The problem with Bioware is that they always, ALWAYS refused to take a step back and say "ok, we did it wrong, we gonna revert this".

Swtor won't handle your stubborn again Bioware, 5.0 made thousands of players quit to the point we went from 8+ NA servers to only 2, it's a fact.

Why don't you swallow your pride and just delete all this stupid RNG gearing system and bring back 4.0's gearing? It was "perfect", it'd be if Data crystals were legacy bound. That's it, problem solved.

I'm on this forum since Beta test, I've NEVER seen a complaint about the old gearing system, NEVER. The only complains were "damn, I gotta buy 3x boots to get a BiS enhancement", but you didn't see anyone actually leaving the game because of it.

IT'S OK to step back and revert what you've done wrong.

DO NOT WASTE time and resources trying to fix what Ben Irving did, just /delete it while you can. Don't let it go live on october. I'll gladly test it on the PTS and give feedback.

Gear was perfect prior to 4.0?

Well clearly you remember that time very differently to me.

Gear was perfect prior to 4.0?

 

Well clearly you remember that time very differently to me.

I remember when BW came out admitting that the majority of players had only one toon fully geared while their alts were not due to such a heavy and lengthy grind for gears. They shared more precise stats on that, but that was the gist of it. They even wrote that their intention was to make it so people played their alts more, and could gear up faster.

By the time 3.0 was out, BW tweaked gearing so PVE and PVPers both were happy. PVPers could gear easily and had vendors to buy mods off of to tinker with their stats and PVE players had their own set of gears to grind for via raids. How was this a bad system, I am curious?

The biggest complaint about this gearing system was players entering WZs without PVP gears on, but this isn't so much a problem with the system as it is with apathetic players who didn't care enough to bother with PVP gears even though they were easy to get. No system is perfect, but at least this was player error and not system error, which is what the RNG gearing systems on SWTOR have been.

Being a PVPer, I found the 3.0 system to be fun. I also never heard anyone complain that gearing needed to be changed. Never seen any requests for BW to add RNG, either. RNG has never been viewed favorably, in fact SWTOR started out with RNG as a major part of gearing and it was despised and panned until they removed it in favor of the 3.0 system.

His point is completely correct regarding how BW never learns from their mistakes. It's as if they don't remember going down this road before. RNG began with SWTOR, it was hated. RNG was removed, and people were happy. RNG was added back in, and people hate it. All RNG does is cause frustration and resentment, it doesn't create "excitement" in anyone.

Over the years the mantra "don't fix it if it's not broken" has floated across these forums, because that's what BW has done multiple times with their large updates that have been quite game-changing. They have gutted and destroyed facets of the game that were viewed favorably and even enjoyed then replaced them with features and gearing systems that have been utterly despised. With all the parts that actually could be improved upon, why even redo parts of the game that aren't considered bad? That's what BW has done.

You are welcome to your opinion and you may want to copy over a character to the test server to get a better understanding of what is going on with gearing.

Gear is now to be acquired from daily areas, flashpoints, and Operations. RNG, Vendors and Crafting are supposed to be supplemental. They are working out the bugs right now but it does feel like you will be competitive in most content fairly quickly.

To give you another perspective until they introduced the RNG crates I only once got a full set of end game gear. Being dependent on not getting a terrible pug that ninjas all the loot was not something I wanted to ever do again. With the crates I have gear for dps, and healing or tanking for multiple toons.

I agree that they needed to balance the RNG with other ways to gear. They did a bit of that shortly after the original command crates by adding back loot drops to OPs and the addition of good loot to many content areas will just make life easier for people that don't want to grind CXP or in this case RXP.

I am not going to say it is perfect but it is getting better and it is far better than having to grind the same heroics over and over for coms/glowing crystals to get gear.

@ Lhancelot (using the @ instead of quoting the entire post)

Ok well first you may of found gearing fun in the pre 3.0-4.0 and that's OK, I personally did not.

Second, I have lots of alts and with rng have found it far easier to gear my characters with RNG that at any time prior. If RNG is removed it's removed. if not then its not. I have been on the test server and yes have left feedback, if BW decide to go another way or take other players suggestions or do something entirely different. That's up to them, don't have an issue at all with it. If you are asking me do I prefer what's coming in 6.0 over what it is now, then no actually I don't. I personally never had an issue with command rank. 6.0 though is not that bad even if I did prefer command rank. Also remember that the test server is just that, a test server, so nothing there yet is set to a point it cannot be changed. It's unlikely that RNG will be removed but drop rates and other things can be changed.

Will 6.0 end the game? NO. Will some leave? Yes as they have done so with every Xpac. However the OP's claim that players all left because of the RNG system is just not true. If you read posts here players will claim others left because of whatever subject they happen to be talking about. One day all left because of population and no server merge, next day its because of no new end game content, day after because of RNG. Tomorrow it be something else. Really its a combination of many things and different reasons from player to player.

When you play a game like this everyone will reach that burn out point and want to try something new or in need of a little time away. A game like this no matter what they won't please everyone. Also a game that's been going years years. Plus how many overall players post here on the forums? Most days it the same 40+ players. Now 40+ players, is that really representative of the overall player base? I was playing on a server late last night on Courscant with 100 players on. I switch instance hoping to get fewer players on, which had 56 players on. Not sure how many were on the third instance that was listed. I guess my point is there were more players in that 20 min window on one planet on one server late at night. So 40+ players? not really all that many. Yet so many think they represent the majority. The OP has every right not to like RNG and reading posts and threads here we do know he's not alone in that, but also needs to be honest when claiming players all left because of RNG. I am sure some did, but only because of it?

I personally liked the gearing in 3.0 too. Before that change happened, I had a commando healer who had finished her class story but still hadn't reached 50, the max for prefs at the time. I did some endgame stuff on Belsavis for the bonus series and Illum, and ended up with enough comms [i forget what they called them] to buy the first tier of end-game gear for her and for an alt. When I recently came back to the char to level her up to 70, I was amused to see that her stats were higher than if I had used the green 210 mods you get at 48. I think I had to delete the alt I had geared during the merger fiasco.

The problem with asking why do they fix things that aren't broken is that when players are fine with something they typically don't say 'this is fine, we like it so don't change it.' They aren't expecting a change from an area they're fine with. So BW might look at the [possible] minority of players who are unhappy with that gearing system and think 'well, we want to change things up anyway because we're noticing problems from the metrics, so let's follow-up this avenue'. Or maybe they just want to keep the game fresh so they do a gearing upheaval every once in a while. Or maybe it's those elitists from the preferential treatment forum. It's all guesswork.

I've never liked GC and if it were possible remove it i'd very much like to see it gone from SWTOR for good, a legacy of Ben Irving i never want to see of if it can be helped. I have a problem specific to him and no one else in Bioware.

Since he is long gone now, it is fitting to move on from that and dump it. As far as Bioware apologising is concerned? i've seen it only a few times over the years but nothing recently, they did on occasion mention they screwed up at times and sought to correct the mistake. Hey i'm all for making mistakes, it is the only way you learn from something but even so tough love also drives someone to do better as well, but the difference between that and getting burned is thinner than you may expect.

So asking them to "swallow their pride" ? you may as well be saying, "i want to force you to apologise on my say so because i can", it isn't remotely helpful.

I personally liked the gearing in 3.0 too. Before that change happened, I had a commando healer who had finished her class story but still hadn't reached 50, the max for prefs at the time. I did some endgame stuff on Belsavis for the bonus series and Illum, and ended up with enough comms [i forget what they called them] to buy the first tier of end-game gear for her and for an alt.

They were called WZ comms iirc. And that was the beauty of the WZ comm system, you could put as much time or as little time in a specific toon but gear it up equally fast because all gameplay on any alts enabled you to accrue the comms and the comms were transferable to any alts. Even lowbies! You could play lowbies in PVP, and get WZ Comms then move those to your cap level toons if you wanted to gear them up.

Second, I have lots of alts and with rng have found it far easier to gear my characters with RNG that at any time prior.

Exactly how does a rigid form of RNG coupled with all the left side gear pieces not being legacy bound, meaning they can't be transfered to alts make gearing easier than the 3.0 gearing system?

I am trying to understand how chance on gears, literally a dice roll is more efficient and easier than getting actual WZ comms like a paycheck after ingame activities are played that can be passed to any alts, and spent on any toon in your stable... How is this less efficient and harder to use to gear alts?

I ask because maybe I am doing something wrong since they added RNG crates to the game. Having BoP left-side pieces also means you got to disintegrate them for a paltry amount of UCs now if you got them already. If you are only needing 1-2 pieces (like I do now on my heal sorc btw) I have to keep opening up RNG chance crates hoping to get the exact piece i need, which never happens.

With the present system, I am forced to grind till I disintegrate enough useless things I already got and all the other useless things that crates drop just to accrue UCs to then buy off the vendor. This is very inefficient, and frustrating. The rate of UCs gained is slow, and the fact I keep getting things I already got and cannot use them on alts because they are not transferable only makes it that much more apparent that it's just a time slog.

How is this more efficient than gaining a set amount of WZ Comms from WZ completions and other ingame activities which then could be moved to any alt and used to buy any piece of equipment or mod I want from vendors? That's what we used to have. A very fluid gearing system that no one complained about.

We now have a very clunky, inefficient gearing system that is wasteful of both ingame items that drop from the crates as well as tons of time being wasted hoping a specific piece drops from the crates. Now, as for Ossus, that only added another layer to the frustration of gearing on SWTOR, it didn't make it better it only made things worse.

Really would love an explanation how the present gearing system is better than what we had in the past. Only way someone would say this imo is if they hardly played during that time, or they couldn't understand how it worked which is hard to believe because if you can understand the present gearing system you ought to have had no trouble understanding 3.0 gearing. I realize some people had issues with expertise, but I never found that complicated, personally.

To give you another perspective until they introduced the RNG crates I only once got a full set of end game gear. Being dependent on not getting a terrible pug that ninjas all the loot was not something I wanted to ever do again. With the crates I have gear for dps, and healing or tanking for multiple toons.

Back then master looter was more common which is not the case now. That's how ninja-looting happened. You could argue that devaluating gear, decreased ninja-looting because it wasn't worth looting anymore because the game practically throws it at you but that doesn't mean the current situation is good.

The problem is that harder content currently is LESS rewarding than easy stuff. I mean you can't tell me that Ossus dailies are very hard to do. And yet this gives you better gear than HM and NiM ops drop. LB runs are so profitable that once you have command rank 300, it's also more rewarding/profitable than HM and NiM ops.

I don't care what anyone might say but it's just not right that more difficult content is rewarded less than stupid mode content. Sorry. I don't mind that there are alternatives for people who don't want to do ops with actual boss mechanics so they can still get gear but it's shouldn't be so easy that it makes a mockery of harder content.

I'll wait and see for 6.0 to come and then make my judgment about how they approached it, but really, it's time this game actually rewards harder content again.

Personally I think that what they are doing with the Ops (restoring them to their old levels and using level sync) is a big step forward and they should do this with FPs as well. But I'd also like them to un-nerf the boss fights and bring back the mechanics they pulled out so brutally.

For all I care we can call it Normal Mode again and put it next to SM Ops where you pew pew and win, so SM warriors can even snooze past Rav, ToS, EC and such without wiping. SWTOR doesn't take it's own end game seriously and I hope that in 6.0 that will change, at least in part.

They were called WZ comms iirc. And that was the beauty of the WZ comm system, you could put as much time or as little time in a specific toon but gear it up equally fast because all gameplay on any alts enabled you to accrue the comms and the comms were transferable to any alts. Even lowbies! You could play lowbies in PVP, and get WZ Comms then move those to your cap level toons if you wanted to gear them up.

Yes, but it was specific to pvp and pvp gear only. There were also coms later re-named to glowing crystals (god knows why) and they were not able to be moved from toon to toon. You had to grind them out on each toon on their own. They only dropped from doing heroics.

Back then master looter was more common which is not the case now. That's how ninja-looting happened. You could argue that devaluating gear, decreased ninja-looting because it wasn't worth looting anymore because the game practically throws it at you but that doesn't mean the current situation is good.

 

The problem is that harder content currently is LESS rewarding than easy stuff. I mean you can't tell me that Ossus dailies are very hard to do. And yet this gives you better gear than HM and NiM ops drop. LB runs are so profitable that once you have command rank 300, it's also more rewarding/profitable than HM and NiM ops.

 

I don't care what anyone might say but it's just not right that more difficult content is rewarded less than stupid mode content. Sorry. I don't mind that there are alternatives for people who don't want to do ops with actual boss mechanics so they can still get gear but it's shouldn't be so easy that it makes a mockery of harder content.

 

I'll wait and see for 6.0 to come and then make my judgment about how they approached it, but really, it's time this game actually rewards harder content again.

 

Personally I think that what they are doing with the Ops (restoring them to their old levels and using level sync) is a big step forward and they should do this with FPs as well. But I'd also like them to un-nerf the boss fights and bring back the mechanics they pulled out so brutally.

 

For all I care we can call it Normal Mode again and put it next to SM Ops where you pew pew and win, so SM warriors can even snooze past Rav, ToS, EC and such without wiping. SWTOR doesn't take it's own end game seriously and I hope that in 6.0 that will change, at least in part.

I 100% understand your frustration with the current system and agree that they dropped the ball as far as gearing for NIM. With that said I do agree harder content should reward better gear faster but I also don't feel that the player that comes into the game for 2 hours a day 3 days a week to do their raid times should be the only ones to get decent gear. The player that plays 4 hours a day 5 days a week after work obviously puts in more time and yet does not have the same opportunities for gearing. Is it fair that the person that plays 6 hours a week should be able to gear while the person playing 20 hours a week is still in greens? The RNG (love it or hate it) did give the person playing 20 hours a week the chance to be geared. It is nowhere as fast as gearing through OPs but they can still do it. SM currently drops tier 2 gear you need to grind 90 cxp levels before you get your first tier 2 crate and in my experience you only get about 4 set pieces per tier and most times they overlap. With that happening you don't complete your set bonus until you are at or above 300. Taking Ossus out of the equation (I agree that was not the way to add 2 tiers of gear) I think the time vs difficulty balance wasn't bad with command. Ignoring Ossus gearing became a time vs difficulty trade off, if you did the hard stuff you cut days or months off gearing. Hell doing sm OPs I can gear in tier 2 fully in under an hour and a half where doing the command system it will take me over a week to get into tier 2 drops.

I think people when they are being short changed on opportunity need to speak up so they don't get overlooked but we don't need to punish others for their choice of game play either.

Yes, but it was specific to pvp and pvp gear only. There were also coms later re-named to glowing crystals (god knows why) and they were not able to be moved from toon to toon. You had to grind them out on each toon on their own. They only dropped from doing heroics.

I don't remember "glowing crystals" so I am thinking they must have come later after 3.0, right? As for 3.0 it was purely a WZ comm system for PVP gears as you said. Regarding a purely PVE player, I don't know how they geared because I never did Ops for gears. Ahh, ok so maybe the glowing crystals were part of the PVE gearing system during 3.0? I don't know.

I just know to gear up a toon for PVP was fun in 3.0. I really enjoyed how you could purchase any mods, enhancements, ears, implants etc. with whatever stats you wanted just by using WZ comms. It was very synergistic, seeing a PVPer would PVP a lot, meaning they accrued a lot of WZ comms which meant as a PVPer you'd end up with tons of WZ comms to use for all kinds of different stat builds.

During 3.0, I would try all kinds of experiments with stats... I'd make a toon, and stack as much alacrity as possible just for the fun of it. Now, you could never do this just for fun, because it would take too much time and too many resources just to create a gimmicky toon for fun.

I think that's what is being stripped from the game as time goes on, fun. It's like they have forgotten the main reason people play games. What happened to the FUN aspect of SWTOR? Like some wise forumquester posted earlier today, "some RNG is ok," but what BW has done with SWTOR is made RNG the backbone for gearing when at most it ought to be a smaller supplementary facet of gearing.

I don't remember "glowing crystals" so I am thinking they must have come later after 3.0, right? As for 3.0 it was purely a WZ comm system for PVP gears as you said. Regarding a purely PVE player, I don't know how they geared because I never did Ops for gears. Ahh, ok so maybe the glowing crystals were part of the PVE gearing system during 3.0? I don't know.

 

I just know to gear up a toon for PVP was fun in 3.0. I really enjoyed how you could purchase any mods, enhancements, ears, implants etc. with whatever stats you wanted just by using WZ comms. It was very synergistic, seeing a PVPer would PVP a lot, meaning they accrued a lot of WZ comms which meant as a PVPer you'd end up with tons of WZ comms to use for all kinds of different stat builds.

 

During 3.0, I would try all kinds of experiments with stats... I'd make a toon, and stack as much alacrity as possible just for the fun of it. Now, you could never do this just for fun, because it would take too much time and too many resources just to create a gimmicky toon for fun.

 

I think that's what is being stripped from the game as time goes on, fun. It's like they have forgotten the main reason people play games. What happened to the FUN aspect of SWTOR? Like some wise forumquester posted earlier today, "some RNG is ok," but what BW has done with SWTOR is made RNG the backbone for gearing when at most it ought to be a smaller supplementary facet of gearing.

For PVE towards the end of the run for gearing with coms they swapped the name to crystals. They tried to sell it as another way to gear but it was still the same old coms just with a new name and picture. Even the prices stayed the same for the PVE gear.

From my standpoint being forced to grind dailies and weeklies just to get gear was no fun. With the Command Levels and Crates I can at least play what I want in game and still be working toward a full set of gear. It may take me 5 times as long as the next person but I can get there. If I run flashpoints with friends I am working towards gear. If I roam around Hoth killing mobs as I look for datacrons I am working towards gear. If I am just playing story chapters I am working towards gear. It may not be the most efficient way but it allowed me to get gear.

With that said I can fully get that for PVP players the new system isn't as good as what was once there and I don't dispute that some attention needs to be given to that player base. I just don't think tossing out something that does help a portion of the population just because it isn't the answer for your preferred part of the game is selfish. We can have a PVP coms system and a RNG crate system for those that play other content. The system doesn't need to be perfect we just need to keep working towards better.

The problem with Bioware is that they always, ALWAYS refused to take a step back and say "ok, we did it wrong, we gonna revert this".

Swtor won't handle your stubborn again Bioware, 5.0 made thousands of players quit to the point we went from 8+ NA servers to only 2, it's a fact.

Why don't you swallow your pride and just delete all this stupid RNG gearing system and bring back 4.0's gearing? It was "perfect", it'd be if Data crystals were legacy bound. That's it, problem solved.

Well said.

You are welcome to your opinion and you may want to copy over a character to the test server to get a better understanding of what is going on with gearing.

Oh please, just stop. You know he's been on the PTS.

Here's what's going on with gearing on PTS. The system rains green un-modded gear upon us. No set bonus. Little to no control over Crit / Alac / Acc / Mastery / Power stat allocation. We are forced into a slow grind with messed up stats from 270 all the way to 306 in 2 point increments. We HAVE to wear the green unmodded stuff with the highest item rating, else the system won't give us upgrades. As such, we either cannot augment our gear, or we'll just have to spend a ton of credits on aug kits as we are constantly swapping out pieces, all the while playing stat roulette with Crit / Alac / Acc changing with every "upgrade".

Ever since 5.0, it's been clear that the people in charge of designing the gearing system in this game just don't get it. It's as if they think stat allocation doesn't matter. Just throw a million points into alacrity, even though there are alacrity thresholds between which points more alac does nothing for you.

I don't remember "glowing crystals" so I am thinking they must have come later after 3.0, right? As for 3.0 it was purely a WZ comm system for PVP gears as you said. Regarding a purely PVE player, I don't know how they geared because I never did Ops for gears. Ahh, ok so maybe the glowing crystals were part of the PVE gearing system during 3.0? I don't know.

 

I just know to gear up a toon for PVP was fun in 3.0. I really enjoyed how you could purchase any mods, enhancements, ears, implants etc. with whatever stats you wanted just by using WZ comms. It was very synergistic, seeing a PVPer would PVP a lot, meaning they accrued a lot of WZ comms which meant as a PVPer you'd end up with tons of WZ comms to use for all kinds of different stat builds.

 

During 3.0, I would try all kinds of experiments with stats... I'd make a toon, and stack as much alacrity as possible just for the fun of it. Now, you could never do this just for fun, because it would take too much time and too many resources just to create a gimmicky toon for fun.

 

I think that's what is being stripped from the game as time goes on, fun. It's like they have forgotten the main reason people play games. What happened to the FUN aspect of SWTOR? Like some wise forumquester posted earlier today, "some RNG is ok," but what BW has done with SWTOR is made RNG the backbone for gearing when at most it ought to be a smaller supplementary facet of gearing.

Respectfully... BW dev team has not forgotten anything. The system is by design. Therefore, IMO.. what and more importantly why... Even more important... what to change to ?

BTW... You're right. Certain aspects of this game seem more like a full time job !!

Fun ?? Hmmm I might just have to drag out Webster's ol' Dictionary … just to remind my self of what that is when applied to the game !