What was wrong with the old system for gearing?

[AscendingSky]

What was wrong with normal cell phones before "smart" phones were invented? Nothing. They made calls and sent messages. But someone decided to try and improve on them (famously at the cost of durability and battery life).

 

Nah, it's better to live in the dark ages and never try to improve anything. Let's all just go back to playing Pong.

 

This is such an enormous false equivalency it is laughable. Leave that poor abused strawman alone; what did he ever do to you?

[AscendingSky]

Sure I may have jumped the gun... I accept that. I was basing the opinion on other peoples statements and my experience with other MMOs... Call it an educated guess. But either way it doesn't matter if it was or was not to easy from the player's perspective... I was making the point that it was probably to easy/fast from BW/EA's perspective relative to what they wanted... Which is why they changed it. That is the point I was actually trying to make...

 

Except that's not what you said at all. You ranted on and on about 'carebears' and 'snowflakes' complaining, claiming it was only because they couldn't get BiS immediately. You were beating on that old, ratty, already well abused strawman instead of actually addressing the points at hand. You were making claims about how gearing actually worked in 4.X when you didn't even play during 4.X and were factually wrong on several points. You even tried to claim Galactic Command was only ever meant as a 'bonus', despite the fact 5.0 dropped with it being the ONLY way to receive set bonus gear, with NO method of doing so through PvP or PvE.

 

Quotes:

 

enter the "carebear" ... no willing to put the work in but wants BiS... lol. I hope we never go back to ALTS-R-US (4.0 - ez mode gearing) ... but whatever happens i will enjoy playing the game and deal with it. If you cant, unsub mate... simple as that...

 

ahh yeh... the old strawman type of argument. replacing what i said with things like "the world is flat" etc. Yeah, that doesnt make you right... sorry. And if you think that GC is the primary way of getting gear thats on you... farm it or quit... simple as that. I dont treat it as such... i have alternatives... and get the odd bonus when i "level up".

 

 

Nice job trying to obfuscate the issue, but that is NOT the argument you were making, as anyone who looks at your previous posts can see.

 

Bye, Felicia.

 

P.S. What happened to you swearing up and down you're not deleting/editing anything in your posts? The first one I quoted is now gone!

Edited February 28, 2017 by AscendingSky

[TUXs]

What was wrong with normal cell phones before "smart" phones were invented? Nothing. They made calls and sent messages. But someone decided to try and improve on them (famously at the cost of durability and battery life).

 

Nah, it's better to live in the dark ages and never try to improve anything. Let's all just go back to playing Pong.

Except this is absolutely nothing like that. This is more like having cell phones and you defending them going back to corded phones. We've had RNG gearing and it failed already...this was a step back in time to impact MORE people, not less.

[Valceanu]

Except that's not what you said at all. You ranted on and on about 'carebears' and 'snowflakes' complaining, claiming it was only because they couldn't get BiS immediately. You were beating on that old, ratty, already well abused strawman instead of actually addressing the points at hand. You were making claims about how gearing actually worked in 4.X when you didn't even play during 4.X and were factually wrong on several points. You even tried to claim Galactic Command was only ever meant as a 'bonus', despite the fact 5.0 dropped with it being the ONLY way to receive set bonus gear, with NO method of doing so through PvP or PvE.

 

Nice job trying to obfuscate the issue, but that is NOT the argument you were making, as anyone who looks at your previous posts can see.

 

Bye, Felicia.

 

Oh I still think getting BiS items should be bloody hard in an mmo and detest the new generations "I want it now" attitude. Matter of fact, it doesn't even matter how easy or hard it was before... Let's say it's harder now and take that as a fact. So what? BTW since I only caught GC in it's current form it's this form that I'm taking about which is why I made the point about PvP and PvE. But either way... I play a game cause I like playing it... I don't need positive reinforcement. For me it's sad to see what the MMO player base has become over the past 15 years... But i guess it is what it is. And I still don't know who Felicia is...

Edited February 28, 2017 by Valceanu

[mmmbuddah]

I wasnt playing during 4.0 myself but from what folks said my understanding was that it was super easy to get gear... People were gearing a ridiculous amount of alts in no time... Which from EA/BWs point of view I guess meant low retention for subs since there was no carrot for people to chase at some point...

 

Except that was what was KEEPING people in. There have been a record number of sub drops now because there is not enough NEW content to warrant this massive grind increase. If they introduced a new FULL operation, new flashpoints, new pvp maps / modes , new starfighter maps / modes, new UC enemies, new story , etc, at LEAST 2 -3 times a year, people wouldn't be so annoyed, but as is, we have super old content we are forced to do for the 9999999999999999999999999999999999th time, the same old warzones, the same old starfighter maps, and the same old events. Lots of grind needs new content. IF there is nothing but old content, there should be less grind.

[Sargrith]

What was wrong with normal cell phones before "smart" phones were invented? Nothing. They made calls and sent messages. But someone decided to try and improve on them (famously at the cost of durability and battery life).

 

Nah, it's better to live in the dark ages and never try to improve anything. Let's all just go back to playing Pong.

 

Come on now this isn't even close to a fair assessment of what happened. The system they pushed was first not an upgrade, nor new. It was used before for PvP and failed then as it is now. And clearly even if they are failing to fix it all the changes to it at least point to them recognizing their new system isn't working. Honesty is always the best policy.

[Lium]

Except that was what was KEEPING people in. There have been a record number of sub drops now because there is not enough NEW content to warrant this massive grind increase. If they introduced a new FULL operation, new flashpoints, new pvp maps / modes , new starfighter maps / modes, new UC enemies, new story , etc, at LEAST 2 -3 times a year, people wouldn't be so annoyed, but as is, we have super old content we are forced to do for the 9999999999999999999999999999999999th time, the same old warzones, the same old starfighter maps, and the same old events. Lots of grind needs new content. IF there is nothing but old content, there should be less grind.

This is an excellent point that I never even thought of. They implemented a massive grind without a massive release of new content. Thus, those that care about gear are forced to do old content they've done numerous times before. And I'm not just talking about old content like stuff released in KOTFE. I'm talking about vanilla content from six years ago when the game released.

[Lium]

Also, slightly off-topic, but I actually got a tier 1 piece in a command crate. Could I turn that piece in along with tokens for a tier 2 piece if I wanted to?

[yeldarbnotned]

Also, slightly off-topic, but I actually got a tier 1 piece in a command crate. Could I turn that piece in along with tokens for a tier 2 piece if I wanted to?

 

No, you have to use unassembled components from pvp or ops buy an unassembled piece mk-3, i think. Then, you use that piece along with tokens to buy a tier 1 piece mk-3. Then, you can trade that tier 1 piece along with more unassembled components for an unassembled mk-15 piece. Then, you use that unassembled mk-15 piece along with more tokens to buy the tier two piece. And, so on and so on, up the chain.

Edited February 28, 2017 by yeldarbnotned

[mmmbuddah]

This is an excellent point that I never even thought of. They implemented a massive grind without a massive release of new content. Thus, those that care about gear are forced to do old content they've done numerous times before. And I'm not just talking about old content like stuff released in KOTFE. I'm talking about vanilla content from six years ago when the game released.

 

Exactly my point. Literally the only reason i still play this game is because it is

 

A. Star Wars

 

B...........Well, I was going to say I havent found a mmo that has fun pvp. But even pvp has become annoying AF with GSF being P2W and warzones being you win only if you dont have a life and grind gear 24/7

[MWM_NoVaCaNe]

I have been here since the open beta, always a subscriber. I play everything except PVP (tried GSF couldn't get into it), had a crappy computer until about the v3's timeframe so PVP was always bad for me, then never got into it after I got a good computer. I like things where I cooperate with people to defeat enemies (and not cooperate to defeat other humans). I have been participating in Ops since the beginning. So, that is where this viewpoint is coming from.

 

If you were in a raiding guild, yes it may have seemed easier to gear up than others. If you were a PUG raider, then you leveled slower, but still at an acceptable pace. After all, PUG raiders never ran NIM ops (ok, never say never, so rarely almost never...how's that?) and HM raid PUG groups did an achievement and gear check. Raiding guilds, as has been pointed out, just run whatever is needed to get their guildies geared.

 

There are four main issues here which I will point out for those who haven't gathered it from the 30 different threads about gearing.

 

1. RNG. The least important because if the other three points I am going to make were not points no one would care (ok not no one, but many less people would consider it an issue). Given the state of the game, introducing RNG now is a huge insult. Because it is luck, some people have good luck and get gear at a great or at least acceptable pace, while others do not. First time I read the thread about the guy who is at Command rank 300 and has only two set pieces that was all I needed to know to not participate in this command rank stuff. I play as I always have on alts and highest rank I have is somewhere in the 30's but I have 28 alts on just one server and more alts on other servers. I also rarely play anymore because there is no incentive. RNG and the grind has pulled all desire out of me, because I do not currently have the gear to participate in HM Ops (and have to grind numbingly just to get BACK to that point).

 

2. No New Content. If there were a ton of new content, AND the old content could still be accessed in all of our old gear, many of these issues would not exist. People wouldn't mind "the grind" because at least there would be something new to grind on. I have to grind and pray to the RNG gods just to get back to doing what I was doing before 5.0 and that is totally unacceptable. I have to (yes HAVE to) do a great many things just to get the gear so I can go back to running HM and NiM ops...the same old ops that were always here....or at least here for the past two years. So months of grind per toon just to be able to do what I was doing before they introduced months of grind to get back to doing what I was doing and wanted to be doing all along, HM and NiM ops. If they Kept all the old content at 65 and scaled you down somehow (lots of issues here yes, just trying to make the point) so everyone who wanted to keep playing the Ops and other things at the 65 level in the gear they had could continue to do so, there would have been a ton less outrage. They MADE me grind OLD content just to be able to get back to doing what I was doing before 5.0.

 

3. Alt Unfriendly. This crazy long grind is so extremely unfriendly to alts I have abandoned 20 of my 28 alts on one server and haven't even logged onto any of the other servers since 5.0 to any of my other alts. They get us all to create alts in the DvL event then do a 180 and say "forget all those alts just concentrate on 1 toon" with this new system. Lots of us had plenty of alts before the DvL event and all of us alt-o-holics have 8 more after the event, and play almost none of our alts.

 

4. Terrible loot tables. So you go through the grind just to get crap? Just to NOT get the set piece you need or get the 12th piece of the same gear (which again you don't need after the 1st)? The reward isn't there. And at the end of gearing (back to where you were before the expansion) you get to run all the same old content you were happily running before 5.0.

 

I will not speak for everyone, I cannot, and my opinions are my own, but I do see many people agreeing with these opinions as I have read them on the forums and hear them from people in chat in-game. So, can I say the majority of people (whatever), no. I do not have stats to back up any claim I may make, so I will not make any claims. I will just say that from my perspective, all drive has been removed to play. All desire to log in at all has been sucked from me, and for the first time since launch I am seriously considering dropping my subscription. The GC system, if instituted at level 50 (when the level cap was first raised to 55 with the first expansion) could have been a success and would not have pissed off so many people. I easily would have accepted it back at that point. At that time, with the release of the expansions that followed, gave plenty of new content to "grind" on GC. But with the current system, introducing it where the only "new" content after you "start" GC is a few uprisings, that is no incentive to play. That is the "grind" people loathe. If the GC system was introduced from the beginning of the game it could have worked, again without waiting until level 70 where there is no new content to grind on to work it up, and I believe not only could it have worked but it would have worked, if (pulling from another thread) RNG were gone and at specific points in the GC leveling you received certain "gear or tokens" to guarantee that through each tier you absolutely had a full set of gear within the tier you were in at the end of the tier. While the goal is there for people, gear up, with the above three points, all drive to do so is gone. Additionally, what do you need to gear up for? To then start replaying the same old content you have been for years before this?

 

I understand all of the perspectives here, BioWare not wanting people to gear up in a week so they complain about no new content or nothing to do at endgame, but making all of us (anyone who was around before 5.0 and actually had toons leveled and in gear capable of doing the endgame harder content) have to grind old content just to get back to the same point they were before the "expansion" is what pissed me off the most. Before 5.0 I could always fond an ops group, and the purpose of my alt-o-holicism was to be able to have an alt available for an op no matter what they needed. Also multiple alts of the same setup (tank, heal or dps) so I could run the same op more than once a week (due to lockouts) via alts. With the system as it is today, unless it is the mind numbing SM mode, my toons are not geared for HM nor will they be in any reasonable timeframe. They took away the thing that made me enjoy the game, trying content with friends that actually challenges me. The thought that I have to spend months to gear a toon back up to the point where I can start being challenged again (without dragging down a team because I am not geared properly) is beyond numbing.....and that is just for one toon....on one server....my friends, my guilds, they will all be gone by that point. Why months? Because I don't have a lot of time each day to play. I work and can't always get on at all some days.

 

I don't normally post so I had to get it all out in this post. Sorry for being so long winded, but I think this summarizes what people hate most about GC (minus the perspective of the PVP'ers).

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited February 28, 2017 by MWM_NoVaCaNe
typo

[x_Boots_x]

Like most other Bioware decisions it seemed to be done to frustrate the player, this is their substitute for challenge or content. We had a system that we all liked so they went and broke it.

[Danery]

No, you have to use unassembled components from pvp or ops buy an unassembled piece mk-3, i think. Then, you use that piece along with tokens to buy a tier 1 piece mk-3. Then, you can trade that tier 1 piece along with more unassembled components for an unassembled mk-15 piece. Then, you use that unassembled mk-15 piece along with more tokens to buy the tier two piece. And, so on and so on, up the chain.

 

Nope. Incorrect. You can trade any piece in from Tier 1 along with Unassembled Components to Upgrade to Tier 2 and same with going from Tier 2 to Tier 3. It doesnt matter if you drag it out of a crate, earn the token in an op, or originally purchased it with unassembled components. As long as its an Eternal Command MK-3 230 piece, you can upgrade to MK-15 using components, and an MK-15 236 to Iokath MK-5

[Darkside]

I never raided or did any kind of organized PvP, just random warzones and such. I don't really care about gear, but everything I've read about GC seems overly complicated.

 

So, I'm just curious. What was wrong with the old system that prompted BioWare to make such drastic changes?

 

It wasn't "Star Warsy or Iconic".....err I mean "Exciting".

Edited March 1, 2017 by Darkside

[stoopicus]

I wasnt playing during 4.0 myself but from what folks said my understanding was that it was super easy to get gear... People were gearing a ridiculous amount of alts in no time... Which from EA/BWs point of view I guess meant low retention for subs since there was no carrot for people to chase at some point...

 

So wait. You are lauding the triumphs of GC all over the forums without knowing how well the old system worked? Good to know!

 

Of course they can... And they should. They'll see I used terms such as pot, carebear and snowflake.

 

Incidentally, you misused the term "CareBear", which has a long MMO tradition - commonly used by PvP players to refer to PvE gearing progression raiders. Eve players use it to describe *any* pure PvE player, which is kind of an esoteric concept in Eve.

Edited March 1, 2017 by stoopicus

[bdatt]

To the OP's subject line, priority hard mode operations were a bad idea. Remove that with top gear dropping only on NiM bosses and everything in 4.0 was fine, minus the lack of content of course

[IanArgent]

Once again, we see the "**** you, got mine!" mentality of the white knights in its natural habitat. You've gotten more drops so obviously the system is better for EVERYONE based on YOUR RESULTS ALONE, right? Let's ignore the fact that the R in RNG stands for RANDOM, and that for every one player experiencing a feast there's going to be many others experiencing famine, right?!

 

You mistake my analysis for a defense. I'm not really interested in defending the system as-implemented, and I'm not convinced that the core ideas were good ones. If I was to redo the gearing system, I wouldn't have done things this way. I try and avoid the "I got mine" attitude; because it's not helpful. The closest I'll deliberately come to it is note that I appear to be the kind of player BW is targeting since 4.x; which may or may not be a good idea on their part. I can (and do) make arguments why this might be the case, but I don't have any evidence as to this being an actual Good Idea. And the GC system may be better than the previous system, relatively speaking, but that doesn't mean it's a good system. It's pretty bad, and needs some fairly severe adjustments to be better.

 

Yeah... I did a lot of raiding in 3.X and 4.X. Even 3.X raid drop gearing was faster for me than this. All it took was a few runs with a group of 7 friends, and everyone got some gear. End of story. Now? Many more runs and praying to RNGesus that 1) something will drop from one of the other bosses, and 2) that your group can complete the final boss of the op rather than wiping repeatedly or people running out of time and having to leave.

 

Welcome to the same state of the game that people who don't have "a group of 7 friends" were already in. Story mode rewards should not be gated behind "membership in a well-run raiding guild." (Incidentally, what they did to progression guilds who were well into HM or NM progression is terrible - I said it based on the pre-5.x rumors, I've said it since. NOBODY should have lost progression, and, well, they did.

 

Oh, and you think making gear drops rarer and based solely on RNG (save for the final boss) makes loot ninjaing rarer? HA! What universe do you live in? People are ninja looting MORE because drops are rarer and so people are getting more selfish and cutthroat about it. Players who win a piece of loot before the final boss will immediately drop the group because they got theirs, who cares about the rest? People also kick other players out so they can't roll on loot, or put on Master Looter and refuse to let backfills into their group to fill holes roll on any loot because they want to keep it for themselves. GC and RNG loot has made the raiding community environment WORSE, not better!

 

Your gearing shouldn't be based on spins of a virtual roulette wheel. It should be based on effort. You should be able to do X amount of stuff and be GUARANTEED to get Y reward as a result, period. I'd be fine with them requiring more of X stuff to get Y reward (I'm the first person to say the highlighted HM system was a bad idea with EV and KP in the mix), but don't use RNG alone to determine what reward I get for my time!

 

I agree with the emphasized part (did you read my .sig?) In a better system, there would be a known hardstop point at which BW said "open this many crates, you are guaranteed to have a complete set of tier X, the RNG will only let you get gear faster than that." That there isn't a guarantee of full tier X set by the time you exit tier X in GC is a nigh-fatal issue. There's too much useless/repeat statted gear in the drop tables, and they're addressing this by increasing the drop rates. Good maths, bad optics.

 

If I was to suggest at this point some way to salvage this mess, working as close to what we have today as possible (there are clearly a lot of limitations in the game engine regarding gear), I'd make earpieces/implants moddable just like armor and MH/OH items, remove the statted items from the drop tables from crates and replace them with "mod crates" containing an armor, a barrel, an enhancement, and a mod, or a token to buy a relic off a vendor, add empty shells for ears/implants to the end-game vendors. Remove the asinine slot limitation on set-bonus plates/barrels. And then you can tweak the rate of return for time vs CXP for various activities.

 

Their insistence on maintaining the baroque gearing system on the back end where only some mods can be freely swapped between slots, but others can't, and some items are moddable but not others, is a major contributor to the problems.

[IanArgent]

If you did not play in 4.0, then you have no basis to comment on the gearing in 4.0. "I have no experience with the topic in question, but allow me to inject hearsay and then proceed to name-call people who do have experience with the topic."

 

ANYWAY...

 

It is clear that BW thought that gearing was too quick and easy. The reality is that the gearing was relatively easy AND there was zero new endgame content, because they spent a long time focusing on a single player RPG aspect of the game. So now BW is realizing that they screwed up and are working on a new operation, but in the meantime, they had to try and do something to keep players subbed. So they made a ridiculous gearing system and are slowly moving it towards sanity in order to try and find a sweet spot of sub retention with minimal real content (maximize returns for minimal investment).

 

Highlighted for emphasis. I'm going to add one more "BW thinks." BW thinks that the pre-4.x game was not viable; and that developing a SWTOR 2 is not practical. (I can guess as to the answers as to why this is, but I can't say for sure). So, they're taking what they have, and rebuilding it into something they think is viable. Even if they had perfect foreknowledge of what a viable non-WoW MMO in 2017 and beyond should look like, the initial case (SWTOR up to 3.x is no longer viable) demands that the game be changed, probably drastically, from the launch-3.x paradigm. That's gonna chap the crawfish of the vets who liked it that way.

[light_senshi]

The short answer? Nothing was wrong with the old system.

[stoopicus]

The short answer? Nothing was wrong with the old system.

 

There was literally nothing wrong with it. In fact it was innovative and a step above other MMOs in that it gave players choice while still maintaining a drive for people to pursue endgame activities.