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

[Decidion]

It's a game. You play it for fun presumably. It's not about need, but about want. If you want to get gear together on your alts then the game should allow it at a reasonable pace between expansions. RNG means that the pace can not be determined.

 

Depends. If you are trying to progress to NiM raiding, then it is definitely a need. Do you think a NiM raid group will even consider you these days without at least being half 248 geared? Maybe if you are their BFF, but otherwise forget about it.

 

And that is the whole problem that we have been communicating to BioWare since before 5.0 even launched, RNG gearing is unacceptable. And is why we have lost so many good players, because with RNG, that pace *always* means way too long and too much trouble. But alas, they do not care, obviously.

[Quraswren]

SNIP,......

 

I'm not sure what kind of BS you posted there but thats about all it is.

 

GC was indeed the way bw wanted you to gear and made it the first and foremost way to do it no matter what alternate ways were around.

 

Now, you can claim you dislike it and did other things to get past gc and thats all fine and dandy but unless you were loaded with credits and I mean in the millions you were not crafting nor buying the gear. Unless you got fairly lucky in a PUG you were victim to RNG there as well but even that didn't happen till 5.2.

 

You can then claim oh just PVP but well thats also such a joke because PVP is a terrible niche area and the love hate relationship it has across most MMOs isn't something I would bank on any large number of players doing to gear. Especially given the massive amount of time it takes to gear in PVP. Even now we know the changes coming wont be enough to make much headway.

 

And yes, while no one needs BIS, that is indeed the biggest reward gamers want in most cases given there is so little to entice gamers left in this game.

 

And on another note, gamers don't want gear to fall off trees as you say, but they sure don't want RNG, they surely don't want it to take the amount of time it does now and if you want to really get down to it. Even if gamers had all BIS gear, gear was never what kept gamers in an MMO. It was the content that bw and swtor is severely lacking. I was never geared so much as I was in 4.0 nor my raiders. Guess what killed them off. Lack of content, not getting geared for their mains and multiple alts in a rather easy manner but even then it wasn't the in a month so many keep bring up.

 

You belittle gamers for seeking gear as if that was some kind of fault. I can assure you, it is not. Gamers not having the millions to craft or buy also isn't something you can expect many gamers to have when this garbage was launched either. So stop that crap about there are other ways as if that was so easy. Same for PVP as your alternate gearing path.

 

And is GC an alt killer? Yes it was and is, because doing GC on an main was bad enough. Doing one of your so called alternate gearing paths is expensive enough once if you can afford it at all on a main much less doing it on alts. GC and anything so far in 5.x is indeed hurting alt play because unless you are 300GC with everything you want on your main, playing any other toon is taking time off that main and that a problem. Especially so if you are not yet at 300 and still a problem if you are at 300 and don't have what you need or want and thats before I bring up the ridiculous amount of credits you have to have to buy and craft.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Quraswren

[Jay-Kor]

They need to put more incentive for doing raids and stuff in the game NOT add yet more grind.

 

I'll probably be done once I get the rest of the class stories completed. KotFE and KotET can go fondle themselves, not impressed with those at all.

 

I've never come across another game with so much stuff I don't want to do in it. Well done BW, well done.

 

I may need a guild though, maybe a good guild could alleviate things.......oh and a decent PC.

 

Christ I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought those last 2 story expansions were trash, it's like they've over complicated the Star Wars universe, take it back to basics, Jedi vs Sith, light vs dark, throw in the usual scoundrels, bounty hunters, undesirables and military factions back into the mix.

[BlackSilverRoar]

I have well over 400 alts now with well over 40 character level 70 across 6 accounts. So speak for yourself when saying its anti Alts. I don't have an issue with it at all. I don't have any problem with others like you not liking it, but am sick to death of you and other thinking you represent EVERYONE else.

 

I've 52 levels 70s, most of which had attained max level BEFORE double-xp, and I can tell you I'm going to side with the OP and others that it IS indeed a suckfest for alts. I like the menu for GC and that's about it. In order to reach the top tier of GC, one would have to focus on a few toons, at best. All my toons are decked out to the eyeballs with different appearance gear and mounts, so I love playing with choice and variety. Well, playing so many alts I barely make a dent in GC tiers on most of my toons. It's a poor system and I hope never to see it again the way it is now, come next expansion.

 

Furtermore, it's way too overcomplicated from the last system, which I'd VASTLY rather have. Too many hoops to go through currently to get top rated end game gear. It's definitely a turnoff for many casuals, who comprise a large amount of this game's population. BioWare needs to do a reality check if they expect to keep or hopefully gained new players during the next expansion. With the Mass Exodus of 5.0, this game needs to recoup its diminished population or this game will just continue to bleed out as lackluster content is put out and new piecemeal operations once in a blue moon.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Willjb

[Transcendent]

All that said.. I DO fault the studio for the super easy gear mill of 4.0 having predisposed some players to complain and play victim (particularly players that either cannot or will not adapt to changes in MMOs). It's pretty hard to claw that easy mill back after you have given it to players for a year... no matter how wrong minded the approach was to begin with in the general context of MMO design and play.

 

I find this part highly interesting.

 

The highest PvE gear I had in 4.x was crafted 220, it didn't even slightly bother me, I could run PvE content in PvP gear.

 

However a majority of my alts had either 208 BiS PvP gear or the very basic (but competitive) 204 PvP gear. I took zero issue with that as there wasn't a massive grind to get that gear, the gear disparity in PvP was minor. The 3.x cycle fixed PvP gearing speed so players could jump into PvP and be on an even playing field pretty quickly. 5.x you can get 230 gear pretty quickly, which gets bolstered, and then you get utterly destroyed by the players in 248 gear who simply abused every single quick shortcut to get to 248 gear (which has since been removed by constant CXP nerfs by the studio). The proposed bolster changes are inadequate, and BioWare are being obstinate on that issue, contrary to the reasoning they went with in the 3.x cycle to make PvP more accessible to players.

 

GC was poorly planned and implemented, the design goal may well have been very thoughtful, but the implementation and subsequent adjustments have simply been reactionary to fix the short-comings of the system.

 

BioWare recognise that GC gearing isn't perfect, but they are simply far too slow to put in place real solutions to the problems that have arisen, instead they're pretty determined to continuously hamstring player gearing speeds in a vain attempt to justify the development time spent producing GC and lock players into a subscription.

 

Also, where on earth is the weekly GC pass so non-subs can partake in endgame content to help improve queue times? So many poor decisions, which lead to players complaining, rightly so in my own opinion. BioWare Austin has not handled this whole issue well, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing complaints about the system still. We're in August now, nearly a year into this mess. It's overdue that it got fixed properly and not minor adjustments (I'm not saying get rid of GC or go back to 4.x gearing speeds).

Edited August 13, 2017 by Transcendent

[Tsillah]

Depends. If you are trying to progress to NiM raiding, then it is definitely a need. Do you think a NiM raid group will even consider you these days without at least being half 248 geared? Maybe if you are their BFF, but otherwise forget about it.

 

And that is the whole problem that we have been communicating to BioWare since before 5.0 even launched, RNG gearing is unacceptable. And is why we have lost so many good players, because with RNG, that pace *always* means way too long and too much trouble. But alas, they do not care, obviously.

 

No, that's not true what you say there. NiM never required BiS gear. It was a reward for beating NiM bosses but since it was the only source of BiS gear, clearly you had to be able to beat the bosses without that gear.

 

So really, you never needed BiS gear for NiM.

[Bobby_McDonald]

At the beginning it was a horrible gind. But now they increased the cxp and you can get boosts from many sources (daily bonus, 25% legacy, character boost etc). Recently I feel like I can gear my alts in a reasonable time. When UC become legacy I guess I will be happy with the system.

[exfell]

I complain about current gearing a lot but in fairness for those people that don't take part in serious endgame activities I think this system as it is now is actually better than 4.0. Back then if one did not raid best one could get was crafted gear, now one can acquire setbonus gear in addition to crafted.

It would ofc be even better if that was not rng

[SentinelThain]

Irony at it's best. Well played.

 

And no.. I expect nobody to play the way I do, just because... unlike some in this discussion.

 

My point is.. people blast in the forum about GC being the only path for gear in 5.0, and rail on it as an ALT killer, and it simply is not true.

 

I don't expect to persuade the person I responded to, nor the OP, on this by any means... but I do have as much right as anyone to point out the clear lack of thoughtful assessment as to how best to meet a players gearing needs in 5.x. There continue to be players that post negatively in the forum about GC and pretend that they are victims of GC. When in fact they are not, as they do have plenty of options in gearing at 70 in 5.x... particularly for ALTS...

 

I will concede that a good grind is needed on GC of you want your main in all BiS gear at 70... but the reality is not that many players actually need said gear. Oh.. they want it for sure.. and there is a grind path for it. But a lot of the negative comments come across as wanting BiS gear with very little time or effort.

 

All that said.. I DO fault the studio for the super easy gear mill of 4.0 having predisposed some players to complain and play victim (particularly players that either cannot or will not adapt to changes in MMOs). It's pretty hard to claw that easy mill back after you have given it to players for a year... no matter how wrong minded the approach was to begin with in the general context of MMO design and play.

As I said it took long enough to gear my main,but you get bored playing 1 toon so I decided to focus on my merc.Doing ALL content too I opened over 1k crates on him and am short of 4 pieces.Now this took weeks.

Think about that,1k crates and only get 8 pieces.How bad is that?You think that's good?

I put in the time and effort,a lot of it absolutely wasting my time.Seriously,to spend so much time to be effed over by rng.Nah no thanks I'm done.

[MandFlurry]

I have a GAJILLION alts on a SUPA BILLION accounts and they're ALL level 70 and max GC. RNG gearing is EXCITING, AMAZING and quite the ADVENTURE! Very best SWTOR! Thousands years of GREATNESS to come! Sky is open for shining light of MAGIC crates gifted by MOST EXCELLENT RNGesus!

 

Hahaha, now that was a good one lol.

 

That guy would have to pay me a Lot of money to believe 400 characters lol.

[Celise]

I complain about current gearing a lot but in fairness for those people that don't take part in serious endgame activities I think this system as it is now is actually better than 4.0. Back then if one did not raid best one could get was crafted gear, now one can acquire setbonus gear in addition to crafted.

It would ofc be even better if that was not rng

 

i'm somewhat casual when i play, but i've raided before 5.0 and after 5.0 and the only real problem comes from those awful crates, you are required to have an active sub to get command points otherwise you can't get what you need as a freemium player and you are stuck.

 

GC is a blight and one that has destroyed the unity of the playerbase by no allowing freemium players to get in on the raids, and just because alot of people are freemium doesn't mean that a good chunk of them were not getting ops passes to play.

 

before 5.0 you only needed to get the token and exchange it, no mess or fuss.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Celise

[exfell]

before 5.0 you only needed to get the token and exchange it, no mess or fuss.

 

How is this any different from how it works for a raider now*?

Raid, get token, exchange it.

 

 

 

* NiM loot broken, yea must be sub, comment not relevant to pvp.

[Jamtas]

the suspicious side of me thinks Ben Irving made some shady deal with the bioware management to keep this crappy system in place after destroying the community and getting his promotion.

 

I don't think it was a promotion. Promotions normally have the person in question introduce their replacement.

 

When it is announced that so and so is gone on to a new opportunity and here is his replacement, that is more a sign someone got re-assigned/demoted/let go - not promoted.

[Slowpokeking]

My advice:

 

Make it legacy wide.

Double the CXP permanently

Fix Tier 4

 

At least it would be better for now.

[Tsillah]

How is this any different from how it works for a raider now*?

Raid, get token, exchange it.

 

 

 

* NiM loot broken, yea must be sub, comment not relevant to pvp.

 

The NiM loot issue is a real one in PvE but indeed doesn't affect PvP...except that there are more PvE'ers being noobs in the warzones. Whether that's a good or bad thing anyone can decide for themselves.

 

You're right about the loot tokens. There is one difference though. The cost of ripping mods was almost tripled by introducing this gold quality gear. It now costs 150k to rip out the mods of one gear piece basically.

 

The NiM issue is the real one though and that's something they need to do something about. Just adding some UCs to boss rewards as per 5.5 won't solve that.

 

By the way, the system is more convoluted now with the gc tokens. If indeed it makes no difference, then why have them in the first place? Brings us back to the whole point of why GC was brought in replacing all gearing systems to begin with.

 

All I see is BW not being able to admit to higher management that GC was a failure because they gambled big with it and lost. So whatever solution they came up with will have to be under the umbrella of GC so that any success can be attributed to GC. Looks better in the powerpoint presentations.

 

So I won't expect anything major on that before the next expac. Perhaps then they can do what they should've done and keep GC for all non ops and non warzone activities and let those two things have their own separate gearing systems. Then we can all stop fussing around with pointless tokens and workarounds.

[mitchsts]

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

[Transcendent]

All I see is BW not being able to admit to higher management that GC was a failure because they gambled big with it and lost. So whatever solution they came up with will have to be under the umbrella of GC so that any success can be attributed to GC. Looks better in the powerpoint presentations.

 

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.

[SentinelThain]

Easy way to fix this whole issue.Instead of giving you crates give us Comms (the harder the content the more Comms).No rng,we can work to what we want and earn it.I'm not asking for easy I'm asking for a fair time spent=reward system.

Crates,no enough is enough..I just wish BW/EA would actually listen and stop before it's too late.

[MikeCobalt]

I don't like either and both just seem to me like a lot of time will be spent doing the same missions over and over and over again for a small *Chance of Progressing very little. RNG is a widely known tactic for not giving out anything good and Very much Disliked everywhere; I have no idea why anybody thought it would be any different here.

[ivanhedgehog]

They are going to make all currencies legacy, so everyone's whining about alts will no longer be an issue.

 

xp wont be legacy

[ivanhedgehog]

I guess the amount of people requiring BiS is rather low, so I can't really understand the fuzz about GC. It sucks, yes, but just stop caring about the drops.

 

The lack of content and balance is what really puzzles me, you can only run the same stuff so often

 

And then the blatant grab into our pockets that is the change of legacy weapons and tuning unlocks furhter alienated me quite a bit. Still too addicted and invested to leave, but seriously frustrated.

 

getting BIS is what 5.0 is all about. they didnt put in a real expansion, gear grind is the expansion.

[Thruine]

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.

[CaptRogue]

IF you don't do Ops, then yes the GC system can be long & tedious, but then you techinically don't need 248 gear, 236 will be just fine, especially augmented & you shouldn't worry about it.

 

I have like 22 toons on the Harb. I only have 3 GC level 300. I only run maybe the same 3-4 per week randomly doing Ops, yet I have a 4 (8 actually because they share gear) toons already half or more 242 gear, and my main tanks are 242+ with one piece of 248 already.

 

Best way is to run your favorite toon(s) through Ops, PvP, etc...Get tokens from Ops, unassembled comps from PvP & legacy it to the toon you want.

As I stated you don't have to have 248 gear. 242 & made 246 is fine for non HM/NiM stuff.

Even if you don't like Ops, you can run HM EV/KP once a week & in a week or two be almost completely HM geared enough to do what you want.

 

BW may have jerked us around with all the command ranks, but over all, it could be done a way lot worse. There is workarounds for most stuff. You just have to work with it.

 

TL;DR: Command rank does not equal the only way to get decent gear. In fact command level doesn't even matter till you need 248 gear which is rare...

Edited August 14, 2017 by CaptRogue

[Andryah]

TL;DR: Command rank does not equal the only way to get decent gear. In fact command level doesn't even matter till you need 248 gear which is rare...

 

^^ I agree.

 

The unstated issues here are two fold I think:

 

1) some people simply want what they don't actually need. This is common in MMOs, for a variety of reasons and motives. Nothing wrong with the feeling, but with the feeling comes owning the requirements for what you want but don't need ... so own it.

 

2) The studio made gearing too easy in 4.0.. and now anything that is perceived to be more effort is widely panned by those who got used to 4.0 gearing.

 

Personally, I geared my alts in 3.0 and 4.0 essentially the same way I did in 5.0 ----> mostly crafted gear, back filling with something better if/when it comes along. And in the case of 5.0... it was more effective then in 3.0 or 4.0. I could have just done a grind for crystals instead in 3 and 4 .... but I really do not buy in to much of the grinding that is doled out by studios to players to keep them busy.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Andryah

[TUXs]

some people simply want what they don't actually need.

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.

Edited August 14, 2017 by TUXs