Break free of your conditioning - gearing, OPs, ...

Exactly. The real core issue here is more about how absurdly easy it was to game 4.0 for BiS gear.

Now that this has changed.. people are accustomed to it find it hard to change or accept anything else.

That said.. improvements are needed in GC if they actually expect it to survive one expac cycle. No need to throw it away, but it does need actual mitigation mechanics for when a player has bad luck.

As to breaking free of conditioning, this is actually a relevant line of thinking. Players claim they don't chase gear, but I think it is pretty clear from the outcry over GC that players do indeed chase gear.

I do think they are listening, but it remains to be seen how far they step into a sequence of changes to address feedback.

Clearly they are going to ignore the current meme of #remove RNG.

Clearly they are making changes in 5.1 to at least partially address concerns, but it's not enough. It solves one issue, and creates new ones in the process.

GC, in my view should be treated like every other reputation grind in the game to date ---> as you level GC ranks, you open more access to direct gear purchase from a vendor.. period. No double grinding for unassembled pieces + grind for GC. Make it a straight up faction grind with clear and visible measure of what progress is required for what items. If you get something from a crate sooner, that is just good fortune and is fine.

Only the removal of the GC system is right. It was released broken, and frankly nothing in a game 5years old should be released broken. If it is remove it. They clearly didn't do their research ahead of time, didn't work the numbers ahead of time. So now we suffer for their lack of effort and more so for their lack of listening. All these people claiming they listen what exactly do you think they are listening to? What have they listened to?

Did they listen when people told the in beta that this would not be acceptable?

Did they listen prior to release when people said it would not be acceptable?

Have they listened since that this is not acceptable?

If you think they have, please show me, show me real evidence in game that they listened? Don't tell me wait till 5.1 we all know that isn't even close to a fix, so show me evidence they really listened?

Wait people asked for companions back, espically the LIs...their all back right? Most of them are back then right?

How about breaks in the chapters so one doesn't auto jump into the next? Did that listen to that?

How about long known hacks in PVP? Dead servers.....

What are they listening to that all the white knight go on about?

Maybe they need to start. Start by listening to the problem that is the galactic command crates. Show some of that humility you keep claiming to have by removing it and saying sorry. Forgoing that just removing it and move one from there. If you think it can work move it back to beta and this time, really really really listen to the feedback. Act on it, and make it work. Don't force a broken system live just to do it. Do the right thing, pull this broken system and get back to adding real content to the game.

I would disagree with you that the galactic command system needs to be removed. It's pretty legit at its core. The RNG gearing portion of the system is what needs fixing. While they may not have listened to us about releasing this system with a valid catch up mechanic or a universal token system, they have since listened and accepted the need for a quasi universal token system. The catch up mechanic needs to be implemented ASAP since it's far too likely currently to get through all the tiers and not complete one set of gear (multiple friends of mine are in tier 3, and have yet to complete an entire 6 piece gear set, more are in tier 2 and have yet to, and even more are at the tail end of tier 1 and are no where close).

So in a round about way they are listening. It's a shame they didn't go into this release with more preparation under their belt though. Their modis operandi seems to be release something, gather data, then make changes. Which isn't a terrible process. It's just slow, and when you're not releasing new content all the while launching a brand new system like this the problems are exponentially increased and more problematic. Who knows.

Ugh. This game deserves a better class of defenders.

It's not really broken, it's working the way it was designed to. That's just not in a way that people find acceptable, as you say. The mentality that led to the implementation of the system (they thought you'd grind through the same ol' content in order to eventually gear up to be able to do content that you were fully able to do a month ago) is what's broken.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the forums, I do believe they are listening, are aware of the discontent of many players, and have tried to implement a fix to try to satiate some of these unhappy players. It's not a complete fix, and not back to the way it was, but it's a start. More needs to be done, and it's up to the smart, experienced players who understand how these things work to point out to the devs how their system is flawed. Walking away doesn't help this, threats of walking away don't help. All this will result in is less people who care being around to make a difference.

Consider the following: all the raiders leave, saying they'll be back if there's new operations to do. After a while, no one will be doing operations. EA will see that and say "the players don't want raids" and Bioware won't make any. The raiders will watch and see no new raids and won't come back. They kill their own system by abandoning it.

Consider: all the raiders leave, saying they'll be back if the game ditches the RNGearing system. Same result. Do you think they know or care WHY you left, WHY no one's raiding? They do not, and that's the sad truth.

If you like the system as it is, the way to show them your point of view is to demonstrate in a reasonable manner how it is superior to the old way. Attacking other people, telling them to quit, calling them names doesn't in any way show anything good about the system; it only shows that you yourself lack class and any reasonable point of view.

For that one guy who actually wants the game to die and posts on the forums for years like the homeless guy roaming the streets with the sandwich board reading THE END IS NEAR.... I have nothing for you, sir, except pity.

If you truly love something you fight for it, you do whatever you can to improve it.

I think most say GC to mean just the rng box reward, well I hope so because GC as a system is really nice, better than i've seen in any other game, and I play a lot.
The single interface for most of the end game activities, where you can select the group finding, or difficulty and transporting to said activities is a really nice feature, and even the boxes are are fine.
If this system and how it was released, was released as an addition to the old system, with the removal of the weekly priority ops farm, I think it would of been received positively by most of the player base.

As for the conditioning thing in the OP it's nonsense. I say that as someone who is fairly well rounded in terms of what I've played in this game: 73% ops, 72% pvp, 100% gsf, 62% Flash Points and I enjoy the story as well. To me ops is the best part of the game and there's no real comparison between ops and flash points. I guess the op believes it fun to clear heaps of trash or maybe have some kind of player designed dungeons, but that seems pretty silly and it in no way diminishes ops, nor makes them the equivalent of tuned up flash points.

As for what can be done to fix GC, I'd say two things:

* You can't get the same implant more than twice, the same relics and ear more than once

* Give a 25% legacy buff to alt xpc gains every 75 cxp levels, to a maximum of 100% cxp legacy bonus

That's just undoing some of the damage though. The game needs new operations. I mean maybe they like what's going on, expenses perhaps are down, and subs perhaps are down too. Maybe that is an acceptable business model for SWTOR, maybe it really is SWTOR maintenance mode.

If that's not what they want, then they need a new ops pretty quickly.

Haha I logged in to post exactly this. And with these forums and its history of white knights/biodrones, this says a lot.

When I look back at what I've done in this and other MMOs to get gear already, I am confident I'm not the lazy one here. The lazy ones here are the Bioware developers who came up with this lazy gearing system and people like you who have loads of opinions and zero proof or reason to do so.

There is nothing to deny here, but if you want to use wikipedia links, here's one for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

I dont think the GC system needs to be removed. I think it provides quite a bit for a casual player.

I do think, however, using it as the sole mechanism to provide end game gear to hardcore players was probably ill-advised.