Gearing Changes in 5.1.1 and 5.1.2

[TPooFlinger]

Will the cxp we get from disintegrating the contents of the Command Crates be affected by the 250% boost?

[TUXs]

This statement makes no sense.

 

You have loot tables for the crates, right? Loot tables are simply arrays with drop rates in them for each item. CHANGE THE DROP RATES to favor things people obviously want (like bonus set items), and lower the drop rates on things people do not grind Cxp for (ie: drop the nonsense items in the tables, like empty shells, companion gifts, jawa scraps, random world drops, etc.

Something I can agree with you on!!!

[PlasmaJohn]

Try another game. You may find one you like that actually seems to care about it's customers. You might also find that regular, real content releases make them way more engaging.

If only there was one to go to.

 

I'm totally burnt out on fantasy, not at all a fan of horror, and my primary interest is in PvE. I had been thinking of giving STO a shot buuuuuut it looks like PWE and Trion just laid off a bunch of people so that's now a non-starter. Post-apoc/survival is just fantasy with a thin sci-fi skin.

 

And the killer feature: No predatory business practices.

[teclado]

Remind me again in which previous expansion top tier gear dropped from things other than Nim bosses?

Last expansion, 4.0. Remember that the highlighted HM of the week dropped 224 pieces, so everybody farmed EV/KP "Hard Mode" whenever they were up. Easy 224. Oh and NiM ops had a "chance" to drop 224 lololol.

Edited February 3, 2017 by teclado

[Methylium]

Thanks, I am happy with those changes Keep the community work up, I like seeing the why and whats next. Good work!

[AscendingSky]

Something I can agree with you on!!!

 

When Andryah is calling out EAWare on stuff they say that doesn't make any sense, you know they've screwed up.

[Avicii]

Loot tables and drop rates are a database change. We have seen Bioware change loot tables far faster than what you're proposing. We have seen you do it with the cartel market numerous times so it is not that much more substantial.

 

You keep making minor changes hoping that we will just stop complaining.

 

This is losing you subs and you cannot admit that it was the wrong move.

 

Exactly...

 

Change the variable drop percentage in the DB for set bonus T1 gear at the very least. All they have done is exactly what people said they did not want them to do. Increasing the rate you get crap is not the answer, its still crap. It still solves none of the issues. SMH...

 

However these changes will probably stop some of the bleeding of subs.

 

But still no catch up mechanics for new returning players, nothing that addresses the increasing gear gap in PvP for players with NO 208 set bonus. Running into to a player that has 242/240 gear with 15k+ more HPs along with all other stats and set bonus is a completely rewarding experience in ranked, for the player and their teammates.

 

Sigh... of recognition they will not make any meaningful changes so that the end game is fun for all players.

[Voblat]

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost

100% * 10% * 25% = 137.5% CXP earned

 

Here is a more extreme example to see where this gets complex:

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost + highlighted activity + DvL Bonus

100% * 10% * 25% * 20% * 15% = 189.75% CXP earned

 

 

Aside from my annoyance at

 

A) not addressing the actual problem and

 

B) including paid for boosts in all calculations to make it seem better than it is when talking to people already paying monthly to play I just want everyone to look at the above.

 

Then remember - GC is supposed to be a simplified system because crystals were too complicated.

 

It has become a farce.

[louisfriend]

As just a little shout out. Please add those bundles of unassembled components to the GSF daily and Weekly as well.

 

 

ps. GSF always appreciates any and all attention you give to it.

[SebastiaanZ]

Can you please add Unassembled Components to Flashpoints? Thats a must ... not all of us want to be playing PvP. Edited February 3, 2017 by SebastiaanZ

[DanNV]

If only there was one to go to.

 

I'm totally burnt out on fantasy, not at all a fan of horror, and my primary interest is in PvE. I had been thinking of giving STO a shot buuuuuut it looks like PWE and Trion just laid off a bunch of people so that's now a non-starter. Post-apoc/survival is just fantasy with a thin sci-fi skin.

 

And the killer feature: No predatory business practices.

 

STO is ok, but not something I can see myself doing a lot of. I have a F2P account there and have fiddled with leveling a bit.

 

Fantasy is ok with me, so I am playing with ESO. FFXIV is mostly text box reading when interacting with NPCs and my wife doesn't like the reading, so that's a non-starter although the gameplay looks good. One of my team is going (or actually may have gone back to) EVE. I don't know anything about it, so can't say if it's good or bad.

 

I can say the guilds I am in here are all slowly bleeding subs. Even the big ones are loosing qualifying accounts and a rate that should be alarming to BW, (And it isn't people changing guilds because the membership numbers are pretty constant.)

[casirabit]

All CXP Packs that you earn from drops and Missions are now Bind on Legacy.

This change is to help a player distribute CXP around their Legacy if they choose to do so.

 

 

Thank you for this. This will benefit some of my other toons. Since most of my toons are either heals or dps this will help me.

[DarthDymond]

How exactly is this helpful in any way for people to get their setbonus gear? This doesn't increase the chances, it just technically allows you to pull the slotmachine lever more often in a given amount of time.

Even though the odds of getting a "win" from each individual "pull of the slot machine lever" is currently staying the same, if they're doubling how many "pulls" you get for the same amount of effort, then that amount of effort is now yielding notably improved odds.

 

Say it takes [X] Warzones to get a command crate now, after this change [X] Warzones will get you at least two command crates. And while each individual crate's odds won't have changed (that would be the Gambler's Fallacy), your overall odds for getting the gear you wanted out of playing [X] Warzones will have improved because of having two crates instead of one.

 

For example, if you have a 5% chance of getting a certain item from one crate, you'll have a 9.75% chance from two - nearly doubling your odds.

 

(Reiterating a point from here, breakdown of the math helpfully provided by Bristol here.)

Edited February 3, 2017 by DarthDymond

[Andryah]

If only there was one to go to.

 

I'm totally burnt out on fantasy, not at all a fan of horror, and my primary interest is in PvE. I had been thinking of giving STO a shot buuuuuut it looks like PWE and Trion just laid off a bunch of people so that's now a non-starter. Post-apoc/survival is just fantasy with a thin sci-fi skin.

 

And the killer feature: No predatory business practices.

 

I almost always have 2 or 3 MMOs in my play rotation at any given time. I will mainly play one, and play the other ones as change of pace and to mitigate burn-out on any given MMO, or if I find I am becoming frustrated with my main MMO.

 

The real challenge for other MMO choices is that for many players, SWTOR is still a strong preference for the IP, the approach to story, the smooth leveling experience through all classes. Honestly, I have yet to find one since SWTOR launched that would make me put it on "alternate status" in my play. And over the years, it is not uncommon to see returning players comment in the forum that they have a much better appreciation for SWTOR after taking a break for a while.

 

That said.... SWTOR is NOT the go-to MMO in my view if PvP and/or Raiding is the only thing you really like to do. But I do not believe either of these content segments represent a "majority interest" in the player base.

 

And for player seeking the "perfect" MMO.... no such beast exists. But I hear that if you are lucky enough to capture a live unicorn, you can trade it in for a life time subscription token to the "perfect MMO".

Edited February 3, 2017 by Andryah

[casirabit]

If only there was one to go to.

 

I'm totally burnt out on fantasy, not at all a fan of horror, and my primary interest is in PvE. I had been thinking of giving STO a shot buuuuuut it looks like PWE and Trion just laid off a bunch of people so that's now a non-starter. Post-apoc/survival is just fantasy with a thin sci-fi skin.

 

And the killer feature: No predatory business practices.

 

STO may be fun if you like space missions. Though there are planet missions where you can take 4 of your crew members most of the missions I ever got was space. I hate space so I stopped playing STO because of that.

[Sargrith]

Remind me again in which previous expansion top tier gear dropped from things other than Nim bosses?

 

 

4.0 the weekly hm dropped top end gear.

[Andryah]

4.0 the weekly hm dropped top end gear.

 

4.0 is a poor example to use.

 

They jumped the shark in 4.0 with their free fall approach to gaining high end gear. Which does not justify the state of GC/Cxp right now.... just that it was just a bad a move as GC in 5.0 has been, though in the opposite extreme.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Andryah

[casirabit]

The PvP Daily and Weekly Missions now reward a batch of Unassembled Components.

This is one of the changes we are making to help players in getting Unassembled Components faster. It also incentivizes dabbling into PvP often.

 

Sorry Eric, Nothing you add to pvp will have me dabbling into PVP often. I did it once for a companion but I rather walk on hot coals barefooted than do PVP.

[MooseMcKenna]

Why wait til Tuesday? Why not activate changes now rather then wait til later?

[PlasmaJohn]

This statement makes no sense.

Agreed, somebody is telling "not-so" stories.

 

Eric, tell your team we're not a bunch of 12 year olds, well not all of us. Among the kids quite a few of us adults are doctors, lawyers, economists, engineers, dba's etc. You guys are dragging your feet and we will call you out when you make ridiculous statements like the one highlighted. If what you said is the truth then you have a much larger problem called gross incompetence.

 

You have loot tables for the crates, right? Loot tables are simply arrays with drop rates in them for each item. CHANGE THE DROP RATES to favor things people obviously want (like bonus set items), and lower the drop rates on things people do not grind Cxp for (ie: drop the nonsense items in the tables, like empty shells, companion gifts, jawa scraps, random world drops, etc.

The nonsense items are extras and have no effect on the quality of the chase items. What they need to adjust is significantly improve the quality of the chase item that drops. Greens should never drop. Set bonus pieces are far too rare especially when repeats are such a problem.

 

I can see it taking much more effort to put in mechanics that check for a prior drop and then no make duplicate drops from a crate.... but with your moves to increase the pace of earning Cxp.. this is less important.

A very easy way to fix this mess is to replace all the drops with a random amount of Unassembled Components (33/50/75) +/- 10% and random amount of a new currency that can be exchanged for CXP, cosmetics, companion gifts, pets, toys, mounts, reputation tokens, etc. Command Tokens can now go the way of the dodo.

 

--

 

A final note to Eric, Ben, EA management, and any EA investor: Galactic Command is NOT improving retention or encouraging new subscriptions. It is doing the exact opposite. Your account metrics should be making that painfully obvious. The sooner it is removed, relegated to an alternative gear path, or morphed into something that's not a hardcore RNG-fest grind that makes even the likes of Nexxon blush the better.

[Andryah]

 

Sorry Eric, Nothing you add to pvp will have me dabbling into PVP often. I did it once for a companion but I rather walk on hot coals barefooted than do PVP.

 

Yeah... the idea of incentivizing one form of content over another in todays MMOs is generally a bad idea. They really should have learned this by now.... and in some cases they appear to have figured it out... yet they keep going overboard... particularly with respect to PvP... .. probably to try to squelch much of the ongoing complaints that generally always come from avid PvPers.

 

What they should be doing is creating a balanced incentive across all content, such that players play what they like, rather then grind on what they don't like. And I use the term "grind" here deliberately... because in general, players playing what they like and have fun doing does not devolve to feeling like a grind, but feeling forced by incentives to do content the player does not feel is fun IS in fact the basis of feelings of weariness over "the grind".

Edited February 3, 2017 by Andryah

[geofraynils]

Hey folks,

 

 

Let’s take a look at what the change from multiplicative to additive means. Warning, if you don’t like math, you’re not going to enjoy this 

 

The way CXP and its respective boosts work right now is that the % increases multiply with each other, hence the term multiplicative. Assuming that normal CXP gains =100%, this is what multiplicative boosting looks like:

 

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost

100% * 10% * 25% = 137.5% CXP earned

 

Here is a more extreme example to see where this gets complex:

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost + highlighted activity + DvL Bonus

100% * 10% * 25% * 20% * 15% = 189.75% CXP earned

 

As you can see, the more boosts you add into the equation the more difficult it becomes to tell how much of a bonus you are actually getting. Since we are going to be running a 250% CXP event and adding a 100% boost. We thought this would be a good time to make that math cleaner for players to figure out and so that our % boost wouldn’t get difficult to manage. Now, the same math from above would look like this:

 

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost

100% + 10% + 25% = 135% CXP earned

 

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost + highlighted activity + DvL Bonus

100% + 10% + 25% + 20% + 15% = 170% CXP earned

 

One thing you will notice is that the % you earn with additive is lower than that of multiplicative. That is one of the reasons that we are making this change under the new event, so that you aren’t actually losing any CXP earned. We also will factor this into future changes to ensure that the additive change isn’t a nerf to the CXP you earn. Especially since our goal is to ensure you are earning it faster, not slower.

 

 

writing math is so difficult....

 

CXP + Legacy Boost + CXP boost

100% * 10% * 25% = 137.5% CXP earned

In math (the real ones ^^) : 100% * 10% * 25% = 0.025 = 2.5%

I think there is a mistake here. Maybe something like this look like better :

CXP * (1+Legacy boost)*(1+Cxp boost) = CXp * 1.1*1.25 = CXP * 1.375

So basic Cxp + 37.5% of this amount

 

CXP + legacy boost + CXP boost + highlighted activity + DvL Bonus

100% * 10% * 25% * 20% * 15% = 7.5*10-4

It may be :

CXP * (1+10%)*(1+25%)*(1+20%)*(1+15%) = CXP*1.8975 = CXP*189.75%

 

The new percentages are correct but this is not the way proportion works.... as always in video game and medias who don't apply the right rules.

 

Why aren't the operation cxp changes earlier (the 7th ?) ? Will they be retroactive on past operation boost we earned before these changes ? I mean can we stack operation boost and have profit of changes later ?

[Jerba]

Remind me again in which previous expansion top tier gear dropped from things other than Nim bosses?

Having top-tier gear restricted to nightmare operations is fine if and only if:

1. There is new NiM content to get the gear from, and
   
2. PvP gear is separate from PvE.
   

Without new content, having to regrind gear to get back where you were pre-5.0 is frustrating, and merging PvE with PvP gear means PvP players can get top-tier gear without any effort, only time invested matters, so why are PvE players forced to run the hardest content to get top-tier gear?

Edited February 3, 2017 by Jerba

[Talon_strikes]

Aside from my annoyance at

 

A) not addressing the actual problem and

 

B) including paid for boosts in all calculations to make it seem better than it is when talking to people already paying monthly to play I just want everyone to look at the above.

 

Then remember - GC is supposed to be a simplified system because crystals were too complicated.

 

It has become a farce.

Maybe the crystals weren't as Exciting™!

[DarthZaul]

Increasing components from WZ = so GSF is dead again lol, well that lasted a few weeks.

250% and legacy stuff is good. Would be better to get a % for ops rather than just 'greatly increased'.