HERE's MY 2 BOBS WORTH AND WHY.GC IS BLEEDING THIS GAME OUT.

[Christie_Swift]

There are several issues with this MMO that have not been resolved and DEVs hope these will just go away as new players start SWTOR.

IMO extreme GRIND has killed this game as it has done many others. I mean grind is a common practice in most MMOs. However, the amount or intensity of it is what makes it insane. Not sure about other MMOS but I came from STO due to the extreme grindfest there after some genius thought about making the game more "FUN". Same goes with SWTOR and have been long enough to see the devolution of what used to be before to RNG and post GC.

 

Grind is ok but too much of it turns players off. IMO I dislike OPs and dont care much for PvP but at least not as much as OPs. Grinding for gear is not easy to come by. Grinding to an extreme level till your eyes bleed thats another story.

 

What is sad that Devs or management could care less in fixing this game anymore but why break it when it wasn't a bad model before?

Edited August 14, 2017 by Christie_Swift

[kodrac]

What is sad that Devs or management could care less in fixing this game anymore but why break it when it wasn't a bad model before?

 

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's why I think GC was an EA suit pushing draconian measures to force subs.

[Tsillah]

That shouldn't stop them from lowering the cost of gearing using UC only, or from increasing the amount of UC available to be earned from all types of content. That would still be under the overall GC system.

 

It also shouldn't stop them from introducing a weekly (or daily) GC pass to the Cartel Market.

 

Or reducing the cost of removing mods. Gold 236 gear...50k a mod. Purple 246 gear, 20k a mod. Da***?

[casirabit]

Clearly you never PvP. Nor have you ever been kicked, or seen someone kicked, from a PuG group for not having the "right" gear. Players want to feel equal...nothing unnatural about that.

 

While I understand the pvp area, I have 242/246 gear on my main (healer) and gotten that through the command crates and you shouldn't be kicked from a pve group with 242/246 gear. Now I am not sure what they do is I normally group with my guild and/or boyfriend so if we need one more person they don't say much as they are grouping up with us and we have each other's backs.

Edited August 14, 2017 by casirabit

[FerkWork]

My question is how did people gear their alts before GC? And if they just removed it today how would they gear their alts? Did people honestly roll on non-BoP gear for an alt while playing their mains? Must be lovely when trying to gear a main. I just don't get the big deal about it today. I think RNG is a terrible thing that never should have been introduced into the game but I'm okay with it applying to GC because you get crates from anything. No matter if its just playing Bounty Brokers or Dread Palace. I just don't get the method people geared their alts that was stolen from them and never has been returned. If they do make the crates drop gear more reliably then shouldn't only specific things offer CXP say like running NiM or Operations. But getting BiS from doing a few heroics... that just doesn't make sense and why would anyone run anything else.

 

I geared my alts pre 5.0: 4.0) Running NiM Ops to get BiS after they finally fixed the debacle of NiM loot then. 3.0 by doing Rav and ToS HM. Now I don't even have a main in full BiS and I have killed every boss in MM and the new Op. Pnly people who benefit from the system are reg farmers who Spam EV and KP. That you get trash from Non final MM Bosses is a joke along with almost half the loot table missing from final bosses.

 

So yeah I geared way better in previous expacs.

[Ratajack]

Clearly you never PvP. Nor have you ever been kicked, or seen someone kicked, from a PuG group for not having the "right" gear. Players want to feel equal...nothing unnatural about that.

 

Really? Given the claims of "insane queue times" or "queues never pop" I keep reading in other threads, you'd think that people would be less likely to kick, let alone for something so stupid.

 

After all, if you just waited an eternity for a pop, why would you kick someone and have to wait for a replacement? Even if you felt a companion could replace the kicked member, why would you want to kick someone and risk being added to another ignore list which would make your future waits even longer?

[TUXs]

Really? Given the claims of "insane queue times" or "queues never pop" I keep reading in other threads, you'd think that people would be less likely to kick, let alone for something so stupid.

Yet it happens. Gear snobs exist, even today.

[Slowpokeking]

I really don't think GC is that bad, but it indeed needs to be improved.

[DWho]

its common knowledge the galactic command system is killing this game, bioware is refusing to accept it.

 

Its common knowledge that anyone talking about common knowledge is making it up.

[exfell]

My question is how did people gear their alts before GC? And if they just removed it today how would they gear their alts? Did people honestly roll on non-BoP gear for an alt while playing their mains? Must be lovely when trying to gear a main. I just don't get the big deal about it today. I think RNG is a terrible thing that never should have been introduced into the game but I'm okay with it applying to GC because you get crates from anything. No matter if its just playing Bounty Brokers or Dread Palace. I just don't get the method people geared their alts that was stolen from them and never has been returned. If they do make the crates drop gear more reliably then shouldn't only specific things offer CXP say like running NiM or Operations. But getting BiS from doing a few heroics... that just doesn't make sense and why would anyone run anything else.

 

Since a raider already answered for that side let me give the 4.0 pvp answer: You bought gear for your main and alts with warzone comms. These were legacy bound, gained from pvp, and you got enough of them to make pvp gearing fast.

 

That is the system we never really got back. Gearing does not have to be as fast as it was but the UCs are a poor grindy replacement (although not as bad as pure rng poxes in 5.0)

 

EDIT: Slight mistake above, not legacy bound but transferable via vendor "grants".

Edited August 14, 2017 by exfell

[Transcendent]

Or reducing the cost of removing mods. Gold 236 gear...50k a mod. Purple 246 gear, 20k a mod. Da***?

 

Legendary mods require legendary pricing?

 

Well okay, no they don't. That's probably the mindset of whoever set the prices though.

 

Since a raider already answered for that side let me give the 4.0 pvp answer: You bought gear for your main and alts with warzone comms. These were legacy bound, gained from pvp, and you got enough of them to make pvp gearing fast.

 

That is the system we never really got back. Gearing does not have to be as fast as it was but the UCs are a poor grindy replacement (although not as bad as pure rng poxes in 5.0)

 

The 3.x - 4.x PvP gearing system worked perfectly, not slow, not too fast, encouraged playing alts. Infinitely better than what we've been given now.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Transcendent

[TUXs]

The 3.x - 4.x PvP gearing system worked perfectly, not slow, not too fast, encouraged playing alts. Infinitely better than what we've been given now.

Agreed! Even while playing a main, you could gear alts.

[Thruine]

So the gearing system worked great prior to GC and it was also too easy to gear. Fine, opinions and all that. But the OP clearly was complaining about gearing through GC which you don't have to any longer. To me, GC is a non-issue these days. The true issue is the randomness or lack of gearing in the actual game. GC, and this is just my opinion, should never have and shouldn't still drop BiS gear.

 

I have a reason for that belief. Chasing gear is always a big part of MMOs. People either want it just to have it or they need it for what their groups are running. If gear didn't matter, we'd all be chasing certain looks of gear and for a whole lot of this game, it doesn't matter. You're going to get gear doing the things you do in most cases. But if gear doesn't come from content then content just isn't used. In a MMO, you need as many people doing the content needing multiple people as possible and one of the easiest ways to get them to do it is the reward of BiS gear.

 

If certain Ops (or raids) don't drop the desired gear, look at what happens. People stop running it. Look at the stories of people working to get their gear and stop running content. They've got the prize they wanted so that content no longer offers them anything. Having GC be the source of BiS was a terrible idea but I understand why. If you're not planning on adding new Ops needing that gear then why not give gear for doing anything. It was bad decision made with another bad decision.

 

What did they think people were going to do, run the same stuff over and over just to run it. Once you have the gear and nothing else offers the challenge or even the reward, you might have a lot of people quit playing all together. Even those that stuck around through it, at some point they too run out of reasons to play. I'm not sure if they could have killed off the game any better than what they did. It was a recipe for disaster. But that's over with and now we just have to get the focus off GC or they're going to keep tinkering with it instead of fixing the actual stuff that needs addressing. Quickest way to make it go to being just a reward for doing anything within the game is remove the BIS drops from the GC crates. Then maybe, just maybe, people will think hey, I need to be running this op or this mode if I want to advance instead of rerunning a chapter or something to get a crate.

[Aldael]

I have the perfect solution for the RNG love that developers (and I imagine high directives that approved it) recently have (a couple of years):

 

- Apply it to your salary, at the end of month (or whenever you get pay) you get an envelope with your check, it can be a magnificent double, a normal one, or just some gift card for 20$.

 

After a couple of months of getting the gift card, I can assure you they would revert to normal.

[CaptRogue]

Really? Given the claims of "insane queue times" or "queues never pop" I keep reading in other threads, you'd think that people would be less likely to kick, let alone for something so stupid.

 

After all, if you just waited an eternity for a pop, why would you kick someone and have to wait for a replacement? Even if you felt a companion could replace the kicked member, why would you want to kick someone and risk being added to another ignore list which would make your future waits even longer?

 

He wasn't saying you get kicked from PvP.

In fact SWTOR makes it so hard to actually kick people who need kicked in WZ. Which is why so many people go afk in the corner on some maps.

Also ignoring a player doesn't do anything for PvP. You will still get grouped with them, you just can't see what they say. It only works in PvE that way.

 

As for gear snob comments, yep. I'll be the first to admit, I will kick you if your gear is trash. I'm not talking about last tier gear either. But like literal trash gear & the healers can't really keep you & the rest of the raid up because you are taking too much damage. It still happens, but rarely. (Now if you're running an HM Ops & same scenario & you're not dps, you will be kicked.)

I'm sure that paints me as a jerk, which I'm not. But I'm not also going to waste my time or the time of 6 others in an Ops to constantly wipe, struggle, etc...on content because one person can't take the time to get some decent gear.

Again most the time that doesn't happen anymore though.

 

Queue pops for Warzones aren't all that long on Harb at level cap though. You may have to wait some but it's not eternity.

[SeCKSEgai]

I was one of the many who provided negative feedback about the grind but it went ignored and I ended my sub. The only reason I can post now is the seven day referral link.

 

From what I've seen in my short time back has made me unlikely to sub for even just one month to continue the story line. Most the players I played with eventually moved on as well and doing the same content yet again isn't worth it without quality company.

[Ratajack]

He wasn't saying you get kicked from PvP.

In fact SWTOR makes it so hard to actually kick people who need kicked in WZ. Which is why so many people go afk in the corner on some maps.

Also ignoring a player doesn't do anything for PvP. You will still get grouped with them, you just can't see what they say. It only works in PvE that way.

 

As for gear snob comments, yep. I'll be the first to admit, I will kick you if your gear is trash. I'm not talking about last tier gear either. But like literal trash gear & the healers can't really keep you & the rest of the raid up because you are taking too much damage. It still happens, but rarely. (Now if you're running an HM Ops & same scenario & you're not dps, you will be kicked.)

I'm sure that paints me as a jerk, which I'm not. But I'm not also going to waste my time or the time of 6 others in an Ops to constantly wipe, struggle, etc...on content because one person can't take the time to get some decent gear.

Again most the time that doesn't happen anymore though.

 

I generally do my group content with friends and guild members, so I don't have to worry about being "kicked for garbage gear", but what would you define as "garbage gear"?

 

Are we talking about level 50 greens, fully augmented 242's with 6 piece set bonus or somewhere in between?

 

Hypothetically, you are grouped with a player in fully augmented 230's with a 6 piece set bonus. Does he merit being "kicked for garbage gear"?

 

Queue pops for Warzones aren't all that long on Harb at level cap though. You may have to wait some but it's not eternity.

 

I have seen plenty of people saying the same thing, although I have no personal experience as I do not PVP in this game.

 

I wonder why we have certain posters in the forums complaining that they seldom get PVP pops or that PVP pops take forever, though? I wonder why they seem to be the only ones who wait "an eternity".

[Transcendent]

I generally do my group content with friends and guild members, so I don't have to worry about being "kicked for garbage gear", but what would you define as "garbage gear"?

 

You're one of the lucky ones then, most of my guild has been decimated by the lack of new group content (operations) and the gearing system in 5.0.

[Ratajack]

You're one of the lucky ones then, most of my guild has been decimated by the lack of new group content (operations) and the gearing system in 5.0.

 

I'm very fortunate that we have always been a small close knit guild and most of my guild and friends play for the fun of the journey and not the destination.

 

For us, it's more about the "togetherness" and not the "goal". We can have just as much fun running a FP for the thousandth time as a new OP. We don't obsess over having the absolute BiS gear or wiping while trying something new or even on something we've done hundreds of times.

[Andryah]

I'm very fortunate that we have always been a small close knit guild and most of my guild and friends play for the fun of the journey and not the destination.

 

For us, it's more about the "togetherness" and not the "goal". We can have just as much fun running a FP for the thousandth time as a new OP. We don't obsess over having the absolute BiS gear or wiping while trying something new or even on something we've done hundreds of times.

 

Same here. Admittedly, in my guild.. the majority of us have actually played MMOs together for years, and across more then one MMO. I'm not interested at all in some random guild formed by who knows who and that routinely recruits for numbers rather then community and team work together. We do successfully recruit more players then we lose over time, and that requires a careful selection process to weed out what we commonly call "guild users" who are really only interested in what the guild can provide them.

 

There are a range of guilds in any MMO, but more and more over the years.... more guilds are very transient in nature rather then an actual persistent group of like minded players (sometimes having moved from MMO to MMO over the years AND/OR maintain a guild identity across multiple MMOs). There are still many good and stable guilds in MMOs, including this one, but they are a minority compared to the many random guilds that get started and use poor selection criteria for adding members.

 

The key to a stable guild is like minded people who are actually committed to the guild rather then themselves, and as such tend to form more permanent and enduring bonds of game play together. Does not mean that some players do not come and go over time... but rather speaks to a persistency baseline that goes beyond the more common "what's in it for me" approach that many take when they hop into a guild in an MMO.

 

Here's the thing in today's MMO guilds.... more and more of them are formed on weak foundations and hence collapse easily in the more nomadic environment in MMOs these days.

Edited August 15, 2017 by Andryah

[CaptRogue]

"but what would you define as "garbage gear"?

Are we talking about level 50 greens, fully augmented 242's with 6 piece set bonus or somewhere in between?

 

Hypothetically, you are grouped with a player in fully augmented 230's with a 6 piece set bonus. Does he merit being "kicked for garbage gear"?

 

I wonder why we have certain posters in the forums complaining that they seldom get PVP pops or that PVP pops take forever, though? I wonder why they seem to be the only ones who wait "an eternity".

 

Garbage gear would be blues/greens picked up from questing that are below level, gear that doesn't match stats. E.g. healer wearing shield, tank wearing alacrity, etc...

 

SM Ops? Nah, as long as they were playing well shouldn't be a problem. Now if they were tanking/healing & couldn't stay alive/aggro/heal, then yes I would kick them.

Honestly I don't check everyone's gear when I run things either. It's only when someone continually fails their role or takes tons of heals do I start checking gear.

 

Probably because the population is down. I won't deny it; I've seen it myself. WZ's don't pop instantly like they did when Harb was in full swing. You can wait a bit now for a pop. Then you have the ones complaining they have to wait.

[LadyArdor]

Thought I'd chime in. Been around since 3.x. IMHO when 4.0 and kotfe hit, I had one heck of a time trying to gear my characters. I ended up scrounging and grinding and stealing creds from my alts just to buy the ridiculously priced advanced purple mods to even make it through kotfe chapters as they grew increasingly more difficult the further along I got. I have 19 alts on Harb, over half of them are doing kotfe and 2 of them have finished kotet. All my max level main and alts had a mish mash of purples and blues between 203-228's. I could find no other way to get better rated mods as the vendor gear was good only to a certain point and the crystals, etc were a pain to earn.

 

When 5.0 hit, and GC came, I saw an opportunity. Yes, I did have to focus on one character at a time. I started out grinding heroics and a lower level flashpoints cuz they'd be faster. It was a grind, yeah, but I had a goal - highest rated gear and reach max GC level. With PVP finally open to everyone (and I now didn't have to worry about switching back and forth between pve/pvp gear or having to wear pve gear in wz's to grind for pvp gear), I dived head first into PVP. My GC level skyrocketed and reached max level GC in about a month. I never geared so easily, so cheaply nor so fast vs how I was trying to do it before. My main, a Sin tank is now in near complete 248's, and several of my alts are being geared up.

 

I have a good friend who figured out the system near instantly and did the gsf and pvp grind and in a matter of weeks he reached max levl GC and max rated gear. Took him 2 weeks if that to earn his T4 gear.

 

You guys wanted things to get harder after 4.0 made playing a lot easier. The Devs gave it to you in the form of gear grind. They gave you something to do, a goal to work towards. You complained and they did what they could to accommodate, appease by adjusting crate rng, component awarding, boosts, loot drops, etc. Heck, look at the huge CXP token drop rate on Iokath! You again start to complain, and they tweak GC some more. You continue to complain. There are now several ways to obtain gear, and mods 245+ rated can be crafted now.

 

The main thing I see that is making people leave is the lack of things to do after you've reached lvl 70 and obtained your max rated gear. You get bored and burned out running the same thing all the time. GC is the lesser evil. Bugs, etc are the least of the evils.

 

My 2 cents and observations.

[SeCKSEgai]

The main thing I see that is making people leave is the lack of things to do after you've reached lvl 70 and obtained your max rated gear. You get bored and burned out running the same thing all the time. GC is the lesser evil. Bugs, etc are the least of the evils.

 

My 2 cents and observations.

 

The lesser evil would have been to not force a new gear grind at all. You've got to keep in mind people were doing the same content repeatedly before 5.0 hit - a lot felt GC was adding insult to injury by rendering hard earned gear obsolete only to have to repeat the same content yet again with nothing to sweeten the deal.

 

I'm on the most populated server and it hurts a little to come back and see that my guilds are a shell of what they used to be. I can't fault them for leaving as I left before they did. My first op back was a 16m TFB that was a bit rough but at least we finished, and I'm glad I caught that pug because the next two after that did not fare so well. I tried a ravs pug and that failed miserably at Master Blaster after several wipes. When I left, most pugs could at least get through that. What hurt the most was a pug for DF at brontes - it's a relatively easy fight but the wipes showed that several people had failed to learn the basic mechanics. I hadn't done it in over a year and yet there were active players struggling with this basic sm op.

 

In other words, when you can earn the highest tier gear without learning basic mechanics, that isn't healthy for the state of the game.

[FerkWork]

Thought I'd chime in. Been around since 3.x. IMHO when 4.0 and kotfe hit, I had one heck of a time trying to gear my characters. I ended up scrounging and grinding and stealing creds from my alts just to buy the ridiculously priced advanced purple mods to even make it through kotfe chapters as they grew increasingly more difficult the further along I got. I have 19 alts on Harb, over half of them are doing kotfe and 2 of them have finished kotet. All my max level main and alts had a mish mash of purples and blues between 203-228's. I could find no other way to get better rated mods as the vendor gear was good only to a certain point and the crystals, etc were a pain to earn.

 

When 5.0 hit, and GC came, I saw an opportunity. Yes, I did have to focus on one character at a time. I started out grinding heroics and a lower level flashpoints cuz they'd be faster. It was a grind, yeah, but I had a goal - highest rated gear and reach max GC level. With PVP finally open to everyone (and I now didn't have to worry about switching back and forth between pve/pvp gear or having to wear pve gear in wz's to grind for pvp gear), I dived head first into PVP. My GC level skyrocketed and reached max level GC in about a month. I never geared so easily, so cheaply nor so fast vs how I was trying to do it before. My main, a Sin tank is now in near complete 248's, and several of my alts are being geared up.

 

I have a good friend who figured out the system near instantly and did the gsf and pvp grind and in a matter of weeks he reached max levl GC and max rated gear. Took him 2 weeks if that to earn his T4 gear.

 

You guys wanted things to get harder after 4.0 made playing a lot easier. The Devs gave it to you in the form of gear grind. They gave you something to do, a goal to work towards. You complained and they did what they could to accommodate, appease by adjusting crate rng, component awarding, boosts, loot drops, etc. Heck, look at the huge CXP token drop rate on Iokath! You again start to complain, and they tweak GC some more. You continue to complain. There are now several ways to obtain gear, and mods 245+ rated can be crafted now.

 

The main thing I see that is making people leave is the lack of things to do after you've reached lvl 70 and obtained your max rated gear. You get bored and burned out running the same thing all the time. GC is the lesser evil. Bugs, etc are the least of the evils.

 

My 2 cents and observations.

 

Before you earned geared by doing challenging content and it rewarded it. I was rewarded and got gear easily doing the challenging content. Now you are rewarded by grinding face roll content. Also, PvP was about skill vs skill not component Simulator 2017 full of deadweight. How is that harder other than rewarding lesser skilled grinders. I'm sorry but this is just bologna if you think GC made things better by rewarding low skill effort which examples litter here. That's why game gearing is a joke. Just no.

Edited August 16, 2017 by FerkWork

[Thruine]

I thought LadyArdor's story sounded more ike when GC came it opened up new paths for them to gear. Not only just "grinding faceroll content" but they played in PvP. Their friend used GSF. It sounded like two or three activities they used they hadn't before. Exactly what it sounded like the introduction of GC was supposed to do. Regardless how you see GC, no one should be depending on it to gear solely. Its just a terrible method. But it is one method. Just terrible. I can't stress that enough. And probably needs to remain terrible.