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New Ossus decorations requiring premium materials


Estelindis

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Dear Bioware, before the recent patch I was hoping some new Ossus decorations would be added. In spite of having bought many copies of all the existing decorations, I have more Ossus relics than I can shake a stick at, and keep on buying more decorations with them so as not to go over the limit. Thus I was delighted to see some new Ossus decorations were added with this patch.

 

Then I saw that you made the new decorations purchasable not for the Ossus currency (relics of Ossus) but for monumental crystals, masterwork crystals, and unassembled components (which themselves can be turned into masterwork crystals). Really? Is this a mistake?

 

:confused:

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Dear Bioware, before the recent patch I was hoping some new Ossus decorations would be added. In spite of having bought many copies of all the existing decorations, I have more Ossus relics than I can shake a stick at, and keep on buying more decorations with them so as not to go over the limit. Thus I was delighted to see some new Ossus decorations were added with this patch.

 

Then I saw that you made the new decorations purchasable not for the Ossus currency (relics of Ossus) but for monumental crystals, masterwork crystals, and unassembled components (which themselves can be turned into masterwork crystals). Really? Is this a mistake?

 

:confused:

 

Are you kidding me? So we now have to do group content to actually decorate our strongholds? :eek:

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Are you kidding me? So we now have to do group content to actually decorate our strongholds? :eek:

It's correct. I was surprised to see they have priced new decorations using premium materials, including monumental crystals which most of us are never going to be able to get. Masterworks crystals I can sort of understand because as a solo player, after I've geared my main, I won't have much else to buy with them. Fortunately the new decorations aren't outstanding so we're not missing too much. Relics of Ossus have gone the way of dark/light currency - they will be spent on random crap just to avoid having the maximum allowed.

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Relics of Ossus have gone the way of dark/light currency - they will be spent on random crap just to avoid having the maximum allowed.

Exactly. I have also wished they would add decorations to the Dark and Light vendors so we'd have something else to do with those currencies. :(

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The game really needs a unified currency instead of needing to keep track of so many different ones. Credits shuold be the universal currency. Everyone can get credits for doing any content they actually enjoy. Would some things be outrageously expensive? Yes. Would everything be in reach for all players regardless of how they enjoy playing? Yes.
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It's correct. I was surprised to see they have priced new decorations using premium materials, including monumental crystals which most of us are never going to be able to get. Masterworks crystals I can sort of understand because as a solo player, after I've geared my main, I won't have much else to buy with them. Fortunately the new decorations aren't outstanding so we're not missing too much. Relics of Ossus have gone the way of dark/light currency - they will be spent on random crap just to avoid having the maximum allowed.

 

I don't even have masterwork crystals. Only way i been gaining those been in slow unassembled component trade and those have been going for my gear. Main is not even close to full 252 and i also want to gear my alts (so not feeling like using them as mules to gear my main). I haven't had any saved UCs so i am activelly trying to gather that 500 every week to get one crystal.So no joy from these decos for me then. Feels bad.:(

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Are you kidding me? So we now have to do group content to actually decorate our strongholds? :eek:
To be fair there was already several items that were only achievable through Operations, PvP, etc...

 

However I agree that having 3 different currencies used, and all of them based around the crystals is too much. At the very least swap out the unassembled components for the Relics. I’ve been hitting cap and have nothing to do with them.

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To be fair there was already several items that were only achievable through Operations, PvP, etc...

 

Yeah but these ones were only things on this patch that would have given at least a tiny little bit something new to get to "non OPS folks". But apparently there is nothing then.:mad:

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Daily Ossus currency? Sure, but Master and Monumental crystals? Are you F***ing kidding me?! Minimum 2 crystals per decoration! If these crystals dropped like candy I wouldn't have an issue, but to have a currency that is tied into gear grinding also be the only way to purchase these decorations is just mind blowing. Was someone sniffing glue when they made this decision ??? The rating of these decorations are green, not even legendary! Hell, lock them behind a reputation gate and use ossus relics like the other decoration vendor has, not this BS, why change something that isn't broken in the flipping first place! Edited by Darth_Exar
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This is absolutely outrageous. I hate PVP and Ops. I understand that Ops have a trophy decoration associated with them and that's fantastic. Let the Ops people who also decorate have something to show off.

 

But adding several more types of currencies was a bad idea...

 

And forcing roleplayers and decorators to jump into PVP and Ops, where many of us are going to mess up the team because we don't enjoy doing it and don't have the right gear for it... that's a major mistake.

 

I was already frustrated that the Ossus decorations bind on aquire. My group is stuck doing Free For All or some other slower looting option so that the people who never decorate don't get a big chunk of the deco drops. (Yes, I know some people have been very lucky with deco drops, but some of us have been doing dailies almost daily and don't have even one of all the potential random drops yet.)

 

After all the bugs and BS we've had to put up with lately, making our in-game lives harder is a really dumb move.

Edited by Xina_LA
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They seem to be doing more and more to alienate non-Ops/group players. It's not a smart idea but they don't seem to be about "smart ideas" with a lot of this.

 

I'm not as fussed about the decos as I am the fact that non-group players have literally no way to gear up their toons with 258 mainhand/offhand weapons at all, but as others have said, gating decos behind group content is ridiculous.

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They seem to be doing more and more to alienate non-Ops/group players. It's not a smart idea but they don't seem to be about "smart ideas" with a lot of this.

 

I'm not as fussed about the decos as I am the fact that non-group players have literally no way to gear up their toons with 258 mainhand/offhand weapons at all, but as others have said, gating decos behind group content is ridiculous.

They aren’t trying to alienate you, they are trying to incentivize behaviors that will help the longevity of the game.

 

The things you want are not required in anyway to continue enjoying the game as you were previously, they are new additional bonuses for people engaging in group content which is essential for them to maintain a good population of if we want SWTOR to stick around. Not to mention, what would you need a 258 weapon for if you’re doing non-end game PvE?

Edited by Karameck
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They aren’t trying to alienate you, they are trying to incentivize behaviors that will help the longevity of the game.

 

The things you want are not required in anyway to continue enjoying the game as you were previously, they are new additional bonuses for people engaging in group content which is essential for them to maintain a good population of if we want SWTOR to stick around. Not to mention, what would you need a 258 weapon for if you’re doing non-end game PvE?

I am not personally arguing that 258 main- and off-hand should be obtainable without doing high-level group content, but I do think that putting so many decorations behind that wall when we already have an overabundance of the Ossus currency is a mistake. Of course some decorations already have an ops requirement, but in my opinion it's not as steep as this one, nor is it as many decorations tied to a single method of obtaining them, nor in the old cases of ops decorations does one have to choose between improving one's gear and obtaining a decoration.

 

In my opinion, the new decorations should also be purchasable with relics of Ossus. If a small number of the new decorations additionally required one masterwork crystal, I think that wouldn't be beyond the pale. I mean, bear in mind, for a balanced stronghold many people like to have several copies of some decorations. This could lead to the absurd situation of decorators needing longer playing high-level gear-orientated content to get the decorations they want than it takes for the highest-tier gear-seekers to get their gear.

 

At the moment I think Ossus is fairly well-populated and there are plenty of people looking to do the existing world bosses and the new one (including myself; I'm actually having fun with the existing bosses and looking forward to the queen when I get a chance). A lot of these groups are accustomed to a high-level group content focus, and will not necessarily even want people in their groups who are primarily decorators not as interested in ops or gearing, so their groups being "diluted" by such players isn't necessarily a plus for them.

Edited by Estelindis
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How about this:

Decorations can be bought for EITHER:

**The current method, mon Crystals etc

**Make the Maximum Ossus crystals change from 1000 to 9999. You can turn in 9999 in exchange. Also remove the weekly cap, which anyone can obtain in one set of dailies.

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All the incentives in the world will not make me do group or PvP content. Ever. And I doubt I am alone, causing me to wonder how useful this type of incentive is. As I've said elsewhere, you can't make an introvert an extrovert. By all means, give the Ops people something for all their hard work, but let's not confuse that with trying to rope more people into a type of game play they will never embrace.

 

Finally, almost no one needs 258 gear. They just like having it. Nothing wrong with that.

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I am not personally arguing that 258 main- and off-hand should be obtainable without doing high-level group content, but I do think that putting so many decorations behind that wall when we already have an overabundance of the Ossus currency is a mistake. Of course some decorations already have an ops requirement, but in my opinion it's not as steep as this one, nor is it as many decorations tied to a single method of obtaining them, nor in the old cases of ops decorations does one have to choose between improving one's gear and obtaining a decoration.

 

In my opinion, the new decorations should also be purchasable with relics of Ossus. If a small number of the new decorations additionally required one masterwork crystal, I think that wouldn't be beyond the pale. I mean, bear in mind, for a balanced stronghold many people like to have several copies of some decorations. This could lead to the absurd situation of decorators needing longer playing high-level gear-orientated content to get the decorations they want than it takes for the highest-tier gear-seekers to get their gear.

 

At the moment I think Ossus is fairly well-populated and there are plenty of people looking to do the existing world bosses and the new one (including myself; I'm actually having fun with the existing bosses and looking forward to the queen when I get a chance). A lot of these groups are accustomed to a high-level group content focus, and will not necessarily even want people in their groups who are primarily decorators not as interested in ops or gearing, so their groups being "diluted" by such players isn't necessarily a plus for them.

As previously stated I agree that including relics would have been preferable, and I also think the price tag is a little steep for most of those items.

 

As far as the number of items, I’ve got a mixed feeling on that. On the one hand seeing the grind it will take, and knowing I’ll likely have to choose between getting better gear or cute decos is painful, but I do appreciate the trend in increasing the quantity of decos made available to us, and we got a crazy big selection made available with Ossus Relics. It’s hard for me to be too upset when for the first time ever I feel like the team is actually giving us the variety of decos I’ve always hoped to see.

 

As far as Ossus being well-populated, it is at the moment, the issue isn’t “can we keep it busy while it’s still new” it’s building a consistent population and implementing incentives that increase longevity. What I’m seeing is smart Dev choices based on my experience with both SWTOR and other MMOs.

 

I don’t mean this in an antagonistic way, I’m speaking from personal experience, but I think people are confusing what’s good/fun for them personally at this moment with what’s good/fun for the game at large. I play both SWTOR and a couple other MMOs. For a long time I never did any end-game or PvP content. There were various reasons for this, but the two biggest were the aspects I enjoyed did not involve high skill combat (thus I was not good at it) and I’m a naturally high-anxiety person. I’ve always gravitated towards character creation, decorating, and crafting.

 

The idea of going out of my comfort zone and putting myself in a situation where strangers might yell at me or get frustrated because I wasn’t “good enough” was incredibly stressful. However, my love of decorating eventually made me take that chance and branch out. I’m not going to pretend that everyone has always been as nice or as patient as you’d want, but as anyone with anxiety can attest reality is never as bad as the story you weave stressing over it. I have continued to push myself to get better and more comfortable with group content with the sole intent of acquiring the decos/gear for purely aesthetic reasons. I will likely never hit the ranked lists, but I’ve become a more active member of the community vs. treating the game like a single player experience due to that incentive.

 

That’s the point of these choices from the higher ups. It’s not that they have any animosity towards people who play the game differently, but they are forced by the nature of the business to try and do everything possible to maintain an active and engaged community for interactive, group content. You can tell from Queue times we still have a long ways to go on that, honestly I think SWTOR didn’t push people to do group content enough previously (TBH probably the biggest mis-step of KOTFE/KOTET) which created such a large niche of people who treat the game as a solo experience. It’s not that those people don’t matter, or that their way of playing isn’t valid, but if the game is going to last, that can’t be the play style that’s catered to. At the end of the day this game is an MMO, it’s not only expected that group content would be prioritized and pushed, it’s necessary for the game to thrive.

Edited by Karameck
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All the incentives in the world will not make me do group or PvP content. Ever. And I doubt I am alone, causing me to wonder how useful this type of incentive is. As I've said elsewhere, you can't make an introvert an extrovert. By all means, give the Ops people something for all their hard work, but let's not confuse that with trying to rope more people into a type of game play they will never embrace.

 

Finally, almost no one needs 258 gear. They just like having it. Nothing wrong with that.

 

Same for me, they are not incentives at all, they are just things i don't do. If i can't get the best gear, it's fine, i am used to it. But if every single new thing added having these "incentives", then i am out till there is content i can do again.

 

People who don't understand about solo playing in MMORPG's should watch this talk from BioWare Austin's Damion Schubert where he explains solo playing and it's different reasons and aspects very well. Actually everyone should watch it, it's really entertaining speach from a smart guy who knows what he is talking about.

 

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I’ve always gravitated towards character creation, decorating, and crafting.

 

The idea of going out of my comfort zone and putting myself in a situation where strangers might yell at me or get frustrated because I wasn’t “good enough” was incredibly stressful. However, my love of decorating eventually made me take that chance and branch out. I’m not going to pretend that everyone has always been as nice or as patient as you’d want, but as anyone with anxiety can attest reality is never as bad as the story you weave stressing over it. I have continued to push myself to get better and more comfortable with group content with the sole intent of acquiring the decos/gear for purely aesthetic reasons. I will likely never hit the ranked lists, but I’ve become a more active member of the community vs. treating the game like a single player experience due to that incentive.

I appreciate you agreeing that it would be appropriate to move some of the cost of these items to relics of Ossus. Re. playstyle, I would have the same natural preferences as yourself and have made a similar effort to move outside my comfort zone - and I've improved in my playing as a result. For what it's worth, I also agree with you in being pleased by the volume of recent decorations (particularly a large number with the same aesthetic, helpful for decorating with a unified style).

 

My concern is not so much with any new decorations requiring group content as it is that so many require it. I appreciate your point about longevity, but there comes a time when people have enough mainhands and offhands for their entire legacy, and people who want to decorate their strongholds nicely with these new items could still be working away diligently long after that. Let's look at the numbers (apologies in advance for any typos or mistakes with adding).

 

To get one copy of each of the 14 new decorations costs a total of 3 monumental crystals, 29 masterwork crystals, and 1,000 unassembled components (which could be turned into one or two masterwork crystals). To get one 258 mainhand and one 258 offhand costs 4 monumental crystals and 10 masterwork crystals (or 14 if you need to buy 252s from which to upgrade). So far, it's looking cheaper to get good gear than these decorations. However, just as decorators often want more than one copy of a decoration, players have alts, so in both cases many people won't stop at one copy of each decoration or one MH/OH. Let's take a look at how much a decorator can buy for the same price as an entire legacy with a *basic*, non-convenient yet full mainhand/offhand loadout.

 

Here is the full list of costs for the new decorations: (cost given in monumental crystals / masterwork crystals / unassembled components)

Bioluminscent Mushrooms: 0/1/250

Broken Geonosian Egg Clump: 0/2/0

Cracked Geonosian Eggs: 0/2/0

Creeping Roots: 0/2/0

Geonosian Eggs: 0/2/0

Hanging Roots: 0/3/0

Large Stone Torch: 0/2/500

Memorial of the Three: 1/2/0

Ossan Jedi Memorial: 0/3/0

Ossan Temple Column: 0/2/500

Pile of Bones: 1/2/0

Royal Mucus(!): 0/1/250

Statue of the Forgotten Heroine: 1/2/0

Stone Torch: 0/2/0

TOTAL: 3/29/1,000 (or 3/31, looked at another way)

 

Here's the absolute minimum loadout for a full legacy of 258 mainhands and offhands (in cases where players don't mind frequently paying to rip mods from, for example, a tanking lightsaber to a tanking dualsaber, or from a DPS Force focus to a DPS tech generator).

 

Tank MH with hilt (lightsaber/dualsaber)

Tank OH with armoring (force/tech shield)

Tank MH with barrel (pistol / blaster rifle)

DPS/healing MH with hilt (lightsaber/dualsaber)

DPS OH with hilt (need a second lightsaber for sentinels / marauders)

DPS/healing OH with armoring (force focus / tech generator)

DPS/healing MH with barrel (pistol / cannon / sniper rifle / blaster rifle)

DPS/healing OH with barrel (scattergun / vibroknife / second blaster pistol for gunslingers / mercs)

Cost of each is 2/5 (or 7 if no 252s).

TOTAL: 16/40 (or 56 if no 252s)

 

I *think* that's everything (someone please tell me if I missed anything), if you don't care about credit annoyances? Just for the sake of argument, we'll examine this case even though plenty of people do care about credit annoyances, myself included. (Correspondingly, you might get people who would put DPS mods into tank shells - and who might do it because they feel tanks need more DPS, not to economize - so this is an attempt to visualize a middle-of-the-road full legacy loadout.)

 

Cost of all those items is 16 monumental crystals and 40 masterwork crystals (56 if there's a need to buy 252s in every case to upgrade). Let's assume the most generous exchange rate of 500 unassembled components to one masterwork crystal and treat 1k components as being functionally identical to 2 mw crystals, so we can add and subtract more easily. That means we're comparing 3/31 to 16/40(56).

 

For 16 monumentals and 40 masterworks, how many decorations can we buy? One full set of 14 decorations at a cost of 3/31 from 16/40 leaves a remainder of 13 monumentals and 9 masterworks. Depending on how we choose to spend that remainder (the currencies don't always cooperate with what we want), we could buy, for example (remembering that 500 components = 1mw crystal) as few as 3 Hanging Roots, or as many as 6 Bioluminscent Mushrooms. If our budget had the 16 extra masterwork crystals needed buy 252s as well - so a full legacy totally from scratch, with nothing to upgrade - then with our remainder of 13 monumentals and 25 masterworks we could buy, for example, as few as 8 Hanging Roots, or many as 16 Bioluminscent Mushrooms. So, depending on our budget, in addition to one copy of each of the 14 decorations, we could buy 3-16 more. Alternatively, if we don't care about unlocking all the decorations (and many decorating fans do care, myself included), we could just stock up on the cheapest, getting 26 Bioluminscent Mushrooms (or 37 if we needed to buy 252s). But that is a really niche case (sorry, mushroom fans!).

 

So... a full set of 258 mainhands and offhands, good for one's entire legacy... or 17-30 decorations (or as many as 37 in a niche so tiny I can't even believe I'm mentioning it). Is this fair? Is this providing the same kind of longevity that will keep gear-seekers and decorators doing this content for the same length of time?

 

(Of course, one could make different comparisons, say by including full sets of armour with 7-piece bonuses, which would certainly cost more, but I'm aiming to make a comparison that includes monumental crystals. Plus plenty of people have already made progress on their non-MH/OH 258s. And certainly none of this is to consider the plight of players like me who enjoy upgrading our gear and decorating, albeit the latter more than the former.)

 

EDIT: I made a miscalculation due to forgetting that the OH barrel can theoretically be shared between more classes/specs/items, so I just redid the equipment calculations and resulting decoration purchases to reflect that.

Edited by Estelindis
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They aren’t trying to alienate you, they are trying to incentivize behaviors that will help the longevity of the game.

 

The things you want are not required in anyway to continue enjoying the game as you were previously, they are new additional bonuses for people engaging in group content which is essential for them to maintain a good population of if we want SWTOR to stick around. Not to mention, what would you need a 258 weapon for if you’re doing non-end game PvE?

 

There is not an incentive in the world that could compel me to play PvP or Ops. And SWTOR should know this does not work.

 

Oricon: players were upset about story ending in Ops, do not do Ops (or Oricon at all)

Iokath: players were upset about Op being added to mission log, asked for it to be able to be abandoned for more than a year until devs relented.

Pierce and 4x: players simply don't do AAs for them requiring PvP.

H4: Had to be retooled for solo play in Section X and Black Hole because nobody did them.

PvP stronghold: players wanted option to turn PvP off and guarantee it could not be activated by SH visitors.

 

By making less and less available to solo players they are squeezing us out and that does not contribute to longevity. Progression guilds are not enough to keep the lights on here. I can't speak for everyone but they really aren't giving solo/story players any reason at all to stick around right now.

 

And as to what players need, do you need achievements? Cosmetics? Those wings from the Oricon op? We all need things to shoot for. Plus difficulty has been increasing. Solo Nathema bolsters you to mastery of 84k for instance.

Edited by IoNonSoEVero
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Progression guilds are not enough to keep the lights on here.

This is true, particularly given that a lot of progression players who left during their content drought never came back. I say this from experience as my mains on each side have been members of progression guilds since launch (even though I've never been much of a progression player - it's just that these were my first couple of guilds to which I was invited, and I kept my Pub and Imp mains in them for social reasons after getting to know the members). I've listened to many complaints over the years about lack of new, complex, engaging PvE endgame content. I've seen formerly passionate progression players finally lose heart and quit. The message of the day on one of my progression guilds says the guild is in hibernation until the new operation will be complete - but it's been complete for a while now, and no one's really come back, leaving the message of the day as a sad tombstone in limbo. So I absolutely want those progression players who've stayed - and those who've joined in the meantime - to get a nice steady release of content. They were neglected for a long time and I think they deserve updates. But I have to agree that - as far as I can tell - there aren't enough of them to keep the game afloat by themselves.

 

Now, that being said, I don't think that any particular group is currently as neglected as progression players were during KotFE/KotFE. Over the past year, there's been content for fans of PvE, PvP, story, decorating, and cosmetics. Now there hasn't been an avalanche of content for any one group, certainly, but there has been some. And as long as everyone keeps getting some, I think we can keep going. And, in my opinion, making these decorations less burdened by a massive requirement of materials from group content would help to keep things balanced.

 

Of course, some people have almost certainly already purchased some of the new decorations. If Bioware were to reassess the prices, I wouldn't want those early adopters to be punished. BW might refund premium materials to those who've already bought the decorations, taking into account how many of each decoration each player has unlocked. (Or, then again, they might not. Various bugs since 5.10 led to many of us not receiving our rewards of masterwork crystals in spite of completing the requisite content, but we have not been refunded those "lost" crystals.)

Edited by Estelindis
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Here is the full list of costs for the new decorations: (cost given in monumental crystals / masterwork crystals / unassembled components)

Bioluminscent Mushrooms: 0/1/250

Broken Geonosian Egg Clump: 0/2/0

Cracked Geonosian Eggs: 0/2/0

Creeping Roots: 0/2/0

Geonosian Eggs: 0/2/0

Hanging Roots: 0/3/0

Large Stone Torch: 0/2/500

Memorial of the Three: 1/2/0

Ossan Jedi Memorial: 0/3/0

Ossan Temple Column: 0/2/500

Pile of Bones: 1/2/0

Royal Mucus(!): 0/1/250

Statue of the Forgotten Heroine: 1/2/0

Stone Torch: 0/2/0

Of those only the Bioluminscent Mushrooms looked good to me when I was viewing them in-game so I'm not that bothered - at some point I will have geared up my main (except for main hand/off hand) and will be have leftover crystals to able to buy the mushrooms. The rest of the decorations are pretty meh considering the price.

I expect they will alter the prices when they find no one is buying them. Are many raiders/ranked PvPers (the only ones likely to get the currency needed) into decorating their Strongholds? Are strongholds more of a solo player thing? I always thought they were more of a solo player thing. Though I can see Ops guilds maybe paying to get the decoration for their guild ships / guild strongholds maybe.

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Are many raiders/ranked PvPers (the only ones likely to get the currency needed) into decorating their Strongholds? Are strongholds more of a solo player thing? I always thought they were more of a solo player thing. Though I can see Ops guilds maybe paying to get the decoration for their guild ships / guild strongholds maybe.

I can't speak to the overall composition of the playerbase or the % of time spent in various activities. I imagine that only BW/EA have that data. However, my experience since I moved most of my characters into large conquest guilds has been that a big enough group has players who overlap in all kinds of ways. I've chatted with plenty of people interested in decorating who take part in group activities, and plenty of decorators who prefer to play solo.

 

In terms of guild ships / guild strongholds, it looks like the new decorations can be donated to a guild for credits once unlocked (this is what TOR Decorating says - plus BoP decorations can't be manually donated, so credits would be the only way). As such, guilds are already playing the decorating game on easy mode (as usual; as a decorator for several guilds, I say this with no particular rancor). It's just people who decorate personal strongholds who'll have to earn group content materials for each and every copy of a decoration. And that angle does make it more difficult by far for the solo player, speaking here of the one who decorates their own stronghold rather than the group/guild stronghold.

Edited by Estelindis
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This is true, particularly given that a lot of progression players who left during their content drought never came back. I say this from experience as my mains on each side have been members of progression guilds since launch (even though I've never been much of a progression player - it's just that these were my first couple of guilds to which I was invited, and I kept my Pub and Imp mains in them for social reasons after getting to know the members). I've listened to many complaints over the years about lack of new, complex, engaging PvE endgame content. I've seen formerly passionate progression players finally lose heart and quit. The message of the day on one of my progression guilds says the guild is in hibernation until the new operation will be complete - but it's been complete for a while now, and no one's really come back, leaving the message of the day as a sad tombstone in limbo. So I absolutely want those progression players who've stayed - and those who've joined in the meantime - to get a nice steady release of content. They were neglected for a long time and I think they deserve updates. But I have to agree that - as far as I can tell - there aren't enough of them to keep the game afloat by themselves.

 

Now, that being said, I don't think that any particular group is currently as neglected as progression players were during KotFE/KotFE. Over the past year, there's been content for fans of PvE, PvP, story, decorating, and cosmetics. Now there hasn't been an avalanche of content for any one group, certainly, but there has been some. And as long as everyone keeps getting some, I think we can keep going. And, in my opinion, making these decorations less burdened by a massive requirement of materials from group content would help to keep things balanced.

 

(snip) I don't think the complaint is with raiders getting content; I think the issue really is that they are closing all the doors for non-raiders/PvPers to acquire the gear/decos, and really seeming to be pushing everyone toward the path of group content.

 

Whatever Galactic Command's flaws might be, you could still play whatever you wanted - chapters, PvP, Ops, whatever - and progress toward getting boxes and/or UCs for gear. Some of those routes were much faster that others, but that's cool. But now they've closed every door except for the few *they* want to keep open and apparently think people should be playing. Trying to tie strongholds together with group content (as they attempted with the Rishi stronghold and now this) seems especially problematic to me.

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While nothing they do surprises me anymore, making decorations require the crystals makes no sense. The unassembled components maybe as those you can get when you destroy some gear but the others are only able to be gotten by certain activities and if a person doesn't do those activities then they are not going to get the crystals. The most you are going to get is people to get the crystals for the gear and nothing else.

 

Furthermore, the only way you will know someone has the decorations is to go visit their strongholds and most have stop doing that so if they are counting on people doing the activities to get those decorations then it seems they didn't think ahead very well.

 

If they think putting decorations on a vendor will push people into doing the content they want people to do they are sadly mistaken. There is nothing they can do to get me to do content I don't want to do. I had enough of operations at the launch when people were nicer and it was fun. It is no longer fun and I am not going to do group missions such as operations again and listen to complaining and as far as pvp nothing you can do will get me to touch that . What might happen is pushing me further and further away from playing and when I no longer have a reason to play they will no longer get my sub. As it is I only log on twice a week to do some decorating for my guild as I promised.

Edited by casirabit
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To be honest my first thought was "is this an out of season april's fool joke"?

 

The costs are absurd for a bunch of decorations that look quite uninspired. Maybe if those were super-awesome, animated decos like the "Holocron of Ancient Masters" (which also has kind of a steep price with the 25 recovered relics needed), it would not feel quite as ridiculous.

Unfortunately we get a bunch of eggs and roots, things that are on the level of simple prefab decos or free flashpoint drops.

 

I also notice a lot of "recycling" lately with all the jedi-themed stuff. At the moment I'm just wondering when the next deco will be released that's based on the "Statue of an Ancient Jedi" with some minor changes to the base or color. There were a few exceptions like the desert vine and the gardening themed stuff, but overall a lot of the decos look like one guy being tasked to churn out lots of them and not having time to really create something great.

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