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

I would agree.

I suspect that a lot of people who are calling for RNG to be removed, would stop doing so if there was an enjoyable alternative.

I would agree with that if they improved the CXP gains or set the levels of the ranks at a static amount instead of ever increasing amounts of CXP required per level.

If the Command Rank levels required 1000CXP per rank, and they increased the rewards for running content such as Heroics to 200CXP (and all the other content to be comparable for time to CXP gain, so an Operation provides roughly 2-3k CXP etc), then I think the system would be doing what BioWare themselves stated. By that I mean gaining a Command Crate roughly every 30-60 minutes of playtime, so players actually feel like they're being rewarded for running the content.

As the system stands currently, if you are attempting to gear, not only do you have RNG with zero mitigation included, but the actual CXP gains and the ranks themselves are an issue. That doesn't even include the problem with alts or legacy.

I still think CXP gains should be legacy wide, as well as making the Command Stash legacy wide, at least that way you would be able to hop onto a new character and open those Command Crates on the character you want to play and start gearing right away. It also means you don't get penalised for spending time on any particular character and gaining ranks when you could have been spending time gearing a different one.

The whole system itself is flawed, even for a casual player who is fine with the RNG aspect, it certainly detracts from playing more than one or two characters. It definitely doesn't deliver on what we were told about gaining x amount of crates per hour. It definitely doesn't fit into the legacy system itself.

It feels like a rushed system designed to extract the maximum amount of money from players. For me it's had the opposite effect to the stated goals of the system. It isn't exciting, it feels worse than the old Crystals / Commendations systems, it doesn't fulfill the design goals that we were told about.

I do find myself wondering if BioWare listened to the feedback they were given in closed testing, instead of letting it go live before polishing it properly.

OK, let's break free of that conditioning from years of ops and talk PvP.

Because conquest is over, all the no-lifers play PvP in the wee hours of the morning. Monday and early Tuesday morning are not the time you want to play PvP casually, because conquest is over.

One of the guys I got pugged with was supposed to be the #2 sorc in the world. He had a mix of 234, 240, and 242 gear, and linked a bunch of season seven titles-and, of course, set bonus. For whatever reason, this guy was in regs, maybe Jeezee showed up in ranked and did his usual thing?

If I wanted to fight this guy on "even" terms (generous, because he's obviously very good with that sorc), I would need a very similar set of gear. Most of my stuff is left over from before 5.0, and I'm not rich enough to buy 240s. Never mind the part where bought 240s can't be bought with set bonus, only ground out.

Because this system has been live for so long, he would be completely in the right to complain if gear like that got easier to get.

Edit: I'm already regretting buying the expansion. It hasn't been good for PvP.

And what precisely does it provide to the casual player?

I probably do count as a casual at the moment, and I, personally, am no longer motivated to do anything that has to do with GC. I have three toons at GC level 8 each. The "a crate an hour" prediction is just a lie; I don't PVP because I hate it, in those oh-so-innovative Uprisings, my framerate goes to hell even if it's fine in FPS and similar, and my "normal" gameplay nets me so little GCXP that frankly I don't even need to bother. No. This system has nothing for a casual player, save the illusion that somehow some day the best gear might be obtainable. For me, that is not enough.

Gear doesn't have to be the best in order to be usable. As a casual player, it's likely that every single command crate got you least one piece of usable gear at those early levels. Compare that to the crystal system where you had to play a while just to afford a non-set glowing/radiant crystal piece. Or the token system which required you to run the most casual unfriendly content in the game.

And I was fine with earning my radiant sets, slowly, at my own pace. The difference is that with the new system, there is no earning. You put in effort, and may or may not get something in return. None of the crates I have opened so far has given me anything I could use. So yes, I am worse off than I was.

as i watched my nephew playing tablet and handy games over the holidays, i know now where that "open rng boxes for rewad" crap comes from....
one could say BW is slowly changing the game to get mobile device ready

So, the argument seems to be that if one does not enjoy 5.0, it is due to their own inadequacy as a gamer. Expecting an MMO to reward group content that actually requires coordination instead of button pressing is old-fashioned. RNG's are somehow now 'evolution', and anyone who dislikes the game is a troll and should quit. Oh, and the game is doing fine.

Congrats! You have successfully logic-chopped.

Implying the player base needs to learn to play a new game -- one they did NOT ask for and one that does NOT address issues important to the bulk of customers -- is exactly why SWG and WAR went offline.

Even 228 gear is useful since the max gear in 4.7 was 224, so you're saying you got none of that?

In PvP (presumably ops too) 228 bolsters generally worse than 208. There are threads analyzing this in detail via experimentation minmaxing at the bolsterizer. So yeah, people are disappointed in the 228 drops because they do better holding on to their old gear.