Gear from Artifact Lockboxes is not random!

[LordDarrack]

The fact that folks have to justify this appalling gearing up system by saying they had 40K bla bla bla stored and are running daily's on 8+ toons a week just proves how ****ed up it is.

Are they now aiming their entire game at the unemployed?

 

Be safe

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

I took me about 5 mirror class toons (Mercs and Commandos) 4 or 5 weeks (I don't remember) to get one toon decked out in full 252 with ONE 258 piece. I did mainly the 252 RNG boxes, kept a spreadsheet of who kept which skin for upgrades to 258.

 

Once I got to that point, full 252 with one 258...I stopped.

 

All that work...it wasn't fun.

Or engaging.

 

This is by far the worst gearing system for "solo'ing" players such as myself.

 

Bring the 3.0 or 4.0 crystal gearing system back please (whichever version had the black hole crystals...before I even cared about endgame gear)

 

 

Problem with that is, that gear was terrible heh. It was all endurance heavy, it was kinda like tank gear stats.

 

It's simply not suitable for end game. One size fits [stat wise] all gear doesn't work.

 

3.0 BIS gear was NiM.[ HM monolith being an exception but that was totally random and that was in 16P HM mode, there was no NiM for that, and only one person got it, and it might not even drop at all.

 

4.0 was garbage gear via crystals or BIS gear obtainable way to easily. EV and KP 'Hard'mode was little more difficult that a heroic. Slap in the face to progression raiders. The crystal based gear was terrible, it was endurance heavy, it wasn't BIS gear at all.

 

PVP gear is something else and it being fast and easy to get works with that player base, np there and there is alot of hope that it will be brought back in 6.0 and reasons exist to think it might.

 

BIS gear should not be easy to get or fast. It should be HARD to get, and take a while.

 

Alt's cant be an issue, not everyone has them. It should take someone who is trying to BIS gear out 14 alts 14X longer to do so than someone just trying to BIS gear one character. Common sense. No price breaks, no coupons, no 2 for 1 specials, no spaghetti Wednesdays with a chance of a free 258 saber.

 

Solo players and BIS gear almost seems a contradiction in terms to me. You will not ever come even close to ever needing that kind of gear for 'clears' of story play which you can do using nothing more than basic attack. I personally don't think that BIS gear from solo play is appropriate as traditionally it's been an impossibility up til 5.x.

 

252 for solo, sure.

258? That should be as incentive for end game group content. People are not going to invest lots of time and scheduling and resources necessary simply for bragging rights.

 

I'm not saying that I think BIS gear should only be from NiM like it use to be. I was a HM/NiM Progression raider right up til 5.x but I know It's a different day and it simply doesn't work for the current player base and that's fine, but, it shouldn't be fast or easy. It should be hard to get BIS gear.

 

Some might call it 'elitest', I dunno, I see it more as 'easy as hell to get BIS gear' diminishes it's value and makes harder group content totally unnecessary and thus results in less people putting themselves thru that and thus harder to find people to do that content.

 

I don't like the current form because BIS thru Dailies and Heroics is 'basic attack only' friendly.

Gearing as it was in 5.9 I think was some of the best gearing this game ever had. It made gearing thru any favored play style [PVP, Raiding, etc.] possible and even solo players could get some BIS gear via crates. It was a time investiment ideology which made it so you had to work for it, which is appropriate for BIS gear. [bIS gear being 248 at the time, now it being 258].

 

I mean if you want that crystal gear only [ heavy endurance] in addition to BIS gear being available only thru other methods, sure, I guess, I don't know why people would want that gear but as an add on option, sure, I cant see any reason not to, just why you want it in the first place! heh

 

PVE and PVP need separate gear types again, the ideologies of those players who play one of the other exclusively are irreconcilable. Them sharing the same gear makes things difficult in adjusting things that may be needed in one area of play but not so in the other. Painting them both with the same stroke causes problems and even resentment at times.

 

Than again, I'm an idiot, so you really can't go by me.

[Lhancelot]

Finally someone gets it....

 

Yeah. The caveat is Grim also had a truckload of UCs saved.

 

What about people that didn't play one main for years saving up UCs because they never really used them on anything else? Because that's what Grim did, and you probably did this too.

 

Grim left out that point in his post explaining how he got so many pieces of 258. He had a million UCs saved up!

 

Sneaky little Grim.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Lhancelot

[TUXs]

Well, thank you, I didn't think I had access to anything like that. I'll be sure to look into it. Makes me wonder how many zillion crystals I'll have to buy to get anything, I imagine it to be something like Club Z points lol.

2-3 crystals per piece for 252 items and then 3-4 crystals to exchange the 252 for the 258. One piece per week easily for most characters (assuming you have UCs).

[TUXs]

okay... so you have cleared gods nim timerun with a fully 248 equipped group?

if not please stop talking about stuff you dont know.....

If you're doing NiM content, you don't need the gear...you need practice. You're already in the top 2-5% of players.

[ivanhedgehog]

Clearly you haven't been sacrificing enough Gungans to RNGesus.

 

All out of gungans...had to move to Ewoks. What is the exchange rate of ewoks to gungans?

[Opiklo]

If you're doing NiM content, you don't need the gear...you need practice. You're already in the top 2-5% of players.

 

i take that as a no and so u dont know what you are talking about

[TUXs]

i take that as a no and so u dont know what you are talking about

The gear helps you, no doubt, but you're the last group of players who NEED better gear. Think what you want of my opinion, insult me all you like, you won't change my mind.

[Lhancelot]

The gear helps you, no doubt, but you're the last group of players who NEED better gear.

 

Honestly I think it's hyperbole saying anyone needs the new gear on this game. I mean, we need water, food, love, pets... No one needs new SWTOR Ossus gears.

[Lunafox]

2-3 crystals per piece for 252 items and then 3-4 crystals to exchange the 252 for the 258. One piece per week easily for most characters (assuming you have UCs).

 

Thanks again for tuning me into this. I took your advice and went to the vendors and looked at it. I'm a bit bummed that I had traded some of my UC's in for the legendary 248's on fleet before I came to see I could do it this way. No matter, with all the repeats I get from my weekly, I'll get what I need (an upper and belt) soon enough. And who knows, I might even do enough to get the 258's and then you'll see a decorator cooking with oil!

[kodrac]

Are they now aiming their entire game at the unemployed?

 

Well, yeah, it is an MMO.

[DavidAtkinson]

Well, I do not have 40K + UCS. Nowhere close to it. Never had. Whatever I had used to get the 248.

 

I PVP ocassionally, on my main.

I have 16 chars (each different) and can play 1-2 hrs per day. Have work, kids, other things.

 

Yes, I know, I saw folks with full 258 already 2 weeks ago, but gosh, those people had probably NOTHING else to do except grind UCS.

 

Regardless of available time. i just find that method utterly nonsesical.

 

The gearing in 3.0 - 4.0 was much more viable.

 

And no, I am not even trying to get full stack of 252 or 258 - there is NO NEED for that unelss you are playing ranked PVP and have fun in it. Same for NM operations.

 

I have done them all on SM, some on HM and that's it for me, why bother with the same content that only takes longer on harder version?

 

In my previous post I was talking about a person who plays this game for fun, not as work.

Gosh, even at my job i would heavilyoppose performing such chores as this grinding is..

 

You don't have to no life this game to gear up to 258.... Doing the dailies once/day on one char is enough as you will hit the weekly with the tokens gathered from previous week. I used 3 characters only...

 

Getting UC is much easier than it was in the past. 248 was useless as soon as the info about bolster to 252 came out. I never spent them on gearing other alts as I PVP only with one char 90% of the time(so far)... I don't have time to play on all alts.

[DavidAtkinson]

Yeah. The caveat is Grim also had a truckload of UCs saved.

 

What about people that didn't play one main for years saving up UCs because they never really used them on anything else? Because that's what Grim did, and you probably did this too.

 

Grim left out that point in his post explaining how he got so many pieces of 258. He had a million UCs saved up!

 

Sneaky little Grim.

 

Well..

 

I can't say anything for those people. I play only one char 90% of the time and it's a marauder... Gearing other alts seemed pointless to me as I will never play them much or at all. I only play story on those other chars and I don't need gear for that. So no point investing in them.. This resulted in close to 70k UC's when 5.10 hit.

 

I am doing the same thing now. farming crystals for weapons. I didn't buy 2 -258 relics because the weapons are a better investment as they give a lot more stats.

[Opiklo]

The gear helps you, no doubt, but you're the last group of players who NEED better gear. Think what you want of my opinion, insult me all you like, you won't change my mind.

 

your forces are lost.... omg

[TrixxieTriss]

The fact that folks have to justify this appalling gearing up system by saying they had 40K bla bla bla stored and are running daily's on 8+ toons a week just proves how ****ed up it is.

Are they now aiming their entire game at the unemployed?

 

Be safe

 

I agree with this. I’m a pvper and I hardly had any UCs when this gearing started. The RNG gods of 5.0-5.9 hated me and I had to use all of my UCs to gear 10 Alts.

I still only have 3 Alts at 300cxp because I prefer to play what I feel like at the time. Not grind 1 or 2 Alts all the time like BioWare seemed to expect. Sometimes I like to play the same class but on a different spec or just a different look.

 

My wife has played way more than me since 5.x was released and she doesn’t even have one Alt at 300cxp because she runs the whole story, on every planet and then all the chapters and listens to ever piece of dialogue, then starts another alt or steps it up to veteran mode. She doesn’t swap gear in legacy shells because she says that’s not in the spirit of how he game should be played (I disagree, but respect her point). She hardly ever has command Comms because boosts and gear don’t drop for her and so she has to buy them. She also doesn’t have many UCs because she doesn’t do lvl 70 pvp.

 

So I can completely relate how bad this gearing system is for people who don’t pvp or run ops. They miss out on getting gear unless they grind obsessively over the same small amount of boring content (after the first 2-3 times) or the RNG system works properly, which lets be fair, it doesn’t for a bunch of people.

 

The people who had a massive stack like 40k UCs either played one toon and only had one to gear up (Grim, no offence babe) or the RNG gods loved them for sacrificing their entire lives to them (when not working).

You are right in saying that people needing to have 40k UCs stored up and run 8 Alts to gear up have no lives outside of swtor or possibly don’t work, don’t have kids or don’t work as much as some people do.

 

This is not the way BioWare should be designing any part of the game. At the moment they are all over the place with priorities and making systems work in harmony. They jump from one project to another and often make mistakes or changes people hate and never fix them. They continue to drive portions of the population away everytime they do this.

 

From an outside perspective looking in and as a player who wants fun from the game, it seems they don’t really have a roadmap that gels together properly.

They have an idea for content, each project is for a certain part of the game, but they don’t really join them together seemlessly. In some cases its like they are making the content for completely different games. This latest gearing grind and the focused MM ops guys is just another example of how things that might be good for one group end up being ****ed for another group(s) of players. These players get fed up and some of them leave. This has been going on since 5.x was originally launched.

 

The fact that they don’t even have a road map to present us now (usually this time of year) is telling on how bad things must be in and for the team. I’m guessing they have to wait till they even know if the game will keep being developed from quarter to quarter. Which would make a road map nearly impossible do. So they are just throwing disjointed content out willy nilly. If that’s the case, I feel bad for them. Having no idea what’s going to be happening in the next quarter or 6 months would make me leave a job like that because having no job security is bad.

I’m not making excuses for them. But a lot of what’s happened in the last 12-14 months makes more sense if you look at it like that.

 

My hope is they are listening enough to player feed back to try and fix all the crap that people are unhappy with before they put the game in maintenance mode. Wether that’s before 6.0 or after it. If the game isn’t made more fun and things don’t change, even those who would stick around to play in maintenance mode will leave.

 

I’ve played this game since launch, I even use to have two accounts, one of which I dropped after 5.0 was released. Each day I read and post on the forums, usually to bring things that are happening to peoples attention or Biowares. Wether they are good things or bad, I’ve been invested in making this game better and more fun for as many people as possible. Sometimes I’m controversial and I’ve got my haters out there because of it. But one thing most of us have in common is we want this game to be fun and successful because we love it.

 

It breaks my heart to see how BioWare are driving people away and destroying the game for people. If they would just stop changing things that aren’t broke or in need of attention, they could be using their limited time, energy and resources to add more seemless content that doesn’t drive people away each time.

 

BioWare, please fix this gearing system. While it’s tolerable for some it’s extremely bad for other people and its driving people away AGAIN! I don’t think anyone really believes this gearing system is good. It needs to be fixed really soon.

[Lhancelot]

This is not the way BioWare should be designing any part of the game.

 

We agree about the gearing system obviously and many other things too, but I can't say we can tell them how they should design their game.

 

Granted I'd like for them to care about my opinion on the matter, and it would be nice if they considered feedback from the playerbase but they can and will design their game the way they want to.

 

They also have faced the consequences of doing it their way both in the past and in the present. I believe the saying goes, they reap what they sow?

Edited February 8, 2019 by Lhancelot

[TrixxieTriss]

Honestly I think it's hyperbole saying anyone needs the new gear on this game. I mean, we need water, food, love, pets... No one needs new SWTOR Ossus gears.

 

That’s not entirely true. Look at it from different perspective. We aren’t discussing needs to keep us alive and functional in real life. We are discussing the game and what is needed to play it. One could say you also don’t need 258 gear to clear the MM op, but that’s not exactly true. BioWare have designed the difficulty of the whole op around needing the gear. So need is relative to the situation and content you are playing and what amount of skill you have.

 

Say you don’t play pvp or ops. So your only content is solo play. But you like doing flash points solo, heroics and chapters. It’s easy to say they don’t need the gear to do that. And that is probably true for most if you only do it on story mode.

But what if you’ve done all of that multiple times and need new content. Where is it? BioWare have not introduced any meaningful content for them, other that grind for 2 years.

Those Players get bored and want something to do or a challenge, so what’s next for them? How about veteran modes or master modes?

 

This is where they “need” or benefit from better gear because the content is much harder for them and they may need to work out mechanics they didn’t need to in story mode. If all they’ve ever done is story mode, they will find the hardmodes a real shock when all of a sudden they can die if they make one mistake.

Ever since BioWare dumbed down the game in the vanilla game and pre Revan, new and old players have lost or never developed the skill to deal with harder game play. So now they have to rely heavily on gear when they try or want to play anything resembling the difficulty we use to have in the first 3-4 years of the game. I remember when we needed 4 people to clear a low lvl 4 man heroic or needing to be a much higher lvl than the planet it was on.

 

I’m not saying you are wrong in them needing the gear from our perspective as veteran players, I’m saying look at it from a different perspective and you can see how they do need the gear if they are to progress to harder content or have anything to keep them playing.

[TrixxieTriss]

We agree about the gearing system obviously and many other things too, but I can't say we can tell them how they should design their game.

 

Granted I'd like for them to care about my opinion on the matter, and it would be nice if they considered feedback from the playerbase but they can and will design their game the way they want to.

 

They also have faced the consequences of doing it their way both in the past and in the present. I believe the saying goes, they reap what they sow?

 

So you don’t think they should make the game gel together better? (That was rhetorical because I’m sure you do).

 

My point wasn’t to tell them how to do it. We all know they do what ever the hell they want and the players be damned. It was my Perspective of what I thinks been happening.

 

I know you and I give them feed back all the time and I think we both understand they mostly ignore it or don’t see it, But we also keep doing it just in case they do and they listen.

 

BioWare will have to face the consequences for their decisions over the years. They’ve made so many mistakes that if the game wasn’t Star Wars, I’m sure it would be shut down by now.

 

You and I and many others are feeling a lot of resent towards them because of it. I know I’m close to quitting for good and I would guess you’re not far from it either. A lot of our posts have become more and negative and hypercritical because of it. And who can blame us? We’ve loved this game and BioWare are destroying it from with in.

 

They will reap what they sow, but I’ll probably keep getting them to fix it till I finally leave. I’m a sucker that way.

[Lhancelot]

That’s not entirely true. Look at it from different perspective. We aren’t discussing needs to keep us alive and functional in real life. We are discussing the game and what is needed to play it. One could say you also don’t need 258 gear to clear the MM op, but that’s not exactly true. BioWare have designed the difficulty of the whole op around needing the gear. So need is relative to the situation and content you are playing and what amount of skill you have.

 

Say you don’t play pvp or ops. So your only content is solo play. But you like doing flash points solo, heroics and chapters. It’s easy to say they don’t need the gear to do that. And that is probably true for most if you only do it on story mode.

But what if you’ve done all of that multiple times and need new content. Where is it? BioWare have not introduced any meaningful content for them, other that grind for 2 years.

Those Players get bored and want something to do or a challenge, so what’s next for them? How about veteran modes or master modes?

 

This is where they “need” or benefit from better gear because the content is much harder for them and they may need to work out mechanics they didn’t need to in story mode. If all they’ve ever done is story mode, they will find the hardmodes a real shock when all of a sudden they can die if they make one mistake.

Ever since BioWare dumbed down the game in the vanilla game and pre Revan, new and old players have lost or never developed the skill to deal with harder game play. So now they have to rely heavily on gear when they try or want to play anything resembling the difficulty we use to have in the first 3-4 years of the game. I remember when we needed 4 people to clear a low lvl 4 man heroic or needing to be a much higher lvl than the planet it was on.

 

I’m not saying you are wrong in them needing the gear from our perspective as veteran players, I’m saying look at it from a different perspective and you can see how they do need the gear if they are to progress to harder content or have anything to keep them playing.

 

Honestly from a gaming perspective, it's subjective if gear is needed. I can't tell some story-mode player just because they don't raid, they don't "need" the gears because in their mind they actually might feel they need it.

 

That's why I don't get into these debates about who needs something while others don't etc.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Lhancelot

[TrixxieTriss]

All out of gungans...had to move to Ewoks. What is the exchange rate of ewoks to gungans?

 

It’s based on the annoyance scale of conversion. The more annoying the sacrifice, the less you need

 

So probably 3 ewoks per gungan sounds about right. When you run out of ewoks (that’s if you can, I hear they breed excessively), you can move on to porgs.

[TrixxieTriss]

Honestly from a gaming perspective, it's subjective if gear is needed. I can't tell some story-mode player just because they don't raid, they don't "need" the gears because in their mind they actually might feel they need it.

 

That's why I don't get into these debates about who needs something while others don't etc.

 

That’s true. I only responded to your post because it seemed like you were saying the opposite. Obviously I missed something.

[Lhancelot]

That’s true. I only responded to your post because it seemed like you were saying the opposite. Obviously I missed something.

 

Well, I am just realistic about them doing what they want versus doing what I think they should do.

 

I won't touch the game as long as they leave it the way it is now, with Ossus grind and locked in mods. Anything that makes gearing more tedious, particularly alts on this game will only repel me.

 

I forced down their RNG cratefest gear system a year after they made it tolerable, but when I seen what they had planned with 5.10, I was done before it began. I never even DL'd that patch.

 

I just come to the forums to forumquest and I always keep hope for a miracle to occur with the development of this game. I probably have a better chance of seeing a meteorite land in my back patio tbh.

[Lunafox]

Well, that was a rude surprise. I accumulated the 1000 UCs and go to the smuggler to buy my 2 crystals. I get one for 500 UCs and the second he wants a 1000UC. What's that about now, do I have to wait until reset to buy another crystal for 500? And if this is the case, well, it's a galactically stupid way of stretching out the game unnecessarily.

[IzumiCurtis]

Well, that was a rude surprise. I accumulated the 1000 UCs and go to the smuggler to buy my 2 crystals. I get one for 500 UCs and the second he wants a 1000UC. What's that about now, do I have to wait until reset to buy another crystal for 500? And if this is the case, well, it's a galactically stupid way of stretching out the game unnecessarily.

 

Yep, the 500 UCs thing is only for the first crystal bought that way for the day.

[RikuvonDrake]

This is laughable...

The players who "need" this gear, are not the NiM raiders...they're dying to mechanics and not getting out of stupid, not gearing. The players who "need" this gear are the ones who struggle to find a rotation that they can work with. The players who can't parse 5k DPS are the ones who "need" this gear, not the 10k+ parsers. The people who need it are basically any group of people except the people who you seem to think need it.

 

In fact, if you think you "need" this gear as a NiM raider, perhaps you need to consider that it might not be the gear that's holding you back...

 

You have no idea what you are talking about, according to the devs Tyth is scaled for 248, Sisters for full 252 gear and every subsequent boss for 258, please don't speculate about things you don't have knowledge. Try doing Nahut burn or Izax different phases in 248, lol....

 

Even from a Nightmare player perspective, gear is suboptimal, sure we get a bunch of forgotten materials to craft with, but it's still ultra expensive to acquire 24-38 Charged Matter Transubstantiator which is why most of the groups sell the majority of the material that they get. That said, it seems that the gearing from the boxes is truly RNG.

Edited February 9, 2019 by RikuvonDrake