Galactic Command - Tier 4 and More

[SithSkereKaan]

Don’t you guys have this feeling when something around the house is broken and you just do something real quick to fix it, but don’t realize that a couple of weeks later it will break again and you will set out to patch it once more?

Where have I seen this recently?

[marmieej]

Eric,

 

This is my first post and that should tell you something. My guild has been busting our *** to get Command Ranks so that we can craft as much BiS gear as possible so that we can do end game raiding. So after 3 months dropping a bombshell that what we have worked hard to achieve has been superseded is beyond demoralizing. We have worked hard to get to Command Rank 300 (and other alts into Tier3). To reward us with 100 more levels and brand new tier of gear that makes our current items obsolete might just be too much for my guild and myself.

 

As a developer myself, I have always tried to defend the game, BW, you and your teams. I understand the difficulty of building software, the process around it and all its intricacies. I play this game as a get-away, a stress relief. The Grind is not fun. More of it is does not make it better. Unfortunately this latest announcement might be too much to take.

 

Please listen to the people on these forums. We are your reoccurring subscriber base. We are your hardcore, repeat players. At the end of the day we all want the same thing: a fun game with multiple end game components that we all can be proud of and enjoy. Galactic Command is not working as you planned. Adding a new level is not the answer.

 

Lorac

- Shadowlands

- Subscriber since Hutt Cartel

[Sportiva]

When are you going to address making this craptastic system more friendly to alts?

[Quraswren]

When are you going to address making this craptastic system more friendly to alts?

 

Apparently their technical skills to make GC legacy wide are more than just lacking. It's absent.

 

There goal is to make sure you grind extremely old content till you can't stand the game anymore. Making ALT friendly GC would go against that.

 

I wouldn't expect it to happen or ALTs get much of a relief anytime soon.

[JattaGin]

I won't comment on the topic or discussions, just want to say that I encourage Eric to continue communicating like that. I appreciate it and I think that most of us are able to read between the lines. I think at this point of time that he has found the maximum amount of info he can give out without getting troubles within the job environment. I know that many players would want more details and info, but just by the way he is writing, I can tell more than he is revealing. I find his new way of phrasing quite smart. I worked in marketing, so I have some kind of understanding of certain restrictions from above.

 

Anyway, call me white knight if you want, the point is: My post is a heads up to Eric. I surely have been critical towards him in the past, but during the last weeks, he has done a - to me - satisfying communication job. The rest is not up to him.

 

TL;DR: Thanks, Eric.

[Deewe]

Hey folks,

 

**snip**

we are going to be adding Tier 4 gear and another 100 Command Ranks to Galactic Command in Game Update 5.2.

 

**snip**

 

-eric

And then 100 more Command Ranks in tier 5 with even higher stepping between the ranks.

How many iterations till you realize you are just alienating your player base?

 

Mark my words, the next step in SWTOR will be R.O.T.D.P.

.

• Rise of the Disgruntled Players
  

 

.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Deewe

[Fardarter]

I dont know how you guys do it. I haven't played in months because for me a few chapters a year just doesnt keep me engaged. I think back to a game like everquest..made 18 year ago. That game had 10x the content in the first 5 years as SWTOR does.

 

We will know in the next few months I guess if many other feel the way i do as it will show up in subs. Anyways for those of you sticking around I wish you all the best,

[DreadtechSavant]

...you guys need to seriously work on your communication.

 

Just throwing out a "Oh hai! More grind!" twitter post on a Sunday without any further information is not the way to do it, especially not when considering how touchy the Galactic Command topic continues to be.

 

Strive to offer solid information your players first, then bait the rest of the world.

 

Ciao, Aronis!

 

I agree with this. Info should be given here first then to the rest. Anyway thanks for the update BW.

[Icykill_]

This result is a self-fulfilling event in my view. So many players drank the GC KoolAid and went binging through GC levels that the analytics tell the studio the system works, is actively being applied by a lot of players, and encourages the studio to keep on keeping on.

 

* Make PvP all about skill, and remove gear completely from the power curve of PvP. PvP players want to... PvP.. not chase gear. Sure.. some are gear chasers.. but that is to try to get an edge on other PvPers through gear. REMOVE gear from the equation in PvP.. period.

 

* Make PvE reward GC in a balanced manner to time and risk required, so that players do not feel compelled to play what pays best, but rather what they like to play.

 

* Make the vendors work based upon Command Tokens only, and drop the second grind of PvP and OPs for yet another token dependency.

 

* Install a "Trade-in Vendor" where a player that is staring at yet another belt or gloves, or whatever drop can turn said item in to the vendor in exchange for an slot item they do not yet have. We already know you know how to make Trade-in Vendors.

 

>>> Unless/until the above steps are made.... /boycott-GC as any focus of your attention as a player. Only by boycotting the system can you encourage the studio to change the system. You have other alternatives for gear. If the studio saw players working the other alternatives and ignoring GC.. they might be motivated to shift their direction.

 

I agree with every point you've made. But how do you boycott the GC if you're playing lvl 70? And with acceleratorated CXP they will be getting even more skewed results. For them it's self fulfilling prophecy.

[Icykill_]

Hey folks,

 

As many of you saw from our social media post over the weekend, we are going to be adding Tier 4 gear and another 100 Command Ranks to Galactic Command in Game Update 5.2. I wanted to let you know that there is quite a bit more to it than just another Tier! Here are some other notes:

• Tier 4 Command Crates are going to work a bit differently than Tier 1-3. You will much more consistently get set bonus gear in this Tier.
  
• We are making adjustments to Tier 1-3 as well to make that leveling/gearing experience better. We want to make sure it feels rewarding to get higher in Command Rank/Tier.
  
• There are other gearing related changes coming based on your feedback such as adjustments to boss drops in Operations.

Hold tight! We know that you have a lot of questions about why we are doing a new Tier and more Command Ranks. We have forum posts coming this week with a detailed breakdown of all that is coming and changing in 5.2.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

So will this higher lvl gear create a bigger gear gap in pvp than there is now or are you going to boost Bolster again to accommodate it. Either that or you have to reverse Bolster the higher lvl gear.

I really hope you've thought this through and have a system in place to lvl out the gear gap and not wait for people to point out how bad it is in Pvp. Waiting to see isn't the solution.

If you haven't got a system in place then you need to work on it fast. I can guarantee if you don't, it will push pvp into the gave once and for all. The only people who will be able to pvp are the ones who already have the best gear when you realesse the higher gear. Any toons that just get to lvl 70 will be steam rolled with just a look from higher geared people.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Icykill_

[Nightblazer]

Please just remove galactic command.

 

Won't happen. Maybe when 6.0 during the next gear change

[RACATW]

This is the first time I've ever read any game update and laughed.

[kimiko_tomiyama]

It has been my experience since I started playing, shortly after RotHC came out, that I had just about finished gearing all my toons to the max when the next gearing level came out. I'm nowhere near getting a full set of 230 blue gear on even one toon. Now they are adding more grind. As a poster on Dulfy observed, with each new ops boss will be another 100 levels of grind and group level gear gets even further out of reach.

 

To quote a friend "It's like they doubled down on the stupid. Why are you still playing?""

[docbenwayddo]

I've tried, but every reasoned and verbose post I start describing the base response this evokes in me, ends in foul nonsense that nearly smells as bad as the steaming pile deposited by the southern end of a northbound Nerf that is Galactic Command.

So I'll just leave it at that and say that without action to update expiry date, my sub billing will fail if I do nothing.

Not doing things is my super power.

I'm literally not doing an infinite number of things as I type this.

 

This announcement makes me want to do nothing.

[October]

have you guys considered: removing galactic command

[OfficerDonNZ]

have you guys considered: removing galactic command

 

That sadly will never happen. If they removed CG they admit that they got it wrong and screwed up. it's also Ben Irving's baby that was sold to the EA higher ups as a way to keep people subbed longer but it's been having the opposite effect.

[stoopicus]

"We're losing subs! Quick, double down on the RNG!"

[Klaus]

where do i find "unsubscribe" button?

[Shwarzchild]

Simply put: It's far far far too early to introduce new levels of gear. Period. End of story. Full stop.

 

Releasing more gear tiers while the system itself is absolutely still very much broken is just....well I don't think it's incredibly prudent.

 

4.0, now 5.0 just haven't been good enough. While I liked Kotfe chapter 1-9 and 14-16 (16 to a degree, it still irks me that its the battle for odessen....but doesn't take place on odessen at all). and I do like the story of Kotet, the rest is just not good. What would have been much better would have been to make Odessen, and Zakuul full fledged planets like Makeb was. I never once get the feeling that I'm on a big open environment of a planet on either. I think the game suffers from such a drastic departure from what we had in vanilla. Basically going full bore away from the vanilla model absolutely has had a destructive effect.

 

The way this game would be great again would be a return to class stories, full planets, regular companion crews with no more soulless things that inhabit a list., with side stories (isnt that what bioware games do best and one big reason people get hooked on their IPs?). They need operation content. They need flashpoint content (not this uprising garbage. Seriously, the person or people who think mobbing the player with add waves needs to seriously go somewhere else). We legit need a return to what the basics this game was built on were. Charge for your expansions if you have to in order to make this happen. I'd bet most people would happily shell out money for a real expansion. None of us understand this need to have free expansions.

 

This galactic command stuff is just....not good enough which has kind of been the theme with the last 2+ years. Things just aren't good enough. It's why this game has become one of the least played MMOs out there. Just simply not good enough.

 

100 more levels? For what? Why? There's no point.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Shwarzchild

[Elvija]

Eric, thanks for the update.

 

Speaking as one who does not do that many operations or PVP, could it be possible that there would be Unassembled Gear Tokens and Pieces into the RNG of the CXP crates? I feel like in some ways that would help a lot. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think it would only be fair, so that players, who like me, focus on dailies and story content, also can have a chance to get geared faster.

 

Can't wait for Iokath. Ignore the haters. But do listen to those who have a solid opinion pointed out in these threads.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Elvija

[GalacticKegger]

I'm just waiting for a James Ohlen-esque Freudian slip when Ben, Charles or Eric refers to Command Crates or their contents as, well ... content. Edited February 28, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[Halinalle]

What's the purpose of 100 more levels with absolutely no new content?

 

Higher item rating = higher dps. So some players can finally complete Blood Hunt in master mode or EV/KP SM.

 

I don't know if there is more than those three because I've only heard complaints about difficulty in these three.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Halinalle

[ShaneDavies]

It still isn't enough to make me re sub.

[midianlord]

It'll be good to have 55+ Gb on my SSD free again for software that's actually worth my money.

 

Not to mention also free of God-only-knows-what mal-/spy-/adware EA bundles into their bloatware nowadays.

 

Thanks for nothing.

[Costello]

Aside from how utterly insane this seems that a new tier of gear is being added at this stage to a system that is generally considered awful. And I appreciate there are people with better luck, hell when I was getting a BIS piece every 10 or so crates I was like this ain't that bad, since going about 30 crates of crap my view has changed.

 

However my question, do the development team honestly think they are adding sufficient content with 5.2 to justify 100 new levels of Galactic Command. I.e. is this increase inline with the increase in content or is the game in such a bad state that every 6 months 50 hours of new grinding of old content will be added to the Galactic command system in place of any real content?

 

It seems from what little we know of the game that it is hemorrhaging players badly and instead of a fun experience the experience on offer is more mindless grinding. If the 4th pillar is now grinding and not story, can you please take a page from Funcom's TSW which is revamping the game experience to make it more fun. Currently combat is cool down management, PvP is stun lock and pointless, class balance is a joke and the story (had to throw this in) is a plot hole incoherent mess.