Why is Bioware so silent on major gear issues from 5.10?

[Lhancelot]

I feel his pain in all honesty. I have been a strong supporter of this game. Subbed since december of 2011 early access beta, blah blah. Been here forever. And I for the first time am dropping my subscription. I can deal with a lack of content. Find some good rp or something to keep my busy. I can deal with some of the worst class balance (mainly pvp) I have seen in a while with dps staying up forever unless 2 or more people are tunneling. I can deal with the small population lack of hm raid teams. I can deal with the lack of challenge in the game. All the single player content is super easy in this game. I remember back when gearing, learning your class actually mattered to kill some elites in this game.

 

But when you make a gear grind so tedious, so boring, so unthoughtful of your playerbase it astonishes me. If we break down essentially what this gear grind has done:

 

1. Made all the content before ossus update 100% useless. I got through the ossus with no gear on literally and went straight to 252. So why pvp? So why raid? Why do anything outside of ossus dailies. There isn't any. 5.0 gear change was not the greatest but at least it was direct and rewarded your play and got peopel queing for GF raids. So now you have a game where you don't push out content on a consistent basis but made all the previous stuff useless to do. Just thinking for a moment will help you don't need player feedback to see this coming.

 

2. Its tedious. The grind is extremely unfair to the player. First you have a rng grab to get a piece of gear weekly (how about you let them pick the piece instead) for taking your time out to do that. How about you don't make the unassembled crystal price go up with unassembled because those don't just drop out of the sky. Then you get a crystal from the world boss weekly, and weekly assignment. This = 1 258 piece or 1 252 piece a week. You realize you have multiple slots right? Multiple sets need be made, pvp, pve, dueling, mitigated sets, skank sets, dps sets, dueling sets. You realize it takes time to build various sets of gear. Also you forget that some of us have more than one toon we need to gear.

 

3. This next point kinda bounces off the last one, the mobile gaming like approach to gearing. This is extremely ridiculous with all the reputation locks, weekly crystal limits, artificial barriers. It feels like a mobile game I finish my grinding by thursday at the latest across my 6 toons to gear just one (wow that is annoying) doing the same dailies over and over. Then it locks me with a comeback next week. And if that rng of the dalies fails you, you got to use your unassembled which you won't sustain unless you are getting lucky and winning alot or just playing immense amount of game time. That is so lame, maybe next week i get busy can't grind or something of that nature. Your realize there are 4 weeks in a month bioware. Literally gearing will take an immense amount of time.

 

4. Min/maxing is literally grinding for the same pieces twice. Now since you like to slot lock stuff you make someone grind for the same piece of gear value twice. Now you just doubled the time for piece which already is on a weekly basis awesome. Thats half a month.....half a month of time unless you got alts on top of alts, on top of alts of the same damn class.

 

Those are just the biggest ones that are making me drop my sub from this game. It is just such an unrewarding process and ill wailt till it gets better before coming back. This update and its changes were so unnecessary. It isn't fun. Why not just add another tier to command system and update the loot drops for the raids like before.

 

Master mode Flashpoints: 242 gear (lets drop some useful stuff here for people)

SM Raids: 248 gear

HM Raids: 252 gear

NIM: 258 gear

 

Leave rest of ossus the same if you want. This way people can keep progressing by doing different stuff. They aren'y just doing ossus over and over and over again. Bioware thats boring come on. Even destiny gave you more entertainment then that and their grind is not the greatest either.

 

If you want to stop kicking pvpers in the balls give them separate gear vendor with expertise. Just make this the most customizable fun star wars experiance you can. The glory days for this MMO are long gone. Lets stop pretending like Ranked PVP is great in here its not. Full of a bunch of win trading and other nonsense. Lets stop pretending there are NIM raid teams everywhere. There isn't they left a long time ago to other mmos. The people that are left love star wars. There is no other reason we are here. Just make it a fun an engaging star wars experiance. I hope to see a change, a real one, because this is not EA's fault, or lack of resources fault. This was a choice made by you guys, bioware, for no reason. Be transparent in what your goals are and be realistic. I hope 6.0 will be fun because this isn't.

 

Nice post. Explains the gearing grind perfectly and I had to highlight the most important thing beyond all the details. That being, it's not fun.

 

They have totally forgotten what games are about, and made a once enjoyable highly entertaining game into a slogfest grind machine MMO with so many unlikable facets to it's progression/gearing system no one enjoys it.

[olagatonjedi]

Before you post inaccurate responses in this thread, try to look up the word "optimized" in any legit dictionary. It means the best possible. After 5.10, the best possible gear build that one can get for a DPS or a tank, requires at least 3 months of grinding for a single toon, and an expected value of at least 10 pieces of gear going down the drain, because of RNG rewars for the Ossus Weekly.

 

You cannot defend this. Grinding is fun only if it has warranted rewards. Grinding that will result in 40-50% of your rewards being disintegrated for unassembled components, is objectively a horrific aspect of the game right now, and is unjustifiable. All of this, is partially because of the slot specific enhancements and mods. If you cannot understand this, it is user error, aka you fail to comprehend simple math and statistics.

There is no required time table on min/max optimized gear. It is available, but gated in various ways. Being gated does not mean something cant be min/maxed.

 

The new expansion has been fun, and does not require any grinding. Having done the story, the max time needed to spend per week, per character, on ossus is like 20-30 mins. Hardly a grind, unless you want to gear more than one toon within a self-imposed time frame.

Edited December 31, 2018 by olagatonjedi

[Syal]

The fact is that with 252 & 258, there is no more need to reach 230, 242 & 248 for a new level 70 !

 

The only gearing up now is to farm during 2, 3 month osus dayly...

 

Tier 1 to 4 is just 1 year of wasted development and veteran players effort !

Edited January 1, 2019 by Syal

[Lhancelot]

The fact is that with 252 & 258, there is no more need to reach 230, 242 & 248 for a new level 70 !

 

The only gearing up now is to farm during 2, 3 month osus dayly...

 

Tier 1 to 4 is just 1 year of wasted development and veteran players effort !

 

I am surprised any vets stick around on the game. Pretty sure it's only for social purposes now.

 

The PVE is not exactly the best, the PVP is old and stale with the same meta running for 2 years now, they added a pointless new gear grind that has locked in mods removing even more of the customization available for gearing, what exactly keeps any vets here besides the social facets of the game?

[olagatonjedi]

The fact is that with 252 & 258, there is no more need to reach 230, 242 & 248 for a new level 70 !

 

The only gearing up now is to farm during 2, 3 month osus dayly...

 

Tier 1 to 4 is just 1 year of wasted development and veteran players effort !

This is false. I have 2 toons that hit 70 recently, and benefit still from GC crates even if its not BIS 258. The gear difference doesnt make the old gear unusable, especially since there was no increase in content difficulty.

[DawnAskham]

Random thoughts:

 

Gear has never been more irrelevant - outside HM / NiM Ops and pushing rank in PVP (if there is even enough population to support ranked), gear is meaningless (between bolster, level sync, easy content, and OP comps).

 

And while the amount of new content is still slim, I would consider sticking around for a while and playing through different content (from old group content to the new area) while optimizing my character with new gear and collecting new decos and whatever else.

 

What I won't do is reward Bioware for the combination of slim content coupled with an excessively grindy gear system filled with ridiculous restrictions (e.g. RNG boxes, slot locking mods) that also requires repeating the small new content over and over and over.

 

Also does anyone know if it is even possible to optimize stats with mods pulled from the new gear - like are the mods different per slot / class (one has crit, another alacrity, another accuracy), or do say all chests have an accuracy enhancement?

[Alanbra]

It is possible to adjust your stats although it doubles the grind. For instance for dps the chest piece has a crit enhancement while the chest for healers has an alacrity one. Of course this means you'll need to grind out twice, once to get the armoring needed for the dps set bonus and then again for the enhancement with the stats you want.

 

For myself, I'm going to stay in 248's. It won't be a problem unless (when) they nerf class abilities "because people are exceeding Bioware's projected class balance" due to a majority of people having higher level gear.

 

 

Honestly though, the new gear, for pve at least, doesn't matter. If Anthem fails badly and Bioware is dissolved then Swtor will probably go into full maintenance mode and there will never be a 6.0 to make higher gear needed.

 

If Bioware continues to exist and there is a 6.0 then people will get starter gear with enough stats to get them though the content. Either way the 252/258 gear grind is nothing but something to keep people busy.

[Syal]

This is false. I have 2 toons that hit 70 recently, and benefit still from GC crates even if its not BIS 258. The gear difference doesnt make the old gear unusable, especially since there was no increase in content difficulty.

 

i know this point ! am just saying that a player who reach lvl 70, don't need to run after tier 1 to 4 ! Now he just have to farm T5 on ossus dayly !

[olagatonjedi]

i know this point ! am just saying that a player who reach lvl 70, don't need to run after tier 1 to 4 ! Now he just have to farm T5 on ossus dayly !

They dont need to farm either, tbh.

[TrixxieTriss]

Do we have a date for when they come back from holidays?

[steveerkcanjerk]

This is false. I have 2 toons that hit 70 recently, and benefit still from GC crates even if its not BIS 258. The gear difference doesnt make the old gear unusable, especially since there was no increase in content difficulty.

 

did ossus with zero gear on and went straight to 252 yeah there is no point of that gear sorry homie

[KainrycKarr]

I feel his pain in all honesty. I have been a strong supporter of this game. Subbed since december of 2011 early access beta, blah blah. Been here forever. And I for the first time am dropping my subscription. I can deal with a lack of content. Find some good rp or something to keep my busy. I can deal with some of the worst class balance (mainly pvp) I have seen in a while with dps staying up forever unless 2 or more people are tunneling. I can deal with the small population lack of hm raid teams. I can deal with the lack of challenge in the game. All the single player content is super easy in this game. I remember back when gearing, learning your class actually mattered to kill some elites in this game.

 

But when you make a gear grind so tedious, so boring, so unthoughtful of your playerbase it astonishes me. If we break down essentially what this gear grind has done:

 

1. Made all the content before ossus update 100% useless. I got through the ossus with no gear on literally and went straight to 252. So why pvp? So why raid? Why do anything outside of ossus dailies. There isn't any. 5.0 gear change was not the greatest but at least it was direct and rewarded your play and got peopel queing for GF raids. So now you have a game where you don't push out content on a consistent basis but made all the previous stuff useless to do. Just thinking for a moment will help you don't need player feedback to see this coming.

 

2. Its tedious. The grind is extremely unfair to the player. First you have a rng grab to get a piece of gear weekly (how about you let them pick the piece instead) for taking your time out to do that. How about you don't make the unassembled crystal price go up with unassembled because those don't just drop out of the sky. Then you get a crystal from the world boss weekly, and weekly assignment. This = 1 258 piece or 1 252 piece a week. You realize you have multiple slots right? Multiple sets need be made, pvp, pve, dueling, mitigated sets, skank sets, dps sets, dueling sets. You realize it takes time to build various sets of gear. Also you forget that some of us have more than one toon we need to gear.

 

3. This next point kinda bounces off the last one, the mobile gaming like approach to gearing. This is extremely ridiculous with all the reputation locks, weekly crystal limits, artificial barriers. It feels like a mobile game I finish my grinding by thursday at the latest across my 6 toons to gear just one (wow that is annoying) doing the same dailies over and over. Then it locks me with a comeback next week. And if that rng of the dalies fails you, you got to use your unassembled which you won't sustain unless you are getting lucky and winning alot or just playing immense amount of game time. That is so lame, maybe next week i get busy can't grind or something of that nature. Your realize there are 4 weeks in a month bioware. Literally gearing will take an immense amount of time.

 

4. Min/maxing is literally grinding for the same pieces twice. Now since you like to slot lock stuff you make someone grind for the same piece of gear value twice. Now you just doubled the time for piece which already is on a weekly basis awesome. Thats half a month.....half a month of time unless you got alts on top of alts, on top of alts of the same damn class.

 

Those are just the biggest ones that are making me drop my sub from this game. It is just such an unrewarding process and ill wailt till it gets better before coming back. This update and its changes were so unnecessary. It isn't fun. Why not just add another tier to command system and update the loot drops for the raids like before.

 

Master mode Flashpoints: 242 gear (lets drop some useful stuff here for people)

SM Raids: 248 gear

HM Raids: 252 gear

NIM: 258 gear

 

Leave rest of ossus the same if you want. This way people can keep progressing by doing different stuff. They aren'y just doing ossus over and over and over again. Bioware thats boring come on. Even destiny gave you more entertainment then that and their grind is not the greatest either.

 

If you want to stop kicking pvpers in the balls give them separate gear vendor with expertise. Just make this the most customizable fun star wars experiance you can. The glory days for this MMO are long gone. Lets stop pretending like Ranked PVP is great in here its not. Full of a bunch of win trading and other nonsense. Lets stop pretending there are NIM raid teams everywhere. There isn't they left a long time ago to other mmos. The people that are left love star wars. There is no other reason we are here. Just make it a fun an engaging star wars experiance. I hope to see a change, a real one, because this is not EA's fault, or lack of resources fault. This was a choice made by you guys, bioware, for no reason. Be transparent in what your goals are and be realistic. I hope 6.0 will be fun because this isn't.

 

I couldn't have put it better myself. Listen to your freaking players.

[DavidAtkinson]

I find your obsession with PVP gear ludicrous and outdated...

 

We don't need PVP gear at all. Make gear easier to get by using various content options WITHOUT forcing people to play what they don't like.

 

One of set of gear is ok as it allows everyone to que WZ without having to grind for another set of gear. Not thanks... That would just remove people form the que who don't feel like getting PVP gear.

[fabsus]

do we need the gear?

. personally i think, that the most ppl don't need the gear. but this is not the question! everybody has the possibility to get it and the majority tries to optimize their gameplay, no matter what this is. so it is nothing wrong, if a heroics-only player wants a fully equiped character.

- but everybody should calm down a bit, because it doesn't really matters.

 

what about the minority?

- that is the problem i see! if you want to raid mastermode gods, you are forced to grind as ****. mosty with different toons, to get one full. so this is no question about skill, it is a question about time, just time!

 

pvp gear?

- the former pvp gear was easy to get, so after 2 weeks playing, everybody had the same chances.

- also with the pvp stats it was way more easy to seperate the classes from pve balancing.

- so in my opinion, it was a false decision, to get rid of the pvp gear, even if you had to check balancing in both ways. but today it is much more harder to find the right way between pve and pvp, by using the same gear.

 

new gear issues?

- by locking everything to the special slots, it really seems, that this should increase the time to grind for gear. if you don't have several toons, it takes months to equip a single toon.

- that the new set-bonus is not stacking is just a failure for me. everything else is just an excuse. there is really no reason why to do so. this really hinders some raid groups doing "progress". some are nearly full, some just having 1-2 parts.

- the random drops in crates are so low, that they are nearly not existent. an example? i opened about 3k level 4 crates and got not a single crystal or 252 piece.

- and it is even worse, because the items you get out of the quest crates are so random, that they are mostly useless. for example i got mostly accuracy gear items on my healer-only-class. this would be no deal, if it would be upgradeable to the the item i want. but it is not. so you need a crit impla to upgrade to a crit impla.

- to say, that there will be major changes in the future and this is the first step, is just an excuse for me. also to begging for feedback is a bit hipocritical to me. why not telling the thoughts how and why they wanna change something and they get enough feedback. but in that case, just a poor try for damage limitation.

- so what major changes could come? locking spec-based enh. and mods, too? getting rid of modularity? no free choice anymore? just grinding for the same gear for just more and more time?

 

sorry, but no. in our guild many quit by intruducing rng gear. some came back now, but left again because the actual system is even worse than the system when rng gear was introduced....

 

so is that a problem? the gear is not the problem,

it is the treatment of the players.

 

it is to deal with something they did, but claiming that they are listening.

but at the end, it seems more and more, that nobody cares... and there

we have a lot of potential to increase the development in a better way.

[DarthSpuds]

Ben Irving very nearly killed this game praying to the RNG gods. It really is time Bioware learned this lesson.

 

Here's the thing with current gearing.

Theoretically you COULD get only "new" pieces from the Weekly box and be fully geared in 14 weeks.

 

But that isn't going to happen, because computer generated random numbers just aren't random, so Bioware knows already what the average Time-To-Gear-Up (TTGU) is, and they know it damn well isn't 14 weeks.

 

Let's say for arguments sake they have set it to 26 weeks (6 months) about the time they expect to drop another update. Problem is some people are going to luck out and be geared in 14 weeks, and then have no reason at all to play for the 12 weeks left before next update.

 

Bigger problem is those people will come to the forum and whine about there being no reward for their ongoing effort, and that will have all those people who got shafted by the RNG and have still only got 8 pieces of gear to really go off the deep end and start feeling resentful.

 

Players lose (except the small percentage who lucked out) and Bioware loses because players hate both side of this system.

 

An Alternative Approach.

 

• Bioware sets a TTGU of 26 weeks.
  
• They add in a Token that drops from Daily and Weekly quests on Ossus and which is traded in for gear - the same gear we are currently dropping from the Weekly 10 Loot Box - and which we choose which piece of gear we want.
  
• They then price those gear pieces so that we could get a full set of 14 pieces of gear from 26 week's worth of Ossus Dailies and Weekly quests.
  

 

Effects:

• No one gets to luck out and complete the gearing up process early, and then complain about no reward for effort for 12 weeks.
  
• No one feels resentful because they'll take 3 times longer than the guy who lucked out to gear up.
  
• Everyone has a reason to log in and do the Daily / Weekly quests for the whole of the 26 week period.
  

 

Its a win/win.

 

Players see that everything they do is an incremental step toward getting something they actually want, rather than a third off-hand they are going to deconstruct.

Bioware has less complaints about the crappy RNG gearing process.

Bioware has less complaints from people who "finished" early and now feel they are getting no reward for their efforts.

 

 

The ONLY downside to this is that we'll know for a fact there is a set TTGU deployed by Bioware to keep us busy between content drops. Well, - + - + NEWS FLASH + - + -, we know this already - we just hate how it is being implemented.

 

All The Best

[Taraq]

As a mainly tank player i take this gearing issue very serious. Since the implementation of the galactic command in 4.0, or even bevor, the tank stats are "broken", i.e. Defense stat.

 

The Defense stat is way in the diminishing returns and any serious Tank player i know is going for B-lettered DPS or b-lettered Tank modifications (endurance > mastery > power/defense) and for the enhancements which BiS is immunity and sturdious they go for vigilant and bulwark which also have more endurance over shield/absorb. Are you aware of that? Tanks do not need 4700 defense! Well i don't think so or you just don't care.

 

Because when you design a new gear you just add some more points to the already existing gear and it's done, easy going. No one from BW does the math behind the stats or maybe even know what they are for. All though you just had to check the lists the theory crafters did, which are btw community members, they are easy to find just google it. These are the source of any min/max.

 

With 4.0 it's already a pain in the *** to get modifications/enhancements to min/max for Tanks. The 248 modifications/enhancements only drop in T4 crates at a insanely low chance and then it needs to be B-lettered or vigilant/bulwark. Crafting mods/enhancements is only possible in 246 and btw. these are better than the 258 BiS modifications/enhancements for Tanks. It's not even possible to get the 252 or 258 modifications/enhancement we need, they just don't exist. This is ridiculous.

 

And that's just aside from the fact that you intended the change for slot restriction on modifications/enhancements which alone is a absolutely stupid change.

 

What are you going to do about the stats, especially for Tanks.

 

I'm a Collectors Edition owning subscriber since launch and i want an answer!

Edited January 2, 2019 by Taraq

[olagatonjedi]

did ossus with zero gear on and went straight to 252 yeah there is no point of that gear sorry homie

So you conclude that no gear is needed?

[Alanbra]

Considering that they give you green gear that's good enough to do Ossus, nope, gear is not needed for 5.10. All the tiers of galactic command is useless.

[Batwer]

They are baaaaack!!!! And they are still silent. http://www.cfs-aktuell.de/ostrich.jpg

[Rion_Starkiller]

Seriously, why do level 70's get bolstered at all?

[Screaming_Ziva]

Considering that they give you green gear that's good enough to do Ossus, nope, gear is not needed for 5.10. All the tiers of galactic command is useless.

This exactly.

 

I forgot to move my legacy gear over to a character before I started Ossus and I was surprised to get a complete set of gear when starting. Is it great gear? No. Is it enough to pretty much do anything SM? Yep. We can now bypass Galactic Command altogether and just start working on our 252 gear right when hitting level 70.

[DawnAskham]

As a mainly tank player i take this gearing issue very serious. Since the implementation of the galactic command in 4.0, or even bevor, the tank stats are "broken", i.e. Defense stat.

 

The Defense stat is way in the diminishing returns and any serious Tank player i know is going for B-lettered DPS or b-lettered Tank modifications (endurance > mastery > power/defense) and for the enhancements which BiS is immunity and sturdious they go for vigilant and bulwark which also have more endurance over shield/absorb. Are you aware of that? Tanks do not need 4700 defense! Well i don't think so or you just don't care.

 

Because when you design a new gear you just add some more points to the already existing gear and it's done, easy going. No one from BW does the math behind the stats or maybe even know what they are for. All though you just had to check the lists the theory crafters did, which are btw community members, they are easy to find just google it. These are the source of any min/max.

 

With 4.0 it's already a pain in the *** to get modifications/enhancements to min/max for Tanks. The 248 modifications/enhancements only drop in T4 crates at a insanely low chance and then it needs to be B-lettered or vigilant/bulwark. Crafting mods/enhancements is only possible in 246 and btw. these are better than the 258 BiS modifications/enhancements for Tanks. It's not even possible to get the 252 or 258 modifications/enhancement we need, they just don't exist. This is ridiculous.

 

And that's just aside from the fact that you intended the change for slot restriction on modifications/enhancements which alone is a absolutely stupid change.

 

What are you going to do about the stats, especially for Tanks.

 

I'm a Collectors Edition owning subscriber since launch and i want an answer!

 

They borked up tank stats and tank gearing in 4.0 (removed endurance from relics, stuck defense on everything yet left defense with very large diminishing returns, removed B mods with mitigation, etc) and have never bothered to do anything about it.

 

As such, I stopped tanking.

[Syal]

Considering that they give you green gear that's good enough to do Ossus, nope, gear is not needed for 5.10. All the tiers of galactic command is useless.

 

A veterans players spank !

Edited January 2, 2019 by Syal

[Taraq]

They borked up tank stats and tank gearing in 4.0 (removed endurance from relics, stuck defense on everything yet left defense with very large diminishing returns, removed B mods with mitigation, etc) and have never bothered to do anything about it.

 

As such, I stopped tanking.

 

Thanks!

 

So i'm not the only one who's annoyed about the lack of compliance we tanks get. When there's a note about tanks in the patch notes ist something like "we took that from the class but we gave the taunt abilities 50% more aggro generation in exchange". Does BW know tanks are as essential as everyone else to get the game working??

 

Let us choose what modification/enhancement we get for trading in masterwork crystals!

Edited January 3, 2019 by Taraq

[TrixxieTriss]

IMO, any RNG in any game, wether it’s loot boxes or a “gearing feature”, should have the drop percentages made public. There is absolutely no ledgitmate reason to keep the percentages secret if they are doing everything above board.

 

One of the biggest push back since the SW BF2 loot box fiasco is that RNG is a form or gambling. The definition of what constitutes gambling seems to differ between coultures and countries. Beligium for instance has defined paid loot boxes in games as gambling and as such falls under gambling laws. Which means if a game wants to have them in Belgium they need to comply with gambling laws and taxes. One requirement is providing the percentages to “win” when gambling or in our case, what’s the drop rate is to get a piece of gear.

 

The only reason I can see that game Devs don’t want to provide the actual drop percentages is so they can change them when ever they want without informing players to. ie, if they want us to grind more, they will decrease the drop rate. It also means we have no way of ever checking to see if they are telling the truth.

 

People have now opened thousands of tier 3 and 4 crates and not had one 252 piece drop. So Bioware, what’s the actual drop percentage? How about coming clean and having some transparency for once,