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

[aerockyul]

I'm the only person in my group that isn't seriously thinking of quitting over this. They were already frustrated, as casual and non-PVP players, about the complexity of gearing.

 

Players that I brought to the game in the last six months got upset about the process of gearing up, starting from level 1. I think the devs look at gearing from where long-time players are now through the next stage, without looking back to see how unreasonably complex the process has become, from start to finish. It is not consistent and it is not intuitive and it is not explained within the game itself.

 

I don't think it's that complicated:

Starting gear--

5 slots filled after first cutscene.

DvL armor from traveling to a Stronghold and pulling it from a Legacy bank

or; DvL armor from mail from another alt that is currently using it.

After final Class Story mission on starter planet, earn a main-hand that you need to mod yourself, from four different sources (the hilt/barrel included, the enhancement (or mod, can't remember) from completing said mission, and an enhancement/mod (whichever you didn't get from that mission) after clicking on the shiny next to the item enhancement station (only the one on start planet--the shiny isn't in your stronghold or on fleet), and finally a stat-ed color crystal (I pull mine from collections, and have to continuously pull them for every OH upgrade).

Color Crystals; after level 10 there is no need to take any crystal from any source but the +41's in collections or from the mailbox attachment with 4 purples. Uh, were you not here for that mail giveaway? Do you even get that one? Have you bought crystals from the CM so you have some to even pull from Collections? Do you, from the starter planet, have a couple hundred thousand credits to buy a +41 crystal on the GTN? Hope it's not too ugly...

and; almost no MH drops with a crystal, or if it does it's a sub-41 one.

 

Leveling gear--

If you're going to gear from leveling--you might not get every single slot filled until much later if you're only doing the Class Story Arc, maybe more if including the Planetary Arc.

Run one PvP mission at level 10 to get all left side non-armor pieces immediately (if you can stomach PvP on a severely gimped toon going up against droves of slumming level 35's).

Run heroics (until level 55) to gain increasingly stronger leveling gear

but; disregard all armor pieces if you're using DvL armor because you cannot pull mods/enhancements from the heroic gear--you're basically running heroics for the off chance you'll get an OH or other left side improvements. Most people are using a cosmetic MH now that requires removeable pieces to upgrade--the heroic MH is not unmoddable. If you want your MH to increase you have to buy mods/enhancements/barrels/hilts from fleet from the Supplies section--but only at certain levels.

Random drops on planets that might be purple, but almost all planetary drops do not exceed the heroic drops--you're going to be overgeared for any drops on planets most of the time.

Flashpoints rarely now drop some gear, but see above about being overgeared already when you get those drops

World Bosses drop some gear, but see above about being overgeared already when you get those drops.

Crafting armor/weapons--Uhhh, you need some stuff, gathered from planets or crew skill missions (costs credits), and you need companions to do the crafting (no silly, YOU cannot craft anything). And the success/failure/critical rate of crafting depends on how happy you make your companions/how influential you are with them.

 

After level 60--

If the gear you're running with is moddable, there are a few more levels you can purchase slots from up to level 65.

Heroics will no longer drop leveling gear--they'll drop boxes that will have legacy empty-slotted gear--that you can collect on after Chapter IX of KOTFE.

If you've finished the Class Story Arc and are running dailies, you can possibly get gear that's worse than anything you're already wearing.

 

Up until level 70--

You don't actually have to do any of the above. You can complete the vanilla game with a MH and nothing else, thanks to how overpowered companions are. They will do your fighting for you. You will also be bolstered in a lot of content outside of the planets so again, not really necessary.

Shall we start a discussion of how bolster works? (It's not that straightforward )

 

Level 70--

Now you get to roll RNG from Command Crates from here to eternity--you might get the good stuff 14 boxes in a row, you might get 7 and then nothing good for 182 crates, or you may never actually get anything gold (especially after rank 300--248's are a myth at this point).

After you've disintegrated about 98% of all contents in the command crates, you get three forms of new "currency"--Unassembled Components, Command Tokens, and Command XP. (let's not get into what item inside the crate goes to which currency and what the percentages are)

Command XP goes back towards your next crate--rinse and repeat the above about RNG and disintegration

Command Tokens go into your Currency tab, where it sits while you accumulate 3,000 of them (cap), and after 3,000 they go into your Command Stash for later retrieval (or accidental disintegration ). You can use Command Tokens to buy a full set of "starting" level 70 gear with the set bonuses attached, and the purple left-side items as well. You will need a lot of them, so you're probably not going to be able to do this on your first toon.

uhhh; make sure you go to the correct class vendor for these command token gear sets (you want Tier 1 at this level, don't get bothered yet about Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 vendors)

Unassembled Components are a "moveable" currency, in that they are not toon bound like the above two currencies, and you can collect and move them to different toons in your legacy (or keep a hoard of them in your legacy bank). I will admit here I have no idea how to spend them--but they give you gear? Better gear? Their conversion rate is 500 for one new Matrix Shard, and 1000 each after that? You can also collect UC's from finishing PvP missions, but apparently they just sit in banks from the sound of it? Are we being trolled? What do UC's actually do?

Crafting post-level 70: Throughout "endgame" you will see drops for "schematics" in order to learn how to craft more stat-ed gear. Most of the time these schematics will not be useful since you have outleveled them or they go to a tank and you're a healer and all sorts of combinations of usefulness that way. You cannot craft set bonus gear, so what's the point if you can just buy them for relatively cheap with all those Command Tokens you have by this time?

 

OH WAIT, now we can craft some set-gear stuff in Tier 5 (remember the 4 tiers? You thought that was all? )

It's very expensive in terms of crafting materials. Shall we go into an equally long list about how to acquire these components and how many ridiculous amounts of each rare material you will need to craft this gear?

 

Let us not forget the Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 vendors--These are the places you can go to trade in your previous tier gear for the next tier gear (set bonus). Pfft, silly rabbit, it's not that easy. You need to run Operations and kill bosses, from which you can roll/pay/random Unassembled xxxx Gear (like, Unassembled gloves, Unassembled chest, etc.), which you can then use (if you were lucky enough to get them) to go back to the next Tier vendor to trade your old piece with the Unassembled piece. There are three levels of Operations, so Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 trade vendors. Have fun if you're not awesome at Operations going through Tier 3 and 4!

If you are like some people and RNG gods are on your side with Command Crates--you may skip all those vendors because you can actually get that gear from your command crates--(yes, rare, but it can and is happening for those lucky enough with RNG--lots of people win the lottery all the time, you know!)

 

Umm, by the way, why do you need all this gear again? Most content sub-Hard Mode is bolstered, sooooo......

 

OH, holy cow, what about augmenting!! Well, let me tell you about augmenting your great gear you've acquired from the above list:

There are ten tiers of augment kits, ten tiers of augment slots to unlock from each piece, ten tiers of various crafting materials needed for each kit, and credit costs of unlocking slots. LOL, no, you can't craft just any augment! There are like, 3 or 4 different crafting disciplines that can craft them, and they're not all the same.

If you aren't a crafting virtuoso, you are going to be buying the augment kits and augments from the GTN. Your prices will vary depending on the mood and market of the crafting and GTN players.

Let's assume you are never going to augment anything below tier 10 (smart, and I'm running out of time with these long explanations!)--there are different levels of augments--they don't tell you which "level or tier" that they belong to, you just type in augment and sift through hundreds of pages, trying to figure out which ones are "max" and which ones are best for your class (min/maxing--ummm, you kind of need to know this information on your own, silly. Look at all the other people that know this information already--that needs to be you, but good luck finding out how)

For a long time, 228 augments (or whatever) were the best, and you could just pull those from your old gear and put it on your new gear after creating a new tier 10 augment slot in the new gear. No, that's not free. What is this, Communism Wars? You gotta pay to remove those augments from your own gear in order to put it in your own gear.

 

Augments, cont.,

So now there are newer, shinier, goldier augments that were introduced with a new flashpoint a while ago. The schematics drop from that flashpoint. I hope you've been hoarding lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of rare/expensive materials by now, because you're going to need A LOT of all that stuff to make them in any meaningful way. Or you could spend a couple million on the GTN for them. You HAVE been saving all those credits, right? Not spending it on frivolous, irrelevant leveling gear? Not on buying inferior augments that worked great for years but are now obsolete, so you've wasted so many credits that could have gotten you those new, shiny, goldy augments? Good for you! Buy your way to the new augments and you'll be ready to go.

 

Tier 5--

Um, grind stuff, on the (admittedly beautiful) planet of Ossus for some Tier 5 gear. You can collect Masterwork Crystals or Shards or something, umm, I don't know, some of the missions were "bugged" from the beginning (get it? there are lots of bugs all over the place on that planet!), umm, Oh, look at the schematic vendors for your level 600 Crafting discipline--there are some new schematics for the new stuff! Uhh, don't look too closely at the material rarity and the amount of materials needed, it's not pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously, what noob is getting confused by all that? :rolleyes:

 

/s

[QuinlanSaathis]

While this change won't impact me all that much as I am a long way from 252 its not a good decision.

Even at my low and relatively modest gear levels I pull out the mods and enhancements to get the optimal stat balance that I can, and I don't use augments because I don't need to and they are not worth the expense.

 

This is not a good change and it should be reversed.

[Kiesu]

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

Please reverse this immediately. Mixing and matching is part of the fun. This is zero fun.

[DarthNillard]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

One follow up question: you guys get paid right? Like this is your actual jobs? If so, how about you do work?

[DarthSpuds]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

-eric

 

No you won't.

 

We've been telling you for YEARS what we want from Gearing, and you've gone out of your way to do the exact opposite - even going so far as to allow Ben irving to go live with Command Crates, resulting in a mass exodus so bad that it saw EA issue a damage limitation questionnaire, and a replacement being found for Ben's position as Lead Producer.

 

All The Best

[DarthSpuds]

If you want end-game ops more challenging, don't hide behind stats, make it harder with harder mechanics, tighter timers and fewer recovery windows.

 

That would mean they would have to know how the classes work, individually and in conjunction with other classes.

And they clearly don't.

 

All The Best

[TrixxieTriss]

That would mean they would have to know how the classes work, individually and in conjunction with other classes.

And they clearly don't.

 

All The Best

 

Class balance is hard

[TrixxieTriss]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

Really? How many times we’re you told on the PTS this was a bad idea.

You are asking for more feed back regarding concerns... BUT HOW MANY MORE PEOPLE NEED TO SAY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER TILL YOU’VE ABSORBED IT??

We have all listed ledgimate reasons in detail why this is a bad idea and why we need to be able to move enhancments/mods/hilts and barrels around. WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM US?

 

Maybe if you actually understood your classes better and what stats they actually need for the different parts of the game we wouldn’t need to remove mod and enhancments. But Bioware have never understood, even when we had pvp gear, that ACCURACY is basically USELESS IN PVP for so many classes.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

This part really is unacceptable at this point and an extremely poor and disingenuous excuse. People were telling you about stuff on the PTS over a month ago.

 

What was the actual point of the PTS if you aren’t going to pass on the feed back and then get it fixed?

 

Why is there even another PTS up when you haven’t even fixed 5.10? It boggles the mind how you guys operate.

 

If it’s not apparent by my post and many other people’s, we are extremely upset and pissed at you guys for not fixing this when you had the chance. Maybe if you communicated with us more often and replied in a timely manner when we present these problems there wouldn’t be this much anger. Replying the day you go on holidays after we’ve been asking you about it since the pts was up is just cowardice. I’m sorry, but there is no other word for it. Why couldn’t you have told us all of this 5 weeks ago when it was discussed on the pts and you ignored us.

 

Sorry Eric, but this time you’ve finally burnt too many bridges for too many people. Good luck in the future job market because you guys are making people leave and you are hastening the closing of the game.

I’m out and will be unsubbing. Call me when you fix the game and I’ll consider coming back.

Edited December 21, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Sareeph]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

I'm not going to rant and rave like some but I will ask a question.

 

Could you not place an NPC that allows you to swap bugged gear "from out in the wild" for unassembled tokens that could then be traded in for corrected items? Make it so the entire piece needs to be exchanged instead of a shell. Or even just the shell if feeling magnanimous.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Sareeph

[mrphstar]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

you are cold as ice, arent you. this is so calculated and subtile, its scary and shocking. you had 3 months to respond to our concerns, and again, dont tell me you didnt recognize them. there were tons of posts regarding this issue since PTS launched. no patch notes, no reaction.....nothing.

so now, right after the last patch for this year, you finally found your balls to admit it was intended, only because you know you gonna be off on holidays for 2-3 weeks, letting the people rage all alone in the forums and hope the armageddon will be over by the time you return.

 

i tell you what, it will be. and all whats left gonna be the insane hardcore fans of the game unable to leave, who dont care being treated like ****. i´m not sure, if i´m gonna be one of them.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a

 

as a developer myself i call ********. you cant mess up code that much, that you have to replace every single armoring already used by players. there gotta be some kind of entity called "armoring" which has the attribute "set bonus" (simplyfied) and all you need to do is change it back like it was, affecting all armorings in the game. stop bull******* us.

Edited December 21, 2018 by mrphstar

[TrixxieTriss]

The pretentious minds disallows any input other than their own. So basically it is always a FU response back. They feel they are artist and we are the plebs, how dare you question our art.

 

There is a difference between art and something else entirely (won’t say cause I dont want a ban)

 

I can throw paint on the wall and call it art. But if I throw poo on the wall it’s called something else (can’t say what due to TOS)

 

What Bioware do isn’t art, it’s throwing poo on the wall.... I’ll leave you guys to fill in what the something else is.

[KendraP]

Since you are apparently reading this thread, Musco, the decision to add a pointless grind was dumb. The people who need something to chase or constant new content left a long time ago.

 

Your decisions regarding the "summer of PvP" killed my guild, and the buggy grind has finally killed me. I still have a substsntial amount of sub time left, but have largely moved along to other games.

 

I will only be back here when i feel the need to be good at something. With all due respect to others here, and as evidenced by the fact that the first and usually most accurate person to give advice to new guardian tanks is me, I claim being one of the better tanks on SS.

 

I also ran one of the more notorious PvP guilds on said server, hefore your changes chased everyone to SF. Now I log on with the same 4 people, trying to carry the same 4 terribads against the same 8 enemy team of the next 8 best in queue. Its old, stale, and not fun.

 

Couple that with the loss of my friends to other games, and your inability to leave well enough alone and not break things that did not need fixing, and I have finally reached the point where I would rather go elsewhere, starting from the beginning, than continue to deal with the lack of loyalty to your customer base.

 

The longest I have been without a sub in over 5 years is about 10 minutes. You still have time to prove to me that I am, in fact, valued. I am a huge star wars nerd, drawn to this game for the promise of KOTOR 3. I was one of the few who was not disappointed. I gradually came to appreciate the mmo aspects of the game. And for now, despite the paid game time remaining on my account, I am spending my time elsewhere.

 

It is a sad state of things coming from me Musco. I realize I have been a sarcastic jerk of late. Read my posting history. I started out very reasonable just before the ridiculous changes you made leading into 5.0. Over time, I became more and more of a jerk attempting to garner attention. Given the only reply you have ever given me, I would say I am right.

 

I sincerely hope you can prove me wrong, and prove to me that my loyalty is valued.

[DarthCasus]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

Go back to 3.0 gearing, thanks. This whole convoluted mess of a system scared off any reasonable pve players I played with and killed my drive to do anything but HARD ('Master' mode was a very unnecessary change when it could have been a nightmare mode introduced) mode flashpoints every now and then on the 2 or 3 toons I've managed to get to 300 GC rank since you're deemed a liability with on-level gear. Really, I'm begging you guys to make changes that actually make sense from a consumer's perspective for once.

[TrixxieTriss]

And here I was worried that the servers would be full over the holidays.

 

There will be half the people left when they come back than there were before 5.10.

Give it a few days for this to sink in and pvp will die off and there will be less and less instances on Ossus and the fleet than there are now,

The only people left will be RP people and solo players.... and the 1% NiM raiders this whole damn gearing system was designed for..,. Talk about idiotic.

They have a summer of pvp development and then drive them all away 3 months later. It’s a wonder they can put one foot infront if another with out tripping over.

There is zero hope for this game now, 5.0 was a disaster and now they repeat the same dumb mistakes again. At this point they should just revert the game back to 4.x and put it into full maintenance mode before they ruin it more. At least gear back then was fun and the game had less bugs, less desync and was enjoyable.

[Ylliarus]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

1 - This is an intended change. That being said, we know there is definitely some friction from this change and so keep raising your concerns/feedback which I can pass to the team. We have made no secret of the fact that we know we are due for some big itemization changes to address a variety of issues around gearing. Please keep telling us what you would like to see in the future from gearing in SWTOR. We will continue to gather feedback and as we get into the next year, we will have active conversations with you about future gearing plans.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

 

Thank you all for your continued feedback. Bigger itemization changes will come and we will definitely talk through them with you when they get here (not soon™). Thanks all.

 

-eric

 

If you really want to engage with players in a discussion about gear then for once listen to us regarding that. So far you ask us what we want, then proceed to do the opposite of what we asked for and in the end change stuff to be closer to what we had wanted when yoy asked us in the first place. You could just immediately listen to what the players want and not stubbornly implement what the dev team wants. Because we already had the Galactic Command debacle, now we have the Ossus nightmare. Come on, learn to listen to the players regarding this for once.

[Beyrahl]

So give us the option to buy mods and enhancements individually like before? There was no reason to take this customization from us imo.

If not that allow there to be more of the same pieces to cover, Critical, Alacrity and Accuracy.

[AllisonLightning]

I'm doing everything I can to get into Guild Wars 2, because at this point, I intend on dropping my subscription until they fix the mess they made- I'm not re-subscribing and when it lapses, or playing while I wait for basic fixes for issues they've dumped at this time of year into the game. PvE tanks have to min/max and all these issues dumped on our heads right before they go on their holidays? Here's a clue, if your raiding/PvP playerbase has stayed subbed this long- they're clearly not going to leave you because they don't have to gear grind. Stop being petty little children throwing your toys out. I hear people blaming EA but you know what, they know how to apologize and rectify to get what they want- I've never seen as I said, such childish antics because anyone with a modicum of maturity would realize this isn't the way you keep a dwindling playerbase.

 

It's not a case of Disney taking Star Wars off EA at this point. It's a case of EA taking SWTOR's multiplayer/grouping elements off Bioware- leaving Bioware doing whatever with story and have one of their other studios handle everything else. You clearly can't run this game properly.

 

I'm blunt because I got sent a CS response this morning that outright lied about how many extra people were playing that they couldn't get back to me and a problem fixed still needed to be.

 

I've told people I play with- I'm not spending my Christmas period grinding a broken and deliberately painful system designed to keep people subbed without the devs having to do their jobs, enough is enough. Either leave gear as it is and release new content or don't but stop being surprised and punishing whoever is still here when you pull these stunts and are surprised people leave this game.

 

By the way, I'm not grinding rep or gear and I encourage everybody to do the same for this new tier and ignore what they're pulling here.

[katees]

----- Edited December 14, 2021 by katees

[TrixxieTriss]

I'm doing everything I can to get into Guild Wars 2, because at this point, I intend on dropping my subscription until they fix the mess they made- I'm not re-subscribing and when it lapses, or playing while I wait for basic fixes for issues they've dumped at this time of year into the game. PvE tanks have to min/max and all these issues dumped on our heads right before they go on their holidays? Here's a clue, if your raiding/PvP playerbase has stayed subbed this long- they're clearly not going to leave you because they don't have to gear grind. Stop being petty little children throwing your toys out. I hear people blaming EA but you know what, they know how to apologize and rectify to get what they want- I've never seen as I said, such childish antics because anyone with a modicum of maturity would realize this isn't the way you keep a dwindling playerbase.

 

It's not a case of Disney taking Star Wars off EA at this point. It's a case of EA taking SWTOR's multiplayer/grouping elements off Bioware- leaving Bioware doing whatever with story and have one of their other studios handle everything else. You clearly can't run this game properly.

 

I'm blunt because I got sent a CS response this morning that outright lied about how many extra people were playing that they couldn't get back to me and a problem fixed still needed to be.

 

I've told people I play with- I'm not spending my Christmas period grinding a broken and deliberately painful system designed to keep people subbed without the devs having to do their jobs, enough is enough. Either leave gear as it is and release new content or don't but stop being surprised and punishing whoever is still here when you pull these stunts and are surprised people leave this game.

 

By the way, I'm not grinding rep or gear and I encourage everybody to do the same for this new tier and ignore what they're pulling here.

 

I tried soooooo hard to get into GW2 after 5.0 was released and got sucked back here because it’s Star Wars.

Which is sad because GW2 has so many better systems and mechanics in place than swtor. The only thing is the story isn’t emersive like swtor because there is no proper interaction with the NPCs and certainly no animation cutscenes with your toon.

In every thing else (besides no customisation of the UI, which I hate), GW2 is superior to swtor in every way. From no sub model (upfront cost), gearing, mounts, pvp, pve cooperation, looting, farming, crafting, auctions,.... I could go on. But it’s not SW or space sci-fi. It’s just an updated and prettier version of what WoW was, all fantasy with elves and bows and magic. (The mount system is epic and the best I’ve ever seen in any MMO).

 

So my next space adventure will be this game Elite Dangerous (look it up cause it’s against the rules to post a link to another game). It looks good and all reviews say it’s constanly improving since it’s launch (unlike swtor). I know it’s not SW, but it has that sci-fi feeling and not fantasy. It also has proper space simulated combat and has even been referred an an off spring of the old SW space sims Xwing), which is what GSF “should have been”. (Another Bioware missed opportunity).

Maybe give it a go

[TrixxieTriss]

This needs to be changed because it is almost impossible to min/max stats.

 

If I want the higher threshold of alacrity on my healer (1860 alacrity, 15.39%), the way to get closest to that number (while still above it) with the 258 gear is to use 7 alacrity enhancements and one 240 alacrity augment.

7 x 253 = 1771

1771 + 99 = 1870

Any other combination will be less optimal (e.g. 6 enhancements and 4 augments would get 1914 alacrity total).

 

Considering that the gloves, pants, boots, and mainhand all come with critical enhancements, it already makes it impossible to optimize the alacrity without being able to swap an extra alacrity enhancement in from another piece. There are only 10 enhancement slots (including the earpiece and implants), so having 4 critical would only allow for 6 alacrity.

 

It's not really fair to basically decide what people's stats are by not allowing them to swap mods or enhancements. You take away half the choice when people can only decide what augments and earpiece/implants/relics they use. You either need to create multiples of the gear with different stats or revert it so the mods and enhancements can be moved between different gear pieces again. You need to at least give us the schematics to make 258 mods and enhancements so we can put them where we want (without the "Forgotten" crafting materials from MM Gods, considering the majority of the player base will not be completing that).

 

Especially when they’ve made this 3 tier alacrity setup since 5.0 and most people don’t even know that extra alacrity above or below those tiers is useless. (Good old Biofail hiding important info as usual)

Now they make it nearly impossible with this system to get to those tiers at all for the different builds.

Maybe if those tiers didn’t exist and alacrity worked the way it use to, it wouldn’t be quite as bad. It still wouldn’t be good.

[kimiko_tomiyama]

These are good questions, so let me try to address them.

 

2 - This is a bug, I acknowledged it here. The reason we didn't fix it with today's patch is that addressing this issue is actually pretty substantial from our side. It will involve us not only fixing the items to work properly going forward, but we need to actually "change" the gear already in the wild to work together. That is the part that is challenging as we need to touch armorings that players are wearing without impacting the rest of their gear. We are working on a solution for this, but it is not something we could turn around in time for 5.10a.

-eric

 

I can get that fixing the stuff already out in the world might be a challenge. Perhaps the easiest solution might be to create a temp vendor that trades the broken pieces for the newer fixed stuff on a 1:1 basis. It's not an optiaml solution but it might work short term.

[Exly]

seriously.. ***. how stupid can Devs get? that's our feedback. you are now telling us how to gear? we can't have any input on our own? are you looking to lose what remaining subs you have?

 

im done spending money in Cartel Market until this is fixed. at least I can speak with my wallet.

 

There are no bounds to your first question.

[Elessara]

I don't usually get involved in gearing disputes because as a mostly solo player my character's gear doesn't require much. That said ... this decision by BioWare to restrict mods/enhancements is, to put it nicely, stupid. One of the better things about SWTOR gearing was that you could change it to suit your build and now ... all of a sudden ... you can't? They say they want feedback? Well here it is: this change is stupid. Unbind the mods and enhancements.

[kukumburr]

This needs to be changed because it is almost impossible to min/max stats.

 

If I want the higher threshold of alacrity on my healer (1860 alacrity, 15.39%), the way to get closest to that number (while still above it) with the 258 gear is to use 7 alacrity enhancements and one 240 alacrity augment.

7 x 253 = 1771

1771 + 99 = 1870

Any other combination will be less optimal (e.g. 6 enhancements and 4 augments would get 1914 alacrity total).

 

Considering that the gloves, pants, boots, and mainhand all come with critical enhancements, it already makes it impossible to optimize the alacrity without being able to swap an extra alacrity enhancement in from another piece. There are only 10 enhancement slots (including the earpiece and implants), so having 4 critical would only allow for 6 alacrity.

 

It's not really fair to basically decide what people's stats are by not allowing them to swap mods or enhancements. You take away half the choice when people can only decide what augments and earpiece/implants/relics they use. You either need to create multiples of the gear with different stats or revert it so the mods and enhancements can be moved between different gear pieces again. At least give us the schematics to make 258 mods and enhancements so we can put them where we want (without the "Forgotten" crafting materials from MM Gods, considering the majority of the player base will not be completing that). Or just put them on a vendor so we can buy them directly.

 

Isn't the alacrity threshold 1857 for 1.3s? You can get 1859 with 1 adept and 2 quick savant earpiece/implants, and 6 240 alacrity augments (in 258 healer gear). Or is it really 1860?

Edited December 21, 2018 by kukumburr

[Darth_Advent]

I figured it was intentional since it fits with past patterns of decisions that were pursued irrespective of all evidence in player feedback.