Huskernutz Posted October 12, 2022 Share Posted October 12, 2022 (edited) I have a lot of thoughts here, so I'll try to keep this short for the sake of readability. Overall, I think the gearing system used in the R-4 Anomaly was huge breath of fresh air for me and my raid team and we all are overwhelming positive about it. Having significant power progression occur while progressing and subsequently farming the raid was noticeable and fun, I can't think of another time where we deliberately were going to speed kills on bosses after we got best-in-slot so that was really nice. It didn't feel like it took a long time and all of the upgrade integration into the Hazardous gear was well done. On the point of improvements to the system I have a few minor things to note. I think the weakest aspect of the system was the SM gearing tokens. Having them drop at unoptimized 328 and only being upgradable to 330 in combination with the stark difficulty increase from other SMs resulted in little to no engagement with that part of the system. I saw virtually none, if any, groups that chose to do R-4 SM for gearing. If I were to offer a suggestion, I think it should have been that SM dropped at 330 and was upgradable to 334, this would give SM players a stronger gear progression through the raid that would be worth the effort and would help to offer a gear buffer for them when they decide to go in HM without impacting those that go straight into HM. As for the HM gear itself, the only sticking point here is that the stat/proc difference between the Virulent and Hazardous relics were so small that it made the Virulent relics worthless to get until everyone was done with every other gear token. Which means that 1/3 of the potential loot from IP-CPT and Watchdog was basically wasted for a long time while we were getting BiS, so for next time if a similar system is used the relics in particular need have a much more significant power difference. On the question of the cosmetic sets, this is probably a little outside my wheelhouse since I know basically no one who went out of their way to go collect these armor sets after we were done with the hazardous gear and most of them just ended up banking tokens or using them to transfer gear to another server. Not sure if this was just an aesthetic thing in relation to the design or if there simply wasn't enough flashy variations on the existing gear models to warrant us wanting to get them. Either way we didn't really end up using this aspect of the system at all. For suggestions I think we would really like having some unique effect added to the armor to make it visually distinct, a lot of us are driven to get cosmetics in the game that both hard to obtain and visually flashy, so something that hits both those categories would be a lot more likely to get used by the people around me. The mount. Oh, there's been so many discussions with the people I raid with about this. First off, visually pretty much all of us like the design of it even if getting yet another wings mount made us roll our eyes for a moment on the stream. The only weird thing with it is that the jetpack animation itself looks a little funky with the stiff butterfly design, a lot of us initially reacted that the wings should've moved back and forth a little. We did really like the integration of the Nihrot animation into the wings design though, it's a small touch but it's really cool. The acquisition of the it on the other hand, that's a whole can of worms in and of itself. Most of us are fine with it being a rng drop from HM, we're not really opposed to that, but with it being a low drop rate on top the effort that needs to be put in to farm the boss efficiently most of us elected to just wait for the guaranteed drop in Nightmare rather than try to farm it out now. The biggest problem here isn't that Kanoth himself is annoying to farm or anything, it's that physically getting to his room on HM is a chore that most of us don't like doing, having to deal with 3 attractors in the hallways means more often than not 2-3 runs through the hallway just to open the door to a 7 minute boss fight so we end up spending as much if not more time getting to the boss as we do pulling it. So, this in combination with the extremely low drop chance just makes most of us say "eh, we'll wait for Nightmare" which I think isn't really great. Although this isn't a suggestion thread, I do feel obligated to say that if we get a nightmare difficulty for the raid that utilizing this system with improvements and changes would be for the best. I've also been notified from someone that there's a very lonely train in the instance that's feeling neglected at the moment, so hopefully that gets looked at in nightmare 🙂 Edited October 12, 2022 by Huskernutz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loc_n_lol Posted October 12, 2022 Share Posted October 12, 2022 (edited) Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes, definitely. 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 would not necessarily change anything about the gearing system, but make some tweaks to the difficulty of the bosses themselves. Having your first boss be a massive roadblock is a bit discouraging because you're not getting any better gear until you bring that one down. I also don't think the proposed HP nerf will be sufficient, it's getting enough people (all 8 of them) alive to the end that has been most difficult. It's also very mentally overwhelming due to the many overlapping mechanics until sufficient practice makes it second nature, that makes it very difficult to progress through this fight with different groups or to bring a newcomer up to speed for example. Honestly I'd reduce the frequency of grenades by half (keep the delay between first and second set for every subsequent set) but leave the same amount of them going out at once. This gives a lot of time to reposition and heal up between sets and should make it more approachable. Anyway that was what I felt was needed when my group couldn't kill it. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes, absolutely. Hazardous gear is for the most part just as good as virulent gear. Sometimes exactly as good. Eventually I figured it was easier to jsut save up 5 tokens and buy one piece to 340 straight away. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Slowly at first. More and more rapidly as it becomes easier to kill bosses. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Haven't completed it yet, but every bit of power/health helps. It seems to have made re-clearing faster and easier, but that mlight also be getting more used to the fights. Do you like the look of these armor sets? Not too much. I'm liking the helmets. The sets have good quality textures and a good level of detail, it's just the overall design of the sets isn't really something I'd want to wear on my characters. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? No. I'm sitting on a few unused story mode tokens. I don't have any VM tokens to spare for cosmetics at the moment, and likely won't for a while. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Keep doing them if possible, or even retroactively add some to legacy operations. Try and give something for every PC archetype, and/or something uniquely relevant to the operation. Something that stands out and looks unique. Something that blends in with cartel market sets and looks practical to wear. Some of these suggestions are contradictory, I know. IMO best examples to date would be Underworld/Kell Dragon gear for class-based gear, especially knight and trooper, and Revanite gear for operation-themed gear. Could also do some weapons. Do you like the look of this mount? It's not necessarily something I'd want to show off for its cosmetic value alone, but it's unique and appropriately themed. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? No. Not my priority, and the chance seems too low to consider it. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? Keep doing them, or even retroactively add some to legacy operations. Less random chance preferably, at least for difficult fights (which Kanoth VM isn't really). Could also add some weapon tunings or dye modules (but better be a really good and unique one). Edited October 13, 2022 by Loc_n_lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthEndonae Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? The 340 gear has definitely made a noticeable impact, especially in legacy NiM raids. You guys nailed it with the final version of 6.0 NiM balance (after removal of Veteran's Edge and the other subsequent adjustments), but right now, some fights feel too easy while others are still pretty hard. Also, it seems you forgot to update the HP for all absorb barriers that need to be DPS's to be broken like Revan's Resonance and Ciphas' shield you have to interrupt. I'm blanking on the others, but it's like that whole category of HP wasn't updated for 7.0. Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? IP-CPT being the hardest boss in the instance while being the first boss has made it difficult to actually get gear from the operation. My group managed to finally clear it, but have been relying on lockouts to skip the fight until it's nerfed because it's just not worth the effort it takes to do the fight perfectly. We have 1 tank that only tanks, but the fight is considerably harder with 5 DPS, 1 tank compared to 6 DPS. I don't mind the first boss being the hardest on its own, but it's not good with this gearing structure, though I think a lot of that has to do with the unfinished balance throughout the whole operation. IP-CPT feels like NiM in terms of balance while Watchdog and Kanoth feel appropriate to HM and Dominique is maybe hardmare. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? This is a weird question. We'd all prefer the 340 purple pieces, of course. The blue upgrades and purple pieces are a fair compromise, though we should be able to get from 330 to 340 blue in a single raid, but that takes 5 tokens instead of 4, so perhaps the blues should start at 332 instead of 330. Also it was determined that the 330 blues aren't an upgrade until 336, combined with the fact that augmentation kits aren't cheap, people just wait until they have 5 to insta-buy 340. Everyone wishes that they could upgrade a 340 blue into a 340 purple and I think people would be okay with it being more expensive for that upgrade, perhaps make going from 340 blue to 340 purple cost 4 tokens so it still takes a full raid to do. You could do the same for upgrading a 330 blue from SM to 332+. The drop rates seem to be designed around farming, not progression. It's fine for the raid to give 1 purple per person for the whole raid, and that structure would be fantastic for old NiM where prog is less of a thing, but with a new raid, you're not gonna clear the whole thing right away and the entire group will be mostly fully geared by the time that's a thing. Many of the people in my circle are pretty much done with gear from Watchdog + Kanoth (and some with IP-CPT) while few have anything from Dominique, so we're gonna have to farm specifically that boss a lot once people get clears. For a single 8-person team, it'll take 12 kills to get everyone full 340, and then there's still other purple mainhands people will want. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Quickly enough, though it takes 5 tokens to get one piece from 330 to 340 while there are only 4 bosses. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? IP-CPT and Dominique are where the extra gear is needed. Watchdog can be solo-healed and doesn't have tight check unless you fail mechanics, and Kanoth doesn't have tight checks either (but you still need good numbers, it's elegant in how the numbers checks work). I don't enjoy progressing gear at the same time as progressing raids in general though because balance is weird. The gearing structure isn't good in this game anyway though because there's a single optimal build for everything but tanks and there aren't mobility-survivability trade-offs and unique effects are confined to the implants. I support stats being completely removed from gear in general though, so my input here is akin to Ron Swanson being a government employee. Do you like the look of these armor sets? I personally think they look really cool, but pretty much everyone else thinks they look hideous, unfortunately. The only thing I don't like is that the tubes on the back of the Virulent Professional chest piece (the collar one) don't have the red glow VFX like the front does. I think this might be trying to evoke the circulation that occurs under the arm, but that's really hard to see and I wish the whole tube had the red glow. This also applies to the green version. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? My primary reason for doing R4 is because I enjoy raiding. I do not need extra incentives, though I have purchased a couple of the sets because I like them and I enjoy getting exclusive cosmetic rewards from raiding. I want a return to having an armor set based on each class, or at least armor rating though. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Don't put everything on 1 vendor. It's super laggy and annoying to find specific pieces. The structure is also needlessly complex if you're gonna continue with no mods. Don't name the pieces Force-Lord, Boltblaster, Tech Medic, etc.; just name them after the enhancement, so have Critical pants, Alacrity pants, Accuracy pants, etc. Each stat should also have a different appearance I like that I'm not locked out of buying things my toon technically can't use so it's still convenient to buy things for alts. I understand that's in place for noobs to not waste their currencies on things they don't need, but you could do the same thing by just making it a setting that players can turn off. Noobs won't know to do that and won't care. Due to the obscene cost of gold augments, I have been sharing 1 set for my entire legacy. It is tedious to transfer all this gear, especially since you turned off the When progression is expected, the gear drops should be weighted to where more gear drops from later bosses so you'll be done gearing by the time you clear the whole thing a couple times. You guys should consider flipping the script where gear is craftable and augments (and still raid-specific cosmetics) are what drop from raids. Do you like the look of this mount? The Wings of Nihrot look really cool, definitely one of the best raid mounts you've made. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? No, but I'm glad it's there. The drop rate is so low that my team isn't even going to attempt to farm it, though we will in NiM with a higher drop rate. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? The drop chance is really low, though it would be fine if it were a guaranteed drop in NiM. I've done Kanoth a ton and still have yet to see it drop for anyone, let alone win it. There are only like 4-5 people I know of on the server that even have it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliffRedemption Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 9 hours ago, BryantWood said: 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? While my group appreciated the distribution method of 340 rating gear, we felt no sense of progress in power doing R-4 Anomaly because zero of the four fights require you to use item rating 340 to complete. One intentional reason for this is that it is Veteran mode, and unlike Master mode, is meant to be clearable by a larger population of players. One unintentional reason, which is something to consider for future Veteran mode releases, is the fact that Guild Perks function normally in R-4 Anomaly. This meant that everyone had access to 5% Alacrity which is almost as large of an output increase as the new gear itself. The strategy of having everyone in a guild with this passive buff was as important as which players were being funneled gear in the first few weeks. 9 hours ago, BryantWood said: 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? Yes, I wanted to upgrade my Hazardous gear and it became especially helpful for getting Mainhand and Offhand weapons for other Combat Styles. Hazardous gear was able to be upgraded quickly since a full run earned yourself 4 tokens, so 80% of an item slot was done for every raid. Hazardous gear was extremely helpful in completing R-4 Anomaly because the tertiary stats were identical to the slightly more powerful Virulent pieces. This made it easy to identify which slots needed which Tertiary stats from augments prior to being fully upgraded in the Virulent gear. I think this structure is strong. 9 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? I think the vanity armor looks quite good- even if all twelve are very similar. I like that you can mix and match the sets to the details on each piece for yourself. These vanity sets were not a motivator for me to do the R-4 Anomaly, but I am very glad they exist. For future operation armors, I would like to see unique visual effects, similar to the Nature of Progress sets (Ex. Ballast Point, Comet Champion, etc.) although a huge drawback for those Dxun sets was the ruthless RNG. I completed close to 100 timed runs of Nature of Progress between 6.1.1 to 7.0 with my team, and even with communicating what items were dropping per boss, I wasn't able to finish four pieces from the Dxun sets. For the future of Operation Armors, and also retroactively, you should consider adding these sets into the Collections tab. 12 armor sets times 7 pieces means I need to find 84 cargo slots which is just over one Bay to store these cool items. Similar to the Remnant sets, this would allow players a less-fatiguing way to style with these going forward, and I don't think people would mind paying 10 cartel coins for each one. 9 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? I think the mount looks great but it is a bit of a bummer that the sound effects are reused from the Wings of the Architect. This mount is a huge motivator to continue going back into R-4 over and over at a chance to get one. For the future of Operation mounts, and also retroactively, you should consider making this mount bound to Legacy (Similar to the Red Sphere in Xenoanalyst II). The reason for this is because with such a low drop chance, believed to be 5%, you might never earn this mount on your main toon. Most players have a main toon that they roleplay with, complete all story content on, and collect stuff like mounts on. I have spiritually divorced the idea of ever claiming this mount on any toons in my legacy besides my main sniper, it would be too cruel to my teammates to snatch them on something else. By making it bound to Legacy, I would actually feel more motivated to run R-4 Anomaly, because I could earn this mount on the toon I actually wanted it on more than once per week. On another note, I hope this cool mount has a larger drop chance, if not 100% drop chance in Master Mode. Either that or tie it to completing 100% Mark of Mastery Achievements, similar to how "The Ultimate Hunter" title was handled for Nature of Progress, combined with how the Wings of the Dragon mount was handled for the Izax promotional period. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aussircaex Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? No; IP-CPT is a ridiculously, inappropriately difficult boss for the first boss of a Veteran mode operation. Especially since there was no way whatsoever to obtain gear to best him outside of obtaining lockouts from others, which we have been forced to do. 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 fights should be balanced for the gear you're expected to have when entering - the whole operation should be clearable with a team of 330-geared players. It currently requires essentially full 340 for the first and last bosses, while the middle two are far easier. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes; it is a good interim reward while we worked on clearing bosses for the Virulent gear. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? We are still working on it, but we are farming Watchdog to do so because the operation is itself so unapproachable in the normal fashion. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? It's essential. The operation is not functionally clearable without it. Do you like the look of these armor sets? The appearance? No, but cosmetics are now mostly something I look elsewhere for. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Well, yeah, the dual goal of clearing the new content and getting the better gear is its own reward. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? I suppose having armors that actually look good would be a nice change. Do you like the look of this mount? Haven't seen it. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Someday maybe. Not yet. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? Yes - more vanity items should be rewards for completing difficult content. Cartel Market items are fun, but we should be able to take some pride in our accomplishments by having unique and rare cosmetic items as rewards for difficult content. Brontes' wings are a great example. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZUHFB Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 1 hour ago, Aussircaex said: Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? No; IP-CPT is a ridiculously, inappropriately difficult boss for the first boss of a Veteran mode operation. Especially since there was no way whatsoever to obtain gear to best him outside of obtaining lockouts from others, which we have been forced to do. 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 fights should be balanced for the gear you're expected to have when entering - the whole operation should be clearable with a team of 330-geared players. It currently requires essentially full 340 for the first and last bosses, while the middle two are far easier. The fights ARE balanced for 330 and the operation IS clearable with 330. If your team does struggle it's not the gear that should be improved. Did you ise a good setup? A good setup makes far more of a difference tha gear, did you memorize the pattern and call out changes? Did you let the last explosive explode? Things like this all have way more impact than gear does. I do agree that the boss is too hard for a HM level boss, however I do not agree that this is because a lack of gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AMAirlines Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 3 hours ago, Aussircaex said: Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? No; IP-CPT is a ridiculously, inappropriately difficult boss for the first boss of a Veteran mode operation. Especially since there was no way whatsoever to obtain gear to best him outside of obtaining lockouts from others, which we have been forced to do. 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 fights should be balanced for the gear you're expected to have when entering - the whole operation should be clearable with a team of 330-geared players. It currently requires essentially full 340 for the first and last bosses, while the middle two are far easier. For your points here, someone would have had to clear IP-CPT HM in 330 gear to obtain a watchdog lockout on the first day. Its not like a magical watchdog lock appeared from nowhere. The fight is not hard, it just requires players to be better. (Remember Tyth on release?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeannaVoyager Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 15 hours ago, BryantWood said: Quote 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? Yes, but it's too slow, especially when some people need to get gear for two roles. Having the bosses drop a 340 token for everyone, not just two people, would be an improvement. Being able to convert sm tokens to hm tokens would also help, because people who don't have enough alts will be locked out for a week from doing it again. This affects the whole team, not just the one without alts, because it means the rest of the people will also have to wait for the weekly reset or find other people to raid with. It would also help to tune down the bosses so that people can bring any class they want, not just the specific meta classes. Not everyone plays those meta classes and it's a bit unrealistic to expect everyone will want to learn new classes just to kill something. Raiding used to be fun when we were still able to bring our favorite classes. Now raiding has been converted into a relog marathon and people are being forced on classes and roles they don't want to play. I have a question: when are we expected to see 340 mods on a vendor? I'd prefer my gear moddable for stats tweaking. Quote 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 haven't even checked what they look like, but I'd rather not see empty shells on the same vendor where you buy piece of gear, especially when the cosmetics can be purchased with the same tokens. Please, put the empty shells on a different vendor. 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? This feedback will be valuable to us going forward as we develop future Operations and review existing Operations. I don't really care about that mount, but in general when there is a chance to get a mount from an operation, the drop rate needs to be better. It doesn't have to drop 100%, I'd be even happy with 50%. Anything less is not good enough because there is eight people in the group, and they all might want it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moralist Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 (edited) Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Progress through experience and replay was more significant than due to 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? Replace bosses, IP-CPT isn't good for entry boss. the difficulty of this boss is more suitable for the last or 3rd. Bugs make this operation not as attractive as it could be, especially dead players in group, but they are alive. Bug with lockout and door after 1st boss. Bug with endless loading after this operation. Corridor between 2nd and 3rd bosses is horrible. 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? We farmed 2nd and 3rd bosses for taking Hazardous MH and other items, which we can earn only from LB. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? More helpful expirience and knowledge of your class/spec and fights. All groups can do it with new Rakata Gear. By the way R4 not dropping operation tokens, and after new gear from R4 even SM devalues gearing from 7.0. What to do now with old gear? Only trade it for useless credits with horrible economic? With 334 Legendaries and 340 gear common ilvl 339 maximum, maybe you can upgrade it to ilvl of the new gear? Do you like the look of these armor sets? No, return design like it was in 1.0, 1.4, or like dread master sets. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Nope, did it only for achievments and gear rating. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Legacy wide armor sets and unique weapons, like gear from events (Gree, Bounty Contracts, Rakghoul, Nightlife) or compatible with Furious sets from PvP. And we need more operations! Do you like the look of this mount? No, it feels like I'm in another fantasy universe, but not in sci-fi, and i don't like the sound of it. I like more mounts like Wings of Architect, Chairs of Meditation for force users and some technological bikes for tech users, I dream about bike with design like X70-Phantom, personal ship of imperial agents. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? I was lucky and earned it when it drops once in our group, but with such a drop chance, I would definitely not go through this operation many times. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? I like an idea about legacy wide mounts, like sharing it from achievment. I do not see any point in going through operations for each character to get mounts. Replay value is interesting in unique achievements. The achievements in this operation are quite interesting. Edited October 13, 2022 by Moralist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nee-Elder Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 1 hour ago, Moralist said: I dream about bike with design like X70-Phantom, personal ship of imperial agents. I like an idea about legacy wide mounts, like sharing it from achievment. I do not see any point in going through operations for each character to get mounts. Especially when there is nothing really all that different nor special (function wise or speed wise, etc. ) from each mount. It's all just re-skin after re-skin; except for maybe the rare 'trick' sometimes. Anyways, these new forums have the 'like' button but tbqh i wish there was also an *agree* icon too, because i absolutely LOVE your 1st idea/dream ^ (imagine if ImpAgents had a mini-quest whereby you had to collect/harvest rare resources from all over the galaxy to CRAFT a replicated model of your ship into an inspired mount! ) and obviously totally agree with your 2nd point too. /tip-hat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waslaf Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? yes Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? make watchdog locks and the tunnel before kanoth work properly Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? yes but its only really better than rakata from 336 on so at that point i wait to have 5 tokens to make a 340 piece and also safe augment kits. but i used them to mostly make main/offhands because you need a lot of those and getting purple tokens is not relieable How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? watchdog farm was pretty quick Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? yes i supplemented the pieces that drop from last boss for dominique progression Do you like the look of these armor sets? didnt look at it too much but its not what i would wear over my outfits Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? no i need my tokens for actual gear Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? i think gear pieces that recreate the outfits of certain iconic bosses can be popular like the dread master outfits from back in the day Do you like the look of this mount? yes. better than izax wings Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? kekw. i mean i farmed kanoth a lot for gear and ive not seen it drop. idk what exactly "small chance" means but ive probably done 30+ kills and not seen it so this is nothing you can farm especially not if you want it on a specific character that gets locked out for a week every time you kill and has a 1:8 chance to get it if it drops. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? i mean in this case its thematically tied to kanoth but in general i think the mounts should be a reward for clearing so preferably make it a safe drop from last boss (or maybe do that for the nim). optionally tie it to an acheivment as well like with the limited time izax wings at first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 (edited) I already wrote some feedback on the PTS forums which sadly was ignored, and the R-4 progression went exactly as expected. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Definitely not, all VM bosses were tuned to Master Mode levels, and SM was tuned to VM levels. In addition, the bosses were not ordered by difficulty. From our experience, Watchdog was the least difficult, followed by Kanoth, then IP-CPT, then Lady Dominique. Since we are unable to kill IP-CPT, we used lockouts from other players to skip it. We've killed Watchdog numerous times (everyone is fully equipped with the 4 purple tokens, and gotten most of the remaining slots at 340 blues), and are 1-2 weeks away from killing Kanoth as well. We won't be able to kill IP-CPT until it is nerfed, and I don't expect us to kill Lady Dominique this raid tier. So no, the bosses were way overtuned. Obviously, some guilds clearing MMs have been able to kill Lady Dominique but those are not the target audience for Veteran Mode. For everyone else, the bosses were too difficult, as well as in the wrong order. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, 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? Bosses 1-3 should be tuned to Watchdog's level, and the final boss should be tuned to Lord Kanoth's level. That's an appropriate difficulty for Veteran Mode (obviously Master Mode should be more difficult). IP-CPT has too much movement involved, the DPS check is too tight, there is no mechanic requiring a tank role, and the graphical effects are so intense that they've been causing our players physical pain. This boss has no place in Veteran Mode, especially not as the first boss. The fact that it will take almost half a year to nerf it speaks volumes about the support the raiding community (and the rest of the game) gets. This boss requires a lot more nerfs than just an HP reduction. 👎 Watchdog difficulty feels perfectly fine. There are some punishing mechanics causing an instant wipe, so I'd say keep it as is. Lord Kanoth feels slightly overtuned for Veteran Mode but manageable. There should be a stronger visual indicator between normal and hardened Niroth. Can't give a lot of feedback on Lady Dominique; we've tested it on PTS but have not yet seen it on live. It's already overtuned on SM (at the very least, the Monstrosities should not spawn in SM). For VM, given the fact that groups are killing it with seven PTs should tell you everything you need to know - class stacking has no place in Veteran Mode. Finally, please fix the countless number of bugs in R-4. Progression is already not fun, and these bugs are ruining any satisfaction we could get. From the 7.1.1 patch notes, it sounds like you'll fix barely half of them. Especially stuff like seeing dead players, darkened debuffs, 1% HP after using elevator, cannot take elevator back after misclick, closed door after IP-CPT lockout, stuck loading screen at 90% after exiting area, too many Attractors during Lord Kanoth's gauntlet run, spawning at Mek-Sha's area start (because the game can't remember the last position after visiting Stronghold) etc. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes, we've upgraded all gear slots (except those dropping at Watchdog) to blue 340s. It's an obvious upgrade over purple 330s, so no reason not to. Though I waited with upgrading until I collected 5 tokens; didn't want to waste any augment kits. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? We've been killing Watchdog more than 5 times per week, so at least 1 slot per week. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Not really; we are not encountering any DPS checks on Lord Kanoth so 330 gear would be enough, and for IP-CPT, even with 340s we'd not be meeting the DPS checks. On the other hand, for raid groups who can't even kill Watchdog VM, some upgrades over 330 gear would be nice (e.g. having them drop from R-4 SM). Instead, those players will be stuck with their 330 gear for quite some time. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Do you like the look of these armor sets? Don't care about any armor appearance; all my raid toons have been using costume slots for many years. I'm happy with my characters' looks and don't expect to change them anytime soon, no matter what new appearances are released. The Columi/Rakata gear was nice for nostalgia reasons though. But I'm still waiting for the other sets, Black Hole, Hazmat etc., not that I'd need those since I still have my 1.0 items. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? In case it wasn't clear, no, and I haven't heard from any player who liked these armor sets. And even if some non-raiding player liked them, they would have no chance to get it, outside of a sale run. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? No, I'm fully satisfied with my characters' appearances; haven't purchased a Cartel Market armor in years. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: Do you like the look of this mount? No, I prefer creature mounts; never liked any of the wing/jetpack mounts. On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: 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? See above. Edited October 13, 2022 by Jerba 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthSpekulatius Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 (edited) On 10/12/2022 at 5:31 PM, BryantWood said: 1) 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? 2) 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? 3) 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? 4) 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! 1) the Two Tokens going directly to max iLVL are Great, same for the Blue ones that aren't slot bound. * even though the 2nd Boss was the only one we killed so far, we were able to use the Purple and Blue Tokens to Gear up quite well * Move boss 2 to be the first Boss of the Operation 2) * yes * I have 4 Blue 340 Pieces for my Tank, the ones I've saved up and any future ones will most likely be DPS Pieces though, for the first Boss. we did about 6 Watchdog Kills / week, Thanks to some Friends who had IDs for us * idk as we didn't try the First Boss again since we started clearing watchdog, and Kanoth seems to be more about playing correctly then about Gear. 3) * I haven't looked at them on my characters as they all have Outfits already * I like nice looking armor from OPS, so what I wrote above isn't a criticism, I'm just not in the mood for creating new Outfits currently. * I'm sure you'll make something nice 4) * yes, But I think I have only one Republic character with an outfit that would match them. that said, I haven't seen it on my character yet so I'm not sure. * yes * make them 100% Dropchance Please (at least for the max difficulty of the OPS where you can get them), I don't like low Drop chance OPS Mounts, with 100% drops it's easy to motivate your group to get one for each Person, with low chance mounts that's not the case unless the Boss is freeloot. lastly something you didn't ask: I think Anomaly is a great NIM OPS, maybe Watchdog needs an Enrage timer but other then that, I think it's likely we won't see an Master Mode of the Operation just like what happened with Temple of sacrifice and Ravagers where Hardmode was already on the Level of Nightmare Operations, is that correct? Edited October 13, 2022 by DarthSpekulatius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSpyrro Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 (edited) On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, 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! 1. Yes, very slowly. For anyone that is not one of the best raiders in the whole game, in hardmode we all had to start by doing Watchdog and Kanoth. IP-CPT is basically impossible in 331 gear alone. 2. Yes. IP-CPT is getting a nerf, which I am happy about. But some things that can improve the fights to make them easier, would be fixing the bugs, such as the ones in Kanoth where you have to restart your game to be able to see the vertical and horizontal Nihrot lines. IP-CPT can also still clip through the floor. One of the most annoying bugs is when you have a Watchdog lockout, the door to get to Watchdog the normal way is closed, and you have to have a sniper with the Pillbox Sniper utility to knock you over the edge to where you go across the pipes through the broken window into the new room. 3. Yes. I was happy to see new gear, and instantly got to grinding the bosses to get more tokens. 4. I was not able to upgrade my Hazardous gear very fast, since you only get one token per boss. As I only used the tokens that got me the veteran mode hazardous gear, I had to kill Watchdog and/or Kanoth many times to even get one piece to 340. This is very repetitive, but if you can get all your gear pieces upgraded to 340 the results are worth the grind for many players. 5. Yes, having the 340 gear helped a lot. It is what made IP-CPT do-able for teams. 6. Honestly, no. The outfits are not the best. 7. Definitely not. 8. I would like to see more of the outfits with holograms like the ones you got from Dxun in 6.0 did. The armors that dropped from ops in 2.0 were much better as well. 9. Yes, I do like the look of the Wings. They would be much better if they were just the wings holding you up, and not rocket boots. Would be more realistic if the wings flapped a bit. 10. No, my main goal was to clear R4 for achievements and gear, but I would like wings as well. Still trying to get my own pair of them. 11. Yes. The Bantam Dxun Reaper and the new Wings look very cool, and would like to see more things like them in upcoming operations. I would also suggest giving the Wings to all players who killed Lady Dominique before the nerf drops, like how you did with the Wings of the Dragon in Gods. In conclusion, I do like the op. It has bugs that needs to be fixed like the Nihrot hallway and the Watchdog lockout bug. Additionally, the boss bugs I have listed above and the infintie loading screen need fixing aswell. Edited October 14, 2022 by DarkSpyrro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deaconik Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 (edited) Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes, once we learned how to kill the IP CPT it was pretty quick Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Not on the Hard Mode. I think the Story Mode gear tokens should upgrade the gear until 334, this would give people a reason to farm Story Mode and at the same time this would make the Hard Mode easier for people who are unable to clear it with 330. And it would make the Lady Dom easier on SM as well Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Pretty quickly, once you learn IP CPT you have 3 bosses to farm where only occassionally you have issues with IP CPT and people not remembering the patterns (yes, some don't remember them even after 20 kills >< ) Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Didn't kill Lady yet, but definitively (best pull was Lady D at 600k HP) Do you like the look of these armor sets? To be honest until recently didn't know there are fancy armor shells, didn't check them Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Will probably happen as a side-effect of hunting wings Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? some mandalorian type armor with the active jetpack (you know, the one which activates for rocket boots), especially if it would have a flamethrower on the hand, so it doesn't appear/disappear when using power tech abilities (feel free to add that to the cartel market ) Do you like the look of this mount? Kinda. What would help is to turn off the jets coming from shoes tho. It somehow doesn't seem right. I don't know, it just doesn't hit with me, but some people in the group like it. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Aw yea, it's a rare mount, me do want. But I raid with 3 groups, kill plenty of Kanoth and saw just one drop, so... can you please add more voice lines to him, so it's more funny to kill him over and over and over and over? Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? A shooting x-wing! With R2! And a multiplayer mount (I know this won't probably happen), but at least a mount where our companion would appear. And the x-wing! Edit> I would love to point out that currently the best tanking gear is the blue one. I don't mind, more purple tokens for my dps, just saying that giving purple tankin gear some additional stats wouldn't be bad. It's not needed tho, just a nitpick. Edited October 14, 2022 by Deaconik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirtanja Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? - Yes and No. Once we started getting gear the answer is a definite yes but that required lock sharing and farming Watchdog and Kannoth. It should not have required this to be done for us to progress 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. Along with the multitude of bug fixes that need to be done to make the operation smoother and less clunky (Hallway fixed, No alt f4 before Kannoth, people staying dead in frames) Something needs to be done about IP. Whilst I do understand that some groups made it though IP in 330, Many did not!!! And this caused fractures in newer teams where people who were expecting hard mode were greeted with a boss that felt more like NiM. When this is your first boss of the operation that is a problem as it presents a barrier for the players who are maybe not the best and who need the gear. I know a health change is coming so I will hold further criticism until I have seen the result of that, but by placing the most difficult boss first in the operation you are halting newer teams from clearing content and advancing further. If the health change doesn't have an impact, a damage change needs to happen Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? - Yes, it is the best tank gear so as a tank for my team it was a priority. Also getting Dominque Items I would not get for awhile as a ops was a bonus How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? - I reached full 339 in both tank and DPS last week so from launch until now Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? - Yes But it should not have required 5 tokens, I would suggest if possible lowering it to 3 and starting at 334 as it is less of a grind and makes the armour an increase from what you are wearing from the get go Do you like the look of these armor sets? - Meh, They are fine but not really what I look for in the game. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? - No, I was not interested in the cosmetic side of the armour Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? - If you want us to wear operation gear cosmetically there has to be something special about these armour's otherwise we will just use outfitter with Cartel Market armours. Whilst I never earned them, I remember that certain Dxun armours has special animations and abilities that looked awesome. More of that Do you like the look of this mount? - Again Meh. It is fine as a design but it doesn't scream Star wars. I would have expected more along the lines of riding watchdog or something. But not bad and close enough that I don't rage. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? - No, it has too small a drop chance for the farm to be worth it unless you are in a team that is specifically farming mounts. It became an added bonus if it appeared Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? - As long as it has a higher drop rate in NiM then no. Maybe start with more than 1% chance as 40 Kannoth Kills in I haven't seen it once. Also again whilst the butterfly wings aren't bad, maybe style the next Mount more in the line of Star Wars. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anchor_leg Posted October 15, 2022 Share Posted October 15, 2022 On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, BryantWood said: 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? Yes my group was able to power through it. We really did enjoy the distribution method of the 340 gear and didn't feel it was critical to clearing. With that gear, it made it a lot easier across the board. Very eager to see what you have for NiM mode. The hallway to Kanoth just seems ridiculous no matter what level of play you're at. I'm not sure what the thought was but that was nothing like the PTS. If anything, that hallway is the biggest headache in the whole raid and shocked there hasn't been any changes to it on both SM & HM. On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, BryantWood said: 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? Yes wanted to upgrade right away. The MH and OH upgrades were the biggest help. The pace of of upgrade was good too because you were rewarded for every clear. It made it enjoyable and the fact that the gear sets can be used across multiple toons made it that much better. No more stress and focus on figuring out what piece for each other class you need and more focus on the main stats was a breath of fresh air. I wouldn't say the gear was truly helpful however it did make it easier. With the amount of runs you can do with a team, you're able to gear up rather fairly in pace. Everything that was set up with the gearing structure was well done. On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, 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? I truly haven't looked at the armor sets long enough to give full judgement. The only thing I could say is I loved some of the sets that had Visual effects from Dxun with Emergency Power, Ballast point etc. Those were fun to have and set to certain classes. I did enjoy that and would hope to have something like that HOWEVER the way to get gear sets in Dxun was a massive pain and a horrible grind so keep up with the tokens for it to make it buyable based on your clears and skill. On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, 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? I've cleared R-4 so many times, I've lost count. The Wings of Nihrot look cool but the drop rate seems way too low. I've never seen it drop once in any of my groups and only know a handful of people that ever got it. If something is going to continue to be that low of a drop rate, please make it legacy bound or a possibility for it to be bought once bound on a single toon. It's no fun having friends all bring their mains at the same time to try to get it. Trying on alts doesn't make it as enjoyable for when it does drop because if you win it on that alt, it doesn't have the same excitement as your main would. I would hope that when NiM comes out the drop rate would be guaranteed or have a higher chance to truly reward players going after the hardest difficulty. Thanks for taking the time to read the feedback and really hope we don't have to wait too long for NiM or the next big round of updates as there was a lot more expected this year for 10 years and I truly feel we were mislead unfortunately Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxFalseGodxx Posted October 27, 2022 Share Posted October 27, 2022 (edited) Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? No. This operation killed my raid team. IP-CPT is too difficult in HM and we could not clear it. The team spent months preparing and gearing up and to be faced with that boss with no hope of getting better gear through SM was too demoralizing for them. I'm the only one from that group still playing as far as I know. Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? IP-CPT and it's various mechanics need to deal less damage somehow, or use actual tank mechanics so damage can be directed to a tank and so tanks have something to do instead of playing off-spec as DPS in order to contribute. Groups shouldn't have to play the ideal/meta compositions (powertechs) in order to clear one boss. Groups shouldn't have to exit and swap roles between bosses. The hallway between Watchdog and Kanoth needs to be changed so you can actually get through it without wiping or at least move the respawn/travel point closer. Wiping sucks to begin with but then having to spend all the time to get back to the hallway again is annoying. In general, the Grey Reaper enemy with the grab mechanic that can't be interrupted is really frustrating to fight in the hallway and during Lady Dominique and that should get nerfed somehow. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? I did, but could not because I could not get past the first boss. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? See above. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? I assume it would be, but I couldn't get any so I don't know. Do you like the look of these armor sets? Not really. They seemed more in keeping with the Rakghoul event than this operation. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Yes, but not only for that. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Less clipping on body type 4 of either sex. I don't know if the current ones do since I never got them but that's a problem for armor/outfits in general in this game. Do you like the look of this mount? Yes. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Yes, but not only for that. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? Nothing comes to mind. Edited October 27, 2022 by xxFalseGodxx did not understand how quote worked 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nee-Elder Posted October 28, 2022 Share Posted October 28, 2022 (edited) On 10/12/2022 at 8:31 AM, 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. Let’s start with Progression as a Group. 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? 1. Yes, at least until the final boss BUG'd out lol ( But that seems to have been fixed today with 7.1.1b , so no big whoop ) 2. hmm....that's a tough one , since i'm not sure this particular Op should be all that 'pug-able' . Progression-groups are usually groups of FRIENDS or GUILDmates , so I'd say maybe wait to make any "improvements" to STORY mode version until the NiM version is released. On 10/12/2022 at 8:31 AM, BryantWood said: 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? i mean.... yes , i dunno, & i suppose. But tbqh i'm not the best person to answer those ^ 3 questions since i stopped thinking/worrying about gear & stats once u guys took away the 6.0 'armor shells & sets' system in favor of this 7.0 mess. And btw: i did my 1st couple runs of R4 (as Sage healer) in only 322 gear and we cleared every boss on 1 or 2 pulls. (except Lady D) On 10/12/2022 at 8:31 AM, 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? Sorry but the only "vanity" i somewhat care about in SWTOR is my Founder title. Plus, i despise looted tokens for buying armor/weapons , since i prefer schematics (to encourage player-crafting and player-harvesting) . But to answer your 3 ^ questions: No, no, and yes: Stop with all the 349753 types of 'currency' and get back to what MMO's should be about: PLAYER-crafted items. On 10/12/2022 at 8:31 AM, 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? 1. No, since it reminds of 'AION' or 'Cinderella' . (instead of STAR WARS , you know the game we're playing ) 2. Heck no, since the mount is not only hideously un-StarWars but also has zero functional distinction from all the other 3478 re-skin mounts in the game. ( Besides which, unlike @EricMusco, i don't find RNG to be "so fun!". ) 3. Yes , how 'bout trying this: Make the bosses drop PARTS to build a mount. This way, if say there's 5 or 10 'pieces' needed for construction, it would not only still motivate players to keep coming back over & over again to run thru the entire Op boss fights , but also once the lucky player completed his/her collection it would give us real sense-of-worth and sense-of-cyber-ownership (of the mount) since we had BUILT it ourselves---err i mean, since our Crew did at least. (*You could even have certain rare parts/pieces give enhancements to the mount, such as: Speed, Shield, Effects, Tricks, etc. etc. ) On 10/12/2022 at 8:31 AM, BryantWood said: This feedback will be valuable to us going forward as we develop future Operations and review existing Operations. Overall , @BryantWood, whichever Dev/Coder team has been designing the Ops lately (Dxun and now R-4) is doing a SUPERB job imo. Very fun dynamic fights, combined with challenging mechanics (both at the bosses as well as within the general terrain/world of the Op grounds itself) . My only wish (other than the few links/suggestions in my forum 'sig' below ) is that somehow please for the next Op: Incorporate SPACE! Put the 'STAR' back into Star Wars after all. HINT: make the next Op a ground/air COMBO....by using.....*drum-roll*....this negleted thing called.... GSF! Edited November 1, 2022 by Nee-Elder Reason: just imagine what SWTOR could be....still ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dev Post BryantWood Posted November 10, 2022 Author Dev Post Share Posted November 10, 2022 Hi everyone, hopping in to give a big thank you to everyone who has responded so far and a future thank you to any further responses! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darknilhus Posted November 10, 2022 Share Posted November 10, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes, although as many people have pointed out, IPCPT (as it was tuned before the nerf) should not have been the first boss of the operation, mainly because Watchdog and Kanoth are way easier. Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Improve the difficulty curve of the operation, which has partly been done with the IPCPT nerf. However I believe it was the wrong way to adress this issue as this boss was perfectly doable in 330 gear before the nerf. A better solution would have been to make Watchdog the first boss and IPCPT the second. The following suggestions would not necessarly make the progression easier but would give more consistency to the operation difficulty wise, forcing groups stuck at IPCPT to improve their gameplay instead of looking for ways to go around the challenge. Currently the raid is in a weird place with the first and last boss being actually challenging while the second and third boss are way easier in comparison. This leads to the "cheating" technique described in many posts above consisting in getting lockouts of second and third boss to get gear and killing IPCPT afterwards. To avoid that, bosses 2 and 3 should be more difficult. Watchdog should have dps and healing checks (the boss is currently solo healable, with no dps requirements whatsoever as long as the mechanics are well executed. Kanoth is missing a dps check (before the burn phase) aswell, the fight can last more than 10 minutes without any consequences as long as people keep clearing the niroth. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Yes, it is a good way to supplement the purple tokens and bringing to 340 the pieces that otherwise only drop from last boss. It is also nice to gear alts faster. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? I decided to upgrade each piece of gear directly to 340 in one go so it would take me 1 or 2 raid days to do so, which is reasonable. However, it is much longer for tanks as 340 blue gear is BIS for them (so make the purple 340 gear BIS for tanks and problem solved!) Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? It gives a sizable dps boost compared to 330 gear, especially the mainhand. As for healing, the entire operation can be clear in 330 gear without problem, so Hazardous (or even Virulent) gear wasn't that helpful. Do you like the look of these armor sets? Not really, they are not ugly but we have many, many more options that look way better. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? No, since I did not like the look of them. Achievements, title and mount were my incentives to clear R-4. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Like other players suggested, armor similar to the one earned in Dxun, with light effects and animations and armor of iconic operation bosses like the dread master outfits. But there is so much more that could be earned in operations: weapons, weapon tunings, toys, flairs... I know most of those are reserved for cartel market but it would be really nice to get more stuff from raids, especially since the pace of release for that type of content is really slow. Do you like the look of this mount? Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? I think the mount looks nice, however the drop rate is way too low (I have not seen it drop once) to make it a reason to clear R-4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aakurb Posted November 11, 2022 Share Posted November 11, 2022 Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Yes, as we got better and better gear it became easier to kill/farm the bosses Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Don't gate specific gear types behind particular bosses. For example, some of us are just using blue 340 main hands instead of purple just because Dominique got buffed in the recent patch to the point where it's impossible to consistently clear the boss. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Absolutely, since it's BiS for tanks (at least pieces with tertiary stats). How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Relatively quickly but it would be great to have the prices reduced. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Again, since it's BiS for tanks, it was very helpful. Also people managed to get blue 340 main hands, gloves and boots and reach optimal tertiary stats. Do you like the look of these armor sets? Nothing special to say, honestly. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? Never bought anything cosmetic from the token vendor. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Dxun armor sets had nice holo shield effects. Would be very nice to see some theme in future ops armors. Do you like the look of this mount? It looks alright but loses to the Wings of the Architect and Dxun Reaper. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? Dozens of times, only saw it drop once. Honestly, the drop rate is unacceptably low. I know people who killed Kanoth hundreds of times and only saw 1-2 drops. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? Higher drop chance or a way to guarantee getting a mount (for example, Dxun timer unlocks the mount for all raid team members which is amazing and provides additional motivation to complete the timed run) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercometl Posted November 11, 2022 Share Posted November 11, 2022 On 10/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, 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? So I want to step in just to touch on a few ideas I had for how to better implement the cosmetic shells for future operation rewards. R4 HM has two main sets of achievements, clear achievements and "mastery" achievements. I think a more rewarding way of integrating these armor sets into rewards would get rid of their token requirement but instead have them be locked behind achievement progression, like with the items on the Dantooine and Mek-sha vendors. (Yarvok's gratitude and Honorary bouncer's badge) This way the marks of mastery have an additional draw, and it removes the need to farm a operation that players are already farming to the point of hating it. With R4 in particular I would split it with the SM sets being all tied to completing the operation on SM, The reskin shells of HM armor behind HM boss clears, and the unique style (the one with asymmetrical shoulder pads) behind marks of mastery achievements. With this the player could utilize these style armors without sacrificing gearing, especially with the amount of main and offhands that need to be acquired if you play a tech class, while also having a reason to target the achievements more aggressively. I do like that there are these alternate outfits in principle, they kind of function like the duxn armors did before, giving a reason to push the content even if just for a cosmetic... well save for emergency power which was meta. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schwigi Posted November 11, 2022 Share Posted November 11, 2022 (edited) To give a perspective of the player skill level in Patch 6.x we did regular HM operations and were working on Duxn HM. Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation? Not at all. After 3 month we are not able to finish Lady Dominique in story mode yet and did not even approach hard mode. Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like? Fix all the bugs that are already mentioned above. Make sure that story mode operations are story mode operations and not hard mode in disguise. Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Almost certainly, but it is not possible. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? Not at all Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? No, since we cannot get it. Do you like the look of these armor sets? I personally do not really care. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? No 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? Looks quite impressive. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? No As seen by the comments above, for the semi regular player it is not really possible to get a gear progression after hitting IR330. Since story mode lockout is reset every day it is not easily possible to learn the tactics for the later bosses. We are usually planing for a 2 hour session. So you have to spend like an hour and a half to get to Lady Dominique and have about half an hour left to learn the fight. So in my opinion the difficulty level for a story mode operation is missed completely. A regular operation group with voice chat should be able to clear any story mode operation without too much trouble. It currently feels like R4 SM should be HM. From what I read above HM feels more like NiM. Edited November 11, 2022 by schwigi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximusRex Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 (edited) 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? No, compared to 6.0 all operations are overtuned in the 7.x dev cycle. In the 6.0 Cycle with 306 gear and purple augs my serious ops team cleared VM Temple of Sacrifice, VM Ravagers and almost cleared NiM Dread Fortress. We also worked on VM Dxun but had a bought of player turnover there and got burned out and decided to switch our focus. VM R4 just feels like a giant rooster block and all the gear that would help is locked behind a VM that is tuned like a NiM. I've played Ops since launch and this cycle is by far the worst cycle in the history of the game. 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, tune the content appropriately to its stated difficulty level. Groups that progressed solidly through VM and NiM content in 6.0 should not be struggling on VM content in 7.0. That is a massive design failure on the part of the dev team. 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? I just want moddable gear back that I can upgrade my mods in, the entire 7.0 gearing cycle is a convoluted overly complicated mess, and it makes managing gear sets and augments a nightmare. I can't wait until the devs get it through their obstinate heads that no one likes it and it is terrible, so they scrap it entirely and bring back a good gearing system. How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear? We haven't cleared any bosses yet. We were making very slow progress on post nerf IP-CPT but decided two weeks ago to get a lockout and work on Watchdog instead to try and get some gear. We are getting close but haven't downed him yet. Was Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly? Don't know, but it can't hurt. 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? No. Might collect anyhow if it is in collections Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets? No Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors? Take more inspiration from Star Wars source material and then take your own take on that. Maybe don't save all the cool sets for the Cartel Market. 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? Yes, it's pretty cool in an evil butterfly kind of way. Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount? No. While a lot of people desire cool drops from difficult content it is just foolish, frustrating, and unfun to go after super rare drops. Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts? 100% drop rates so we can reasonably work to earn it for our whole team. Edited November 17, 2022 by MaximusRex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts