TerraStomper Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 (edited) Some observations regarding the Downgrade Process. This is a bit of a rant. 248 gear goes to rank 250. Why?All armorings lose their set bonuses.Armor pieces that had armorings with set bonuses have those set bonuses transferred to their shells, UNLESS the were DVL armors. The value of DVL armor is destroyed as their XP set bonuses are removed entirely. Other than DVL gear, all shells from set gear were Bind on Pickup, and may no longer be in inventory. This hurts. I used mods from old gear to gear up new characters while they were leveling, transferred via Legacy. Those set bonuses are now gone. 240 augments change to 242 and 41 of their tertiary stat is converted to +41 power. This can be a massive nerf to the augment, and throws off build balance big time. Between levels 71 and 75 power gets capped anyway when doing level 70 and below content, nullifying the all power from this old augment as-is. I cannot think of a good reason why Bioware would do this when they'll all be replaced anyway as we level up. The 208 and 228 augments are now BETTER for the vast majority of game content, any that run under Level Sync. 236 augments change to 238, with a proportional amount of tertiary stat moved to power as their 240 cousins got. Legendary armor shells like Crest of the Dread Master likely had headpiece armorings, mods and enhancements transferred to them. Poof goes the set bonus from the armoring. Lots of players transferred armorings, mods and enhancements to Legacy gear to share with their alts. On Downgrade, *POOF* no more set bonuses. Also, many players, myself included, were plagued by the non-randomness of the 252 Ossus crates. For example, my main only got random implants from upper crates, ear pieces and off-hands from tech crates, and lots of relics, a few boots, and one belt from lower crates. Alts made up the short comings (they were similarly affected by the non-randomness, but with different slots being fixed or semi-fixed. That character now only has the two piece, which of course deactivated on leveling up to 75 anyway. I think Bioware should scrap the Downgrade process entirely, because if this goes live, there will be lots of unhappy customers. This tester is certainly not happy about it, particularly with the gearing process being so random, slow, unbalanced, and unrewarding as it is in PTS 2.0. There is little time for me to try to fix the mess my main is in, or try to craft around, as expensive and time consuming as crafting is now. 20 minutes later: Oh, great! Earned another Renown crate! Opens it. Another tank relic. Once again this healer is unrewarded. That's the 8th renown crate now, all returning random gear with garbage stats. The character is now sporting an eclectic set of 268/270 green gear. A few have mod slots, but nothing better has dropped in the world or from the tech vendors on Fleet. Edited September 1, 2019 by TerraStomper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alidore Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 "All armorings lose their set bonuses." This is the biggest downgrade, now we will have to wear the crappy armor and only use the other gear for appearance, this applies to all the sets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HuntyUK Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 Yep, not looking forward to this, honestly, I can see myself calling it a day with swtor, same reasons as stated by the op. Also getting 2 shotted by a silver in a vet fp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nashbozard Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 Agreed, especially for the set bonuses. Maybe compensatory items can be made available to players who have the older sets? New shells at the older levels with the older bonuses, maybe a trade-in vendor of some kind? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArreynGrey Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 I agree with the OP re: set bonuses being attached to shells. ALL my gear is in legacy sets; I just picked up 252 gear for my heal spec on Ossus, and without even thinking I yanked everything out and put it in a legacy set, just like I always do... so when Onslaught goes live, that set will be completely useless. I literally only picked it up for set bonus. I'm already mourning the loss of the current set bonuses; I think they're much better than the new ones. I hate that I'll have to carry a different gear set for every spec, instead of just for different roles. But to lose the set bonuses immediately since I'm not wearing the shells those bonuses went with anymore... that's too much. The new gear is way, way too expensive for the drop rate on the tech fragment currency... I can see just not bothering. This downgrade process is really killing my excitement, because I feel like my current gear is going to be screwed while I try to grind for the new stuff. Why can't it just be left alone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalorilan Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 [*]Armor pieces that had armorings with set bonuses have those set bonuses transferred to their shells, UNLESS the were DVL armors. The value of DVL armor is destroyed as their XP set bonuses are removed entirely. Other than DVL gear, all shells from set gear were Bind on Pickup, and may no longer be in inventory. This hurts. I used mods from old gear to gear up new characters while they were leveling, transferred via Legacy. Those set bonuses are now gone. ...and if you *did* get a set of complete 230 set bonus gear, from using Master's Datacron, the set bonus is now only valid through level 74 and I can't even figure out any way to transfer the BoP gear to any other character. Hope I'm missing something or that this is an oversight as I have a lot of 230 set bonus armorings that are bouncing around in Legacy sets right now, and if I can't keep those for leveling then I'll be pretty annoyed...but if I actually still *have* the original pieces but they're still BoP then it doesn't quite seem right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alidore Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 I think this is what's going to kill the game for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerraStomper Posted September 2, 2019 Author Share Posted September 2, 2019 Yep, not looking forward to this, honestly, I can see myself calling it a day with swtor, same reasons as stated by the op. Also getting 2 shotted by a silver in a vet fp? It was a gold the middle of a pack that smacked a teammate marauder hard, but yeah, oops!. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueSorcerer Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeannaVoyager Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Agreed, this is a really bad idea. Also, you can not just take off the DVL armor set bonus, because players who have it worked their butts and totally earned it after months of grinding. Some even had to buy extra character slots, with real money, to be able to do all 8 class stories (again) to get the cheevos and the armor set. If you now take away what we paid for, you are basically stealing. Even if your hidden agenda is to make people buy outlander tokens or master datacron with cartel coins, when they need clone alts fast, you are still stealing from everyone who had to buy character slots to complete the DVL event, not to mention buying the game time for the time that it took to complete DVL. Just keep the set bonuses as they are, in armorings, so you won't break the game for several months. Again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveTheCynic Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. At the beginning, they said that for Galactic Command, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cibacrome Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 I've been playing PTS pretty thorougly for last couple of days, including Dxun SM, Hammer Vet & Master, KP Vet and Story, as well as frequent visits to new vendors for gear, etc.... Have gotten my toon up to 282 primarily by running Hammer vet solo (dxun doesn't drop gear, just crates which aren't giving good gear, but it's a fun op well worth trying) and mm group. Gear drops pretty regularly, and at 282 I'm finally starting to see some gold gear drops, though not many, and not any bonus pieces I'd actually want, but hey, RNG(squared) is an exciting system designed to make us feel a deep level of accomplishment and satisfaction! Leveling to 75 felt like a HUGE slap in the face, downgrade, nerf, and giant middle finger to all my hard work gearing up until now. I know tertiary stats get nerfed with the lvl 75 scaling curve (power and mastery boost should make up for this mostly), but killing set bonus is a TERRIBLE idea/ There is nothing good about it. Fix this, do NOT NOT NOT release 6.0 by removing all our existing set bonuses and supplying us with trash green gear after we've had full 258 with 240 augments and set bonus. Seriously. No. Also this game at 1.4 gcd = snoozefest. Fix alacrity please. I keep telling myself "its only PTS it's only PTS it's only PTS none of this is final.. they'll fix this stuff right?" only to remember that nothing having to do with gearing got fixed in 5.0 or 5.10, so I'm kinda planning on being ok with leaving this game. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised, but what I'm seeing now is extremely depressing. The bright spot here is Dxun. Good work so far Matt, and thanks for helping us during our run. Plus, your trolling is next level and made me spray water out of my nose in a laughing fit at one point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damask_Rose Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. The PTS forum is for people to give their guided feedback. It is inappropriate to shout down people for giving the feedback that Bioware requested of them. If you wish to give your own feedback on gear drops in flashpoints and from renown crates, then by all means, go run flashpoints on the PTS for a couple of days and give your feedback on the "Gear Acquisition" thread. Bioware needs to freely hear from as many people as possible. But don't try to quash other people's options because they don't mesh with yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeternali Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 I think this is what's going to kill the game for me I think you are right, it will also kill the game for me too. Additionally, a lot of inactive players will return, make this discovery, see what the new gear grind is like and NOT stick around for very long. It would seem the devs have never learned from the mistakes of the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JattaGin Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. Yes, spamming flashpoints. Finally something new and fun to do. Oh, wait. I think this is what's going to kill the game for me I hear you. What I've witnessed so far on the PTS is highly discouraging me. I even just logged off, even though this afternoon was supposed to be my playing afternoon. But I couldn't stand it anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darev Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 (edited) Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. Spend some time at the two tech fragment vendors to get an idea of how gearing is going to work. It mimics drops from npcs (at least by design) - they seem to use the same basic system Examine the player's gear and make the drops in the "range" of their gear level. It doesn't seem to go below 270 item rating, which is the only good thing I can say. it's PAINFULLY slow. Get up to 272 gear rating and you can still get 270 drops. get up to 280 gear rating and you can still get 272 drops FINALLY get up to 306 gear rating and you can still get green drops. My point isn't to contradict your statement about renown crates, because you're correct, that's what the devs have stated. But every gearing system I've seen on PTS so far is horrible. Edited September 2, 2019 by Darev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterRummy Posted September 2, 2019 Share Posted September 2, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. Sadly this is what a NON PVP player would state. Quit looking at your own little world, and join the real overall world that is seeing this from all angles. You say FPs.....I hate FPs as I get sick when there is too much motion around me, and even some of the Operations are not possible for me, so what would I be left with? This is NOT looking good at all. Everyone needs to be able to level gear wisse, and if they kill our main gear, then it means we all start over and the ones who play 8 to 16 hours a day will be the only ones left in the game as they have time to play all the content....... This has to be REVAMPED ASAP! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllisonLightning Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 I earned the DvL armour and that, I a hundred percent disagree with. I've never moved the armorings out of the shells- that was a reward and I worked my fingers tired to earn that- they should not be retrospectively stripping player rewards from the game. I and others were playing and earned those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scardera Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Stop complaining about gear, It's not the hard to spam flashpoints for gear and THEY ALREADY SAID NOT TO RELY ON RENOWN CRATES FOR GEAR, its NOT A GEARING SYSTEM. Why are you so triggered? Command system almost killed SWTOR people dont want that to happen with 6.0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DWho Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 This is by far the biggest problem with what is currently on the PTS. If you decide you don't need better gear and decide not to participate in the gear grind, you get a massive nerf going from level 74 to 75 (in previous expansions getting to max level put you back where you were, not worse off). If you are going to create a gearing system only available to end game players (which is a bad idea sub retention wise in my opinion) then the gear that has been acquired up to the end of the previous expansion can't be made suddenly much worse by that system simply for hitting the maximum level. In addition, this gear acquisition system, as it is right now on the PTS, is much worse than the original launch of the Galactic Command system for acquiring end game gear for endgame players. As currently implemented, it will be completely out of reach for everyone else (so no reason to sub after starting the new expansion). Recommendations 1) Make endgame gearing just that, a matter of swapping out "boosters" to find the perfect combination 2) Make those "boosters" only relevant to endgame content (deactivated outside group content) 3) Reduce the cost or randomness of the current "booster" acquisition system. Is there any point to starting a new character to see how this new "system" impacts them (apparent reduction in comp effectiveness, new drop system, etc) or is that not sufficiently implemented on the PTS to make that informative? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laiboch Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 (edited) I went into test very optimistic, but after just a few moments the reality of just how much of a massive grind gearing is going to be really started to sink in. I would have hoped you learned your lessen from Ossus, but it seems instead you have amplified all of the mistakes you made. I actually didn't even bother trying to get 258 gear because its not worth the extra 6-8 weeks of grinding on several toons. You are making SWTOR feel less like a game and more like a job. I play a game to have fun not to feel like its a second full time job that I have to pay to go to work at. Grinding dailies on several toons with the prospect of getting a total of 2 pieces of gear a week while being bottle necked at every turn is not appealing in the slightest. Some might say 3, but it seems that all you get from the weekly are an abundant supply of relics of devastating disappointment. Yes, I understand the concept of progression, but this makes some of the most grindy gear games I have ever played look appealing again. The gear cost is simply out of control. Moving the set bonuses out of the armoring is going to flat out enrage the vast majority of your current player base because they will instantly lose all of that work they put into getting full sets. Combine that with the overly tedious system for attaining gear and the widespread use of legacy gear to compensate for the extreme amount of time it took to get the gear and you might be looking at a full on revolt. Edited September 3, 2019 by laiboch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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