Just the timetable of this tells me you are taking all of our criticisms very seriously, so I thank you for that in advance and can't wait to hear the official response tomorrow. Edited September 3, 2019 by ZionHalcyon

Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow?

- Too slow - especially since it takes quite a few gear rating levels to get same or similar stats to 258, but then without the set bonus. Meanwhile seems like you need to wear the higher level gear to keep increasing the gear level, so basically taking a couple of steps back before being able to move forward - unless I missed something.

 

Do you understand what to do to get gear?

- Yes, missions and content, plus the tech fragment vendors and a bit from Renown. However don't completely understand how to improve gear bought from Kai Zyken, which is quite expensive (so you need to save up for a set unless you have silly amounts of credits or time). There were only very few drops for mods the ways we tested (mostly Hammer station) and what I've heard from others who did missions - and the crafting level I reached only gave 276 armoring, so doesn't seem like the best way either.

 

How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions)

- Gear drops from the difficult content and missions could be improved compared to what's on PTS - too many drops which aren't relevant to anyone in the group.

 

How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown)

- Vendor with unidentified gear could improve by at least giving either same/higher level gear or for the current discipline (I can send to alts of course, but not everyone has 15-25 alts to switch between). For Kai Zyken gear it seems like noone could find mods to improve of what you initially buy. I got some from Hammer Station and also got crafting to 690, but schematics I saw there still wasn't a vast improvement. Will comment more in the crafting thread..

- Didn't notice any higher level gear crafting on my Synthweaver besides augments and armoring, and didn't see anything crafted in GTN. Didn't have time to go crafting on other ones.

- Renown takes a lot for each level and gives very little - I believe someone mentioned an FP or a round of dailies should give roughly 1.5 renown levels, but only got around 60-70%. Advanced roughly 10-15 levels with not much interesting gear coming out.

I've not been able to play and test the new content as much as others here but as someone who has stuck with the game from the start I'd like to give you my one wish for gearing.

 

My main is Bounty Hunter Merc and its opposite number on Rep side. However like most players who are still here I have alts of all flavours...all advanced classes, both sexes, different species, different allegiances etc. My problem is, I'd like to playing more than just my main...but inevitably I end up just having time to gear up one or two toons because the gearing process is too time consuming.

 

Now I know you want a certain depth to gearing not to over simplify it and take the fun out of it but I think most people would like to be able to get alts to a pretty decent level as well as having one or two characters that are top notch.

 

I'd like that loot drops in such a manner as to make this goal possible.

 

I'm glad to see you taking people's constructive comments seriously, love that the game is still in existance all these years on and wish the whole team the very best for the future.

 

Roll on November!

I've not been able to play and test the new content as much as others here but as someone who has stuck with the game from the start I'd like to give you my one wish for gearing.

 

My main is Bounty Hunter Merc and its opposite number on Rep side. However like most players who are still here I have alts of all flavours...all advanced classes, both sexes, different species, different allegiances etc. My problem is, I'd like to playing more than just my main...but inevitably I end up just having time to gear up one or two toons because the gearing process is too time consuming.

 

Now I know you want a certain depth to gearing not to over simplify it and take the fun out of it but I think most people would like to be able to get alts to a pretty decent level as well as having one or two characters that are top notch.

 

I'd like that loot drops in such a manner as to make this goal possible.

 

I'm glad to see you taking people's constructive comments seriously, love that the game is still in existance all these years on and wish the whole team the very best for the future.

 

Roll on November!

 

With 6.0 all gear is bind to legacy, so every character can use every piece of gear. So your main can work on gearing up, put his gear in the legacy bay and you can swap to an alt that can share it.

General feedback seems pretty consistent -

 

good core ideas

too much RNG getting in the way

Tech frags cap too low

too much nerf to current endgamers

Vendors too expensive (frags)

Crafting too complicated and expensive

 

Lots of other great comments, looking forward to hearing what devs will do with this!

I ran a lot of Hammer Stations (50+) and the only thing I didn't like was the lack of set-piece drops or useable Tacticals. I only acquired 4 set-piece items and 6 Tacticals none of which I could use. The set-piece items were also useless since mods weren't dropping frequently enough to keep the gear up to date.

 

During my play, I went from item level 258 to 282 which I'm okay with given that I'll only need to do the grind once. I also earned around 35 Renown crates which seemed to be a reasonable rate once I realised that Renown XP was a combination of CXP and regular XP so that legacy FP XP perks and some old FP XP boosts stacked with RXP boosts.

 

The R-crates contain pretty much garbage and if the same RNG numbers are used for the vendor crates I can understand the frustration of others. Of the 30+ I opened I think I used maybe 3 or 4 pieces and claimed the rest to scrap for Tech fragments. The R-Crates themselves could use more loot in them, I'd like to see XP boosts and companion gifts.

 

I think that general set bonus items and tacticals should be easier to acquire. I'd also like to see more hilts/mods/etc. drop so that I can use my expensive mainhand and not some random drop that I need to have equipped to keep my gear level up to ensure I get better drops.

 

The gear crates you can buy from the vendor are trash and after opening 4 I decided it was better to grind Hammer Station where loot was more consistently an upgrade and therefore useful, saving Tech frags for Kai purchases. the vendor crates need to at least give loot relevant to your class if not your spec. I needed a main hand early and my Jugg got a blaster rifle.

 

Last it would have been helpful to have a more detailed description of how the system works. I wasted time initially by not equipping gear as soon as possible and thereby not getting better drops sooner. The system felt really slow at the start. If you have an inventory of freshly dropped 272's and you're still wearing 270s then you miss out on possible 274s once I figured this out then things speeded up and I actually enjoyed seeing my character incrementally improve all the time.

 

I'm curious how things are when you get closer to max rating. Do set pieces become more frequent?

Edited September 3, 2019 by TrigPt

With 6.0 all gear is bind to legacy, so every character can use every piece of gear. So your main can work on gearing up, put his gear in the legacy bay and you can swap to an alt that can share it.

 

I understand that, and that will be an improvement as far as the right hand side of the character sheet is concerned over what we have now but other than that the classes are all different in terms of what their gear requirements are....you wouldn't put the mercs gear on a sage healer or a tanking guardian. And from what I understand of the new system there are several teirs of gear each which will take a lot of time to move up through.

 

I'd prefer to be spending my time in game earning visible rewards than tinkering endlessly trying to keep up with a tiresome gear grind which will of course become outdated in due course ( I know thats what happens in mmos but it shouldn't be all consuming or excessively grindy as has been the way of late with cxp and ossus).

• Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow?
  

 

I haven't read the whole thread here and I may be a minority in this, but I think it was perfectly generous. I mean, I ran Hammer Station five times (1 on Master and 4 on Veteran) and got more than 30 pieces of loot between drops and the 3 Renown crates that popped for me. That's a lot of loot. So amount of loot dropping doesn't seem to be an issue, far from it.

 

However, quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, and five FP runs in one night doesn't really accurately represent a gear grind journey. It's worth noting that the majority of this loot was for roles/specs I wasn't playing. I did all five of those runs on a Sage healer and about half of what I got in drops was tank gear, and another bunch of DPS. This isn't a dealbreaker for me (after all I can still ship them to alts), but it does imply an across-the-board randomness that is not reassuring.

 

For example, it should be absolutely guaranteed that the gear that drops off at least the final boss of a FP be something that matches the spec of someone in the group, especially if it's a rare set piece of tactical item. Being Legacy friendly is a very good thing, but completing a FP run and getting a final boss drop that no one in the group can use is completely discouraging. It's psychology at play.

 

Likewise there should never be a case where I run an entire FP and not one single piece of loot that drops for me is actually relevant to my spec. Perhaps the ideal situation would be to make sure that at minimum the gear which the final boss drops for everyone matches everyone's spec.

 

So, for running group content the rate of gear acquisition seems fast, but that is mitigated pretty dramatically by RNG.

 

Alternatively, I am not really sure how this feels for solo players, because I noticed that Boss drops are scaling to your gear, but trash mob drops within the FP and open world PVE drops are scaling to the ZONE. Honestly I really like this because certain elder game cosmetic shells had vanished because a player is never synced to their zone anymore and I am glad of the prospect of seeing those return, but it does beg the question of where/how solo players are guaranteed to get drops that are scaling to their current gear rating. Is this only Renown crates? Or will it be official mission rewards? (I admit I only did group content on the PTS, I didn't try any solo missions.)

 

• Do you understand what to do to get gear?
  

 

I mean... I think so? Maybe the fact that I'm phrasing that as a question isn't the best sign? But it seems pretty obvious from even just a single night's game play that to get gear I need to play content. Renown is obviously supplementary, and I am aware that there are vendors as a sort of 'backup' contingency for a currency that I get automatically as drops and can increase by disintegrations.

 

One thing I'll say, however, is that Kai being only available certain days and with a random inventory does have the potential be confusing. I would never have understood what was happening if someone in my group hadn't told me. You shouldn't have to be an ardent Dev Tracker and Live Stream follower in order to understand what Kai is about. I understand that when you talk to Kai he is going to give you in-character dialogue, but it might be good to have a tool tip or tutorial pop up the first you time talk to him that explains what he's about.

 

• How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions)
  

 

This is an easy one: I think this is a good choice. For everything except maybe the final 2-3 tiers of gear rating, basic missions and content should get you what you need.

 

Highest tiers being tied to hardest content is also totally reasonable. (I know there will be some who complain that they can't get highest tier playing solo, but I'm of the camp who would argue that if you're playing only solo you don't need the highest gear to clear that content. Need and want are different things. If it's need, it should be accessible. If it's want, then do the thing to get the thing.)

 

• How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown)
  

 

Crafting is a disaster. I've posted at length about that in the crafting thread. At the moment in its current PTS iteration, it shouldn't even be considered as a gearing means because it is completely not viable.

 

Renown as a concept for a supplementary system works fine. Given the frequency of drops if you're running group content, the increase in time it takes for a Renown crate (vs a CXP crate) isn't too bad. It's also worth noting that a RXP boost was a significantly greater boost than CXP boosts used to be. It happened that I was the only one in my Hammer Station group running with a boost (and all of us with the max CXP legacy perks), and the result was that I gained Renown at almost twice the rate.

 

One adjustment I would suggest for Renown, however, is that drops out of Renown crates should absolutely NOT be subject to spec/discipline RNG. I should never open a Renown crate on a healer and get tank gear. Renown crates should work like Command crates used to, guaranteed to drop something tied to your discipline when you open them. This is especially more relevant since they are acquired more slowly.

 

Vendors, in concept, are fine. The currency is fine and it's nice that it's a single currency, but I would suggest that there's no reason to cap that currency at all, or if so make it a very high cap. Who cares if we're hoarding it? What does it matter? Maybe one day we'll want to do an epic binge on a newly rolled Nautolan to gear them in one fell swoop. Since it's Legacy currency and we earned every bit of it through gameplay we should be totally entitled to do that if we want.

 

The other thing I'll suggest about vendors is that there should be at least one vendor where we can be guaranteed to get a piece of our choosing. If all drops are RNG and all crates are RNG then making the vendors RNG too is just... waaaaaayyyyyyy too much RNG. Vendors should be the last stop safety check against RNG bad luck. Even if the vendor who sells guaranteed items is the most expensive of all, at least we know we're saving up for something certain. Ideally this something certain should be set pieces. Unless specific Ops bosses are going to always drop specific pieces of gear that we can target, a guarantee purchase or drop chance has to exist somewhere even if it's expensive.

 

 

Side Note PSA and Potential Bug Call-Out: The RXP packs that drop for each player off a FP boss are being auto-consumed rather than going into our inventory as a clickable item. First off, this is a little confusing, we only figured it out on the third run when someone reviewed the system feedback log and saw that we were getting the RXP automatically applied. But secondly and more important, I think it would be ideal if these were made BoL consumables just like the CXP packs were. A BoL consumable is more within our control to farm out across our legacy as desired, and is a boon to people who have been forced to play a character that wasn't their first choice in order to helpfully fill roles for their group.

Edited September 4, 2019 by JediBoadicea

Hey folks,

 

We cannot thank you enough for taking the time to give us your impressions of Phase 2. I have passed all of your feedback (from this thread, PTS forums, and elsewhere) onto the team and we are working on a number of changes. I will circle back by tomorrow and talk about what we are hearing from you and what changes we plan to make. Our goal will be to have a new patch for phase 2 by the end of this week.

 

Thanks everyone, keep the feedback coming!

 

-eric

Dear Eric, thanks for quick reaction.

What worries me the most is the amount of unmoddable gear drop.

Unmoddable gear shall not be a thing, this is not Korriban story line or whatever, we need to be able to modify our gear as much as possible on all stages of gearing up.

Hey folks,

 

We cannot thank you enough for taking the time to give us your impressions of Phase 2. I have passed all of your feedback (from this thread, PTS forums, and elsewhere) onto the team and we are working on a number of changes. I will circle back by tomorrow and talk about what we are hearing from you and what changes we plan to make. Our goal will be to have a new patch for phase 2 by the end of this week.

 

Thanks everyone, keep the feedback coming!

 

-eric

 

Hopefully you guys take enough feedback into account so as to make this system as polished as possible, it has potential. But right now it is desperately in need of fine-tuning.

The system is not bad just too grindy and RNG you can make a good gearing system out of it but in this state its rly not fun to grind for gears

To be fair, all this is so needlessly over-complicated. Simplicity is best. Just drop a legacy currency, and have gear vendors where we can go buy what we want.

So based on my limited time on PTS, my issue is mainly that everything is RNG based. I feel that it is useful in the sense that as you are gearing you are also gearing your toons. However, the renown crates should not be RNG based. They should be similar to how command crates rolled for gear, discipline based. I am fine with tacticals not being discipline, or even class based. Since those are something that once you get one of you will never need to get again, it just makes it easier to have all content that can drop one roll on all tacticles. I didn't tool around with the vendors too much. For me I just think I got way too much tank gear for running as an operative healer. I think the best choice is make it so that the final boss+bonus boss of MM FP are class usable gear. So I can either get dps or healer stuff on an operative.

 

ALSO MODS MODS MODS. No static gear, it is the worst decision in this entire move. Adaptive armor should be the focus, since we are also getting mods and the such from drops.

Hey folks,

 

We cannot thank you enough for taking the time to give us your impressions of Phase 2. I have passed all of your feedback (from this thread, PTS forums, and elsewhere) onto the team and we are working on a number of changes. I will circle back by tomorrow and talk about what we are hearing from you and what changes we plan to make. Our goal will be to have a new patch for phase 2 by the end of this week.

 

Thanks everyone, keep the feedback coming!

 

-eric

 

Any eta on when today on this?

I'm really concerned about the 19 tiers of gear and the lack of moddable gear. I'm not sure if you've seen this but it's enough to have me very concerned about the new gearing system.

 

I think I posted this but to echo what a lot of people have said, I can't stress enough how important it is to at the very least give us fully moddable weapons at all levels. You've said that putting Weapons in Outfit Designer is on the wall of crazy and is much harder than it seems, so forcing us to use green/blue drops instead of Cartel weapons is bad, bad, bad.

 

If I were the dude that designs those weapons I'd be very sad to see that people aren't using my Unstable Peacemakers Charged Electrified Magnificent Lightsaber of Eternal Darkness and Sadness™.

I've just started on the PTS 2 days ago and did my share of Hammerstations. Gearing up from 0 (as I had forgotton to transfer my gear) to 278 (now) went quite smooth for me. I don't know how many levels still lie infront of me to BiS Gear but anyhow the experience feels continuous.

 

I've encountered an issue with the tech parts gear vendor: I wasn't able to buy belts. I spent the tech parts but did not get the belt in return. The vendor doesn't seem to have them or is reluctant to part with them.

 

Also I'm wondering about set bonuses. In the "old" CXP Boxes we received gear with set bonuses from 230 on. It wouldn't hurt to introduce set bonuses as early as possible in the process of gearing up to get people acquainted with them. Even more so as from what I've heard you have increased the number of different set bonuses for different classes. I'm not asking for a high percentage of set bonus drops from 270 onwards but once in a while would be nice to give a preview of what's out there.

 

I've also looked at crafting and crafting costs for the current gear. 20 refined isotope stabilizers for green gear seems ridiculously high. If you want us to test crafting you should consider to lower the cost or increase the drop rate.