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Galactic Command Gearing Roadmap - Coming This Week


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

In one of my previous posts I highlighted that beyond the changes we made in Game Update 5.1 that there are more coming. By Friday of this week I am going to make a forum post highlighting a roadmap of changes you can expect to address the feedback you have raised around gearing in Galactic Command. These changes will be starting in the next few weeks and will go through to Game Update 5.2. They are intended to address the following:

  • Greatly increase the rate at which you earn Command Crates. Our goal is that you earn one Crate every 30 minutes, or less (on average).
  • Looking at improvements we can make to Unassembled Components and Unassembled Pieces.
  • Make gearing more alt-friendly.

That isn't a comprehensive list, but it gives you an idea of some of the things we are looking to address based on your feedback. Just in case I was quiet about Galactic Command for a few days I want you to know that we are listening and more changes are coming. Look for my post later this week!

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

Nice to hear Eric i hope you read the posts of pvp players about how disbalanced are pvp and pve gearing progression, farming components due to their cost is far much longer than getting gear through running operations! I hope you will consider it in 5.2 or you face massive loss of pvp players which don't want to do pve for gearing up...4 of my pvp friends already left swtor because of this, PLS DO SOMETHING! Pvp and pve gearing progression must be at the same level.

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Thanks Eric..

 

 

 

 

I don't care what they call it. They are fixing something that is broken and for that I am thankful. Hopefully the rest of my guild wont quit first.

Wait, let me get this straight. You are praising them for ....

 

First, taking something that wasn't broken and totally destroying it.

 

Now, trying to fix a severed limb with a Band-Aid?

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I still don't see how this is going to be possible. As things are right now, aren't we supposed to be averaging one crate every hour according to them? Is anyone even currently earning one crate an hour without farming Fractured with a premade group of 4?

 

I'm not- not even when warzones are a bonus. The figure is insane, we don't earn a crate an hour now so I don't trust some arbitrary new thirty minute figure.

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off the top of my head, I was playing for 60 hrs to get to rank 108 from 71 - exclusively doing WZ, GSF and dailies/heroics+ chapters - admittedly without any booster. Which averages about 0.6 ranks per hour.

I try to do more of the bonus stuff on the bonus day, but if a pop happens I always take it. I would guess any PvP activity comes out around 50% win/loss and GSF possibly about 60% win/loss ( imps are generally marginally ahead- tho' not by much)

I'm always queued in the daytime when pops are plentiful.

 

So 1 rank per hour- not happening over about rank 20.... Even semi hardcore-ing it :)

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Why wont you remove the cancer rng? Why not make a system simple and plain.

 

Any activity in game would grant you an unassambled gear component. For example, h2, 1 component per mission, or planet. Values can be easly calculated. Ops boss on SM - 5 components. Flashpoin boss, 2. WZ 3. Those are only examples, keep that in mind. I wasnt even doing any math yet.

 

For unassambled components you could buy 230 and only 230 gear. Entry lvl gear.

For credits you could get the blue 230 with borked enchs, yes, blue gear should not have proper enchs imo.

Anything above purple 230 would go as following

 

PVP endgame gearing?

 

People are asking for cross server wz. Grant them that (AND LOTS OF NEW WZ maps... how much more we have to play on same maps. Turn off the old and make new! The wz type dont have to be new. Dont make new odessen that nobody understand. Just make new maps based on current systems. Capture the point, capture the flag (huttball) etc. WE NEED SOME NEW STUFF. Dont reinvent the wheel, just make a new one because old is a wreck) And with that we could finally get the mm (match making) for ranked games based on your rating.

The higher tier gear would be accessible for obtaining a certain rank in soloq or bit more higher in team ranked ladder.

If you are winning the games and if you have rank high enough to give you access to the gear, you are granted an unassambled token that will give you the choice of what item you want to make. Token would be granted once per game, or two. Values to be calculated.

 

PVE endgame gearing?

 

This would require to rebuild the operations and bring back some of the old nims, but it might be worth it.

 

SM - unassambled components and fights easy as 4th boss in TBF. Revan in tos with one floor less etc. All fights in sm simplified.

Before i will go further with system, we need to cover the gear.

We have 12 types of items. 7 armor items, MH OH, Ear, Implant and Relic.

This require 12 bosses so BW should do 6 new operations so the middle one and last boss drop fixed gear. Small chance to drop something from other bosses. Very small, smaller then now.

Or make 1 or 2 ops long like snv and make it drop 3 items and other 3 operations would drop another half of gear. All to be decided but you get the general idea. With that, BW should remove the lvl sync on the operations, or just leave them as they are now and just make them do not drop the end game gear. Or mabye better, character lvl should be synced down, to original lvl of the operation and just drop the unassambled components (values based on the lvl of diff). We could also get 1 or 2 instances with more difficult bosses that would drop mh and/or oh like the mono did on 3.0. That was fun. But before we would get to the new operations i bet this system would be implemented to current operations. So let me explain what i would do with operations themselfs.

 

Personaly i would love to see 2 new extra long operations. Few of typical and one or two with one or two bosses for extra goodies.

 

Now, after the story mode was nerfed its time to make some good things for the raiders. Veteran mode (old hard mode, that would became a bit of a challange and exchange current story mode) would be left as it is now or in some cases slightly nerfed (revan for example, or just remove most of the swaps mechanics, lower some of the dmg output from bosses etc, Tiny adjustments) and to make all things crystal clear we need to get back to 3 tiers of difficulty on each operation because we have 3 tiers of gear. Master mode is missing on some of the operations. Some of the fights are already hard enough to be on mastermode (revan hello again) but some of them are not (soa?!?) So those would have to be bumped a lot. Soa for example would be good on Master mode (old nim) if he had something like more dps checks, if your team fails to destroy the mind trap in cerain time, mind trap kills the guy inside. Balls would simply zapp to death anyother player that is not being targated byt it ETC. Mechanics are simple stuff. No need to reinvent the wheel, just make a new one. I have lots of simple but good ideas. Just ask for them if you want. And only veteran mode and master mode would drop 2nd and 3rd tier gear.

 

And to add the finishing touch. You could finally get it done with the boring alliance, lana and theron. Most of the peole are bored with force stuff. Its the 3rd expansion that is focused on very serious forcec buisness. Bring back the old story chapters for each class and roll out an expansion with tech based story. For example

 

Czerka outbreak. After all those wars empire and republic is so weak that mare Czerka corporation is becoming a threat. Czerka is hunting down mysterious ancient terraforming tech that would give them a dominant position in galaxy, but they dont want to destroy the empire and republic. They want them to keep fighting so czerka can sell more weapons to them and enslave both sides in endless war.

Expansion filled with lots of gags and jokes in dialogs, followed by 2 new dailie areas or some new heroics and 3-4 new flashpoints with seperate story.

 

Ive figured that out in less time i was writing this.

 

EDIT: Forgot to say that BW, with lvl sync on planets, does not have to do the new planet. They could simply do things on current planets. Who would like to go and meet with group in front of operation that entrance is next to scarlac pit!

Edited by Forren-Midosea
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The fix we need we wont get. We need the command system removed lock stock and barrel. RNG as a primary gearing method is insane and they were told this over and over but they have totally refused to accept it. They ignore it and keep making crazy changes that only make it more convoluted but don't address the true issue.

 

We can make all the suggestions we want. We can say anything we want to say. The truth is they know the fix, have known it a long time, but are streadfastly refusing to apply it. Now the reason they are refusing is to me the real concern. Who is making that line in the sand, who needs to be moved out of the way so this game can go back to being fun? Who ever it is, they need to be moved on.

 

RNG is punishment for a player base that had been loyal and engaged in the content you did provide. Now all we do it fight against it and sadly many just leave, once and for all. It has poised every aspect of the game.

 

Punishing the players with RNG must end, once and for all. No other fix will do, end RNG.

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- Reduce the component cost of Tier 1 (230) gear significantly (like I said above). I would say the cost of Tier 1 gear should be halved at the absolute minimum. That way players can get the entry level gear much quicker creating a more even playing field.

- Increase the amount of Unassembled Components earned for completing all types of PvP content win or loss. I would say doubling the amount of Unassembled Components earned would be a good start.[/i]"

The problem is that PvE and PvP are now tied, you can't make a change to PvP without affecting PvE.

 

Right now, you have to do 3-4 SM operations on average to get a single piece. That can take as long as 8 hours, provided you find a group that gets through it and has no ninja looter, which is not guaranteed.

 

Compared to that, I think the PvP cost is fine. If they give Tier 1 away for free via PvP, then no one will run SM operations anymore, and since that's kind of the only operation content you can PuG nowadays, it means operations will only be run internally in the raid groups.

 

It was horrible when no one was looking for operations during 5.0; with 5.1 it got better. Yes, the system needs to change, but your suggestion will change it for the worse in PvE.

Edited by Jerba
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So 1 rank per hour- not happening over about rank 20.... Even semi hardcore-ing it :)

 

Doing kotfe chapter 1 master on repeat while queue'ing for GSF got me around 600 unassembled components and over 30 levels (started at below 150, now i'm 181), in less than 30 hours.

Edited by Eli_Porter
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Doing kotfe chapter 1 master on repeat while queue'ing for GSF got me around 600 unassembled components and over 30 levels (started at below 150, now i'm 181), in less than 30 hours.

 

Playing for 30 hours in a week isn't semi-hard coring it, its going pretty extreme and your specifically gaming the system using the two things that are giving an unjustified reward for their difficulty. I think you prove his point very well.

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The current system COULD work with some changes:

 

1) Instead of giving us a piece of gear that we might or might not need, give us a UNIVERSAL token in the Command crate which we can trade in for an item of OUR CHOOSING. That way it prevents us from getting the same item over and over again.

 

2) Increase the amount of Unassembled Components we get. Right now I can't bring myself to buy an item because I always think "what if I get this item on the next command crate?" Buying an item using Unassembled Components to only have the same item drop in a crate would seriously make me punch my monitor considering how long it takes to get enough Components to buy a single piece. The drop for Unassembled Components need to be doubled or tripled across the board.

 

3) Add Unassembled Components to daily/weekly PvP boxes, as well as adding them to Uprisings and Flashpoints (the harder the difficulty the more components it drops from bosses).

 

4) Dramatically increase the CXP gain for completing weekly quests.

 

5) Make Unassembled Components LEGACY wide just as the tokens currently are. This change would make the game alt-friendly again.

Edited by ---AlterEgo---
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5.1 was just the start of the changes though, and my post above was to let you know when to expect more specifics!

 

-eric

 

Respectfully, Eric, I'm a little blown away we're still having this same conversation - It's been three and a half months since you unveiled this system and we're still at square one. If you somehow truly believe the proper course is to phase in continued tweaks and tunes to this system, you are mistaken.

 

It is broken. And horribly so. And your community essentially hates it.

 

It is frustrating, to me as a long time subscriber, to know the studio is continuing to waste time and resources on this problem when there is a simple, elegant solution that puts this debacle in the rear view mirror. I would much prefer you guys were spending your time creating new content than continuing to bolt on more clumsiness and clutter.

 

Go back to October when you first discussed this. Compare what you had in your mind then to what we have now. I suspect the two versions are nothing alike.

 

Yet everything you're doing - and everything you intend to continue to do - is simply addressing problems we told you about the day of the announcement. And again on PTS. And again at 5.0 launch. And again at 5.1. And again, today. The phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" springs to mind.

 

The fix you need to implement is to simply put loot back on the bosses, and revert PvP gearing to 4.0. You have broken the game badly, and until you make those two changes it will remain broken.

 

However you are reacting at a pace that is about 10 speeds too slow. Remember how quickly you patched the bug the other day? Remember how quickly you nerfed Golds/Champs? That's how fast you need to be correcting here. Because I suspect we've still got a ways to go - a number of iterations - before what we've been telling you sinks in for you guys. And until it does, you're going to continue to hemorrhage bodies.

 

To be clear - getting one random crate filled with crap that is both useless and unwanted, even every half hour, is still a crap system. You could give me three at a time and it's still crap. However I suspect you still don't realize we are probably months away from even seeing one crate per half hour. You just don't understand how your game works, do you?

 

How can you possibly make flashpoints and PvP equitable for CXP? You understand it cannot be done, don't you? As in literally, it won't work.

 

Because if you tune it so that casual players who use Galactic Command to queue for both PvP and FP's are going to have vastly different queue times. I would wager a DPS can do one HM flashpoint - if queueing - in the time another player can do 6-8 WZs. But let's be over generous and say only four WZs. So that HM FP ought to provide 4x the CXP as a WZ.

 

Yet for the player that doesn't need to queue - and just has a group of friends to run FPS with - they can blast through those same FPs in half the time, with no queue. Now they're getting ~3x as much CXP as the PvP player.

 

Think about it - chain running a broken Fractured netted about the same, maybe slightly more but not by much, CXP as PvPing. Don't you see the problem here? It. Can't. Work.

 

Oink.

 

Here's my suggestion. Whatever you plan to announce later this week - don't. Take whatever numbers you're planning on releasing, and triple them. Seriously, triple. And patch it into the game the very next day. And then go play, and see if it's still not broken. I promise you, it will be.

 

Making these incremental changes is not helping. It's just pissing people off and encouraging them to quit. Because we know they are pointless, we're telling you they're pointless - and you're just not listening.

 

There was nothing wrong with how PvP gearing used to work. Nothing.

 

There was nothing wrong with how Ops gearing used to work until you created HHM. Nothing.

 

Stop screwing around.

Edited by gabigool
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Hi Eric,

 

I'm not some fancy game developer but these changes would seem to encourage players to not play the game until they're implemented. For example, if someone said to me there was an expected price drop in something I'm looking to buy in a month then I'd probably just not buy it for a month.

 

Now I've never developed an mmo so excuse me if I'm oversimplifying things here but why on earth would a player not just unsub and then resub when you finally get around to fixing this clearly broken from implementation system?

 

I've never managed a shoe shop so maybe I'm missing the instant "keep paying money for the game" part of this post but all I read is:

 

1: Stop playing the game for now, do something else! We'll reward your time far better soon

2: Please stop PvPing! If you do it in a month you'll get much greater rewards - And for the love of God don't buy anything for the next 6 weeks

3: You know those alts we massively encouraged to level for 12x XP and DvL? Well leave them on the shelf for a while longer and perhaps we'll help them.

 

Any chance you could possibly address these pretty gosh darn valid concerns?

 

These are pretty gosh darn valid concerns :rak_03:.

 

It is fair to say that if someone solely cares about gearing their character, they would consider waiting for these changes to go in place before playing. That is why we had a few goals in making my post yesterday:

  1. We are being open that changes are coming.
  2. We are going to provide details on what is changing, and when, so that you know what to expect.
  3. We want to start rolling these changes out ASAP. I said the changes will start in the next few weeks, but the goal is the first changes will happen very soon (likely next week).

If someone really wants to wait for changes to take affect before playing, that's ok! However, I think there is other fun to be had without just gearing their 70 (level an alt to 70 in prep for the changes, finish up legendary status, etc).

 

-eric

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That sounds like a really choice way to spend time.

 

Ikr 30 hours of Speed running a boring chapter that I didn't like doing when it first dropped a year ago is so much fun... Also why does GSF give more components than any other form of PvP besides Granked and the most CXP when it still has its own currency it uses.. :rak_02:

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The GSF part sounds great. Robotically stealthing through KotFE chapter 1 - no.

I didn't use a stealth character, I did cheese a couple mini-boss fights with saber reflect though. It's also actually fun PvE because I have to use my stuns and DCD's wisely to be efficient.

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These are pretty gosh darn valid concerns :rak_03:.

 

It is fair to say that if someone solely cares about gearing their character, they would consider waiting for these changes to go in place before playing. That is why we had a few goals in making my post yesterday:

  1. We are being open that changes are coming.
  2. We are going to provide details on what is changing, and when, so that you know what to expect.
  3. We want to start rolling these changes out ASAP. I said the changes will start in the next few weeks, but the goal is the first changes will happen very soon (likely next week).

If someone really wants to wait for changes to take affect before playing, that's ok! However, I think there is other fun to be had without just gearing their 70 (level an alt to 70 in prep for the changes, finish up legendary status, etc).

 

-eric

 

Perhaps if you don't wall gear behind a months-long grind, players would focus on something other than gearing.

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Playing for 30 hours in a week isn't semi-hard coring it, its going pretty extreme and your specifically gaming the system using the two things that are giving an unjustified reward for their difficulty. I think you prove his point very well.

 

4 hours a day for one week isn't extreme.

 

His point was that 1 hour per crate isn't possible, and it's false.

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I didn't use a stealth character, I did cheese a couple mini-boss fights with saber reflect though. It's also actually fun PvE because I have to use my stuns and DCD's wisely to be efficient.

 

Well, to each their own. I actually like that chapter but 30 hrs? Nope nope nope.

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Doing kotfe chapter 1 master on repeat while queue'ing for GSF got me around 600 unassembled components and over 30 levels (started at below 150, now i'm 181), in less than 30 hours.

Their estimated times they say are for normal game play. Sorry, but I don't think that repeating a single chapter for 30 hours is considered "normal" game play. That's farming.

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Well, I'm done trolling this forum. The GC is a total disaster, and my hopes that a drastic reduction in subscriptions would result in the developers quickly changing their stance on GC and the RNG gearing policy. I suspect subs have cratered and this "roadmap" of tuning GXP just overlays the foundation of RNG.

 

To believe that a "roadmap" promise is enough to stem the tide or give people reason to come back from a cancelled subscription is silly. The only way is to dismantle the RNG. You'll never get rid of GC once implemented, that's obvious, but keeping this horrible gearing system in place is silly. You were told prior to 5.0 in Beta that this was the worst idea ever. You were told it would lead many people to cancel their subscriptions. I wasn't just one or two people saying it. Almost everyone in Beta told you don't do this, it will destroy the game. You did it anyway, and despite seeing what we all told you would happen, you continue down this retarded path of RNG gearing.

 

This game is done. All you are doing is keeping the patient alive just a little while longer with band-aids over the wounds you have inflicted. The only thing that could save SWTOR at this point is a removal of RNG crates. Drop crates but get rid of RNG....you were told this many times before 5.0. I hope when the game closes, you will go back and think about what your paying customers told you what would happen. I will never understand the hubris of developers in every MMO that seem to think they know the game better than the players.

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Well, to each their own. I actually like that chapter but 30 hrs? Nope nope nope.

 

Their estimated times they say are for normal game play. Sorry, but I don't think that repeating a single chapter for 30 hours is considered "normal" game play. That's farming.

 

 

Didn't just do that for 30 hours, it was about 2/3rd GSF and 1/3rd Chapter.

Edited by Eli_Porter
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These are pretty gosh darn valid concerns :rak_03:.

 

It is fair to say that if someone solely cares about gearing their character, they would consider waiting for these changes to go in place before playing. That is why we had a few goals in making my post yesterday:

  1. We are being open that changes are coming.
  2. We are going to provide details on what is changing, and when, so that you know what to expect.
  3. We want to start rolling these changes out ASAP. I said the changes will start in the next few weeks, but the goal is the first changes will happen very soon (likely next week).

If someone really wants to wait for changes to take affect before playing, that's ok! However, I think there is other fun to be had without just gearing their 70 (level an alt to 70 in prep for the changes, finish up legendary status, etc).

 

-eric

 

And the point of this response was... nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders?

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I still don't see how this is going to be possible. As things are right now, aren't we supposed to be averaging one crate every hour according to them? Is anyone even currently earning one crate an hour without farming Fractured with a premade group of 4?

 

Our goal at launch was 60 minutes per crate. Right now we are seeing times both below and above that goal with an average time per crate being little higher than our target, but not much. It is one of the data points we looked at to plan for our new target. Which if you are math savvy, our new goal is you will get crates twice as fast as before (or more).

 

For reference, people doing aggressive CXP farming are already doing so at a rate quite a bit faster than every 60 minutes. Our new targets are that someone will get a crate every 30 minutes, without a boost.

 

-eric

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