The Next PTS Patch and Future Changes

[SteveTheCynic]

Let me correct something from my post. If it appears that you have an empty green shell in your stash, that is actually not a bug in of itself. The way that item works is when you pull it from your stash into your inventory it will then fill that item with mods for you based on your item rating and Discipline. Even though it looks like an empty green item, it is actually a great item to get.

 

The bug we need to address is that it looks like a very bad item in your stash and doesn't relay to you that you need to pull it to your inventory. We are working on a solution for that.

 

-eric

No, the bug you need to address is that the shell was empty once I took it out into my inventory.

[Exly]

As it should be. If everyone got their gear in 1 week, nobody would run the new content. Ossus is proof of thst.

 

I don't know how that proves anything. I ran Ossus dailies on 3 characters today. I also ran missions on Ziost, Ilum and Hoth. On the other hand, I do not run missions on Iokath, and though I did the first 8 chapters of KotFE at least 20 characters, but I only did it on 2 with KotET.

 

I do like the fact that they are brining out new content, and if it is good, I will play it on several characters. If not, I will look for other ways to level my toons and will still be glad that they brought us new content.

 

What I don't like is the gear grind treadmill. I did that in the 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 eras, and the thought of having to do it again is 6.0 does not please me, so please forgive me if I don't agree with you.

 

The one exception to this was with pvp gear in 4.0. Because of the changes they made to the game starting with 3.3 I was able to save up enough pvp comms to get bis gear on day one of that expansion, and I appreciated that. The result was that I played a lot more pvp in the months leading up 4.0 and throughout the entire expansion until things changed in 5.0.

[OdinJediCovenant]

No, the bug you need to address is that the shell was empty once I took it out into my inventory.

 

IOve just tested this also! I took an empty shell from my renowned stash and it was still empty

[Exly]

He did say it was a bug that you couldnt see what it was

 

You're right, but then he corrected himself and said:

 

"Let me correct something from my post. If it appears that you have an empty green shell in your stash, that is actually not a bug in of itself. The way that item works is when you pull it from your stash into your inventory it will then fill that item with mods for you based on your item rating and Discipline. Even though it looks like an empty green item, it is actually a great item to get."

 

So according to his latest statement, we will see empty gear in the stash and won't find out what stats it has until after we pull it out. That means that we can't take into account the stats on the gear before deciding whether we want to claim or disintegrate that gear, and I would rather know that information before making the decision.

 

I don't want end up claiming gear only to regret that decision when I get gear that has stats on it that I don't need or want. Having the information while it is still in my command stash would at least provide with me the ability to make an informed decision.

[SteveTheCynic]

IOve just tested this also! I took an empty shell from my renowned stash and it was still empty

It may be caused (on new characters that have been bounced up to 75) by opening the crate before you select a discipline, which may also be an element in the "empty crate" thing.

 

Of course, what it *should* do in that case is block you from opening the crate.

[Farferello]

With set bonus being on shell, so many unmoddable pieces, and having to grind through so many tiers of gear, I can't say I'll bother to keep augmenting gear every single time I get an up/sidegrade, it'd be way too costly and with so many tiers, a total waste of time and credits, so my chance of hitting any sort of accuracy threshold, never mind alacrity (goodbye 1.3 GC on all my toons) or crit is pretty slim. Can't say I'm looking forward to starting to miss my attacks because of a lack of accuracy.

[Folcwar]

I can not believe the amount of people 'praising' this as listening to feedback, the feedback was we don't want as much RnG, You were just fed a wall of text saying all RnG is here to stay, suck it.

 

The positives - Gear is spec specific, yay.

A vendor to buy what I want (I assume this will be a lot more expensive than random pieces, as it's not the intended way of gearing)

 

Everything else stays RnG, unmoddable gear on every tier - of which there are like 60, Tacticals and set bonuses, dropping in specific locations, but out of a pool of god knows how many.

 

I don't see this as listening to feedback sorry, all I see is an attempt to try make a system nobody wants, sounds slightly less terrible.

[LorcaGneditch]

Being a casual player I'm worried it would be no longer to acquire decent gear (like, at least SM ops-good gear) without heavy grinding, that with the new amount of points one needs to complete Conquest or to earn a Renown crate.

Right now I can get decent (not top, but certainly decent!) gear through dailies or command crates playing on my own pace with no heavy grinding.

In 6.0 it would be, well, impossible...

[OdinJediCovenant]

Being a casual player I'm worried it would be no longer to acquire decent gear (like, at least SM ops-good gear) without heavy grinding, that with the new amount of points one needs to complete Conquest or to earn a Renown crate.

Right now I can get decent (not top, but certainly decent!) gear through dailies or command crates playing on my own pace with no heavy grinding.

In 6.0 it would be, well, impossible...

 

No offence but MMO's are all about rewarding people with more who play more, if your casual, you should expect that you cant get the same gear, or even near the same decent gear as people who play hardcore, all MMO's do it this way, the more you play, the harder the content the better gear and rewards you get.

 

The reason this MMO is in a mess is because it took too much time to cater to the solo and casuals of the game, right now it needs to focus on the hardcore community and its group people.

[Darev]

No offence but MMO's are all about rewarding people with more who play more, if your casual, you should expect that you cant get the same gear, or even near the same decent gear as people who play hardcore, all MMO's do it this way, the more you play, the harder the content the better gear and rewards you get.

 

The reason this MMO is in a mess is because it took too much time to cater to the solo and casuals of the game, right now it needs to focus on the hardcore community and its group people.

 

I think his concern is valid.

He isn't changing his play style.

With 6.0 he's concerned the game is getting "harder" to gear up.

 

It's like playing Pac Man for 6 months then the difficulty gets turned up. You're still playing the same game, but the company behind it changed the rules. It's a valid concern.

[FlameYOL]

The changes look promising, finally you guys are giving the steps towards properly fine-tuning this system.

[scardera]

Still way too RNG and grindy. its just that the system was so bad at the start that now people are all excited. Still a lot of work to do to make it ''good''

[olagatonjedi]

I don't know how that proves anything. I ran Ossus dailies on 3 characters today. I also ran missions on Ziost, Ilum and Hoth. On the other hand, I do not run missions on Iokath, and though I did the first 8 chapters of KotFE at least 20 characters, but I only did it on 2 with KotET.

If gear is tied to running content, and the BIS gear is controlled enough that people cant acquire a full set within 1 week, then people will continue to make themselves available to run content. Gear is a huge draw for many MMO players. If RNG is removed as some of these posters are requesting, then they better expect the distribution of gear (or regeants) to be significantly reduced, or the cost to be significantly increased. The devs automatically have a minimum date in mind for when the non-NIM raider should be able to acquire a full set of BIS gear. Whatever gearing loot system they implement will always fall back to limiting acquisition of BIS gear to that date. Its gonna be a gear grind regardless, whether its running tons of content or requiring you to log in at least weekly to perform the same task over and over. It would be naive to expect anything otherwise from an MMO. Every single gear change followed that pattern so far.

Edited September 7, 2019 by olagatonjedi

[Darthanimus]

We are going to implement a toggle on your character portrait which will allow you to select what Discipline you want that gear to drop for. Ex: You’re playing on your Operative as Concealment, but you really want to focus on getting Medicine. You can switch your toggle to Medicine and you will receive that Discipline’s gear instead of Concealment.

[*]This will be in a future PTS patch.

 

I have wanted something like this for years, so glad its implemented, this is a fantastic quality of life change.

[Balameb]

THANK YOU!!!

 

That is really a BIG step in the right direction for 6.0. In terms of general gearing will probably solve most if not all of the rng issues. Looking forward to test it.

I will have to correct myself.

While i do feel this changes were in the right directon, in practice is not THAT good yet.

 

About RNG vendor:

 

The good:

* No more downgrades! (Thak you!!!!!!)

* Finally all pieces are relevant to discipline. As a way to upgrade one or two pieces that are making average rating low it certainly helps a lot. But.... (look for bad part)

 

The So-So:

* Prices increased. Was that neccesary?

* Rating upgrades (from my testing) was only up to 2 rating, before last patch there was chances of getting at least 4 rating increase.

* RNG is still an issue with left side, particularly with relics. Probably nothing much to help here. I had really bad luck with RNG boxes and then a single boss in HS gave me both relics i wanted.

 

The bad:

* The good part is only valid IF you completely ignore set bonus and modded gear.

* Mod box only gives one item (it was giving 4 before last patch) and is not discipline relevant. Arround 50%+ of what i got was for tank. That is too expensive, too RNG.

 

This i what i tested:

1- I bought RNG boxes to test changes, was very happy with results of getting proper and relevant upgrades.

2- Decided it was time to go set bonus. So bought it from Kai. In item rating it felt as a small downgrade because of RNG mods in those shells.

3- Started buying mod box. Really bad experience there. It took me arround 30 boxes or more just to get close to the same rating i was.

4- From that point i feel stuck. Upgrading is mission impossible, loot is still not moddable so only left side has a chance to maybe work as an upgrade.

 

 

As it is now, even after you add new direct vendors, people needs to completly ignore setbonus, augments and cosmetic MH/OH until you are almost in BIS tier. That is not Play your way.

 

What i think needs to be changed:

* MH and OH should ALWAYS be moddable. We are loosing our Orange moddable weapons. In all the mod boxes i bought with my Sentinel i only got one resistive barrel and no hilts.

* I feel that after green tier all gear upgrades from blue should be moddable. Or at least lower the price of mod box a LOT, like 75 or 100 tech fragments at most. and dividing in multiple boxes for Hilt, barrels, armoring, mods, enhancements. The RNG with all of that in the same box is just too much.

 

Edit: On vengeance Jugg i'm still getting tank relics, tank lightsabers, and losts of "force healer" stuff (this is still usable), i think there is a problem with the loot table for this spec or class.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Balameb
add info

[Raansu]

Hey folks,

 

There is another PTS patch coming today that will make some additional changes to Spoils of War. Let’s talk about everything that is changing and why; I will also call out the portions that are in today’s patch vs what is coming later.

 

TLDR - Gear will now drop only for your current Discipline, random vendor will now always give upgrades (with proper targeting), and we are adding supplementary vendors that sell set bonus shells and tacticals for tech fragments.

 

Gear for My Main Only

As stated in my previous post we wanted to ensure that players had some capacity to gear off-stats or alts while playing. Your feedback has made it clear that getting gear drops that aren’t meant for your current character is frustrating, so we are changing it. But, we also want to give you the choice to get alternate gear as well. Here is what is changing on this front:

• All personal loot will now look only at your Discipline.
  
• All group loot only looks at base/Advanced Classes.
  
  • This is in today’s patch.
    

  [*]We are going to implement a toggle on your character portrait which will allow you to select what Discipline you want that gear to drop for.

  • Ex: You’re playing on your Operative as Concealment, but you really want to focus on getting Medicine. You can switch your toggle to Medicine and you will receive that Discipline’s gear instead of Concealment.
    
  • This will be in a future PTS patch.
    

 

Random Tech Fragment Vendor and Vertical Progression

The random Tech Fragment vendor’s intention was to be a supplementary way to get gear that would help protect you from a streak of bad luck. Since this vendor is also random it is leading to frustration where you use the vendor seeking an upgrade, and instead it is either for the wrong spec or too low of an item rating. We’ve addressed the gearing issue above, so let’s discuss receiving a lower rated item: Here is what is changing:

• Any item purchased from this vendor will now always be of a higher item rating than your character’s currently equipped item rating (this is not by slot, but the average displayed on your character sheet).
  
• This means the best use of this vendor is to spend fragments on whichever item slot has your current lowest item rating gear. This would effectively guarantee an item rating increase for that slot (unless it is at max item rating, of course). For example: if your currently-equipped boots are item rating 270 and your character’s average item rating is 274, and you buy new boots from this vendor, those new boots are going to be above item rating 274.
  

 

Just to reiterate, the ‘random’ vendor is intended to be a mechanism to help address “vertical” progression (meaning your path from the start of level 75 to max item rating). To address concerns about horizontal progression, such as getting the exact sets or tacticals you want, read on...

 

Working Towards Specific Drops, Not Random

Although the underlying system of Spoils of War is there, it is clear that there needs to be a mechanism to work towards getting the exact item(s) you want. Our intention is that this type of system would need to be supplementary, but the current solutions we have in place are not enough.

 

I want to add some clarity to a system that is already in place to assist with this. Each content type will drop specific gear types, depending on difficulty. Example: the final boss of Master Mode Flashpoints have a 100% chance to drop from a pool of mostly tactical items and some set bonuses for the group. They don’t only drop in Flashpoints, but if you are targeting a specific type of drop, you can hone in on it by running specific content. To be clear, Daily Areas, Conquest, Flashpoint, Operations, Reputation Vendors, Crafting, and PvP all will have these focused loot drops. Now, we may need to focus this more so that you have more control over drops, so please keep the feedback coming on that front. Also as a reminder, these are just bonus drops in addition to all of the personal loot you will get which can also contain any set and tactical item.

 

Let’s talk about what is coming next. We are going to add vendors to the game that will sell all set items and tacticals for Tech Fragments. This is not meant to be a primary source of acquiring the gear but it will ensure you can get exactly what you want over time. Since this is meant to be supplementary, expect higher pricing on it.

 

Kai Zykken will remain in-game as a vendor with his current functionality. His purpose will now be to have a random selection of items that will be at a reduced price from what is on the standard vendors. This still gives you a compelling reason to check his wares every week as you might be able to get exactly what you want, but at a reduced rate from what you would normally pay.

 

Since these vendors were not available in the initial implementation of the vendors and Tech Fragments, expect when they are implemented in a future PTS patch there will likely be a shakeup in Tech Fragments acquisition / costs. Again, this is not in today’s patch.

 

Thanks all! As always, this is not a comprehensive list of everything we are tracking and working on, so look for additional information as PTS progresses and keep your feedback coming!

 

-eric

 

 

Stop trying to make the RNG vendor work. Its clear as day we don't want it at all. RNG drops are one thing, but an RNG vendor is just obnoxious.

 

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel with the gearing system. You guys are insistent on having korean mmo level grinding and its not cool. Just give us back what we had before the catastrophe that was galactic command was implemented. The token and warzone comm system we had in 4.x was extremely simple and PERFECT. It was direct and to the point.

 

You do pvp? Here's wz comms for your direct progression of pvp gear with lowered costs to make gearing fast. And there were even a mod/enhancement vendor so people could cheaply get to BiS and even cheaply and easily try different stat builds. It was a great time to be a pvper and to experiment with stats. The huge cap on comms and them being legacy also boosted lowbie pvp since you could earn comms while leveling allowing you to get at least tier 1 immediately hitting level cap. This was literally the PERFECT setup for pvp. Lowbie pvp had incentive to pvp and cap pvp had easy progression to be geared for ranked.

 

PvE? Here's the raids, each final boss drops a specific token for your direct progression while the mid bosses throughout the raid had RNG drops.

 

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THAT? You guys are driving us crazy here with this crap.

 

And for the love of all that is good, MAKE ALL GEAR MODDABLE. No one wants this garbage green gear that you cant mod.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Raansu

[Darev]

If gear is tied to running content, and the BIS gear is controlled enough that people cant acquire a full set within 1 week, then people will continue to make themselves available to run content. Gear is a huge draw for many MMO players. If RNG is removed as some of these posters are requesting, then they better expect the distribution of gear (or regeants) to be significantly reduced, or the cost to be significantly increased. The devs automatically have a minimum date in mind for when the non-NIM raider should be able to acquire a full set of BIS gear. Whatever gearing loot system they implement will always fall back to limiting acquisition of BIS gear to that date. Its gonna be a gear grind regardless, whether its running tons of content or requiring you to log in at least weekly to perform the same task over and over. It would be naive to expect anything otherwise from an MMO. Every single gear change followed that pattern so far.

 

No post I've read is saying "give me BIS in a week...or a month"

 

What I, and many other players posting in the PTS forums, want is a way to work toward gear that does not involve RNG in any way at all.

 

NO version of this game has ever had RNG only gearing prior to 5.0. They implemented it in 5.0 and the playerbase, very loudly, said "no" after it was implemented. They added a non RNG system that worked and the RNG system went back to being supplementary.

 

Now with 6.0 we have the following ways to gear:

 

RNG from Vendor "A"

RNG from Vendor "B"

NPC loot drops that are by nature supposed to be RNG

RNG boss loot drops of varying types/degrees of difficulty.

 

The only gearing system that isn't RNG is crafting, which has its own set of massive problems.

 

If I'm missing anything, please let me know what it is.

 

 

***added***

Oh, if I remember correctly, the very first PVP gearing system was with randomized loot boxes bought with WZ comms.

Remember how well that worked out?

 

Not at all.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Darev

[LordCamTheGreat]

These changes are a big first step in the right direction and I have to commend the devs for the quick turnaround based on forum feedback.

Still would like to see a lot of changes to amplifiers to make getting the specific type of amplifier you want a lot easier, rather than dumping hundreds of thousands of credits in the hope you might get something half decent.

[ultimarb]

Not enough. Get back to the system of token and comm drops to buy exactly the thing you WANT.

[AwesomeTacoCat]

No post I've read is saying "give me BIS in a week...or a month"

 

What I, and many other players posting in the PTS forums, want is a way to work toward gear that does not involve RNG in any way at all.

 

NO version of this game has ever had RNG only gearing prior to 5.0. They implemented it in 5.0 and the playerbase, very loudly, said "no" after it was implemented. They added a non RNG system that worked and the RNG system went back to being supplementary.

 

Now with 6.0 we have the following ways to gear:

 

RNG from Vendor "A"

RNG from Vendor "B"

NPC loot drops that are by nature supposed to be RNG

RNG boss loot drops of varying types/degrees of difficulty.

 

The only gearing system that isn't RNG is crafting, which has its own set of massive problems.

 

If I'm missing anything, please let me know what it is.

 

 

***added***

Oh, if I remember correctly, the very first PVP gearing system was with randomized loot boxes bought with WZ comms.

Remember how well that worked out?

 

Not at all.

 

I feel like if you can clear sm raids to get hm gear in a week, clear a bunch of hm raids in another week to get gear for NiM raids, and clear a bunch of NiM raids in a week you should be able to get BIS in a month. Seems sensible...

[Darev]

they are getting rid of lockouts for SM ops...so maybe that will help.

 

I'm not a big operations type player, but I like getting as close to BIS as possible.

 

I've never once tried a MM operation.

I've barely tried MM flashpoints.

 

So for that maybe 5% of players who do MM operations....if there was a dedicated team, maybe they could gear up in a month.

 

If that route existed, and they put in the effort, they deserve the reward in my opinion.

 

How does that, maybe 5%, make some people think that, for the majority of the players, it's too fast and therefore shouldn't be allowed for anyone?

[MikeCobalt]

Moddable Gear is going to be what drops right? I'm not using gear I don't like, sell it, trade or whatever, upgrading the gear I have or choose is the end result.

[Lhancelot]

Stop trying to make the RNG vendor work. Its clear as day we don't want it at all. RNG drops are one thing, but an RNG vendor is just obnoxious.

 

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel with the gearing system. You guys are insistent on having korean mmo level grinding and its not cool. Just give us back what we had before the catastrophe that was galactic command was implemented. The token and warzone comm system we had in 4.x was extremely simple and PERFECT. It was direct and to the point.

 

You do pvp? Here's wz comms for your direct progression of pvp gear with lowered costs to make gearing fast. And there were even a mod/enhancement vendor so people could cheaply get to BiS and even cheaply and easily try different stat builds. It was a great time to be a pvper and to experiment with stats. The huge cap on comms and them being legacy also boosted lowbie pvp since you could earn comms while leveling allowing you to get at least tier 1 immediately hitting level cap. This was literally the PERFECT setup for pvp. Lowbie pvp had incentive to pvp and cap pvp had easy progression to be geared for ranked.

 

PvE? Here's the raids, each final boss drops a specific token for your direct progression while the mid bosses throughout the raid had RNG drops.

 

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THAT? You guys are driving us crazy here with this crap.

 

And for the love of all that is good, MAKE ALL GEAR MODDABLE. No one wants this garbage green gear that you cant mod.

 

It's crazy because they are literally sitting on the blueprint for making the game great again for PVPers, yet for some reason are hellbent on not learning from the past regarding what works and what does not work for gearing for PVP.

 

Choices and options with gearing makes things interesting. Allowing players the freedom to gear alts easily for PVP allows them to focus on the best part of PVP which is, PVPing. Putting unnecessary gates in front of ingame activities is counter-productive and only discourages players from playing more.

 

Gating activities like PVE with gears works, because the premise is you need to gear up for harder targets to take down. In PVP, there is no point to making people spend exorbitant amounts of time gearing up when the targets are other players.

 

In PVP gears should not be the major deciding factor for who wins, and players should not have to spend the majority of their time gearing up just to enter PVP on the same footing as other players.

 

The best part of that old system was the amount of customization players were afforded when gearing up for PVP.

You could easily run an all alacrity build sorc if you wanted, or you could stack all critical if you wanted, you could build a toon and customize the stats anyway you wanted! It worked well because the more you PVP'd, the more gears you could get and play with. For PVPers it really was a near-perfect system.

 

The point is, it was your choice... You were not forced to enter WZs with stats that you didn't want just because that was the only gear available to you and to get other stats it would take tons of time grinding just to get exactly what you want.

 

Sadly they are going to push this out the door, ignoring the main point of what people dislike about the new system and that's keeping RNG as the backbone of their gearing system. If they want to have a steep gear grind for PVE, I don't care, fine. But for PVP there ought not be any sort of gear grind.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Lhancelot

[teclado]

So after playing through some more, this is still unacceptable. No way to control our stat distribution. We're basically forced to wear green gear. Can't augment our stuff without continually wasting a ton of credits on kits and fees.

[olagatonjedi]

No post I've read is saying "give me BIS in a week...or a month"

 

What I, and many other players posting in the PTS forums, want is a way to work toward gear that does not involve RNG in any way at all.

 

NO version of this game has ever had RNG only gearing prior to 5.0. They implemented it in 5.0 and the playerbase, very loudly, said "no" after it was implemented. They added a non RNG system that worked and the RNG system went back to being supplementary.

 

Now with 6.0 we have the following ways to gear:

 

RNG from Vendor "A"

RNG from Vendor "B"

NPC loot drops that are by nature supposed to be RNG

RNG boss loot drops of varying types/degrees of difficulty.

 

The only gearing system that isn't RNG is crafting, which has its own set of massive problems.

 

If I'm missing anything, please let me know what it is.

 

 

***added***

Oh, if I remember correctly, the very first PVP gearing system was with randomized loot boxes bought with WZ comms.

Remember how well that worked out?

 

Not at all.

Prior to 5.0, people had to compete against others via RNG /random to win an item. No system has ever been void of an RNG factor.