Discussion Topic: Master Mode Operation Gear Drops

[EzioMessi]

Not necessarily. You have to look beyond just the color coding. If a prototype item has the same effective stats as artifact... I would always go with the prototype. Why? Lower maintenance costs, and mods are less expensive to pull as well if it's a modable item.

 

Now, if the prototype is inferior in stats then your point is well taken. But early on in 5.x they appear to have blurred lines between color codes as we indeed did see even some green armors that are effectively artifact level in terms of stats/level, just the wrong color for those who chase color.

 

I am simply pointing out that fixating on color coding is not always wise with SWTOR itemizations. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not.

 

I also think the studio should stop with the Legendary drops unless they are clearly superior to artifact/prototype items. Why? Again... maintenance costs are quite a bit higher for little actual benefit. In fact, I would prefer that Ops drops only be artifact level items...... with accurate itemizations compared to a similar item that is prototype quality (like it use to be in the old days).

 

It's not just about the colour coding, 242 gear has a set bonus, 244 doesn't. That objectively makes 244 gear significantly worse for classes that rely on their set bonus for autocrits, damage/heal increases and protection.

[krumbar]

IMO best thing for the game would be option 1 but with 246 and 248 (they can both be assembled pieces) with chances for 248 going up as each boss is killed (first boss could have 0% chance to drop 248 because of nefra) instead of 244 and 246. why drop 248? well becuase you cant get all 248 itmes through pve only (you need to get lucky with crates or play pvp).

 

i don't think option 2 would be good because balancing it would be hell, if you give 8 (like pvp match win i think, i don't really play pvp) that would be way too low amount for anything usefull, but if yoou gave 20 or 50(like some here suggest) it would be good for pve players but wouldnt be fair for pvp.

[Hronych]

UC drops from ever NiM boss sounds pretty good. Gives the actual incentive to run all NiMs on the week.

 

Also for the love of god PLEASE remove 244 gear from NiM and lock the 246 gear drop on classes which actually present in ops. Getting drops for PT/Jugg dps when neither of them are present and even frikin tanks are both assasins is just maddening.

[NeoBlakkrstal]

Hey folks,

We realize Unassembled Components have been attributed to PvP activities, but we could make that adjustment.

 

-eric

 

I would just like to see the number of Unassembled Components received increased PERIOD. Also, more avenues to obtain these sacred items would be appreciated. Limiting availability to JUST PvP is a major handicap.

 

Thanks.

[VegasTheLost]

No point discussing without addressing the initial issue, that is we have an unfinished OPS, even so we don't even have a MM level for it yet. So tuning the drops in regards to this... Come on maaan. Leave Gods of the Machines out of the gear cycle for now, and when all of the bosses are released, the drops can be altered, so the new OPS will drop the best loot on MM. Until then no point tweaking.

 

Also to consider is that more than 6 months passed since 5.0 released with the Galactic Command gearing, and ever since was MM loot drops(and at release OPS drops) a hot topic. After a year basically, 4.0 loot system came back and I remember that the community was quite clear about it. So here we are a year passed same situation different numbers, trying to solve a problem that should never had happened if it wasn't touched back then.

 

Eric/Keith, get yourselves together, assign the tier numbers to the levels, assign the unassembled drops to bosses an be good with it. Don't overthink it, keep it simple, it will be fine. Trust me. GC will complement the PVE gearing well enough.

[Silko]

Or or or! Nightmare bosses could drop tokens........

[ViciousFett]

I've always felt EV and KP are too easy for the level of gear they drop. You definitely shouldn't be receiving mainhands and offhands from those operations when other operations of the same difficulty are much more difficult. If anything EV and KP should be limited to gear like wrists, belts, ear and implants.

[Danery]

It's not just about the colour coding, 242 gear has a set bonus, 244 doesn't. That objectively makes 244 gear significantly worse for classes that rely on their set bonus for autocrits, damage/heal increases and protection.

all gear from tier 4, whether its 244, 246, or 248 has a set bonus. It is one of the changes they made when they introduced tier 4 gear into the game so that every piece could be a potential upgrade

[CheliosBear]

Hey folks,

 

Since the launch of Galactic Command we have made great strides to change it to be a supporting gearing system versus the primary means of gearing your characters. We still have improvements to make and we will be talking more about gearing methodology in an upcoming discussion topic. For today, we really want to focus on the drops currently coming from Master Mode Operations, as this has been a hot topic. Let’s start with some context on how gearing currently works for Operations at each difficulty (all examples assume 8-player):

 

Story Mode Operations:

• Each boss drops a specific Tier 2 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Soa in Eternity Vault will always drop 2 offhands

 

Veteran Mode Operations:

• Each boss drops a specific Tier 3 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Soa in Eternity Vault will always drop 2 offhands

 

Master Mode Operations:

• Each non-final boss in an Operation will drop random Tier 4 Prototype and/or Artifact quality item
  
  • Ex: Killing Nefra in Dread Fortress will drop 2 random items which will be of Prototype or Artifact quality

• Each final boss of an Operation will drop a specific Tier 4 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Dread Master Brontes in Dread Fortress will always drop 2 gloves

 

Gods From the Machine does not follow the above rules. Here is how that works:

• Story Mode – Each boss will drop a specific Tier 3 Legendary item
  
  • Ex: Tyth will always drop a Tier 3 relic

• Veteran Mode – Each boss will drop a specific Tier 4 Legendary item
  
  • Ex: Tyth will always drop a Tier 3 relic

 

The key issue with Master Mode is the gear you are receiving isn’t being consistently provided as it is with the other Tiers. The primary reason is we wanted the Gods from the Machine Operation to contain BiS gear and be the most consistent source for Tier 4 gear. But, since we only offer one boss encounter right now, it’s making it difficult for you to obtain Tier 4 gear. We have been discussing two ideas to address this issue and would like your feedback:

 

1. We double the amount of drops awarded in both 8 and 16-player difficulties. This means there is a random aspect of what is dropping, but there will be more chances of receiving Tier 4 gear based on the number of players participating in the Operation.
   
2. We leave the amount of gear drops as is, but we add Unassembled Components to each boss. This would mean that players running Master Mode would not only be receiving a chance at Tier 4 gear, but they are also working towards being able to upgrade/purchase the Tier 4 gear they need. We realize Unassembled Components have been attributed to PvP activities, but we could make that adjustment.

 

So what do you think? Do you like or dislike option 1 or 2 above? Is there something you are concerned about with either idea? What idea was not mentioned that you think could solve this? Let us know!

 

-eric

 

Put back how it was in 3.0/4.0 atm pvp has such a greater advantage then doing Master Mode PvE content, people that are doing the Nightmare content need that high gear more then pvp'rs and GSF people. For people like me who totally dislike pvp and wont step a foot inside of it have almost no chance to get full 248 since we solely rely on rank ups... In ~700 packs i still haven't gotten a single 248 MH/OH while people that do pvp for a week get both. This is a unfair aspect you guys have given to pve. Just give us back the tokens on NiM, only thing that is a reward nowadays on Nightmare is the last piece at the end.. we need to clear a whole operation just for the last piece, thats not enough... bring back how it was in 3.0/4.0, the tokens were a way better plan, put the most precious stuff on last bosses (Mainhand / Offhand) They were on Revan and Brontes back in the day, that was way better atleast something to work towards, its way more alt friendly that way too and it would still be hard for so many people so its not like everyone can get their farm on... Just stop giving pvp such a gearing advantage over NiM raiders... Not everyone likes to do PvP or GSF so why should they participate in it and be the only players in the game that rely on RNG?

 

Nightmare Ops should drop 248 gear on every boss

Edited June 15, 2017 by CheliosBear

[Angel_Inside]

A major purpose of doing endgame raiding was gutted like a mackerel when it's pants on head stupid easy to farm cxp and open a buttload of RNG boxes which just happen to drop top tier gear.

 

Gear check? Skill check? Nah, open more crates. OPEN MORE CRATES.

 

Probably opened many hundreds of crates and RNG or not, the competence and teamwork required to click on a crate and be rewarded with the best gear isn't exactly high.

 

The options available are trivial. I gained most of my full 248 and extra 248 from farming casual content for CXP.

 

Neither option put forward suggests this will change in the future. Developers still hanging on to the idea that the hardest way to get endgame gear should be to clear the hardest PVE content.

 

Rather choose nothing than encourage it.

 

Crates should cap out below endgame gear and hardest PVE content should be the final tier without RNG, one piece a boss with the most desirable pieces being on the final bosses. Tokens at that so people can do their own balancing.

 

And then PVP should get down bolstered to max level from crates so PVE doesn't interfere.

 

Can keep the crates, just bin the reality of it being the way to endgame gear.

 

This ^

 

Why in the world should I be rewarded less doing HM and NiM progression with my raid team than any sh**ty unranked pvp j**k or a casual heroics farmer? Why am I getting all the top tier gear from crates doing pointless endless farming of SM ops for CXP bonus packs? I HATE PvP. And nobody ever will force me to play it. So UCs from PvP is not an option for me. I just want mah raids. Just want to beat the highest DPS checks. Why am I punished for that?

[TUXs]

Honestly Eric, PvE is in a good spot now in terms of Operation drops (minus the fact that NiM doesn't drop 248's)...but I really like the idea of the unassembled components dropping (#2).

 

The areas I really beg you to focus on are PvP gearing (the costs need to be halved or rewards at least doubled). FPs and Uprisings need better incentive too, even if you just double the CXP rewarded.

[Angel_Inside]

all gear from tier 4, whether its 244, 246, or 248 has a set bonus. It is one of the changes they made when they introduced tier 4 gear into the game so that every piece could be a potential upgrade

 

Take this and compare please: Blue 244 stalker headpiece vs. Gold 242 stalker headpiece

Stats for armorings and enhancements are completely the same. BUT the mod for 242 has more Power. Try to guess: Does DPS need Power?

So no, this is not an upgrade anyway, even if it has set bonus. Well, maybe only if you don't have any 242 for this slot ofc. But in this case why would you need 248 if you cannot clear any HM for 242?

Edited June 15, 2017 by Angel_Inside

[Storm-Cutter]

If you're serious about PvP or Operations, chance is that you've already got BiS gear anyways, probably had it for months already.

 

I can't believe that Bioware is still using up precious dev time to tinker with this GC thing, which didn't really need changing in the first place. How many months is it now? How many iterations? Is it even complete yet? or is there another 6-8 months of sacrificing content to fix the CF that was GC..... Before they quietly drop it in favour of something new....And sweep the past under the carpet.

[EzioMessi]

all gear from tier 4, whether its 244, 246, or 248 has a set bonus. It is one of the changes they made when they introduced tier 4 gear into the game so that every piece could be a potential upgrade

 

DERP my bad. In that case I guess blues/greens from a higher tier are better for PvE, because repair costs.

[DarkSaberMaster]

How about we just scrap this system all together and go back to how it was prior to 5.0? Keep the RNGesus boxes and CXP grind for those who want to get BiS doing whatever their favorite thing is in game and have the drops and tokens like it was before. Why are you tiptoeing and wasting time trying to "fix" this self inflicted wound trying to get to the same conclusion of pre 5.0 by adding even more UC's and tokens to Ops bosses?

 

Sorry if I'm coming off as confrontational. But it is ridiculous that you are going through this side show just to get back to where we were before. Just do it already so you can move on to bigger and better things.

[DarthZaul]

Regarding UC's from SM/HM bosses, rewards should be op-specific based on difficulty to deter farming.

 

Easy SM ops like EV/KP should award 2 UC for each boss.

 

Hard SM ops like ToS should award 3 UC for each boss.

 

Easy HM ops like EV/KP should award 4 UC for each boss.

 

Moderately difficult HM ops like TFB should award 8 UC for each boss.

 

Difficult HM ops like ToS should award 12 UC for each boss.

 

And so on.

 

Even with 2 UC's per boss, you're talking about a 15-30 minute activity that rewards about four times as much CXP and roughly the same UC's a PvP match would give with a daily+weekly active.

 

So PvP CXP would need a buff to make up for it, by roughly 50% (preferably in the daily+weekly rewards). GSF CXP is really good in comparison so i'd only buff it by like 20%.

 

THIS.

 

It is very easy to get 248 through PVP/GSF (if you have the 242s from Ops or crates) and impossible to get it through PVE (except Tyth HM). This situation should never have occurred in the first place and needs to be fixed ASAP.

The only other way for PVE to compare is the CXP from raids to be at least doubled but CXP is really pretty much irrelevant since the chance of getting 248 in crates is negligible.

 

I would also say DON'T have components from the weekly or more components from the last boss, since the game needs every system it can get to encourage people to do full raids instead of lockout farming last bosses.

Edited June 15, 2017 by DarthZaul

[EzioMessi]

How about we just scrap this system all together and go back to how it was prior to 5.0? Keep the RNGesus boxes and CXP grind for those who want to get BiS doing whatever their favorite thing is in game and have the drops and tokens like it was before. Why are you tiptoeing and wasting time trying to "fix" this self inflicted wound trying to get to the same conclusion of pre 5.0 by adding even more UC's and tokens to Ops bosses?

 

Sorry if I'm coming off as confrontational. But it is ridiculous that you are going through this side show just to get back to where we were before. Just do it already so you can move on to bigger and better things.

 

Right???? There's so much development time being wasted on fixing a system that just can't be done fairly.

 

If they make PvE gearing easier, us PvPers will whine that we have to grind so much to nullify the gear gap.

 

If they make PvP gearing easier, PvErs will whine that this makes progression redundant because the best way to gear is PvP.

 

There isn't any fair way to go about fixing this system. The only proper solution would be to revert to pre-5.0.

 

Bring back Expertise gear, place it at tier 230/236, place bolster at 224, and revert PvE gearing back to dropping one piece per boss, reliably, allowing PvErs who clear NiM to get NiM-gear. This really isn't difficult, the system ALREADY EXISTS.

[Foambreaker]

All that code and all that forum noise and we are going to end where we started. Command crates were such a mistake.

 

When is the PvP gear with expertise coming out?

[TUXs]

Bring back Expertise gear, place it at tier 230/236, place bolster at 224

GOD NO!!!! PLEASE NO! Expertise was TERRIBLE and it was never used for what it should have been. Expertise should have been used to address balance issues in PvP without ever impacting PvE...but it never was. Instead, just make Bolster boost players to 246 status (highest purple level) and give PvPers a better path to gearing (more UCs or halve the cost).

[Foambreaker]

GOD NO!!!! PLEASE NO! Expertise was TERRIBLE and it was never used for what it should have been. Expertise should have been used to address balance issues in PvP without ever impacting PvE...but it never was. Instead, just make Bolster boost players to 246 status (highest purple level) and give PvPers a better path to gearing (more UCs or halve the cost).

 

There is a thread in the PvP forums, don't think the posters agree, most PvPers want expertise back.

 

The devs reasoning for taking it out, that people would not need 2 sets of gear, was false.

 

All the current system is doing is giving PvP advantage to PvE raiders.

[curulz]

Like others have said, just put 248 unassembled tokens on each NiM boss.

[TUXs]

There is a thread in the PvP forums, don't think the posters agree, most PvPers want expertise back.

 

The devs reasoning for taking it out, that people would not need 2 sets of gear, was false.

 

All the current system is doing is giving PvP advantage to PvE raiders.

I understand - I PvP too. I've never liked Expertise. I loved 4.0 because I had my full 208 set the day it was released, but I hated having to have 2-sets of gear.

 

Bringing Bolster up to 246 and increasing UC's (or slashing costs), virtually eliminates the gear gap that exists.

[Forren-Midosea]

The real problem of gearing is that we have 3 modes of difficulty and some operations have only 2.

 

In my opinion BW should fix that. Remove the nightmare/master mode and increase the difficulty of old oldest operations or bring back the 3 lvls to all operations and make RAV TOS and GOTM in mastermode. This would make this game much simpler. Im all in for 3 lvl for all operations. Story mode dull easy for entry players, veteran mode adjusted with numbers and tactics to something like DP and DF and mastermode to those operations that are missing that mode at the moment.

Also, make mastermode flashpoints a true challange!

[Andryah]

There is a thread in the PvP forums, don't think the posters agree, most PvPers want expertise back.

 

The devs reasoning for taking it out, that people would not need 2 sets of gear, was false.

 

All the current system is doing is giving PvP advantage to PvE raiders.

 

Odd to say it here.. but I agree with TUXs on this.

 

Expertise is a terrible system for separating gear between PvP and PvE in MMOs.. and always has been. What it actually does is freeze out the casual PvPer in MMOs as they are simply not going to chase after a new set of gear for something they only do casually.

 

PvP should ignore gear completely... because the point of PvP is killing other players, not collecting shiny pieces of armor. When entering PvP, all players should have the same optimized stats applied for their class through a bolster mechanism and be done with it. We are half way there with the removal of expertise.. time for the studio to take the final step.

[DarthBatemanJ]

Hey folks,

 

Since the launch of Galactic Command we have made great strides to change it to be a supporting gearing system versus the primary means of gearing your characters. We still have improvements to make and we will be talking more about gearing methodology in an upcoming discussion topic. For today, we really want to focus on the drops currently coming from Master Mode Operations, as this has been a hot topic. Let’s start with some context on how gearing currently works for Operations at each difficulty (all examples assume 8-player):

 

Story Mode Operations:

• Each boss drops a specific Tier 2 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Soa in Eternity Vault will always drop 2 offhands

 

Veteran Mode Operations:

• Each boss drops a specific Tier 3 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Soa in Eternity Vault will always drop 2 offhands

 

Master Mode Operations:

• Each non-final boss in an Operation will drop random Tier 4 Prototype and/or Artifact quality item
  
  • Ex: Killing Nefra in Dread Fortress will drop 2 random items which will be of Prototype or Artifact quality

• Each final boss of an Operation will drop a specific Tier 4 Legendary quality item
  
  • Ex: Dread Master Brontes in Dread Fortress will always drop 2 gloves

 

Gods From the Machine does not follow the above rules. Here is how that works:

• Story Mode – Each boss will drop a specific Tier 3 Legendary item
  
  • Ex: Tyth will always drop a Tier 3 relic

• Veteran Mode – Each boss will drop a specific Tier 4 Legendary item
  
  • Ex: Tyth will always drop a Tier 3 relic

 

The key issue with Master Mode is the gear you are receiving isn’t being consistently provided as it is with the other Tiers. The primary reason is we wanted the Gods from the Machine Operation to contain BiS gear and be the most consistent source for Tier 4 gear. But, since we only offer one boss encounter right now, it’s making it difficult for you to obtain Tier 4 gear. We have been discussing two ideas to address this issue and would like your feedback:

 

1. We double the amount of drops awarded in both 8 and 16-player difficulties. This means there is a random aspect of what is dropping, but there will be more chances of receiving Tier 4 gear based on the number of players participating in the Operation.
   
2. We leave the amount of gear drops as is, but we add Unassembled Components to each boss. This would mean that players running Master Mode would not only be receiving a chance at Tier 4 gear, but they are also working towards being able to upgrade/purchase the Tier 4 gear they need. We realize Unassembled Components have been attributed to PvP activities, but we could make that adjustment.

 

So what do you think? Do you like or dislike option 1 or 2 above? Is there something you are concerned about with either idea? What idea was not mentioned that you think could solve this? Let us know!

 

-eric

 

Option 2...but ideally option 3 where the drops are specific as all the other tiers. This imho shouldn't be a hard concept to grasp.