Galactic Command Gearing Roadmap - Coming This Week

[snave]

I love playing ranked pvp on different characters. It brings me fun.

But I can't have fun when everybody's gear is better than mine, just because I didn't stick to one character, even though I played probably WAY more than an average ranked player.

Snave is 100% accurate here.

 

And this post says you shouldn't play those characters for the next month because you'll be more likely to win after getting easier gear. I just don't get their thinking.

[Wayshuba]

And this post says you shouldn't play those characters for the next month because you'll be more likely to win after getting easier gear. I just don't get their thinking.

 

An old saying comes to mind, "Desperate people do desperate things."

 

Their thinking is probably that sub losses are mounting fast and they are trying to figure out what to say to stem the bleeding. Thing is, what they should have been thinking, prior to the 5.0 drop, is that the GC System (even at announcement) was not received well at all and maybe should have been held for a later date until they worked something out. But I also think they knew they had very little content in the expansion that would keep people subbed beyond a month, so they had to come up with some gimmick to try and keep people subbed.

[Kurj]

An old saying comes to mind, "Desperate people do desperate things."

 

Their thinking is probably that sub losses are mounting fast and they are trying to figure out what to say to stem the bleeding. Thing is, what they should have been thinking, prior to the 5.0 drop, is that the GC System (even at announcement) was not received well at all and maybe should have been held for a later date until they worked something out. But I also think they knew they had very little content in the expansion that would keep people subbed beyond a month, so they had to come up with some gimmick to try and keep people subbed.

 

I agree, they are just reacting to the problem at this point. I don't see any evidence of thinking. That's why I think things must be pretty bad behind the scenes.

[Aniajan]

I dont think there is any way to accurately describe how insanely frustrating and retarded everything associated with Galactic Command, the gearing system introduced in 5.1, opening GC crates and the goddamn RNG grind is.

 

IT IS FRUSTRATING AND I AM WRITING IT IN CAPS!!!!!

 

And now the devs think saving it in 2 months is fine. Instead of reducing the grind to a minimum with an "emergency patch".

 

Reduce CXP required for levels. Increase payouts in PVP for components. Increase payouts elsewhere. Reduce gear cost.

 

Do that and buy yourselves the time to get rid of the system altogether and introduce something better. You dont have the time or else you run into the problems Snave outlined....

[Resputin]

Damage Control, just call it what it is

 

So you rather have them do nothing. Cant win if they dont change it and cant win if they do. Some people are not ever going to be happy.

[cyrusramsey]

It feels like every week there's another "This time we really listened! This time we've got real solutions! Just wait and see!" message of some sort.

 

Well.. I genuinely hope that what we get to hear will make me want to resub and reinstall, but they're going to need to be some actual changes. Don't want to be this skeptical, but I've waited to see what they've had to see, with genuine hope, a few too many times now, and just seeing assurances and justifications and Soon™.

 

Real solutions now plx.

[Isaee]

So again an announcement of an announcement. Dont get me wrong i think its good that you try to keep in touch with the community. This method js a bit of .... tingling under my skin because i sooo curious ! ^^ Thanks for posting !

 

It feels like every week there's another "This time we really listened! This time we've got real solutions! Just wait and see!" message of some sort.

 

Well.. I genuinely hope that what we get to hear will make me want to resub and reinstall, but they're going to need to be some actual changes. Don't want to be this skeptical, but I've waited to see what they've had to see, with genuine hope, a few too many times now, and just seeing assurances and justifications and Soon™.

 

Real solutions now plx.

 

Sorry for picking on you, but ! i think gearing in 4.0 was way too easy ... . Is rng a good solution as it is now ? In my Opinion no its not. So let me see they deleted the token version. I dont think they put it back in with a harder version to get a token just to be mean. They did it with reason , because the community wanted to have tokens back. So please stop and be realistic that it never wont be as easy as in 4.0. Although .... you can have it quite easy with just farming end boss id's. Is this new system better .... no , but at least you can see that they are really trying to get as close to the wishes of the community as they can / want.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Isaee

[ThomasStarWars]

I wish I could, at least once in my lifetime, see MMO devs say 'Sorry guys, we ****ed up. We apologize and are reverting our changes.'. I'd probably buy a lifetime subscription if that happens. But yeah, something about a snowball and hell...

 

Blizzard WoW devs admitted they ****ed up with warlords of draenor expansion.

[jimmorrisson]

...

 

By Friday of this week I am going to make a forum post highlighting a roadmap of changes you can expect to address the feedback you have raised around gearing in Galactic Command.

 

These changes will be starting in the next few weeks and will go through to Game Update 5.2

...

• Greatly increase the rate at which you earn Command Crates. Our goal is that you earn one Crate every 30 minutes, or less (on average).
  

 

Iincremental Command Gearing changes up until Update 5.2 this April.

 

The only issue with 4.0's gearing would be the cosmetic currency name change to "crystals".

Edited January 31, 2017 by jimmorrisson

[JediRelentless]

Thanks Eric.

[Joonbeams]

...

 

2.) You guys still ignore, in every livestream, in 5.1, in the changes already announced in 5.2 and now in this post the elephant in the room with the command crates. The RNG is AWFUL. You get more meaningless stuff than anything else. It is frustrating (not exciting), and it is the number one cause that had the members of my guild decide enough was enough. Even if you make the crates come every thirty minutes. If people are not getting anything useful for 15-20 crates, it is still 5-7 hours of grinding to get one piece of somewhat useful gear. Until you guys address the utter frustration with the RNG currently, speeding up getting that frustration won't do you any good.

 

 

I've tried in vain to make this point repeatedly. It gets ignored. But this is, quite simply, the easiest fix the devs could implement - could be done in a Tues patch and would have max impact. So long as people are getting crap drops, increasing the rate of crap attainment does nothing but more crap faster. Fix the loot tables and make useful items drop MUCH more frequently and nearly all of the major complaints go away. It's quite obvious - indeed the big, pink-spotted elephant in the room. If the goal is really to stop the bleeding and be responsive, they would do this immediately.

[GalacticKegger]

The goal of 5.1 was to give a method for people to supplement Galactic Command so that aside from Command Crates, they could work towards a specific piece of gear. We did that through introducing Unassembled Pieces and Unassembled Tokens. We also added the start of some help for Legacies with Command Tokens as a Legacy Currency and the Legacy Perks.

 

5.1 was just the start of the changes though, and my post above was to let you know when to expect more specifics!

 

-eric

Eric,

 

I can't speak for anyone but myself and our founding guilds (Rep & Imp on Harbinger - PM me if you want to know more) which all but dissolved after the Livestream on the 26th. So here is some feedback for you and your team, and I would ask that you try not to twist it into something other than what it states. Ready? Here goes ...

 

WE DON'T WANT GALACTIC COMMAND.

 

We don't want crates. We don't want unassemled parts or unassemled tokens. We want our Pre-4.0 endgame progression, loot and comm system back. You people are just finding out what we have been trying to tell you since beta last fall ... the system will not handle end game. It's a square peg in a round hole. Stop wasting more precious time and resources grinding it down closer to what you already had, and simply bring what you had back.

 

Enough with all the BS posturing already and restore what every ops veteran in this room (who has been here longer than 15 months) knows works. You're killing us man ... you're killing us.

Edited January 31, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[GrandLordMenace]

Hi Eric,

 

I'm not some fancy game developer but these changes would seem to encourage players to not play the game until they're implemented. For example, if someone said to me there was an expected price drop in something I'm looking to buy in a month then I'd probably just not buy it for a month.

 

Now I've never developed an mmo so excuse me if I'm oversimplifying things here but why on earth would a player not just unsub and then resub when you finally get around to fixing this clearly broken from implementation system?

 

I've never managed a shoe shop so maybe I'm missing the instant "keep paying money for the game" part of this post but all I read is:

 

1: Stop playing the game for now, do something else! We'll reward your time far better soon

2: Please stop PvPing! If you do it in a month you'll get much greater rewards - And for the love of God don't buy anything for the next 6 weeks

3: You know those alts we massively encouraged to level for 12x XP and DvL? Well leave them on the shelf for a while longer and perhaps we'll help them.

 

Any chance you could possibly address these pretty gosh darn valid concerns?

 

Bump, there needs to be a retroactive benefit for these changes. I'm command rank 289 and all these changes are telling me are "stop grinding it'll be fixed later and if you keep grinding you'll waste time."

[ctprock]

so an announcement for an announcement later on ? this is some top tier trolling from BW

[FlavivsAetivs]

Bring back the old system. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

Keep GC, with vast improvements, as a method for non-raiders to get BiS gear.

 

What I've been saying since the Galactic Command system was first announced.

 

~ Eudoxia

[GalacticKegger]

Bring back the old system. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

Keep GC, with vast improvements, as a method for non-raiders to get BiS gear.

 

What I've been saying since the Galactic Command system was first announced.

 

~ Eudoxia

Perfect.

[DanNV]

Eric,

 

I can't speak for anyone but myself and our founding guilds (Rep & Imp on Harbinger - PM me if you want to know more) which all but dissolved after the Livestream on the 26th. So here is some feedback for you and your team, and I would ask that you try not to twist it into something other than what it states. Ready? Here goes ...

 

WE DON'T WANT GALACTIC COMMAND.

 

We don't want crates. We don't want unassemled parts or unassemled tokens. We want our Pre-4.0 endgame progression, loot and comm system back. You people are just finding out what we have been trying to tell you since beta last fall ... the system will not handle end game. It's a square peg in a round hole. Stop wasting more precious time and resources grinding it down closer to what you already had, and simply bring what you had back.

 

Enough with all the BS posturing already and restore what every ops veteran in this room (who has been here longer than 15 months) knows works. You're killing us man ... you're killing us.

 

Quoting all of this for emphasis. His guild isn't the only one feeling this way. I don't think it can be said in a planer manner.

 

At this point I'd settle for the old PVP gearing system for everything as well, but one or the other needs to be done, and not months from now, but tomorrow since it's too late today.

[cyrusramsey]

So again an announcement of an announcement. Dont get me wrong i think its good that you try to keep in touch with the community. This method js a bit of .... tingling under my skin because i sooo curious ! ^^ Thanks for posting !

 

 

 

Sorry for picking on you, but ! i think gearing in 4.0 was way too easy ... . Is rng a good solution as it is now ? In my Opinion no its not. So let me see they deleted the token version. I dont think they put it back in with a harder version to get a token just to be mean. They did it with reason , because the community wanted to have tokens back. So please stop and be realistic that it never wont be as easy as in 4.0. Although .... you can have it quite easy with just farming end boss id's. Is this new system better .... no , but at least you can see that they are really trying to get as close to the wishes of the community as they can / want.

 

I'm not sure why you're telling me this.. I have only mentioned 4.0 when others bring it up (but am more than happy to share my view again!), but... I could play a certain way pre-2.0, during 2.0, 3.0, 4.0.. had to make adjustments.. but I could play how I wanted, now I can not. I physically can not gear the characters I want to play for the content I want to play with them, within a year.

 

I started playing when the game went f2p, I became a sub with 2.0, I have never had full BiS gear. I did not farm EV/KP during 4.0. I did not have or want a raiding guild, I was fine with my tiny group of friends and with playing pugs for the more difficult content. Gearing was NOT fast for me in 4.0, but at least it was possible, by putting some time and effort into it.

 

Now the problem with gearing being too fast in 4.0 is that it was too fast for a certain subsection of people, and that's the exact subsection of people that they've also tried to placate (though I get the impression that this didn't succeed very well, if at all) with the 5.1 changes. These did not benefit a player like me at all.

 

I'm not looking for "RIGHT NAO!", but with available math I concluded that, depending on 'rng', getting as many characters geared as I had in 4.0 (and I have more characters now, but.. let's just focus on maintaining, rather than expanding) to the extent I had them geared in 4.0 (we're talking some 224, a lot of 220 and 216, even a lot of that being non-set piece--ah, I'm going on a rant in a rant, but people leave out that part when they compare the systems, the many 216 cookies that would drop from SM ops were not optimal, but a great help in quickly getting many characters up to a bare minimum, there is no fast way to get a lot of entry stuff anymore.. even the low-end gear is a huge grind if you play enough characters) would take me anywhere from 30 to 60 WEEKS, based on how much time I'd tend to spend on the game, and the kind of content I (try to) play.

 

I'm not looking for instant gratification, I'm looking for playing difficult content with many characters to be possible, and for more people than only the ones who have a guild set up to carry them through the process.

 

I don't mind doing the legwork, but am not going to accept the game turning into nothing but legwork.

Edited January 31, 2017 by cyrusramsey

[Ottoattack]

so an announcement for an announcement later on ? this is some top tier trolling from BW

 

I thought all their posts were trolling

[Quraswren]

Damage Control, just call it what it is

 

Thats exactly what it is. Which is fine but they got a whole lot more to do that what he mentioned or what 5.1 tried to accomplish. So far, it's all a joke when it comes to fixing things. BW claims the hear but it's still like that evil Genie. Sure they hear the wish but they always want to warp it into something you didn't really ask for.

 

Thats my worry about all this. The claim that BW is listening. Well that doesn't mean jack when they warp it into something no one really asked for or worse yet, only put in the littlest of effort and claim to the high heavens, "Oh look what we gave you."

 

The real kicker is can you imagine the number of subscribers that must have left to get a game company to start reversing course this early in their new expansion? An expansion so badly designed that had to have caused a massive lose of subs to get bw to start changing their brand new expansion. The loss of money talk to game companies and the lack of it is clearly speaking rather loudly right now.

 

Damage control is fine. Lets just hope bw isn't too late because to see these things changes coming you have to wait 2+ months, paying $30+ dollars, replaying extremely old content or the paltry new mediocre uprisings for just the hope bw gets something right in 2 months.

 

Thats a long wait and a lot to give for a game that has no more new than this game has.

[AscendingSky]

Eric, I realize you have to say what you're told to say, however, this is about as close to a lie as you can get. 5.1 did nothing to help alts. Nothing, zip, zero. It's nice talk, but it did nothing to help the grind and every dev who worked on it knows it. It was an attempt at damage control, that's all. Just PR. The time to get gear via PVP is longer than the grind to GC 300. The drop rate in Ops is stupidly low, and designed to be that way. In spite of months of customer feedback saying the game was on the wrong track, that we wanted gearing similar to 3.0 and 4.0, BW has continued to go down the RNG for end game gear route in the failed hope that subs will keep subbing and chasing that magic payout. If BW was proud of how the system worked, they'd publish the odds of getting the gear piece you need from a given crate. If BW was proud of the system you wouldn't still be changing it and hoping subs will stop leaving.

 

Your "ability to work towards a specific piece of gear" is a joke, too. Go back and do the math on how long it will take a group to get everyone that piece of gear, assuming they can down the one and only boss dropping it. Or, go back and read the posts, the math for both PVE and PVP has been posted more than once.

 

We all know that if 5.1 had made a major dent in the loss of subs, you wouldn't be posting today that there will be more changes "soon". We all know that if anyone actually believe trickling out Ops bosses over a year was going to keep subs you wouldn't be announcing more changes "soon".

 

Right now the game sucks. That's all there is to it. It's a horrendous grind with absolutely no end in sight, no matter how fast you say we'll get boxes. Most of us are smart enough to realize that BW will just reduce the drop rate of the gear to compensate for the increased rate of acquiring boxes. So, if the odds are now 1.50 that we get some sort of set piece and BW increases the drop rate on boxes 400%, you'll also reduce the drop rate to 1/200 so the time to actually get gear doesn't decrease. If you decrease the time to get gear you have to admit that GC was a failure and we all know Ben and his team won't ever admit that.

 

Once again, you hit the nail squarely on the head. I don't blame Musco for saying what he's being told to say; he's just a mouthpiece, if he wants to keep his job he has to toe the line. But seriously, EAWare... we can see these are obvious lies. 5.1 didn't help alt gearing AT ALL. In a way, it made it worse, because by nerfing bolster on PvP you've doomed alts without gear to almost constantly lose matches and get far fewer components, which makes the grind even harder for them.

 

And the ops drop rates are HORRIBLE. I've seen people get invited to fill an empty slot in an ops group, and then not be allowed to roll on loot at the end because nothing else dropped in the entire ops and the guild who ran the group wants to keep the drops for themselves because getting those drops is so miserable in the first place. This has happened to MULTIPLE PEOPLE I know already, because even in HMs loot rarely drops off anything but the final boss, so people are getting desperate and cutthroat about it.

Edited January 31, 2017 by AscendingSky

[yeldarbnotned]

Bring back the old system. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

Keep GC, with vast improvements, as a method for non-raiders to get BiS gear.

 

What I've been saying since the Galactic Command system was first announced.

 

~ Eudoxia

 

This really says it all. Save your game and just do it, please.

[Wayshuba]

So you rather have them do nothing. Cant win if they dont change it and cant win if they do. Some people are not ever going to be happy.

 

I think what he meant is they are NOT fixing it. The continue to make it even worse. Over 1,200 PvP matches for gearing, really? That was their FIX.

 

The number one problem is how bad the RNG is on the crates. How you get more useless junk than anything. So, in all the livestreams since going live, in 5.1, in changes discussed for 5.2 and in this very post, where have they addressed that this is the NUMBER ONE problem with the current system?

 

See the problem?

 

I'll add one other salient point and this is a good one:

 

Since 5.0, specifically the GC System, it really seems to have become and us (customers) versus them (company) scenario. The example given was how maybe a half dozen people (out of thousands) farmed gold mobs on Tatooine and hit the cap in three days. BW was quick (like four days into the launch) to nerf the Champion mob CxP. But when players (customers) are in a major uproar about the length of the grind, BW is going to take until April to make a fix that benefits their customers. As was stated, this is completely *** backwards from the way any sane company operates, regardless of the business. This is why so many people are in complete disbelief about what is happening with this system.

Edited January 31, 2017 by Wayshuba

[Velgar]

They certainly need to move fast on this, the panic is definitely showing on their part and after today I can certainly see why. I am on JC, logged in this afternoon to check guild stuff on both sides. I regularly log in early to mid afternoon when I do that and populations on both Imp and Rep fleets were way lower than I ahve ever seen on a weekday at that same time. Only in the 40s on the Rep side, only one map instance. And only about 70 on the Imp side, just the one map instance. Used to be well over 100 and sometimes a second instance during 4.0 era..

[AllisonLightning]

And the ops drop rates are HORRIBLE. I've seen people get invited to fill an empty slot in an ops group, and then not be allowed to roll on loot at the end because nothing else dropped in the entire ops and the guild who ran the group wants to keep the drops for themselves because getting those drops is so miserable in the first place. This has happened to MULTIPLE PEOPLE I know already, because even in HMs loot rarely drops off anything but the final boss, so people are getting desperate and cutthroat about it.

 

Like I've said in game, I refuse to join Ops groups at the moment, migraines running them notwithstanding. Because they want backfill to get their chance at the loot and they aren't going to let anyone get in. Any guilds running this kind of scam should get named and shamed because they don't deserve backfill. I don't feel sorry for guilds who do it either and find issues with backfill.

 

 

The boxes are an absolute nightmare RNG. They are so bad that cartel crates are better. Let's just repeat that, crates where you spend CC give you a better chance at a gold item than those crates do of the set pieces. You don't even get higher chances the higher in the tier you get, the loot table is just so drowned by garbage. And then there's the component system which is punishing and brutal.

 

So every time Bioware opens their mouth, they make me want to uninstall.