Forums should add an agree button so I can say as much. This is the truth.

That is certainly one issue that is encompassed in what I am talking about. To me, the bigger issue is the fact that by there is no way to know what proper gearing looks like for doing content before either 1. getting your face smashed in, or 2. finding a guide. Flashpoints to me are just the best example of this and they also provide the best illustration of what you brought up (maybe flashpoints are being designed to be bad in group? Just do the story and get to raiding?) To me the big problem is the set up for failure. Hypothetical person gets their 320 green gear and sees they can run flashpoints and start farming blue gear because it will drop all blue gear at 320 and they can farm the upgrades. Our hypothetical person loves flashpoint content, shorter than raiding but not endless cycle of PVP, and its in a group so not lonely like conquest. However, this person comes to find out that at their current gearing they are woefully unprepared to get blue gear from FP. In fact, the person realizes that even if they already had the gear that would DROP from the FP, they still can't run the FP. To me, no game should be developed to where the reward from content is in and of itself not powerful enough to run the content. Think about how absolutely regressive that system is. I don't understand how something like that comes into the game without it being intentional.

Greetings, I just wanted to lay out the case for what I see as the biggest problem with the end game gearing system that is going largely ignored. Its one I experienced as an old player returning after about a hiatus since the 6.0 came out and I ran through the story on that. The problem is the current system basically makes false promises about different gearing paths. Let me explain. All of the statements from the dev team talked about item rating would no longer be tied to gear quality and that it would open branches for gearing to fit multiple play styles. The progression from 320 to 326 could be done according to your own play style. basically all content would drop gear you could use and even guaranteed upgrades after some farming. That was the promise, it is incredibly unfulfilled. Master Mode flashpoints I believe illustrate the problem best. This content is relatively easy to que for. Importantly, it REWARDS 320 gear. To someone coming back to the game seeing that in fact you can get 320 blue from MM flashpoints, it implies that the content is designed to allow that. Surely the devs wouldn't provide rewards in content but then balance that content around people for whom those rewards are meaningless? But they did exactly that. You see, MM flashpoints are basically balanced around already being at 326, with augments. Nothing in the system as its designed would clue the player into that. The player would only learn that when they start getting their actual s**t wrecked in the flashpoint. Or as happened to me, I qued in, immediately upon entering the flashpoint someone starts yelling at the group to kick for being under geared. Instead of telling me (i asked) "hey, here is what you need to actually run this content," they went and pulled every group of trash they could to wipe the group and then left the flashpoint. After getting to play the content eventually, I can see why the person was concerned. Even though my later group got a clear, it was a tough road. Should it have been handled with some better communication, absolutely. Would that situation ever have happened if the devs had balanced the reward system around the actual difficulty of the content. No, it wouldn't have. The only way I have found to see my mistake, was to find random guides on youtube. If the devs make it so youtube is communicating their vision better than they are, its a major problem. Adjusting currency rewards doesn't fix this. The fact is, the current system is built in a way that literally sets players up for failure. In a time when I gamed BHC (before having children, a time in shadow of revan when i healed in raids and was obtaining BiS gear as it dropped) i would have simply put in the time to grind out the gear and been done with it. But now you have to look at a guide before you play to even see if what you are doing can be done or is worth while to do because there are zero clues in game. Its a bad system and one that sets people up for failure. There are a lot of people who will likely just completely ignore the end game and once the story is complete a couple times to cover different variations, like I intend to do from now on.

I agree with the Original Poster 1,000 times. First off, I don't get to play all that much with my real life commitments. So when I am playing, I want to be doing something, not sitting waiting for group finder to pop. I therefore find that while I'm doing something, I end up leveling right to 55 without even knowing, thus essentially shutting me out of the experience since I don't play enough to be a member of a raiding guild or anything like that. I would just love to see the SM 50-54 opps become 50-55.