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

[Master_Morak]

Cant say I’ve ever seen any posts by any Bioware employee, especially Keith, saying they were sorry for anything or that they’ve made mistakes.

 

I also can’t remember ever hearing it on a stream or pod cast either.

 

But I am blind (literally) so I may have missed it. Please post me a link so I can get my wife to read it for me.

 

No, you are right. They didn't never say sorry, not to there destroyed Storyline with KotET/KotFE, not to that stupid Focus on OP or PvP, not to there idiotic changes to conquest.

 

Going back to the 2 fraction Concept is a stupid idea, the alliance as third fraction would have so much more potential for epic Story- and questlines. Allying with one of the two fractions upon missions or Goals for a short time and build a strong third force would be much better. I hope they will not total go back to a stupid black/whiote sceanrio, but they are BW (a slave of of EA) …

 

A long time ago I loved Bioware for games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights - but that is long ago and nothing is left in SWTOR today.

Edited December 24, 2018 by Master_Morak

[Chemengfoo]

Hi BioWare,

New gearing system not enjoyable and made old gearing system irrelevant, not that it was a good gearing system either. Why are you making the game less enjoyable?

Communication about change should have been made earlier rather than have player base discover it.

 

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

[Sundown]

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

Some remarks:

1) To get that out of the way: if my memory serves me right it is the first time that mods and enhancements are not exchangeable between slots. So doing such a massive change without actually putting it into the patch notes (when you said any change not in the log was a bug) despite lots of feedback from the PTS is not an oversight, I take it as a lie. You should never lie to your paying customers.

2) It was a major error to remove PvP gear, simply because now you not only have to handle balance between PvP and PvE in one skill tree, but also make highend gear available for non-PvE players, thus making the old gear progression obsolete.

3) GC was a mess to start with, but after the tweaks (over a year!) it actually got ok for gearing, even if playing many alts as I do. Especially the upgrade path via vendors is a great thing, as I can decide how to proceed and every character can contribute via UCs. Now you render this completely useless, because there is no path from 248 to 252.

4) RNG: you just don‘t accept that gearing via RNG is widely disliked. What‘s the rootcause of your obsession with lootboxes? I don‘t get it (ok, I have an idea, but that is not at all positive for you). If you remove the „open“ upgrade path you needed to add to cure the plague that is GC lootboxes, you need to make the pieces chooseable as they drop. Anything else will lead to frustration, not to „challenge“.

5) Pretty much as 4, just specifically pointing towards left side items: I keep getting useless stuff (boundless ages relics or similar), and I don‘t even need to keep it, as I will not be able to upgrade it to a relic of choice. How satisfying.

 

My simple consequence as yet is to just not take part in this. I haven‘t converted any UC into MWS despite sitting on loads of them. I just don‘t care anymore. Which is the reason I don‘t know if MWS are actually character bound (as I suspect, because I had a couple on one char and none on another). If so: that is also unacceptable. Any character should be contributing to your gearing process.

 

Ossus story was really nice, and I like the planet, too bad it is overshadowed by the gear issues. Yet another missed opportunity.

[DarthFixxxer]

If you cant min/max, its user error. The game still allows it, so its not an issue with the game itself.

 

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.

[Aetideus]

Just fix the damn thing.

 

Not just by fixing the set bug and removing the slot requirement in mods and enhancements which is stupid regarding min/max, but make the M. Crystals Legacy bound. Now not after 3 months when you ll have busted #!^*($.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Aetideus

[Lhancelot]

Just fix the damn thing.

 

Not just by fixing the set bug and removing the slot requirement in mods and enhancements which is stupid regarding min/max, but make the M. Crystals Legacy bound. Now not after 3 months when you ll have busted #!^*($.

 

All in good time! They might walk back or add some improvements, it just takes a few months if they are going to do it. And, you never know if they will. Just keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.

 

I imagine any changes will probably be in March or later, seeing holidays are here and they just used what limited resources they had on making this new gear system.

[well]

Well 2 crit ear pieces in 3 weeks doesn't make me a happy camper. If they were bound to legacy that is one thing. I would have a use for it. Since it is not. It was a waste of time. As far as 252 items in chest I have yet to see one. Oh well.

[Batwer]

Spread over 6 characters, I've opened 300 boxes in the last 2 weeks. The result is 252 = 0 .... Honestly, I have nothing against having to open a few boxes more, but at some point you are already extremely pissed off.

 

I do not want to wait until March to adjust the system. They will get me until my subscription expires in February. Otherwise, I continue to play without a subscription. I have already stopped my monthly purchases in the cartel market.

[TrixxieTriss]

My rage at the gearing system has died down enough to provide some constructive feed back. But I still won’t be playing the game again until a bunch of changes are made. Pve gear grind for pvp isn’t my idea of fun.

 

Here are some changes (in no particular order) I would like to see to the gearing system when Bioware get back from holidays. Some are negotiable and some aren’t (slot locked items and gear set bonuses).

 

1. Unlock shards so they are legacy bound like UCs

 

2. Increase the drop rate significantly of 252 gear from tier 3-4 CXP crates (they aren’t dropping for the majority of players, even after 100s of crates)

 

3. Allow ear, implants, relics to be swapped or upgraded to a different version like they can be under the CXP/UC gearing model

 

4. Fix the drop for the weekly so that if you pick lower or upper body you don’t get an ear, relic or implant and instead get a head, chest, legs, feet, hand, wrists or belt.

 

5. Reduce the cost of the second UC shard conversion to 500 UCs

 

6. Make it so you can collect 4 shards per week converting UCs and make the last two cost 750

 

7. Reduce the Ossus reputation requirements to buy 258 gear or drop reputation rewards for ALL pvp wins (regs and lowbies included)

 

8. More ways for reg pvpers to earn shards other than UCs or a random weekly (that may only happen once a month).

 

9. Mods, enhancements, barrels, hilts need to be slot unlocked so they can be moved into other Armor pieces or off hand

 

10. 252/258 Set bonuses need to work and stack with lower geared set bonuses.

 

11. Have another way to get 252 weapon instead of killing world bosses.

[well]

My rage at the gearing system has died down enough to provide some constructive feed back. But I still won’t be playing the game again until a bunch of changes are made. Pve gear grind for pvp isn’t my idea of fun.

 

Here are some changes (in no particular order) I would like to see to the gearing system when Bioware get back from holidays. Some are negotiable and some aren’t (slot locked items and gear set bonuses).

 

1. Unlock shards so they are legacy bound like UCs

 

2. Increase the drop rate significantly of 252 gear from tier 3-4 CXP crates (they aren’t dropping for the majority of players, even after 100s of crates)

 

3. Allow ear, implants, relics to be swapped or upgraded to a different version like they can be under the CXP/UC gearing model

 

4. Fix the drop for the weekly so that if you pick lower or upper body you don’t get an ear, relic or implant and instead get a head, chest, legs, feet, hand, wrists or belt.

 

5. Reduce the cost of the second UC shard conversion to 500 UCs

 

6. Make it so you can collect 4 shards per week converting UCs and make the last two cost 750

 

7. Reduce the Ossus reputation requirements to buy 258 gear or drop reputation rewards for ALL pvp wins (regs and lowbies included)

 

8. More ways for reg pvpers to earn shards other than UCs or a random weekly (that may only happen once a month).

 

9. Mods, enhancements, barrels, hilts need to be slot unlocked so they can be moved into other Armor pieces or off hand

 

10. 252/258 Set bonuses need to work and stack with lower geared set bonuses.

 

11. Have another way to get 252 weapon instead of killing world bosses.

 

That would work. It would make it worthwhile to do the runs.

[Lhancelot]

Spread over 6 characters, I've opened 300 boxes in the last 2 weeks. The result is 252 = 0 .... Honestly, I have nothing against having to open a few boxes more, but at some point you are already extremely pissed off.

 

I do not want to wait until March to adjust the system. They will get me until my subscription expires in February. Otherwise, I continue to play without a subscription. I have already stopped my monthly purchases in the cartel market.

 

This is surprising as you have always been a really optimistic supporter of the game, even as of recently. When even the most positive supporters decry changes on the game, they really ought to listen. It's just sad that it takes this much blow-back for them to even acknowledge or listen.

[kirorx]

Gearing should be fun. Being able to mix match pieces to fit your personal play style is part of the game.

 

Your main should be like a race car that you work on. You can customize and optimize your gear, customize their look, max some companions and even choose crafting abilities to make that characters your own.

 

This new gearing system is just a long lame grind which hinders your ability to really do anything and frankly...i am done with this. I have been here since launch, but I am done

[Lhancelot]

Gearing should be fun. Being able to mix match pieces to fit your personal play style is part of the game.

 

Your main should be like a race car that you work on. You can customize and optimize your gear, customize their look, max some companions and even choose crafting abilities to make that characters your own.

 

This new gearing system is just a long lame grind which hinders your ability to really do anything and frankly...i am done with this. I have been here since launch, but I am done

 

Exactly! I used to use this analogy in the past myself, likening the past gearing systems with that of building a race car.

 

What amazes me is the number of people who white knight so hard that they refuse to admit this system is completely awful and off the mark as to what direction the game ought to be going.

 

People like you and I, who undoubtedly have given HUNDREDS of pages of FEEDBACK as asked before and after changes were made to the game are now just past the point of giving more feedback which is very rarely acknowledged let alone used.

 

People want to say we are just sad souls angry at the world... No, we are not. We are fed up, and after 6+ years of "patience" we have become accustomed to this pattern BW/EA have continued since this game began, which is 1 step forward, 2 steps back. "Fix" things that aren't broken, and remove/destroy the best parts of the game.

 

It's utterly amazing the destruction that the game has done unto itself.

[TUXs]

Spread over 6 characters, I've opened 300 boxes in the last 2 weeks. The result is 252 = 0 .... Honestly, I have nothing against having to open a few boxes more, but at some point you are already extremely pissed off.

I've opened even more without one piece myself. I don't believe they actually drop from crates tbh. If they do, it's rarer than Grand Chance Cubes are.

[DarthSpuds]

Gearing should be fun.:

 

There you go - we get it.

 

Unfortunately Bioware don't.

 

 

All The Best

[MrRuck]

I've opened even more without one piece myself. I don't believe they actually drop from crates tbh. If they do, it's rarer than Grand Chance Cubes are.

I almost hope they don't. It's going to be a massive slap in the face when the stars align & it's one of the few pieces I already have.

 

Speaking of which, I've done the 252 weekly 12 times & only got accuracy earpiece/implants so far. Starting to think they don't drop anything else.

Edited December 27, 2018 by MrRuck

[Khevar]

Speaking of which, I've done the 252 weekly 12 times & only got accuracy earpiece/implants so far. Starting to think they don't drop anything else.

I suppose you could try switching to a heal spec before opening the box -- you shouldn't get any accuracy gear.

 

Of course, then you'll probably get a relic of ephemeral mending ...

 

[Ghost_Spectre]

Gearing should be fun.

 

You're correct. It should be. However, now...it is not. I'm voting with my wallet. When my sub runs out in March, unless they fix this or return to what they changed for gearing I'm finished.

 

I've stated a few times how BioWare devs are using a Koreanesque style gear grind, specifically that of Blade & Soul. However, that is not the case anymore. I recently returned to playing it when I found out that they completely overhauled their gearing system. It was so long and tedious, it took me 9 months to get from my original upgradeable weapon to stage 5 Seraph. All my other equipment was maxed out by that time.

 

Fast forward till today. In 3 days of playing, I upgraded my weapon from stage 5 through stage 12 (max for that thread) to stage 3 of the next highest weapon. What is more important is the rewards dropped the necessary items to transmute the weapon from one stage to another. And the thread to the top weapon involves 2 more unique weapons. I cannot tell you how stunned I am about this. Originally took me 9 months to get to stage 5 and now in 3 days I'm at stage 3 on the next advanced weapon! Oh yeah, I did not spend a dime doing it either.

 

BioWare and their wisdom have ruined gear progression in this game. I'm to old and do not have the patience to spend untold hours grinding for something that I know will take me 5 plus months to complete 258 knowing full well when 6.0 drops all that work is for nought. Good job BioWare, freaking outstanding job...not.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Ghost_Spectre

[Lhancelot]

BioWare and their wisdom have ruined gear progression in this game. I'm to old and do not have the patience to spend untold hours grinding for something that I know will take me 5 plus months to complete 258 knowing full well when 6.0 drops all that work is for nought. Good job BioWare, freaking outstanding job...not.

 

Yeah. This. ^

[chevyn]

I cant believe they knew before hand about the changes to mods and enhancements being piece specific and didnt tell the community,has the dev team ever played the game? how could they not know how much we would hate this, so far i have mid maxed almost every season but this is the absolute worst for a pvp player! this grind is terrible and i thought they couldn't make5.0 worse then it already was but they exceeded my expectations on how to make swotor worse. its like they want to make people leave this game, we don't want to endless grind for the point of grinding. i grind so i can play the content i want and thats ranked pvp which there is no way in hell im playing without mid maxed top tier gear. grinding the same daily over and over is not fun, how can i do ranked if i can only gear one toon over a 2 month period and then not even be able to mid max. bring back 4.0 gearing for pvp i want to play my alts again i already have a full time job dont make me hate swtor for being a chore i play so as to get away from that!

[NuSeC]

They were told about this on the PTS and ignored it then too. The only conclusion is they meant it to be this way to make the grind even harder and longer.

What they don’t realise is people are leaving because it’s a ******** decision and we are all sick of them ignoring overwhelming player feed back on BAD ideas.

 

Exactly! LMBO! I was looking at coming back... not now! Played this game for over six years, They just want you planted grinding gear in place of content.

 

Maintenance mode engaged.

[Syal]

Please Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk come back to save us all ! Edited December 31, 2018 by Syal

[DarthSpuds]

Please Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk come back to save us all !

 

Save us Ray and Greg, you are our only hope?

 

 

All The Best

[steveerkcanjerk]

This is surprising as you have always been a really optimistic supporter of the game, even as of recently. When even the most positive supporters decry changes on the game, they really ought to listen. It's just sad that it takes this much blow-back for them to even acknowledge or listen.

 

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.

[-JE-BLAZAR-]

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 do not agree with the conclusion on point 1.

We want to change our mods/enhancements with full freedom to do so. More importantly I want my Item modification being able to bind to my legacy armor set who I use for most my toons at level 70. Am I correct that I read now here, that we are not able to do so anymore?? With so many characters created it will be impossible and not fun to play endgame with my toons if this is not possible. I find changing stats fun, it adds another layer of tinkering with your character and makes the game less shallow. it is fun to always experiment with stats. I really advise to remove this change and make it the way it was before. I know most people enjoyed this freedom too.

 

Some compliments: I just returned and played the story, it was short but fun, the daily area and the datacron farming was fun, thank you for that. I mainly loved to see Master Ood Bnar! I really appreciated that and also the tuning! It was amazing the whole experience with farming that datacron and interacting with Ood Bnar!! Thank you for that. <3

So just to remind you you get good compliments from me also, but do please remove this change you did with gearing on ''point 1''. Greets and best wishes for 2019.

Edited December 31, 2018 by -JE-BLAZAR-