Feedback on Gearing in The R-4 Anomaly Operation

[BryantWood]

Hey Operations players!

Now that you’ve had time to challenge The R-4 Anomaly, we wanted to gather feedback on how rewards and gear were distributed. If you need a refresher on the gearing system, check here! As a highlight from this post, the main goals of the R-4 gearing system are Progression as a Group and Progression on every Kill.

Let’s start with Progression as a Group. Bosses in The R-4 Anomaly drop 2 boss-specific tokens per defeat that can be exchanged for Virulent gear, the highest item rating available from the operation. These tokens are tradeable for a 2 hour window to any member of the operation. This lets a group move rewards to a chosen player and ensures that early bosses remain desirable after multiple clears.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

To target Progression on every Kill, each boss drops a general R-4 token that can be used to purchase and upgrade Hazardous gear. This secondary gear set lets you make smaller power improvements while working to complete your set of Virulent Gear.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

This feedback will be valuable to us going forward as we develop future Operations and review existing Operations.

Gotta run, Lady Dominique wants me to convince Lord Kanoth to clean his room, something about rot being everywhere!

[xyiolas]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes pretty easily
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Maybe resolve some bug. As the fall in the ground of IP and the adds between watchdog and Kanoth.
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Nope.
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Fast enough.
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Not really the scale of the op is not that hard.
• Do you like the look of these armor sets? Sorry but they are horrible.
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Yes, and also for the achievment.
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? I don't care i just want a Nightmare for R4 and atleast 1 or 2 more op on this maj ( yeah i'm a dreamer) 
• Do you like the look of this mount? Not really but still better than the Dragon wings of GFTM
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Nope drop rate is too low, boring to farm it.
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? Not really, something cool with swtor lore and the style of FFXIV or WoW mount. 

[codydmaan]

20 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

 

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?
• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?
• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

It wasn't progressing it was more farming a Lockout on watchdog and farming that boss till we got ever peice to 340. 

Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

YES! when the team wipes people are showing up dead constantly. Requiring someone to duel them inside the op, stun them, then conceded the duel to fix that bug. Which makes for less pulls trying to fix a bug then actually raiding.

Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Umm obviously who doesn't want higher gear rating.

 

How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Just hit full 340 less the implants so since launch of r4 till now.

 

Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

No. All raids should be compleable in the gear that was max going into the raid. In this instance 330. 

 

Do you like the look of these armor sets?

No their extreemly ugly. The armor designer really needs a wake up call.

 

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

Definitely not. Why waste upgrade tokens on visuals that look really bad 👎 

 

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

Better looking armor

Do you like the look of this mount?

No and I'll tell you why. Wings like literal "butterfly" wings are something found in mobile games and really has nothing to do with star wars. 

 

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

No I did the raid for gear

 

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Things like the duxn mount or izax mount. 

Look the gear system doesn't work imo. You should be at max item rating GOING INTO the raid. Raids should drop set bonus items perhaps "craftable" implants or somthing like that. 

6.0 was much better for gearing for the community as a whole imo relying on a raid teams skill to clear the raid rather then their gear score. 

 

Perhaps you can make it more fair for the community in general to hit max item rating.

 

 

[Elvarania]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes we were. The damage and healing increase in power were tangible and significant. The difference to tank gear/stats was less so.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

Yes, absolutely. The first boss is significantly harder than the 2nd, 3rd and possibly even 4th. The HP nerf will not really make much difference. Perhaps a general damage decrease, or a lower frequency of grenades will make this boss easier. Although perhaps the HP nerf might mean groups can actually bring a tank to handle the droids that spawn.

However, the main issue that needs to be addressed for easier progress are the bugs. Specifically 1) the door after IP-CPT being closed and requiring a Gunslinger to blast people across the chasm. 2) the Overgrown Corridor on Veteran is overwhelming and almost always results in a wipe. This is made more frustrating as it requires a few minutes of travel to return. 3) The entire raid has to alt+f4 before Kanoth in order to see Vertical Growth. I've only just begun progressing on Dominique but so far it's pretty bug free. However these bugs combined (plus things like random crashes, being returned to starship, and players appearing dead) all just contribute towards delays in the operation.

 

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Yes, but due to the loot system we prioritise other members who need the upgrades. This is fine within a team, but it causes a bit of derision, and some wealthy players are offering billions of credits in exchange for loot tokens. 

• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Pretty quickly, but I play a lot. A group of us farmed Watchdog and Kanoth, and were able to gear up to 339 within a few weeks.

• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Absolutely, yes. The DPS boost is necessary to beat IP and Dominique, and helpful for the middle bosses. I am excited to try legacy master mode operations with the new gear.

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

These questions are obviously subjective, but yes, I do like the look of them. I probably wouldn't choose to wear it all the time, but the gear fits the theme of entering a hazardous area.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, I would not do the operation simply to get the armour sets.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

A more obvious variety between light, medium and heavy armour might be fun. Some animations or special effects might also be nice on the armour.

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

I do!

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, we kill Kanoth frequently for a chance to get it.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Perhaps a flair/animation would be fun to see.

[joshrva]

25 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, but not in the intended way. Like many other groups, we did Kanoth first to upgrade our gear before doing IP-CPT, as IP-CPT was a much harder boss and required better gear than the 330 we had going in to the operation.

 

27 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

I think just making the first boss easier to do without getting gear from the later bosses first would suffice. The proposed nerf to IP-CPT in the 7.1.1 plans, however, would not achieve this. The hardest part of the fight is getting through the second set of Enforcers. During that phase, there are 3 bombs that need to be defused, and the enforcers also spawn on the second set of bombs which means that there is less time to kill the enforcers before the boss comes down and you have to deal with floor traps and grenades while finishing off the enforcers. Reducing the health of the enforcers will help greatly in reducing the difficulty of the fight.

 

32 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Yes. I, and many other people, upgraded our mainhands, boots, and gloves through Hazardous gear, as those are the pieces that drop from Dominique. I also upgraded gear for my off-roles through Hazardous gear.

 

33 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

I think for me personally it took a few weeks after the operation came out. I think the timeframe was reasonable, and once I got the pieces I needed to upgrade I started accumulating an excess amount, making it easy to gear alts through Hazardous gear.

 

36 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, as you were able to get your mainhand to 340 before defeating the final boss, which definitely helped not only in actually defeating the final boss but also defeating the bosses before it consistently. You could also of course get other gear pieces to 340, but the mainhand was the most significant.

 

37 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of these armor sets?

Quite frankly, they weren't for me. I didn't use any of them.

 

37 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No.

 

37 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

I like the idea of Operations armors, I just would like more appealing ones.

 

38 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of this mount?

Yeah it's pretty unique and I feel like it fits the operation.
 

38 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

It wasn't my main motivation for clearing R4, but it was something cool that was a possibility in getting. I do wish there was a more consistent way to get it, as it currently only has an honestly abysmal drop chance and I will likely never obtain it if there is no alternative method.

 

40 minutes ago, BryantWood said:

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Not specifically, but I do think it would definitely be cool to see more.

[NoahSiess]

Hi Bryant, I really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on the R4 Anomaly. I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to most of your questions in the hope that they will actually be read by someone at Bioware.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, as we did the raid on PTS beforehand, we were pretty experienced in all the mechanics. Only thing that caught us offguard initially on the day of release was the differences in scaling on IP-CPT, but alltogether the scaling was/is fine.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The operation in terms of scaling is fine as is. Only thing that could've been better are the various bugs that are still current to this day, like:

people being dead in the operation frame
the bug on IP-CPT where the boss disappears under the floor when you push him at the exact time as burn starts
the hallway encounter before Lord Kanoth where an infinite amount of attractors keep spawning in, making it virtually impossible to clear it in one go.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

We used it to buy the gear that was only available from Boss 4 Tokens first (especially Mainhands). The incentive was definitely there. They are also useful for buying gear for other classes/specs.

• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, see previous question.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

I'm not a huge fan of them personally and I only know of exactly one person who likes them so far.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the cosmetic aspect of the gear was definitely no reason to clear the operation.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

Not a huge fan of the mount in terms of optics. Only reason I want to get it right now is the (temporary) exclusivity.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, this is the question I am the most excited to reply to. My team managed to 100% operation as world first and immediately started to do farm runs for every member where we killed Lord Kanoth with one person being on his main toon in an - as we later learned futile - attempt to get everyone one of this mount. Which means we averaged about 6-8 runs every week since the release and in those 12 weeks (around 80 kills already) we only saw the Wings drop exactly once! This is not accounting for all the kills each one of us did in pugs or other teams.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

An actual official statement what the dropchance is. You could've also made a vendor where you could trade in an arbitrary number of blue tokens (could've been anywhere from 100-200) to buy the mount like some other games do. But no, we're left with rumours of what the actual dropchance could be and killing a boss that gets more boring with every kill and praying for Eric Musco to bless us with an ounce of his godly grace.

In conclusion, the operation is fine in terms of scaling but aquiring the mount is the single most annoying thing in this game right now.

[xxSHOONYxx]

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

It did for dominique, after kanoth kill we all went to buy blue 336 weapon and those that had the 340 gear that one too. 

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

I think the idea of blue tokens was neat, those people that requiere a bit more gear to clear Dominique benefited from the progress. Only thing i would change for others that need more help after like the first 2 weeks of r4 being released would be to upgrade sm r4 top gear to 332 and nim ops top gear to 334.

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

I did for the weapon for dominique.

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Only one run of the op, used it for 336 weapon and not again, i had or waited for 340 gear after that. It would be a good idea that once you reach 334 on the implants you can upgrade them to 340 by blue tokens + credits, everything 340 but 2 parts of gear at 334 hurts my eyes

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Probably was, dominique was probably a little bit easier with 336 weapons. 

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of these armor sets?

It's an okay designe. But not something i would personally use as an outfit

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

Not for the looks, did it for the achievments/gear/title

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

Not that i can think of, an armor/weapon that has a unique tunnin already maybe, or as an example a weapon that is invisible for sorcerer/sage, they look silly with a lightsaber when they don't use it

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of this mount?

I like it

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

I did some extra kanoth kills for it

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

A mount that is tailored and changes for the class you have it maybe, once for force users thaat use the force to move and one for tech users.
Or a mount with utility like that other/s in your group can "hop in" and you drive them

Edited October 12, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[jonasgallinatttt]

29 minutes ago, NoahSiess said:

Hi Bryant, I really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on the R4 Anomaly. I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to most of your questions in the hope that they will actually be read by someone at Bioware.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, as we did the raid on PTS beforehand, we were pretty experienced in all the mechanics. Only thing that caught us offguard initially on the day of release was the differences in scaling on IP-CPT, but alltogether the scaling was/is fine.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The operation in terms of scaling is fine as is. Only thing that could've been better are the various bugs that are still current to this day, like:

people being dead in the operation frame
the bug on IP-CPT where the boss disappears under the floor when you push him at the exact time as burn starts
the hallway encounter before Lord Kanoth where an infinite amount of attractors keep spawning in, making it virtually impossible to clear it in one go.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

We used it to buy the gear that was only available from Boss 4 Tokens first (especially Mainhands). The incentive was definitely there. They are also useful for buying gear for other classes/specs.

• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, see previous question.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

I'm not a huge fan of them personally and I only know of exactly one person who likes them so far.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the cosmetic aspect of the gear was definitely no reason to clear the operation.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

Not a huge fan of the mount in terms of optics. Only reason I want to get it right now is the (temporary) exclusivity.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, this is the question I am the most excited to reply to. My team managed to 100% operation as world first and immediately started to do farm runs for every member where we killed Lord Kanoth with one person being on his main toon in an - as we later learned futile - attempt to get everyone one of this mount. Which means we averaged about 6-8 runs every week since the release and in those 12 weeks (around 80 kills already) we only saw the Wings drop exactly once! This is not accounting for all the kills each one of us did in pugs or other teams.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

An actual official statement what the dropchance is. You could've also made a vendor where you could trade in an arbitrary number of blue tokens (could've been anywhere from 100-200) to buy the mount like some other games do. But no, we're left with rumours of what the actual dropchance could be and killing a boss that gets more boring with every kill and praying for Eric Musco to bless us with an ounce of his godly grace.

In conclusion, the operation is fine in terms of scaling but aquiring the mount is the single most annoying thing in this game right now.

Totally agree on your points 187

 

[Aethyriel]

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

I've seen most groups struggle on the first boss and then getting IDs (we gave ours out quite often) from others to farm the second boss for blue tokens to get 340 mainhands to have an easier time killing the first boss. That is not a gearing issue though, that's a balancing issue. IP-CPT is much harder than Watchdog and Kanoth and it's not even close.

The improvement thus would be better balancing. Watchdog should've been the first boss. It has a much more appropriate difficulty for the entry boss.

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Sure, every piece of 340 equipment helped. But you really had to have 5 tokens to upgrade it unless you wanted to augment every iteration of the same item. The hazardous gear was helpful for sure but took quite a while and many watchdog Ids to complete. Without specifically saving the ID and farming Watchdog on the weekends, it would have taken quite a while I guess with not enough tokens for a clear run to get one item from new to 340.

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

Lol, no and no and thus: Better looking armor sets. Who wants to run around looking like a scuba diver on land? they also basically look the same as the gear you can get with stats anyway, so what even is the point?

1 hour ago, BryantWood said:

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

I love the look of the mount.  Went in multiple times trying to get the mount because I'd like to have it on multiple characters.

In the future, we need a better drop chance though OR at least make it an account wide mount I can get from my collections if the drop chance is that low. That would be a fantastic change. I've seen it drop only one single time in some 20 kills or so. Fortunately I got it and I'm happy with that but it's a pure fluff item and should not be that tedious to get. You could also put it on the vendor for many many tokens from the R4 operations giving people some motivation to keep running it. Overall, it would've been better if it was tied to an achievement and could have been gotten that way for all characters and not the one you were in there with.

[Nee-Elder]

48 minutes ago, codydmaan said:

Do you like the look of this mount?

No and I'll tell you why. Wings like literal "butterfly" wings are something found in mobile games and really has nothing to do with star wars. 

 

Look the gear system doesn't work imo. You should be at max item rating GOING INTO the raid. Raids should drop set bonus items perhaps "craftable" implants or somthing like that. 

6.0 was much better for gearing for the community as a whole imo relying on a raid teams skill to clear the raid rather then their gear score.

Just wanna  QFE  those 2 points ^ by  codydmaan  real quick , as  i  wholeheartedly AGREE with both points. (especially  about that ridiculous flaming-wings "mount", ugh what is this  'AION' or  Star Wars?!?!  )

As for the rest of  OP BryantWood's  questions,  i shall answer them later when i get better  'R4'  runs under my belt  with more legit  raider  types.

[NicoleMay]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
  Not really. My groups aren't NiM based, and we expected hard mode difficulty when we went in. Not NiM. Watchdog and Kanoth are the only ones that feel somewhat balanced. IP is awful and we haven't even attempted Lady Dom.
   
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?
  1 less big red circle on IP would be fantastic. Also, reducing the damage from those circles a bit. Lady Dom's knockback chain is brutal even on SM. I can't imagine how much of a pain it is on HM. Beyond that, the dps checks need to be lower. They are way too brutal.
  
  Also, the hallway. Gotta make the hallway easier to understand to newbies, and nerf how many ads are spawning. I've never seen anyone one shot the hallway on SM, let alone HM. (If someone has on HM, send me the clip so I can see your black magic in action.) It requires dying and running back. That's bad game design.
  
  SM also needs severe nerfs. SM should be able to have everyone join from a random pug on fleet, no voice coms needed, nothing. R4 is absolutely not tuned for this. SM feels like HM, and HM feels like NiM. Please stop appealing to the top 1% of raid teams and focus on the rest of us down here.
   
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  Yes. I did. I thought this would be a quick easy way to get to 340 blues since we only needed 14 VM tokens and would upgrade with SM tokens. Instead SM tokens were made absolutely useless.
   
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  Not fast at all. If you wanted to get all 340 blues, that would take clearing OVER 70 BOSSES. That's frankly unacceptable with weekly lockouts. Not everyone has optimized alts they can spam the bosses with.
   
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?
  I mean, better than nothing? Really feels like it's tuned for 340 gear, not 330 gear.
   
• The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.
   
• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
  Didn't care for looks.
   
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
  Not for the style, no. We all want better stats because everything feels so much weaker in LOTS. The balancing was admittedly too easy in 6.0, but this is an overcorrection.
   
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?
  Easier to obtain. I shouldn't need to run an operation getting full clears over 10 weeks in a row for the best gear. If you went with the original post of upgrading blue gear to 340 with SM tokens, I'd be complaining way less. Unlock the gear with a VM clear, upgrade with SM clear. SM is currently useless unless you just want the story now since 330 Rakata (or equivalent from mod vendors) is better than 330 Columi/blues.
   
• Do you like the look of this mount?
  Yeah looks cool. I got the nihrot tuning and will likely make an alt focusing on Nihrot themes.
   
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
  Not for the mount specifically, but it's a nice extra incentive for Kanoth. Glad it isn't with Lady Dom. And I'll pick it up eventually. Took a break from R4 due to balancing, all the bugs (player shows up as dead, endless loading screen, IP through the floor, broken watchdog LO. Players have had to find our own workarounds while you appear to ignore them because you can't recreate them on the dev server. Maybe actually play undercover with other regular players on the main server so you can see em for yourself. This goes for balancing too.), and slow gear progression. Gonna start getting back into it now, but it's still frustrating how slowly you gear.
   
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?
  I think the mount is handled fine. Wings are dope. But some more variety on mounts could be cool.

[MasterAtreides]

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• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, definitely.  My group killed IP in 330s and as we progressed and got more gear it became easier. 

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• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

I think the nerf to IP will be fine and more groups will be able to kill it.  I personally like this return to old operations, where you had to EARN the gear as you progressed instead of having max gear before entering the raid.  Having max gear prior to entering the raid, lost part of the appeal and drive to clear a raid.  The whole point was to prove your skill and show off the gear you earned.  

The various bugs need to be fixed:

• Appearing dead in the ops frame:   a group shouldn't have to do an inventory of who is appearing dead, duel, stun and be ready for the fight.
• The hallway leading up to Kanoth:  please explain why in Veteran Mode there are like 3 or 4 attractors all on top of one another that spawns way more adds then it should? My group can do it 2 pulls, 1 if we manage to kill the correct attractor immediately.  But it shouldn't have to be that way.  Honestly, this hallways is harder than Watchdog.
• Alt + F4 to see Horizontal and Vertical Growth:  why do we have to do this?  We should be able to enter the fight and not have to close out the game to see a mechanic.

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• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Yes, as a tank those stats are slightly better than purple gear.  I've only picked up a few purple gear pieces for those that are better than 340 hazardous.  Otherwise, I've prioritized the dps and heals in my group for gear. 

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• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

My group and raiders don't raid all hours of the day in their free time.  For me, it's taken a bit of time to upgrade most of my pieces to 340 hazardous, I'm still not completely upgraded.  I'm a tank though, it's not as needed.  We prioritized getting the gear pieces my dps and heals needed but haven't spent all of our time upgrading like some groups have.  We still made time to work on Lady Dominique since it doesn't require a fully upgraded group.  

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• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

My group hasn't completed it yet.  Still working on Lady Dominique.  However, it has bee helpful since my group could upgrade the pieces they didn't have in purple to 340 hazardous, then switch those pieces out when they got the piece.  As a tank, since the stats are slightly better than tank purples.

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• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

Definitely not.  The armor sets are absolutely HIDEOUS.  One of the worse looking sets in the game. 

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• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

Definitely not.  See previous response.  

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• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

Definitely better looking armor.  In past operations the armor sets looked better.  Sure, the nightmare operation sets were always the best looking such as Kell Dragon and Dread Forged.  Maybe return to something that is actually uniquely Star Wars.

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• Do you like the look of this mount?

No, it's not uniquely Star Wars.  It's a butterfly... 

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• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

One of my raiders really wanted this mount, so we did Kanoth like usual if it dropped great, if not also fine.  It's dropped twice for our group and we've killed Kanoth far less times than most groups.  Definitely not clearing R4 for the mount though.  

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• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Yes, I'd like to see a clear drop chance for mounts.  I would also like to see something uniquely Star Wars.  In past operations the mounts made sense and looked absolutely amazing.  The mounts from NiM TFB, SNV, EC, DF are absolutely still the best looking mounts in the game.  DP fell short with its Dread Rancor, the wings from GFTM are meh, and a burning nexu doesn't quite feel like a reward from Dxun.  Now we have butterfly wings, Kanoth isn't even wearing them...

 

Thank you for allowing the community to provide their feedback to this operation.  It's been fun so far despite the bugs. 

[funfish]

53 minutes ago, NoahSiess said:

Hi Bryant, I really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on the R4 Anomaly. I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to most of your questions in the hope that they will actually be read by someone at Bioware.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, as we did the raid on PTS beforehand, we were pretty experienced in all the mechanics. Only thing that caught us offguard initially on the day of release was the differences in scaling on IP-CPT, but alltogether the scaling was/is fine.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The operation in terms of scaling is fine as is. Only thing that could've been better are the various bugs that are still current to this day, like:

people being dead in the operation frame
the bug on IP-CPT where the boss disappears under the floor when you push him at the exact time as burn starts
the hallway encounter before Lord Kanoth where an infinite amount of attractors keep spawning in, making it virtually impossible to clear it in one go.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

We used it to buy the gear that was only available from Boss 4 Tokens first (especially Mainhands). The incentive was definitely there. They are also useful for buying gear for other classes/specs.

• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, see previous question.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

I'm not a huge fan of them personally and I only know of exactly one person who likes them so far.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the cosmetic aspect of the gear was definitely no reason to clear the operation.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

Not a huge fan of the mount in terms of optics. Only reason I want to get it right now is the (temporary) exclusivity.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, this is the question I am the most excited to reply to. My team managed to 100% operation as world first and immediately started to do farm runs for every member where we killed Lord Kanoth with one person being on his main toon in an - as we later learned futile - attempt to get everyone one of this mount. Which means we averaged about 6-8 runs every week since the release and in those 12 weeks (around 80 kills already) we only saw the Wings drop exactly once! This is not accounting for all the kills each one of us did in pugs or other teams.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

An actual official statement what the dropchance is. You could've also made a vendor where you could trade in an arbitrary number of blue tokens (could've been anywhere from 100-200) to buy the mount like some other games do. But no, we're left with rumours of what the actual dropchance could be and killing a boss that gets more boring with every kill and praying for Eric Musco to bless us with an ounce of his godly grace.

In conclusion, the operation is fine in terms of scaling but aquiring the mount is the single most annoying thing in this game right now.

Agree! Especially with the r-4 mount suggestion

Edited October 12, 2022 by funfish

[Akushii]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes as we geared up, the group as a whole gained power.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

Yes, I think the order of difficulty for the bosses are in the wrong order. Most groups are struggling on first boss but have Watchdog/Kannoth on farm. As a result most teams are trying to acquire locks then killing Watchdog/Kannoth to gear up. I think it would have been better if Watchdog was the first boss, Kannoth second, IP-CPT as third boss and Lady Dominique as last.

To target Progression on every Kill, each boss drops a general R-4 token that can be used to purchase and upgrade Hazardous gear. This secondary gear set lets you make smaller power improvements while working to complete your set of Virulent Gear.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? 

Sure

• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Fairly quickly as we were able to farm WD and Kannoth.

• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Somewhat helpful.

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

I personally didn't look too closely at these armor sets as I have no intention of wasting tokens on vanity armor sets. It would have been nice if these vanity armor sets dropped from the boss as extra loot, just like decos.

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

The mount is okay, but the drop rate is ridiculously low. I've killed Kannoth like 20-30 times and haven't even seen it drop. I've heard similar things from many of the people I've raided with. It would be nice to see the drop rate go up to like 10-20%

[Screaming_Ziva]

2 hours ago, BryantWood said:

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Mounts from operations should be guaranteed drops.  Why should I have to possibly prove myself 50+ times running an operation to get a mount?

[AMAirlines]

2 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Hey Operations players!

Now that you’ve had time to challenge The R-4 Anomaly, we wanted to gather feedback on how rewards and gear were distributed. If you need a refresher on the gearing system, check here! As a highlight from this post, the main goals of the R-4 gearing system are Progression as a Group and Progression on every Kill.

Let’s start with Progression as a Group. Bosses in The R-4 Anomaly drop 2 boss-specific tokens per defeat that can be exchanged for Virulent gear, the highest item rating available from the operation. These tokens are tradeable for a 2 hour window to any member of the operation. This lets a group move rewards to a chosen player and ensures that early bosses remain desirable after multiple clears.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

To target Progression on every Kill, each boss drops a general R-4 token that can be used to purchase and upgrade Hazardous gear. This secondary gear set lets you make smaller power improvements while working to complete your set of Virulent Gear.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

This feedback will be valuable to us going forward as we develop future Operations and review existing Operations.

Gotta run, Lady Dominique wants me to convince Lord Kanoth to clean his room, something about rot being everywhere!

Alright, let's go step by step. This is my personal point of view as a nightmare raider obviously who progresses content on release.

Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

- Yes, it was very easy.

 

Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

- Honestly? Felt just about right. The only thing that really needed to be adjusted is forcing regular comps on all the fights so people couldn't cheese with 5 or 6 dps to clear. This would likely require a fix to IP-CPT to make tanks required

 

Do you like the look of these armor sets?

- I think the virulent sets are hilarious. Its about time we get scuba suits in swtor

 

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

- Since I was able to clear the raid consistently, blue tokens were useless to me. I bought the sets using the tokens I had, but I can't say they were the goal since the cosmetics were the same as the raid armor.

 

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

- Give an exclusive weapon set that looks super cool and isn't a reskin. Or shiny armor like we had from Dxun.

 

Do you like the look of this mount?

- I'm one of the lucky few who has one, I quite like it.

 

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

- It wasn't my primary goal, but it was after I was fully geared. My raid team got very lucky and had 3 back-to-back drops.

 

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

- Kanoth was a bit too easy of a fight to warrant the mount drop. Even if it was off theme, it should have dropped from Dominique since she is the last boss. At the moment there is no cosmetic reward for repeated Dominique clears, leaving most people to just farm Kanoth. I'm fine with the drop rates because I know the mount will be present again in Nightmare, and hopefully it will be from Dominique or the timed run.

 

Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

- Funny enough the dps relics are BiS for tank, so I did upgrade these.

 

How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

- WAY too fast

 

Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

- Not really, raid was easy enough in 330 gear.

 

Closing opinions

- I don't think there should be an alternate gearing path in the future. Hazardous gear mostly took away from a key point that I know you all like to avoid. Many raid groups struggled on IP-CPT and Dominique, so they farmed out Watchdog and Kanoth until reaching full 340 with the usage of the blue tokens, without ever needing to clear the first and last boss. I know this is unintentional since you guys aren't exactly fans of us farming small pieces of content in order to gear, (IE: Toborros, Nefra, Dash'roode). However on the flip side, I think a gearing method such as Hazardous gear would be a great thing to add say a few months after as a way to help the groups who struggled to gear up the normal way, the same way we often got an augment tier in the past after a raid release.

- The mount. For starters, I don't think it should have been present in Hard Mode of a raid unless it was a reward for a limited time clear (aka Bane of Izax style). I would have supported it more if it was "Clear Dominique within a week or so of release and you get the legacy title and the mount legacy unlocked". I still believe even then, it should be dropping off the final boss in order to better serve as a reward for clearing the apex content of the game, since there is no reason for me to do Dominique unless its a sale run. For Nightmare, I very heavily suggest its tied to the last boss and/or timed run and/or meta achievement.

- Raid comps. Some of the fights had a couple flaws that encouraged the usage of non-standard raid comps. I also know you all don't like this, I have some ideas though that can help the raid be more balanced towards a 2-4-2 standard comp if you'd like to hear it.

[beastmorpheus]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? No. Vet IP-CPT is orders of magnitude harder than Watchdog or Lord Kanoth. So I would have been unable to gear past 330 unless friends passed me a boss 2 lockout.
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Lower the health on Overload and Inferno Droid in Vet Ip-CPT encounter. Groups are currently running 6 dps to meet that check, (killing one droid before buttons needs to be pressed for 2nd wave of mines is where most groups fail. If you are slow to kill 1 droid you take to long to press buttons. If you don't kill one droid and go back to buttons the damage output is to high and kills the players in the center) . Ip-cpt's health isnt the issue, its the droids that spawn during the mine phase.

To target Progression on every Kill, each boss drops a general R-4 token that can be used to purchase and upgrade Hazardous gear. This secondary gear set lets you make smaller power improvements while working to complete your set of Virulent Gear.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes, as i seen there was no realistic way for me to obtain Virulent Tokens from IP-CPT.
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? It varied on the speed i could obtain a boss 2 lockout.
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? I still have not cleared boss 1 & 4 in Vet. But the power increase always helps

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount? I Love it!
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? I currently am running a team that is aiming for these!
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? No, I have enjoyed every one!

[Keleset]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes, slowly.
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Yes. Seeing a rebalance to the IP-CPT HM fight would be great and I would be happy if it were prioritized. Rebalancing would help those of us who are working on R4 HM get to the later bosses quicker each week, and it would help bring more players into R4-HM who might be dissuaded by the first boss's difficulty now. I personally believe that the entire group makeup should not have to change for one fight. This slows down progression in multiple ways: multiple people have to play different classes and roles that they are not used to. Players then have to leave the operation (and face a likely game crash on the loading screen) to swap to their main role after the boss is down. I would love to see some bug fixes as well, because they also slow down progression. Fixing zombie frames, dealing with loading screen crashes, the IP-CPT doorway being aggro-able, and the ad during the Lord Kanoth fight all cause small issues that add up.
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Very slowly because of the first boss causing such a bottleneck every week. 
• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Yes
• Do you like the look of these armor sets? Sorry, no. They are certainly on-theme for the operation, but not my cup of tea. 
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? For that purpose? No. 
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? I would like to see blue and purple mods from Hyde and Zeek for 340. I understand why that is not currently a feature, but I would expect it in the future. 
• Do you like the look of this mount? Very much.
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Yes, but I don't really expect to ever get one. 
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? One per operation would be great, that's it. Maybe... a 10% drop chance? 

[xXLordBusterXx]

3 hours ago, NoahSiess said:

Hi Bryant, I really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on the R4 Anomaly. I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to most of your questions in the hope that they will actually be read by someone at Bioware.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, as we did the raid on PTS beforehand, we were pretty experienced in all the mechanics. Only thing that caught us offguard initially on the day of release was the differences in scaling on IP-CPT, but alltogether the scaling was/is fine.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The operation in terms of scaling is fine as is. Only thing that could've been better are the various bugs that are still current to this day, like:

people being dead in the operation frame
the bug on IP-CPT where the boss disappears under the floor when you push him at the exact time as burn starts
the hallway encounter before Lord Kanoth where an infinite amount of attractors keep spawning in, making it virtually impossible to clear it in one go.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

We used it to buy the gear that was only available from Boss 4 Tokens first (especially Mainhands). The incentive was definitely there. They are also useful for buying gear for other classes/specs.

• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, see previous question.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

I'm not a huge fan of them personally and I only know of exactly one person who likes them so far.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the cosmetic aspect of the gear was definitely no reason to clear the operation.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

Not a huge fan of the mount in terms of optics. Only reason I want to get it right now is the (temporary) exclusivity.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, this is the question I am the most excited to reply to. My team managed to 100% operation as world first and immediately started to do farm runs for every member where we killed Lord Kanoth with one person being on his main toon in an - as we later learned futile - attempt to get everyone one of this mount. Which means we averaged about 6-8 runs every week since the release and in those 12 weeks (around 80 kills already) we only saw the Wings drop exactly once! This is not accounting for all the kills each one of us did in pugs or other teams.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

An actual official statement what the dropchance is. You could've also made a vendor where you could trade in an arbitrary number of blue tokens (could've been anywhere from 100-200) to buy the mount like some other games do. But no, we're left with rumours of what the actual dropchance could be and killing a boss that gets more boring with every kill and praying for Eric Musco to bless us with an ounce of his godly grace.

In conclusion, the operation is fine in terms of scaling but aquiring the mount is the single most annoying thing in this game right now.

100% true

[Rex-Dra]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb NoahSiess:

Hi Bryant, I really appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on the R4 Anomaly. I'm going to take a bit of time to reply to most of your questions in the hope that they will actually be read by someone at Bioware.

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Yes, as we did the raid on PTS beforehand, we were pretty experienced in all the mechanics. Only thing that caught us offguard initially on the day of release was the differences in scaling on IP-CPT, but alltogether the scaling was/is fine.

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The operation in terms of scaling is fine as is. Only thing that could've been better are the various bugs that are still current to this day, like:

people being dead in the operation frame
the bug on IP-CPT where the boss disappears under the floor when you push him at the exact time as burn starts
the hallway encounter before Lord Kanoth where an infinite amount of attractors keep spawning in, making it virtually impossible to clear it in one go.

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

We used it to buy the gear that was only available from Boss 4 Tokens first (especially Mainhands). The incentive was definitely there. They are also useful for buying gear for other classes/specs.

• Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Yes, see previous question.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?

I'm not a huge fan of them personally and I only know of exactly one person who likes them so far.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the cosmetic aspect of the gear was definitely no reason to clear the operation.

• Do you like the look of this mount?

Not a huge fan of the mount in terms of optics. Only reason I want to get it right now is the (temporary) exclusivity.

• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, this is the question I am the most excited to reply to. My team managed to 100% operation as world first and immediately started to do farm runs for every member where we killed Lord Kanoth with one person being on his main toon in an - as we later learned futile - attempt to get everyone one of this mount. Which means we averaged about 6-8 runs every week since the release and in those 12 weeks (around 80 kills already) we only saw the Wings drop exactly once! This is not accounting for all the kills each one of us did in pugs or other teams.

• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

An actual official statement what the dropchance is. You could've also made a vendor where you could trade in an arbitrary number of blue tokens (could've been anywhere from 100-200) to buy the mount like some other games do. But no, we're left with rumours of what the actual dropchance could be and killing a boss that gets more boring with every kill and praying for Eric Musco to bless us with an ounce of his godly grace.

In conclusion, the operation is fine in terms of scaling but aquiring the mount is the single most annoying thing in this game right now.

100% true

 

[Nee-Elder]

41 minutes ago, xXLordBusterXx said:

100% true

40 minutes ago, Rex-Dra said:

100% true

Is there an echo in here?

p.s.  On-topic::  imho,  better  more worthy-of-grinding (repeating bosses)  rewards in Ops like  'R4'  over & over again  would be to drop  SCHEMATICS  (thereby encouraging  player-crafting more often)  as well as   rare 'resources' needed to craft those schems. 

[ZUHFB]

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

Nope. While there is a difference playing the correct comps is a way bigger deal than slightly better gear.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

Well, mostly QoL changes. The attractors that spawn more attractors are a big problem for example, just to get from watchdog to Kanoth the group has to wipe at least two times. 

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Yeah, I am a tank main and Harardous gear > Virulent gear for everything but relics, belts and bracers. This is exclusive to tank gear.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?

Finished week two after HM release, did that on Tulak Hord. Then one week later I did it on Darth Malgus too.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Not at all. Especially for tank gear really couldn't matter less. The diminishing returns are very low, so low in fact you have to rely on Predation to allow yourself to survive things like Ultraviolence from Apex Vanguard 100% of the time, a tank simply isn't able to reach the needed defense value. By the way: Before you guys touch R-4 balancing try to increase the diminishing returns for all classes, that would help other players too and would probably be a good change.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of these armor sets?

Not really. But I'm not into fashion.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?

No, the looks of the armor played no part in any of the runs I did.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

YES - Dxun gear looked amazing, it had that cool glowing lights in colors depending on classes. I really liked it and it was very nice! 

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Do you like the look of this mount?

It looks nice when just standing, but it gets weird if you actually move around. I think the wings are in a wrong position too, they should be... slimmer? closer together? something like that.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?

Yes, but only since there is nothing else to do.

4 hours ago, BryantWood said:

Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Keep it simple please. Make the last boss some reek or something and then make it drop with a 33% chance.

 

To the argument of the clean boys who are replying to @NoahSiess, which basically boils down to being upset about 1 drop in 80 pulls, we had 15 runs and 3 drops. I did 4 runs on NA too saw another. Unlucky. 

[Exocor]

Quote

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?

 

Can't say, came back only recently when my old group had already cleared the operation.

 

Quote

• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

The difficulty of the bosses should increase with the bosses. Right now, bosses 1 and 4 are hardest. Boss 2 feels like a normal hardmode boss, while Boss 3 feels like a hardmode final boss. This deals both, with boss mechanics and DPS/Heal checks. Obviously, no operation follows this idea completely, but almost all first bosses are somewhat easy compared to the rest - I'm thinking Nefra and Dash'rood here for example. Watchdog would for example be balanced perfectly fine as a first boss.

 

Quote

• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?

Hazardous Gear seems better for tanks these days, as Endurance isn't as useful as it was in previous versions of the game. You gain more from defense stat these days. Hence, I'm upgrading the blue stuff up to 340. One thing I have to admit is, that I usually upgrade one piece in one go once I farm five blue tokens, in order to save money and time to augment them every step of the way.

Blue Tokens are also helpful to get different main- and offhands for different classes, increasing variety and offering options to play other classes, while being carried by the equipment.

 

Quote

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

Gear Rating > Cosmetics. It'll still be some time until I have nothing but cosmetics to buy from those tokens.

If you want to make cosmetics gathered from operations interesting, have those items be chance drops and have a visual distinction between the Gear - similar to the Gear dropped in Dread Fortress and Dread Palace, where Veteran Mode Gear looks similar to the Master Mod Gear, but the Master Mode Gear is glowing.

 

Quote

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

 

I have never seen the mount. However, I'd prefer Mounts to be dropped in similar fashion as in old operations - safe or (good!) chance drop at the final boss. Make it a safe drop for Master Mode and a (low) chance drop for Veteran Mode, if you really want it.

Why? In my group, we had Loot- and Title-Wishlists in the past - get a Helix Hyperpod on that character or Gate Crasher on this character. It's really tiresome to kill Kanoth 50 times to get one of those items. Everyone in your group? Do the math. You're going to be in there a while.

 

Aside from that, I like the operation. Feels like a mix between 3.0 operations and gods. I liked both.

 

[VilianSW]

From person who's a casual player and not really up for VM ops except for easiest ones. We were mostly going ir330-331 and as a guild group we've never made it through Dominique, though we did not make enough of attempts for sure. We're a small guild, too small to run demanding content regularly and our most experienced players go for VM/NiM ops elsewhere.

 

6 hours ago, BryantWood said:

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?

Nerf first boss a bit. When done with it, we were already pretty exhausted every single time, even when doing it with one or two wipes only. 

6 hours ago, BryantWood said:

The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.

• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?

My story tokens gather dust. Sets are decently textured, but absolutely ugly. Legs look somewhat useable if you'd remove glowing bits, boots would be better without so many metal parts, gloves are nice but then not unique enough. Nothing screams Star Wars, it's absolutely not worth the effort to run ops for these glam sets. For satisfaction - yes, for guild bonding - sure, for plethora of other reasons as well, just absolutely not for the look of the gear.

 

6 hours ago, BryantWood said:

The R-4 Anomaly also came with a new mount, the Wings of Nihrot. This mount has a small chance to be rewarded when defeating Lord Kanoth.

• Do you like the look of this mount?
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?

Star Wars butterfly? Nope. I wouldn't buy it from cartel market (you can probably check my account, I do buy stuff), will not grind ops for something so non-SW. Droid mount would be nice, beast would be nice, jetpack would be nice, but not butterfly wings.

How about an ops-related skin for HK comp? I don't expect a completely new droid comp, but even just a recolour would be an interesting change of pace and a much more rewarding drop than butterfly wings.



 

[FlavaBizkit]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
  • Yes, However not the normal way, we relied  on lockouts for watchdog and kanoth to be able to give us the gear score we needed to complete IP-CPT
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?
  • The arguably most difficult boss in there should not have been the first one. If players did not share lockouts most people would still be on first boss IMO
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  • Not untilI I had at least 5 tokens so I could upgrade everything at once to keep from spending so much on augment kits in this horrible economy
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  • I'm still not fully upgraded as by the time i can really play most WD/Kanoth groups are finished for the week
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?
  • The main hand is probably the biggest upgrade.
• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
  • No, Then again SWTOR Raid gear has been pretty meh most releases... 2.0 has good armor though
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
  • Nope, Did it for achievments and gear rating
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?
  • Items that actually looks like it belongs in the star wars universe
• Do you like the look of this mount?
  • Its alright, I guess, looks more like butterfly wings.. additionally the "rocket boots" aspect doesn't really fit the style
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
  • Was not my main focus of R4
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?
  • Similar to my thoughts on the armor sets, stuff that actually fits the star wars universe, additionally better drop chances.. or tie them achievement unlocks. having a low drop chance, 8 people to fight it for and only being able to roll once a week is pretty meh