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Changes to Gearing in 7.0 from PTS Feedback


BryantWood

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I found this in itemization news post:

 

Yes it doesn't say 3 months, you are right here. Maybe I am too optimistic about the release of the next patch which will be 7.1.

Thank you for the concession (being serious here, not snarky).

 

At the same time you are calliing them handicapped and preaching they will have harder game to play. I didn't put this word there, you did. I didn't call them that.

I think you might be mistaking what I mean by "handicapped" or disabled. I'm not calling casual players handicapped. I'm talking about people with actual, real, physical and/or mental handicaps--my friends who have had strokes or have cerebral palsy and can't move their hands or fingers quickly, my other friends who are legally blind or severely hearing impaired, others with fibromyalgia or severe arthritis who experience real pain when playing, some others who've had traumatic brain injuries, those with severe ASD, etc etc etc. I'm not "preaching" anything. They do find the game physically harder to play as a result of the disabilities. They experienced trouble doing heroics and even story-mode KOTFE/KOTET with 270 gear but found optimized 306 gear allowed them to be successful.

 

Surely, you remember how annoying it was to do MMFPs or even vet content in generic, non-optimized 270 gear and how much easier it is to do it in min-maxed BIS 306. Why in the world would we want to return to foisting sub-optimal gear back on people who have trouble just playing the game at all?

 

This is one of the biggest reasons why I think limiting top gear to a tiny fraction of gamers in 7.0, after promoting BIS availability to everyone in 6.0, is such an awful idea. I'll happily give up stat-point exclusivity if it helps my disabled friends enjoy this game more.

My more casual-style friends jumped into Ops and dabbled in vet mode content once they geared up to BIS. They didn't feel confident enough to take it on with 270 gear.

Their enjoyment=more subscriptions=SWTOR servers stay open longer.

 

But I disagree with a popular opinion that bis gear helps casuals or players who don't play hard endgame content.
It's 'popular' because it's true. I think I've proven that BIS helps casual players and causes no harm to NIM raiders. Let me know when you can show evidence for your claims besides "I want NIM raiders to be the only ones who can get NIM gear because that's how they do it in WoW, and I like the feeling of exclusivity."

 

Someone observed this and thought it's not working in general and thus this change was born.
What's not working is the development of new content on a much more frequent schedule than one Op every 3 years because BioWare wasted time and resources screwing around with armor _yet again_. And if you stayed around to play the game through the "era of the casuals having BIS gear," then apparently it didn't distress you much at all that Nim raiders didn't have exclusive raid stats, or you'd be playing WoW instead.

 

....And me personally I never turn anyone back just because they have wrong implants or relics.
(snipped for brevity). I'm glad you're not an elitist jerk. (That's a serious comment, not a sarcastic one, to be very clear).

 

And the maximum gear obtainable from flashpoints, conquest which is 326, is enough for story and solo players to enjoy the game.

I think I've very clearly shown that for a number of players, this is just patently false. I remember how annoyed I was to go to green, non-moddable, non-optimized 270 gear in 6.0 after having min-maxed gold 258 gear in 5.0. I challenge you to go put on 322 green gear once you've obtained Nim gear and see how much you like playing in gear that 'is enough for story and solo players'. If you even do try that, I'm sure you'll be putting your best gear back on right after the first boss because the time it takes to kill even a heroic boss will make doing that content extremely tedious.

 

Many people shared their feedback on that and it is sufficient.

All .002% of you? Nearly 100% of the feedback expresses testers' intense dislike of non-moddable gear. Go look at the ratio of posts of people expressing dislike vs like of the new gear. And I do take into account that people complain more often than they praise, but even factoring that in, the number and percentage of dislikes is overwhelming.

 

I know the change is hard to process, since Bioware got every one used to this system for so long and now this change will turn everything upside down.
I'm not saying it's hard to process. It's not. What I am saying is that this is going to be an extremely unpopular move once it hits live, and angry/frustrated players don't re-subscribe. No subscriptions=SWTOR servers get shut down faster. No mmo lives forever, but I like this one enough that I'd like to play it a little longer.

 

That's my point of view and I know people who share it, and it's not 0.001 percent of players, trust me. Look up Reddit, YouTube, discords.
Influencers depend on their positive relationships with BioWare to keep getting fed exclusive information from the company. You'll see very little negative press from social media influencers because too much negativity means they'll get cut off by BioWare, and that ends their streams. Yes, there will be some who dare to say some negative comments, but by and large, most of them will post only positive "Rah! Rah! This is great!" posts. They know which side their bread is buttered on. The fact that the weapon outfitter alone won't be working in 7.0 and people have to equip non-moddable weapons to gear up I can guarantee is going to infuriate a whole lot of players. They've paid a lot of real money to buy cartel market items they now won't be able to use without nerfing their ability to gear up. It's an insane business decision to remove the ability for players to use Cartel Market items, even temporarily. I shook my head at the irony of a CM weapon being on sale in game the other day that a buyer won't even be able to use after the 14th. And that's just one problem. Does that sound like a winning financial strategy to you? It sure doesn't to me, and I foresee a substantial player exodus from the game until BioWare fixes the gear problems. Whether players return once it's fixed remains to be seen. It's irrelevant how you or I feel about Nim-exclusive gear if a bunch of players leave the game because of it.

 

In any case, if you have any other reason for your support of Nim-exclusive gear besides "I like it having better stats than the casuals and WoW does it that way," then we have more to discuss. Otherwise, there's nothing left to debate.

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Thank you for the concession (being serious here, not snarky).

 

 

I think you might be mistaking what I mean by "handicapped" or disabled. I'm not calling casual players handicapped. I'm talking about people with actual, real, physical and/or mental handicaps--my friends who have had strokes or have cerebral palsy and can't move their hands or fingers quickly, my other friends who are legally blind or severely hearing impaired, others with fibromyalgia or severe arthritis who experience real pain when playing, some others who've had traumatic brain injuries, those with severe ASD, etc etc etc. I'm not "preaching" anything. They do find the game physically harder to play as a result of the disabilities. They experienced trouble doing heroics and even story-mode KOTFE/KOTET with 270 gear but found optimized 306 gear allowed them to be successful.

 

Surely, you remember how annoying it was to do MMFPs or even vet content in generic, non-optimized 270 gear and how much easier it is to do it in min-maxed BIS 306. Why in the world would we want to return to foisting sub-optimal gear back on people who have trouble just playing the game at all?

 

This is one of the biggest reasons why I think limiting top gear to a tiny fraction of gamers in 7.0, after promoting BIS availability to everyone in 6.0, is such an awful idea. I'll happily give up stat-point exclusivity if it helps my disabled friends enjoy this game more.

My more casual-style friends jumped into Ops and dabbled in vet mode content once they geared up to BIS. They didn't feel confident enough to take it on with 270 gear.

Their enjoyment=more subscriptions=SWTOR servers stay open longer.

 

It's 'popular' because it's true. I think I've proven that BIS helps casual players and causes no harm to NIM raiders. Let me know when you can show evidence for your claims besides "I want NIM raiders to be the only ones who can get NIM gear because that's how they do it in WoW, and I like the feeling of exclusivity."

 

What's not working is the development of new content on a much more frequent schedule than one Op every 3 years because BioWare wasted time and resources screwing around with armor _yet again_. And if you stayed around to play the game through the "era of the casuals having BIS gear," then apparently it didn't distress you much at all that Nim raiders didn't have exclusive raid stats, or you'd be playing WoW instead.

 

(snipped for brevity). I'm glad you're not an elitist jerk. (That's a serious comment, not a sarcastic one, to be very clear).

 

 

I think I've very clearly shown that for a number of players, this is just patently false. I remember how annoyed I was to go to green, non-moddable, non-optimized 270 gear in 6.0 after having min-maxed gold 258 gear in 5.0. I challenge you to go put on 322 green gear once you've obtained Nim gear and see how much you like playing in gear that 'is enough for story and solo players'. If you even do try that, I'm sure you'll be putting your best gear back on right after the first boss because the time it takes to kill even a heroic boss will make doing that content extremely tedious.

 

 

All .002% of you? Nearly 100% of the feedback expresses testers' intense dislike of non-moddable gear. Go look at the ratio of posts of people expressing dislike vs like of the new gear. And I do take into account that people complain more often than they praise, but even factoring that in, the number and percentage of dislikes is overwhelming.

 

I'm not saying it's hard to process. It's not. What I am saying is that this is going to be an extremely unpopular move once it hits live, and angry/frustrated players don't re-subscribe. No subscriptions=SWTOR servers get shut down faster. No mmo lives forever, but I like this one enough that I'd like to play it a little longer.

 

Influencers depend on their positive relationships with BioWare to keep getting fed exclusive information from the company. You'll see very little negative press from social media influencers because too much negativity means they'll get cut off by BioWare, and that ends their streams. Yes, there will be some who dare to say some negative comments, but by and large, most of them will post only positive "Rah! Rah! This is great!" posts. They know which side their bread is buttered on. The fact that the weapon outfitter alone won't be working in 7.0 and people have to equip non-moddable weapons to gear up I can guarantee is going to infuriate a whole lot of players. They've paid a lot of real money to buy cartel market items they now won't be able to use without nerfing their ability to gear up. It's an insane business decision to remove the ability for players to use Cartel Market items, even temporarily. I shook my head at the irony of a CM weapon being on sale in game the other day that a buyer won't even be able to use after the 14th. And that's just one problem. Does that sound like a winning financial strategy to you? It sure doesn't to me, and I foresee a substantial player exodus from the game until BioWare fixes the gear problems. Whether players return once it's fixed remains to be seen. It's irrelevant how you or I feel about Nim-exclusive gear if a bunch of players leave the game because of it.

 

In any case, if you have any other reason for your support of Nim-exclusive gear besides "I like it having better stats than the casuals and WoW does it that way," then we have more to discuss. Otherwise, there's nothing left to debate.

 

Thank you for these awesome statements and for defending the handicapped / disabled players of this mmo.

Additionally I wanted to thank you for defending the majority of players (like me) who think that the new gearing

system is wrong and unfair.

 

Unfortunately I'm one of the players who's thinking about unsubscribing (like my guild members) and this

means that our support of other guilds and single players in op, fp, etc (mostly as heals and tanks) will end soon.

 

By the way this goes out to the guys who think they are Elite (not a special person).

Elitism has never been a good thing and led to bad things in real life (Shoah).

We don't spit on you (quote from last page), we just say that elitism is wrong.

All people should have the same chances in real life and in a game.

And no I'm not a communist / socialist, I just care about unfair chances.

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Thank you for these awesome statements and for defending the handicapped / disabled players of this mmo.

Additionally I wanted to thank you for defending the majority of players (like me) who think that the new gearing

system is wrong and unfair.

 

Unfortunately I'm one of the players who's thinking about unsubscribing (like my guild members) and this

means that our support of other guilds and single players in op, fp, etc (mostly as heals and tanks) will end soon.

 

By the way this goes out to the guys who think they are Elite (not a special person).

Elitism has never been a good thing and led to bad things in real life (Shoah).

We don't spit on you (quote from last page), we just say that elitism is wrong.

All people should have the same chances in real life and in a game.

And no I'm not a communist / socialist, I just care about unfair chances.

You're very welcome.

Like you, my guilds have a significant number of members who've said, "I can't equip my CM weapons that I paid good money for after the 14th? BioWare's taking away moddable gear? I'm not even able to do Ops lockouts? I have to grind multiple places just to get one set of gear, and it's an insane grind to gear my alts? I'm out. I'm going to go play another MMO where I'm not going to get screwed over in so many directions it makes my head spin. Is BioWare _trying_ to kill this game?"

The ones who plan on coming back are telling me, "I'm going to do the story and then unsub until BioWare fixes this crap. If they fix it quickly, fine. If they don't fix it quickly and I end up liking another game even more? Well, bye, SWTOR."

What distresses me is that I'm hearing this kind of thing from a much higher percentage of fellow players and guildies than I did with the change from 5.0 to 6.0. And this was before BW made the very quiet announcement that the weapon outfitter won't be available until 7.1 (and a high probability of that never happening, frankly, because they've been working on this unsuccessfully since the outfitter option came out before 6.0). Usually, I've found a number of things to be positive about in updates. I can't find a single thing to be positive about in 7.0 except for the small story content and new flashpoint.

 

I don't know how many more of us can tell BioWare that there are some glaring, severe problems that need to be fixed really fast for the game's financials to stay in the black. About all I can do is what I've done--voice my thoughts. After that, I'll just pull out the popcorn on Feb. 15th while watching social media explode with angry players, check out the half-hour of story content, and then log into FFXIV for a while until the mess here is (hopefully) fixed.

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I have loved this game since I started in 2020 but I will not be playing the expansion. The gearing system was PERFECT in 6.0

 

The gearing system in 7.0 has made me lose all interest in this game, which makes me sad, because I quit World or Warcrap after 15 years (played it since day one) to come to this game SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE gearing alts was such a FUN, easy task from 2020 until 7.0.

 

It makes me sad that Bioware is following the lead of WoW which has been massively losing subscribers. WHY would you copy a game that is on the decline I will never be able to figure out.

 

Oh well, so long all. It was fun while it lasted.

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I have loved this game since I started in 2020 but I will not be playing the expansion. The gearing system was PERFECT in 6.0

 

The gearing system in 7.0 has made me lose all interest in this game, which makes me sad, because I quit World or Warcrap after 15 years (played it since day one) to come to this game SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE gearing alts was such a FUN, easy task from 2020 until 7.0.

 

It makes me sad that Bioware is following the lead of WoW which has been massively losing subscribers. WHY would you copy a game that is on the decline I will never be able to figure out.

 

Oh well, so long all. It was fun while it lasted.

 

Some of us are migrating over to Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV)

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What I don’t get about the elitist rants is why does it have to be a stat gear grind to satisfy them? Other more successful raid games don’t use gear grinds to satisfy their community, they use exclusive bling items.

To me, the ranting from some of the elitist raiders demanding they only get the best gear and that it be difficult to get d disingenuous because they obviously don’t need the gear to complete the raids themselves. They just don’t want anyone else to have access so they can lord it over people.

But if all they want to do is lord it over people, why does it even need to be stat gear. Why couldn’t the rewards be non stat items they can use in outfitter or special glam looking weapons or mounts or other “non performance enhancing items”.

Other games do this really well and they have much more healthy progressive raiding communities than swtor.

The idea of giving raiders the top stat gear as rewards is an antiquated design. And those raiders arguing for it on the forums with their antagonist posts are just trolling. It tells you a lot about that communities attitudes and why that part of the game is dying.

 

Forgive me for this but I do have a question, these elitist are they not the same ones that complain that no one raids anymore and yet BW is doing something that is going to push more people away from raiding because if I recall at launch if you didn't have the "correct" gear getting in to do raids was nearly impossible.

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Forgive me for this but I do have a question, these elitist are they not the same ones that complain that no one raids anymore and yet BW is doing something that is going to push more people away from raiding because if I recall at launch if you didn't have the "correct" gear getting in to do raids was nearly impossible.

 

Yeah, I can imagine it now. The elitists will be gating people joining their raids because they don’t have mods in 7.1. But the only way you’ll be able to get the mods is raiding. Which will restrict more people doing it. Then they’ll start selling runs for billions of credits a run just to get the mods.

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Yeah, I can imagine it now. The elitists will be gating people joining their raids because they don’t have mods in 7.1. But the only way you’ll be able to get the mods is raiding. Which will restrict more people doing it. Then they’ll start selling runs for billions of credits a run just to get the mods.

 

I doubt it. Surely there will be some minimum item rating requirement for the harder modes. (As there were in 6.0). But this game has had item ratings locked behind operations for quite some time, and I've never been asked for an item rating that could only be attained through the ops we're doing. Always at least a tier lower, and I doubt it'll change much.

 

Maybe some people will when they're trying for timed runs or farming a particular boss, but for any regular runs I really don't see the gating you're describing happening. And the few who might, are probably players you don't want to be playing with anyway (I sure as **** wouldn't want to).

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I doubt it. Surely there will be some minimum item rating requirement for the harder modes. (As there were in 6.0). But this game has had item ratings locked behind operations for quite some time, and I've never been asked for an item rating that could only be attained through the ops we're doing. Always at least a tier lower, and I doubt it'll change much.

 

Maybe some people will when they're trying for timed runs or farming a particular boss, but for any regular runs I really don't see the gating you're describing happening. And the few who might, are probably players you don't want to be playing with anyway (I sure as **** wouldn't want to).

 

I only expect the sort of Elitists that Casi was alluding to and I was commenting on. I don’t expect decent raiders to behave that way.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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