize all too well how utterly pointless my quest for better gear. All SM are done a hundred times, some HM too, and others (not to mention NIM lol) will be forever out of reach simple becase my skills are not good enough and I dont have a guild of friends interested in carrying me.

 

But I still get immense satisfaction when replacing 220 mods and armoring with 230 ones in my gear.

[cyrusramsey]

I for one was still having a lot of fun with all the old content. Mostly because getting to play it with many different characters prevented it from feeling stale to me.

 

For what it's worth, I am not "grinding for the best gear", so perhaps I am not exactly the target audience for your question.. firstly because I would've been content with having my army of characters in tier 2, which is still an impossible grind for me, and secondly because after I came to that conclusion I stopped bothering, stopped playing.

 

Had been sitting through the last stream because of:

 

One of the biggest concerns expressed is Galactic Command forces a player into working only on one character. [...] I am working to have more details available for our January 26th Livestream.

 

And found myself heavily disappointed that the only news boiled down to "tune in next time!"

 

But I think the core of the matter is... when it will become physically possible for me gear up all my characters inside of a cycle, even if not BiS, then I'd start the gear grind immediately, because I was having tons of fun still, and I'd like to pick that back up one of these days.

Edited January 30, 2017 by cyrusramsey

[gsummers]

Because being the best gear makes it the best.

And don't I DESERVE THE BEST?

Right from the moment when I met it, saw it,

I said "it's awesome" loud and clear,

This is the only gear that can be,

as awesome as me,

so I'm making plans to grind this new best gear!

[Talon_strikes]

Because I want to be the very best

Like no one ever was

[Quraswren]

Better gear makes everything faster and easier for the most part.

 

Sure, you might not need it for dailies but better gear makes them easier to do and faster. It makes the grind a bit more tolerable.

 

That works for about everything you do in swtor. Better gear gets things done more efficiently. PVE or PVP.

There is no reason to not want better and better gear. You don't have to in many cases but there is no reason stop going after it. Just because you get to max level doesn't mean the want and need for better gear to make things faster and easier should stop.

 

You can be content with less but I see no reason to when better options are out there. If your playing at all you should always want to get better and be better at what you play. Gear does that in this game.

[Lionflash]

The people who find fun in grinding gear are not the same people who find fun in challenge.

 

From what I've learned they don't enjoy the gameplay, as much as simple gear acquisition. It's a status thing among guilds and grinders.

[DanNV]

Although I have been playing Swtor off and on for a couple of years now, I have never bothered with endgame much. I'm pretty much in it for the story. That said, the new gearing changes that everyone has been complaining about don't really mean much to me because I pretty much quit playing my level 70 Jugg until new story content is released.

 

There seems to be a general consensus that getting the latest gear is a huge grind (I hate grind). However, I am wondering what exactly are people grinding for? This is a serious question, there does not appear to be much endgame content to grind for. There's Heroics that are nothing to write home about, Flashpoints that can be played solo, some short uprisings and some old Operations. I am genuinely baffled, are people grinding gear for that? or did I leave something out? If it is pvp people grind for than I suppose that makes sense but besides that I'm not sure what the point is in getting the best gear. There's not much PvE content to use it for, unless I am mistaken.

 

You need to gear to run the end-game content (Opeations, upper end PVP.) For Operations, you have to beat enrage timers, which means the DPS has be have gear that allows that to happen, tanks have to have gear that lets them survive and healers have to have gear that lets them put out sufficient healing. Since the general mitigation, damage or healing your character has s based on stats you need the gear to get the stats. SM operations are bolsters, so you can do that in almost anything if you know your class (if you don't gear won't help anyway.) Beyond the bolstered content, you need gear to move on to harder stuff. Having to grind story mode content for months on end to get enough gear to move up is what the PVE community is complaining about.

 

For the PvP community, the problem is also rooted in the stats given by the gear. The raw damage output (or healing or mitigation) are based on stats, so the game becomes more about gear than it is about skill and that has people justifiably upset.

 

Does that help?

[Velgar]

Overall, for me, they made alts irrelevant with this grind since gearing even one toon solo is utterly ridiculous grind, and I am not talking full sets, just getting reasonable gear upgrades on fairly regular basis, feeling some sort of progress for playing the same old tired content again and again and again ad nauseum. By making alts irrelevant, they made the game irrelevant to me and all they can say is "that was not our intent". I don't care what their intent was, they need to fix it NOW, not mumble on about unintended effects. Tells me their planning was fundamentally flawed on this whole concept that annoyed a large segment of their subs. Mine runs out sometime in Feb but I stopped logging in already, no point to it.

[Edyn]

I'd like to add that (from what I understand and lease correct me if I'm wrong) there are players out there who were enjoying and completing the more difficult raid content before 5.0, and once 5.0 hit, they were essentially locked out of what they had just been doing the day before the patch. This was due to the level increase and no normalization of gear with the level increase other than obtaining new gear from the Command Crates.

 

Personally, if was able to complete my favorite content in the game and then the next day it was taken away from me and locked behind a gear wall, which in turn is locked behind RNG, which in turn is locked behind grinding... I'd be pretty miffed. This is the only MMO gaming company I've seen that actually straight up removes content from players and makes them earn/grind it back. It's borderline insulting that they would remove access to old content and gate it rather than adding new content and gating it.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Edyn

[Andryah]

This is in fact the one million dollar question.

 

Its a habit in MMOs to get the latest and best gear, but overall, yes, when you look at it, there is no real point for it. Unless you are doing the hardest content in the game which is Ranked PVP (bolster now is lower so you need better gear, but its sill no big difference), HM and NiM operations, Master KOTFE Chapters, soon to come Master Uprisings and lastly unscalled instances (Star Fortress, Eternal Championship.....)

 

Exactly.

 

There are two main drivers:

 

1) want gear, mainly out of habit, or desrie

2) need gear, for min/max optimization for PvP or NiM OPs

 

Want and need are two different drivers, and frankly I often see MMO players confuse the two or conflate want = need.

 

This is not a hazardous or hard MMO to play for 95% of the content .... so for #1... the reality is that most players can do just fine with crafted 228s w/augments and maybe carry over some set bonus armor mods if they have them...... and in the case of number 2, they still can take routes other then GC to gear to higher levels. The only exception is set bonus which only drops from crates at this point, and I bet fewer then 5% of players actually need set bonus (as opposed to "wanting" set bonus).

 

Smart players are decoupling from GC for gear and just letting GC be reward bonus whenever hey come along while just playing the game.

 

At the end of the day, GC was poorly rolled out.. but there is a deeper issue.. in 4.0 they made it far too easy for players to put all their characters in BiS or near BiS gear... and once people become accustomed to low hanging fruit.. when the fruit is higher up in the tree... much drama ensues. Plus there was indeed very much a "welfare gear" quality to 4.0 since much of what you wanted you could get by tapping the crystal vendors on Odessen. The welfare gear is definitely gone in 5.0, but people still remember it in 4.0 and are upset that it's gone now.

[ShinDoRai]

why people play in a semicore club if they could play in the 1.league.

some can and some cant.

some are good in cooking while others are good in warming it up

 

or some love only one picture while others like a collection of that kind of picture.

 

or to put it here on to swtor.

every year we get new looks from endgear and it depends on seasons. or to be competitive on the highest ladder.

 

why should we always level up, if they also could only give us higher rated gear, instead of new levels compared to higher difficult content compensated through gear.

by that we could also only progress through story with higher gear ratings cos of difficult content, but that would be like a offlinegame.

[Kawiki]

Want and need are two different drivers, and frankly I often see MMO players confuse the two or conflate want = need.

 

Your posts and LionFlash's post are extremely shortsighted and wrong. You specifically should stop posting this nonsense.

 

A lot of players want better gear so they have the option to do higher level content when they feel ready, which they will need to be successful. I'd argue that this group specifically needs it more as it will be a new challenge to them.

 

This insistence on the forum that gear is not needed or people should not strive for it is completely moronic.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Kawiki

[DanNV]

I'd like to add that (from what I understand and lease correct me if I'm wrong) there are players out there who were enjoying and completing the more difficult raid content before 5.0, and once 5.0 hit, they were essentially locked out of what they had just been doing the day before the patch. This was due to the level increase and no normalization of gear with the level increase other than obtaining new gear from the Command Crates.

 

That about covers it.

 

Personally, if was able to complete my favorite content in the game and then the next day it was taken away from me and locked behind a gear wall, which in turn is locked behind RNG, which in turn is locked behind grinding... I'd be pretty miffed. This is the only MMO gaming company I've seen that actually straight up removes content from players and makes them earn/grind it back. It's borderline insulting that they would remove access to old content and gate it rather than adding new content and gating it.

 

Yep. It wouldn't be as bad if there was a clear path to gear to get back to where we were in November, but right now it's all stuck behind GC. So, lots of us have quit. Some are already gone and some are counting down sub days. BW keeps putting off real fixes in favor of "tweaks" but they don't seem to understand tweaks aren't going to cut it. At the rate they are going they won';t figure it out until the end game community is almost entirely paying someone else for their entertainment.

[Drew_Braxton]

Although I have been playing Swtor off and on for a couple of years now, I have never bothered with endgame much. I'm pretty much in it for the story. That said, the new gearing changes that everyone has been complaining about don't really mean much to me because I pretty much quit playing my level 70 Jugg until new story content is released.

 

There seems to be a general consensus that getting the latest gear is a huge grind (I hate grind). However, I am wondering what exactly are people grinding for? This is a serious question, there does not appear to be much endgame content to grind for. There's Heroics that are nothing to write home about, Flashpoints that can be played solo, some short uprisings and some old Operations. I am genuinely baffled, are people grinding gear for that? or did I leave something out? If it is pvp people grind for than I suppose that makes sense but besides that I'm not sure what the point is in getting the best gear. There's not much PvE content to use it for, unless I am mistaken.

 

Suggestions, but grindy so may not work since you hate the grind.

 

Fracture (PVE) or do PVP

For solo you can run solo veteran black talon. Comp set on dps and keeping a good pace you can finish around 10mins each run. Obviously, you have to use the space bar a lot. 600 - 800 something if you use boost and depending on if your alignment is in control (dark/light). The second benefit from this is you get two istotopes each run and those either sell quick on gtn (current 150 - 180K each on my server) or use for crafting the 234/240 gear. All the 234/240 left hand side items (implant, earpiece, and relics) use these and the conquest material so you don't have to do too many runs to get enough to get some nice upgrades crafted.

 

The stories on master level (with boost) seemed to pay out around 1100 - 1300, but they were way longer than 10 minutes.

[Joonbeams]

Exactly.

 

There are two main drivers:

 

1) want gear, mainly out of habit, or desrie

2) need gear, for min/max optimization for PvP or NiM OPs

 

Want and need are two different drivers, and frankly I often see MMO players confuse the two or conflate want = need.

 

SNIP

 

In video games/entertainment/leisure, want == need. Fundamentally there is no difference.

[BenduKundalini]

There's a spot in the human soul for progressing and feeling alpha. Why do we play monopoly? The money is bogus. Yet we pay real money to feel rich and mighty even for an hour.

 

Neuroscientists are actually studying gamer's brain activity... read that somewhere some time ago.