Changes to Gearing in 7.0 from PTS Feedback

[Sarova]

Also what happens with weapons and you’re recent announcement that weapons won’t be in outfitter for in 7.0?? (And maybe not even in 7.1 if you can’t get it to work). By removing moddable gear, you are basically removing our ability to use our cartel market weapons.

This is by FAR the most annoying thing that's gone wrong. Few players read these forums (have you announced this on other platforms)? I'm guessing when 7.0 goes live many players will be furious about this (if you watch general chat on DM it's clear many players have no idea about the changes and are expecting something completely different). Given the many issues from previous updates that have taken literal years to get a fix, I'm not hopeful that this weapons outfitter issue will be fixed in 7.1 or indeed ever. With this one problem, you've made a mockery of ALL OF US who spent money on weapons and collection unlocks so all our characters have access to our favourite weapons. Weapons and offhands should remain moddable with access to a vendor that sells level 80 mods. And to rub salt into the wound (so to speak) there will be new weapons available in 7.0 as both GS rewards (which are all quite nice) and on the CM. You will lose subscribers over this.

 

You also didn’t listen about resetting the pvp weekly win requirement to finish it before it resets. What happens when the matchmaking puts you on teams of players who dont play to win?? But instead put you on teams of people who only care what their DPS or healing or Protection numbers were all match (scoreboard epreening). They don’t care if they lose and they don’t play the objectives. It’s not our fault we get put on those teams and can’t win enough matches to complete the weeklies in the time frame you are now artificially restricting us to.

And what about solo players? Is it there fault they keep getting put against premade sides that are just there to ROFLSTOMP pugs because the matchmaking system is broken.

It doesn’t matter if you reduce the amount of matches required and make the weekly repeatable if you can’t win those matches. So either get rid of the win requirement or the reset requirement or both.

TrixxieTriss is making a really important point here. For casual solo players it can take weeks to complete the PvP weekly as it stands in live. Reducing the weekly PvP mission to require x4 wins instead of x10 only worked on the PTS because those in unranked actually wanted to try to win. Given the point about unranked being prime hunting ground for scoreboard epeeners/ROFLSTOMP premades who have no interest in the objectives or winning, I suggest for a while you ban premades from queuing for unranked.

[MaximusRex]

Hi mentalmackem,

 

PTS will be brought down tomorrow afternoon, so there will not be another phase of testing. When changes are live, we absolutely will be observing feedback coming in from players. I'm working on ways to help streamline that for players who frequent the forums.

 

Disappointing that Devs are ignoring the feedback given and are going to push this cluster live. Command Crates all over again, except worse.

[NeoBlakkrstal]

Yep, again, I completely agree.

 

Although I suppose that requiring wins will stop players from being dead weight on purpose, it will still be frustrating when they are not doing anything useful.

 

Win or nothing hasn't stopped people who are dead weight from playing, what it has done is stop the casual PVPer, like myself, who do care, and when in PvP actually do try and contribute, no matter how minimal that might be, from even bothering to queue. Going to win or nothing, stripping any sort of tangible reward from a loss, has not helped in the least, it has made a bad situation even worse.

 

And I agree, the resetting of weekly missions is absolutely terrible. The way I play, it takes me several weeks to complete a weekly at times. I was realizing just this week that I probably won't ever finish a Feast weekly again once 7.0 drops due to this ridiculous change. On the toons that I did the Feast event with, it took all 3 weeks to finish all the weekly missions from the terminal.

 

Other than the weapons not being in outfit designer, the reset of weeklies is going to be the worst thing about 7.0. For me at least, and I am sure I am not the only one.

Edited January 27, 2022 by NeoBlakkrstal

[Ulrah]

Not wrong.

 

I mean, why can't they just give us MODS to buy instead of gear pieces? Is it really that hard to code is so that you can't buy those mods until your item rating is high enough?

 

Also please people stop quoting the whole post every time you post feedback...

This is particularly glaring since they are not completely removing item mod from the game long term...

 

I see it as another slap in the face for non-raiders. Just like they push people to sub by making the game annoying without, they are now doing same thing with gearing (to try to increase raid participation).

[HectorCasan]

Who asked for this changes?

 

I liked the liberty of 6.0. And modales gear

 

Revert those changes. No one wants this. Just release new story and Ui modifications

[HectorCasan]

Win or nothing hasn't stopped people who are dead weight from playing, what it has done is stop the casual PVPer, like myself, who do care, and when in PvP actually do try and contribute, no matter how minimal that might be, from even bothering to queue. Going to win or nothing, stripping any sort of tangible reward from a loss, has not helped in the least, it has made a bad situation even worse.

 

And I agree, the resetting of weekly missions is absolutely terrible. The way I play, it takes me several weeks to complete a weekly at times. I was realizing just this week that I probably won't ever finish a Feast weekly again once 7.0 drops due to this ridiculous change. On the toons that I did the Feast event with, it took all 3 weeks to finish all the weekly missions from the terminal.

 

Other than the weapons not being in outfit designer, the reset of weeklies is going to be the worst thing about 7.0. For me at least, and I am sure I am not the only one.

 

 

Agree. Sometimes I may play a monda and do t have enough time

 

They are going going the wow route with the forced stuff. The one failing MMO is the one Bioware is copying...

[CrazyScruffy]

This is particularly glaring since they are not completely removing item mod from the game long term...

 

+1

 

Just like they push people to sub by making the game annoying without, they are now doing same thing with gearing (to try to increase raid participation).

 

Yes but it was a subscription based game. And subs are the ones that bring in the money. So yes it makes sense to push people to want to sub and shouldn't be viewed in the same light. Especially with how many benefits and workarounds that non-subs can get/do.

[Eli_Porter]

Agree. Sometimes I may play a monda and do t have enough time

 

They are going going the wow route with the forced stuff. The one failing MMO is the one Bioware is copying...

If time is a concern(it's mine too) they're lowering the wins required from 10 to 4.

[Damask_Rose]

I'm glad that GSF isn't forgotten!

 

I see no reason as to why it should not be treated equally to unrated PvP in terms of gearing. Please ensure GSF weekly gives gear comparable to pvp weekly. It'd be good if people could gear up their character by doing what they like.

 

Hard mode railshooter missions should be included here too, perhaps.

 

To play devil's advocate, I'm going to ask why GSF should reward any gear components at all? The philosophy of this expansion is that you play the content to earn the gear that Bioware thinks you need to play that content. (At a base level, god forbid if you actually want to be efficient doing the content of your choice, or do content that they prefer to forget is part of your playstyle of choice.) GSF doesn't require any gear, so why should it reward any?

 

Me personally? I liked that 6.x let people gear up doing what ever content they enjoyed and I was perfectly fine that some content geared people significantly faster than others.

[theJudeAbides]

So, there's a lot of people complaining about the lack of mod-able gear in the new expansion, and while I generally agree with the sentiment, I think there's a lot they're not telling us (yet) and that, at some point, there will be, but probably not how you expect it.

 

The following is conjecture, but it is based on the following things that BioWare has already said:

- There will be new levels of gear introduced throughout this expansion. The max level of gear at launch will NOT be the max level of gear at the end.

- There are big crafting changes coming that won't be part of 7.0, but will be introduced later.

 

Maybe some of you can see where I'm going with this based on that.

 

I fully suspect that, in some future update (potentially 7.1, but maybe later), there will be a new level of gear introduced. Alongside this new level of gear, the crafting changes will be introduced. With these "significant" changes, players will be able to craft armorings, mods, and enhancements. I'm not sure if they'll re-arrange it around a little bit between the crafting skills, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I also suspect new augments will be introduced at this time as well, since we won't be getting any at launch. Now, the initial schematics will be fairly low level (say 312 or something like that), but you will be able to reverse-engineer you way to higher and higher levels until 320 or 322). Once there, you will be able to craft and modify your gear using this.

 

Additional Reasoning:

In 6.x, besides augments and augmentation kits (and the usual Biochem stims/adrenals/medpacks), crafting was largely pointless. There was NO reason to craft armorings, mods, enhancements, earpieces, implants, or relics when that gear practically fell into your inventory every time you took a few steps. Nobody was buying 306 pieces off the GTN when they could just run some basic content and get the gear much easier and cheaper.

 

The reason they're making it longer/harder to gear, the reason they're making it more convoluted, the reason they're limiting customizability, is to make crafting relevant again. It's funny how quickly people forget about one of the largest complaints about 6.0: How utterly bad and pointless crafting was. People are saying they're not listening, but I think they did (at least on this point). They're making crafting worthwhile again (hopefully). Now granted, their communication, as always, is atrocious, but I suspect they fear promising too much and not being able to deliver (which is fair because that is their MO).

 

I think it would have been better to introduce some of these crafting changes at the start of 7.0, but hey, it's much more important to have those CM items ready to sell at launch than actual content. That can always be pushed out to the next update.

[Bullyabass]

Hey Community!

We want to share with you adjustments we’ve made based on your feedback

 

Omnishambles

Edited January 27, 2022 by Bullyabass

[supercometl]

• Many Flashpoints have bonus bosses. Could there be/will there be perks to taking them doing given the extra work they require to unlock/encounter?
  

 

Honestly this is my biggest gripe with how bonus bosses have been handled. They really need to get the same drop levels as a final boss, as they tend to be as difficulty if not more difficult than said final boss. With the way gearing is looking to function in flashpoints, it seems we still are going to rocking the "do the content as fast as possible" approach.

 

The main change I would like to see is the bonus boss doesn't just give a same level item rating piece, but an upgrade every time. Don't even give that to the final fight of a MM flashpoint.

[Exly]

*thumb up*

 

Seriously though, so much negativity when clearly they DID listen to at least some of the feedback.

 

Is it perfect? Definitely not but gosh, I'll take the changes at least.

 

Also, it's annoying to see actual feedback lost in pages of insults. Then you wonder why they don't seem to listen.

 

Which came first though, their not listening, or the criticism? They are more concerned about doing the things we ask them not to though, and then we get blamed for being part of the problem.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Exly

[Lyriel]

So, there's a lot of people complaining about the lack of mod-able gear in the new expansion, and while I generally agree with the sentiment, I think there's a lot they're not telling us (yet) and that, at some point, there will be, but probably not how you expect it.

 

The following is conjecture, but it is based on the following things that BioWare has already said:

- There will be new levels of gear introduced throughout this expansion. The max level of gear at launch will NOT be the max level of gear at the end.

- There are big crafting changes coming that won't be part of 7.0, but will be introduced later.

 

Maybe some of you can see where I'm going with this based on that.

 

I fully suspect that, in some future update (potentially 7.1, but maybe later), there will be a new level of gear introduced. Alongside this new level of gear, the crafting changes will be introduced. With these "significant" changes, players will be able to craft armorings, mods, and enhancements. I'm not sure if they'll re-arrange it around a little bit between the crafting skills, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I also suspect new augments will be introduced at this time as well, since we won't be getting any at launch. Now, the initial schematics will be fairly low level (say 312 or something like that), but you will be able to reverse-engineer you way to higher and higher levels until 320 or 322). Once there, you will be able to craft and modify your gear using this.

 

Additional Reasoning:

In 6.x, besides augments and augmentation kits (and the usual Biochem stims/adrenals/medpacks), crafting was largely pointless. There was NO reason to craft armorings, mods, enhancements, earpieces, implants, or relics when that gear practically fell into your inventory every time you took a few steps. Nobody was buying 306 pieces off the GTN when they could just run some basic content and get the gear much easier and cheaper.

 

The reason they're making it longer/harder to gear, the reason they're making it more convoluted, the reason they're limiting customizability, is to make crafting relevant again. It's funny how quickly people forget about one of the largest complaints about 6.0: How utterly bad and pointless crafting was. People are saying they're not listening, but I think they did (at least on this point). They're making crafting worthwhile again (hopefully). Now granted, their communication, as always, is atrocious, but I suspect they fear promising too much and not being able to deliver (which is fair because that is their MO).

 

I think it would have been better to introduce some of these crafting changes at the start of 7.0, but hey, it's much more important to have those CM items ready to sell at launch than actual content. That can always be pushed out to the next update.

 

While all of that is a lovely idea, it is at the moment pure fantasy. Nothing they have said supports any of it, nor does it do a danged thing to mitigate the problems that are actually coming with the release of 7.0. There is no way they have time to shoehorn massive crafting changes into 7.1 - they've already punted the new daily area and the weapon outfitter (maybe more, that's all I can remember off the top of my head) in addition to having the op to finish and polish. I mean, yes, there is supposed to be a new tier of unmoddable gear that will come with 7.1, but their own information indicated from the beginning that the moddable gear irating would not be released with the op. So by their own word, it will be after 7.1. We don't know when that will be, but we can safely assume it won't be immediately after 7.0 (since a new PTS has been announced for 7.1). Given their failure to deliver, well, anything on the schedule they announce, there is simply no way to predict when 7.1 will actually launch, much less when anything that comes after it will.

 

Your optimism about them making crafting relevant again is refreshing, but again misplaced based on the evidence at hand. They had plenty of time to make it relevant over the past two years, and they chose not to. They have been quite specific that the new method of gearing up (collecting various items from various content sources and trading in to specific vendors) is the intended method. They threw a small bone to FP players so that bosses will drop a (single) piece of gear - and I expect it will only be true if you are completing the weekly in that FP on that character (in other words, it's going to be limited per week). Solo "conqutest" players will get one dropped piece per week.

 

TL;DR: People are reacting to the only evidence we have to go on, and that is not irrational. This 'ten year celebration' is feeling more like a wake than a party.

[supercometl]

Win or nothing hasn't stopped people who are dead weight from playing, what it has done is stop the casual PVPer, like myself, who do care, and when in PvP actually do try and contribute, no matter how minimal that might be, from even bothering to queue. Going to win or nothing, stripping any sort of tangible reward from a loss, has not helped in the least, it has made a bad situation even worse.

 

And I agree, the resetting of weekly missions is absolutely terrible. The way I play, it takes me several weeks to complete a weekly at times. I was realizing just this week that I probably won't ever finish a Feast weekly again once 7.0 drops due to this ridiculous change. On the toons that I did the Feast event with, it took all 3 weeks to finish all the weekly missions from the terminal.

 

Other than the weapons not being in outfit designer, the reset of weeklies is going to be the worst thing about 7.0. For me at least, and I am sure I am not the only one.

 

The win or nothing I find is worse than the old system in terms of dead weights. Now as soon as your team is losing you might as well just log, as half your team does that. it used to be you would have try hards vs try hards and casuals helping and dead weight playing until they get their 8 medals. Now it is try hards vs try hards until one side loses then it is just try hards vs casuals as the losing try hards left the group.

 

The actual "solution" should just be increase the amount of medals that give rewards. Keep the rewards for getting 8 medals the same, but allow for the 9th and 10th medal to also matter. Why shouldn't the "mvp" (at least in the way the game sees it) get to be rewarded for getting their 19 medals?

 

Lessen the weight of the weekly and push up the rewards from the matches themselves. Do that but make the weekly achieveable and bada boom. Queues are fixed.

[Pricia]

Which came first though, their not listening, or the criticism? They are more concerned about doing the things we ask them not to though, and then we get blamed for being part of the problem.

 

Well, the update is coming out in 3 weeks, I'd think it would take much longer to scrap their idea and start over.

 

So we got a compromise. Which is better than what's on PTS right now.

 

And yeah, still hoping that we'll get moddable gear eventually.

 

But people are mentioning that they didn't listen to feedback regarding combat changes, but how do they know? This post was about gear. Now, they could give us more updates for sure, but people complaining about the lack of updates in an update thread is just annoying.

[hillerbees]

As a player who has been here from the start I feel sorry for any new player trying to get to grips with all this.

 

You have pruned abilities and opened up combat choices but if this is meant to be intelligible and understandable (or even likeable) to new players or even your average regular player I think you are wide of the mark.

 

I think the new update is going to be a car crash and I hope you can find a way to revert to what is live at the moment to roll back to if it does all go south. Probably naive of me to think this is something that could or would be done but I can't see a good reason for taking the path we are taking with the game.

 

Don't mean to be negative and hope I am wrong but thats my tuppence worth on matters.

[mentalmackem]

Hi mentalmackem,

 

PTS will be brought down tomorrow afternoon, so there will not be another phase of testing. When changes are live, we absolutely will be observing feedback coming in from players. I'm working on ways to help streamline that for players who frequent the forums.

 

So im paying for the privilege of doing further testing for you, got it.

[ImladrisCZ]

So im paying for the privilege of doing further testing for you, got it.

 

You absolutely got it.

Honestly... I don't think BW has any QA team at all for years.

[TrixxieTriss]

I will give my vote every single time that this suggestion comes up.

 

I want to play for fun, and it's already not fun to end up in a ****** team, it's even less fun when you just waste 20 minutes.

 

I'd rather see 8 matches than 4 wins, personally.

 

100% agree. I would have even left it so that it’s 10 wins or 20 losses. That way people have an incentive to try, but there’s an escape clause if you have a run of bad teams.

Edited January 28, 2022 by TrixxieTriss

[Toraak]

Honestly this is my biggest gripe with how bonus bosses have been handled. They really need to get the same drop levels as a final boss, as they tend to be as difficulty if not more difficult than said final boss. With the way gearing is looking to function in flashpoints, it seems we still are going to rocking the "do the content as fast as possible" approach.

 

The main change I would like to see is the bonus boss doesn't just give a same level item rating piece, but an upgrade every time. Don't even give that to the final fight of a MM flashpoint.

 

I actually like this idea. This will have additional implications other then just to have an upgrade for the gear, but will also encourage players to not all play stealth characters to skip everything. If they are having a chance at an automatic upgrade they will be more willing to do the FP (since most bonus bosses have Stages to unlock them).

[TrixxieTriss]

Based on your posting in this thread, you do not appear to be interested in a good faith discussion. People are trying to be helpful and inform you of the news we have available from the dev team. The only news we have is that the next PTS will be for 7.1 and will release within 1 week of the 7.0 expansion launch.

 

And yet my information was 100% accurate (as you can see from Jackie’s Post below). So whose posting in bad faith now?

 

Hi mentalmackem,

 

PTS will be brought down tomorrow afternoon, so there will not be another phase of testing. When changes are live, we absolutely will be observing feedback coming in from players. I'm working on ways to help streamline that for players who frequent the forums.

Edited January 28, 2022 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

But why should GSF daily/weekly get advanced with loses while unranked PvP doesn't? I have played multiple times a day at multiple times of the day to get the teams that don't give a flying **** about wins. They just want to flex tiny epeens of numbers. This is the problem with the daily/weekly missions auto resets.

 

Which is why loses should count too. You cannot force people on your team to care. It’s not your fault if you get a string of teams who don’t care if they win or not. And as more people top out their gear, there is less and less reason for those guys to play to win.

This can become a real problem if you don’t play during primetime. And even in primetime it can be an issue if the number of people in the queue is low because you’ll keep getting out with the same groups.

You can’t even leave now before the match starts if you pop in with them. At least before the deserter debuff penalty you could leave and hopefully break the cycle of the same people every match.

[Rolodome]

Which is why loses should count too. You cannot force people on your team to care. It’s not your fault if you get a string of teams who don’t care if they win or not. And as more people top out their gear, there is less and less reason for those guys to play to win.

This can become a real problem if you don’t play during primetime. And even in primetime it can be an issue if the number of people in the queue is low because you’ll keep getting out with the same groups.

You can’t even leave now before the match starts if you pop in with them. At least before the deserter debuff penalty you could leave and hopefully break the cycle of the same people every match.

Yeah, tying the rewards to wins in a near-exclusively pug system where you can do nothing about who you are matched with and against is some awful design and I will give BW a modicum of leeway here that they are not the only game to do it this way, but it's poor design every time. It doesn't even mean that the most skillful get better rewards, it just means whoever does a premade or gets lucky in their matchup gets better rewards.

 

PvP in general seems to be an afterthought pug system in most MMOs, with an open world component most people don't use because they just get abused by griefers (and then in this game, the engine issues prob ruin any chance of fun, organized open world). I can understand them not being innovators in PvP systems, but the least they can do is not lean into the poor design of other games in this way.

[JaeOnasi]

So im paying for the privilege of doing further testing for you, got it.

Piggy-backing on this--I volunteered to test out content on the PTS--but that was my choice. However, I'm not paying to test it live where I have no choice.

 

Adding in the additional gear sets--WHY??? Just optimize the stats on the pieces you're going to release, for God's sake. It's not like you don't know what the heck those numbers are. I did the mix-and-match of gear sets on PTS to try to get to 110% accuracy. It was IMPOSSIBLE at 318 and 320, even with taking EVERY accuracy-granting piece and left side items and using a max stim. I needed augments to get to 110%.

 

My sub is up in March. BioWare has until then to fix this CF of an "update" for me to continue it. Even then, I think I'm going to go hang out in FFXIV for awhile because I don't want to waste time paying to "test" this mess on live. Certainly, I don't want to bother doing Seasons 2 when I can't even equip the stuff. I have plenty of other games to play and activities to do that don't involve useless grinding for poorly optimized non-moddable gear. I'll check in now and then to see if it's fixed. If not? Well, you won't earn my sub that month.

 

Last week, I had at least 3 guildmates who've let me know they have already or will be unsubbing because they don't want to deal with the BS unmoddable gear. I have even more people howling today about the weapon costume slot not going live in 7.0 and being forced to use the butt ugly 318 vendor weapons.

 

BioWare, "monitoring the feedback" is entirely meaningless if you don't DO anything substantial with that feedback. I can monitor the liquifying lettuce in my 'refresher' drawer in the bottom of my fridge, but it does no good if I close the drawer and leave the moldy mass there. You're parsing words, and we all know it. And despite the pages and pages in thread after thread of overwhelmingly negative feedback, you're moving forward with this "update" (I use the term loosely) anyway. What you will be doing is monitoring the drop in subscriptions that's going to happen after February. I'm sure the EA quarterly earnings statement for the quarter after everyone discovers they can't even equip their lightsabers and blasters while gearing anymore will be fascinating. We've warned you repeatedly this isn't going to go well because we WANT you to fix it so that you succeed. We can all continue gaming here when you succeed, so we have a vested interest in that success.

 

You've managed to reach my breaking point this time after 10 years. Congratulations.