Best Gear Should Be Soaked in Tears and Blood

You are correct sir.

When you have vertical gear scaling i.e. tiers of gear like we have in TOR then you have to have very quick gearing for every single tier except the final one.

that is what we do now have. Before the new tier of gear, I agree that it was too quick and easy to get full 146 rating gear due to the black hole comms. however, now that 1.4 has hit, the only way to get the top gear, 150, is to complete TFB hardmode or spend extortionate prices on the GTN.

So, this has now addressed the balance: everyone can gear up very quickly and easily up to second best gear, but the very best gear is still very difficult to get and takes a long grind through TFB HM.



Ofc, my personal opinion is that the entire loot structure in this game is absolutely fecking terrible. Vertical gear scaling, whilst it shows progression, segregates the community extremely fast and invalidates huge swathes of old content. Thats just lose-lose.

TOR needs horizontal gear scaling. Each new raid has the same rating of gear, but different set bonuses, different stat weightings etc. We need tons and tons of rare "comparable incomparables". They've started adding some of these with Black Hole Mk 1-3 items, but its not enough. If "Rare earpiece of ridiculous power-but-no-endurance" had a 10% droprate from False emporer, many people would willingly farm that instance just to get the earpiece. Horizontal gear scaling + rare loot = massive longevity to content, no community segregation, more character customisation whilst retaining the ability to be "better" than other people by having the rarest and most optimised loot.

I could get behind that.

I might have gotten a bit ahead of myself with transforming that argument to form I see most often, where people apparently only raid for gear, which I relize don't apply to everyone.
Still, I can't agree with you. You did not 'get' this gear, I don't doubt you were doing your best doing your part in each encounter, but as fresh 50 I doubt you had enough power to contribute as much as you should to say that you 'got' this gear. You were essentially given it(as I read in later posts, quite literatly). And that is huge difference.
First of all, lifespan of that gear trier was already fulfiled, as everyone else and their cats already managed to get it. Now with Dreadguard, it became main carrot, while older gear is just stepping stone. Some may argue that making stepping stones achievement on it's own is way to go, but I disagree. While that prolongs lifetime of content for more casual players, they are not main source of whine about lack of new content anyway, and pulling everyone to same tier makes everything much easier to manage, including detecting moment when newest ops expires and another one needs to be released.
Secondly, it's about gearing alts. I did spent N months on getting my main character to this kind of gear. If I had to spend another N months on alt to gear it up to same level, I would most likely have to neglect my main, resulting in ignoring alts altogether, and that is not intended in this game. Therefore, if you have help of geared people, you can gear up enough to be "raidworthy" quite fast, altough not in one day. Unless they will also craft you all earpieces and implants and relics. But if you're fully in BiS first day after hitting 50 it doesn't mean gearing does not require effort, it means people that help you already put lot of effort into making such fast gearing of new characters possible. Even if you buy all stuff from GTN because you swim in money, you simply move effort from making all that money to gear. If it really was so easy, everyone would be in full BiS day after 50.
Finally, unless BW made gear for some class too good, what drops from bosses is not BiS. All pieces on purpose tend to have unoptimized stats distribution to make road to best possible gear longer.

Gearing up trough random HM takes months, ops are still best way to get gear, and that way you still have reason to visit all endgame content for gear. Even if you are full campaign and want new BH implants, you have to run trough random HM, random Ops, EC and TFB to get as many BH comms as fast as possible. This does just opposite of what you said - makes more content relevant.

Hard to get but 100% that you will if you put certain amount of effort? Nope, I don't think there is such stuff here, unless you count expensive speeders. Gear that takes lots of effort and gives stats? Well, we have datacrons, and even though they are not visible people still complain about them now and then. If people were smashing other people heads with "20 stats more than you", QQfest would be infinite. Not going to argue about entitlement, but giving stats on such stuff is not a good idea. But, stuff that requires only lots of grind and gives you something cool, visual, yep, game could use it.
There already are "wow" thingies, rare drops from bosses. They don't show effort, mostly luck, but they are already around.

Tough luck, BW went with progression raiding, and changing that suddenly would lose them more people than it could gain, so not likely to happen. Maybe in different game.

And in terms of progression raiding, each thing that doesn't drop something that you need is trash. If operation have 5 bosses, each one has to drop gear better than what you have now, so that you have to kill bosses 1 and 2 so you're able to tacke bosses 3 and 4. If only 2 last bosses would drop gear, all other would be only simple trash, roadblock on road to progress.

Now, the thing is, this is game with both PvP and PvE, that are supposed to be keeps mostly separate. That means there is power ceiling, and blance that has to be kept. PvP gear always worse in PvE than PvE gear, and other way around, while not overvaluing pvp stat. And there is also limit on how much more power can new gear have over old one. With progression, gear dropped has to be better than what you have, and difference should be big enough to make it at least partialy required to tackle futher bosses. Most of the time gear here is already hitting ceiling, and giving better gear, by any means, will upset balance.

You want to have your hard content, that's cool, but you can't take away 'easier' content either. And with current system of "reward or no reward" with only one kind of reward, there is nothing that can be done. Should thay introduce another subtier of gear that would require something more than killing bosses? Maybe, but that is quite a challenge, to make it in a way where it doesn't break other parts of game. For now, try to live without it.

well u could try to do gearing up the normal way.do first some ev or kp sm ,then ev,kp hm,denova sm,.... U choose to gear up so fast.

The gear progression system did not prevent 3/4 of the playerbase from walking the plank. It was a mistake, IMO, to go with vertical progression of this type. Any attempts to make it more difficult will simply be more counterproductive.

I agree with u good sir!

After reading this through a few times, half of me wants to call troll. However, if the OP is serious, I have some sad news for him. This type of post pops up every few months, where someone is desperately unhappy that more than 5 toons on fleet are in War Hero or (at the time) Black Hole/Campaign gear. They are used to games where only a very very small percentage of the player base ever ever ever have a legit shot at the end-game top-tier purple or legendary shiny. That way, they can stand in common areas with or on their ultra-special-rare-nigh impossible to get "_____ " that they spent two to six months in a twelve hour at a time grind to get.

With all due respect, this game is not for you.

From the outset, EA/Bioware planned that this game would be casual-friendly above all. And it is. Most folks I see on fleet have a least a few Rakata pieces, and I'm fine with that. I get there are people who are not fine with that. I'm not even sure there are games out there anymore with the EQI level of dedication required. I think those days of gaming are pretty much over. Mostly because people want to play a game, not log onto a second job, as many of us old-schoolers did for so many years.

Sadly, I have no advice for you. I would only suggest that if you feel that you worked harder for the same gear accessible by most other players, you probably need to be looking for a better gaming fit. I wish you luck.

It's been really interesting reading everyone's responses.

I agree that this latest tier is set up better than previous tiers, aside from the ease with which schematics are being re'd off the gtn. It's a step in the right direction.

A bunch of people suggested ways to manufacture difficulty that isn't there. If they provided rewards for beating such challenges in the way of vanity pets, mounts, or titles, I'd be inclined to agree.

A couple people got fussy about the term "tears and blood". It's called exaggeration This is a game. It's entertainment. On the scale of important things in the world, it doesn't come anywhere close to the stuff that's truly meaningful. That said, if a game doesn't provide challenges that frustrate you at least a little, then the payoff when you overcome those challenges isn't as great. You have to have the lows to get to the highs.

People who are busy and can only play the game rarely should be able to get gear that allows them to participate in endgame and work towards those best pieces. But no, I don't think they should be able to pick up the best of the best with very little effort.

What it comes down to, in my opinion, is that there should be pieces that are rare and hard to get. The best of the best should be a goal for most people, something to work towards. I believe that things that are easily attainable quickly lose their value. The rush that comes from achieving something difficult is worth the effort.

Correct, it's no longer the BiS gear, thought it was when I got it before 1.4, I know it might be a confusing example and I should have pointed out that fact >.<

No need for harder modes, even thought that would be alright, just remove some of the loot and make the BiS stuff more rare and most important, not craftable...

Tbh I am doing that right now on the alt to get the different speeders