There is no secret discord server, stop the tinfoil hat things.

I believe Keith is or at least was a member of a raiding guild and was pretty open about it. Can't imagine members of a guild not communicating with each other, especially during raids.

Hey Community!

Increasing the Power Ceiling

With 7.1 we’ll be implementing our first power increase, allowing players to obtain even stronger gear. Here are the new maximum item ratings players can obtain:

• Noble Decurion Gear – 330 (up from 326)
  
• Elite Decurion Gear – 330 (up from 324)
  
• Supreme Decurion Gear – 330 (up from 326)
  
• Tionese Gear – 330 (up from 322)
  
• Columi Gear – 330 (up from 326)
  
• Thyrsian Gear – 328 (up from 326)
  
• Legendary Implants – 334 (up from 330)
  

 

Will you fix the level sync because else that is just pointless?. It will make you weaker in lower level areas. The re is no sence of progression so far. Bigger numbers in your gear means weaker toon on LOWER LEVELS!!!

This means nothing to pure PVPers.

This is all to reward the most boring aspect of the game, PVE.

PVP stats and abilities are still unbalanced in PVP and have always been.

That is why operatives never get nerfed. Still crazy OP.

Hello,

I'm originally from WoW and occasionally play SWTOR in phases, I really liked SWTOR with 6.0 and had spent an amazing amount of time with the game. I'm back with 7.1 and I'm actually really disappointed because my character is stuck at 331 and I can't get any further. I can't call myself a solo player, occasionally go with friends or random veteran operations, or collect the usual tech fragments in SM. In WoW I raided 1 decade of progress and don't want it in SWTOR, community very small (Warcraft logs), the SWTOR raids don't run as smoothly as in other MMOs. Nevertheless, I am a player who likes to do max DPS and can do it, whether I need it for my situation is completely irrelevant. Don't understand why it is always said that you need equipment ))

it's just stupid, when I run a random class, a veteran operation and I don't have a chance with my 330 gear against a bad 339 player, I find that ridiculous and frustrating, I lose interest. Of course you can say go NIM Raiden Play on a DE-EU server and the community there is so small and unapproachable that you can't even find the right people for NIM. Shame about SWTOR

I honestly don't know much about modding or gearing - seems like 15 times more complicated in this game than in Elder Scrolls Online, which is kinda cool and endlessly fascinating as I enjoy intricate systems that always have some mystery to it. I'm a new level 80, still learning the end game stuff and having the time of my life; my gear is at level 321 right now. Again, I don't quite understand what these folk are complaining about because it takes me quite a few months to figure out the deep end game in an MMO as it were, but my hope is that by the time I've figured out what's going on, the devs have resolved the complaints these folk have here so that I'll barely notice a beat.

What spooks me are the recent tweets under hashtag #SaveSWTOR that are saying the game is on its last legs due to the complaints about gearing (which I again don't get quite yet, ignorance is bliss). I beseech the devs and community manager to please keep tabs on twitter as well. I really want this game to continue and I don't want it to pewter out. That being said, I see old posts and tweets from 2018 doomsaying so maybe there are always a few doomsayers.

Anyways, I have a uniqueness complex and my feeling is that now that I am here, whatever the issue is - the devs will want to fix whatever it is because my subscription is most important.

Hello,

 

I'm originally from WoW and occasionally play SWTOR in phases, I really liked SWTOR with 6.0 and had spent an amazing amount of time with the game. I'm back with 7.1 and I'm actually really disappointed because my character is stuck at 331 and I can't get any further. I can't call myself a solo player, occasionally go with friends or random veteran operations, or collect the usual tech fragments in SM. In WoW I raided 1 decade of progress and don't want it in SWTOR, community very small (Warcraft logs), the SWTOR raids don't run as smoothly as in other MMOs. Nevertheless, I am a player who likes to do max DPS and can do it, whether I need it for my situation is completely irrelevant. Don't understand why it is always said that you need equipment ))

it's just stupid, when I run a random class, a veteran operation and I don't have a chance with my 330 gear against a bad 339 player, I find that ridiculous and frustrating, I lose interest. Of course you can say go NIM Raiden Play on a DE-EU server and the community there is so small and unapproachable that you can't even find the right people for NIM. Shame about SWTOR

I share your frustration. As I myself have cancelled my sub and taken a break from Swtor after realizing the only way I can get 340 gear is through Veteran R4 and no other operation and that operation and all it's bosses are so insanely overtuned that only 1-2% of the current dwindling player base will clear it. So it's like who was this update and operation made for? NiM raiders? And what pisses me off more is when people are like "you don't need 340 gear". If WE the subscribers are locked out of getting the best gear. Then why do we continue paying and playing? We aren't getting our money's worth if we are locked out of content and gearing cause the content itself is unnecessarily hard and the raiders who run it are in exclusive groups and NiM raid guilds only. It breeds toxicity and elitist mentality. After trying for a month. I gave up. They took the gearing conundrum of 7.0, amplified it and doubled down on it with 7.1 and Bioware deserves to lose people at this point.

I share your frustration. As I myself have cancelled my sub and taken a break from Swtor after realizing the only way I can get 340 gear is through Veteran R4 and no other operation and that operation and all it's bosses are so insanely overtuned that only 1-2% of the current dwindling player base will clear it. So it's like who was this update and operation made for? NiM raiders? And what pisses me off more is when people are like "you don't need 340 gear". If WE the subscribers are locked out of getting the best gear. Then why do we continue paying and playing? We aren't getting our money's worth if we are locked out of content and gearing cause the content itself is unnecessarily hard and the raiders who run it are in exclusive groups and NiM raid guilds only. It breeds toxicity and elitist mentality. After trying for a month. I gave up. They took the gearing conundrum of 7.0, amplified it and doubled down on it with 7.1 and Bioware deserves to lose people at this point.

I can be very negative about games, but in this case I am honestly just curious why people would complain about this. Why does anyone need 340 gear? PVP? From what I'm reading, it seems like 340 gear didn't even exist until R4. It seems actually even more rewarding if gear is harder to get. If everyone can get gear, it's not worth fighting for.

I say this as a solo player who is embarrassingly bad. I don't want smucks like me to just get things handed to them. I like there to be some elite tier I can aspire to, that I can work at for months and months. Isn't that usually what MMO is about? And honestly, being embarrassingly bad myself, I'm surprised how well I'm doing at operations and flashpoints once I buddy up with a group - and I only have 321 gear. It feels like I don't need 340 gear to do literally anything, except possibly PVP. Occasionally coming out of your shell to go into a group activity is the intention behind an MMO. And yes, sometimes I have a terrible time, but sometimes it's not so bad and I get over it and maybe even enjoy it.

I play Elder Scrolls Online at the same time as this game, and you can either buy elite gear from traders, or get it doing the hardest veteran dungeons. Isn't it the same thing? I don't see the difference. In fact, in Elder Scrolls Online, gear sets are locked to specific dungeons. So if there's a really elite, high-grade gear set you want, you have to play that specific dungeon.

I'm just confused how this is any different from other MMOs. I'm not a WoW vet. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Perhaps the suffering is caused by the fact that the player base is small, so gear can't be bought easily on the GTN market, right? Is that what the issue is? Because as I mentioned, in ESO right now, you can get elite gear only two ways: play the hard, vet dungeon with a GROUP, orrr... buy it from a trader. And obviously, if there are too few players, the gear won't be available on the trader/market or whatever. So I can understand that frustration. Not sure how un-subscribing is going to improve *that* situation but it's a free country.

Very few "NEEDS" 340, you can only really say it's warranted for Gods Nightmare mode, but other than that you will be OK with just the regular 330, however, players always "WANT" the best accessible gear, and that is something which Bioware, and basically any other large gaming company is using to bait players into content with higher retention rates

a couple of players might quit as they realize they will never reach the level of capacity to clear a boss or two that drops this tier of gear, and although I am sure that's sad for them or whatever if that was the only thing keep them in the game they were going to drop soon anyway. compared that to the large amount of players that will be baitied into endgame pve groups and raiding teams which have a much higher retention rate and its a net win for bioware

Very few "NEEDS" 340, you can only really say it's warranted for Gods Nightmare mode, but other than that you will be OK with just the regular 330, however, players always "WANT" the best accessible gear, and that is something which Bioware, and basically any other large gaming company is using to bait players into content with higher retention rates

 

a couple of players might quit as they realize they will never reach the level of capacity to clear a boss or two that drops this tier of gear, and although I am sure that's sad for them or whatever if that was the only thing keep them in the game they were going to drop soon anyway. compared that to the large amount of players that will be baitied into endgame pve groups and raiding teams which have a much higher retention rate and its a net win for bioware

Let me make sure I understand. You believe that the complainers in this particular thread are just a few cracked egg shells, and that in the long run, it's a possible omelette?

I just ask, because I'm really invested in this game right now and I hope it continues to grow haha

Let me make sure I understand. You believe that the complainers in this particular thread are just a few cracked egg shells, and that in the long run, it's a possible omelette?

 

I just ask, because I'm really invested in this game right now and I hope it continues to grow haha

I as well as everyone who isn't a developer (tho, most of them don't have access to all required data) simply have no idea about the stats, numbers or info, all of the opinions here are either based on personal preference or anecdotal at least, anyone claiming anything is lying.

All we can do is guess, and my guess is that Bioware through SWTOR wants to make money, creating a good platform for games and a good product are great milestones but the main objective is making money. If you start with that assumption and perspective on most changes you can usually find some way to justify changes made.

Another common "idea" people seem to have the wrong assumption, in my opinion, is that Bioware keeps their finger on the pulse for smaller player groups like nim raiders, and ranked pvpers but doesn't listen or respond to casual players. In a way this is right, cause casuals and story players are the biggest player groups in this game, and probably the biggest net spenders, so Bioware keeps track of their data and activity in much more detail.

Why listen to what a couple of ppl on the forums or discord say when you can simply look at the player statistics and see what people play, and how trends develop depending on released content and gearing paths? At the same time you can join 3-4 discords and talk to the players there and you covered 50%+ of the nightmare pve community in this game.

I think this game is kinda in a "middle" phase right now, we are a bit off the last large content drop and seem to be quite a while away from the next one, at the same time Bioware has developed a way to combine story and group content by release a lot of story through flashpoints. Those can be done solo through the story (great for solo/story players) and also in higher difficulty modes with a larger group, compare that to the fiasco that was chapters back a couple of years ago, basically the same concept but a terrible execution that dropped the player count considerably.

Simultaneously the MMO genre is dying, the Clone Wars series ended, the next Mandalorian season is quite a while away and the spinoff series from those were average at best, so in a way, you are joining a sinking ship, although it might take 3-4+ years at least. It's still a great game tho, both in terms of content and general playerbase, despite the recent leviathan exodus

Unless you are rolling it back to the old system anything you do on this new system is only making it worse.