Then we let ourselves be surprised. Can only get better. But ... I thought so with 5.0.

exactly. you are here for so long,

you should know better

Hey folks,

 

I alluded to this in my earlier post (Phase 3 coming down the end of the this week) but I wanted to post a reminder. PTS Phase 3 will be coming down for good this Friday afternoon! Make sure to get in your PTS Achievements by then if you want the Kai Zaikken log.

 

The current patch that is on PTS will be the final one. We would love to put up more patches and show you the changes that have already been made, along with gathering more feedback. At this point though the team needs to focus their efforts on the final build for the 22nd. Definitely keep all feedback coming it is still being passed onto the team and rolled into launch.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

At this point if I may ask …

Is there really any point of posting here any more ?

At this point if I may ask …

 

Is there really any point of posting here any more ?

Wrong !

Was there a point to ever post in here, you had to ask !

Wrong !

 

Was there a point to ever post in here, you had to ask !

Always a point in posting even though they dont listen to us I would rather post and say I did something to try to help a game I love then sit back and let it burn and have done nothing

Even if it might be in vain by now, Eric says to keep the feedback coming, so I draw the devs' particular attention to this post:

• Reduce the materials requirement for all components (green, blue, and purple quality) to 2/2/2 .
  
• Green schematics must only require green materials to make. Remove conquest mats from this equation entirely.
  
• Blue schematics must only require blue and green materials, in reasonable amounts.
  
• Purple schematics can require purple, blue and green, in reasonable amounts.
  
• Legendary schematics are the only ones that should require legendary mats.
  
• Increase your RE chance. (Even with infinite mats your players' testing is showing that current percentages are punitive.)
  
• Remove Grade 11 components from war supplies schematics.
  
• Reduce the cost of buying mats from the vendor using Jawa scrap. (As I showed in one of my previous posts, if deconstructing 150 pieces of gear doesn't give us sufficient scrap to craft a single basic green component, then your math is catastrophically wrong.)
  

Check out the post itself, and other posts by JediBoadicea, for a fuller commentary on the experiences leading to these conclusions. I believe that these suggested changes can save crafting in 6.0.

I also want to draw attention to a post by myself, particularly the spreadsheet I put together from my attempts to reverse engineer a single synthweaving chestpiece. Here's the most pertinent data:

To learn four schematics (and have no items left over, as they were all used up in RE attempts), I used 10.3k standard materials, 28.7k premium materials, and 6.1k prototype materials. <snip>

 

Additionally, in exotic materials, I used 1.1k Processed Isotope Stabilizers (materials said to be granted by operations, ranked PvP, and master-mode flashpoints) as well as 400 Solid Resource Matrices (conquest reward materials). <snip>

 

This was all to advance the Reverse Engineering of one single synthweaving chest piece. And I didn't even get to the end of the chain.

Experiences like these show why current material costs for crafting must absolutely come down. Thank you.

Wrong !

 

Was there a point to ever post in here, you had to ask !

DOAH !!

I missed that part !

Right now this is pretty much where my thoughts are at.

(I apologize for the long intro … but it's the best clip I found for this one)

Can we at least have an answer on the Alliance Supply Crates? The specialists have a (very slow) workaround but considering I hit 70 around Hoth on all my characters in the course of normal play, it’s feasible to hit 75 before even touching Ilum, let alone Odessen. This could very easily create conditions in which a player cannot progress their star fortress missions if they don’t realize they have to save whatever crates they have.

 

Just acknowledgment of this would go a long way. Is it intended? Will there be some other way to gain them if so? Will the structure of the star fortress missions change (a simple yes/no isn’t a spoiler is it?)? Is it a bug?

But you can always get more supply crates if you run out during star fortress missions, or is that changing in 6.0?

To address some of the other questions I am seeing. Yes, absolutely please keep feedback coming as the team is still reviewing it. I am working on getting details on crafting changes for you as well.

Thanks, Eric. We will keep getting whatever info we can to you. I hope the eventual news is healthy for crafting, which I think it will be if ye take steps as drastic as we are recommending.

In overall I'm happy with the expansion so far. Yes we would have wish without rng, but even just clearing a nim got my inventory full with gear. Even running hm hs is give BiS. If you can adjust the balance as well, would be dope expansion.

My only complaint is amplifiers, I know Eric said its not included in the balance but swtor combat team stated that they are in the hm, nim balance. And that credit sink, it's just too much for the most of the players.

Hey folks!

 

As a heads up the plan to be specific is to bring PTS fully offline at 4PM Central tomorrow.

 

To address some of the other questions I am seeing. Yes, absolutely please keep feedback coming as the team is still reviewing it. I am working on getting details on crafting changes for you as well.

 

-eric

Thanks for that but what about gear and loot changes? Is there anything being done on that front? Because I find it hard to believe with all the feedback about the systems in place now and how it not effective for the game, that they would be pushed through to go live.

I find it hard to believe that people are so focused on gearing system still in the latest patches of PTS. Honestly it's easy to gear up fast, and also ZERO RNG to get set bonus, tacticals. And stats? Well perfection will take a while, but really getting a solid set of stats for all current PvE should not be an issue.

PLEASE RAISE THE TECH FRAG CAP.

Running back and forth from vendor to content for every piece of gear is NOT FUN. Being in the middle of long content and capping out on tech frags IS NOT FUN. It's stupid. Period. Let us buy more than one piece of non-rng gear per cap. Is that really asking so much?!

Then there are the 20 varieties of mods. Add a non-RNG vendor and keep all 20. I agree that having granularity to set up stats precisely is a good thing, it's just not good when put behind a 480 layers of RNG.

But holy hell, crafting is feels like a lost cause right now. There is no scenario in which I can imagine myself taking the time & effort to even break down enough crafted or dropped(?) items to gain schematics for endgame bio or augments. It feels hopeless, and this is coming from someone who has crafted augs and bio for all of my alts since I first learned how to craft in 4.whatever. Yes it was expensive, but it didn't require weeks of conquest, millions+ to craft a SINGLE BiS augment.

Eric says changes are coming, but we're on the umpteenth iteration of PTS and it's so far out of whack I don't think the person(s) responsible for this are managing the situation, and we have every reason to expect this to be a @#$show at this point.

Seriously, locking augments behind this disaster is a terrible disservice to your players BW.

Seriously, locking augments behind this disaster is a terrible disservice to your players BW.

And augments aren't even that bad, compared to the rest of crafting. Please note, I'm not saying augments are in a good place. But with it only taking a single RE success to go from the trainer schematic to what seems like current BiS, it's not nearly as bad as the many different levels that other items seem forced to go through.

That said, the amount of exotic materials required even for the trainer schematic is prohibitive. And actually, in the overall augment system, a significant speedbump is augmentation components. I've been doing many hours of focused REing, spending over 45k units of materials, and you know how many grade 11 augmentation components I currently have? 67. Enough for six kits. (Now, I wasn't REing specifically for augmentation components, so I could've been more efficient in that case, but isn't that still a very low return?) For that matter, the inflated cost of basic components, raising them from 2/2/2 to 10/10/10, has three levels of impact on augments. First, since the most efficient thing to RE is still the basic component (e.g. bonded attachments), the cost of that level is quintupled. Then you need to make lots more premium basic components (again, quintupled in cost) to craft the actual component needed to make kits, prototype components - and you need to make more of these than you needed of basic components for the previous level of kit.

Yikes. It's pretty bad. The more I examine it, the worse I see that it is. And yet, it's still not the worst. Isn't it quite concerning, that this severely heightened level of expense for augmentation kits isn't close to the worst case of increased cost across all of crafting?

More and more reasons accrue to strongly reduce the punitive changes to crafting.

I find it hard to believe that people are so focused on gearing system still in the latest patches of PTS. Honestly it's easy to gear up fast, and also ZERO RNG to get set bonus, tacticals. And stats? Well perfection will take a while, but really getting a solid set of stats for all current PvE should not be an issue.

 

PLEASE RAISE THE TECH FRAG CAP.

 

Running back and forth from vendor to content for every piece of gear is NOT FUN. Being in the middle of long content and capping out on tech frags IS NOT FUN. It's stupid. Period. Let us buy more than one piece of non-rng gear per cap. Is that really asking so much?!

 

Then there are the 20 varieties of mods. Add a non-RNG vendor and keep all 20. I agree that having granularity to set up stats precisely is a good thing, it's just not good when put behind a 480 layers of RNG.

 

But holy hell, crafting is feels like a lost cause right now. There is no scenario in which I can imagine myself taking the time & effort to even break down enough crafted or dropped(?) items to gain schematics for endgame bio or augments. It feels hopeless, and this is coming from someone who has crafted augs and bio for all of my alts since I first learned how to craft in 4.whatever. Yes it was expensive, but it didn't require weeks of conquest, millions+ to craft a SINGLE BiS augment.

 

Eric says changes are coming, but we're on the umpteenth iteration of PTS and it's so far out of whack I don't think the person(s) responsible for this are managing the situation, and we have every reason to expect this to be a @#$show at this point.

 

Seriously, locking augments behind this disaster is a terrible disservice to your players BW.

It's because of the RNG that people are so focused how could they not be. I agree it's not hard gearing up but having to grind through needles RGN is not fun or rewarding nor does it entice people run content only to pray your lucky enough to get what is good for your class. If there was a vendor like you said that offered specific mods , hilts,barrels,armoring,and enhancements then people wouldn't be worried or so focused on the gears as you said. But as it stands now the system on the PTS is neither and IMO ludicrous in asking the player base to suffer through that. Look at games that have that model of RNG and see how well they are doing or how happy the playerbase is with it (division 2 is a prime example of a loot system done wrong)

For the vendors that sell the set bonuses and tacticals, please fix it so your class and spec show appropriate gear. As a sniper, I don't need to see all of the operative gear on top of all the sniper specs to get what I want.

I also have a suggestion. Please make a new vendor that only sells the general set bonus and tactical items. It's a mess as it is to go through trying to find stuff for my class and spec, and the general player is going to be even more confused. Putting the general set bonus and tactical on a separate vendor will clean it up and make it easier to find the right gear and tacticals whether it be class-specific or general.

For the vendors that sell the set bonuses and tacticals, please fix it so your class and spec show appropriate gear. As a sniper, I don't need to see all of the operative gear on top of all the sniper specs to get what I want.

 

I also have a suggestion. Please make a new vendor that only sells the general set bonus and tactical items. It's a mess as it is to go through trying to find stuff for my class and spec, and the general player is going to be even more confused. Putting the general set bonus and tactical on a separate vendor will clean it up and make it easier to find the right gear and tacticals whether it be class-specific or general.

I think that both of these suggestions are very good. With the large number of new items, it's important to streamline players' vendor experience as much as possible.

For the vendors that sell the set bonuses and tacticals, please fix it so your class and spec show appropriate gear. As a sniper, I don't need to see all of the operative gear on top of all the sniper specs to get what I want.

 

I also have a suggestion. Please make a new vendor that only sells the general set bonus and tactical items. It's a mess as it is to go through trying to find stuff for my class and spec, and the general player is going to be even more confused. Putting the general set bonus and tactical on a separate vendor will clean it up and make it easier to find the right gear and tacticals whether it be class-specific or general.

I agree and well said

Apart from what others said (where I agree strongly with tech fragment cap increase and crafting needs to be changed based on very detailed thread), I would like to ask for following:

- Add drops to chests in Colicoid War Games FP (the FP worked great, I understand why it is not on groupfinder due to very different and fun mechanics, but it is pointless to run to break the pace of other FP where you mindlessly kill everything it when nothing drops there)

- Add drops to Uprisings. I made a post about it before. People do not run them even now on live, because they do not offer any meaningful rewards - only one small cxp pack at the end, no isotopes, no specific conquest objectives. On PTS not even the packs drops, no gear, no tech fragments... Please make it on par with FPs (or scale it - for example with story giving 1 items from bosses and 2 from last boss completition, vet giving 2 items from bosses with 3 from last boss completition, master giving 3 items from bosses with 4 from last boss completition). Throw in some renown packs, tech fragment, you can even throw blue/purple/gold companion gifts because why not... Or since they are related to Alliance story-wise, add some crates for alliance specialists, that used to drop from heroic missions, as a reward when completing the uprising (you can again scale it so story gives 1 of each, vet 2 of each, master 3-4 of each). Make isotopes drop here too. Treat the Uprisings like Flashpoints - most of them are much harder than vet HS/Athiss anyway.

- Update drops of world bosses - I know you want to keep those relevant to the planet they are on. However they could still drop a tactical item even though they are for higher levels - if a lower level player gets one, they can keep it for future use and look forward level 75. They could drop a bunch of companion gifts - green, blue, purple or even gold that people could roll on, those are useful for everyone. They could drop Holocron decorations that never drop from heroics when you are over 50 level to allow higher level players to get them.

- Update drops from treasure chests - same issue as above I suppose, but if the chest could "look" at player (in other words have loot generated not on spawn, but when someone opens it), it could maybe have drops changed to include some 75 lvl items, have small/medium crafting satchels of low grade items replaced with new bags ov lvl 11 crafting items, maybe added a lvl 11 crafting mission for players with unnlocked 600+ crafting skill... or it could rarely contain some decorations... or a credit pig certificate similar to those on Iokath missions... just anything that would make chests relevant again for higher levels, as now people usually don't even bother picking them when they would have to kill a mob guarding them.

- If you are going to remove alliance crates from Heroic missions, please consider adding some other reward like a few tech fragments for doing them... maybe 20-25 per mission? The heroics seemed to drop less items than what I drop on live, so solo players could use some tech fragment source to go buy unidentified items at Takanna.

I know all those are "just" droplist changes, and droplist changes are boring to do (so much searching for correct npc id and item id and making sure quantity is set correctly). But there is plenty of content in swtor that got outdated, even though it is fun to do and there are achievements for it, that it would be nice to just pick it up again. The droplist changes don't require too much development (apart from the change to the droplist itself, but the npcs and items already exist) and can even be rolled out step-by-step in later patches. If you announce that there is a plan to do so, people will have something to look forward to in future patches. Because, let's be honest, people will do the activities that feel most "rewarding". The OPSes and FPs rate of gear acquisition was really great on PTS in last iteration, it is hard to describe to people that did not try it, they cannot really imagine running 4 FPs and having a completely full inventory of usable items. I would like to see some love also for solo players that just quest on planets, do the heroics and story mode FPs and for example decorate strongholds - I know they don't really need those items, but this is mmoRPG, people want to feel some progress. And this kind of players is not one that would be dominating the pvp or selling nim titles, so why not let them have some steady source of small amounts of tech fragments - they will never catch up to us nim raiders, but they don't have to be left behind by game completely.

And the most important request - please please please, finally bring back Darth Marr and Darth Acina as companions again!

I agree with a lot said above, im in no way an expert on stats/abilities

As a more casual raider/player i wont comment on skills/ability changes, as im not really qualified to do so.

However on some of the new gear stuff I echo others' opinions:

> Increase the Tech Fragment cap or remove cap completely (I dont see why there needs to be one at all)

> add a max cap of like 30-50k to re-rolling amplifiers

> having so many variations between enhancements/mods is a bit annoying

> the vendors are hard to get through indeed, so much stuff listed all at once for each class, especially for us more casuals, not that I can actually see myself buying a lot straight from those vendors, 1mil credits for an empty shell isnt nothing, especially when re-rolling amps and ripping out mods/enhancements from gear also will tick up on amounts of credits needed

> please dont remove alliance crates from heroics, I do like the outfits from those, not to mention needing those for the alliance officers/star fortresses

> I cant see myself bothering with crafting at all (outside of the new augments, maybe) the old gear was already too much of a bother for me to mess with crafting em, the new stuff is beyond nightmarish for me to even consider looking into crafting it

Also back to my earlier question about the PTS titles, my char doesnt have the mail, but the achievement is unlocked (both achievements are), I hope this wont cause any problems when rewards are transfered to live server, that would suck

But you can always get more supply crates if you run out during star fortress missions, or is that changing in 6.0?

I am going to test this tonight but apparently supply crates no longer drop when running heroics on the main planets

For the vendors that sell the set bonuses and tacticals, please fix it so your class and spec show appropriate gear. As a sniper, I don't need to see all of the operative gear on top of all the sniper specs to get what I want.

 

I also have a suggestion. Please make a new vendor that only sells the general set bonus and tactical items. It's a mess as it is to go through trying to find stuff for my class and spec, and the general player is going to be even more confused. Putting the general set bonus and tactical on a separate vendor will clean it up and make it easier to find the right gear and tacticals whether it be class-specific or general.

I Agree. Even as a veteran playing this game for 6+ years, I spent HOURS at these vendors trying to figure, what should I buy when reaching the absurdly low "Chuck bux" cap of 5k to not exceed it. I can't imagine, how discouraging this mess would look for a new player.

Also why exactly these vendors don't offer every tactical and set bonus? As a player focusing mostly on PvP, how can I directly get for example the Endless Offensive set without forcing myself to playing Operations? Is this the Play your way™?

Unless something changes:

**Right now reward drops from Heroics leave something to be desired. I actually gained more from random drops in the Heroic off of trash bosses than from the rewards for completing the mission. (this after running 10 heroics in a row: 5 on Nar Shaddaa / 5 on Tatooine ).

** Running other missions difficulty levels are about the same as a few days or so. Heroics SM are fine, SM FP's are doable aside from those found on Odessen that have been discussed in other threads. (no sense in repeating dead information)

** Fragment caps: either that has to be "adjusted" and set much higher or get rid of the RNG vendor for specific gear components. However since the idea seems to be to keep players in greens (without mods) as long as possible and to drag out the process of obtaining gear … IMO asking for this to be corrected is a waste of time.

** Crafting: I genuinely hope that the "adjustments" that are coming for crafting are better than what was demonstrated when similar information was provided regarding RNG and gear acquisition.