R-4 Anomaly Gearing

[Brittaany_Banks]

A lot of negativity in these comments. I, personally, am thrilled to have the 1.x gearing showing a return. The fact that you can get BiS gear in 6.x simply from farming just about anything was dumb. These changes make sense. Sorry, not sorry. If you can't clear all of R-4 Vet Mode...you simply do not deserve BiS gear. No more participation trophies. When I hover over someone's character portrait, or inspect them and see their Item Rating average as 340 with all slots showing a purple border (except legendary implants of course)--I will know they are a beast because that means there is a very good chance that they and their group have cleared R-4 HM about 12 times.

 

Calling them elitists is gaslighting. Having BiS gear should be an indication of skill across 8 players who spend enough time to maximize their character's effectiveness and coordination with their teammates to beat the hardest content.

 

This is how it should be. And I say this knowing there's a chance my group may not make it to the end of R-4 for a long time. It is what it is. We will do our best, get better each week, and be rewarded properly based on how well we do. As it will be for everyone. You get what you put in. If you raid 2 hours per week, don't expect to get a full set of BiS gear in any timely manner.

 

As for PUGs...the first problem is thinking "hey, let's PUG the hardest content". If the hardest content is PUGable...it's not hard enough. The hardest content should only be clearable from static groups who coordinate well with each other, that have no qualms with wiping 50 times per night just to learn one mechanic.

 

"But I'm not in a static group...it's not fair". Here's a suggestion: put yourself out there. I know for a fact that so many static groups are actively filling slots right now. I also know for a fact a lot of players are involved in multiple groups and actually enjoy starting new groups for inexperienced players looking to get a taste of prog raiding. Just ask. If you're in a guild, let your guild leaders know you're interested. If enough people show interest, I'm sure they will help form additional static groups. If they refuse...you're not in the right guild.

 

Last topic I saw was a complaint about the possibility of needing 65,000 tech frags to upgrade our legendary implants from 330 to 340. Have you played recently? The game is just giving away tech frags. If you regularly play Vet mode legacy ops for fun (tons of PUGs always forming), you can easily--EASILY, do a single upgrade every 1 or 2 days of playing. I promise you will have legendary implants at 340 before you're even close to having a full set of Artifact 340s. As it stands based on this post, a single static group of 8 players will need to clear all 4 vet mode bosses 12 times (that's 12 weeks), in order for each player to get the R-4 boss token for each of the 12 slots of gear the operation offers. You don't think you'll have 65,000 tech frags in 3 months? I consider myself a slightly dedicated casual gamer and I'm pulling about 8,000 frags per week. If I needed to, I can get more per week by playing more.

 

As I said already, you get what you put in. Nothing should be handed to you for little to no effort. That's what Pay To Win games are for. I'm excited for the gearing changes come 7.1. Even if I'm the only one in the comments who is.

 

I have full 330 gear and do hard end game content. This **** is dumb. Less people to play the game with is a bad thing.

[Shayddow]

As for PUGs...the first problem is thinking "hey, let's PUG the hardest content". If the hardest content is PUGable...it's not hard enough. The hardest content should only be clearable from static groups who coordinate well with each other, that have no qualms with wiping 50 times per night just to learn one mechanic.

 

And, for those people who actually HAVE a life outside of gaming.....

[ZUHFB]

Title: R-4 Anomaly Gearing

 

Comments: Elitist PvE people get all the benefits.

 

It's called R-4 gearing for a reason, FP gear or whatever will also be upgraded maybe even to 340. For all we knew the max gearscore was 334. But it was also supposed to have 5 bosses. If they don't communicate at least they can't disappoint and yet they still manage to.

[Flayv]

Hello. I don't quite understand the logic in your system.

 

What was good with 6.x is that everyone could have stuff regardless of the content. We did what we wanted, when we wanted and no matter how difficult it was.

 

With 7.0, the content has become very restrictive, do what you are told to do (with the quests) and that's it! Besides that, you have set up different currencies to recover in large quantities. Currency often useless! (I only used FP currency once) since in the end, the content boils down to Nefra Nim and recovering Operation Catalysts. + some quests for the daily and conquest matrices. This further reduces the content of the game once again.

 

And now in 7.1, you tell us: we remove everything and you will do the new Operation again and again and again until the players are disgusted with the game.

Why remove your currency system that we are finally beginning to accept (understand) And who needs an overhaul by the way. Because it's just not up to par? Why would you want to limit the content of the game to only the new operation? Yes, we know the old content of the game, but at least we varied a little the scenery, bosses etc. I really don't see where you find it good to do only 4 bosses each day and with several characters for several weeks to recover the stuff. You really have no other ideas? There, I can see the players coming back to 7.1, doing the new operation, saying "it's cool, we've done it, now we have to do it on a loop, no thanks!".

 

Like I said, I really don't understand your logic in your way of doing things.

 

Almost all the players I had recruited into my guild when 7.0 was released stopped playing. Those who stayed are part of our Operation HM/Nim roster. That's about 12 players against more than 40 the week of the release of 7.1. And this largely for a reason: The lack of content, always doing the same thing again is not motivating.

 

We know that you don't release a lot of content on the game. And having all the operations and FP available at 80 gives content to the game. So why would you want to put it aside?

 

The difficulty of the raids is a good thing, we have to progress again to defeat the bosses, they are hard, it's a new challenge. And you have to do it in a guild! It's an mmorpg, the goal is to form rosters, play in guilds. I find it normal that the content is not doable by PUG and it should not become so.

 

It is also good not to have the stuff easily, especially when this one is the BIS. But try to make an effort on the time invested to have it and the way to get it, make sure it's not too short, too long, too hard or not enough! And above all, try to make it fun to have. And not restrictive as desired. Like asking to do GSF, when I hear people everywhere saying they don't like GSF...

 

For the Legendaires: I have 330 on several combat styles, it's long. It's strange to have them only 334, where the rest of the stuff is 340. But having to upgrade them 340 on each character with this system.... Unless you reduce the amount of currency required a bit

 

Sorry for my English. Ty for reading me.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Flayv

[The_Hightower]

The Spoils of War Vendor no longer sells OEMs, I tried on several of my toons.

[Carba]

One reason 6.0 was successful in bringing people into the game is that it reduced the abuse of PUG players. This was a departure from most previous gearing cycles from 1.0 onward. Most of those cycles were intended to reward group leaders. Each of those cycles progressively killed market share compared to competing games. Fewer than 1% of players are guild leaders. They will now control the gearing for the 99%. Dumb idea.

[LittleEwina]

I noticed the same things about the OEM.

[WendaWenda]

One reason 6.0 was successful in bringing people into the game is that it reduced the abuse of PUG players. This was a departure from most previous gearing cycles from 1.0 onward. Most of those cycles were intended to reward group leaders. Each of those cycles progressively killed market share compared to competing games. Fewer than 1% of players are guild leaders. They will now control the gearing for the 99%. Dumb idea.

 

How do guild leaders control it? They don't. Gear drops to random players and raid leader has no say in it, unless the group agrees to that beforehand but that's their thing if they do.

This gearing is fine, its a bit grindy and rng. But otherwise its fine, if u don't do R4 veteran, u don't need better gear for storymodes.

[khamseen_air]

This new way of gearing is cancer.

Agreed.

[DeannaVoyager]

The Spoils of War Vendor no longer sells OEMs, I tried on several of my toons.

 

There might be a limit we are not aware of. I just checked and it shows them on the vendor, but then again I haven't bought any this week. I've barely logged in so not getting tech frags either. I'm capped on almost all currencies, so apart from scheduled raids I'm playing other games until I can use them on something.

[Exly]

I think having gear drops in the op are a good idea, making it so that the only place a person can acquire the gear is by doing one operation is stupid. I know that you want to thin out the player base with the changes that you are making, but I don't think that you should be doing this.

 

In the end, what you will find is that even the people that you are trying to make happy with this change will soon become disenchanted with the game and leave as soon as they have no more reason to play the game after the already have the gear that they want, and no longer feel the need to play content that they have burned out on.

 

The reason 6.0 gearing was better is that it allowed people to enjoy the game doing what they wanted. It allowed low skill players to do better because they could get better gear, and it allowed better skilled players to branch out and do content that they could also enjoy.

 

Limiting gear to make the game harder makes the game less fun. For the low skilled players, they are excluded from content and have less fun because of that, and highly skilled people become frustrated with the lower skilled players because they aren't pulling their weight, and they adopt an attitude that others refer to as "elitist".

 

So, continue on this path, and I think you will only cause more people to leave the game. The choice is yours.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Exly

[MaximusRex]

A lot of negativity in these comments. I, personally, am thrilled to have the 1.x gearing showing a return. The fact that you can get BiS gear in 6.x simply from farming just about anything was dumb. These changes make sense. Sorry, not sorry. If you can't clear all of R-4 Vet Mode...you simply do not deserve BiS gear. No more participation trophies. When I hover over someone's character portrait, or inspect them and see their Item Rating average as 340 with all slots showing a purple border (except legendary implants of course)--I will know they are a beast because that means there is a very good chance that they and their group have cleared R-4 HM about 12 times.

 

Calling them elitists is gaslighting. Having BiS gear should be an indication of skill across 8 players who spend enough time to maximize their character's effectiveness and coordination with their teammates to beat the hardest content.

 

This is how it should be. And I say this knowing there's a chance my group may not make it to the end of R-4 for a long time. It is what it is. We will do our best, get better each week, and be rewarded properly based on how well we do. As it will be for everyone. You get what you put in. If you raid 2 hours per week, don't expect to get a full set of BiS gear in any timely manner.

 

As for PUGs...the first problem is thinking "hey, let's PUG the hardest content". If the hardest content is PUGable...it's not hard enough. The hardest content should only be clearable from static groups who coordinate well with each other, that have no qualms with wiping 50 times per night just to learn one mechanic.

 

"But I'm not in a static group...it's not fair". Here's a suggestion: put yourself out there. I know for a fact that so many static groups are actively filling slots right now. I also know for a fact a lot of players are involved in multiple groups and actually enjoy starting new groups for inexperienced players looking to get a taste of prog raiding. Just ask. If you're in a guild, let your guild leaders know you're interested. If enough people show interest, I'm sure they will help form additional static groups. If they refuse...you're not in the right guild.

 

Last topic I saw was a complaint about the possibility of needing 65,000 tech frags to upgrade our legendary implants from 330 to 340. Have you played recently? The game is just giving away tech frags. If you regularly play Vet mode legacy ops for fun (tons of PUGs always forming), you can easily--EASILY, do a single upgrade every 1 or 2 days of playing. I promise you will have legendary implants at 340 before you're even close to having a full set of Artifact 340s. As it stands based on this post, a single static group of 8 players will need to clear all 4 vet mode bosses 12 times (that's 12 weeks), in order for each player to get the R-4 boss token for each of the 12 slots of gear the operation offers. You don't think you'll have 65,000 tech frags in 3 months? I consider myself a slightly dedicated casual gamer and I'm pulling about 8,000 frags per week. If I needed to, I can get more per week by playing more.

 

As I said already, you get what you put in. Nothing should be handed to you for little to no effort. That's what Pay To Win games are for. I'm excited for the gearing changes come 7.1. Even if I'm the only one in the comments who is.

 

As someone who has been an officer in raiding guilds in MMOs for almost 20 years, everything this person said is wrong and is harmful to the community and to raiding in general.

 

Gear is a tool for progress and success, when it is treated like a reward it causes drama and slows down a group's ability to progress. Over the years I have seen so many fights and hurt feelings over loot that systems like this have caused. In 6.0 each person could max out their own loot and then it was purely about their skill and willingness to learn the content, as it should be.

 

Limiting access to gear makes it harder for new players to break into raiding, and that only gets worse as each new tier of "rewards" is put in place, making those players further and further behind. If a team loses a player, they either need to try and find someone who got geared on some other team, which can then leave a different team short handed, or they need to pause their progress to bring a new player up to spec on their gear.

 

Gear grinding is nothing but an artificial block put in place to slow players from doing the content they actually want to do. This system additionally makes it terrible to gear alts or secondary combat styles as you are pressured and feel obligated to focus on gearing your main first, leaving the alts without currency and 100% dependent on drops that are actual upgrades, which is a terribly rare occurrence currently.

 

And the rotating operation weeklies, where you have your only chance for a guaranteed upgrade are not all equal in difficulty, locking a lot of players and groups out of being able to progress. I find it hilarious that Story Mode R4 is going to drop 326 gear when the feedback on the last PTS was that SM was way overturned for a SM by people wearing 330 gear.

 

BioWare is destroying their game and its community to make a few selfish elitists happy, I hope it's worth it.

[ebinhovdloca]

you wont need this gear for anything outside of R4 and maybe the hardest NiMs(even tho everything but gods was cleared with 330 gear) you wont need R4 gear for solo content, you wont need R4 gear for FP, its irelevant gear for you, it wont affect pvp etc.

 

 

you dont complete a single player game by completing the 1st level over and over again.

 

 

6.0 gearing was one of the worst if not the worst gearing system i have seen in 20 years of playing MMORPG's.

Edited June 4, 2022 by ebinhovdloca

[ThanderSnB]

As someone who has been an officer in raiding guilds in MMOs for almost 20 years, everything this person said is wrong and is harmful to the community and to raiding in general.

 

Gear is a tool for progress and success, when it is treated like a reward it causes drama and slows down a group's ability to progress. Over the years I have seen so many fights and hurt feelings over loot that systems like this have caused. In 6.0 each person could max out their own loot and then it was purely about their skill and willingness to learn the content, as it should be.

 

Limiting access to gear makes it harder for new players to break into raiding, and that only gets worse as each new tier of "rewards" is put in place, making those players further and further behind. If a team loses a player, they either need to try and find someone who got geared on some other team, which can then leave a different team short handed, or they need to pause their progress to bring a new player up to spec on their gear.

 

Gear grinding is nothing but an artificial block put in place to slow players from doing the content they actually want to do. This system additionally makes it terrible to gear alts or secondary combat styles as you are pressured and feel obligated to focus on gearing your main first, leaving the alts without currency and 100% dependent on drops that are actual upgrades, which is a terribly rare occurrence currently.

 

And the rotating operation weeklies, where you have your only chance for a guaranteed upgrade are not all equal in difficulty, locking a lot of players and groups out of being able to progress. I find it hilarious that Story Mode R4 is going to drop 326 gear when the feedback on the last PTS was that SM was way overturned for a SM by people wearing 330 gear.

 

BioWare is destroying their game and its community to make a few selfish elitists happy, I hope it's worth it.

 

Edit: Nevermind, I misread the original post. Still, any characters at 326 can do story mode R-4 to get 330. Then use that 330 gear to do veteran R-4 (assuming they aren't already at 330). I guess it will depend how hard the story mode is. If it's pretty easy, it will be easy to catch-up. If it's a tough one, it may be tough to bridge the gap 326 to 330. Bioware can adjust difficulty though.

Edited June 4, 2022 by ThanderSnB

[Jerba]

I've already posted in the PTS thread but since there's been way more discussion here, I'll link my post:

As requested, here is my feedback on the R-4 gearing system.

 

We are a semi-progression raid group that since release has cleared most nightmare content (except for Apex & Gods), so we're definitely in the upper percentile but not one of the top progression groups.

By killing Nefra MM and running VM ops to farm OP-1 Catalysts (not our first choice but our only choice), we've been at full 330 for a few months now. At this point, players are bored running the same old VM operations, yet most MM bosses are too hard to beat with 330 gear at our skill level. Had the Crystal of Nightmare Fury not been removed, it would now give us the edge to meet some of the DPS/HPS checks with lesser gear. In addition, we've been progressing Dxun MM for the past two years and still haven't beaten Apex yet, so as a raid leader, I am having trouble keeping the group motivated.

 

Since people are starving for new raid content, we've been testing the bosses on PTS and it is not looking good.

• We expect to full clear R-4 SM on release day but that won't help because its loot can only be upgraded to 330, so it's no upgrade for us and there's no point in running SM, nor is there a point in helping other players on the server clear SM. Previously, I had a lot of fun forming 16-man SM runs to take along 8 newbie players with our raid group but even that is not possible with R-4.
  Sadly, the same thing is already happening with MM FPs: With no veteran players queueing in Group Finder, the queue times have increased and new players are no longer able to beat anything but Hammer Station.
  
• Instead, the only way for us to get better gear (and thus unlock more MM content we can beat) is by killing bosses in R-4 VM. From our PTS testing, it is pretty clear that we will not be able to kill the first boss, IP-CPT. The DPS check and amount of movement required exceeds our group's skill level, and the graphical effects are giving players headaches. Having exhausted all my game knowlege and strategies, as a raid leader I have two options:
  1. I can replace the worst-performing players, however the raiding pool on our server has decreased dramatically, so I doubt I'd find a better player. Most other raid groups have already quit.
     
  2. We can share a lockout from another raid group to skip to the second or third boss (whichever is the easiest). Unfortunately, some players are unwilling to do this as this goes against the spirit of progression raiding, and it would be my last option as well.
     

 

My point is:

It doesn't matter what loot drops in VM, as long as we cannot kill the first boss. The first boss in an operation must not be a progression blocker, it should be killable by a group of veteran players (most of us have been playing since release). Not as easy as Nefra but easy enough that we can kill it in 2-3 weeks of progression.

Any following bosses will have to step up the difficulty of course, but this way, we can continue farming the first boss to gradually increase our gear and meet DPS/HPS checks on the following bosses. This is the traditional way progression raiding works, except that with the Legacy system, it'll be a little faster since we are not bound by weekly lockouts, only by the number of alts (e.g. I'm a dedicated player so I have 14 Scoundrels at level 80).

 

Therefore, please reconsider the balancing of the VM bosses. My group will not survive a 6-months progression on IP-CPT VM, without any carrot (= realistic chance of gear upgrades).

We are among your most loyal players, having stuck around when most raid groups quit. We love the game and we love running operations. Usually, we'd be looking forward to new operations content but no one is excited for R-4.

I've said it many times before (Rav/ToS, Gods, Dxun): Don't put MM mechanics into VM. The busiest raiding period was during Oricon—not because operations were the only way to acquire BiS gear (like now with 7.0) but because DF/DP VM were beatable by an above-average group. You could even find PuG groups to run VM, and it led to a very exciting MM progression race with so many competing raid groups.

Don't worry about the MM raiders—they will wait until MM is released, no need to tune VM for them.

[MaximusRex]

Sounds like you are some SM hero and everyone who has done high end game raiding knows you gear up certain parts of the raid team first with certain drops. This game is full of little cry babies ohh if i don't get this i'm leaving the game and unsubbing lol nobody is forcing anyone to do the content if you don't like it don't do it.

 

"I can't make an actual counter argument so I will just make a strawman post"

 

Fixed that for you.

[Toraak]

So, we're gonna have to do another 5 implant upgrades at 6500 tech frags each to go from 330 to 340? That's a bit much. That should be lowered. We spent enough just getting from 326 to 330, but then to have to do it 5 more times to get to 340 for each implant we have is outrageous.

 

Implants stop at 334 on the PTS, so only 2 upgrades per if your already at 330.

[juliushorst]

It's called R-4 gearing for a reason, FP gear or whatever will also be upgraded maybe even to 340. For all we knew the max gearscore was 334. But it was also supposed to have 5 bosses. If they don't communicate at least they can't disappoint and yet they still manage to.

 

And we're supposed to be thrilled for more joyless grind?

[juliushorst]

I think having gear drops in the op are a good idea, making it so that the only place a person can acquire the gear is by doing one operation is stupid.

 

I think they are desperate to show execs that people play this new operation.

That's why I'm not going to touch it even in SM.

[ZUHFB]

And we're supposed to be thrilled for more joyless grind?

 

Yes duh, you get to play content again. If you don't want to farm gear don't do it how is this so hard? What's even the point how is getring a mm fp pop for no reason but fun more enjoyable then the fp that has all the previous qualities + gear.

[ZUHFB]

I think they are desperate to show execs that people play this new operation.

That's why I'm not going to touch it even in SM.

 

That will show 'em.

[juliushorst]

Yes duh, you get to play content again. If you don't want to farm gear don't do it how is this so hard? What's even the point how is getring a mm fp pop for no reason but fun more enjoyable then the fp that has all the previous qualities + gear.

 

So you're in support of their idea that gearing = content?

But you're right, I'll probably skip it. I have my 326s in various color variations and until they fix open world scaling it'll have to do. If I'm feeling like doing something and it drops a higher rating piece - fine, I'll use it but I'm done with dedicationg time to collecting gear that'll become obsolete after 4 months.

[ForfiniteStories]

And having all the operations and FP available at 80 gives content to the game.

 

To the contrary, not scaling everything would give me and others A LOT to do. Do you have any idea of how many Flashpoints/Uprisings/Operations I'd be able to solo? I'd be happy as a pig in mud, even more so. All those achievements...

Edited June 5, 2022 by ForfiniteStories

[xordevoreaux]

Only 2 tokens will drop per boss and they are tradeable amongst the operations group.

 

I just want to know why Bioware wants to create enmity between players.

 

Six players screwed per boss doesn't really seem motivational.

A player could go all 4 bosses and get zero of these tokens.

Edited June 5, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[Uzamakiuchi]

Hee i have a qeustion regarding 7.1 I saw you guys adding these amazing decorations on manaan daily area

 

called [Progenitor Statue] i wish you guys could make a smaller version or something on the reputation vendor or ingame store for meduim floor or large cause star ship is just to big for most strongholds and i want to have these snake like heads beside my throne so it looks more epic