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Thank the heavens the gear grind in this game is limited to end-game.


xordevoreaux

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One of the things I detest about Everquest and Everquest 2 is the constant gear grind.

 

Go enough levels in EQ2, and your under-leveled gear goes white, meaning they no longer contribute to your stats, thereby forcing players to farm armor drops or buy new gear.

 

I think people don't appreciate just how nice it really is not to have to contend with such a gear grind here until 75.

 

Personally, I MUCH prefer the system we have in SWTOR where we're not constantly having to peek at our gear to see if anything went useless on us, so when I post in threads that green gear will do just fine for PvE story, I'm not complaining.

 

The alternative sucks.

Edited by xordevoreaux
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The game is a lot easier now than it was at launch.

Through various patches and rebalances, it has been turned into a walk in the park where gear is irrelevant until max level.

It was frustrating at the time, going into a fight that you needed to win to be able to progress with your class story, only to wipe because your gear or your skill was not up to the task, but now that I can just sic my companion on the content to win, and sleep through everything except the conversations, I would not mind having the option to make the current Veteran/Heroic difficulty the standard for my characters.

Still, even though I would love to have more of a challenge, I also definitely do not miss the gear grind :)

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One of the things I detest about Everquest and Everquest 2 is the constant gear grind.

 

Go enough levels in EQ2, and your under-leveled gear goes white, meaning they no longer contribute to your stats, thereby forcing players to farm armor drops or buy new gear.

 

I think people don't appreciate just how nice it really is not to have to contend with such a gear grind here until 75.

 

Personally, I MUCH prefer the system we have in SWTOR where we're not constantly having to peek at our gear to see if anything went useless on us, so when I post in threads that green gear will do just fine for PvE story, I'm not complaining.

 

The alternative sucks.

 

I agree, I like the fact that I can level up in peace, knowing that the gear that drops, although might not be the higest level, is enough to keep me going, and able to combat most content, and if I choose to, I can do heroics, to improve it more. Also that even in end game, as long as I'm not doing NiM or extremely difficult MM FP's/ops the gear that drops is usually enough.

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The game is a lot easier now than it was at launch.

Through various patches and rebalances, it has been turned into a walk in the park where gear is irrelevant until max level.

It was frustrating at the time, going into a fight that you needed to win to be able to progress with your class story, only to wipe because your gear or your skill was not up to the task, but now that I can just sic my companion on the content to win, and sleep through everything except the conversations, I would not mind having the option to make the current Veteran/Heroic difficulty the standard for my characters.

Still, even though I would love to have more of a challenge, I also definitely do not miss the gear grind :)

 

This pops up a lot, and myself and others keep pushing for a vet/hm option for instants mission, where it wouldn't affect open world. I personally think this would be a great compromise and would give most people what the like -> Options / Choices.

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One of the things I detest about Everquest and Everquest 2 is the constant gear grind.

 

Go enough levels in EQ2, and your under-leveled gear goes white, meaning they no longer contribute to your stats, thereby forcing players to farm armor drops or buy new gear.

 

I think people don't appreciate just how nice it really is not to have to contend with such a gear grind here until 75.

 

Personally, I MUCH prefer the system we have in SWTOR where we're not constantly having to peek at our gear to see if anything went useless on us, so when I post in threads that green gear will do just fine for PvE story, I'm not complaining.

 

The alternative sucks.

 

While I personally don't dislike that you can drop lower item-level on lower difficulty mission, I still find that the amount of useless rng layers above this really, really bothering, and if you allow me a little salty note... (tho I do agree with what you said about Everquest)

 

My main gripes is with the set bonuses (It's a long rant, but I swear I'm making my point with this). The fact that there exists way, way too many for every class can be a good point, if and only if every one of these are worth it. Currently there are way too much different set bonuses and tacticals for every spec and most of them are meme-worthy at best. I mean, sure it doesn't affect peoples who don't do above heroics, but going higher, even for slightly higher difficulty content like unranked pvp this difference can mean the world and imo isn't fair or good gear design. The fact that set bonuses are an obligation to not be a dead weight to your group is what makes this an issue for me, and should be for casual players who wants to try content a little bit above veteran flashpoints.

 

Same goes for most useless gear design in the game. Like the fact that there is different stat distribution on the same Enhancement. Again, it boils down to RNG, but seeing a 306 critical enhancement finally drop only to see that it has maxed Endurance and a lot of power instead of high critical and low endurance is a bother as well. Or the amplifiers designed firstly to be a credit sink and nothing else.

 

 

Sure, this doesn't mean much for story players, but I still recall that even them ended up farming command ranks/Ossus useless high-level gear during the end of 5.0 in order to do something. And I believe that enormous levels of rng gear grind can be a deterrent in making them try higher level content, which maybe they could like and stick with.

 

All in all, I believe that there should be better ways to gear up for everybody. Well, I would be all in for less powerfull companions as well, and a better overall game design/ better ways to teach peoples how to play, just like better game indicators (more precise aoes on veteran modes, more visible enemy VFX, so players can understand better what went wrong).

 

The excuse of a "story-driven MMO" doesn't fit well with me anymore for the overall lack of teachings and challenges to the newer players, especially seeing how other "story-driven MMOs" are doing way better in that manner, to the point where dungeons and raids are integrated to their main storyline. I'm not saying to make Dread Fortress a must-have in the main story, but there shouldn't be an obligation to premade a story-mode operation in order to suceed at it. That's the point of Story mode after all. Everybody should have the skill and gear to clear it without trouble. Currently, the gear design and skill gap between players makes that impossible, to the point where peoples complains about the last story mode flashpoint being "too hard".

 

 

A bigger rant than intented to be honest, and I apologize for this. All of this to say that having a lesser difference between let's say "story-mode" gear and high level gear wouldn't hurt as much as one would think. And a gear grind system is better for everybody without rng, be it for the afraid newbies or the motivated veterans.

This would make content more accessible to the majority of the playerbase, or at least this would contribute to that goal.

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If you were not getting gear what would you be doing differently? An open question to anyone.

 

I cannot answer that question for you, but for me absolutely nothing different. Every time there is a increase of level, it gives me something to work towards, except I don't see it as work, just as playing the game.

Edited by DreadtechSavant
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If you were not getting gear what would you be doing differently? An open question to anyone.

 

I cannot answer that question for you, but for me absolutely nothing different. Every time there is a increase of level, it gives me something to work towards, except I don't see it as work, just as playing the game.

 

The question is not "if you were not getting gear what would you do" I think.

 

But "why do you farm gear if you can/have already clear existing content without it".

 

Gear grind is supposed, at least thats what other mmos do, to go with new high-end content. Harder high-end content. The issue here being that we have a gear grind, but no content to test/use this gear on.

 

I see that as an issue because it is an artificial way of adding useless content. By releasing new raids, new operations or just new unique bossfights, you give peoples a need to get higher gear, hence giving peoples an actual reason to do so.

 

If you want to have an idea down the road of what could be done to solve that issue and to bring an answer to your question :

 

An expansion gets released with one new raid, made of four bosses, each one being incremently more difficult in hard/master mode, but difficulty being overall decently balanced in story so everybody can clear it without trouble.

With said raid gets released a tier of gear. One being purple, we'll say, and the other being the upgraded version, in gold, maybe 4 item-level above purple.

 

Purple can be obtained with tokens earned in doing whatever peoples want. Flashpoints, story-mode operation, heroics, unranked pvp, ranked pvp...

 

Gold tier can be achieved by clearing one of the new Operation boss in hard mode, clearing unranked weekly, winning in ranked PvP, completing master mode flashpoint weekly...

 

Overall, players can get purple gear fairly easily to clear every story content available, which allows them to go into higher difficulty content if they want to upgrade their gear to gold.

 

 

Then later in the expansion you release a new raid and new content like flashpoints, boss... All of it being more difficult than the previous one, and thus requiring higher item-level to get cleared.

 

Then you release another tier of gear at the same time. Just like before, one purple, and the gold upgrade, much stronger than the old one, which now can be obtained at a drastically reduced token cost (maybe make the old tier be gold by default now), so players can easily catch up.

 

 

Here. You just got a new fancy way to grind gear, without rng, AND which is accessible to everybody playing any kind of content. And adding new content requiring more stats makes it important to grind gear if you want to do more than story content, while not gimping players who only play "for the story".

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Gods, yes. Now, Its actually a causual game. Get one toon to 75, get renown-boxes, deconstruct crap wit 270+-rating, get tech-fragments from it. Exchange to various modules... What You won't use for the main, It will help your alt(s) to get better, quickly. Normally(...) A toon need to spend weeks to get further from 276-rating. If You have a main, You can almost immediately go from 276 to 304/6'Iish. -Depending on if You spend some credits on pulling modules out, to give them to the alts.

 

First toon will take time, but everything your main can't use, can easily trickle down to your alts. -Afterall, getting levelled to 75 is not difficult. AT ALL. (Nightmare-Flashbacks to 2014-2017)

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-Depending on if You spend some credits on pulling modules out, to give them to the alts.

 

This one as well bothers me. I know that the absurdly high prices of repairing and removing gold gear parts is made to be a credit sink, but new players don't always have much money at first, and more often than not will struggle to get some in the first place. Implementing multiple credits sink into gearing is not what I'd call healthy for every players. And surely there should have been proper thinking ahead in order to avoid such an absurd inflation as we've experienced in the past years... :rolleyes:

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This one as well bothers me. I know that the absurdly high prices of repairing and removing gold gear parts is made to be a credit sink, but new players don't always have much money at first, and more often than not will struggle to get some in the first place. Implementing multiple credits sink into gearing is not what I'd call healthy for every players. And surely there should have been proper thinking ahead in order to avoid such an absurd inflation as we've experienced in the past years... :rolleyes:

 

One day of a level 75 doing every heroic in the game will net over 1 million credits, enough to pop out a few of those gold mods.

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This one as well bothers me. I know that the absurdly high prices of repairing and removing gold gear parts is made to be a credit sink, but new players don't always have much money at first, and more often than not will struggle to get some in the first place. Implementing multiple credits sink into gearing is not what I'd call healthy for every players. And surely there should have been proper thinking ahead in order to avoid such an absurd inflation as we've experienced in the past years... :rolleyes:

 

Pish-posh. What is there to spend credits on? Flashy items from the exchange? Meh. These days we are lucky enough to be able to activate alternative looks by clicking on a button, and... ...You might look nekkid, but have a rating of 306. ;)

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Pish-posh. What is there to spend credits on? Flashy items from the exchange? Meh. These days we are lucky enough to be able to activate alternative looks by clicking on a button, and... ...You might look nekkid, but have a rating of 306. ;)

 

Maybe we could have avoided dumb credit inflationby simply giving more ways overall to spend money. Be it in crafting materials, even -ok, let's get silly here- crafting gear. Ok, now let's go in the "will never happen even tho other games did it", but what if you could buy items on the cartel market with an absurd amount of money ? Imagine, 1 Billion Credits for a platinum or gold item. What a way to make money disappear really fast. Another thing, but housing, be it in strongholds or decorations is a good credit sink. I recall that back in the early days, peoples used to buy the VIP fleet pass for credits, as well as the 2M mount available on the vendor up here. Thoses used to be credit sinks at the time, which were not mandatory, but peoples enjoyed going after those more than spending a million to get one piece of gear. :rak_03:

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One of the things I detest about Everquest and Everquest 2 is the constant gear grind.

 

Go enough levels in EQ2, and your under-leveled gear goes white, meaning they no longer contribute to your stats, thereby forcing players to farm armor drops or buy new gear.

 

I think people don't appreciate just how nice it really is not to have to contend with such a gear grind here until 75.

 

Personally, I MUCH prefer the system we have in SWTOR where we're not constantly having to peek at our gear to see if anything went useless on us, so when I post in threads that green gear will do just fine for PvE story, I'm not complaining.

 

The alternative sucks.

 

I could not agree more. Gear allows me to do the activities I enjoy, which is 99% group stuff...grinding gear over and over isn't my idea of fun.

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Pish-posh. What is there to spend credits on? Flashy items from the exchange? Meh. These days we are lucky enough to be able to activate alternative looks by clicking on a button, and... ...You might look nekkid, but have a rating of 306. ;)

 

Gear still...just good looking gear ;) The gooder you look, the gooder you play. :p

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I could not agree more. Gear allows me to do the activities I enjoy, which is 99% group stuff...grinding gear over and over isn't my idea of fun.

 

ESO also has this issue of gear being nerfed the further you exp, and I don't think that this is a fun aspect during leveling. Endgame-wise tho, I think everybody else does better than Swtor on that regard. :D

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Once upon a time there was a jedi consular quest that actually required you to put your companion in passive mode then run out of the droid's blast range then run back in putting companion back in combat mode because otherwise your would both die quickly. You had to do this several times. When you were done you were barely alive.

 

Back then you gave your companions your old armor to boost their skills. I kind of miss that. And one companion for each class was a healer, one was ranged tank, one melee tank, one ranged dps, one melee dps. Bounty Hunter got healer first, smuggler last. When Treek came out she was best healer or tank. Only companion that could tank or heal. Others were tank/dps or heal/dps.

Edited by RameiArashi
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Back then you gave your companions your old armor to boost their skills. I kind of miss that.

 

Oh GOD NO I absolutely DO NOT missing gearing companions. I have a 178 toons. That's 5 story companions x 178 characters = 890 companions, and that doesn't even begin to address the other 35-odd companions you can get beyond that once you start KOTFE/KOTET/Star Fortresses/JUS/what you can get off the cartel market and all the rest.

 

That was a freaking nightmare to keep track of all that crap for all my toons.

That was pure hell and I'm glad comp gearing was removed from the game.

Edited by xordevoreaux
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Once upon a time there was a jedi consular quest that actually required you to put your companion in passive mode then run out of the droid's blast range then run back in putting companion back in combat mode because otherwise your would both die quickly. You had to do this several times. When you were done you were barely alive.

 

Back then you gave your companions your old armor to boost their skills. I kind of miss that. And one companion for each class was a healer, one was ranged tank, one melee tank, one ranged dps, one melee dps. Bounty Hunter got healer first, smuggler last. When Treek came out she was best healer or tank. Only companion that could tank or heal. Others were tank/dps or heal/dps.

 

Ohno, no more companion gearing. That was a nightmare for sure.

 

However I do miss the old companion specs for sure. I'd wish they'd find a way to make them "unique" again. Maybe with crafting, I dunno.

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Ohno, no more companion gearing. That was a nightmare for sure.

 

However I do miss the old companion specs for sure. I'd wish they'd find a way to make them "unique" again. Maybe with crafting, I dunno.

 

I don't want to be locked out of using my favorite companion just because it went from being a Swiss army knife to heals-only. No thank you.

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Ohno, no more companion gearing. That was a nightmare for sure.

 

However I do miss the old companion specs for sure. I'd wish they'd find a way to make them "unique" again. Maybe with crafting, I dunno.

 

They used to have different gathering and crafting skills bonuses too. For example Mako was a slicer (who'd of thunk it).

Edited by RameiArashi
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I don't want to be locked out of using my favorite companion just because it went from being a Swiss army knife to heals-only. No thank you.

 

Which is why I suggested giving them bonus based around crafting and stuff. This would ask for an overhaul of crafting I think in order to take full advantage of this, but you wouldn't be locked from using your preferred companion in PvE. (I fully understand the concern, giving that I mostly play PvP right now, and my best companion is Pierce because of that.)

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Which is why I suggested giving them bonus based around crafting and stuff. This would ask for an overhaul of crafting I think in order to take full advantage of this, but you wouldn't be locked from using your preferred companion in PvE. (I fully understand the concern, giving that I mostly play PvP right now, and my best companion is Pierce because of that.)

 

A bonus around "crafting and stuff" doesn't do freaking squat for a companion's sudden lack of DPS abilities.

I want to use the companion I want to use in whatever capacity that I want to use that companion, which is exactly what I can do now.

 

So no thank you on that. I'll fight to keep companions the way they are now.

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