Maybe I'm under-thinking this... but it seems like a straightforward bug report to submit and they'll just need to bring players down to the hard cap in a future update. I realize that in the short-term it creates an issue, but that's why it is a bug in need of repair. No one should have more than the cap for a decoration, so report it and hopefully it is an easy fix that can be implemented somewhat soon.

The issue is that for ranked PVP or progression Ops teams, 2% DPS for 15 seconds is a very significant difference. The system is especially bad for players trying to play the most difficult content in the game which are already a much maligned group around here.

:takes a bow:

Because they made a mistake but refuse to roll back a system that was a keystone of their most recent expansion for PR reasons.

I think I can describe it in one sentence... nihilistic | adjective | nī-(h)ə-ˈli-stik A viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless. Example: The gearing system in Star Wars: The Old Repbulic is nihilistic.

People hate it because the Galactic Command gearing system is worse than the gearing system that existed the day before 5.0 hit the servers. The Galactic Command system was also sold to the player base using insultingly transparent lies. It was clearly designed with the primary design goal of gating desirable end-game content behind a 90-180 day gear grind because they had no actual content to keep people subscribed between November and April and this was obvious to everyone as soon as the details were announced. Instead, the public faces of BioWare Austin were put in the awkward position of trying to sell its necessity due to tokens being confusing (while adding LS/DS tokens to the game simultaneously) and other illogical explanations to avoid the true intent of the system. I think they've played us all for fools. They've feigned surprise over the reaction of players so that they could slowly "improve" the Galactic Command system and say they're listening to their players. They knew it was a bad system for players because they designed it to force people to subscribe in order to run the stale end-game content because too many people were unsubscribing and using Ops/PVP passes bought with credits off the GTN. I've come to the conclusion that everything is proceeding according to the plan and we're just complacent fools that think they're trying really hard to fix the system when in reality it has served its purpose of buying them time and the plan was always to bring back gear tokens into Ops and PVP the way they did. If they had taken Ops drops from 4.x system to the current system without the complete removal in between, we'd be calling for the old system back. Instead, most of us THANKED THEM for partially returning the old Ops token drops as if they did something laudable. I'm almost impressed. It is Palpatine-quality manipulation of the masses.

All indications are that the team at BioWare Austin are prepared to go down with the ship rather than cut Galactic Command loose. It's inexplicable, but they've been condescendingly dismissive of calls to abandon this terrible system since the moment it was announced. I spent weeks trying to convince them of it and saw zero impact. They're tinkering around the edges because the fact that the entire system is fundamentally anti-fun is an invalid opinion to them. With the current rate of CXP gain, the game has gone from unplayable to aggressively boring for me personally. That seems to be the extent of their willingness to change though, aggressively boring seems to be our best case scenario indefinitely as long as the complete removal of Galactic Command from the game is not a valid opinion at BioWare Austin.

Sad to see you go, but thank you for all of your hard work on the game we all love. MTFBWY

This has become internet canon, but the case for it is based on a small number of quotes and articles. I think the actions of studios, including BioWare recently, speak louder than a few articles over the last 10 years making this claim. All content has meaningful development costs and the specific costs of development are based on many management decisions along the way. If it were truly a vocal minority interested in Operations then BioWare wouldn't be developing one. The fact that they've pivoted so sharply back toward Operations content says that a large number of players want that content.

Not everything can be solo content. Not everything can be group content. BioWare's biggest mistakes come from trying to please everyone instead of creating content for the target audience and making other content for other target audiences. That said, there's already a solo version of Temple of Sacrifice from a story perspective. I don't think that's an unreasonable example of a story alternative to an operation. An operation like Explosive Conflict though has limited story value outside of itself, so I don't see the value or methodology to make a story alternate path for an Operation like EC. That's like saying there should be a solo version of a warzone to allow solo players to experience the story that frames the PVP warzone because neither Explosive Conflict nor Novar Coast matter to the broader character story or galactic story really.

I wholeheartedly disagree on the economic impact of server merges. It would be a resounding positive to have a less fragmented in-game economy. There are only a few servers with functional, healthy economies in NA now which is good for no one. The Harbinger has the most rational and stable GTN pricing of any server, it represents the goal not the problem.

Unless there's new functionality that I'm not aware of, that website only provides data for 30-60 days at a time. The server capacities also change over time, that's why I've always favored the Google trends method over the server status method. Google trends is no less an imperfect proxy than server status in my opinion, but everyone can decide their own preferences certainly.

So I'm hateful because I provide rational insight and analysis based on the available information, even if that information is circumstantial and imperfect? I still enjoy many aspects of the game, but won't apologize for providing specific constructive criticism on the game. I can still enjoy rolling a new Jedi alt on Tython with the beautiful environment and deep storylines while providing rational observations and criticisms about Galactic Command. If enough players thought Galactic Command was awesome they wouldn't be changing it. If enough players enjoyed the story focus of the last two expansions they wouldn't be changing it. The actions of the studio are the ultimate evidence because their motivation is simple - make a game that attracts and retains as many paying customers as possible. I've already cited other specific evidence in other replies so I won't repeat them again. I think it is telling that all of these replies I received were just "you can't prove that" instead of offering a single rational counter argument. Everyone knows that none of us have specific metrics on the game, you aren't providing some shocking or scathing insight by sarcastically pointing out that I can't post official metrics on server populations.

The in-game user interface that tells you how many instances there are and how many players are in that instance. The queue times for group content are longer than ever. The amount of instances of the GroupFinder Operation each day are well below previous levels. The Google trends method was discussed at length on Ootinicast this week as well and shows the same. The fact that there's any question that the server populations are down significantly is laughable. Please provide a single piece of evidence to the contrary? No one outside BioWare can provide official statistics, but I've provided multiple circumstantial data points that all show the same thing and you've only provided a snarky retort to try to discredit me. I'll let my years of work in this community and the circumstantial evidence that's available speak for itself, if that's not good enough for you then enjoy living in the version of reality you choose, it doesn't matter to me either way.

What active player data? The amount of players in game is down based on the numbers of instances and number of players in those instances. The Google trends method that has a logical, data-driven methodology shows the game in its lowest point to date. And BioWare itself is making drastic changes to the game at a high frequency, that is the behavior of a business scrambling to stop a problem, not of a game that's stable or growing its population.