Masterwork Gear Changes in 5.10

[merovejec]

Look mate, not everyone has bots and not everyone multiboxes so people will have to actively grind for months for this gear. Shocking for you I know. Grats for your solo kills achievements in Yavin and Vandin wz's btw. You must be a great multi...errr...pvper.

 

And how does multiboxing help to get gear in this system???

[Zeeln]

Do they believe most of us will bother with months long grinds that late into 5.0?

As an unranked warzones and story player, I have no way of acquiring this gear reliably and in decent times for my two characters. Ranked queues don't pop on my server except at specific times where the last dedicated players group on Discord, once a week and even then, it still takes ages. Unranked will be even more deserted too now.

I will either accept to be at a disadvantage because they refuse to bolster everyone to 258 in PvP, or quit the game once it becomes unbearable (silver lining is, it might be months down the line because of the time it takes to acquire that new set...).

[merovejec]

So what this says is that you can get cca 4 Masterwork Data Crystals. That measn you can buy 2 252 pieces or upgrade 1 252 to 258. With this rate you can buy all the needed 14 slots in 7 weeks (yes you may need more to min/max) so that is 2 months for 252 gear. However, in this time you might get some drops from Command Crates and from the Ossus Weekly which gives one piece. In theory you then get 3 pcs of 252 gear in a week, which brings down the time to 4 weeks (If you get 1 or 2 pieces from command crates or any other way).

 

So we have 1 month for full 252. To get that to 258 you just need to farm Masterwork Data Crystals and by getting again 4 per week you will get full 258 in 14 weeks (one 258 per week) which is over 3 months. So in the end it will take 4 months to get a toon to full 248.

 

For me the 252 is fine as its not that slow and I mainly dont want it to affect ranked pvp too much. Yes, this is a long grind, well its not even a grind as you cannot grind cause there is nothing to grind, you can do the available objectives in 1 day and then there is just nothing you can do, but wait for next week. Still this system makes the 258 gear really exclusive so if people can kill NiM GotM then they really deserve it.

[giorgo]

And how does multiboxing help to get gear in this system???

 

Oh I don't know, maybe something along the lines of doing the Ossus weekly with multiple chars at once thus getting 252 gear in many alts that can be used to move gear pieces within your legacy or doing group ranked with bots at dead server hours maybe? I don't want to give you more ideas so I'll just stop here.

[Syal]

Don't get why Bioware want us spend so much time in farming for this TIER 5

 

It's just look incense !

[merovejec]

Oh I don't know, maybe something along the lines of doing the Ossus weekly with multiple chars at once thus getting 252 gear in many alts that can be used to move gear pieces within your legacy or doing group ranked with bots at dead server hours maybe? I don't want to give you more ideas so I'll just stop here.

 

For some time now there is a system tool in place to identify multiboxing so its not possible anymore. If you see someone doing it, they will get banned soon (they mostly wait for more ppl to bann at once). You cannot gain anything with doing Ossus stuff with bots as you Crystals are not transferable and even legacy bound on PTS. You really get nothing of it.

 

The only way to gear is to take you toon, kill the World boss, do group ranked weekly and swap UCs for crystals. Then you get 4 Crystals and you can buy 2x 252 pieces. Then you do the Ossus weekly and you get one random 252 piece, so thats 3 pieces per toon per week. Then you login alt and repeat. If you have 5 alts and are lucky you can have a toon geared full 252 in first week. I see no issues there (you transfer the 252 gear via legacy gear.

[merovejec]

Ok I just realiezed, so if you have 5 alts and you do all the needed activities on them you can get 1 toon to full 252 in first week. You can get 4 shards per week with Defeat World boss, Group ranked weekly and 2 shards for converting UCs. 4 shards give you 2x 252 gear pieces. Then you do the Ossus weekly for 1 more 252 piece. Thats 3x 252 per character, which means 5 toons give you 15x 252 gear pieces in 1 week.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Don't get why Bioware want us spend so much time in farming for this TIER 5

 

It's just look incense !

 

They're doing to have platers bide their time as they wait for 6.0 to be completed and go live.

 

Grinds are a central aspect of most MMOs and gearing is at the heart if it.. Personally? I wouldn't want it any other way.

 

Certainly there is a point when a grind can be seen as "to hard"/ "to long".

 

So for example if it takes 3 months to fully gear 258 on a character, that doesn't seem excessive to me, it was worse when BIS was only obtainable via NiM Operations. There were times when players couldn't even ever get full BIS at those times.

 

There wasn't one time between 1.x and 3.x that I ever got full BIS geared, and that's the time frame until 4.0. 4.0 really changed things up with regard to BIS gearing, it became a lot more reasonable to contend the possibility of Full BIS gear for most players.

 

Too many people *****ed about 5.x gearing even after 5.3, so they are changing things up. Personally, I have been saying all along [since after 5.4] that I felt that gearing at that point was probably the best it had ever been, baring in mind that many players felt that 4.x was too easy, a sentiment I shared in. I did so because it allowed players to become full BIS gear only doing the 'spotlight of the week" Operation in HM. Given that a majority of the gear could be obtained only doing KP/EV Hardmodes which had nothing 'hard' about them. They were notoriously easier than most other HM Operations.

 

You can't judge gearing times by the number of alts being played , you judge it by how fast/slow hard/easy for one character it is.

 

If a player has 10 aIts that they are actively trying to BIS gear at the same time, it should take 10 x's longer to gear them in full BIS than it does for one character. I don't feel there should be prices breaks, coupons, or sales. I don't see that as a reasonable consideration with regard to BIS gear.

 

2, maybwe 3 alts, okay that's not a ton and so you could more reasonably split your time between them and not fall too behind in gearing times a single played character.

 

Obtaining full BIS gear shouldn't be easy or fast to get. It's the best gear in the game. That is however fairly incompatible with regard to PVP. If they bring back PVP gear that situation with the BIS gearing times becomes irrelivant to them and gear complaints less espoused by PVEers. Gear gaps are more of an issue for PVPers as they fight people with varying degrees of power due to gear. [and e-pen ]

 

You did say you wanted a change to gearing el lah 5.x - 5.9 and BW listened and changed it up some.

 

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it !

Edited November 21, 2018 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[Tharfindor]

Hey folks,

Here are the ways in which you can acquire MW Data Crystals per week:

PvE

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
  
• 1 Crystal – New rotating Weekly Mission (50% chance of being a PvE objective)
  

...

TLDR – If a player simply does two Weekly Missions of their chosen playstyle they will be able to acquire a minimum of two 252 pieces per week (or upgrade one 252 piece to 258). This does not include crossing over into both PvP and PvE, any MW Data Crystals or drops from Command Crates, or purchasing any crafted versions of this gear, which can speed up your acquisition rate of MW gear.

-eric

 

So let's do some math here: As a PvE only player with no love from RNGsus I would need 7 weeks for all 14 slots just for the first gearing step to 252. After an additional period of 14 weeks I would have upgraded from 252 to 258. My first character would be done in 21 weeks - yeah! That's about 5 months just for one char.

Calculating ...

In about that time my subscription will have run off and will not be continued for this grind - leaving my 30 other toons with old gear.

 

And I would NEVER EVER buy crafted gear from the GTN, the prices will be astronomical.

 

Now the most important question: Is the respawn timer for the world bosses set to 5 minutes or 10? A longer timer like that of dreadtooth in section X would cause queues of player groups piling at their spawn places.

 

As an afterthought: When I heard there will be new gear, I automatically thought it would result in tier V and command rank 400 - a logical assumption. But no, this does not happen. How should you explain this to a new player?

Edited November 21, 2018 by Tharfindor
typo corrected

[Goologne]

One thing was not mentioned in the post from Eric.

 

In the commando crates is a possibility to get a random reputation token.

 

Will there be with 5.10 also the Ossus reputation token included in the commando crates?

 

Would be interesting to know, now this rank matters for the vendor to get the MW gear.

[merovejec]

So let's do some math here: As a PvE only player with no love from RNGsus I would need 7 weeks for all 14 slots just for the first gearing step to 252. After an additional period of 14 weeks I would have upgraded from 252 to 258. My first character would be done in 21 weeks - yeah! That's about 5 months just for one char.

Calculating ...

In about that time my subscription will have run off and will not be continued for this grind - leaving my 30 other toons with old gear.

 

As I said, if you do this on 5 alts you transfer gear via legacy and you have 1 toon full 252 per week.

[bladech]

Hey folks,

 

For those of you who are familiar with current Masterwork gearing plans from PTS, you will notice some changes. Otherwise, this may be an introduction to how all of this will work in 5.10. Throughout this post when I refer to Masterwork gear, I am referring to the new 252 and 258 item rating gear being introduced in 5.10. Based on our initial implementation there were a few key things we wanted to address:

• Getting Masterwork gear solely from PvP was more difficult than we would like.
  
• The implementation encouraged working directly to 258 while skipping 252. We don’t have a problem with this, but it made getting any gear upgrades more challenging and expensive than desired. By “stair stepping” up to 252 and then 258 there can be constant progression that isn’t as expensive as trying to jump straight to best in slot.
  
• We needed more opportunities for players to get Masterwork Data Crystals and gear overall.
  
• Players had no long term value in getting 252 since they could not be upgraded to 258.
  

 

Before we dive into the way MW gear acquisition will work in 5.10, just a reminder that 258 gear can be crafted by gathering materials from a variety of sources, including Master Mode Gods from the Machine. This ensures that the new MM in 5.10 is a very valuable source for progression Ops players. Outside of crafting, there are two ways of acquiring MW gear, by turning in MW Data Crystals to a vendor for 252 / 258 or by receiving 252 gear directly. Let’s cover each of these methods and within each, the separation of PvE and PvP where applicable.

 

Masterwork Data Crystals

There are two places where you can purchase MW gear:

• Lord Fural / Major Pucenisco on Ossus – 252 Gear
  
  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank between Outsider and Hero, depending on gear piece
    
  • Each piece costs 2 Masterwork Data Crystals
    

  [*]Lord Bay’lor / Captain Anfel on Ossus – 258 Gear

  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank of Champion or Legend, depending on gear piece
    
  • Each piece costs 3-4 Masterwork Data Crystals and a matching piece of 252 gear
    

Here are the ways in which you can acquire MW Data Crystals per week:

PvE

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
  
• 1 Crystal – New rotating Weekly Mission (50% chance of being a PvE objective)
  

 

PvP

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
  
• 1 Crystal – New rotating Weekly Mission (50% chance of being a PvP objective)
  

Both

• Rare chance of MW Data Crystals dropping out of Command Crates at Tier 3 and up
  
• 1-2 Crystals – Turning in Unassembled Components
  

252 Gear Drops

In addition to being able to purchase gear for MW Data Crystals, there are a two places where you can outright acquire 252 gear.

• [Weekly] Daily Area Ossus will allow you to choose one of the 3 Artifact Lockboxes:
  
  • Artifact Lockbox (Lower Body): Waist, Legs, Feet, or Relic
    
  • Artifact Lockbox (Tech): Main Hand, Offhand, Head, or Ear
    
  • Artifact Lockbox (Upper Body): Chest, Wrists, Hands, or Implant
    

  [*]Once you are in Tier 3 of Galactic Command there is a chance that an Artifact Lockbox containing one random 252 piece can drop from Command Crates.

 

Additional Changes

There are some other changes to help support Masterwork Gear (mostly targeted at PvPers). They are:

• We increased the current 252 disintegration rates from PTS. 252 gear will disintegrate into 175 Unassembled Components in 5.10 (up from 9 to 45).
  
• To help PvPers get the required Reputation for the MW Data Crystal vendors, we are adding Rep rewards to Ranked PvP Missions:
  
  • [DAILY] Arena of Death!: 2 Geonosian Power Cell
    
  • [DAILY] My Kind of Scum: 1 Geonosian Power Cell
    
  • [WEEKLY] Go Berserk!: 4 Encrypted Data Disks
    
  • [WEEKLY] Time for Pain!: 2 Encrypted Data Disks
    

TLDR – If a player simply does two Weekly Missions of their chosen playstyle they will be able to acquire a minimum of two 252 pieces per week (or upgrade one 252 piece to 258). This does not include crossing over into both PvP and PvE, any MW Data Crystals or drops from Command Crates, or purchasing any crafted versions of this gear, which can speed up your acquisition rate of MW gear.

 

Let us know your thoughts on the changes to acquiring Masterwork gear in 5.10!

 

-eric

 

Your changes already force many pvp players to quit the game and unsub. I already see a huge decrease in solo and group ranked pops and regular warzones pops on both sf and dm servers. You dont understand that pvp players WANT TO PLAY PVP CONTENT. Continue to dance in direction of forcing pvp players to do what they doesn't want to do and soon you will see a huge decreases in population

[giorgo]

As I said, if you do this on 5 alts you transfer gear via legacy and you have 1 toon full 252 per week.

That is if you do all the weeklies required. With as many alts as possible....and get super lucky with artifact crates or wt the f they are called...and endless grind in Ossus with all these alts. Realistically speaking we are talking about 2 weeks minimum for full 252 per alt which means 6 weeks for 258 minimum per alt. In reality though it will take even more time because not everyone will be able to do every single weekly on every single alt.Double that s**t if you have a tank alt. All that at the back end of an expansion that lost many subs due to a broken gearing method.

Edited November 21, 2018 by giorgo

[Arrien_]

• 1 Crystal – [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal – This Mission is to defeat both world bosses -or- earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points
  

 

Someone else asked this earlier, but I think it's worth bringing up again. If this is a quest everyone will want to be doing, you need to really consider the respawn. Even for the conquest world bosses, they are often respawn camped.

[merovejec]

That is if you do all the weeklies required. With as many alts as possible....and get super lucky with artifact crates or wt the f they are called...and endless grind in Ossus with all these alts. Realistically speaking we are talking about 2 weeks minimum for full 252 per alt which means 6 weeks for 258 minimum per alt. In reality though it will take even more time because not everyone will be able to do every single weekly on every single alt.Double that s**t if you have a tank alt. All that at the back end of an expansion that lost many subs due to a broken gearing method.

 

It is pretty obvious that this is only a tool to keep people busy until 6.0 is released so..... I will just go with it. The only thing I am curious about is how it will influence ranked pvp. As people mentioned you already have people with 230-240 gear going in so if people will have 252 after 2 weeks, it will get more interesting.

[bladech]

Ok I just realiezed, so if you have 5 alts and you do all the needed activities on them you can get 1 toon to full 252 in first week. You can get 4 shards per week with Defeat World boss, Group ranked weekly and 2 shards for converting UCs. 4 shards give you 2x 252 gear pieces. Then you do the Ossus weekly for 1 more 252 piece. Thats 3x 252 per character, which means 5 toons give you 15x 252 gear pieces in 1 week.

 

Who said that shards are legacy bound?

[merovejec]

Who said that shards are legacy bound?

 

They are not legacy bound, at least not on PTS, but the gear you get for them can be transferred via legacy gear.

[Storm-Cutter]

Someone remind me why we have to have a new gear tier, when they could have made the new operation just a bit harder/more demanding for current gear levels?

 

I'm no programmer, but I would think that upping the HP of the boss, or tightening the enrage timer, or making the adds spawn a bit more frequently, or increasing the radius of the stupid on the ground would have been easier to adjust than designing a whole new gear reward system / reputation rank and all the rest.

 

[KendraP]

Someone remind me why we have to have a new gear tier, when they could have made the new operation just a bit harder/more demanding for current gear levels?

 

I have asked this myself many times, even addressing the anawers provided by community members, as our friendly community manager is notoriously selective in what he chooses to read. Most recently:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=956482&page=2

[EmanoWanga]

Someone remind me why we have to have a new gear tier, when they could have made the new operation just a bit harder/more demanding for current gear levels?

 

I'm no programmer, but I would think that upping the HP of the boss, or tightening the enrage timer, or making the adds spawn a bit more frequently, or increasing the radius of the stupid on the ground would have been easier to adjust than designing a whole new gear reward system / reputation rank and all the rest.

 

 

It is pretty clear why we have the gear, they simply need to buy time before 6.0

 

You can see how the adding of content is spread out over a long time period. I mean if you take a look at the stuff we got up to know it is almost stuff worth of 1 expansion. Instead we were slowly getting things added like Flashpoints, warzones and now NiM. They could have really supplied all this at once as a huge package.

 

Anyway, its simply meant to keep us busy till 6.0 and I am fine with that.

[Jdast]

I have supported you in the past but not this time. I pve only (heroics and dailies mostly) and even though I am in a guild these changes you might as well have shot your foot and this is not something I normally have said. If they are not given out like on the PTS, for weekly missions then you are making a mistake.

 

Yes Pvp players need a way to get them but do me a favor don't try to force players that don't pvp into pvp just for the crystals.

 

As some pvp players have said they didn't like to pve well the same is with pve (or story people).

 

This is my issue as well. It is not just that they are making it more difficult to get 258 gear, though they are making it easier to get 252 gear, but they are limiting your PvE options now for the weekly missions.

 

A much wiser choice would be to give players the option to do either the PvE or the PvP option. Choose 1 -- everyone is happy and you still keep the throttle of MWS acquisition on.

 

More broadly -- the 2 World Boss Weekly, in particular, I foresee as being a huge _______ (fill in with term of your choosing).

 

I suppose if they are massively increasing the rate at which you can acquire MWS in crates, that will help alleviate the problem, but that brings us back full circle to the RNG-debacle plaguing 5.0 to 5.6.

 

Dasty

Edited November 21, 2018 by Jdast

[KendraP]

It is pretty clear why we have the gear, they simply need to buy time before 6.0

Anyway, its simply meant to keep us busy till 6.0 and I am fine with that.

 

I already answered this absurd argument, again most recently:

2. The "grind keeps people around" argument, from my perspective, is complete and utter nonsense. I am attempting to get it through your obviously abnormally thick skill, Musco, that should I stay, I am doing it IN SPITE OF the gear grind i will inevitably end up participating in. I am NOT doing a gear grind because I enjoy it, and by extension, this is NOT retaining me as a player - frankly at this point my guild and the lack of another game I care to play are doing that. To expand this argument from purely my perspective, at one point prior to the pvp changes that destroyed my guild's playerbase, I had about 10-15 active players on any given day. We're down to 2-6 because of the previous changes. This is a 40-87% decrease in active and subscribing members. Guess how many of those (previously subscribing) players are returning? None.

Quoted myself because I'm tired of typing the same reply to the same argument from different peoole several hundred times. If Musco thinks people are just dying because they just can't swtor without another futless grind, he is even duller than I thought. If i wanted massive grindfests, I'd go to WoW where the levelling grind proved too boring for me.

 

What has made swtor good for a long time now is that it deviated away from the absurd grindfest model.

[assatrap]

So what this says is that you can get cca 4 Masterwork Data Crystals. That measn you can buy 2 252 pieces or upgrade 1 252 to 258. With this rate you can buy all the needed 14 slots in 7 weeks (yes you may need more to min/max) so that is 2 months for 252 gear. However, in this time you might get some drops from Command Crates and from the Ossus Weekly which gives one piece. In theory you then get 3 pcs of 252 gear in a week, which brings down the time to 4 weeks (If you get 1 or 2 pieces from command crates or any other way).

 

So we have 1 month for full 252. To get that to 258 you just need to farm Masterwork Data Crystals and by getting again 4 per week you will get full 258 in 14 weeks (one 258 per week) which is over 3 months. So in the end it will take 4 months to get a toon to full 248.

 

For me the 252 is fine as its not that slow and I mainly dont want it to affect ranked pvp too much. Yes, this is a long grind, well its not even a grind as you cannot grind cause there is nothing to grind, you can do the available objectives in 1 day and then there is just nothing you can do, but wait for next week. Still this system makes the 258 gear really exclusive so if people can kill NiM GotM then they really deserve it.

 

merovejec to say it politetly are you F kidding me?

 

you are one of the 0.00001% population in swtor who has 99.9% or was it 100% achievement in SWTOR.

99% dont even have close to 50% achievement completed. You probably play in average 10hours a day for years. You make hardcore korean mmo players look like bunch of touchy amateurs. Your opinion should be regarded as a joke or satire at most.

 

For me personally i was contemplating wether to continue playing mmo after new year there is already enough bs IRL... i dont want to waste my time on even more nonsense BS especially in my leisure time. Devs have definetly made my decision alot easier for once in for all quit mmos with this 5.1 update. God knows how complicated and contrived 6.0 will be and how much mess they going to create in future 5.10 is just the beginning. Guild perks and Guild leveling?.... there has been thousands of good suggestions over the years none of them had mentionen "guild perks and lvling" jesus....

 

I will play Ossus both empire and republic for the story - thoroughly explore the area and skip all form of grinding. Then probably revisit the IA and SW story one last time. Then call it there. When a diehard swtor fan like snave quits the game thats telling. Was a fun ride swtor but its time to abandon the ship/wreck and move on and give up on swtor.

[teclado]

How does one get to Ossus? If I have to grind through KotFE and KotET just to get to the vendor that has the endgame gear, I'm going to be...not happy. I think I did FE on one character, but that's it.

[casirabit]

How does one get to Ossus? If I have to grind through KotFE and KotET just to get to the vendor that has the endgame gear, I'm going to be...not happy. I think I did FE on one character, but that's it.

 

You can auto-complete but the choices will be made for you. I.E. Republic-All light side choices (you rejoin the Republic) Empire- All Dark Side Choices (You rejoin the Empire)