Please Help A Confused Returning Player

[Samcuu]

21 hours ago, Stradlin said:

All those cool sets with interesting set bonus..gone.

Almost every set bonus still exists in the game. They've been moved over to implants now instead. You need to unlock the vendor with a mission. He's in the same room where u upgrade ur gear, he's a big twilek guy standing next to a Droid. 

[DawnAskham]

Only Bioware could be so competently incompetent to create such a system.

I couldn't make a gearing system this bad if I tried.

Edited March 2, 2023 by DawnAskham

[JediQuaker]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

Only Bioware could be so competently incompetent to create such a system.

I couldn't make a gearing system this bad if I tried.

Don't underestimate yourself. 😅

[Samcuu]

On 3/1/2023 at 12:08 AM, Stradlin said:

All those cool sets with interesting set bonus..gone.

Almost every set bonus still exists in the game. They've been moved over to implants now instead. You need to unlock the vendor with a mission. He's in the same room where u upgrade ur gear, he's a big twilek guy standing next to a Droid. 

[Samcuu]

Lots of crying cuz the gearing actually takes some forethought? Lol, sit down for 10 minutes and read a guide it's quite simple to gear. I just gave u all a way to get 336 purples in one day of grinding. 7.2 gearing is even easier than 6.0 was because the RNG is taken out of the equation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Death-Hammer]

1 hour ago, Samcuu said:

Lots of crying cuz the gearing actually takes some forethought? Lol, sit down for 10 minutes and read a guide it's quite simple to gear. I just gave u all a way to get 336 purples in one day of grinding. 7.2 gearing is even easier than 6.0 was because the RNG is taken out of the equation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We should not have to go to an outside source to understand how to gear. That is a fundamental failure of a system.

[JediQuaker]

1 minute ago, Death-Hammer said:

We should not have to go to an outside source to understand how to gear. That is a fundamental failure of a system.

Or, a fundamental failure of your understanding. 😂

[Samcuu]

8 minutes ago, Death-Hammer said:

We should not have to go to an outside source to understand how to gear. That is a fundamental failure of a system.

You don't have to. All you have to do is look around on fleet at the vendors and you will figure it out on ur own. If u don't want to think about it u can go to an outside source like u did here and we can walk u through it like we just did. Follow my steps and you'll be fully geared in 336 purples in a week or so. Simples tbh. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Samcuu

[Death-Hammer]

3 minutes ago, JediQuaker said:

Or, a fundamental failure of your understanding. 😂

No. this gearing system is not defensible. It's a disaster. Anyone who defends it is either trolling or just plain blind

[Death-Hammer]

Just now, Samcuu said:

You don't have to. All you have to do is look around on fleet at the vendors and you will figure it out on ur own. If u don't want to think about it u can go to an outside source like u did here and we can walk u through it like we just did. Follow my steps and you'll be fully geared in 336 purples in a week or so. Simplest tbh. 

If I'm taking my frustration out on you, then I apologize. I expected a gearing system as simple as 6.0. I made a couple of stupid choices before I understood the system even a little. I find this system of gearing frustrating. Like why doesn't fp boss drop a piece of gear higher guaranteed? Such a simple addition would make gearing so much easier.

[Samcuu]

10 minutes ago, Death-Hammer said:

If I'm taking my frustration out on you, then I apologize. I expected a gearing system as simple as 6.0. I made a couple of stupid choices before I understood the system even a little. I find this system of gearing frustrating. Like why doesn't fp boss drop a piece of gear higher guaranteed? Such a simple addition would make gearing so much easier.

Honestly I can't really speak to the fps or ops bosses and what they drop. I only focused on pvp which does give u an auto upgrade to ur lowest piece of gear when u open a crate. So it's very easy to cheese the drops and get whatever piece you want simply by wearing a lower piece of gear in whatever slot you want to upgrade. Anyways they listened to the concerns and that's why they made a vendor. 

Again for emphasis all you have to do is get one piece of 336 blue, pick up the missions to deconstruct it, and it will unlock all the blue 336 components so u can fill up ur old legacy gear shells with 336 gear. 

[Advocatis]

I thought you leveled the armor to max, then made or bought an augment kit to insert augments (made or bought) into the armor. Hyde and Zeek made a better grade of augments available.

So the process is to augment shells instead?  And they replace the Decurion (or whatever grade armor the player earns)?

[AdjeYo]

54 minutes ago, Advocatis said:

I thought you leveled the armor to max, then made or bought an augment kit to insert augments (made or bought) into the armor. Hyde and Zeek made a better grade of augments available.

So the process is to augment shells instead?  And they replace the Decurion (or whatever grade armor the player earns)?

Hyde and Zeek sell item modifications (which you can put into empty shells yourself), most geardrops don't have them, they just have the stats. So you either grab the gear with stats or empty shells with mods (those will be effectively the same, giving the same stats). Augments are entirely separate from that. 

[Ardrossan]

On 3/2/2023 at 11:36 AM, Death-Hammer said:

No. this gearing system is not defensible. It's a disaster. Anyone who defends it is either trolling or just plain blind

There will always be simps who think that everything BioWare does is the best idea ever. You've met a few in this thread already. They aren't trolling, they genuinely believe that sucking up to the devs is the way to go. 

As for why they chose to take several steps backwards from the horizontal gearing approach they implemented in 6.0, you might ask why they chose to change the map which was perfectly functional, to a new map design that makes it harder to see where you're going. Or why they changed the UI. Or why they created several rep vendors with nothing to buy. Or why they changed the forum (still can't post images lol). Or why they're going to update the graphics (when my computer freezes every time I open legacy storage).

It's been clear since at least 5.0 (maybe earlier) that much of what the devs do in these updates is busywork that gives their EA slave overseers the misleading impression that the devs have been getting a lot done when they've actually done very little that progresses the game.

Their 'fix' for the inflation problem comes from the same energy: they'll try the ridiculous scheme of taxing quick travel and when that fails they can say "oh well we tried this one thing, that didn't work (not going to revert the changes though!) so now we'll try something else!" to give them another actionable item they can use to fill up spreadsheets of completed tasks. 

When/if 8.0 churns out in a couple years, they will undoubtedly change the gearing system again to something else, maybe less convoluted, maybe more. I pvp but I see no reason to gear up beyond 326, the system is stupid and deliberate trash so they have something that they can spend months applying small fixes to in order to trick people into believing that outside of the small content updates they produce, they're hard at work 'improving' the game.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Stradlin]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

you might ask why they chose to change the map which was perfectly functional, to a new map design that makes it harder to see where you're going. Or why they changed the UI. Or why they created several rep vendors with nothing to buy.

 

 

I have a /tinfoil about this. Back when Anthem failed, EA had lots of Bioware studio devs to move around and re-employ. While figuring out where to put them, they passed few guys over to SWTOR for 4-8 months or something, til they figure out some more lasting place with some brand new game for them. So TOR devs suddenly  got like 1-2 new colleagues who have specialized in UI design. That is all they do. And what do you do with UI designers who do nothing else? Wellp, redesign the UI I guess. Regardless of how necessary it is or  isn't. So you have people who know nothing about a 10 year old game making a new UI for it. They might be talented and all, but they don't know the game and aren't used to it. So they make a do-over that is a combination of  pointless parts and some steps backwards. On the  plus side, some of TOR's UI  now kinda looks like  some looter shooter. Which is exactly what literally nobody ever wanted. 

 

Some of the changes are just..wild. Character creation screen for example. Nice hangar that has some movement and life to it. Something that comes with a sense of character about to depart for an adventure? Naah, scratch that. Feel free to enjoy this black screen of nothingness instead. Old character creation screen had issues such as player being able to figure out how the character would look in the game world. This has been fixed with such hyper lighting that character you design, skin color and so on, will look nothing like what it actually does, in game..

 

Crazy 100% pointless forced pop ins upon login are my favorite. I love the daily tasks menu, that some people can't even figure out how to close, assuming they aren't used to UI customization yet:D 

 

 

 

I know nothing,purely speculation. But I claim it a valid theory:p

"Darn it, I sure hope this game gets a reworked UI!"

- Said nobody ever, til 7.0 that is.

 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by Stradlin

[Ardrossan]

2 hours ago, Stradlin said:

 

Some of the changes are just..wild. Character creation screen for example. Nice hangar that has some movement and life to it. Something that comes with a sense of character about to depart for an adventure? Naah, scratch that. Feel free to enjoy this black screen of nothingness instead. Old character creation screen had issues such as player being able to figure out how the character would look in the game world. This has been fixed with such hyper lighting that character you design, skin color and so on, will look nothing like what it actually does, in game..

Right, that's a perfect example. Completely unnecessary, makes it harder not easier to customize. I detest the new character creation screens. They make changes so they can say that they made changes. 

[Stradlin]

Just now, Ardrossan said:

Right, that's a perfect example. Completely unnecessary, makes it harder not easier to customize. I detest the new character creation screens. They make changes so they can say that they made changes. 

Yes that's pretty much it. Changes that look nice in CVs of people who made them. I vaguely recall like..vanilla TOR having some really clumsy bits  in UI..but all of those had been polished away by 3.0 or something like that. Have you ever heard anyone wishing some drastic makeovers for character creation,, paperdoll, etc? All of it was perfectly fine. 

 

Couple of legit UI improvements TOR is missing ofc didn't happen. (Search window for inventories, bit fancier procs and vital buffs display)

[Ardrossan]

10 minutes ago, Stradlin said:

Yes that's pretty much it. Changes that look nice in CVs of people who made them. I vaguely recall like..vanilla TOR having some really clumsy bits  in UI..but all of those had been polished away by 3.0 or something like that. Have you ever heard anyone wishing some drastic makeovers for character creation,, paperdoll, etc? All of it was perfectly fine. 

 

Couple of legit UI improvements TOR is missing ofc didn't happen. (Search window for inventories, bit fancier procs and vital buffs display)

I love how they changed this forum and non-subs still can't post anywhere in here. I recall Jackie saying they would "think about it" lmao. What is there to think about exactly? non subs can already post in Steam discussions and have been doing so since the Steam client launched. All the elitist rationalizations for locking F2P out has turned out to be nonsense (and it always was). Update the forum but confine it to the same two dozen players posting lmao. 

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Stradlin]

2 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

I love how they changed this forum and non-subs still can't post anywhere in here. I recall Jackie saying they would "think about it" lmao. What is there to think about exactly? non subs can already post in Steam discussions and have been doing so since the Steam client launched. All the elitist rationalizations for locking F2P out has turned out to be nonsense (and it always was). Update the forum but confine it to the same two dozen players posting lmao. 

 

 

I think the new forums look pretty nice..but they're way, way too quiet for their own good. Two people talking about stuff like this, managing like 4 posts an hour is nit busier than the norm here. Not sure how much it'd help to let preferred join. It'd help some, for sure. I assume they worry about gold seller spam and such.

Besides game just having bit less players, I think  this surprising wealth of silence here is mostly  about world moving on from forums like this in general.  People use time they have to waste for..well, for this in reddit and discord now. TOR is far busier on both of those platforms. And steam ig? Never checked that one personally.  Neither really fills the void forums have left, yet they've replaced forums for almost everybody. Is a shame rly!

 

[Ardrossan]

1 minute ago, Stradlin said:

 

I think the new forums look pretty nice..but they're way, way too quiet for their own good. Two people talking about stuff like this, managing like 4 posts an hour is nit busier than the norm here. Not sure how much it'd help to let preferred join. It'd help some, for sure. I assume they worry about gold seller spam and such.

Besides game just having bit less players, I think  this surprising wealth of silence here is mostly  about world moving on from forums like this in general.  People use time they have to waste for..well, for this in reddit and discord now. TOR is far busier on both of those platforms. And steam ig? Never checked that one personally.  Neither really fills the void forums have left, yet they've replaced forums for almost everybody. Is a shame rly!

 

It's true, they missed the window when having preferred players / F2P would be beneficial. The time to do that was 5 years ago at least. Yeah nobody uses forums much anymore. Of course, that goes back to why did they make a new forum after a decade? Increasingly when i have a question about the game I post it on reddit. 

[eabevella]

8 hours ago, Stradlin said:

Yes that's pretty much it. Changes that look nice in CVs of people who made them. I vaguely recall like..vanilla TOR having some really clumsy bits  in UI..but all of those had been polished away by 3.0 or something like that. Have you ever heard anyone wishing some drastic makeovers for character creation,, paperdoll, etc? All of it was perfectly fine. 

 

Couple of legit UI improvements TOR is missing ofc didn't happen. (Search window for inventories, bit fancier procs and vital buffs display)

Or a billboard to show/display guilds.

This function will greatly benefit players and guilds of all sorts.

At the very least players can see what guilds are available so that they can pick one to join instead of basically relying on random invitation that may or may not be a scam (it's a problem for new players and we already seen guilds exploited them), and even the smallest guild has a better chance to be seen if there is a list for all guilds and their basic information (with a basic search and sort options).

Maybe not a pure "UI" improvement but definitely something we should have.

[Stradlin]

On 2/23/2023 at 6:16 PM, StrikePrice said:

I'll give you the easiest way. Don't try and understand it. Just do it.  This assumes you have fully modded 306 gear. If you don't, just ignore those steps. I'm not covering how to get your Legendary Implants, look up another guide on that.

1. Complete personal conquest
2. Purchase a full set of 324 gear from the conquest vendor
3. Put all your 306 gear in your bank, we will use the shells later
4. Run Vet flashpoints wearing your conquest 324 gear. Bosses will drop 324 "elite" gear.
4a. Bosses *might* also drop blue accessories (ear, implant, relic)
5. Equip full set of 324 elite gear. Equip any blue relics that drop.
6. Once you get a full set of 324 "elite" gear, you will start to get blue accessory drops.
7. Equip a full set of 324 "elite" gear, all blue accessories except 1 green 324 relic (always keep this one on). This is the critical step.
7a. Because you are wearing one green relic, the bosses will always drop blue gear. Blue gear disassembles for 10 FP currency instead of 3. So you get 30 per run.
8. Run Vet FPs. You will now get all blue drops. Upgrade you ear or implants, keep the 1 green relic at 324
9.  Continue to run Vet FPs. If you get a blue ear upgrade to the blue ear you have, use it. If not, collect enough currency to upgrade your ear to 336
9a. This will require approximately 25 Vet FP runs. It will be less if you get lucky drops and do the dailies and weeklies. 
10. Once you have your 336 blue ear piece. Get the Hyde & Zeek quest for 336 prototype gear.
11. Make sure you have the correct quest before you go past this step.
12. To fish the quest, disassemble your 336 ear. Warning: If you do this step without the proper quest, you will have to start all over.
13. You can now buy 336 mods from Hyde & Zeek. 
14. Get your old 306 gear out of your bank.
15. Modify it with 336 blue mods (you only need to do this if you had augmented 306 gear).
16. You now have 336 augmented gear.
17. Repeat the process until you can upgrade to all 336 accessories.
18. You now have 336 gear.

See? Simple. 

Thank you for this.

 

It is dififcult to describe gearing in 7.x in words that wouldn't get one banned on these forums.

Way I play TOR nettos me with so few DRMs that this stuff will take ages it seems..

 

Its such a terrible gearing system omg

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Stradlin

[Skolops]

Honestly, as someone else who has also recently returned after several years off the complaints about this system don't really resonate with me. I find the current gearing system to be waaaaaay better than what we had before. At the very least, it's a lot less work.

One of the "requirements" for my coming back to the game was that gearing up would not be too arduous. If I was going to come back I wanted to come back to play, not to spend weeks and months trying to grind for gear, which is how it felt to me before. I hated the Galactic Command system. You had to play and play and play to increase your galactic command level at a glacially slow pace. This allowed you very slowly get better drops from random loot boxes so that you could slowly over time collect the right pieces to get the set bonus you wanted. Meanwhile you were constantly gambling on the amplifiers - an idea that I actually didn't hate but along with everything else was just more RNG to have to rely on. The worst part was that this was for one character. There was a system where once you got one character to level 300 it made other characters advance a bit faster, but it was still a long, long grind to get the one character up there which just allowed your other characters to each go through less arduous grinds. 

With around 16 characters this was awful.

The current system is so, so much better.  I had to play for a little under a week and now Hyde and Zeek are unlocked for the max possible gear so now after five or six evenings  I can basically gear out all of my characters with some of the best gear available. The implants will take longer to get for everyone, but I don't mind this since I can choose exactly the bonuses I want without having to wait for the right drop. This will give a worthwhile sense of progression as I do get the different implants and upgrade them over time playing, so I will still get that sense of my characters getting stronger and having something to aim for, while still letting me feel like I have gotten them to a more than viable state of gearing with very little work that took less than a week. 

[Wilsu_Addar]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:16 AM, StrikePrice said:

I'll give you the easiest way. Don't try and understand it. Just do it.  This assumes you have fully modded 306 gear. If you don't, just ignore those steps. I'm not covering how to get your Legendary Implants, look up another guide on that.

1. Complete personal conquest
2. Purchase a full set of 324 gear from the conquest vendor
3. Put all your 306 gear in your bank, we will use the shells later
4. Run Vet flashpoints wearing your conquest 324 gear. Bosses will drop 324 "elite" gear.
4a. Bosses *might* also drop blue accessories (ear, implant, relic)
5. Equip full set of 324 elite gear. Equip any blue relics that drop.
6. Once you get a full set of 324 "elite" gear, you will start to get blue accessory drops.
7. Equip a full set of 324 "elite" gear, all blue accessories except 1 green 324 relic (always keep this one on). This is the critical step.
7a. Because you are wearing one green relic, the bosses will always drop blue gear. Blue gear disassembles for 10 FP currency instead of 3. So you get 30 per run.
8. Run Vet FPs. You will now get all blue drops. Upgrade you ear or implants, keep the 1 green relic at 324
9.  Continue to run Vet FPs. If you get a blue ear upgrade to the blue ear you have, use it. If not, collect enough currency to upgrade your ear to 336
9a. This will require approximately 25 Vet FP runs. It will be less if you get lucky drops and do the dailies and weeklies. 
10. Once you have your 336 blue ear piece. Get the Hyde & Zeek quest for 336 prototype gear.
11. Make sure you have the correct quest before you go past this step.
12. To fish the quest, disassemble your 336 ear. Warning: If you do this step without the proper quest, you will have to start all over.
13. You can now buy 336 mods from Hyde & Zeek. 
14. Get your old 306 gear out of your bank.
15. Modify it with 336 blue mods (you only need to do this if you had augmented 306 gear).
16. You now have 336 augmented gear.
17. Repeat the process until you can upgrade to all 336 accessories.
18. You now have 336 gear.

See? Simple. 

 

I have followed these steps.  I am currently on step 7a....I am wearing all green elite gear, all blue accessories except 1 green relic...the bosses continue to drop a mix of blue and green gear.  

Has this been hotfixed or removed? 

[StrikePrice]

1 hour ago, Wilsu_Addar said:

 

I have followed these steps.  I am currently on step 7a....I am wearing all green elite gear, all blue accessories except 1 green relic...the bosses continue to drop a mix of blue and green gear.  

Has this been hotfixed or removed? 

Is the green relic lower rating than your other gear? If all your other gear is green & blue 324 (which is sounds like it is), the other relic needs to be lower ... like 306.