PTS Phase 2 Loot Acquisition Feedback (Newest Patch)

[Darev]

RNG is fine as a supplementary system. When there is a chance of 306 dropping while you're in 270 gear, that's exciting RNG. When you have to RNG your way up to 304 in order to have a chance for 306 dropping, thats repulsive.

 

Give us base gear (i.e. 268 mods) right at the start. In a live stream you said you want to move away from event currencies and use reputation and credits instead. Do the same with gear and renown. Add vendors that sell us green mods of all tiers for credits but require renown to be traded with. Use loot drops as a supplementary system with a chance to drop gear far better than we could buy based on renown.

 

For the Wall of Crazy: Let us improve the mods we have. Add blue/purple/golden currencies that drop from missions depending on difficulty. Add a vendor that acts as armorer/workbench that "improves" our mods by, for example, selling a blue barrel for a green barrel and 10 blue tokens.

 

They're not pushing RNG as a supplementary system with 6.0

They're giving it to us as the ONLY system.

[Prog]

So I've talked to people in my raid group, to some other people, totals about 60 players. And most of them know this game since 1.x patches. Pretty much all of the people independently came to telling me that there isn't a better system than it was in vanilla. It was balanced, rewarding, fun and it actually restricted people from getting a new toon geared very quickly without much effort (which current system doesn't do - all gear is Legacy and transferring 306 gear to a new toon so he gets high ilvl loot for his spec - this is the most obvious abuse of a badly designed loot system)

 

Let me remind you the vanilla loot system: there were tokens that drop from raids and that reward BiS gear with set-bonus. And there were commendations that supply high rating gear which is not fully optimized and does not have a set bonus. PvP gear was also separate from PvE and that actually maintained some quality in PvP (which is hard to find nowadays). I even remember times when you got full Recruit PvP gear from doing an introduction warzones quest so you get base expertise, but low stats and no set bonus.

 

So with the old system the players who were not really skilled in PvP couldn't enter the warzone in full PvE gear and nuke everything - they had no expertise. They had to grind for PvP gear and while they grind...they learn something

In the old system who were not really skilled in PvE couldn't enter a raid and oneshot everything with their PvP gear. Same with the grind part - getting gear was parallel to getting skill. Learning something new passively while you play - isn't that awesome?

It was an amazing split.

 

What the old system lacked was being friendly to more casual players who do not enjoy doing hardcore raids to get top gear (I still struggle to understand why would they need to have top gear - tolerance can sometimes be pointless like in this case, but okay). The biggest issue that more casual players had was: I do not have the set bonus and my class isn't as fun without it. To get the set bonus i need to do raid which I do not want to do. And top tier armorings that provide set bonus were tied to top tier PvE. So even if a person got lets say Tionese set bonus (which was low ilvl) and put high ilvl non-bis mod and enhancement from commendations, the person would still have low ilvl on the set bonus armoring - commendations as a supplementary system didnt provide that. And getting a Rakata token was impossible for a casual player on tier.

 

But that is fixed now. The set bonuses are tied to the shell, not to the armorings. That is by far the best change to the gearing system that I can see in this patch. Also tacticals. They are neat, I like them. Except the part that as a stealth class I can exit the combat and equip a different tactical and it can give a huge advantage that other classes do not possess. I suggest that changing a tactical in the field required more than just swapping a gear slot.

 

A suggestion regarding gear system:

• Leave Kai Zakken as he is. He is a fun chap. Maybe form boxes out of set bonuses and reduce number of items he has available weekly. Each box has its own chance to be on his weekly list. The boxes are like in cartel market. Upper Body Right Price set bonus provides chest gloves, what else is upper? You know better. Maybe call it differently so that Tech Fragments correspond to the contents of the box. Right now his sell list is huge and its inconvenient to scroll. Reducing number of items he sells weekly will hurt people who want to buy from him. Grouping his inventory in boxes - thats gonna work, trust me, I am a data science engineer
  
• Remove Takkanna (or rework, read next)
  
• Add vendors that sell role-specific no-rng no-set bonus items for commendations (tech fragments). So lets say when I spend Tech Fragments I know for sure its an upgrade and it will have the stats I want. If I a buy greaves and I am a dps, I want to choose between Alacrity, Critical and Accuracy. I dont want to spend commendations (tech fragments) and get the thing I don't need. It is lame. Lets say you fix the rng and it gives upgrades more often. But you cannot fix the Alacrity/Critical/Accuracy choice with the RNG system on. The RNG should be limited, not overwhelming like now.
  
• Add token drops to the raid bosses (or even final flashpoint bosses) that allow buying set bonus gear and tactical items.
  
• Add vendors that allow exchanging tokens to gear.
  
• Make bosses/flashpoints/crates drop gear only according to your current discipline. It is big lame when I get tank gear on a Scoundrel or Commando. Even if I am Assassin, what if I prefer DPSing? Give me dps loot, thats why my current discipline is Hatred or Deception, why does the game think I care about tanking if my class has this option? Respect my choices, aren't they supposed to matter? Choices matter, innit?
  

So back to the good part where I don't rage. Buying gear for commendations should be rewarding. its like paying in supermarket, you see whats in your basket, you dont have anything random there. Getting drops from crates or pve/pvp content - why not rng, why not.

[schinkar]

Well, the state of gearing for the PTS (with unlimited resources of the Fragments) is already frustrating. But on live we won't have that. I don't see how this RNG is going to work after the release. Please, we don't want RNG, we don't need 19 tiers of gear! Gosh, after seeing this system on PTS I've started to love the Ossus and Command Crates system! I think what everyone would like is the old 3.0-4.0 system but with the addition of some crates with gear that we have right now (by the old system I also mean the Priority Operations when certain hm would give you nim gear). The biggest plus of it is that RNG, though being a part of the system, is nowhere near the main source of gear. For PvP, it could either be an old system with the gear with the Expertise stat or the system with the currency that everyone would get but PvP would give you more and then you can exchange it for tokens (hello from UC that are on live atm). But again, this minimizes the RNG factor to a not vital, so everyone is happy

[Maricstefan]

Oh well then. this gonna be a long one.

 

So ive just played for like 4 ish hours, and think i got a decent picture of what works and what doesn't work. obviously some of this is going to be subjective so bear with me on that one.

 

First Impressions:

 

The new loot system doesn't work. its fundamentally not working.

So, what did we learn from Borderlands, Diablo, and co ? well 3 things which are needed for a " more loot, more rewarding loot, even more, loot " system as you guys are trying to put into place here

 

1. you need a lot of gear, because due to the fact that you want to keep the loot relevant, and rewarding you gotta trick the player into thinking that it is actually more and rewarding.

 

2. because we have a lot more loot dropping, the fact that the loot isn't better, or not relevant for the class right now, will be pushed aside due to the sheer variety of loot dropping.

//eg, you run the same raid boss 20 times, and you may won't find any better loot, but you won't get doubs and thus the player will be tricked into thinking that it was worth it running it because new and different loot keeps dropping.//

 

3. the loot has to reflect the activity the player just has completed. dropping green for basic activities is nice, but dropping green all the time, especially considering its always doubs and no new or different gear, fundamentally breaks the point of the new loot system.

 

The issues

i ran around 10 Vm hammer stations and like 6 or so MM hammer stations and two KPs.

 

A. " better " loot stopped dropping after the second VM. after that i only kept getting doubs and no new or different gear.

A.1 the indicator for which loot is better is broken.

//it seems to be only highlighting one stat /overall rating of an item without considering which class/spec youre playing. for me as a lighting sorc, it kept saying " crit is better " even though i already was at 1.5k crit with alac being only at 1.3k and accu being at 503 with stim. if you only equip the " better " gear youll have like no accu at the end anymore. just saying.

 

B. both the MM and KP didnt give relevant gear.

green gear/doubs kept dropping, making me lose interest in running the activities because the useless gear is useless

 

C. the stats of the 268 gear is hilariously bad. my fully augmented 247gear Sorc has the same if not better specs, so that needs to be reworked asap

 

Ideas to fix the loot system

 

As said before,

you just gotta throw way more items at the loot table, one way i could think of doing that is simply taking all the vanilla gear, reworking it, adding the onslaught stats, and throw those in again. you right away get 1000+ more items that way keeping the loot fresh for most of the first runs and keep the player running trying to find all the best loot instead of giving them the same loot over and over again. ( and essentially you can just keep reintroducing old gear into the mix but just redoing the textures and adding some stuff to them or removing backpacks and jetpacks and such. )

 

- At gearbox, for example, its like this " you may drop 20 blues 10 times, but because its always different blues the player will be coming back for a while to find the best out of the blues. and then you throw a couple of purples into the mix and you have a good boss to farm "

Especially for you guys this is relevant because right now you dont get relevant loot after the second run anymore, you at least wanna keep new and different loot dropping for a while, so even though i dont get better stuff, i get interesting loot i can min/max with a bit.

Fixing the Rewards

-The raid bosses NEED to drop better and relevant gear. which means AT LEAST Blue and up. NO GREEN!

same with MM Flashpoints. NO DAMN GREEN!

 

// for the VM flashpoints at least make the bosses each drop a blue with a chance of 40% and a purple with the chance of 20%. so that repeated playing makes sense. think thats easy to patch in for phase 3 //

 

- You wanna reflect the difficulty and the time spend in the activity and reward the player with loot that isn't totally useless. The reward/Happy/lets go again loop isnt created by just throwing loot at the player, but by AGAIN tricking the player into thinking that the loot is fresh and interesting.

 

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

 

the renown system.

 

leveled up 4 times and was impressed with how useless it was.

With the command crates, i at least got between 4 and 6 items now its only just 0 to 2 lol. and again none of which is useful.

 

( useful = i can min/max some stats around or its better.

useless = not my class, lower stats/rating, not for my spec )

 

personally, i liked how the command system worked because you had a loot table tied to each rank, now with that gone it will be less streamlined i feel, and it will cause more useless loot to drop than before.

 

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short: the ne loot system doesnt work on a base level. throwing a ton of the same gear and even more mats at you so it feels more " rewarding " is not how that loop works. Getting a ton of doubs and no better gear, right now LITERALLY turns this game into vanilla destiny 2. and quite frankly, thats ****. in destiny 2 you played 40 hours and you had like 20 exotics, of which half were doubs. There was no reason to keep playing because there was no point for grinding for better gear and no point in min-maxing because of no variety in the gear.

 

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

 

Update on Vendors :

 

I didn't check the rate at which i was gaining tech parts, but after the stuff i ran, i had around 4k i think.

 

i think the base rate is alright it seems ( from just doing normal FPs and disassembling stuff ), though i would definitely adjust it for Raids and and higher difficulty in general.

I cant give any obective numbers but based on what the vendors prices for gear are i would could give some rates

 

//each VM flashpoint boss should drop around 100ish ( 300 per hammer station Run. 1200 after 4 runs a 12 min. )

each MM Flashpoint boss should drop around 150ish

each SM Raid Boss should give around 150ish

each HM raid boss should give around 200ish

solo Raid bosses just give a hard 500 //

- that way you still gotta grind for it but you get rewarded for playing the higher difficulties. keeps endgame relevant instead of what you going for right now

 

for the prices at the spoils of war vendor. id adjust the price range to 350 for the cheapest one ( belt earpiece ) to 700 for the most expensive one ( chest plate relic sth like that )

-Why ? this way you gotta at least play hammer station once, and encourage the dismantling of gear to get the cheapest one but a couple more times to grab the most expensive one.

 

// 1 hammer station = cheapest piece of random sov gear

3 hammer station = most expensive piece of sov gear

1 raid = most expensive piece of sov gear plus extra //

 

ALSO IMPORTANT: i would definitely do it like this, because you dont have enough gear right now in the loot pool anyway. So you simply cant throw even more useless gear at people too fast this way you gotta work for the maybe not useless gear lol

 

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cheers,

Bert

Edited September 6, 2019 by Maricstefan

[Syroe]

I tested the new updated system last night for a bit. Here are the numbers, conclusions at the end:

TL;DR: While improved(both quantity and quality-wise) drops are ok. They are nowhere near enough to create an enjoyable experience. Cut down on the RNG. Give a clear path to getting gear which allows players a degree of agency.

 

Taakaana vendor, got batches of 3k tech fragments, bought 12 items, kept the upgrades deconstructed everything else:

1. iRating 289: 6 sidegrades, 4 upgrades, 2 downgrades. 1 item was for a different role. Deconstructing 12 288(ish) items gave me 57 tech fragments.

2. iRating 290: 4 sidegrades, 0 upgrades, 8 downgrades. all items were role-appropriate. Deconstructing 12 288(ish items gave me 54 tech fragments.

3. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 1 upgrade, 11 downgrades. all items were role appropriate. Deconstructing 12 288(ish) items gave me 54 tech fragments.

4. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 3 upgrades*, 9 downgrades. *of the 3 upgrades 2 were for a different role. Deconstructing 12 290(ish) items gave me 54 tech fragmens.

5. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 3 upgrades*, 9 downgrades. 1 of the upgrades was for a different role. Deocnstructing 12 290(ish) items gave me 60 tech fragments.

6. iRating 291: 3 sidegrades, 0 upgrades, 9 downgrades. 2 of the items were for a different role. Deconstructing 12 290-ish items gave me 65 tech fragments.

 

At this point I got a pop for Hammer Station MM. Flashpoint took roughly 30 minutes to complete(going back to a 1.5 gcd, no autocrits etc. is definitely not an experience I look forward to on live), summary of the drops is:

32 items in total: 20 upgrades, 4 sidegrades, 0 downgrades, 3 role-appropriate enhancements and 1 mod. Unfortunately, in terms of what I could equip the number of upgrades goes down to 6(since a lot of them were duplicates).

Final boss dropped a general set-bonus piece.

Deconstructing everything(after equipping the upgrades, obviously) gave me 151 tech fragments.

Completing the weekly added another 100 tech fragments.

And the bosses(probably another source I didn't notice too) also gave me 90 tech fragments.

 

Second Hammer Station MM. Flashpoint took about 20 minutes(2 people in optimized 306 were in the group), with an added 5-10 minutes dealing with the "Unable to return to medcenter during boss fight" bug. Drops were:

27 items in total: 11 upgrades, 8 sidegrades, 8 downgrades, 1 of the items was for a different role. Pretty big chunk of duplicates.

Final boss dropped a merc healer tactical(which was appropriate, since we had a merc healer in group).

Deconstructing everything I didn't equip netted 151 tech fragments.

 

That's all I had time for. Conclusion(s):

The good(ish):

The more generous drops in MM HS did feel better, I don't know if I was just lucky or if some protections were put in place but the items dropping were within a tier of my item level, which alleviated some of the frustrations from the first phase. As a supplemental method of gearing it's ok. Will have to test drops while chasing BiS items, but I have a feeling the situation is a lot grimmer then.

Just to make it clear: Running a flashpoint and hoping you get one of the six items you need out of a pool of 360 is not a good main venue of obtaining gear.

 

The (terri)bad:

In the current format, the vendor is pointless outside of throwing some bantha poo-doo at the wall when Kai is gone so you don't completely waste tech fragments once you're close to the cap. Sidegrades are still more likely than upgrades and downgrades can still go down up to 5 tiers(that's the lowest I've gotten, could be worse).

Generally, the acquisition rate for tech fragments doesn't feel great. It would probably feel even worse if the vendor had any sort of decent chance at giving out stuff you're looking for.

I feel like you guys should make a decision in one direction or another when it comes to moddable gear outside of the endgame sets. Either get rid of 90% of the non-moddable stuff and flood the market with mods and enhancements so people can micro-manage(or not) to their hearts' content OR get rid of the moddable stuff up to iLevel 302, at which point you no longer get non-moddable stuff but instead...*drum-roll* shells with set bonuses and mods. It's not an ideal solution but it will mitigate some of the problems raised by a loot pool that is both deep and almost entirely useless at the same time.

 

The Ug(h)ly:

Is renown working as intended? Because the gain of ranks seems slower than a drunk Hutt going uphill and the rewards are...underwhelming.

[genguskahnn]

Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow? I am ambivalent as to the speed of obtaining gear. What bothers me is the amount of gear that I get that is still useless either to my character, play style, or gear level.

 

Do you understand what to do to get gear? yes. put any higher level gear on even if it is crappy so you have a small chance to get better gear.

 

How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions) This isn't bad but so far i have not been able to get any good increased gear levels playing this way. As an example. I ran hammer station last night with a gear score of 296. Every piece of gear I relieved was gear score 290. it would be impossible to get better gear this way.

 

How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown) I am spending billions of credits deconstructing items for tech only to get mostly crap out of the vendors. This is however the only way i'm finding I can get better gear is a 1 in 20 chance of getting a piece that has a better armor, mod or enhancement to upgrade my equipment.

Edited September 6, 2019 by genguskahnn

[sharkfishman]

Let me just spell this out quickly and concisely: Getting downgrades will NEVER feel rewarding, no matter how much quantity you throw at us. It will always be frustrating.

 

There are a lot of RNG problems in 6.0, but I don't want to touch on that yet. Just, please, solve at least this downgrade problem right away.

 

Solution: Make it so you never get gear that is lower than your average iLVL. If you're worried about players climbing too quickly (because that would be a crime, lol) then simply make it so you get more at-level gear. But NO downgrades. 0. Zilch.

 

Example: Let's say your current distribution is 25% chance of upgrade at 290. 50% chance of side-grade/same level. 25% chance of downgrade. Just merge the downgrade with the side-grade! Players can still have the same 25% chance for an upgrade, and 75% chance of no upgrade, but at least by getting rid of the stupid downgrades we don't feel as frustrated.

 

Of course, these are only placeholder examples, in reality having to fight intensely for gear level upgrades is pretty bad in itself. But, to recap, downgrades have no place in this expansion.

[Ameyazing]

I see a too much Green gear drops on VM Hammer Station, even the MM Hammer stations drops 370 Green .

Tried SM KP (with 4M), again 370 Green. And what about the Eternal MK-15 Unassembled drops? will they still exist to drop? instead should have dropped some purple.

[ZionHalcyon]

SO.

 

Still seeing the issue with needing to be completely upgraded to get better loot.

 

I had all 270 gear except for my mainhand which had me at a 268 total rating. Loot drops and also vendor acquisitons were at 270.

 

It didn't change until I got a random mainhand from the vendor that I could pull the mods from and put into the mainhand, and once I hit 270, 272 items started dropping.

 

However, those items were all non-moddable, and the items from the vendor, including consecutive main and off hands were also non modable.

 

Its still a PITA.

[gundiesalvo]

Almost all has been said so far, and yes slow progression based on just slightly higher RNG based drops is a drag. I will emphasize one thing though, Renown crates suck. Only one drop per crate and most of the time it's around the same level as my current gear, not to mention it feels like it takes a lot to even get each renown level (compared to Command Rank, at least).

[scardera]

This gearing system is a crime against gamers

[DragoshNashu]

Not actually about the loot acquisition, but about the setbonuses themselves, the setbonus tooltip wording needs to be clearer, and convey that they increase stat pool by X%, and not actual static X%

[MacCleoud]

As most people have said, the RNG too high. We have to gamble for BiS stats.

 

I ran several Vet Hammer Stations last night and I did like the increase in loot that was dropped. Most of it was side-grades and upgrades with very little that was a down-grade......in terms of gear level by number, not by usability.

 

The added RNG Mod bundle on the Takanna is great....except for the RNG part. As my gear level increased, the level of the mods increased, however, the low end never increased. Even at 286, i was still getting 270 mods.

 

I am not sure who hypnotized whom, but RNG is not as fun as someone thinks.

 

-----------------------------------------------Take a step back and look at Alt-Friendliness------------------------------------------------

 

 

Now, stepping back a moment and looking at how everything drops, and that everything is BoL now. I do understand that the increase in RNG can be utilized more effectively by using all that gear that is dropped and sending it around to alts. We (me included) have been complaining about how Alt-unfriendly the gearing process was. I mean the best way to gear an Alt for a long time was to get a toon to GC 300, rip the mods out, and use higher level mods with lower level setbonused armoring as you leveled that toon (or class/mirror) up the GC ranks.

 

While I was trying to fill out a full set of 286 mods for my DPS assassin, I was also able to put together a full set of 280 Tank mods and hilt. A full set of 282 mods for my sorc DPS (107 accuracy in the enhancements) and a full set for of 278 for my heals (not many Alac Enhancments dropped). This was nice, but it was also a ton of TF's to do this and a TON of decon on the things I really didn't need.

 

-----------------------------------------------back to point at hand-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Like almost everyone else here has stated, the RNG is too overwhelming. There needs to be a straight path to knowing what we are getting.

 

How do we get there, Old Man?

Well, I think we take the suggestions of several members of our great forums. We need a vendor that has specific items that are NOT RNG based. The RNG mods are 225 TF's right now. Drop the RNG mods to something like 150 TF's (just be sure to raise the low end as the top end goes up). Then, add static stats based options.

 

For examle. 150 TF's = gamble mods.

250 TF's would have options something like the following.

Bastion: Resistive Armoring, Warding Mod, Bastion Enhancement; Resistive hilt/barrel

Quick Savant: Versatile Armoring, Lethal Mod, Quick Savnat Enhancement, Versatile hilt/Barrel.

etc

etc

etc

 

OR

 

If you didn't want to break them down like by Enhancement type, just break them down by Role

 

Tanky Title: Resistive Armoring, Warding Mod, Shield/Absorb Enhancement, Resistive Hilt/Barrel

Crit Title: Versatile Armoring, Letahl Mod, Critical Enhancement, Versatile Hilt/Barrel

Speedy title: Versatile Armoring, Letahl Mod, Alacrity Enhancement, Versatile Hilt/Barrel

Accurate title: Versatile Armoring, Letahl Mod, Accuracy Enhancement, Versatile Hilt/Barrel

 

Most of us don't mind working for our gear, if we did, we wouldn't play any games. What we don't want is working hard for the chance to get gear that doesn't do anything for us at all and all we are going to do is throw it away.

[The_Hightower]

a) Any gear items need to be moddable. In case I have accuracy on my 272 boots and I get 274 boots with critical rating (which are mostly unmoddable, I nevertheless have to wear those boots in order to increase the chances of getting higher item ratings. However, the stats get totally messed up by that and you end up with having to permanently add augment slots to non-moddable gear in order to get your stats in order which is especially important to enter nightmare operations. However, none of this green and blue crap gear will be used on any alt etc. once you get even better gear. Thus, in case it is desired that myriads of augmentation kits are wasted by the players on the way to BiS gear pelase confirm this intention. In view of the currently ridiculously high material costs for augmentation kits and 19 (!!!!!!) tiers of gear, this is an unacceptable time sink.

 

EDIT: After obtaining a complete 306 non-moddable gear from Nitoo on Carrick Station, I started obtaining random mods from the vendor. Obtaining tank mods went to through the roof thereby, ratio of tank to dps Armorings/mods/enhancements was about 1:1...

Furthermore, when I stopped this RNG Mod stuff I already obtained 10 (yes ten) different DPS mods and 9 different tank armorings, 6 different DPS Armorings etc... Some appear to only slightly differ, e.g. Resistive Superior Armoring 80R-2 differed from Resistive Superior Armoring 80R-3 in +2 Mastery/-2 Endurance and that seems to continue up to Resistive Superior Armoring 80R-10. Some Armorings/Mods even appeared to only differ regarding their possible amps (as the stats were identical). Currently you have 3 versions of Mods and Enhancements having the same stat pool, e.g. lethal mod 52, 52A and 52B. The 52A lethal mod and in my opinion also the respective 52A tank mod were already useless, now you appear to have about 8 different kinds of "A-mods". Who needs that? Having three DPS Armorings one with max Mastery/min Endurance, another with min Mastery/max Endurance, and, if necesarry one in between is sufficient. The same with tank armorings, Mods and Enhancements. Furthermore, having two mods with identical stats but different possible amps only adds further frustration, obtaining the correct stats takes long enough. Instead of the latter all possible amps need to be available on each mod etc., rerolling them is expensive enough.

 

PLUS, 325 TF for one random Mods (this term includes armorings and enhancements as well), whereof statistically

i) half of them are already useless because they are tank and not dps/heal or vice versa since the drop rate is 50:50 although I'm on a gunslinger

ii) 9 out of 10 have stats not suitable for DPS/Heal, who wants endurance on a dps?

iii) 1 out of 2 (or possibly 3) mods have amplifiers which may be nice for crafting or whatever, however, the job of a DPS is to do DPS and any damage reduction, etc. may be a nice gimmick, however, amps increasing DPS are first priority. Hence, instead of having 2 or 3 different mods having identical stats but different possible amps, one mod with all those amps is required, rerolling is expensive enough.

 

Hence, statistically, 1.6 % of the Mods appear to be indeed BiS for the selected discipline. Furthermore, there are 3 tank disciplines but 21 DPS/Heal disciplines. Hence, even in case I could use some of the Mods I get as a DPS for a tank alt provided I play a tank alt, still far below 5 % of the Mods are indeed BiS for all possible disciplines

 

Hence, the endless RNG grind with obtaining heaps of useles junk starts all over again with the mods...

 

Drastically lowering the price of the mods (i.e., less than 100 TF), removing several of the intermediate stat mods (the current varieties available for 248 gear from Command crates is sufficent in my opinion), making all possible Amps available on one Mod instead of having three Mods with identical stats (but different possible amps), only dropping Mods for the current discipline would be a start but in the end only a drop in the Ocean.

 

SUGGESTION: Add vendors for each base class which is accessible once you hit item rating 302 (or 304 if absolutely necesarry), where I can select the 306 BiS items including Mods for my base class I want, i.e. comparable to the 230 through 248 gear vendors on the fleet. Make the prices high if needed.

 

b) Random drops, rewards, items obtained from a vendor, need to be 100% for the present class and discipline, it is complete nonsense that I get mainhands and offhands my base class cannot even wear, getting dps stuff and tank stuff in equal amount (yes I have selected kinetic combat on my shadow). Furthermore, since most of the gear is non-moddable, I cannot even use anything from those items. In case it would be moddable, I could at least use a DPS armoring or modification on a tank. However, as outlined above, in case I want DPS gear, I select a DPS discipline.

 

EDIT: Improved a lot regarding the random gear pieces; However, still got several tank items: Mainhand (blaster pistol) and relics on my gunslinger. Furthermore, obtained several green moddable items which, however, were 5-10 numbers below my current item rating

 

c) The set items must not be restricted to the respective class. Currently in case I would have 306 BiS gear on my shadow tank, I need to wear whatever stuff I got beforehand in case I want to equip other tank classes. Same with DPS and healers. Although the respective set bonus is of course not applied to a different class it is surely better to wear BiS gear of another class than wearing whatever stuff which is not or nearly not augmented (cf. discussion topic a).

 

EDIT: unchanged

 

d) This receving downgrade item nonsense from anywhere in the game needs to stop, be it loot drop, renown crate, whatever. It is time-consuming and annoying enough to grind through 19 tiers of gear only to obtain completely useless items which do not yield a relevant amount of tech fragments when disintegrated.

 

EDIT: this appears to have been improved a lot as reagrds the gear pieces

 

e) A complete RNG³ (getting something better than you actually wear, getting something at least your base class can wear, getting something which is usuable for your current discipline) trader as main gear acquisition path is, excuse me, complete nonsense. Nightmare/Mastermode operations should yield tokens which can be exchanged by a vendor for the respective BiS item, i.e., slot-specific drops for each boss, including tokens for tacticals. For ranked PvP-Players the daily and weekly need to yield respective tokens as well, maybe changing everyday as suggested earlier. In HC/Veteran Operations (except The Ravagers/Temple of Sacrifice/The Nature of Progress which do not have Nightmare modes) the same kinds of tokens except having a lower item rating need to drop as it is presently the case (at least in HC and Nightmare endbosses) as far as 242 and 248 gear rating is concerned.

 

f) Mods are still bugged in set bonus gear, not any stats are applied, they go into hiding

Edited September 7, 2019 by The_Hightower
did further testing

[Ahwassa]

It´s great that I´m getting more gear and especially more gear for my class (I only play one so I don´t need stuff for alts).

 

The problem with the gear is still that it´s not moddable and the drops in flashpoints are still lower than my overall gear rating. Also mainhand needs to be moddable only. I want my legacy saber

 

Renown is ok for a supplementary system but in the state it is now, it could be deleted because it´s almost irrelevant.

It would be better if you could just drop more tech fragments (equivalent to the disintegration from the renown crate).

Edited September 7, 2019 by Ahwassa

[Maricstefan]

Hey Eric,

 

A the new patch did not necessarily fix things, but it moved loot drops into a better more streamlined position.

 

what I like now is, that when i run sorc curruptionm i will get gear only for that. that's better than before.

 

 

But everything else I said yesterday persists. copied another character, the same sorc, and ran her identically as i did pre-patch, and while I get loot suited for the chosen spec, after 3 runs of VM i didn't get any upgrades anymore.

now, i understand the system is working akin to how destiny 1 did it with taken king, where you have to reach light level 300 for the game to be like " we dropping 310 gear now " and reach 310 for 317 and so forth. absolutely makes sense.

 

now again here are my issues.

there is A not enough and different loot to keep things fresh,

b. dismantling doubs doesn't really give that many tech fragments,

C. i still like my idea, that bosses drop tech fragments instead of the FP/Raid itself.

// example: we tried to run Hammerstation on MM today again,and for some reason, we couldn't beat the end boss. worked like a charm yesterday but not today. anyway. i noticed that some VM run of hammerstation gives me around 220 tech fragments. and a MM just slightly more. //

D. my 248 fully auged set is better than a full 270 green set. like literally better. only after 270 it starts to become less viable. because the stats on the new gear just screw with how the stats should be distributed.

now lemme put down my idea for a possible working loop here :

 

A. just by running FPs, you currently dont get over 266ish. loot gets thrown at you but the fact is, that half the " upgrade " loot is objectively not an upgrade. for example. yesterday it just kept telling me that the piece which upped my crit as lighting sorc was the upgrade i needed. i ended up with no accuracy and 500 alac and like 2100 crit lol, because for testing purpose i just kept equipping what the game told be is an upgrade. so eventually you wont actually get upgrades anymore even though they have 1 better stat.

B. by making bosses drop tech fragments, farming gets more rewarding and useable.

c. the new core loop for endgame or gearing would be, among others. run the raids and flashpoints, till you cant level up your gear anymore, then farm one of the FPs till you have enough fragments, then grab the RNG upgrades. get the upgrade, and repeat.

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

 

now more objectively.

loot still becomes irrelevant too fast. against after the 3rd run today i just didn't get anything that was playing nicely with my spec.

tech fragments are a shore to farm. the current model is buying that presence stim for 1.5k and dismantle like 800 of those to get 3000 tech fragments.thats what i did to get to 280 because it is the way better way right now getting those.

 

again i think having bosses from now on drop tech fragments instead of getting them randomly by completing the fp makes more sense.

VM boss -100

MM boss - 150

SM raid boss -150

HM raid biss - 200

NM raid boss - 400

 

and even with having an abundance of tech fragments, it still took like an hour and a half to get to 280 because at first really tried hard to keep my stats correct and eventually just gave up.

 

TLDR: still a lot of useless loot and a ton of doubs, and not enough tech fragments. hope you consider trying to do the bosses drop fragments to make up FPs not actually giving you upgrades way to fast

Edited September 7, 2019 by Maricstefan

[Hawkebatt]

Update on yesterday.

The loot drops are better and I went from about 278 to 284 and started to see 286 purple drops.

 

Leveling gear which this is not suppose to have good stats.

I Like the fact I am gearing for multiple toons at once I save the top three pieces of each slot so if I take another toon they go from whatever to 282 just below my 284 or I can just put everything on my current toon and boom 284.

 

I complained at first but I see the logic. Avoid the vendors as that is just wasting tech. Kai Zykken for a tactical but that is it. Be a smart shopper and not a piranha and biting the lowest cost thing out there.

 

Will I want to balance my gear once I hit 306. Yes I will, but until then I am just chasing the next gear score. WHILE I am gearing several toons at once. When this goes live as is then I will have eight gear sets by the time the first gets to 306. Meaning I will have gear for eight other toons. I will probably have tacticals for many different specs. In the end I did the effort for nine toons with one character at once or more.

 

Could it be better? Yes they could be better and from what I heard is that the token vendors will come back. Expensive but they will be back. Can anyone name a game that you can transfer gear from one toon to the next? With a general set bonus I have basic gear for any dps I have with one run through.

 

Do I hate RNG yes, but don't kill the goose we have just because something could be better. Tell them things need to change, but understand that they will not be perfect but they are changing. That much I have learned in three days playing the pts.

[Maricstefan]

Btw Eric?

 

Quick question. at what level will the blue gear start and where will it drop

the same with purple and gold? and what stats will those have?

 

because right now the osseus gear just outperforms the new green gear, which I guess makes sense given its endgame gear lol.

 

but id be interested nevertheless where and how we get the better grade gear later. and how it will drop in flash points and raids.

[TrigPt]

The latest patch makes it relatively easy to to get to 306. I finished off a toon I started last week and being able to get the last few pieces with guaranteed boxes from the vendor saved me from the frustration of getting that last piece.

 

I then started from scratch with a 268 toon and got up to 282 in 3hours of solo VM Hammertime so I think 10hours to be a reasonable guess to how long it would take me to get to 306.

 

Things I'd like to see changed:-

Loot drops at 306 are bad, most of the gear is lower than 306 and at this point, all I want is to update my set bonus armour with armourings, mods, etc. which don't seem to drop and when they do they're not 306.

 

The loot box on the vendor that contains armourings and mods only contains one item, it used to have 4 different items. This needs to be cheaper or go back to 3-4 items.

 

The UI needs an update, once you get to 306 regular pieces and set bonus pieces look identical in the inventory and since deconstructing items is such a common task there needs to be a clear distinction. I'd suggest adding the old legacy icon to set bonus pieces for the sake of clarity.

Edited September 7, 2019 by TrigPt

[Kalorilan]

Adding to all of this:

Most of us have at least a couple of moddable sabers, pistols, etc. in our collections that we may want to use on characters. Left hand side pieces are never "seen" by anyone else unless they inspect our character, and right-hand side equipment can always be papered over in the outfit designer.

 

But....mainhand weapons, and offhand sabers/pistols, we have to use what is available.

And right now, it's pretty doggone painful to get usable hilts/barrels for those items.

 

If there's no "weapon designer" to let us override, and we're stuck using Bubba's Boltblaster Pistol or random non-moddable saber instead of the item we lucked into (or for some, whaled into) and love....well, it's going to be another item that sours people on their overall experience.

 

I detect a great disturbance in the average GTN price of Tython Force-Master Lightsabers...

[xJediRyanx]

20 different armoring variants

20 different barrel variants

20 different hilt variants

 

60 different mod variants

20 different enhancement variants for each type of enhancement.

 

And everything else that is RNG. Why would I need to get 3 mara pieces from a Renown box while I play a Power Tech. I don't even have a mara.

 

I would like to congratulate the developers of this game for literally taking a great expansion and turning it into garbage based on what is on the PTS right now.

 

Player base: Ossus and Command ranks is a terrible way to get gear

 

Developers: Hold my beer.

[elspethfire]

Hello

 

So im on my sniper and so far most of the drops i have been getting are for a jug tank or has tanking specs in it which really disappoints me. I will say from doing dailies i have gotten gear over time but from just mob drops. The renown crate and the vet flashpoints well i just stuff that is lower then my gear i have now and have yet to get any set pieces. Also correct me if im wrong but i thought the stuff to get with the tact frag stuff was suppose to go down in price but i dont see it . ill have to say getting gear for my sniper is taking a while. As for gear from Hammer station i NEVER get anything that is either an upgrade or even a set piece for my sniper Marybelbis. So please let me know what im doing wrong and is it only the master mode FP that u can get a tatical?

 

Thank you

[Sir-steve]

Does acquiring gear feel too fast/slow?

 

Slow. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon on PTS using a toon copy in 258 gear. Between Onderon and Hammer Station I went up about 1.25 levels. Very low number of drops - mostly 210. In Hammer station it was mostly resources and I did receive one command crate, which I can't use due to level (must be 75). Perhaps its a level problem, but I really dont want to spend days levelling up 35 alts filling up their inventories with useless and unusable items.

 

Do you understand what to do to get gear? How do you feel about the primary sources...

 

I think I understand it - run missions, hit flashpoints etc. I don't think its a lack of understanding, its a lack of interest. The process is not engaging, the loot not rewarding and the system needlessly random and complex. I genuinely think you have gone in the exact opposite direction from what people wanted. Put plainly, this just isn't fun.

 

Side notes on Onderon:

 

- While visually attractive, I hate this kind of 'lab rats in a maze' type terrain i.e. no direct path, can't go 'over' things. I mean c'mon, SW has jetpacks and spaceships - why are we so often stuck not being able to get over a little hill?

- Blue glowy (now green circles, yellow squares and red dots) for clicking are very hard to see under all the flora

- It just wasnt that exciting/interesting

 

Sorry guys, I'm sure you put a lot of hard work into this but overall, I'm turned off by it not excited for it. If there's one thing you MUST get right before this goes live, it's GOT to be getting this RNG nonsense under control.

[Master_Morak]

Hey folks,

 

Making a new feedback thread based on all of the changes we have made with the newest patch. Please ensure you have played hands-on PTS with the new patch before providing feedback as things have changed.

• Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow?
  
• Do you understand what to do to get gear?
  
• How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions)
  
• How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown)
  

Remember that for gear acquisition we want you to focus on Hammer Station or Karagga's Palace on any difficulty and the Onderon Dailies.

 

-eric

 

Eric this system is a worse System, why - the rewards are to low for playing the content.

 

Keep in mind that there are many solo players and not only raiders and flash point runners. The rewards for the dailies and weeklies are to low.

 

For examble: in the Moment you revieve 4 command chests für the yavin 4 Weekly, but here not even one renown chest for the same effort - that is frustrating.

 

I got 3 chests and 2 contents green parts below the level of my char, the next Frustration.

 

BTW: 50.000 points for conquest a much to high

[Hawkebatt]

my update on the gear

in five days I have gone from 252 to 302 I am getting gold drops now.

 

I have four sets of lower gear five of seven of one set and three of seven for another.

plenty of armorings mods and enhancements to make a fifth set.

 

Sat are still not balanced, but work fine for VM Hammer station.

Comp has difficultly getting past the third mob group where I have to use unity and he is at 50 so maybe a bit low on the initial healing burst, but manageable

 

I fluctuated from no alacrity up to 12% 800 crit to 2300, 500 accuracy to 2300. The 2% alacrity set bonus does seem to be working as I should have 2% with no alacrity on my gear and does not change my percentage even if I do. Might be the invisible set bonus gear glitch in the strongholds.

 

So far I may not have a balanced set for ops, but fine enough for VM flashpoints.

 

I also noticed that if I am wearing mod gear I get mod drops. Will test this once I am at close to 306.

 

So with five spare sets worth of gear from one toon toon leveling gear the drops are fine.

 

Except for the relics and weapons dropping for tank spec on my dps assassin. hardest item so far to get is main hand. Was at ilevel 298 with a 290 weapon for the longest.