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JaeOnasi

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  1. These proposed changes in the first post do nothing to stop those folks who've amassed billions. What's 800 credits to someone with 100 billion? Nothing. What's 800 credits to a new player? A LOT. The quick travel costs will hurt new folks and have zero effect on billionaires. This stronghold/guild ship travel costs punish roleplaying and travel costs, especially for new players. My guild roleplays 4 times a week with some players doing side roleplay on the guild ship and strongholds. If you institute costs for travel to strongholds, some of our new players aren't going to be able to travel unless someone gives them credits. Things you can do that won't disproportionately affect newer players or those with few credits: 1. Be more aggressive on banning RMT. You can't control the economy while RMTers are pouring credits into the economy. You may as well pee into the wind if you don't enact any changes without dealing with the gold sellers. 2. Raise the credit cap on the GTN. People are selling outside of the GTN because those items currently exceed the allowed GTN amount. 3. You need to find a way to incentivize high-credit purchases and put in high credit sinks. You could start by doing what Guild Wars 2 does by allowing credits to be exchanged for cartel coins. Make the credit cost high, but put it there. Add in a lot more dyes, cosmetic items, different armors, mounts, weapons, crystals, decorations, hairstyles, hair colors, facial styles, etc that can be bought with credits. Fashion is the true end game for many, and players will spend a LOT for it, if it's anything like I've seen playing Guild Wars 1 and 2 and Final Fantasy 14. 4. Perhaps re-institute amplifiers, but don't build the amplifier numbers into NIM/Master Mode content to the extent that those become required. These don't have to be high percentages, but the min-maxxers like me will love the extra couple of percent so long as you make it so it's not required to clear content for newer raiders/PvPers. And yes, I know a bunch of us will gripe about the cost, but it certainly was a huge credit sink for me. 5. Allow us to buy more gear mod/left size max items. I'd pay a lot of credits to gear out a bunch of my alts just so I wouldn't have to stick my one set of min-max gear into legacy bay to transfer it to another toon all the time. I could live with needing to have to turn in the first item I acquire in order to unlock it for the rest of my alts. Maybe you have to have a certain item level in order to talk to the vendor, or put more items for sale with Zeek and Frik (or whatever their names are) for the current 336 armor mods. 6. Increase the amounts of grade 11 mats for augments, stims, and medpacs gathered from nodes, and put out more nodes. Increase the supply and the demand goes down. 7. Make crafting relevant. Let the crafters make items that are close to equivalent to end game gear. Allow them to make cool-looking outfits, dyes, weapons, tunings, and crystals that are crafter-only. 8. Allow us to dye weapons in addition to gear, or offer more color skins to current weapons. 9. Sell some of the Grade 11 mats for credits in addition to scraps--make those mats bind-on-pickup so they can't be resold for more on the GTN. People will pay for the convenience.
  2. Nearly spit out my drink laughing at you saying BW continuing "bringing this vision to life" could only be viewed as a threat. You're not wrong, though. At least they made it crystal clear that they've chosen the "My way or the highway" method of interacting with players. I guess for me in 44 days it'll be the highway.
  3. Perhaps this is why since Jan 1 alone, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson has sold 20,000 shares of EA stock, COO Laura Miele has sold 9,300 shares, CFO Blake Jorgensen has sold 6,630 shares, CPO Vijayanthimala Singh has sold 1,600 shares, and CLO Jacob Schatz has sold 2,000 shares.
  4. Thanks for the update. The cinematic trailer was fantastic. Best part of 7.0 by far. Understatement of the millennium. When are you fixing the glaring gearing problems and the weapon outfitter? When is 7.1 coming?
  5. For those of you wanting to run KOTOR on Win 10--run it in compatibilty mode for XP SP2. Check out Deadly Stream forum--they have some tips on running on different systems like Linux. Also, check out the KOTOR subreddit (I found a thread here with different tips that might help ) As for 7.0....ugh. Just ugh. Some nights, I have time for an Op. Some nights, I might only have time for a flashpoint or heroic or two. Before, I could do any content and get BIS gear. Now, if I want dedicated (eventually moddable) BIS gear, I can _only_ get it doing NIM Ops. In 6.0, I could get upgrades for my gear doing flashpoints and heroics and conquest. 7.0 is definitely not "play your way". It's "play our way--and we're making it a grind to keep you subbing longer." I have 3 toons with the conquest reward that I can't claim because I don't have enough tech frags to buy an upgrade that also consumes the commendations I'll need. The currencies are wildly out of sync because I like to play my way--but BW's insane gearing system makes that impossible. No thanks, BioWare. This buggy, awful mess isn't fun. My sub's good for another month, and sad to say, I'll probably not be renewing after that--after playing this game since beta.
  6. Yep, we were unpaid testers and our testing was completely ignored. I won't waste my time ever again, either--and I tested for game beta and at least one other time for sure, maybe more before this last time. I had a feeling my time was going to be wasted, although I had hoped something might come out of my efforts. The state 7.0 was released in certainly confirmed that almost none of the critiques were in any way remotely considered, much less acted upon. You, me, and dozens if not hundreds more testers told BioWare the same thing: Gearing was awful, the whole thing was a buggy mess, the UI was atrocious (I can't even read which of the 18 million different currencies are needed for gear piece upgrades at the vendors--and I have a large monitor), the weapon outfitter wasn't even available for testing. After being told for the last 7 years that BioWare was 'looking at implementing' the weapon outfitter but that the coding is extremely complex, I highly doubt we'll ever see a weapon outfitter, although I'd like to be wrong. At least give us back weapon mods while you work on the weapon-outfittter-that-will-be-pushed-back-to-8.0. Maybe I'm being too optimistic that there'll even be an 8.0, but I can dream. As for the problems we see on 7.0 live, BioWare? I told you so. In several detailed posts. As did many other of us testers. We warned you releasing 7.0 with all the bugs, bad UI, insane gearing, and non-working weapon outfitter would be an unmitigated disaster. You ignored it. You get to live with the logical outcomes we warned you about. Unfortunately, we have to live with it, too. And many are simply choosing not to live with it anymore and are leaving for other games. Some of the other posters in this thread are correct--you, BioWare, show incredible disrespect for consumers and public testers when you ask for feedback and then do absolutely nothing with constructive critiques that very clearly show you the severe problems. I can't decide if that's sheer hubris, foolishness, lack of interest in even reading the feedback, or just plain bad decision-making. Ignoring severe problems that mean people can't even equip cartel market weapons and still be able to do the gear grind certainly is a monumentally stupid business decision. I love this game. I want it to succeed so that my friends and I can continue playing it. I've been extremely happy with many BioWare games over the years, and I'd love for BioWare to have continued success for years to come. However, the quality control that this company had even 5 years ago obviously is now gone. This isn't the company that Drs. Ray and Greg built and ran at all. What a shame to see it falling apart this badly. SWTOR is unplayable in some areas (Primal Destroyer, Revan in TOS, the new fp, etc). My guildmates are dropping subs like crazy because they want to play end-game, not grind-game. Enough other people drop their subs, the game dies. I'd prefer that not happen--I don't want you all to lose your jobs, and I still want the game to be successful and profitable. I have absolutely no desire to hear the standard PR garbage of "we're reading the feedback." First, I don't believe you anymore--you didn't read and then act on the feedback on PTS, so it's clear only sub numbers and cartel purchases have any impact on your decision-making whatsoever. Second, I don't want to know you're _reading_ the thousands of bug reports and complaints. Any five-year-old can read the comments. So, please, stop with the verbal parsing. I want to know you're _fixing_ the problems and what concrete, actionable steps you're taking to deliver on your promises of more playable content, bug fixes, readable UI, and a working weapon outfitter (or just go back to weapon/off-hand mods, for heaven's sake). I want a realistic timetable for those fixes and details on what you're implementing. There are ways to do that without giving away your trade secrets. That would be real communication, not this "we see your comments" nonsense.
  7. While I’m the guild leader for 2 mostly-family guilds and can’t unsubscribe until we decide how to handle those, I certainly can stay logged out most of the time to play other games that actually appreciate paying customers and thus not see the flash sales for all the CC weapons for sale…that we can’t equip anyway in 7.0. I might not unsubscribe right away, but I’m switching down to 1 month and won’t be buying any other cartel market items until BW fixes this nightmare. You don’t have to unsubscribe to have a financial impact. It will be fascinating to see the EA quarterly report the first quarter after the subs bought for 7.0 release run out.
  8. Believe me, I don’t like thinking this is a possibility, but seeing negative change after negative change after negative change based solely on their game metrics, when BW _knows_ from player feedback those are profoundly bad moves that will drive players away? It’s hard to come to any other conclusion, no matter how hard I try. At some point, mere incompetence at/mistakes with 7.0 design stop being options. If I didn’t care about this game, I wouldn’t bother posting, but I do care. Not that I think any of us players have any impact anymore, as is clear from a 100 credit “refund” for items that cost 3000 tech frags to replace. The money isn’t the issue. The time spent to grind tech frags to get the new tactical is a significant time burden to those affected, and we can’t even “stock up” on more than 11,000 tech frags ahead of time. I’m losing tacticals on at least 15 of my toons. Grinding tech frags will take a lot longer in 7.0, so replacing those will require a substantial amount of time. The grind involved on the PTS made me realize it’s not worth it—at least at 7.0 launch. And that’s just the tactical problem alone. Maybe BW will discover that ignoring players doesn’t work after thousands of people unsubscribe. Maybe they’ll even learn that before the game dies. Hard to believe they don’t already know this, however, hence the conspiracy theory.
  9. Yet more things being removed? I have a lot of tacticals being removed from my many alts. Are you reimbursing me for the tech frags of all of those, or am I screwed over six ways to Sunday on that front? Serious question: are you/EA trying to sabotage this game into failure? Sure looks like it to me, especially given EA loses its exclusivity license in a year. (Edited spelling)
  10. Can we equip and use this dual saber after 7.0 with the weapon outfitter not working? No? :slow clap:
  11. You're very welcome. Like you, my guilds have a significant number of members who've said, "I can't equip my CM weapons that I paid good money for after the 14th? BioWare's taking away moddable gear? I'm not even able to do Ops lockouts? I have to grind multiple places just to get one set of gear, and it's an insane grind to gear my alts? I'm out. I'm going to go play another MMO where I'm not going to get screwed over in so many directions it makes my head spin. Is BioWare _trying_ to kill this game?" The ones who plan on coming back are telling me, "I'm going to do the story and then unsub until BioWare fixes this crap. If they fix it quickly, fine. If they don't fix it quickly and I end up liking another game even more? Well, bye, SWTOR." What distresses me is that I'm hearing this kind of thing from a much higher percentage of fellow players and guildies than I did with the change from 5.0 to 6.0. And this was before BW made the very quiet announcement that the weapon outfitter won't be available until 7.1 (and a high probability of that never happening, frankly, because they've been working on this unsuccessfully since the outfitter option came out before 6.0). Usually, I've found a number of things to be positive about in updates. I can't find a single thing to be positive about in 7.0 except for the small story content and new flashpoint. I don't know how many more of us can tell BioWare that there are some glaring, severe problems that need to be fixed really fast for the game's financials to stay in the black. About all I can do is what I've done--voice my thoughts. After that, I'll just pull out the popcorn on Feb. 15th while watching social media explode with angry players, check out the half-hour of story content, and then log into FFXIV for a while until the mess here is (hopefully) fixed.
  12. Thank you for the concession (being serious here, not snarky). I think you might be mistaking what I mean by "handicapped" or disabled. I'm not calling casual players handicapped. I'm talking about people with actual, real, physical and/or mental handicaps--my friends who have had strokes or have cerebral palsy and can't move their hands or fingers quickly, my other friends who are legally blind or severely hearing impaired, others with fibromyalgia or severe arthritis who experience real pain when playing, some others who've had traumatic brain injuries, those with severe ASD, etc etc etc. I'm not "preaching" anything. They do find the game physically harder to play as a result of the disabilities. They experienced trouble doing heroics and even story-mode KOTFE/KOTET with 270 gear but found optimized 306 gear allowed them to be successful. Surely, you remember how annoying it was to do MMFPs or even vet content in generic, non-optimized 270 gear and how much easier it is to do it in min-maxed BIS 306. Why in the world would we want to return to foisting sub-optimal gear back on people who have trouble just playing the game at all? This is one of the biggest reasons why I think limiting top gear to a tiny fraction of gamers in 7.0, after promoting BIS availability to everyone in 6.0, is such an awful idea. I'll happily give up stat-point exclusivity if it helps my disabled friends enjoy this game more. My more casual-style friends jumped into Ops and dabbled in vet mode content once they geared up to BIS. They didn't feel confident enough to take it on with 270 gear. Their enjoyment=more subscriptions=SWTOR servers stay open longer. It's 'popular' because it's true. I think I've proven that BIS helps casual players and causes no harm to NIM raiders. Let me know when you can show evidence for your claims besides "I want NIM raiders to be the only ones who can get NIM gear because that's how they do it in WoW, and I like the feeling of exclusivity." What's not working is the development of new content on a much more frequent schedule than one Op every 3 years because BioWare wasted time and resources screwing around with armor _yet again_. And if you stayed around to play the game through the "era of the casuals having BIS gear," then apparently it didn't distress you much at all that Nim raiders didn't have exclusive raid stats, or you'd be playing WoW instead. (snipped for brevity). I'm glad you're not an elitist jerk. (That's a serious comment, not a sarcastic one, to be very clear). I think I've very clearly shown that for a number of players, this is just patently false. I remember how annoyed I was to go to green, non-moddable, non-optimized 270 gear in 6.0 after having min-maxed gold 258 gear in 5.0. I challenge you to go put on 322 green gear once you've obtained Nim gear and see how much you like playing in gear that 'is enough for story and solo players'. If you even do try that, I'm sure you'll be putting your best gear back on right after the first boss because the time it takes to kill even a heroic boss will make doing that content extremely tedious. All .002% of you? Nearly 100% of the feedback expresses testers' intense dislike of non-moddable gear. Go look at the ratio of posts of people expressing dislike vs like of the new gear. And I do take into account that people complain more often than they praise, but even factoring that in, the number and percentage of dislikes is overwhelming. I'm not saying it's hard to process. It's not. What I am saying is that this is going to be an extremely unpopular move once it hits live, and angry/frustrated players don't re-subscribe. No subscriptions=SWTOR servers get shut down faster. No mmo lives forever, but I like this one enough that I'd like to play it a little longer. Influencers depend on their positive relationships with BioWare to keep getting fed exclusive information from the company. You'll see very little negative press from social media influencers because too much negativity means they'll get cut off by BioWare, and that ends their streams. Yes, there will be some who dare to say some negative comments, but by and large, most of them will post only positive "Rah! Rah! This is great!" posts. They know which side their bread is buttered on. The fact that the weapon outfitter alone won't be working in 7.0 and people have to equip non-moddable weapons to gear up I can guarantee is going to infuriate a whole lot of players. They've paid a lot of real money to buy cartel market items they now won't be able to use without nerfing their ability to gear up. It's an insane business decision to remove the ability for players to use Cartel Market items, even temporarily. I shook my head at the irony of a CM weapon being on sale in game the other day that a buyer won't even be able to use after the 14th. And that's just one problem. Does that sound like a winning financial strategy to you? It sure doesn't to me, and I foresee a substantial player exodus from the game until BioWare fixes the gear problems. Whether players return once it's fixed remains to be seen. It's irrelevant how you or I feel about Nim-exclusive gear if a bunch of players leave the game because of it. In any case, if you have any other reason for your support of Nim-exclusive gear besides "I like it having better stats than the casuals and WoW does it that way," then we have more to discuss. Otherwise, there's nothing left to debate.
  13. What the hell, I'll reply. Since you appeared to be answering me, I assumed you thought my post was controversial. You clarified your point here, so now I understand you more clearly, and thank you for that. I'll certainly concede that others have made comments that are rude or at the very least inelegant. None of my disabled/handicapped (whatever word you prefer to use) guildmates thought that getting gear more easily in 6.0 was hurtful to them in the least. In fact, I heard repeatedly that they enjoyed the game substantially more with BIS gear. It certainly didn't hurt me or the whole game to obtain BIS easily, as you assert. If you have data to back up your assertion here, I'm happy to see that. Otherwise, I have Starparse proof that obtaining BIS through any method helped my disabled friends (they stayed alive better, were able to play the game longer (which is good for seeing EA cartel market ads and thus bottom line), they experienced less pain playing). That's a pretty damn significant improvement, not "more hurtful" to them as you claim. I understand your point entirely. Your point was clear enough. I don't agree with your point. Your opinion is based solely on what you alone want. My statements are based on factual stats, my experiences professionally and in game, and experiences with hundreds of guildmates over the years--perhaps starting to get into the thousands at this point, I don't know. But a lot, anyway. So, let me take a moment to clarify my experience in and out of the game, since you made a completely incorrect assumption about my skill level. I generally don't post my resume since I don't honestly care who has better dps, who has more achievements, etc etc etc. I don't think achievements make me better than anyone else, or anyone else better than me as people. Since it's important to you, however: a. I've played this game since beta, and I'd love to play it for years more--which is why I'm very vocal about the 7.0 changes. I think BioWare risks angering enough players that they'll leave the game after completing the new content, and fewer players mean a lower chance of this game staying viable, which means it closes down sooner. b. I wrote the consular column for TORWars back at launch until the owner shut down the site because she was contractually required to for her new job at NCSoft to prevent conflict of interest. c. I've cleared every Op at SM 8m and 16m, nearly all of them at Vet 8m and 16m, and have done some NIM raiding. d. I main infil shadow/deception assassin well enough to be in the top 25 on the dps leaderboards for those specs on my server. e. I've gotten just about everything done in SWTOR that can be done in the PVE realm at master level. f. I can quote theorycrafting numbers by heart at this point and can explain why they're that way in great detail. g. I took the time to go to the PTS and test out the gear and then compared actual statistics. g. I work with partially and completely blind people on a regular basis as part of my profession, and I follow Able Gamers, too (GREAT organization, by the way, folks. They help people with all sorts of disabilities be able to get into and enjoy more games). You can call me "Casual lover Andy", which as an apparent insult is mildly amusing, but you're obviously incorrect. What benefit is there to putting non-elite players and disabled folks at a disadvantage in a story-driven mmo? That's a serious question, not rhetorical. I'd really like to know why you think it's ok to make the game harder for disabled folks so that you and other Nim raiders can have some extra stat points. No, jumping from flashpoints to Ops won't work the same, because people can't trade in flashpoint gear for equivalent Ops gear. It's on a completely different gear track--and that's one of the problems. You can have 326 maxed out for MMFPs, but you can't use that to trade up to 328 Ops gear. You have to start at 320 green crap for Ops, no matter what you have elsewhere. The grind to get to gear that is remotely close to decent is annoyingly long and complex. I've made a spreadsheet just to figure out what gear combos will be best for accuracy (subject to change when 7.0 is live, of course). Pro-tip--if you have to have a spreadsheet to figure out optimal gearing, it's probably still too complex. But I'm a numbers junkie, I actually like that kind of thing, so I deal with it. My actual experience with gear grinding in 5.0 (which is what 7.0 basically is returning too, now improved with even MORE iLvls!!11!!!) was just the opposite of what you _think_it will be in 7.0. The elitists did the grinding for their gear quickly, and then promptly refused to raid with anyone else who wasn't fully geared. That was a significant problem that BioWare was trying to fix and indeed was substantially mitigated with the 6.0 gear changes. That problem will return with 7.0, unfortunately. Elitist raiders have no patience to help newer raiders gear up once a critical mass of NIM raiders has been reached. They'll only raid with other NIM raiders. I can't tell you how many times I was told by guildies that they'd been kicked from a PUG vet mode Ops group because "you don't have enough (then-max) 258 gear". The nim raiders made no offers to help that person get that gear, either, of course. No. I'm saying BIS gear should be obtainable no matter where one games--provided someone puts the work into obtaining it in game. NIM raids certainly can and should have special, unique rewards--Brontes wings are a good example of an exclusive reward. Mounts for getting to the top of the leaderboards in PvP are another example--and none of those have anything to do with gear stats. Since f2p/preferred can currently get BIS gear without paying, your assertion is incorrect. However, it will be "pay to win" in 7.0 since f2p and preferred won't ever even be able to access BIS gear since that's restricted to NIM ops only, and preferred players can't do Ops at all. F2p and preferred won't be able to switch to the second combat style, either. And this is exactly the kind of elitist comment that many find offensive. You think it should _only_ be obtained through Ops and that it should be exclusive. You've made no effort to say how that benefits all players, and I've noted it will make it harder for a lot of players. There are any number of other things that NIM raiders can use to flex their achievements for the world to see besides gear. I'm not wasting time on your other obvious ad hominems. What smear? Show me where that is. I DID help my disabled guildmates. I ran a lot of SMOPS and FPs with them to help them gear up, and then helped them select the correct tactical, gear sets, armorings, mods, enhancements, and left side pieces. I wrote a gear guide for my guild. Every single one of my disabled friends said it was easier to survive with BIS gear over non-BIS gear--there was more endurance so they could survive hits better, and optimized stats helped them kill things faster. Understand that it takes my disabled friends longer to even _see_ puddles of poo on the ground, react to attacks, and my folks who've had strokes or have problems with movement like cerebral palsy take longer to kill things because their APM is substantially lower due to their inabilty to be able to hit keys quickly. Having BIS gave them the max stats which helped them do what you or I could do normally with 270 gear. They had trouble completing some things with "casual gamer" level gear as you might call it. Now do you understand my point? (not being snarky, I'd really like to know if my point is clear to you). I never said you were narrow-minded. I was very precise with my wording. How many other people think like you? 2? 3? .0001% of the raiding community? I assure you, it's a much smaller percentage than you might think, and a much larger percentage of my guildies and friends have expressed sharing my opinion on gear--including other NIM raiders. Yes. Been gaming since Atari 2600 days. Long live the gray dot in Adventure. So what? I could care less what's done in WoW. And that "sick looking piece of gear" could be done with a simple skin without affecting any stats. A number of other MMOs DON'T use this type of elitist gearing, and they're arguably more successful than SWTOR is at this point, which is sad, because I love this game and want it to be super successful. In any case, your preference is categorically NOT how mmorpgs "should work". It's only how _you_ think they should work, and it's an outdated mode of gearing. So, let me get this straight. We should make it harder to gear for others so that you can have the satisfaction of other players...envying you. I don't care about someone envying me in the least. I care about successfully completing a vet and Nim Ops. And I don't envy other players who've achieved top things. I'm happy that they had success doing something they clearly enjoy. However, there are plenty of other items that can incentivize NIM raiders--mounts, special outfit and weapon skins, minipets, more stronghold decos, etc etc etc. Gear stats, which don't show up anyway unless someone actually knows to inspect your gear, should not be one of those things. I think Brontes wings are far more cool than the fact that your crit might be 2900 instead of 2852. The max, moddable gear PER BIOWARE is ONLY available in Nim Ops. They've stated "maybe" moddable gear will come at a later time--no timetable whatsoever, and based on long experience with BioWare's definition of "a later time," I'm not holding my breath on that. Show me the quote where BioWare said moddable gear will be available for anyone besides NIM raiders in 3 months. I'll wait. In the meantime, raiders will say, "Huh, this gear is crap right now, BioWare said I can get moddable gear in 8 months (or however many months from now BW fixes it)--I'll just skip the CF right now and play another game for 8 months until they fix this mess. Then, I'll hop back in." In the meantime, BioWare has lost the subs of all those people during that time--possibly permanently. Considering that I raid several times a week, all I'll say to this is that this entire paragraph is simply wrong. I don't waste time on ad hominems otherwise.
  14. Snipped for brevity. My reply was to Xenaul's claim that the average casual player's performance would improve in 7.0 from 6.0, and my reply was to show why that line of thinking was incorrect based on PTS stats. I wasn't debating any of the points you raised, so I'm not entirely sure where you were going with your post. If casual players don't care about gear, that's fine, but the gear BioWare does offer at the vendors should at least give casual folks who know nothing about gearing a fighting chance at being able to kill overland bosses and champs and do vet FPs and SMOPS in a reasonable time frame. Inadequate and poorly optimized tertiary stats are going to make it that much harder for casual players in 7.0, and it's absolutely going to make it harder for my handicapped guildies and friends. There is no controversy here. Constructive critiques are not controversial. The math is the math, the gear is not optimized at all, and the changes BioWare is making are going to cause howling on the forums and in social media--particularly the weapon outfitter not working yet requiring people to equip non-moddable weapons in order to gear up. I love this game, and I want BioWare to have success because their success means that a 10 year old game continues longer. BioWare wanted testers to give them their opinions--I tested and gave mine. I don't like the changes (see reasoning in my other posts; I'm not repeating them here to save space) and neither do most of my guildmates. I see problems down the road with bringing these changes live, and I explained to BioWare why. That's not controversial. That's being honest, and I've been polite in my critiques. Gushing over these changes like a star-struck fangirl does BioWare a huge disservice and is disingenuous. Why do you care how other players gear up? No one is stopping you from using only Nim Ops and taking 2 years to gear up if you personally want to have that challenge. Who said gearing has to work your way, and ONLY your way, for everyone else? Just because _you_ think it should be difficult, time-consuming, and confined to elitist gameplay doesn't mean that's the correct or even desirable way for everyone else. In fact, restricting BIS gearing to elitist levels is an outdated mode of thinking that frankly belongs in the dark ages of 2004 mmo gameplay. Allowing people to get BIS gear through a variety of means allows them to have some more confidence to take on higher-level content. In fact, more people in my guild started doing vet mode ops for the first time in 6.0 _because_ they were able to use flashpoints to get BIS gear before jumping into the harder content. We went from having one vet mode team to multiple vet mode teams and a couple of teams starting to prog hardmare and NiM-difficulty content when they'd previously gone to other NiM-only guilds in 5.0. BioWare has just killed that with the gear changes and removing lockouts. I don't play hard mode to get gear. I play hard mode because I like the challenge of the gameplay itself and the achievement. I use BIS gear as a tool to let me play vet/Nim level to work towards those achievements, not an end in itself. I go to an Operation to complete the operation, not to say "Hooray! RNGesus finally blessed me with that belt after 2 years!!11!11!!" Again, just because you play it to grind gear doesn't mean everyone else wants to play that way. At least in 6.0, we had both options--you could choose to get gear via Ops only if that's what floats your boat, while I could use flashpoints to get gear for Ops to hop into vet/Nim and work on learning the boss mechanics and getting achievements. My option is gone in 7.0, and BioWare is now incentivizing elitist-only gameplay once more. PUG raiding on my server is not dead in the least--it's quite active, and there is no trouble at all finding players in allies chat in game or on discord servers devoted to doing ops/mmfps/harder content. Pug raiding isn't dead--you're just probably not hooked into the right channels to see people grouping up. Some people get legacy-ignored by so many other players that they can't get a group to pop. Hopefully, that isn't your case. To spend time with my friends in game trying to improve my skill and just enjoy the challenges of learning the mechanics and eventually beating a difficult boss or Operation. Grinding gear need not be involved at all to do that. Pro-tip for BioWare: Grinding is not fun for a lot of people. I might have taken offense at this if I actually cared enough to do so, because I and many others actually do many different things besides Spammer Station. I just finished a master mode run of Kotfe/Kotet with a guildie, for instance, and BIS gear made some of those boss battles survivable where conquest or flashpoint gear would not have. Thank God we finished those achievements before 7.0 dropped. Suffice it to say that having BIS gear in 6.0 has allowed me and many other guildies to jump into vet/Nim content that we weren't able to do in 5.0. Again, why should I push myself your way just because _you_ say I should? I pay the same monthly sub you do. There's no reason to restrict content that I pay for just to make the elitist 0.00001% happy. Again, if you want to grind gear doing only Ops, you're more than welcome to do so. No one forced you to do TC and Hammer station for gear. Don't expect the rest of us to share your definition of a good time. There's a tremendous amount of narrow-mindedness and arrogance in that statement. Do you know I have a number of handicapped guildmates who depend on BIS gear just to survive overland story content? Being able to get BIS by playing however we wanted to play--which was something BioWare hyped 2 years ago and was a phenomenally positive change--made their ability to game even normal content far more enjoyable for them and even less physically painful for some of them. Just because _you_ don't need 334 gear to do story content doesn't mean other people don't need it. BioWare is now taking BIS gear away from my handicapped friends in 7.0 and making the game less accessible for them. Do you think it's appropriate to make the game less accessible for handicapped people? I sure don't. The elitist attitude of "gear should be for Nim raiders only!" makes it harder for BioWare to understand that not everyone who wants BIS wants it just to go do a NIM raid. There are plenty of other reasons why someone wants BIS gear, and it's not because we want to stand around on fleet and flex. BIS gear does not need to be, and should not be, reserved for elitist Nim raiders only. I am so tired of hearing this narrow-minded and frankly selfish view from raiders that BIS gear should be obtained only through NIM content.
  15. Actually, your conclusion that casual players’ average DPS will go up makes no sense whatsoever. It does not square with testing, and it certainly does not square with the math of tertiary stats. I suspect you didn’t look at the gear on the PTS. You honestly think that decreasing accuracy percentages and poorly optimizing all tertiary stats will IMPROVE a casual player’s performance? Here’s what’s most likely to happen. A casual player will not know that they need to buy pieces from multiple vendors to achieve anywhere close to 110% accuracy. I’m not even sure if you can get 100% accuracy with a single set. Many of us told BioWare that there was not nearly enough accuracy even mixing sets on 318/320 gear. I and others suggested increasing the amount of tertiary stats on the current sets to bring stats more in line with what’s needed. BioWare’s answer? Don’t change the stats, create more sets so that we can mix and match, even though I and others had—you guessed it—mixed and matched during testing. Let me explain better why casual players will have even less DPS than raiders and min-maxxers since I suspect this might be a point of confusion. If you do not have enough accuracy (110% for bosses) you miss hits. Every single miss is an absolute DPS loss. Alacrity and crit have no bearing whatsoever on a missed hit. In fact, if you have a high alacrity and low accuracy, you just miss faster. I know how to get accuracy up so I miss as close to 0 hits as possible. The casual player doesn’t know this. When that newer Consular dps player selects all Force Lord armor as the game suggests s/he should do at the vendor (because NOWHERE does BioWare suggest mixing sets to maximize accuracy), that player will experience an absolute dps loss. The percentage loss of accuracy will be even greater for a casual player than it will be for someone who understands the basics of theorycrafting. I’ll be missing 2% of my hits with unaugmented gear. The casual player will be missing closer to 10%, possibly more if they don’t take any left side accuracy pieces or use a proficient stim. So, casual players’ DPS will be overall lower, arguably even quite a few percentage points lower, and definitely not higher as you suggested. On top of that, bosses have more health. Now, you should understand why I think—based on PTS testing and data—that casual players will have a dps loss, perhaps even more percentage-wise than those who do understand the tertiary stats.
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