You will not need unassembled components in 6.0, feel free to spend them. Most likely they will be converted to credits with Onslaught's launch.

 

-eric

And the fate of Masterwork Shards as well please. Im building up a decent stock of those as well.

Eric, does this mean an end to Galactic Command? Should we be grinding those out for the achievements/schematics now?

Self-evidently, GC (in the form we see it now) is no more with 6.0. It's the progression system for level 70s to gear up (eventually, if you bother with it) *while stuck at level 70*. There will be something else for gearing at level 75 after the release of 6.0.

And that reminds me, I must crank on with my "all eight to CR300" achievement. (currently 3/8 done).

Like usual I wouldn't expect it to be a great conversion rate. We would encourage you to spend them and not rely on a big payoff from them or anything.

 

 

 

Same as above. It is a fair assumption that the currency you use to acquire gear now is not going to work in Onslaught. We'll be talking in more detail about how acquisition will work in the coming weeks.

 

-eric

If you're throwing everything we're doing currently away, then why should we continue to pay y'all in the meantime? Every time y'all get 'new ideas', do you think its actually 'fun' rebuilding what you've taken away? It isn't.

If you're throwing everything we're doing currently away, then why should we continue to pay y'all in the meantime? Every time y'all get 'new ideas', do you think its actually 'fun' rebuilding what you've taken away? It isn't.

This is normal in an MMORPG. And yes, the change MMORPGs go through helps refresh the game and make it differently enjoyable after being in the existing system for a while. Thats the planned scheme for MMORPGs amd almost always has been.

This is normal in an MMORPG. And yes, the change MMORPGs go through helps refresh the game and make it differently enjoyable after being in the existing system for a while. Thats the planned scheme for MMORPGs amd almost always has been.

This comment pertains to what I said how? If they're throwing everything out that I may accomplish in the the next ~6 months, then why do i keep paying in the interim? Besides, your point is irrelevant as there's -plenty- of titles that respect player progress when introducing a new system. Its not zero sum. Differently enjoyable, trollol.

This comment pertains to what I said how? If they're throwing everything out that I may accomplish in the the next ~6 months, then why do i keep paying in the interim? Besides, your point is irrelevant as there's -plenty- of titles that respect player progress when introducing a new system. Its not zero sum. Differently enjoyable, trollol.

Perhaps im not sure what you mean. What progress do you lose?

They openly encourage people to play the way they wish, to whatever motivates them. If you feel you arent making use of your time or your money, you dont need to pay them. Their pay structure allows them to still make equivalent profit whether you skip a month or 3, or pay through those months.

You will not need unassembled components in 6.0, feel free to spend them. Most likely they will be converted to credits with Onslaught's launch.

 

-eric

Hmmm....whats the point in playing/paying if its going to be eliminated for the expansion. Been a subscriber since launch and never thought of this but I'm going to weigh my options now to FTP or whatever cheaper route if their is one....worst case scenario find a better game.

Hmmm....whats the point in playing/paying if its going to be eliminated for the expansion. Been a subscriber since launch and never thought of this but I'm going to weigh my options now to FTP or whatever cheaper route if their is one....worst case scenario find a better game.

Make money, work on achievements, friends, beat content you havent mastered, gear up, pvp, strongholds, conquest, guild progress, learn a different class - just think of this period as free to do anything you wish without being anchored to a specific content by gear acquisition. The choice are limitless, but each player must make their own choice if its enough to keep playing through it. Many will be just fine because they enjoy the game and all it offers.

Hmmm....whats the point in playing/paying if its going to be eliminated for the expansion. Been a subscriber since launch and never thought of this but I'm going to weigh my options now to FTP or whatever cheaper route if their is one....worst case scenario find a better game.

Why would you stop or leave over it? You'd stop paying and leave because they made it so that you don't have to keep grinding for currency to get gear? They make it far easier so you quit? Are you paying to grind out that gear, or are you paying to have ACCESS to that gear? You pay to have access to the system that gives you that currency to acquire that gear.

This comment pertains to what I said how? If they're throwing everything out that I may accomplish in the the next ~6 months, then why do i keep paying in the interim? Besides, your point is irrelevant as there's -plenty- of titles that respect player progress when introducing a new system. Its not zero sum. Differently enjoyable, trollol.

You won't lose anything after the change. You earned what you currently have. It would only be a loss if you lost what you earned. The progress isn't taken away because what you achieved isn't taken away. It's being made easier. If you were travelling a long way on foot and someone brought a vehicle to make it easier for you, would you decline it and say "You are not taking away the progress I've made!"? Or if you're building something using screws and a screwdriver, and someone gave you a drill to make it easier, would you say "You are not taking away the progress I've made!"?

Certainly not! Why? Because the progress isn't taken away. You're being given a way to reach your goal easier, and the old way is being eliminated. Spend what you do have if you have any left over by release in September.

How about an Item that when equipped changes you to a DPS spec... AND remembers your hotkey setup for that spec.

Then another Item that when equipped changes you to your HEAL spec... and updates to your hotkey layout for that.

Then the same for your third spec... if you use it... You get the idea. Quite often it would be beneficial to change my current spec, but it is a nightmare because my skills and hotkey layout etc all change as a result.

Why would you stop or leave over it? You'd stop paying and leave because they made it so that you don't have to keep grinding for currency to get gear? They make it far easier so you quit? Are you paying to grind out that gear, or are you paying to have ACCESS to that gear? You pay to have access to the system that gives you that currency to acquire that gear.

 

Oh boy...."FTP...cheaper route...worst case scenario..." I had the chance to quit a long time ago. To be honest I enjoyed the original gaming concept of the PVP grind for our own gear (Expertise) cause thats what I enjoyed to do. When they made it universal (level synch) I thought to myself OK this would be something new because I really didn't put any effort in the past to PVE (probably spoiled by LotLK/first time playing an online game 07'). Then the Galactic Command/UC-gearing system came along and since I was already accustomed to do whatever it was needed to gear up quickly although it made it somewhat difficult for my alts. Now after several months its all gone to waste due to the new roll-out in the upcoming expansion.

 

All this was my reaction from learning the news of UC being obsolete for the expansion while doing my dailies on Ossus; its not a crime to be upset on something I like very much. In a couple of months I'll probably forget this and continue shuffling along with the SWTOR beat. Take a chill pill dude...

How about an Item that when equipped changes you to a DPS spec... AND remembers your hotkey setup for that spec.

 

Then another Item that when equipped changes you to your HEAL spec... and updates to your hotkey layout for that.

 

Then the same for your third spec... if you use it... You get the idea. Quite often it would be beneficial to change my current spec, but it is a nightmare because my skills and hotkey layout etc all change as a result.

I won't knock what you suggested, as they did leave it wide open for any suggestion no matter how out there. However, you do know that the hotkey layout thing you suggested already exists in the game, right? You merely have to place your abilities to their appropriate locations.

I'm excited about the potential for a variety of set bonuses and for tactical items. I'm going to start this with my suggestions, and then second some other folks' suggestions from this thread that I think are particularly good.

Crafting Set Bonuses - Others have made these suggestions too, but just to get it on the record:

• Increased yield on gathering from nodes.
  
• Reduced time on crafting items.
  
• Increased critical chance on crafting items, or crafting crits get you two extra items instead of the one extra. (Obviously the latter wouldn't impact the chance of an augment slot, but maybe the equivalent would be that you're guaranteed the highest possible MK augment slot regardless of the item rating of the shell.)
  

Points Gain Set Bonuses - Others have obviously also suggested points gain increase set bonuses, but these are the areas I think would be least likely to overlap with or undercut existing items or core game progression.

• Increased Social points gain
  
• Increased Valor points gain
  
• Increased Reputation points gain. (To encourage the idea that each faction should be its own commitment of time, perhaps the pieces of this set bonus can be acquired from the faction's rep vendor at various stages of rep advancement, so that gain only really gets faster in the later stages after you've already dedicated some time to that faction specifically. Either that or just make this a tactical item, that again you can only get once you're at Hero or Champion. It would be important I think for this to apply to when you pop consumable rep grant items too, because then those of us who want to collect rep set bonuses but PVE with a different set bonus could save our trophies, then switch gear and pop them all w/ bonus intact. Keeping weekly caps unchanged should mitigate people advancing too quickly, but players would still be rewarded by not having to do quite as much grinding. I'm looking at you GSI, the only rep faction I have yet to get from Champion to Legend because I can't stomach digging for things and never finding anything..)
  

I know that Travel was mentioned as one of the possible categories but honestly I think character and legacy Perks already cover this really extensively, I can't think of any gains that would make a set like this worth grinding when it's so much easier to buy the perks.

Cosmetic Tactical Items - The thought with these is that they would apply effects that are already seen in action on avatars in game (so not like making people look like another species that won't fit the animations), as just a cosmetic on-all-the-time effect. These would be amazing for RP, but I think they'd have appeal to non RPers too. Some appearances I can think of:

• Spectral. You can already see this applied to avatars when you get that datacron in the shrine on Voss. Some different colors of spectral would be nice.
  
• Hologram. You can already see this effect on avatars when they use the holoprojector toy.
  
• Dark side corruption on skin tones. One for full corruption, and one for halfway. I know we can achieve this by actual alignment, but maybe we want to wear light side alignment gear, or we just want to RP? No harm making us grind for an item that would do this separately.
  
• Plagued. Just use the rakghoul miasma and eyes without any of the convulsing animations that go with the status effect.
  
• Berserker. Some sort of reddish or purple or black dark side fog or energy, rather like Sentinels/Marauders get when their stacks are up. I suppose this might make it hard for people to distinguish when their stacks are up if they do that by animation only, although you'd still get the indicator on your hotbar. This would be a great item to put up for Dark Side tokens on the vendor.
  
• Light-infused. Same as berserker above, just bluish or white or gold. Again a great item for the Light Side tokens vendor.
  

Ok, that's it for my own ideas. Here are some ideas from other people that I loved enough to want to call out and lend some additional support to:

Another idea for a Tactical Item, transform rocket boost into a toggle so it can be used as a legit mount rather than for just a short period of time. It would be nice to be able to use the jetpack that's apart of my character's chestpiece as a legit mount.

^^^^ I would love this so much!!!! I might use this as a legit mount even on characters who don't have an armor piece that's affected, because then I could use some of the clunkier boot models in game and pretend they're legitimate bootjets for my techeads! Yes please! (But don't remove rocket boost! Leave the perk unchanged. So maybe this is less of a request for a Tactical item and more a request for a new mount. )

How about a Tactical Item that lets you use the rest & recharge ability of another class i.e. Seethe on a Sith Warrior.

^^^ I love this too. I imagine that the only way to avoid a complicated need for a menu option attached to the item is just to create eight versions of this item, one for each class. Maybe put them on the Dark Side and Light Side token vendors too, Republic class versions on the Light Side and Imperial class versions on the Dark Side. Just please don't make them have dark/light side alignment requirement to equip, because that would totally defeat the purpose; absolutely make them alignment neutral, but there's no harm making those token vendors relevant again for the purpose of amassing your collection.

What about a tactical item that grants some degree of stealth? Like someone mentioned before here, maybe it could be to a lesser degree than native stealth classes. That's what I would like to see.

^^ I like this, but I can see how it might be really hard to implement while not unbalancing broad aspects of the game. Maybe if there's a way to make sure that this item doesn't work inside a WZ or a FP/Ops? Maybe as long as it doesn't affect players, only NPCs? And maybe it could have a hefty cooldown that is triggered upon engaging in combat so that it can't be used again for x amount of time after you kill a mob. That way you can't totally cheap PVE content entirely as a non-stealth class, but if you are being very careful about pathing a resource gathering route you might be able to make things quicker if you're smart and careful. (That's a whole lot of caveats and restrictions on an item, though. Not sure if this one is really practical.)

COMPANION INFLUENCE BOOST. A boost to companion influence gained from companion items, conversations, etc. would be of great benefit.

^ Yes please! I think this is a good candidate for either/both a set bonus or a tactical item.

DECORATION DROP BOOST. I need about 300 more of the [Fire Sconce]s that drop from open-world mobs on Ossus. I think RPers would be much more inclined to play content like the SOLO mode Flashpoints, open-world planets like Nar Shaddaa and Alderaan and all the others that used to drop the datacron decorations, and especially Ossus if there were a much higher drop rate for decorations.

^ I'm torn on this. As a dedicated RPer myself, I still think it's perfectly fair to expect RPers to grind just like everyone else. That being said, with Ossus decos being BOP it does make it a little frustrating to be so completely at the mercy of the drop table with no recourse elsewhere. (I actually don't mind them being BOP, it's not bad to reward people with exclusivity for being willing to put in the work, but I too would like more Fire Sconces and having no control at all over when I get them no matter how long I grind can be disheartening. As has been said a million times, decos are not like mounts or gear where you only need to get lucky once and then you can unlock it forever.) I don't know how hard it is to actually adjust drop chances on a player by player basis, item or no item. Maybe making it duplicate the items that do drop for you instead? I don't know if that's any easier, technically speaking. But I can imagine that being a check that's done after the fact. Drop chance determined by whatever rules are already in place, then one additional logic step: If decoration item dropped, multiply quantity.

Like usual I wouldn't expect it to be a great conversion rate. We would encourage you to spend them and not rely on a big payoff from them or anything.

 

 

 

Same as above. It is a fair assumption that the currency you use to acquire gear now is not going to work in Onslaught. We'll be talking in more detail about how acquisition will work in the coming weeks.

 

-eric

How will command crates work? If we've got a stash of them, should we just go ahead and clean them out now??

I see the questions that start to arise and I wonder why now??

I mean this concept has been here forever. You grind gear, which becomes irrelevant after a year or so. Sure, what you can do is sub after an expansion is out, play through it and then be done and unsub. This way you play the game as a single player game, which gets constant content updates. You play for the story. However, with this method you might as well watch the stuff on youtube and not even bother playing the game.

When you subscribe you actually contribute to the game and its development. Imagine that everyone would only sub when an expansion is out and then unsub after 3 weeks of playing through everything the new content has to offer. This would ruin the game pretty fast.

Also this is an MMO, its not the idea of the game to be only played when new stuff comes out. The idea is to have groups of people play the game for a common goal, mainly to have fun This is why group activities like PVP, GSF, FPS and operations are an important part of the game cause they provide constant fun, not like the story part which when played through is done.

This means that everyone should know what he expects from the game. However people should not confuse this game with a single player game that keeps on getting DLCs. If people start treating the game like this, there will soon be no game.

Over the last two weeks myself and members of Failure and Origin, Nightmare raiding guilds on Satele Shan and Star Forge respectively put our heads together to try nail down some potential set bonuses and tactical items we think could really improve the feel and playability of classes from a raiders perspective going into 6.0. We primarily focused on the scope of PVE and Operations because that is who we are to our core. A difficult task to be sure. At times we’ve done our best to provide reasonable %’s and modifiers for abilities and passives but maths and balance clearly aren’t the jobs of players so we’ve included this information to try inform and assist other players and developers in understanding the kind of power we’re looking for from certain abilities/items. Conversely there have been ideas we’ve had where we simply couldn’t determine what a balance point for this might be, in these instances we’ve instead used X, Y and Z to reflect our unknowns.

Some things to note, certain classes play so well currently that it can be quite hard to think of what you would change. AP Powertechs and Juggernauts as a whole proved difficult for us. We also decided that set bonuses shouldn’t really impact rotations or the way you play, moreso they should reward you for playing correctly. As you read through our suggestions I’m sure you will notice some classes seem like they’ve had more effort put into them than others. I can however assure you that was not the case, we have many passionate players of many different classes and our discussions often went long into the night. Trying to knuckle down on ideas that were workable and balanced wasn’t easy. We’ve reworked and even removed some of our favorite ideas due to how it could affect the game balance no matter how fun and engaging we argued it would be.

These are just our thoughts, you’ll find them here as well as in their relevant class forums. Feel free to make comments and suggestions, we’ll actively discuss anything you think might be improved throughout all the classes and specs we’ve made suggestions for.

Regards,

Failure

Link to Main Forum Post with Google Doc of Failure's Set Bonus and Tactical Item suggestions

GENERAL

Tactical Suggestions:

• Mass Rez for healers while operations combat is inactive
  
• Combat Clarity
  
  • For 12 seconds, a key ability has no resource cost or cooldown, and your movement speed is increased by 100%
    
  • Not usable in instanced PvP or Operations

   

  [*]Roll the dice (for fun)

  • Grants a random [offensive or defensive] ability at 0 cost from the other advanced specs of your class
    
  • Not usable in instanced PvP or Operations

Set Bonus:

• Mob slayer/Rampage
  
  • 2-set Killing mobs gives you 20% movement speed for 5 seconds (stacks to 3)
    
  • 4-set Killing mobs heals you for 10% max HP
    
  • 6-set 5% increased damage dealt (stacks to 3) for 5 seconds

   

  [*]Social life (4 player group not ops group)

  • 3-set Increased endurance from being in a group
    
  • 5-set Increased CXP gained from being in a group (non-pack)

   

  [*]Speed Demon

  • Sprint now works in combat
    
  • Killing mobs gives 20% movement speed
    
  • Increase sprint movement speed to +50%

   

  [*]Gathering

  • 50% increased movement speed from mounts
    
  • Greatly increased protection from being dismounted/knocked off
    
  • Increases materials dropped from gathering nodes

Link to Main Forum Post with Google Doc of Failure's Set Bonus and Tactical Item suggestions

General Class Specific Suggestions:

MARAUDER/SENTINEL:

JUGGERNAUT/GUARDIAN

ASSASSIN/SHADOW

SORCERER/SAGE

MERCENARY/COMMANDO

POWERTECH/VANGUARD

SNIPER/GUNSLINGER

OPERATIVE/SCOUNDREL

You will not need unassembled components in 6.0, feel free to spend them. Most likely they will be converted to credits with Onslaught's launch.

 

-eric

What about the decorations on Ossus that were added with Hive of the Mountain Queen? Some of them cost unassembled components, will they be changed to credits?

You will not need unassembled components in 6.0, feel free to spend them. Most likely they will be converted to credits with Onslaught's launch.

 

-eric

So what the point to keep farming for 5.0 gear right now ?

So what the point to keep farming for 5.0 gear right now ?

Not sure about you, but i dont have a full set of 5.0 gear on my off-roles like healer and tank yet, so ive just been accumulating them doing my own fun activites. You can do stuff you enjoy without necessarily grinding. Remember CXP comes innately in nearly every activity in game, so you dont need to really grind anything.

You will not need unassembled components in 6.0, feel free to spend them. Most likely they will be converted to credits with Onslaught's launch.

 

-eric

If i get 258 gear, i no need to farm Masterwork and monumentals crystals too?

I already have 20+ masterwork and like 10 monumentals on my main toon, so probably with 6.0 You gonna introduce new currency to keep me sub (You will say "To make gearing easier and better phew!), and forget previous currency that i farmed?

I know this is slightly different than what was intended, but I would appreciate it just the same. I would like it if there was a bonus that increased decoration drop rate in missions/mob drops in exchange for lower credit drops. Building on that, the better odds for rare decos the lower the credit output.

For me, combat is just a means to an end and a lot of the time that end is the decorations. Same with credits, I basically grind credits to get the decorations I want. If I had armor that let me spend more time enjoying the aspects I like, I wouldn't need to contribute as much to the already crazy inflation in game. Also, I would enjoy combat more as it wouldn't be as much of a waste of time for me.

For point of reference, I feel like I gotten the most out of the game when I can play through interesting stories, create my own stories with other players through rp, and get rewards I can use towards rp. Rewards I could use toward RP could mean anything from armor my characters would wear to their mounts, pets, decorations for their environment, and so on.

However, being able to gear up just to kill the baddest thing so I can get armor to kill the next biggest baddest thing is not much of a draw for me and neither is pvp.