I recognize that opinions are subjective, but BOBF is definitely the red-headed step-child, compared to Mandalorian. And the PT had at least one good movie (ROTS), whereas the ST had zero good films. So, you were saying?

That's actually an entire separate issue and is not what I was getting at. At least currently, though, since tertiary stats scale down, you are correct. Having purple 330s might shave off mere seconds in a heroic, versus wearing greens, or even 306s. The difference is negligible, at best. Gear really doesn't even matter in raids much, right now, unless you're doing Vet/NiM ops.

That's fine. Your take is reasonable. The person I directly responded to was not. The person I responded to was belligerently angry and saying that the money they spent should have earned them the best gear in the game. I still question the need for the gear. You can do all story content in the game in green 318s or worse. You don't need purple 330s. But at least you're not expecting the best gear for nothing but money, like some people do.

You got max gear on all those characters by working for the gear. You earned it, at some point. You didn't log in at the launch of 6.0 and find a full set of 306 gear with gold implants in your mailbox, courtesy of Bioware. You earned it. You may have easily earned it (because 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 made gearing easy), but you did earn it. The only thing that changed with 7.0 is how easily you earn it. Don't take my stance here as defending Bioware. I'm not. I am a hardcore raider and I hate this new gearing system, too. It's atrocious. I was talking **** about the system before it launched and it's worse than I thought it would be. I'm not happy with the new gearing system. All I'm pointing out here is that spending money on a game does not entitle a player to the best gear. SWTOR, in the history of SWTOR, has NEVER been P2W. That's not how this game works. Anyone thinking that $15 a month entitles them to the best gear in the game is objectively delusional, because the game has never, ever, in its entire history, given out the best gear available in exchange for a subscription. It just hasn't. There is no reality that exists where that would be true. Dr. Strange checked the multiverse and he can't find one. That's not how SWTOR works.

Lightning Sorcs are struggling these days. That sounds reasonable to me. Marauders are currently overpowered. If they were struggling, it wasn't because their gear sucked. This is the only example here where I can see some merit to the "better gear needed" argument. Not that you'll be running Umbara all the time. Most players quit when they load into it because that last boss is just obnoxiously difficult for most groups, even in 6.0. But sure, I'll throw you a bone on this one. You say yourself here that the DPS were new. The problem here wasn't the gear. And depending on what spec those Snipers were, it may not have even been their skill. There's only one Sniper spec that actually parses well in 7.0 right now. Throwing BiS gear at people for minimum effort for 2-3 expansions in a row is how the playerbase got to the point where it looks like half the DPS you run with don't know what the **** they're doing. They don't learn their class, because they get carried by fantastic gear and better players and think they're doing fine-- and when push comes to shove they can't pull their weight. Maybe all of the bad DPS that you say you were with were just new, in which case, good. Hopefully they'll get better over time. If you know a player isn't pulling their weight, and you plan to complete the content that you can't complete because of a certain player, then yes. Either quitting and reforming with different people, or kicking the people weighing you down is, in fact, the answer. You may not like it, but it sounds like you're never going to clear a semi-difficult FP with that Marauder.

When you buy an RPG of any kind-- or at least a AAA RPG-- you aren't just given the best gear at the outset of the game. You ramp up your gear over time with hard work-- such as procuring loot from dungeons, buying them from vendors, crafting them, going on some asinine fetch quest, or if you're in an MMO perhaps trading for it. You pay a set amount of money for this RPG, but you don't get the best gear just because you paid for the game. You are provided the opportunity to earn the best gear, but it's not just gifted to you. Before you raise your hackles and come up with a retort, this analogy applies to other video game genres, as well. In Call of Duty multiplayer, you have to unlock all the different weapons, weapon accessories, and paints by leveling up in multiplayer and you can level up faster by being a better player. In Forza or Need for Speed, you aren't given the best cars in the game at the start of your save. You have to buy them with money/credits you earn as you play and upgrades are sometimes story-gated. You paid the same amount of money as hardcore raiders to have the opportunity to work for your gear, not so you could just have your gear. If you didn't understand this before paying for a subscription, that's not on Bioware. That's on you.

This bug also occurs (although much more rarely) on the first boss fight, and during the cutscene after you interact with Malgus (assuming this horrendous bug doesn't stop you from beating him). The latter occurs 100% of the time. I literally hear my character cry out in agony as it falls through the terrain, in spite of the cutscene continuing unabated. On one occasion, a Shadow Stride caused me to fall through the map for about 60 seconds before I actually died. And pushes of any kind initiated by the player seem to be able to do this to trash mobs. I don't want to upend your investigation/troubleshooting process, or anything, but it really seems like the problem isn't with the attacks that are occurring. It's with the terrain. Or at least, that's the bottom denominator.

"I knew that if I kept playing it would consume my life." "I just like WoW better." -this person has since moved onto FFXIV

I mean, my overall point was that "temporary" may be a questionable term to use if its going to be here for the foreseeable future. By your logic, all max gear ratings are temporary and there's no point grinding for gear, even if you're a serious raider. You're just going to have to regrind in 20 months when another expansion drops, so why bother? /s But this was kind of a sidebar to my larger point: That this system is objectively bad and doesn't actually make things fairer for the average player. The removal of the Need/Greed/Pass system only inundates players inventory with more junk and makes things harder to get when players that would normally Pass on something are forcibly given an item they don't care for anyway.

So, you think the drop rate of items, which directly impacts how easily you can get an item, has no relevance to the removal of the Need/Greed/Pass system, which also directly impacts how easily you can win an item? Alright, I'll take that, as long as you accept my offer on this bridge I'm selling you.

I know. I'm one of them, but I wasn't specifically talking about personal loot. I was talking about the overarching system that now exists, which is what OP asked about. If you'd bothered to actually read, you would have understood this and not made this farcical statement. The other one of the three also is specifically complaining about the removal of Need/Greed/Pass, not Personal Loot, which we've had as a system since at least 6.0 (being able to loot a dedicated set of gear, that may or may not be useful to you, for the preferred discipline of the character that you are playing) edit: So out of this extremely small and anecdotal sample set, only one person is complaining about personal loot, and even that's not entirely clear as they didn't specify what, exactly, they were complaining about.

I've seen the opposite reaction on Discords. People either haven't been commenting on it (probably because they didn't realize the change was implemented-- my GM didn't realize loot rules had been changed until we were discussing it last night) or generally dislike it. Also, you're arguing against an argument that nobody has made. No one said the personal loot system was bad. Most folks aren't even arguing against the removal of Master Looter. The main problem is the removal of Need/Greed/Pass.

I'd love to know why you think any of these things are irrelevant, and would also love to know how you answered each of these on your own.

Where did you get that idea? The only way I can see you derived that is if you read as this being an interim step to another "improved" system somewhere in the far future. Onslaught was released in October of 2019. If SWTOR doesn't significantly update or change the loot rules issued in 6.3.2 for a similar length of time, then it looks like we'll be stuck with this system for a year, at minimum. And given the questionable nature of whether or not the current system is actually an improvement, I hesitate to ask for a newer "positive" change.

I will forgive Bioware for not giving us a hood toggle after 10 years if they revert this loot system.