Major flaws in the current PTS gearing system

[THAT_EPIC_GUY]

I think it is evident from overwhelming player feedback that the gearing system on the current PTS build needs some addressing and there are massive amounts of complaints and partially overlapping feedback. I am writing this post in an attempt to clearly categorise and summarise major areas from a game fundamentals standpoint. I am hoping this highlights system-wide flaws rather than something highly specific and thus can assist in a larger scale and more impactful change. Naturally I recognise this is the first iteration of this gearing system and your team at Bioware is looking for feedback so I am understanding of the issues present. I am hoping that the playerbase and the dev team can have a good enough line of communication to ultimately create a fun and rewarding gearing system come the live launch of onslaught.

 

Issues

 

1. The sheer number of gear tiers. In prior expansions we have often seen something in the realms of 4, maybe 5 gear tiers from your entry level max level gear until you are at the highest item level gear and this progression (for the most part) has been ok. It has felt like an achievable number of tiers and thus players have been happy to grind out these 4 or 5 tiers until they are best in slot. In the current PTS system our entry level gear is 268 and the typical gear upgrade is a piece which is 2 item level higher than our character's item level. We as players have observed item level upgrades of 1 and up to 4 but these seem to be rarer cases and 2 is the norm. Now Onslaught's gear appears to go up to item level 306. This means that with each gear tier being only an upgrade of 2 item level for a player to go from entry level gear to the highest item level they must grind through a staggering 19 gear tiers. This is a grind that is far too extreme for most players and so daunting that many players I have spoken to feel so demotivated to gear that they do not even want to begin gearing. Proposed solution: increase the item level increments of gear upgrades; if your character is at say 268 item level they should have access to something like 274 item level pieces, this creates larger stepping stones and thus fewer tiers for a player to grind through.

 

2. Backwards and sideways gear progression. Currently a player can receive gear that is a drastically below their current item level and a player can receive gear that is their item level. This makes it extremely frustrating when trying to improve your item level. When a player has spent hours or days to reach a certain item level they do not want to be receiving pieces which are no longer relevant. Pieces of the same item level as a player's equipped gear a nuisance as well but a minor one and theoretically could remain purely for the purposes of min/maxing (a piece of your current item level could still be beneficial simply due to it granting you the power to choose between stat profiles). I understand this may be a bug as I believe it was mentioned in a dev stream that you should not receive downgrade gear. Proposed solution; do not award players gear that is lower than their item level.

 

3. Moddable vs non-moddable gear. This games history has shown moddable gear to be more useful to players due to the freedom of choice in controlling their stats. They can decide exactly which mods and enhancements they wish to run and it allows for players to utilise partial aspects of multiple acquired gear pieces to essentially combine them into a desired outcome. The current PTS gearing system retains moddable gear but at the same time awards massive amounts of non-moddable gear. This creates an extremely awkward disparity when upgrading your gear, swapping between moddable and non-moddable gear is frustrating, especially when you create situations where a player's moddable set bonus piece cannot be retained since higher item level non-moddable pieces are being obtained. Proposed solution; drastically increase the frequency of moddable gear pieces as gear rewards as opposed to non-moddable pieces.

 

4. Challenging content does not feel adequately rewarding. This opinion may not be fully fleshed out currently as we do not have access to loot drop implementation in all tiers of content. We do not know what nightmare operations or ranked PvP will give in relation to their story/hard and regular counterparts. However from comparing flashpoint difficulty tiers in Hammer station and comparing story and hard mode Karraga's Palace (the content the dev team has asked us to test for gear drops) it is quite apparent that the only reward for doing harder content is an increased probability in obtaining set pieces or tacticals. Now this is of course an incentive to run this content over easier content but I feel this is not the type of incentive the player base is looking for since you are still stuck upgrading your item level at the same rate as all other content in the game. Harder content is currently only aiding progression within a gear tier but not helping in any to obtain higher gear tiers. Proposed solution; more difficult content should either provide increased item level improvements over a players current item level (eg. a nightmare boss awards loot that is 2+y item levels above yours as opposed to the standard 2 item level gain) OR difficult content should drop a fixed item level of gear (akin to prior expansions) so it can be used as a stepping stone to pass lower gear tiers as a reward.

 

5. Stats and gear pieces obtained. Currently most loot boxes which are achieved through galactic renown and those bought from spoils of war vendors appear to award seemingly any piece of gear including gear that cannot be equipped by your class or stats that are for roles which you are not specced as or roles which your class cannot even do. This effectively renders a lot of gear received unusable. Proposed solution; loot boxes award gear based on discipline.

 

I hope this provides some sort of methodological explanation of many current player frustrations with the PTS gearing changes.

Edited September 2, 2019 by THAT_EPIC_GUY

[RussellRichter]

yeah same

[Toraak]

I would also add that many are commenting that the Tech fragment costs from those 2 vendors are way to high as well. I'd also Increase the Cap for Tech Fragments by a lot as well. 20,000 instead of 3,000 so people can save up Tech Fragments for when Kai Zykken (or however you spell it) has the appropriate set bonus gear for you.

[ZionHalcyon]

I would contend that the gearing system is actually okay. The problem is the values of everything.

 

The value of the loot drops is too poor and not consistent, the cost of vendors and consecutive augment rerolls past 50k credits is too much, and the cost of trying to craft is way too damn High because of extremely high resource requirements and extremely hard to get resource requirements for the most basic items to craft.

 

The bones are there and I think they can be pretty darn good. It's just all the values are so out of whack it's not even worth it.

[teclado]

Agreed. The system in place on PTS is a dealbreaker for me. If this goes live, I'm cancelling my sub and walking away. Again We've said for a long time that we don't want RNG, we don't want insane grinds. So what we get on PTS is an RNG heavy insane grind. :confused:

 

Solutions:

1. Get rid of the Takanna RNG vendor. Just delete it altogether.

2. Give us a few gear tiers that we can just straight up buy with TF. Like 3 tiers, lowest tier being dirt cheap. Similar to what we had with unassembled components.

 

I want a clear path for gearing, not slot machine gearing with terrible odds at actually getting something I can use. So far, 6.0 seems like a major step backwards for gearing in this game.

 

EDIT: I'm cancelling sub. Reason: RNG. I just can't deal with this anymore.

Edited September 3, 2019 by teclado

[ZionHalcyon]

Agreed. The system in place on PTS is a dealbreaker for me. If this goes live, I'm cancelling my sub and walking away. Again We've said for a long time that we don't want RNG, we don't want insane grinds. So what we get on PTS is an RNG heavy insane grind. :confused:

 

Solutions:

1. Get rid of the Takanna RNG vendor. Just delete it altogether.

2. Give us a few gear tiers that we can just straight up buy with TF. Like 3 tiers, lowest tier being dirt cheap. Similar to what we had with unassembled components.

 

I want a clear path for gearing, not slot machine gearing with terrible odds at actually getting something I can use. So far, 6.0 seems like a major step backwards for gearing in this game.

 

I'm not opposed to multiple tears more than three. Augusta each Greenfield needs to be something easily craftable. The original steering system in the how they handled green, blue, and purple Mats was just fine.

[cibacrome]

I think op summed my thoughts about current PTS gearing up very well.

 

I've spent hours upon hours on PTS grinding through gear drops. I've leveled to 286, and received exactly 2 pieces of set bonus armor from drops. These are not good ones, pretty much useless for 99% of content since they provide a mastery boost, and with level sync our master & power is hardcapped (!?!?!?!). At the current drop rates & levels it feels like getting a full set of min/max'd gear with all the stats just they way I want them will take several months+ per character with hardcore grinding, though being fully legacy is a very nice QoL change.

 

I get that this is PTS, everything can change, and that some elements of this phase are clearly not working correctly or at all, but you asked for comments on everything having to do with drops, playing it safe and giving my opinion even on the most obviously broken aspects. For instance, I'm not experiencing anything like rng protection, or at least it appears to be missing by the consistent number of garbage drops I'm getting.

 

1) Multiple layers of RNG are the biggest problem atm. Loot drop rng + stats rng + gearlevel rng + amp rng + vendor rng = unmanageable gearing.

 

2) Tech Frag rates both from running content and from breaking down gear are much too low. Freshly dropped (unbound) gear that doesn't suit our needs, whether it be bad rng from content or vendor drop should give a decent quantity, so it only takes a couple broken down pieces of gear to get a new piece from a vendor. This will help reduce the frustration if devs insist on continuing with stats rng and level rng in vendors and loot drops.

 

Right now one piece of gear drops between 3 and 6 fragments far as I can tell, and one RNG box from vendor costs 200+ fragments... the mere fact that this is an RNG box is already bad enough, but to have to break down almost 100 pieces of gear to get another roll is terrible. Kai Zykken, who will not even have what you want necessarily, and only appears on weekends, currently costs 1500 tech frags + 1mil creds, which comes to a whopping 375 pieces of broken down gear! Yes I know you get (also small qty) frags for running content, I'm just trying to illustrate a point.

 

3) Don't inflict a massive downgrade for existing players continuing to play this game (based on PTS 2.0). For players coming fully geared from 5.x, first having all your stats nerfed, set bonus stripped, and now having to equip garbage unmoddable gear... why even bother playing if when I log into the new expansion the results of my hard work have been taken away and I'm grinding for garbage?

 

Of course leveling from 70-75 should help soften that - bonus & stats don't get nerfed until lvl 75, and I'm assuming gear will be dropping during that time. But I don't want to replace my set bonus gear with higher irating garbage unmoddable gear with worse stats, no augments or set bonus, just so I can see a better drop down the road. This system essentially forces players who've geared up to strip back down just to be able get on the gear path, and that's a terrible idea IMHO.

 

A few smart tweaks to the drops and this could all be so much more player friendly. First, put our 5.x gear set bonus onto our shells so we can keep them if we want. Second, drop mods WAY more frequently so we can gear up ilevels that way, instead of wearing garbage. Third, get rid of unmoddable drops altogether. Why is this even a thing at lvl 75?

 

Suggested gear path: existing armor bonus converted to shell > drop mods for higher ilevel ratings > drop tacticals and set bonus gear for true min/max upgrading. Unwanted gear can be converted to a reasonable amount of fragments, vendor RNG is reduced SIGNIFICANTLY from current levels, if not completely eliminated.

[TerraStomper]

The way the random gear rewards work right now, the gear one can get out of a reward or a drop is expanding from a larger and larger pool as item level increases.

 

The midpoint feels to me like it is 287 -- the point where you're 50% likely to get downgrade or sidegrade rather than an upgrade. If this is true, the chance of getting a 306 upgrade by the time item level is 304 might be down to 5% or worse.

[Metthew]

The way the random gear rewards work right now, the gear one can get out of a reward or a drop is expanding from a larger and larger pool as item level increases.

 

The midpoint feels to me like it is 287 -- the point where you're 50% likely to get downgrade or sidegrade rather than an upgrade. If this is true, the chance of getting a 306 upgrade by the time item level is 304 might be down to 5% or worse.

That sounds about right. When I was pushing for 306, I had to get 15-25 rolls per piece on the vendor. This is incredibly harsh - especially since sidegrading heavily is needed for optimal gear now. Why also push our legacy characters down when sidegrading itself also takes significant effort?

 

--------------------------

 

I'll put my previous posts regarding this matter down here, since it is another thread which touches on points I wanted to make.

 

On the experience of gearing:

 

 

(I have edited this post since first writing it. It now has suggestions.)

 

I'll section this post into three main parts: my experience, the questions that arise from it, and suggestions.

 

PTS 2.0 Experience

 

So, I've tried Hammer Station VM/MM, KP, unranked Warzones, Kai Zykken vendor & the Tech Fragments vendor up so far. Here are the parts which aren't worth that much mention for now:

 

1) Hammer Station VM gave very meh gear. It is fast, there are some who claim that farming it solo between warzone pops may be good. It yields around 4 pieces per 15 minutes or so, I'd say.

2) Hammer Station MM actually gave me a lot of improvements in gear, and a tactical for my character (the entire group rolled on it). We were 3 DPS + 1 healer doing the flashpoint. I'd say that the number of rolls seems -ok-, and an organised group would benefit more from farming it than the veteran mode.

3) Warzone and KP loot seem to both be not implemented yet. It was a waste of time.

 

As for the Kai and the TF vendor... well, I could write about how bad it was for me, but I actually streamed the agonising experience of dealing with those vendors. Here are the important part:

 

00:00 - I buy fat stacks of medpacs like everyone and their mother in the PTS.

02:15 - Realising that I'll need something entertaining, I turn on some music.

02:35 - The process starts.

07:00 - I spend 3250 (not 3750) TFs for a +2 iLvL improvement on my chestpiece.

07:11 - Kelevra suggests I just buy the chestpiece directly instead of keeping rolling on it. Little does he know.

09:00 - I remark that the gear from Kai seems to be empty shells. Curious.

09:20 - I make the silly guess that maybe each slot is just rolled upon purchase. Turns out it wasn't silly.

12:25 - Not being able to locate the Marksmanship tactical I know I want, I go back to my beloved Takanna.

13:05 - I remark that mainhand / offhand is not tailored. At least I hope that is the case.

15:26 - I remark that I've hit 278 iLvL, so I should be able to reliably get 280 gear. I am shown immediately wrong.

16:35 - Kelevra, hopeful, asks if this stuff would be subject to change. (I hope so)

17:32 - Nightrain tells me that I should be just buying the pieces directly, so naive.

18:17 - I show Nightrain how direct buy from Kai works. His response has quite a lot of letters.

20:25 - Kelevra asks if you guys had really said this would be the easiest gearing ever. Because it doesn't seem so.

21:14 - I get a Marauder glove tailored to by spec, Marksmanship sniper -.- Nightrain asks if RNG is such that a very lucky person could get a full gear set, I respond that the system is such that you can only inch forward +2 iLvL at a time.

22:21 - Nightrain asks two questions, whose answers he won't like.

26:26 - Nightrain asks a question whose answer he likes - that everything is Legacy.

27:05 - I explain how Legacy gear improves the loot box odds - one can just equip the 306 gear and roll the crates after. I then ponder if the odds are bad to specifically deny this.

28:33 - I get an assault cannon tailored to my Marksmanship sniper.

30:19 - I roll a +2 iLvL improvement on mainhand, except it's a polesaber now.

31:52 - SupaHsuB mentions I can keep rolling belt from Kai Zykken. Since Kai refunds the currency upon returns, I realise that I can reroll his gear until I get what I like. But then why is his gear RNG in the first place?

33:20 - SupaHsuB tells his secret for getting to 306 gear in the PTS (It's Netflix).

... and so on.

 

Later on, to my horror, I learned of two more things:

- Gear rolls from Kai do not only have RNG with relation to the iLvL but also to type, I probably have a bunch of unoptimised mods / armorings in them.

- The RNG for iLvL improvements get worse over time, I needed around 20-30 chestpieces to go from 302 to 304, for example.

 

Another thing of note is the lack of customisable gear. I guess we should be swimming in modification drops by doing PVE / PVP? I could not test it so much, though my MM flashpoint adventure didn't leave me with a noteworthy amount of modifications.

 

Finally, deconstructing just doesn't really seem to be worth it that much. At least I wouldn't deconstruct for Tech Fragments, unless I was literally swimming in the loot.

 

Questions:

First thing I am wondering is, how are we PvP'ers supposed to gear up in this system? I know that warzone loot acquisition is not implemented yet - is it the case that we will be given crates after each unranked / SR / TR game? If the number of TF's from the unranked arenas in PTS is any indication, it looks like Warzone gearing is going to be very slow. Even with bolster, we actually do need some minmaxing, since bolster never really fully worked.

 

Also, what is the reason that people can roll downgrades to their items? It just makes no sense, especially since there is so much lateral variance - I had to roll like 30 relics until I got a Serendipitous Assault 306, for example. When you cannot even guarantee you will roll the stats you want, what is the point of also giving people lower iLvL items?

 

I noticed that a greater portion of my MM Hammer Station loot were improvements to my gear than the things I've rolled in VM or from the RNG boxes. Are the loot distributions for the two cases different, in the sense that MM flashpoints and operations will guarantee gear improvement at a higher chance? Can we expect such a thing for warzone rewards too?

 

I did notice that, while mainhand / offhand rolls seem to be bugged, I do actually semi-consistently get sniper rifles and vibroblades. Is rolling gear from other specs (with some lower but non-zero probability) intended for the Tech Fragments vendor? I really hope not.

 

Remarks

As of the moment, getting a downgrade simply sucks. Arguably, getting one character geared up could get all others geared up quickly (as long as you gear up your DPS / healer first), but that is not a reason to have downgrades at 274 iLvL. Maybe when you get to some number, you can start rolling items down to at worst that level (say at 306 gear, I can roll between 298-306) - that would still disallow -instant BiS- while still allowing people to gear quickly.

 

However, one should simply not roll downgrades while getting greens, it is EXTREMELY disheartening. You could keep some at the top (I would say that beyond 294, rolling >= 294 is worst case ok scenario), but there is a lot of lateral variation so I am unsure if it's ever needed. It will still take time to get the optimal mods / enhancements, the way mod rolling works right now.

 

In case Warzone / Operations / MM flashpoints do have a higher chance to roll gear improvements, you should outright tell us so. Same for the mainhand / offhand (hopefully) bugged rolls - are the actually bugged? They better be, there is little more infuriating than spending hard-earned Tech Fragments and rolling a mainhand you can't even use.

 

I know that us PvP'ers need BiS sooner - maybe if you could detach stats in warzones from stats outside, it would also be nice (fixed stats, or selection of stats). I guess a new PvP stat system would be on the wall of crazy - but I think it should eventually be considered.

 

P.S. Currently you cannot Unify Colors on companion outfits in the PTS. Something to fix.

 

 

On warzone loot:

 

 

idc if they bring pvp gear or keep pve gear pvp players must not be forced to run pve. Everyone must play whatever he WANTS TO PLAY. they need to bring expertise gear back or make pvp fast way to acquire gear i have no time and desire to run pve for a gear i will USE ONLY IN PVP!

What they should do is to disentangle warzone stats from regular stats. I will repeat, again and again, the actual perfect system for PVP stats:

 

1) You make some stat selection choices (say, alacrity threshold / critical rating / accuracy / mastery choices, for tanks defensive stat choices, etc.), from some screen. Stats you can select are based on your spec. (edit: you should also pick set bonus on this screen)

2) Game checks your selection and gives you all your stats and set bonuses based on it. This includes armor, weapon damage, power, tech/force power, accuracy, mastery, endurance, critical rating, defense chance - everything. (Maybe have some requirement that appropriate MH-OH be equipped).

3) You play, happily enjoying your stats in a gear-free PVP. PVP still drops gear, with team ranked being somewhat equivalent to progressing by farming HM ops in the new system (or maybe MM flashpoint - it should be better than SM ops though).

 

Like, we obviously don't remain in the game for the grind, so there is no need to have a grind to keep us in. This system would also allow for a lot more customisation: you can balance classes in PVP by changing their PVP weapon damage / armoring, meaning PVP balance is no longer full entangled to PVE balance. You can (but don't need to) do wonky stuff like allowing people to play with < 1.2s GCD, or give people 30% accuracy if you want some specs to be able to somewhat penetrate DCDs. And it gets rid of all the PVPer gearing complaints ever.

 

 

 

Just did the warzone daily (with the bugged arenas, it was hard to get) - I got four drops. I heard the weekly gives six. -OK- I guess, except for the part where I had 305 iLvL and I got four 296 pieces. I guess at least it wasn't greens / blues, I'm ok as long as in high purples, you get nothing but purple / gold.

 

I think it's an ok number of drops for the daily. Maybe if we could get more mod drops (not at the expense of pieces), it'd be better.

 

 

Since the warzone daily gave me four rolls, I am hoping that solo ranked and group ranked dailies / weeklies give significantly more rolls (SR daily and weekly 10+ [or SM ops level] and TR daily and weekly perhaps 20+ [or between HM/NiM], with the weeklies guaranteeing set bonus items and tacticals). That, along with significantly reducing the chance of downgrades (as sidegrades are also sorely needed often) should make the gearing a lot more tolerable.

 

Furthermore, each win in unranked / SR / TR should give roll(s) on items.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Metthew

[xSssoulx]

Adding some info to the point 4 of the op i have cheesed my way to item lvl 301 with re medpacks and decided to go into vet HS and on second boss i got upgrade of 304 bracers to my 300, in my opinion since highest item rating is 306 and getting item 304 from vet HS is very disincentivizing of running harder content.

Granted it was not modable gear but it had dps/heal stats which was upgrade, how and where should we be getting our armorings/mod/enhancements to upgrade our set bonus shells

[Metthew]

Adding some info to the point 4 of the op i have cheesed my way to item lvl 301 with re medpacks and decided to go into vet HS and on second boss i got upgrade of 304 bracers to my 300, in my opinion since highest item rating is 306 and getting item 304 from vet HS is very disincentivizing of running harder content.

Granted it was not modable gear but it had dps/heal stats which was upgrade, how and where should we be getting our armorings/mod/enhancements to upgrade our set bonus shells

The key point is, even after getting to 306, you aren't guaranteed moddable gear, let alone set bonus gear. You get the stuff you want either from Kai or from just rolling a lot of items as you keep playing, and then rolling for mods and upgrading mods as you also keep playing.

 

I admittedly am ok with the system in mind - the problem is that right now the odds are way too low. Downgrades should not happen - even if we want people to keep playing, it should be mostly sidegrades with the occasional upgrade, as getting moddable gear or optimal mods is already very hard. And Kai should give a strict upgrade.

[ZionHalcyon]

The key point is, even after getting to 306, you aren't guaranteed moddable gear, let alone set bonus gear. You get the stuff you want either from Kai or from just rolling a lot of items as you keep playing, and then rolling for mods and upgrading mods as you also keep playing.

 

I admittedly am ok with the system in mind - the problem is that right now the odds are way too low. Downgrades should not happen - even if we want people to keep playing, it should be mostly sidegrades with the occasional upgrade, as getting moddable gear or optimal mods is already very hard. And Kai should give a strict upgrade.

 

Agreed.

[xSssoulx]

The key point is, even after getting to 306, you aren't guaranteed moddable gear, let alone set bonus gear. You get the stuff you want either from Kai or from just rolling a lot of items as you keep playing, and then rolling for mods and upgrading mods as you also keep playing.

 

I admittedly am ok with the system in mind - the problem is that right now the odds are way too low. Downgrades should not happen - even if we want people to keep playing, it should be mostly sidegrades with the occasional upgrade, as getting moddable gear or optimal mods is already very hard. And Kai should give a strict upgrade.

 

I agree with side grades especially armorings/mods/enhancmnets so we can min/max set bonus shells but i also posted in HS feedback pst and would like to copy part of it here

"I think allowing this high of item rating dropping from vetran FP and as easy as hammer station will disincentivize running harder group content, this will lead to smaller end game pool of players cause why should i be social and group and improve my play in mmo when I can just run this one flashpoint over and over, get highest gear and claim I am ready to tackle harder content cause I have the highest item rating so i must be ready, right."(taken from my post from other topic)

[Metthew]

I agree with side grades especially armorings/mods/enhancmnets so we can min/max set bonus shells but i also posted in HS feedback pst and would like to copy part of it here

"I think allowing this high of item rating dropping from vetran FP and as easy as hammer station will disincentivize running harder group content, this will lead to smaller end game pool of players cause why should i be social and group and improve my play in mmo when I can just run this one flashpoint over and over, get highest gear and claim I am ready to tackle harder content cause I have the highest item rating so i must be ready, right."(taken from my post from other topic)

I think Hammer Station Veteran Mode will end up being on the lower end of gear farming. A good group can get more loot from Master Mode, and the unranked daily gives four pieces. Also, operations / ranked may simply allow loot that has a better distribution (higher chance of iLvL improvement, moddable gear etc.). So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with how much loot Hammer Station VM returns, if anything it's promising on how much loot we could get in other areas.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Metthew

[-sakaa-]

what I would love to see is when you do a heroic for example when you get your box, instead of just giving 2 random items, it gives you a menu so you can pick what you actually need. The other annoyance is when you get boss gear it drops stuff that you can't use. This is with classes where you can choose between tanking or dps or heals etc. This bug affects any classes where you get a choice of 2 boxes for your heroic reward

[AllisonLightning]

This system as it stands is going to result in a severe exodus like the CXP crates at the beginning of 5.0 and we just don't have the game population to survive it. The devs can't just put in some backwards insane RNG grind- as a healer, I shouldn't have to contend with not only random, garbage stats but unusable main and offhands from a vendor- you know it doesn't keep people subbed- and the gear tokens off bosses should be static unassembled pieces for set slots- and then there's the tech fragments dropping for one person in the raid.

 

I just- at this point all I see is some eldritch gearing system in which the devs didn't learn their lesson. Hell, I found a comic strip about the pieces which dropped back in previous expansions. Stop repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results because you've used up all of the good will and there aren't enough players to sustain another heavy loss.

You've got so much to fix that you should honestly come up with some reward and delay till the end of November (some people have said you can't delay till December) and do it properly rather than leaving an aspect to the wayside. We'll forgive delays for a system that works instead of one we're beta testing on live for months on end.

[MacCleoud]

I like the amount of gear that has dropped for me so far... i have run 15 Vet HS, and picked up almost 50 pieces of armor. this has been pretty nice. The problem is of the 50, 17 have been for a tank, 22 have been side grades (at best) and 11 have been actual upgrades from the 268 i went in with. I have picked up 2 set pieces so far...1 for a healer sage and 1 for something else that i can't remember. This has been pretty sad and pointless to me at this point.....

[Aeternali]

Agreed. The system in place on PTS is a dealbreaker for me. If this goes live, I'm cancelling my sub and walking away. Again We've said for a long time that we don't want RNG, we don't want insane grinds. So what we get on PTS is an RNG heavy insane grind. :confused:

 

Solutions:

1. Get rid of the Takanna RNG vendor. Just delete it altogether.

2. Give us a few gear tiers that we can just straight up buy with TF. Like 3 tiers, lowest tier being dirt cheap. Similar to what we had with unassembled components.

 

I want a clear path for gearing, not slot machine gearing with terrible odds at actually getting something I can use. So far, 6.0 seems like a major step backwards for gearing in this game.

 

EDIT: I'm cancelling sub. Reason: RNG. I just can't deal with this anymore.

 

I agreed with both the OP and this post as well.

 

Honestly, the current system is better and more clear. While I am looking forward to the new content, I am NOT looking forward to these changes and will likely just unsub.

 

The devs keep making the same mistakes.

• Changing a bunch of mechanics just before new content release, breaking both at the same time.

• Breaking game balance, everything is either too easy or way too hard.

• Making previous max gear practically worthless as a bunch of inactive players return in old gear.

• Gear grind is not fun, is not content and by itself does not keep the majority of subscribers in game.

• Listening to the small percentage of high end players and not the majority.

• Fixing things that weren't broke to begin with.

• Adding new things that are not fun and no one ever asked for.

• Replacing an old grind to zero, creating an identical grind with a new name and resetting old progress to zero.

• Nerfing companion healing yet again after upsetting the community last time.

• Upsetting the community because something we love or enjoy that doesn't match up to the dev's vision.

• Dev's vision not aligning to community desire or needs.

• Believing that dev's vision trumps community desire or needs

• Repeating the above since the alpha.

[fabsus]

How are the chances, that the PTS gearing system gets an overhaul to get rid of RNG?

 

at the moment it sounds for me like:

We don't want to make the same mistakes like before, ...

... so we renamed it. Great!

 

Let us take a look back!

Ossus was a nice update, because we got some new kind of quests and something to do. The storyline was... a bit short. Okay fine. What killed the fun with Ossus was the gearing system. Running Ossus with each character to get the RNG crates is just an horrible way. Even today, with added 252 crates in commando crates, this RNG system is just stupid. I just can use 1% of the RNG-items.

 

Okay, back to 5.0. We got a story, we got content and this on it's own was nice. What killed the fun? Again the gearing system. It was so frustrating, that many left, including me. It was just way to much RNG. So instead of doing content, you had to grind for commando ranks. That forced you, to do stupid grinding stuff, you tried to stop with every patch, just to increase the grinding time. You ignored balancing problems with the same excuses on and on.

 

 

So what do I expect from 6.0?

I don't expect much content, less than former expansions.

I expect a balancing hell, with all the changes. With that amount of changes, you can't figure it out on the PTS and it will take months until you change classes and abilities.

I also expect an even worst RNG system like we had with 5.0.

At the moment i would rename the expansion to Star Wars: The Old Republic - RNG Inception

 

so again:

 

How are the chances, that the PTS gearing system gets an overhaul to get rid of RNG?

Edited September 3, 2019 by fabsus

[Aeternali]

How are the chances, that the PTS gearing system gets an overhaul to get rid of RNG?

 

at the moment it sounds for me like:

We don't want to make the same mistakes like before, ...

... so we renamed it. Great!

 

 

I think you nailed it! I pretty much agree with and feel the pain from the points that you made.

[TonyTricicolo]

Okay, please explain. Say if i have an armor piece with penetration of .60% and decide i want to upgrade it. Is there a chance that I'll get a penetration upgrade lower than what I had, in turn actually making it a degrade?

RNG from loot is fine but there shouldn't be any when decalibrating amps.

[ZionHalcyon]

• Upsetting the community because something we love or enjoy that doesn't match up to the dev's vision.

• Dev's vision not aligning to community desire or needs.

• Believing that dev's vision trumps community desire or needs

 

These are the cardinal sins of game development

[ZionHalcyon]

One thing I do want to say though.

 

I know we are really getting on the Developers for what got released to PTS, and it's good that we make our displeasure known now oh, but it is indeed called public test server. As in this isn't live and they haven't pushed this to live.

 

So while we do make our displeasure known, keep in mind that things could change and hopefully will change, so while we can criticize the systems let's not eviscerate the developers just yet.

After all, the last time this group had some significant criticism regarding Phase 1 and tacticals oh, they made significant changes by listening to the community.

 

All I am saying is I guess the wounds from the past, but this team seems to listen a lot better so let's give them a chance to.

 

I am really eager to see what they have to say today in light of the overwhelming negative feedback this far on gearing and pricing.

[Aeternali]

One thing I do want to say though.

 

I know we are really getting on the Developers for what got released to PTS, and it's good that we make our displeasure known now oh, but it is indeed called public test server. As in this isn't live and they haven't pushed this to live.

 

So while we do make our displeasure known, keep in mind that things could change and hopefully will change, so while we can criticize the systems let's not eviscerate the developers just yet.

After all, the last time this group had some significant criticism regarding Phase 1 and tacticals oh, they made significant changes by listening to the community.

 

All I am saying is I guess the wounds from the past, but this team seems to listen a lot better so let's give them a chance to.

 

I am really eager to see what they have to say today in light of the overwhelming negative feedback this far on gearing and pricing.

 

While I would love to agree with you on this, their own past behavior has burned too many which lead us to where we are today.

 

Granted, a lot of the changes over the past few years have made huge improvements to the game. Honestly, the gearing system post 5.0 was good enough for me, I was hoping for some improvements but this but this really feels like a huge unnecessary step back to me. Add in a companion healing nerf, plus the expected but unwanted equipment nerf, throw in a whole lot of balance issues with the new content and you have a huge mess just as the new players start with the old players returning.

 

I am encouraged by the fact that they pushed the rollout back a month. I think this is was correct decision and I applaud them for that. I just hope they fix this... even if it takes more time.

[ZionHalcyon]

While I would love to agree with you on this, their own past behavior has burned too many which lead us to where we are today.

 

Granted, a lot of the changes over the past few years have made huge improvements to the game. Honestly, the gearing system post 5.0 was good enough for me, I was hoping for some improvements but this but this really feels like a huge unnecessary step back to me. Add in a companion healing nerf, plus the expected but unwanted equipment nerf, throw in a whole lot of balance issues with the new content and you have a huge mess just as the new players start with the old players returning.

 

I am encouraged by the fact that they pushed the rollout back a month. I think this is was correct decision and I applaud them for that. I just hope they fix this... even if it takes more time.

 

You're making my point for me though. We got burned many times in the past... by a Ben Irving lead developer team. And prior to that by a bunch of e a bean counter lead teams.

 

However since Keith took over, it's been a little different and noticeably so from those other teams.

 

Not saying we should have complete faith they will nail this, but at the very least, they do seem to listen and make adjustments based on our feedback just going off of this pts alone thus far.

 

So like I said, we can make our criticisms known, but let's just not Flay the new team just yet.