My main concern is that PvP activities hand out CXP for everyone, even players who stand AFK in a corner, while for PvE you need to run the most difficult content (requiring high gear and skill) and you still don't come close to the CXP from PvP. The buff to flashpoints and uprisings is appreciated, though it may still not be enough, and operations still need a buff.

But being able to work towards a specific gear piece will come a long way toward improving the system. Looking forward to details on that!

Please allow us to just buy the gear from a given tier if we complete the tier. That would help so much.

And please stop nerfing things if you aren't going to put the nerf in the patch notes.

Its simple.

When I ding a level, I should get something. The randomness should be between something useful and something special.

The dichotomy between your game theory and the reality for me as a player is you think 'something' simply means 'anything'.

Orange shells are not something.

Greens and blues that are no better than my current 208/216 gear are not something.

Reputation tokens for things I maxed out 2 years ago are not something.

Start from there. then move on to the 'idea' to transition from a DvL content that REQUIRED me to roll lots of alts, to something that will take all my time to do on a single toon. You have both active on the same day. One in the morning, the other in the afternoon (for us in the UK).

Read that paragraph back, and then work out the problem. It should never have got this far.

Its simple.

 

When I ding a level, I should get something. The randomness should be between something useful and something special.

 

The dichotomy between your game theory and the reality for me as a player is you think 'something' simply means 'anything'.

 

Orange shells are not something.

 

Greens and blues that are no better than my current 208/216 gear are not something.

 

Reputation tokens for things I maxed out 2 years ago are not something.

 

Start from there. then move on to the move to transition from a DvL content that REQUIRED me to roll lots of alts, to something that will take all my time to do on a single toon. You have both active on the same day. One in the morning, the other in the afternoon (for us in the UK).

 

Read that paragraph back, and then work out the problem. It should never have got this far.

So much this.

All The Best

What, no Christmas month out? Guess those subs are dropping bad...

OK, cynicism aside - good job. But those are points that should be discovered DURING initial design of system, not after it got implemented and pissed people off.

Hey folks,

 

Please keep all of your feedback coming on Command Crates, Command XP, and Galactic Command. The team is always looking over your feedback and looking for ways we can improve the system! We have been reading everything you sent our way, and there are couple of stand-out points (this is by no means everything):

• There needs to be a way to work towards a specific slot of gear to fill in gaps (especially set bonuses) for people who are unlucky with Command Crates.
  
• Gearing your other characters is too grindy.
  

 

With this in mind, the team has some important changes planned for Game Update 5.1 coming next month to address the above concerns! We are finalizing those changes now and will walk you through our plans during this Thursday’s Livestream, 12/15 so be sure to tune in. If you can’t make the stream we will be posting a recap on the forums. I just wanted to let you know that along with the changes we have already made in 5.0a and 5.0.1, your voices are being heard. We look forward to talking with all of you about the upcoming changes.

 

-eric

 

PS - I will be back on the stream this week so the stream dream team is back together again.

Yay! Glad to see you guys are listening more after all these years. Did you guys go for some Disney customer training?

My main concern is that PvP activities hand out CXP for everyone, even players who stand AFK in a corner, while for PvE you need to run the most difficult content (requiring high gear and skill) and you still don't come close to the CXP from PvP.

Before, with heroics, you could count on 20 CXP for the mission plus that much more for every elite you had to kill while doing it.

If the heroic threw 20 elites at you, you would get 420 CXP for the whole thing.

That meant that it was offering a fair amount of CXP for the work.

But then the nerf came and now that same heroic would give 40 CXP.

This same thing happens anywhere you're expected to kill elites: The original objective numbers were balanced based on how much total CXP you could expect to earn for the activity.

I see two ways to fix this if you don't want people farming MOBs for CXP

1) Restrict the 20 CXP for elites to instanced elites only.

2) Leave the nerf in place but significantly boost the quest payout based on the original quest + kill numbers.

They screwed their own formulas with the nerf by not taking this into account and they need to fix it.

It's just the classic BioWare overcorrection when something doesn't go as expected: Nerf it into oblivion rather than actually try to bring it in line with their expectations.

All I have to say to this.

Sorry but WAY to little WAY to late.

Unsubbed and until I see real valied changes that stays.

5 days left.

But those are points that should be discovered DURING initial design of system, not after it got implemented and pissed people off.

This is the thing that most concerns me.

The moment the Galactic Command Crate system was announced the forums were swamped with players telling Bioware is would be too random (progression content players need those completed sets, and a way to target the missing set items) AND far too grindy (there would no incentive to level Alts despite the fact that the last 6+ months had pretty much been exclusively about leveling Alts).

How far removed from a) the core ethos of the genre, and b) the peculiarities of this specific game, and c) the desires and needs of the various factions of the playerbase does Bioware need to be to not have seen these issues until after 5.0 launched? Players saw the core faults with the system within a matter of seconds of the info being put out there. Bioware would pretty much have had to deliberately go out of their way to consciously avoid all the 5.0 feedback to date.

So while I applaud Bioware for acknowledging the two issues they have in Eric's OP I am mindful that a) there are far more than just those two issues at play here, and b) it should never, ever been allowed to get this far along the path to failure.

This announcement is certainly too little, let's hope its not also too late.

PS: Given the gravity of this issue why is this post not stickied?

All The Best

I'd really like to believe this Eric, but I personally won't be re-subbing until you guys win my confidence back. 4+ years you've had my support, but have completely lost it with this direction. I simply can't bring myself to believe anything you guys are saying any more, and that last live stream was an absolute joke and pretty insulting.

One point I'd like to make is specifically about tanks. Tanks need multiple sets of gear with varying stats on each piece of gear. Back when I was raiding, I'd have one pve set dedicated to shield / absorb leaning fights and another dedicated to fights requiring larger amounts of defence.

In pvp, defence is generally useless and you gear tanks vastly different to how you would in pve; mods, enhancements, augments etc for pvp are generally heavier in hp and often replace defence mods for power instead.

Essentially, to get the most out of your tank in both pve and pvp, you need to have at least two separate sets of gear both with set bonus.

Are you really expecting someone to grind away with this cruddy RNG system to tailor and construct multiple sets of gear required for just one toon? I haven't even bothered touching my healer to even get him one set... gearing my main is ridiculous enough.

I get maybe 10hrs a week of game time if I'm lucky these days, it's just not practical for a casual player to build themselves a decent basic set of gear any more. I haven't had this issue at all in the past four years I've played this game, no matter how much or how little time I had to play I was always confident that I could get my toons up to par even with just basic sets.

On a positive note, I'd like to commend the pvp team for whatever they did with bolster. It seems to be working better than ever.

I really hope you are taking on feedback.

Galactic Command is an Excellent idea, but its an awful way to gear. Those 300 ranks should be tied to character progression, in much the same way legacy was where if I maxed out a companion I got a stat bonus or a class got me a special ability I could use. Grinding 300 ranks when it makes you more powerful is a goal you can see and work towards and each step on that 1.23 million grind works towards it.

Gear should be achievable from a variety of sources, be it looting, buying, crafting, purchasing with tokens or all of the above. What happens when gods willing 6.0 comes out Jaesa (though a little insane) returns to my Sith Warriors loving arms and the cap increases and new gear roles out. Does everyone have to grind to 300 before they can even start getting that gear? It will make purchasing just off top from the GTN far better than grinding for 700 hours just to start working on it.

Have you any idea how many hours you want this grind to be, cause as it stands if you played the game with cut scenes and enjoying the content (and not mindlessly queuing for pvp or KP gold elite farming) we are talking over 1000 hours. Even if this was to be the goal, some people may not have their sets by then or may be too insane to know.

Finally how will this effect people that have already taken part in the system, i.e. how will you make it work retroactively? Its all great improving the chance for purple drops but what about the people that have actually participated in the GC and got very very little. Are you going to say screw you early access people, welcome people coming from the Rogue One experience we like you more than people that subscribed in September they are scum anyway?

In short GC great as an end game progression system where every rank makes you better regardless of gear, awful for a gearing system where 300+ boxes are made worthless next expansion when the next tier of gear drops and blues are better than tier 3 stuff.

Its simple.

 

When I ding a level, I should get something. The randomness should be between something useful and something special.

 

The dichotomy between your game theory and the reality for me as a player is you think 'something' simply means 'anything'.

 

Orange shells are not something.

 

Greens and blues that are no better than my current 208/216 gear are not something.

 

Reputation tokens for things I maxed out 2 years ago are not something.

 

Start from there. then move on to the 'idea' to transition from a DvL content that REQUIRED me to roll lots of alts, to something that will take all my time to do on a single toon. You have both active on the same day. One in the morning, the other in the afternoon (for us in the UK).

 

Read that paragraph back, and then work out the problem. It should never have got this far.

Even the 210 drops are better than 208 vendor gear, 220 drops are better than 216 vendor gear.

The crates drop 228 / 230 gear, which is a lot better than 208 / 216.

And you get a piece of gear or a crafting schematic for 230 gear with every crate (sometimes even both).

Somme suggestions

GCP Legacy wide for char at level 70 (gear bound to char who claims rewards)

or double GC XP until level of your highest char with GC ( your main has GC 100, all alts get double gc until level 100)

Chance to get token to get tier 1 ,2 ,3 tokens from gc crate to exchance at vendor for missing gear.

They screwed their own formulas with the nerf by not taking this into account and they need to fix it.

While it looks that way, in reality, the nerfs were easy to do, and retuning to compensate would take a bit longer. I can understand this, and I really think the studio needs to be more transparent about things like this as some people do not analyze, they just react.

Keep in mind.. they said right up front, before release of 5.0 that they put weekly caps in to prevent any serious damage through exploited play. This tells me they knew players would be clever and do unintended things, but rather then try to predict and interdict every hole ahead of release, they decided to put in some safeguards, and then wait and see what players do and how they do it.... making adjustments up/down from there.

The studio is deploying and entire new methodology for endgame with 5.0. It is reasonable to assume all will not go as planned and tuning over time will be needed. I just wish the studio would explain this up front. It would not please everyone, but it would help with encouraging some patience by players and give more insight as to what they are doing.

Hey folks,

 

Please keep all of your feedback coming on Command Crates, Command XP, and Galactic Command. The team is always looking over your feedback and looking for ways we can improve the system! We have been reading everything you sent our way, and there are couple of stand-out points (this is by no means everything):

• There needs to be a way to work towards a specific slot of gear to fill in gaps (especially set bonuses) for people who are unlucky with Command Crates.
  
• Gearing your other characters is too grindy.
  

 

With this in mind, the team has some important changes planned for Game Update 5.1 coming next month to address the above concerns! We are finalizing those changes now and will walk you through our plans during this Thursday’s Livestream, 12/15 so be sure to tune in. If you can’t make the stream we will be posting a recap on the forums. I just wanted to let you know that along with the changes we have already made in 5.0a and 5.0.1, your voices are being heard. We look forward to talking with all of you about the upcoming changes.

 

-eric

 

PS - I will be back on the stream this week so the stream dream team is back together again.

I could kiss you right now! I mean I won't, at least not until any changes are actually made rather than talked about but this is a nice step in what I hope to be the right direction! Thanks!

And welcome back! Did you only have one week off? I thought you guys usually flailed through December too high on eggnog to do much work on the game.

My recommendations for the system.

The system, as it is set up now IMO is not viable. It will constantly create situations where Bioware will have to come in and adjust CXP payouts. Every time an adjustment is made, IMO, players will find a new grind source. It will likely never end.

Therefore the system is inherently flawed in its design, and some changes need to be made immediately.

1) Reduce weekly CXP cap drastically. Perhaps one quarter what it is now.

2) Increase CXP payout drastically across the board for ALL activities.

3) Increase the Command level cap to 5000 or remove the cap all together.

4) Add a mechanic to convert TIER armor to legacy bound tokens, open a vendor on Odessen to allow purchase of TIER pieces, or simply have tokens drop instead of tier gear pieces.

5) Add a .015 percent boost to secondary stats, similar to class buffs, for every command rank earned, perhaps cap it at 10 percent max (600 command levels or so).

This will solve all of the problems with the current system IMO and give it the widest appeal with the playerbase possible.

Even the 210 drops are better than 208 vendor gear, 220 drops are better than 216 vendor gear.

The crates drop 228 / 230 gear, which is a lot better than 208 / 216.

And you get a piece of gear or a crafting schematic for 230 gear with every crate (sometimes even both).

From the few crates I have had so far the only 2 items that did not get disintegrated were schematics. Not one bit of gear was better than what I already had. And I only had 208/216 gear with a couple of bits of 220, and none of it had any set bonus.

All The Best

Even the 210 drops are better than 208 vendor gear, 220 drops are better than 216 vendor gear.

The crates drop 228 / 230 gear, which is a lot better than 208 / 216.

And you get a piece of gear or a crafting schematic for 230 gear with every crate (sometimes even both).

I've opened 24 levels of galactic command boxes across two toons without getting anything useful. The majority I have got is orange empty shells. I get those for doing heroics anyway with the odessen boxes. I have recieved a dozen reputation tokens, mostly for things I've completed, and a few for first fleet, which means nothing to me at all.

But that is the thing with RNG based loot pulled from such a broad loot table. Your experience will be very different. And that is precisely why it is a design that does not belong in an MMO. I like the interface, its well done, but basing it entirely off RNG for a massive loot table is just poor design, and so at odds with the direction the game was going - many alts - right up to the very day of the patch, that its hard to believe it got to live, it is such a poor choice.