We don't want it, we're vocal about not wanting it. What logic is there in cxp?

I like the RNG aspect it's no different to other MMO games such as FFXIV, WoW, they are all RNG as well on what gear you get if you get any and to be honest I'm against the topic of the thread I have been a sub since Beta and have gone through all of the different gearing strats this game has had to offer from the battlemaster,champion bags to the loot drops in operations that were dropping class tokens so if you never had a certain class in that team the loot was wasted because the token was worthless.

I like how they are increasing the CXP earned but also I think the quality item rates should be increased along with it and that's about as good as we need.

Wrong, FF14 has a token system for all endgame tier gear. If you dont roll high on a drop you will be able to buy one at its ilevel anyway. Even the highest tier has tokens, and that gear costs only a reasonble amount. 8 tokens for the best chest etc.

Last time i done 24M raiding in FFXIV you got locked on gear if you won but that bit of gear that dropped was not always something you could use they were random bits so it was RNG. But I have not played any of the new raids since I left the game.

Even then it was not "all RNG" as you claimed in your original post. You still got tokens from it and many parts of the game that allowed you to buy the same ilevel gear.

FF14 has always had token gear, the only newer tokens are the ones for the highest teir. And none of the 24man drop or have dropped the highest teir.

PUG groups are notoriously unreliable. I saw someone struggling to get a partner to run Hoth Heroics last night. That's not a matter of population so much as it is other factors. For group content, I think lots of players are hesitant to run them with strangers; they'd rather do it with people they know, people that can be relied upon to perform. Even in my very limited experience, I have a short list of people I'd rather do and not do Flashpoints with. That's especially true for OPS. Couple with that the random nature of the GC window (you don't know what Flashpoint you're signing up for until after you click "Ready" and you don't even know what level Operation you're signing up for thru GC, much less which Operation)

k, how does this sound, "We want cxp. please dont change it because we approve of what you're doing BW"

we are right that does sound good when you say it

Sounds right. We want CXP and GC to stay. Otherwise we will rage, we will quit and this game will bleed subs like mad!

^^ Very much agree with this assessment.

I can remember back in the day.. when random, ad hoc, grouping was par for the course in leveling up characters in older MMOs. And back in the day... people were generally friendly, social, and cooperative in the process. Sure.. you would run across a few d-bags here and there, but that is what your ignore list was for. Then.......

..... WoW happened... and within a few years.... the entire dynamic of random grouping changes in the genre. People became inpatient, impersonal, only caring about zipping through the content asap, and generally could care less for fellow group mates. There were still good random players to be found, but it eventually became a complete crap shoot. Hence, about 7 years ago I stopped doing PuGs... period.. full stop. If I needed a group to do something, a simple request in guild chat resulted in a full group within minutes to do what needed to be done.

Guild grouping = good (unless you are in a really bad guild, in which case find a new guild).
Friends grouping = good (if they are available and online at the same time).
Random grouping = 70% chance of your time being wasted, frustrations, and probably lack of success. (those are poor odds, and not worthy of wasting time in my view).

That said, as MMOs became more and more solo friendly... this problem with random grouping deteriorated further over time. And it has deteriorated beyond recovery in the MMO genre in my view... which should bode well long term for good solid guilds that play a diverse set of content.

What active player data? The amount of players in game is down based on the numbers of instances and number of players in those instances. The Google trends method that has a logical, data-driven methodology shows the game in its lowest point to date. And BioWare itself is making drastic changes to the game at a high frequency, that is the behavior of a business scrambling to stop a problem, not of a game that's stable or growing its population.

The in-game user interface that tells you how many instances there are and how many players are in that instance. The queue times for group content are longer than ever. The amount of instances of the GroupFinder Operation each day are well below previous levels. The Google trends method was discussed at length on Ootinicast this week as well and shows the same.

The fact that there's any question that the server populations are down significantly is laughable. Please provide a single piece of evidence to the contrary? No one outside BioWare can provide official statistics, but I've provided multiple circumstantial data points that all show the same thing and you've only provided a snarky retort to try to discredit me. I'll let my years of work in this community and the circumstantial evidence that's available speak for itself, if that's not good enough for you then enjoy living in the version of reality you choose, it doesn't matter to me either way.