Make No Mistake: Gearing in 7.0 is alt-hostile

[xordevoreaux]

This is my last negative commentary regarding gearing in 7.0

After today, for me, personally, it's either suck it up buttercup or don't play. I have made the decision to play.

 

I have spent 7 years building two player associations, one pub side, one imp. I absolutely love the people in them. They have been there for me. They are great people. We have a great thing going. I will cheer them on. I will encourage them. I will rejoice with them when we complete operations, and I will be with them in those operations. I will celebrate with my members when they complete their datacron mastery, complete hard-won achievements, complete their legacy, whatever is a hooray for them. I will do nothing less under 7.0 for my guilds than I do today. That is my pledge to them: Nothing will change.

 

 

But on a personal level, how I play my own toons is completely changing in 7.0, and it's all because of the new gearing system.

 

I am attention deficit disordered. I'm also on the high side of 50 and my memory isn't the best any more.

 

Many of my guild members swap gear out between their toons when they fill in whatever role is necessary for an operation. They sit there and real quick flip their combat proficiencies, their tacticals, the whole nine yards, to do so. Some swap tacticals fight to fight to fight within the same op depending on their expectation of what they know they'll encounter in each fight.

 

That is not me. I have never wanted to hold my team back by forcing them to stand around while I look at a screen shot of how the combat proficiencies should be for a given role for a given class, or try to remember which toon is wearing what, or flip tacticals. I'm too addle-brained for that.

 

So for me, the rule has always been: one toon, one combat role, one set of gear, one tactical. Can't mess up that way. Need a healer? Got one! Fully loaded, let's go. Need a DPS? Got one! Fully loaded, let me switch to him, good to go. Same with a tank. But I do not switch any gear between characters or flip roles on a character. I would drive myself mad.

 

7.0 promises to eliminate part of that problem with load-outs. Yay. Eventually they'll get it smooth enough where some of that is possible. But even after that point, I will still be a one toon, one set of gear guy, or two for a second combat style, but both sets would never leave that toon. I will not flip gear across toons. Argue against the reasoning of doing so till you're blue in the face, I'm accommodating my broken brain, and that's that.

 

With that caveat, I'll talk about gearing and toons. I've often said on these forums that I quit Everquest 2 because their end-game gearing requirements got craptastically stupid.

 

In Everquest 2, you go your whole career with a set of stats that you think is appropriate for your toon, then come across an expansion in your early level-90's in which there are areas of the game gated off with a hard requirement of certain stats.

 

So you grind, and you grind, getting the gear you need to enter the next area, all so you can ... grind more gear.

Develop the story of your character? No. Expose something new about your character? No. What you do is kill the same monsters in the same instances day in and day out, so you can move to the next tier and do it all over again somewhere else. That's it. That's end-game Everquest 2. So I quit. Still have toons over there, but I just mess around soloing on lowbies and nothing else.

 

With 7.0, gearing in SWTOR has reached or exceeded that level of craptastic. FOUR WEEKS for a casual SWTOR player to grind out a set of gear. You're in here right now reading this post in the PTS sub-forum, meaning you've probably been on PTS, did part of the gear grind. You know the math. You know what it's going to take.

 

For me, being the one toon, one set of gear guy that I am, I experienced a certain level of stress discovering the labor necessary to gear a toon.

 

You've probably more than once read where I have over 180 toons across five accounts. Four of those accounts are fluff, me playing space barbies. Most are in trash gear, will stay in trash gear, and I don't care because I'm not playing them for end-game. They're sitting in my me-only guilds on every server, and gearing isn't why I play them. Not worried about them.

 

Star Forge is where I am GL of two player associations with my one account that's a subscriber, and its contending with this account in gearing under 7.0 that I'm writing this post.

 

At one point, I had 50-something toons on Star Forge on my subscriber account. After seeing the reality of 7.0, I am down to 22.

 

It proved far less stressful for me to type DELETE on 30-something toons—toons that I loved to play, toons wearing bound, expensively-colored quested gear sets like the Rishi pirate outfit, toons that had reached 700 in crafting, toons I had burned level tokens on, toons with companions that I had burned compendiums on— than it will be under 7.0 knowing I'll be staring at toons in the character select window that I will never get around to gearing. Never. There's too much labor involved in 7.0 to do that.

 

Not happening. So I have triaged the toons that will support my player associations. My toons in my side guilds I still have, but deleted some toons in those. I got rid of all duplicity that had built up over the years playing space barbies on that account on Star Forge. I have my ecology of crafters, one full set of crafters for each guild, and some place holder toons for my name sake, and my GTN mule.

 

The rest? Torched.

 

7.0 is alt-hostile.

Edited January 15, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[Sarova]

Are you speaking as a raider/ops player/ranked player where gear really matters? I'm none of those. I was really concerned about gearing up my alts just to be able to survive the higher level story aspects of the game, however I'm actually encouraged by what I've experienced from gearing on the PTS. The basic set can be bought and I've been able to upgrade it just doing things I would normally do.

I've also had several gear drops which I can keep for my alts of the same class. For a soloer like me I don't see any problems; I have to say I'm surprised by how easy it is - I had thought it would be an awful grind. What I would like to know is if gearing via conquest will go higher than 322. I've only been able to get higher though FPs and PvP - I only do those when I'm in the mood.

 

I'm more concerned about the outfitter; they really need to sort out the weapons slot before 7.0 goes live. I can see now being able to show-off your favourite weapon being a deal breaker for a lot of players.

[Pricia]

I only have 34 characters but same... I've already started making a list of which ones I'm going to have to stop playing.

Same thing, one spec, one tactical, one set of gear per character, it's how I like to play. And yes I've been playing CQ on every character every week since I came back 1.5 years ago.

 

I know that it could be worse, the gear is bind to legacy after all... but gosh I have no desire to have to have to transfer gear from one character to another every time I want to play another toon. It's a major PITA, requires you to log off next to a legacy vault etc.

 

Unfortunately, with no drops at all for soloers, I won't even be able to just pass down duplicates I get - I won't get any. I'll have to grind every single piece of gear for every single character. Honestly, it just saddens me. Between that and the fact that the gear sucks compared to my 306 stuff, I can tell you that I have no desire to grind. What's the point? I don't have a main. I play them all as much. I can only hope that they won't make the story updates too difficult and we won't have a Spirit of Vengeance repeat.

 

And you forgot to mention how god awful CQ rewards are after the 4th character. All my characters are in guilds and some of them already struggle to meet the weekly goal, so between 100k CQ and how alt-unfriendly they are... It's only going to get worse. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of smaller guilds just die because of the update.

 

So yes, this is definitely really a huge step back for people who love alts.

[Toraak]

Are you speaking as a raider/ops player/ranked player where gear really matters? I'm none of those. I was really concerned about gearing up my alts just to be able to survive the higher level story aspects of the game, however I'm actually encouraged by what I've experienced from gearing on the PTS. The basic set can be bought and I've been able to upgrade it just doing things I would normally do.

I've also had several gear drops which I can keep for my alts of the same class. For a soloer like me I don't see any problems; I have to say I'm surprised by how easy it is - I had thought it would be an awful grind. What I would like to know is if gearing via conquest will go higher than 322. I've only been able to get higher though FPs and PvP - I only do those when I'm in the mood.

 

I'm more concerned about the outfitter; they really need to sort out the weapons slot before 7.0 goes live. I can see now being able to show-off your favourite weapon being a deal breaker for a lot of players.

 

Conquest gearing can go up to 326.

[xordevoreaux]

Are you speaking as a raider/ops player/ranked player where gear really matters?

No one needs anything more than base green gear to kill off anything overland in PvE or story that isn't heroic or higher. Definitely faster with better accuracy and crit with better gear, but unnecessary, and in 7.0 all stats are capped, not just primary.

 

Right now, supporting my team in operations, my toons are in 306 gear with 276 / 286 augs. I run story mode and am backfill when we run hard mode. My overriding concern is keeping up with my team in those situations as far as staying geared so that they're not perpetually having to carry me in what will be now instances tuned to level 80.

 

Most likely I will not gear as quickly as they do, I don't even play on Sundays, for example, so I have my work cut out for me, and must select wisely which toons I invest in to gear up and the best use of my time given weekly conquest caps and my frequency of play.

Edited January 15, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[supercometl]

So to hopefully calm you down some. Gear is more alt-hostile than 6.x but that doesn't mean it is alt hostile. I won't say definitely, but I do think it is going to be about par with 5.x after the changes. The initial grind is still going to be rough, but the system still does Item rating progression. So if you max out at Hardmode Flashpoints, well then once you get your Supreme Decurion on your main to 326, all the future drops when you run on said alt will be the same as before, alt gear.

 

So in reality the only major punishment is that if you play anything harder than veteran flashpoints then doing said easier content will feel pointless in comparison to current 6.x, even if it does give some currency for side/upgrades.

 

One relevant aspect I would like to see added is the ability to buy the last level of I rating without needed it to be upgraded once you have achieved that level of the item.

[Pricia]

So to hopefully calm you down some. Gear is more alt-hostile than 6.x but that doesn't mean it is alt hostile. I won't say definitely, but I do think it is going to be about par with 5.x after the changes. The initial grind is still going to be rough, but the system still does Item rating progression. So if you max out at Hardmode Flashpoints, well then once you get your Supreme Decurion on your main to 326, all the future drops when you run on said alt will be the same as before, alt gear.

 

So in reality the only major punishment is that if you play anything harder than veteran flashpoints then doing said easier content will feel pointless in comparison to current 6.x, even if it does give some currency for side/upgrades.

 

One relevant aspect I would like to see added is the ability to buy the last level of I rating without needed it to be upgraded once you have achieved that level of the item.

 

Except that solo players get no drops at all, so that doesn't work.

[mike_carton]

Are you speaking as a raider/ops player/ranked player where gear really matters? I'm none of those...

Did you do the new FP on Story Mode with the gear you got? It iwll be required to progress the character story when 7.0 goes live.