I cannot find any recent thread about this topic. I do apologize in advance if someone also brought this up but I cannot find any related thread in the last 7 pages of general discussion.

1st off the addition of new augments was welcomed and unwelcomed by some to say the least lol. However that being said we now can have all our gear nice and "shiny gold"

However there does exist a issue i do beleive here where you can debate this idea. The MASS MAJORITY of players are not "nightmare raiders" or "Ranked pvpers" alot of players do story line quests and then once finished perhaps join a guild to do Story Mode and then Hardmode raids.

Now we all do want our character to be the best it can be stats dps tanking healing wise. So how can the mass majority of people ever get these augments? Nightmare and ranked pvp.

I do appreciate the efforts the Dev team has made to try to make these modes more popular however if you compare the population of chars to the population of chars that actually complete these modes its EXTREMELY SMALL.

The next way to get these augments SOlO by yourself if buying rhe materials on the GTN for the last 4 months prices have stayed the same. It would cost 2.5 billion credits to make 1 level 300 augment. Add that by 14 and then times that by however many chars you have thats alot. That's beyond realistic for the mass majority of people.

And aren't you tailoring to the mass majority. Isn't that where most of the income comes from? Somthing to think about there.

So my point is these Nightmare Raid modes and Ranked pvp modes remain unpopular. And since the 300 augments have been around almost 6 months dont you think its about time that you make them a bit easier to obtain. Perhaps including mats in Hard Mode raid drops instead and "unranked pvp" matches.

This way people will still have to work for it but still will be completely obtainable for the mass majority of players.

And don't we all just wanna have fun anyway and enjoy what you put into the game.

Thanks yall

The prices on Tulak are 600 - 700 Mil. per augment. Still too expensive and really not worth it.

The gain is too small to justify the prices. I don´t know anyone who buys/uses them.

But I get you, I want the best stats too.

I wish they required less mats or just one type of mat that would drop in Nim and Ranked.

But I guess they´ll be irrelevant by the time the next ilevel or whatever comes around.

I only see 1 idea here. Where are the other 299? 😁

But seriously, no, nobody but the very hardest of the hardcore NiM raiders and PvP'ers needs to worry in the slightest about these new augments. There's no need to make them easier to get because there's no need for them.

I think any discussion about augments above 286 should be taken in context of the next time the game's level cap is raised. The level of effort to make the next tier, once we'll be re-gearing all of our max-level toons to the next max, shouldn't be made any more difficult than what we're doing now to create the 286 gear.

Right now the 306 augs are stratospheric in their requirements and not sustainable in the long term for EA to expect the masses to gear to when the next level cap hits.

Just posted about this in my own thread as well. To everyone who says "well you don't need them anyway": I say it's my game, my character, and I min-maxing gear is just about the only thing left for me to do in the game, EXCEPT it's not actually possible for me to attain and therefore might as well not even be in the game.

It doesn't matter if we *need* to have the gear. That's not what the min-maxing mini-game is all about. As in any (MMO)RPG, endgame gearing and perfecting stats *is* the game. I very very rarely run any ops at all; they're too long and the queue system is broken, not that pug'ing for an op is a practical or good idea anyway.

Furthermore, my Cybertech crafter is otherwise useless, and they teased me with an addition to the recipe list that ostensibly made crafting not useless anymore -- except that the recipe effectively cannot be crafted at well over 1 BILLION credits for mats off the market oer Augment.

It's an infuriating slap in the face.

Just posted about this in my own thread as well. To everyone who says "well you don't need them anyway": I say it's my game, my character, and I min-maxing gear is just about the only thing left for me to do in the game, EXCEPT it's not actually possible for me to attain and therefore might as well not even be in the game.

 

It doesn't matter if we *need* to have the gear. That's not what the min-maxing mini-game is all about. As in any (MMO)RPG, endgame gearing and perfecting stats *is* the game. I very very rarely run any ops at all; they're too long and the queue system is broken, not that pug'ing for an op is a practical or good idea anyway.

 

Furthermore, my Cybertech crafter is otherwise useless, and they teased me with an addition to the recipe list that ostensibly made crafting not useless anymore -- except that the recipe effectively cannot be crafted at well over 1 BILLION credits for mats off the market oer Augment.

 

It's an infuriating slap in the face.

You and I think the same. Thats exactly what I wanted to say thank you I totally agree 👍

I only see 1 idea here. Where are the other 299? 😁

 

But seriously, no, nobody but the very hardest of the hardcore NiM raiders and PvP'ers needs to worry in the slightest about these new augments. There's no need to make them easier to get because there's no need for them.

I mean, all the content was doable without them, and literally all but one raid are level capped anyway, so id say NiMers don't need them either by this logic. With the exception of dxun, people doing regs pvp have more use for these than an NiM progression team, but its not like you can get them in regs.

At the risk of repeating myself (again) to BW: New gear is not new content and I will not hang around just to futlessly grind whatever it is you want me to do. I found a game im enjoying and pre-ordered another that comes out in May. Neither are EA games. Please convince me why I should remain your customer after my current game time expires. Because frankly, at this point, I paid you to post on the forum. (Because I paid the sub before we managed to find a new game). That said, I have every intention of posting my displeasure because I paid for it.

Until they scale everything to 75, they shouldn't bother with these nonsense augments that have most of their stats capped. That they wasted time and effort adding the 300 augments is dumb enough - let's just chalk it up as a mistake and move on.

Scale everything up to 75, sustain a steady pace of new content drops (not one new mission every six months with the rest rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic type changes), and possibly / slowly add in 308, 310, 312, etc gear to all content as new content is added (working just like 306 does today, not like the 300 augments or the silly grind on Ossus with convoluted and highly restricted means of obtainment).

And DO NOT raise the level cap again until there is a leveling campaign that takes more than a couple of hours to complete, along with a full operation with multiple difficulties ready to go, and the ability to scale all content to the new level cap if we are expected to continue running 10-year-old plus content at level cap.

I mean, all the content was doable without them, and literally all but one raid are level capped anyway, so id say NiMers don't need them either by this logic. With the exception of dxun, people doing regs pvp have more use for these than an NiM progression team, but its not like you can get them in regs.

 

At the risk of repeating myself (again) to BW: New gear is not new content and I will not hang around just to futlessly grind whatever it is you want me to do. I found a game im enjoying and pre-ordered another that comes out in May. Neither are EA games. Please convince me why I should remain your customer after my current game time expires. Because frankly, at this point, I paid you to post on the forum. (Because I paid the sub before we managed to find a new game). That said, I have every intention of posting my displeasure because I paid for it.

I'm one prone to repeat myself as well, but isn't that funny that you need to play ranked PvP in order to gear up and be fully min-maxed for ranked PvP ? Usually if you want to have every chance of winning by your side, you gear up BEFORE entering ranked. Not while playing ranked.

That's funny, but sad as well. 300 ilvl Augments aren't usefull in the slightest in PvE and you're expected to play a mode that requires min-maxing in order to min-max. I think that somebody at BW's office must have messed up their spreadsheet.

And nooooo Kendra don't go, you were one of the peoples I still enjoy seeing posts around here from time to time Where will you go now ?

Just posted about this in my own thread as well. To everyone who says "well you don't need them anyway": I say it's my game, my character, and I min-maxing gear is just about the only thing left for me to do in the game, EXCEPT it's not actually possible for me to attain and therefore might as well not even be in the game.

 

It doesn't matter if we *need* to have the gear. That's not what the min-maxing mini-game is all about. As in any (MMO)RPG, endgame gearing and perfecting stats *is* the game. I very very rarely run any ops at all; they're too long and the queue system is broken, not that pug'ing for an op is a practical or good idea anyway.

 

Furthermore, my Cybertech crafter is otherwise useless, and they teased me with an addition to the recipe list that ostensibly made crafting not useless anymore -- except that the recipe effectively cannot be crafted at well over 1 BILLION credits for mats off the market oer Augment.

 

It's an infuriating slap in the face.

I'm with you as well. I'm a min/maxer. At some point a long long time ago before I took several years away from this game I had every single character (18 total) min/maxed in the game. Today I have exactly 1 barely maxed (spending hundreds of millions of credits already) except for the yellow augments. I don't see myself ever attempting to craft even one of them. I am hesitant to even bother attempting to max out any other characters knowing by the time I'm finished my efforts would be made obsolete by a new level cap. And I consider myself in the top 1-5% of players in the game in terms of ability to generate credits and achievements. I can only imaging what an average player would need to go through to get geared.

To everyone who says "well you don't need them anyway": I say it's my game, my character, and I min-maxing gear is just about the only thing left for me to do in the game, EXCEPT it's not actually possible for me to attain and therefore might as well not even be in the game.

I can understand, all too well, how you can run out of things to do, but that doesn't mean that min/max'ing gear should necessarily be designed so that 'you' can complete it, in the way you want.

As in any (MMO)RPG, endgame gearing and perfecting stats *is* the game.

Um, no. Endgame gearing etc, may be "the" game for you, but that's not what a "Role Playing Game" is primarily focused on.

I can understand, all too well, how you can run out of things to do, but that doesn't mean that min/max'ing gear should necessarily be designed so that 'you' can complete it, in the way you want.

 

 

Um, no. Endgame gearing etc, may be "the" game for you, but that's not what a "Role Playing Game" is primarily focused on.

I mean, BW keeps trying to give us gear instead of content, then can't figure out why the people who can't get the gear complain about it. Before this gear was introduced, all content was doable, AND in literally all but 1 op and 2 fp, they are still practically useless for PVE. Thus, the primary effect this actually had was not making NiM more accessible; but giving a (probably) very small minority a perceived advantage in PvP.

So, adding new gear without a level cap increase, content scaling change, or new content quite literally does more harm than good.

But I suppose BW has the numbers, and if people are willing to accept gear in place of content enjoy your game. The more people insist on chasing the stupid things, the more you prove to BW that gear is appropriate in place of content, thus tangentially impacting literally everyone else by encouraging BW stupidity.

 

At the risk of repeating myself (again) to BW: New gear is not new content and I will not hang around just to futlessly grind whatever it is you want me to do. I found a game im enjoying and pre-ordered another that comes out in May. Neither are EA games. Please convince me why I should remain your customer after my current game time expires. Because frankly, at this point, I paid you to post on the forum. (Because I paid the sub before we managed to find a new game). That said, I have every intention of posting my displeasure because I paid for it.

care to tell us the name of both games...you might have a load of new players joining you...lol

Um, no. Endgame gearing etc, may be "the" game for you, but that's not what a "Role Playing Game" is primarily focused on.

Eheh, similarly, it certainly isn't "paying 40$ for a lightsaber on one character" as well. But here we are, and swtor is still called an RPG despite that. So I take that this genre appeals to players for a vast majority of reasons and none of them is worse than the others.

On another note, the goal with minmaxing isn't that everybody can do it. But more like that it should be an objective that most peoples can look up to. Not something that 99% of players will give up just by looking at the value of one augment, let alone 14 of them. Imo, at least.

care to tell us the name of both games...you might have a load of new players joining you...lol

At the moment, thanks to a recommendation from a friend (a different friend than the one I normally mention haha) I've swapped genres a bit to div 2. The pre-order was to a game the first friend found, called hood: outlaws and legends. The PvPvE concept seems a bit weird, but it looks interesting and hey, we have 4 people.

I'm skeptical that Bioware intended for non-whale players to be able to use the augments in any reasonable time frame. More likely than not, they released the augments and mats with the draconian requirements they have as an attempt to breathe life into the hardest modes of the game that, as you mentioned, only a handful of players currently venture into.

You're right, though, that the mats should be obtainable through less demanding means. Ranked and NiM exclusive items should only be aesthetic status symbol things like mounts, weapons, color crystals, etc...

Stat-based gear should be (feasibly) obtainable for everyone.

I'm skeptical that Bioware intended for non-whale players to be able to use the augments in any reasonable time frame. More likely than not, they released the augments and mats with the draconian requirements they have as an attempt to breathe life into the hardest modes of the game that, as you mentioned, only a handful of players currently venture into.

 

You're right, though, that the mats should be obtainable through less demanding means. Ranked and NiM exclusive items should only be aesthetic status symbol things like mounts, weapons, color crystals, etc...

Stat-based gear should be (feasibly) obtainable for everyone.

I mean, on Leviathan we have a lot of guilds clearing NiM just because they don't have anything else to do. So in theory, then they should drop mats and at least craft some of these augments.

There are so few of those on the GTN and with so high prices that I even wonder if they are actually craftable. And almost nobody in these guilds uses said augments. So...

The measure for Aug availability is whether or not enough people are laundering money through the cash shop, to buy them with credits.

BW's preferred state is where they're just craftable enough to meet the demand of players willing to pay their way past our sabotaged quality of life.

Any monetized system is *always* about the money.