To the dev team, please reevaluate the rewards given for SM ops. I, like many others, have noticed lately that fleet is a ghost town. Instead of 2-3 instances bubbling with life from 170-180 people LFG, we now usually have 1 instance with around 90 people trolling, gold spamming, or trading. I believe this is because there is no room for improving ones gear through SM operations anymore, beyond lackluster 192 non-set bonus gear, and no ultimate comms. While I do not believe that one should be able to earn top tier gear from 55 operations, I believe there is room for improvement over the 162 arkanian gear dropped. With 3.0, a higher tier of gear was granted to pvpers for doing the same voidstar, or hutt ball, etc... Why not give 186 or 192 rated set bonus gear from a daily SM Group finder option? This would give players an incentive to run most of the ops again, while still keeping the 198 set bonuses exclusive to folks clearing top tier content. If this is not acceptable, please find an option that is, as many of us loved running the SM operations daily using different toons, but Re unwilling to stand around fleet for 2+ hours trying to assemble a group due to the obvious lack of interest shown by the community at large.

The way the gearing system works is you get given the next tier of gear based on the levelling storyline.

Level 50: you buy lvl140 mods, do ops for 146/150 gear

Level 55: you can craft/buy lvl156 mods, do SM ops for 162 gear, from full 162 you do TFB/SV HM for 168 gear, then DF/DP for 180 gear

Level 60: you can craft/buy lvl186 stuff, do SM ops for 192, then HM for 198

 

TL;DR gear system is fine, old ops will always be obsolete for gearing

April 28th 3.2 comes out. All the lower ops will be giving out Ultimates again and they will all be in group finder. Plus the group finder is switching from 16 man to 8 man que pops. Edited April 5, 2015 by AutoCocker

April 28th 3.2 comes out. All the lower ops will be giving out Ultimates again and they will all be in group finder. Plus the group finder is switching from 16 man to 8 man que pops.

 

This is awesome news, and exactly what I believe we (the swtor pve community) have been asking for. The gear isn't and has never been, my top concern, just the ability to form a group to run the content. If this is true, then I believe, "problem solved." Where did you find this information btw, as I would very much like to read more.

Check your local, friendly, neighborhood pts forum and the April 2nd patch notes.

This is awesome news, and exactly what I believe we (the swtor pve community) have been asking for. The gear isn't and has never been, my top concern, just the ability to form a group to run the content. If this is true, then I believe, "problem solved." Where did you find this information btw, as I would very much like to read more.

 

Dev Tracker (http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php) is your friend Specifically http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8116660#edit8116660

This is awesome news, and exactly what I believe we (the swtor pve community) have been asking for. The gear isn't and has never been, my top concern, just the ability to form a group to run the content. If this is true, then I believe, "problem solved." Where did you find this information btw, as I would very much like to read more.

 

You say this, but it was originally 16m for group finder Ops and due to performance issues, they switched it to 8m. A large part of the community complained about it so they ended up switching it back to 16m. And now we are going back to 8m.