Command Rank Needs to Be LEGACY Wide

[Eshvara]

Never have agreed with the instant gratification mindset. I dont believe command rank should be legacy wide. Bioware has provided several means to increase cxp through the legacy perk and 2-3 hour 100% cxp buffs you can purchase with tokens or cartel coins.

 

Two questions.... what do people realistically expect the amount of time it should take to bring a character to rank 300 and then to complete BiS gearing?

 

And is anyone willing to try to understand why Bioware set the cxp gearing as it is currently? Why do you think they set the system to its current timing/state.

 

I guess a third question, what aspects of the game really require complete BiS to be successful at this time? NiM raiding? PvP? I honestly dont know as i dont pvp and my team hasnt moved into NIM raiding yet.

 

Ashur

 

PvP certainly doesn't require BiS at its core, and we don't want anything to do with BiS as PvP players. Unfortunately they merged everything together and if you want to stay competitive, you don't have much choice but to get BiS gear.

 

Imo BiS gear should stay for PvE, it's the case for many games, I don't get the sudden 180 with this system.

 

It should take a decent amount of time to get BiS gear for PvE players, PvP isn't about the gear, which is my main problem and of other PvP players.

 

25% buff they added doesn't make a difference as it's too little and it's per character. I can't really enjoy other classes in PvP with how slow it takes to level to rank 300 and get it geared. My main isn't even geared and it's been over a month now. For a PvP player this is ***** up!

Edited July 8, 2017 by Eshvara

[BoySaber]

Warframe would die if you'd get Mastery Rank 0 each time you start a new character on same account.

Swtor is on life support because you get Command Rank 0 each time you start new character on same legacy.

BioWare encouraged us to play Dark vs Light 2016 event, encouraged players to have alts, then introduced pay to RNG outside of Cartel Market (Galactic Command) that benefits no alts they encouraged us to have, and then showed us we can pay extra to play RNG outside of Cartel Market at faster rate, that also does not encourages us to play alts they wanted us to have.

 

For people who want to level from zero each new character in Command Rank / Valor Rank / Social Points / Reputation / Currencies / let them. For people that want all play time to count on every character, let them to. Give players option to decide if they make fresh start with new character, or not. Now both type of players can play how they want. Instead to bash each other on forums.

 

 

 

You're absolutely right. Why didn't we think of that before.

 

Every character we create is automatically created at the level of our lowest character. Every time we gain a level on ONE character, all of our other characters automatically gain a level.

 

Every time we loot credits, each and every other character we have gets an equal amount of credits. Every time we loot an item. each and every character we have receives that same item.

 

After all, you "want all play time to count on every character", right?

 

IMO, some things should be left character specific, no matter how "boring" or how much a "grind" they are. GC is one of those things, IMO.

 

Should it be made easier after the first character gets to level 300? Yes, and they are doing that. Are subsequent characters going to reach 300 instantly or in a matter of hours? No, but they should not, IMO. They will still have to earn that GC level 300, but they WILL be able to reach that magical level 300 faster than that first character did, which is what is important.

 

I was more thinking about family tree feature, once you connect alts to your main, they get access to same ranks, same currency. What you speak of is multiplying currency, I am not sure why I try to explain because of your obvious attempt to yet again twist people ideas and suggestion into something they are not, an old habit of yours. But in case you actually do not understand the idea behind this topic then I apologize and let me explain it to you. Your family tree will allow you to spend currency made with main on an alt, so your main will lose the earnings you made, your time you invested as a player. There is no multiplying, there is no cloning, you spend what you earned. When my son asks money from me, money does not double itself, it leaves my pocket and goes to his. And vise versa. And btw I am still not 300, at 274 now with my main, I fear I wont make it before last expansion, before all gear becomes useless and starts over. It's that slow and terrible that they had to replace employees positions and buff rates every now and then to save the game from the mistake they made. Time will tell if it is too late. I just wish someone who can word it better than me so that people wont jump with twists or finger pointing because they do not understand. Someone who will say it better so that Keith actually bothers to read it, review it and reply. The value of player's time invested and devoted to the game as a whole is greater and more important than the value of player's time used on a single character only, where playing anything else only penalties you. And another important note, this does not punish players who want to play one and only one thing in the game. If they ever chose to try new and different things, they will be happy knowing that their time put in game was not for nothing.

Edited July 8, 2017 by BoySaber

[Equeliber]

No no and no!

 

People who say they have 40+ alts... Why the hell would you need max command rank on them? You don't even do ops on most of them! They gave you 230 gear for command tokens, need set bonus so badly for doing heroics, go buy that!

 

Then, another thing. It would be so stupid if you could get 10 ranks on one character and automatically get them on others... It would kill the gearing system, even you casuals would get bored of it in a week. How can you not see it? Hell, I am getting bored of a character aftet reaching rank300 with him. If I had them all at 300 already, what would be the point? There would be no feel of progress, nothing. Just stale grind for nothing.

 

Gearing system in it's current state is PERFECT. Nothing needs to be changed except for may be more reliable 248 drops in Nim ops.

 

You people just want everything handed to you for pressing few buttons for 5 minutes.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Equeliber

[AshurDarksoul]

Thank you for explaining some of the pvp issuez Eshvara ( hope i spelled it right). Im not a pvper, and i do understand that pvping for some players is as important to them as pve is to me. I am sympathetic to that idea.

 

I guess what im trying to understand, and im sure bioware would never provide information about the health of the game, is that BW motivation is to ensure longevity. Players that have little to work towards tend to move on to other games. Of course = v revenue= v funding= v staffing= v content = v things for players to do, ie no new content or slower release of content which starts the cycle over. The death of a game. As such, developers must find "creative ways" to keep players working towards in game goals.....at a slower rate to effectively "buy time" so they can generate more content with reduced resources to keep players paying/playing to...."keep the lights on."

 

Id love to hear about the challenges and frustrations developers have to address/ solve to keep their project out of the red and ...keep their paychecks coming. Id bet there are some common "problems" all mmo's have to overcome. Another thread perhaps.

 

Ashur

[Anzel]

You people just want everything handed to you for ptessing few buttons for 5 minutes.

 

Leveling 20 toons takes more than 5 minutes. Then leveling to some new made up command rank BS takes more than 5 minutes. Oh, BTW, this is the FIFTH time they've made existing gear obsolete and introduced another tier so yeah.

 

If they NEVER were going to have a release 6.0 where you know, you have to start the whole senseless grind over again then I could see having something to shoot for. But grinding the same characters over and over again with each new made up release is for drooling monkeys.

[frennky]

As such, developers must find "creative ways" to keep players working towards in game goals.....at a slower rate to effectively "buy time" so they can generate more content with reduced resources to keep players paying/playing to...."keep the lights on."

 

Yeah I get they wanted a stick and a carrot, but the problem is they over did it. They made the stick too long and carrot is in a bag and it's not even a carrot it's just an RNG potato. Very creative...

 

When it comes to PvP, we've had same old maps for years and ppl still play that. There's no need to grind/work towards something.

 

They should swap bolster with something like normalizer. Everyone gets same gear rating with respect to mod/enhancement types you have. That way everyone has same stat pool, but we keep gear customization.

[Thruine]

If its legacy wide, wouldn't it either give all characters on the account (and what about new ones after the fact) get a free crate or would you get one crate and the gear will be anything for any of your characters? So in order to gear up a knight quickly, you better not have any smugglers on your account. I get wanting it to be legacy wide (there are things I'd like to see added such as valor and bound items myself) but I'd be afraid it would be made worse than it is.

 

I'd really rather have bound items that you can trade around within your legacy so at least some benefit might be had of lower gear pieces (as long as they aren't a tank). But there aren't many games I can think of that make end game gearing a quick process. They could do away with the system and go back to solely drops then you'd still feel like you're being forced to play your main at least until its fully geared which could take a good bit of time.

[dscount]

If its legacy wide, wouldn't it either give all characters on the account (and what about new ones after the fact) get a free crate or would you get one crate and the gear will be anything for any of your characters? So in order to gear up a knight quickly, you better not have any smugglers on your account. I get wanting it to be legacy wide (there are things I'd like to see added such as valor and bound items myself) but I'd be afraid it would be made worse than it is.

 

I'd really rather have bound items that you can trade around within your legacy so at least some benefit might be had of lower gear pieces (as long as they aren't a tank). But there aren't many games I can think of that make end game gearing a quick process. They could do away with the system and go back to solely drops then you'd still feel like you're being forced to play your main at least until its fully geared which could take a good bit of time.

 

No I would think it would be treated like REP. When you ding a level you get a crate only on the character that is currently active.

[Andryah]

I started feeding CXP cookies from FPs and ops to one character once the legacy-wide unlock to increase CXP was announced. This character is now CR210. My other 51 characters on my primary server, all lvl70, are all still in tier 1.

 

I have 26 characters on the main server I play on these days.. and 20 of those are capped level. One is GC rank 71, one is rank 17, and another is rank 6 if I recall correctly. The rest are somewhere sub level 5 I think.... I really don't check it that closely to be honest. Yet I have 4 of my main characters in full crafted 246's and the remaining 16 capped level ones are in full crafted 240s.

 

I have not chased GC for cxp for gear because it simply is not required. You can do it if you choose to, but it's not the best way to gear up in 5.x.

 

My point is people who do not like to grind in MMOs (me being one of them) need to look at all your options, not just the most obvious one being promoted by the studio. And I really see no reason to just simply take the studio focus on GC grind as something I must do.

 

Even in 4.0... I did not grind for crystals for buying gear either. Because I don't like grinding for tokens and never have. yet I had no issue gearing my mains and alts in 4.0 either.

 

Please note: my comments here are not a defense of GC in any way. I've been a harsh critic of it at release and they still have not fixed everything to the extent I think they should have. In fact, I encourage players to ignore GC and move onward. You will get some GC ranking and cxp just playing the game and any rewards from it are considered gravy in my view.

 

Setting aside the obvious mistakes in the rollout of GC at 5.0 release..... I think the studio over estimated the player base with GC. I think they expected most players would take a blended approach to gearing.... sourcing from not just GC but also crafting. But effective crafting is a group effort, so it favors guilds and groups of friends but does nothing for loners. Though in fairness.. loners have full access to the crafting market on the GTNs too.. so no real excuse. None the less.. the average player wants gearing to stay the way it was 10 years ago across the MMO marketplace and are simply not open to changes in approach and will not look past the obvious in getting their gearing needs met.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Andryah

[Ratajack]

I have 26 characters on the main server I play on these days.. and 20 of those are capped level. One is GC rank 71, one is rank 17, and another is rank 6 if I recall correctly. The rest are somewhere sub level 5 I think.... I really don't check it that closely to be honest. Yet I have 4 of my main characters in full crafted 246's and the remaining 16 capped level ones are in full crafted 240s.

 

I have not chased GC for cxp for gear because it simply is not required. You can do it if you choose to, but it's not the best way to gear up in 5.x.

 

My point is people who do not like to grind in MMOs (me being one of them) need to look at all your options, not just the most obvious one being promoted by the studio. And I really see no reason to just simply take the studio focus on GC grind as something I must do.

 

Even in 4.0... I did not grind for crystals for buying gear either. Because I don't like grinding for tokens and never have. yet I had no issue gearing my mains and alts in 4.0 either.

 

Please note: my comments here are not a defense of GC in any way. I've been a harsh critic of it at release and they still have not fixed everything to the extent I think they should have. In fact, I encourage players to ignore GC and move onward. You will get some GC ranking and cxp just playing the game and any rewards from it are considered gravy in my view.

 

Setting aside the obvious mistakes in the rollout of GC at 5.0 release..... I think the studio over estimated the player base with GC. I think they expected most players would take a blended approach to gearing.... sourcing from not just GC but also crafting. But effective crafting is a group effort, so it favors guilds and groups of friends but does nothing for loners. Though in fairness.. loners have full access to the crafting market on the GTNs too.. so no real excuse. None the less.. the average player wants gearing to stay the way it was 10 years ago across the MMO marketplace and are simply not open to changes in approach and will not look past the obvious in getting their gearing needs met.

 

/sarcasm on

 

Didn't you know that anything less than absolute BIS is utter and complete garbage?

 

/sarcasm off

[Anzel]

This game has been overhauled with each and every single release. Gearing has changed every 6-12 months rendering everything you've done obsolete. The system introduced in 5.0 has been a catastrophe. Gambling is the absolute worst way to design a system like this.

 

Players should be encouraged to play as many alts as possible. The more players spend time in the game, the more they are likely to spend their money. Not having Command Rank be legacy wide does the opposite. It boxes players into one character at a time and rely's on gambling which is for complete morons.

[Thruine]

But I still don't understand how you aren't "forced" to play one character no matter what path to gearing you take. Like others have said above, I don't even pay attention to GC in that matter (not that its maxxed or anywhere close). Just play and if you get gear from it, yea you, that's one piece you don't have to hunt down.

 

I've played many many (many) other MMORPGs over the years. None are really that friendly to alt gearing. If you're able to gear alts with decent gear, the best is bind on pickup and so forth. You always have to play the character you want to gear and if needing rank 300 to gear is the only way then I think maybe those characters aren't actually being played to their fullness.

[Alssaran]

Suggestion:

How about they FIX the Legacy bonus from 25% CXP Legacy Buff to 250% CXP Legacy wide buff?

 

250% might be a bit excessive, espescially during double GCXP weekends/weeks.

 

However, I agree with the general idea. Maybe instead of a 25% bonus for a million, have a 50% bonus for two million. Or 100% for three million.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

I have 26 characters on the main server I play on these days.. and 20 of those are capped level. One is GC rank 71, one is rank 17, and another is rank 6 if I recall correctly. The rest are somewhere sub level 5 I think.

 

 

Please go outside.

 

=]

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

I've played many many (many) other MMORPGs over the years. None are really that friendly to alt gearing. If you're able to gear alts with decent gear, the best is bind on pickup and so forth. You always have to play the character you want to gear and if needing rank 300 to gear is the only way then I think maybe those characters aren't actually being played to their fullness.

 

Here's what I don't get. Why do people think it should take less time to gear a second or third or 4th character than it took to gear the first?

 

If you want to fully gear 10 characters. It should take you ten times as long to gear all ten than it took you to gear the first one.

 

5 Characters geared? Expect it to take 5 times as long as just gearing one.

 

There shouldn't be price breaks on gear, no buy one get one frees, no half offs. Full price for the same peice of gear every time you buy that peice of gear if you are going the UCs route. If you are just going the Operations route. That's always been about RNG so no need to consider that.

 

Gearing through crates is not intended to be the main method of gearing. Personally, I don't think crates should drop gear at all. That's a free drop in your lap.

 

I don't care about CR rank, but gearing should be the same for every single character, whether it's the only character you play or one of ten, gearing should come at the same rate for each of them individually.

[fushnchips]

I'm sorry, but I'm so ***ing bored of playing my main. I've been playing a Tank/Jugg since almost day one. I have him and my Merc as the two characters that I've played the most since launch.

 

However I have over 20 characters. I would love to hop in and level them but my highest command rank is like 70 something so I just feel like I'm wasting my time.

 

If command rank was legacy wide then I would be more excited to play all of the characters in my legacy except just the one. Having them separate just kills my excitement to play the game.

 

The legacy system is something that I was super excited about when they introduced it but now it just seems dead. What was the point of having a "Legacy Rank", then abandon it in favor of "Command Rank"????

 

Valor, Command Rank, etc. should all be legacy wide. It's sill me behind the curtain no matter what character I'm on.

 

Arhh NO just no no no somethings are earned and somethings are not and CR is one that should be earned by the content that the characters gets involved with. Now should they increase the 25% extra CR bonus in the legacy each time you get a toon to 300 of course so if you get 2 toons it increases to 50% and so on.

 

and even though the OP has only 20 characters I have over 80 account wide 51 on harbinger and some of my toons need that rank 300 but it shouldn't be spoon feed to me as I said I need to earn it.

[Andryah]

This game has been overhauled with each and every single release. Gearing has changed every 6-12 months rendering everything you've done obsolete.

Welcome to every MMO ever.

 

The system introduced in 5.0 has been a catastrophe. Gambling is the absolute worst way to design a system like this.

 

Players should be encouraged to play as many alts as possible. The more players spend time in the game, the more they are likely to spend their money. Not having Command Rank be legacy wide does the opposite. It boxes players into one character at a time and rely's on gambling which is for complete morons.

 

Sorry... but I, and I know many others, ... play as many alts as ever. But these are also players that quickly recognized that GC was not the fastest way to gear up in 5.x, nor do most alts need anything that is BiS.

 

In fact, I had my alts well geared much faster in 5.x then 4.x. I only had to work at it for my main and a couple of alts that are played sometimes as my main and even those were not that difficult to gear up. Even then, I did not need to rely on GC... GC crates, when they come are just dessert. Then again.. I chose not to follow the obvious bread crumbs of GC and went a different route, as did my entire guild.

 

In my view.... play smarter, not harder, and stop demanding welfare programs.

 

While the initial deployment of GC was poor and they were slow to fix it.. it's really not that bad anymore but still needs some improvements. But unlike 4.x where they really borked up crafting for a while as a viable gearing approach... in 5.x crafting was very effective from day one and made GC look silly by comparison.

Edited July 9, 2017 by Andryah

[Transcendent]

The idea here is to encourage people to play as many different characters as possible. Why? Usage = Value. The more someone is playing the game, the more likely they will resub, the more likely they will spend more money on extras.

 

It had the opposite effect to me. It discouraged me to play alts or even bother levelling them. It went so far as to make me start playing other games, which in a way I'm glad I've done. At least it saves me the monthly subscription, gave it some time to see how the changes have panned out and came back for one month.

 

I'm still going to be playing other games.

 

While I get that some players enjoy this gearing method, and gaining Command Rank per character, that's fine. I play HoTS and enjoy levelling each character playing that and earning cosmetic items etc. See if Command Rank had been a way of earning cosmetic items etc? I'd be fine with that.

 

However as a gearing method it's simply too long and too drawn out and the cynical sod in me sees it exactly what it is, a way to retain subscribers. Fun should be the reason you retain subscribers, not a gearing treadmill.

[Icykill_]

It had the opposite effect to me. It discouraged me to play alts or even bother levelling them. It went so far as to make me start playing other games...

.

 

It has had the same affect on me but in another way.. I just refuse to play my lvl 70s (if I can) because I refuse to play into this RNG CXP grind

I have now got 9 lvl 70s and I do have some to tier 2, but that's just from frustration of lower lvls of pvp not popping.

Edited July 9, 2017 by Icykill_

[Stellarcrusade]

There are many valid points both for and against this concept. But really all that matters is that most people will simply not spend 2000 hours on each character, and thus will play the alts less or abandon them or abandon this game because of it. That's the real issue. So the OP's suggestion does help and is a good idea. Keep in mind, THAT is the whole point of legacy, to allow people to run through something on the main, and not have to do as much of it again over and over and over on alt characters. Really this idea doesn't just hand BiS gear to alts, because once you are 300 with the current T4 legendary drop rates currently the alts will still have to each get about 500 command ranks to get there, so you are only cutting 300 of the 800 required out of the equation, but it allows everything they do to actually count towards BiS, instead of filling up on 230 worthless items.

 

Ultimately OPs idea is very good, but more than that should be done.

[Han_Salo]

I do wish Command Rank would be legacy wide.

I do wish Valor Rank would be legacy wide.

I do wish unassembled Components would be legacy wide.

I do wish my Credit Storage would be legacy wide.

I do wish Starship Reputation (and Fleet Comms) would be legacy wide.

And yes, I do wish Codex entries would be legacy wide like the datacrons are.

 

I have 48 Level-70-Toons at the moment ...

Edited July 10, 2017 by Han_Salo

[TUXs]

Why should a toon that hasn't done any command stuff have command rank.

Because it should be based on a players experience, not an imaginary toons. It's not like we're not playing and just expect free CXP. CXP should be account or Legacy wide. Most people don't play just for gear...gear simply allows us to play what we want to play.

[Aikon]

Command Rank being legacy wide -while that would be awesome, it would allow me to max out my alts quicker with gear, and leave me with little reason to run PvE content after running new content a few times for the story/experience (don't really care for achievements or titles, or go out of my way too often for cosmetic/decorations). But I do think that every time a character has maxed out their Command Rank that it should/could trigger a legacy achievement, and perhaps provide a small boost to CXP. Each time you max out, another boost is added. Say, an additional 5-10% each time. Maybe have this max out at 200%.

 

I know there is a legacy perk to buy, to speed up CXP gains, but I think having Command Ranks being an achievement and boost sort of thing would be more helpful. I also think this could also be applied to Valor, maybe.

[Thruine]

Now codex I do agree should be legacy wide. I like to play to completion on a character. With achievements being legacy wide, I have no idea who has done what and where so why stop at the codex?

 

About command rank, I think if you're like me, RNGesus hates you personally. Nothing ever falls your way. I've put close to 1000 chips into the slot on Nar Shaddaa without one single prize other that a handful of certificates (we're talking less that 20 here). I think I would go crazy if my crates were the only way. Thankfully, my bad luck hasn't noticed I like completing the cosmetic gear that drops from them more than anything else.

[Anzel]

I do wish Command Rank would be legacy wide.

I do wish Valor Rank would be legacy wide.

I do wish unassembled Components would be legacy wide.

I do wish my Credit Storage would be legacy wide.

I do wish Starship Reputation (and Fleet Comms) would be legacy wide.

And yes, I do wish Codex entries would be legacy wide like the datacrons are.

 

I have 48 Level-70-Toons at the moment ...

 

Exactly. This is what I was expecting when they spend months on the forums pumping up how amazing the legacy system would be. Then F2P came and all of the "Legacy Rewards" you received for playing different toons in your legacy became "Character Perks" and conveniently accept Cartel Coins for each and every character you make.

 

They took this super cool idea and twisted it to the most greedy and evil feature possible. Oh, but wait... you don't need any of these things. They're extra. Also... everything is now extra.