Short answer? Its a joke.

Long answer? Its a *********** joke.

Try having 46 alts and try to grind out gear just by pvp. It is impossible to do. Takes forever.

Also why do solo sm heros need bis nim gear? Oh they dont?

Oh whats that ben **** irving? Rng is fun? Well F. U. C. K. You

Well, thank you for all of your replies, it has been quite an interesting read...especially some of the more colorful ones.

I look forward to seeing more.

Something else that I like about the system: I can take ANY implant, relic, ear piece, etc. with whatever stats it has and turn it into any other implant, relic, ear piece, etc. that I want. So say I got a crit ear piece and I really needed Alacrity. I just save up the UCs and that piece can be exchanged when upgrading to a token that will get me the next tier of the ear piece that I wanted.

That's really a big deal. Making it that way takes a lot of the pain of getting the "wrong" gear pieces because you know that you can convert it into whatever piece you actually want/need.

There has never been a way to do that before, but it's a really nice feature with this new system. It made getting that crummy Ephemeral Mending 242 relic a lot less painful knowing I could turn it into Focused Retribution when I upgraded it to 248, etc. Not having to wait for the exact piece to drop to upgrade made this all a lot better.

Hi. I dont know about any changes in the game for 1 month now or more. So you must had played for the first time in a long time now. I like the system how it is. And it is not 300. It is 180+

/edit: blue gear for command levels? The gear allways is purple or a empty stlye orange. Verry rare a full socketed orange/yellow. My 1st was at 160+

Well, as is so often the case, the answer is a little bit more grey. 5.6.1 is a small nerf to those who were running Ziost and CZ-198 seven days a week on a single character. From my perspective, though, the large buff to the weekly area more than compensates for two primary reasons, and one ancillary:

 

1) I would rather gain the huge weekly buff quickly by doing it once and save myself the 60 minutes (assuming Ziost takes 10 min / run) and not gouge my eyes out from boredom. You have to figure in opportunity costs (in this case time spent doing other activities) in the equation. Since I'm not going to run Ziost multiple times / week, for me the benefit is huge.

 

2) If you have a couple alts, you get more bang for your buck by running it once each on a couple different characters, assuming you can stomach it.

 

3) They did buff all planetary dailies so you can still cheese, say, Coruscant in 10-12 minutes depending on crowding in Black Sun District.

 

This, of course, doesn't even address the broader philosophical issue of whether one should fight 5 mobs max on Ziost and get multiple crates /day after 10 minutes.

 

The second claim you make of getting less stuff / drops inside of crates I don't get and my experience is dramatically different with the addition of mods, crafting mats for new augments, CXP boosts, Bonus CXP tokens, and the ability to destroy loot that benefits any character since UC's are universal / legacy-wide. Not sure what I'm missing on your latter claim.

 

Dasty

All cxp packs were part of the loot table, including Ops boss cxp packs, now you only get one 1500(ish) cxp pack, chance cubes and other random CM stuff was also removed from the loot table.

CZ, BH and SX can be done as soon as you reach a certain level, even earlier if you tag along with a friend, others require doing the expansion they're associated with, old BW trick of gating stuff behind things people would rather not do more than once, so it looks like people actually care for that content.

Considering one would rather go to a vendor and buy the gear one wants rather than play the lottery, your philosophical issue is somewhat moot.

The only good thing about UC is it only takes one legacy cargo spot, other than that the thing is useless to me, UC is for group activities peeps, not for people who only do solo content, i think they should've given us the option to still get cxp from gear like some people suggested.

I pretty much still hate it. They've made some better tweaks in trying to return some semblance to the way it was before they pulled this crap on us; but it is probably more convoluted now than it was before with the simple crystal/vendor, Ops boss drop, PvP gear vendor system before.

In that regard, I'm still of a mind they need to turn Galactic Command into a side "fluff grind" that would include cartel market items in their RNG boxes and simply roll us back on how gearing works. It isn't going to happen, I know. Just saying my opinion is that this is a failed, and terrible idea, for a mmorpg. I know there were good intentions behind it... but the implementation left a lot to be desired.

How I'd rather see it go:

• Either return the crystal vendors method or implement one, and only one, token currency for the game. No matter what you do... you're earning this one type of token for everything.
  
• Address the real confusion with the past gearing system. Keep gear naming simple. Example: Jedi Knight Tank Gear in the naming on vendors instead of a different name for each armor set every new gear bump.
  
• Allow Galactic Command to be a supplementary aid to gearing but not the main source of gear. Instead, add random items from CM (legacy bound) to it to make subscribing desireable to participate in it.
  

The above allows those that still wish to get their gear through a pointless RNG grind to do so. While it would return a pretty cut and dry "Do x thing, get x gear, or pick out x gear from vendor with token" process to those of us that wish you'd never touched that process to begin with. The added bonus would be that by adding the chance at getting CM items via Galactic Command probably would drive more people to resubscribe. Please note that I'm not asking for items to have 90% drop rate or anything like that. Just knowing there is a 1% chance at getting something nice would be enough for a lot of players even if all items are BoL and not up for trade or sell on the GTN. And, finally, what I feel was probably the real source of the problem to begin with... simply make vendor named gear (for classes) easier to discern through keeping Gear Naming stupid simple. This is Jedi Knight Tank Gear, This is Jedi Knight DPS Gear... right in the item name rather than changing to convoluted names every time there is a gear bump up.

My post can largely be disregarded though as I know it isn't going to happen. Once a major change is allowed to be pushed to live you're pretty well stuck with it in the mmorpg industry. Rollbacks are a rarity now. And this is exactly why we shouldn't be so quick to judge people that are voicing concerns over changes being presented on a Test server. The wait and see approach is often not a good idea in an mmorpg. Why? Once you disinterest a group of your players-- it is very hard to get them back with whatever put them off still in play.

I pretty much still hate it. They've made some better tweaks in trying to return some semblance to the way it was before they pulled this crap on us; but it is probably more convoluted now than it was before with the simple crystal/vendor, Ops boss drop, PvP gear vendor system before.

 

In that regard, I'm still of a mind they need to turn Galactic Command into a side "fluff grind" that would include cartel market items in their RNG boxes and simply roll us back on how gearing works. It isn't going to happen, I know. Just saying my opinion is that this is a failed, and terrible idea, for a mmorpg. I know there were good intentions behind it... but the implementation left a lot to be desired.

 

How I'd rather see it go:

• Either return the crystal vendors method or implement one, and only one, token currency for the game. No matter what you do... you're earning this one type of token for everything.
  
• Address the real confusion with the past gearing system. Keep gear naming simple. Example: Jedi Knight Tank Gear in the naming on vendors instead of a different name for each armor set every new gear bump.
  
• Allow Galactic Command to be a supplementary aid to gearing but not the main source of gear. Instead, add random items from CM (legacy bound) to it to make subscribing desireable to participate in it.
  

 

The above allows those that still wish to get their gear through a pointless RNG grind to do so. While it would return a pretty cut and dry "Do x thing, get x gear, or pick out x gear from vendor with token" process to those of us that wish you'd never touched that process to begin with. The added bonus would be that by adding the chance at getting CM items via Galactic Command probably would drive more people to resubscribe. Please note that I'm not asking for items to have 90% drop rate or anything like that. Just knowing there is a 1% chance at getting something nice would be enough for a lot of players even if all items are BoL and not up for trade or sell on the GTN. And, finally, what I feel was probably the real source of the problem to begin with... simply make vendor named gear (for classes) easier to discern through keeping Gear Naming stupid simple. This is Jedi Knight Tank Gear, This is Jedi Knight DPS Gear... right in the item name rather than changing to convoluted names every time there is a gear bump up.

 

My post can largely be disregarded though as I know it isn't going to happen. Once a major change is allowed to be pushed to live you're pretty well stuck with it in the mmorpg industry. Rollbacks are a rarity now. And this is exactly why we shouldn't be so quick to judge people that are voicing concerns over changes being presented on a Test server. The wait and see approach is often not a good idea in an mmorpg. Why? Once you disinterest a group of your players-- it is very hard to get them back with whatever put them off still in play.

The players "and focus groups" who were on the pts to test this garbage are an absolute joke. They clearly invited a load of mentally ill players on the pts. And the focus groups they always bang on about who tell them no endgame content outside a fp that nobody cares about and a reskinned wz is a good idea. Or this crappy gearing system. Or no class balance. Or releasing 1 ops boss every 3 or 4 months is a good thing?

Could you imagine if antorus (wow raid for all who dont know) was released over a period of a year? Lolol

This game in 2.0 was good. After that this pathetic "developer team" have completely ruined. They are a joke of the highest order.

Hi. I dont know about any changes in the game for 1 month now or more. So you must had played for the first time in a long time now. I like the system how it is. And it is not 300. It is 180+

/edit: blue gear for command levels? The gear allways is purple or a empty stlye orange. Verry rare a full socketed orange/yellow. My 1st was at 160+

It is, indeed 300 for the top tier. 180-299 crates give Tier 3 gear (238-242), and 300 (repeats endlessly) gives you Tier 4 gear (244-248).

And there are FOUR colours of "ready" gear, in ascending order of "strength" at each tier:

* Green with Green mods (or just green for ear/implant/relic)

* Orange with Blue mods (or just blue for ears etc)

* Purple with Purple mods (or just purple)

* Yellow/gold with Yellow/gold mods (or just yellow/gold)

There are also "empty" orange shells, but those are mostly boring. Or ugly. Or boring AND ugly.

Short answer? Its a joke.

 

Long answer? Its a *********** joke.

 

Try having 46 alts and try to grind out gear just by pvp. It is impossible to do. Takes forever.

 

Also why do solo sm heros need bis nim gear? Oh they dont?

 

Oh whats that ben **** irving? Rng is fun? Well F. U. C. K. You

Erm if you want to gear up 46 alts just by pvp, I'd say that part of the problem lies with yourself. But I might be wrong. So let me ask you the question. How was it gearing up 46 alts with pvp only before 5.0? I would've thought that was no picnic either...

GC is vastly improved, but here are the things that I do not like about it currently:

1. Grinding to GCL 300 gives me something to do, but 95% of the drops will be disintegrated until T4 @ 300.

2. The drops are too simplistic. Why does (almost) every piece of gear have a setpiece bonus? Why are all pieces BiS except for blue 244 mods and tank gear?

3. Reputation should not drop from command crates. The rep drops are completely unrelated to the actual content being done.

4. Nothing to spend my command tokens on.

5. Crates accumulate in my already full inventory, particularly when I do content with GC bonus. (Yes I do need 6 different rest items, like Sarlacc pit. Yes, I do need all of these medpacs, stims, adrenals, etc. Yes, I do need these 2 sets of gear in my inventory - one is for tanking, one is for pvp, plus the pve dps set I am currently wearing).

Erm if you want to gear up 46 alts just by pvp, I'd say that part of the problem lies with yourself. But I might be wrong. So let me ask you the question. How was it gearing up 46 alts with pvp only before 5.0? I would've thought that was no picnic either...

Once ypu were geared you continued to earn comms. You saved those comms up on each character so when next expansion hit you were ready to rock.

Also, when a new expansion hit, you could level those 5 levels via pvp and earn enough comms for a full set of lower tier pvp gear and 3 or 4 higher gear pieces.

Now you have to pray to RNGesus and grind pointlessly for months.

Its a joke and so are the "developers" who must sit around eating crayons all day. Either that or smoking crack.

There was nothing wrong with the old system. It rewarded you for playing your given content. Now is a farse.

Its a joke and so are the "developers" who must sit around eating crayons all day.

Red ones are the best. Stay away from Indigo, though.

It is, indeed 300 for the top tier. 180-299 crates give Tier 3 gear (238-242), and 300 (repeats endlessly) gives you Tier 4 gear (244-248).

 

And there are FOUR colours of "ready" gear, in ascending order of "strength" at each tier:

* Green with Green mods (or just green for ear/implant/relic)

* Orange with Blue mods (or just blue for ears etc)

* Purple with Purple mods (or just purple)

* Yellow/gold with Yellow/gold mods (or just yellow/gold)

 

There are also "empty" orange shells, but those are mostly boring. Or ugly. Or boring AND ugly.

The four rating / colors in each tier is also annoying as f*ck.

If RNG gives you the gold, great, you can upgrade - get the others and sucks to be you.

Also why is the cost to extract based on the color and not the rating - as you move up, the mod ratings go up, yet extracting a blue higher rating mod is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than a lower rating gold.

Sadly they decided to hose the old gearing system, and nothing they have done to tweak the CG system has been anything but trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Sadly they decided to hose the old gearing system, and nothing they have done to tweak the CG system has been anything but trying to put lipstick on a pig.

I have to disagree, I think that the inital GC system was really bad but the system that we have today, apart from the slow process of getting high endurance tanking mods and enhancements, is far better than what we have had historically. I have always played the PvE part of SWTOR and thus might be a bit ill-informed of the PvP gearing, but at least from a PvE perspective. Gearing today is far easier, quicker and better for the vast majority of the player base, sure you can argue that why would people who only do heroics and stuff get full BiS, but they are facing the RNG with crates and will gear up and gain crates far slower than people who run Operations/Flashpoints/Warzones.

Sure, there are multiple things that could be improved, but based on what we have had prior at launch, during 2.0, during 3.0 or during the dreadful "highlighted hard mode" period of 4.0, the current Galactic Command system is very well designed based on what type of player base swtor has.

Well, mostly I don't care.

The series of missteps in terms of development basically drove most of the people I know in PvE out of the game, so though I keep mains well geared out of habit, there's not real motivation to gear better than crafted gear at about 230 rating. Anything short of hard/NIM mode doesn't need it, and I'm not doing that content anymore.

The gear I use most is gear I've had since before 3.0.

Why? Because GSF has a gearing system that isn't linked to expansions, and it works. I've been BiS for everything I care about for 3 expacs now, and I can compete reasonably well in starter gear.

Actually, all my most CXP geared toons got their CXP gear primarily from crates earned in GSF.

So, it works for me, but it works mostly because I've given up on most of the game.

That said, if you decide to be a raider and can find people to raid with, you can gear up fast even if it's a soul crushing pain in the *****. But that's MMORGP endgame for you, pretty much regardless of the MMO.

I shouldn't complain too much though. 5.5 brought a comprehensive balance pass for GSF, to the point where it's probably the most balanced PvP content I've ever seen in an MMORPG.

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It is, indeed 300 for the top tier. 180-299 crates give Tier 3 gear (238-242), and 300 (repeats endlessly) gives you Tier 4 gear (244-248).

 

And there are FOUR colours of "ready" gear, in ascending order of "strength" at each tier:

* Green with Green mods (or just green for ear/implant/relic)

* Orange with Blue mods (or just blue for ears etc)

* Purple with Purple mods (or just purple)

* Yellow/gold with Yellow/gold mods (or just yellow/gold)

 

There are also "empty" orange shells, but those are mostly boring. Or ugly. Or boring AND ugly.

Thanks for the heads up at the motivation for lvling up more

I have to disagree, I think that the inital GC system was really bad but the system that we have today, apart from the slow process of getting high endurance tanking mods and enhancements, is far better than what we have had historically. I have always played the PvE part of SWTOR and thus might be a bit ill-informed of the PvP gearing, but at least from a PvE perspective. Gearing today is far easier, quicker and better for the vast majority of the player base, sure you can argue that why would people who only do heroics and stuff get full BiS, but they are facing the RNG with crates and will gear up and gain crates far slower than people who run Operations/Flashpoints/Warzones.

 

Sure, there are multiple things that could be improved, but based on what we have had prior at launch, during 2.0, during 3.0 or during the dreadful "highlighted hard mode" period of 4.0, the current Galactic Command system is very well designed based on what type of player base swtor has.

I played in 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 raiding mostly HM and NiM stuff, and it was much more straight forward and simple to gear, even for tanks as the mods had better stat distributions and options pre-4.0 (still don't get their obsession with sticking an over-abundance of def on everything while making high end stuff so rare).

Sure having every operation available at 4.0 made gearing a bit too quick, as did the HM of the week - which was a joke and which never should have dropped 224, while NiM should have always dropped 224.

Anyways today I find it difficult to get good groups for much in the way of HM, and quite a few seem to believe you need full 248 to succeed, so I've gotten very little from operations - the rest I have to rely on RNG boxes instead of on currency for which I could in the past purchase what I want (oh and I'm at T2, so even when I get something - to all the Ziost daily runners trying to do HM EV, I'm in terrible low level gear).

At the same time, they haven't even finished the one operation they started last year, so there really aren't any challenges in the game for me - so I come back to 'f*ck it, why bother as I can do anything with the gear I have save some NiM stuff, which I've done before'.

I guess the RNG getting 246+ gear for running Ziost or losing yolo WZs over and over to play old outdated content is appealing to some - but not me.

Personally, I'd rather play the original stories - which is what I'm doing now after completing the very little new stuff added in the past year on the first day I resubbed.

Honestly, while I find the system terrible, my real complaint is the lack of new content, I mean lets be honest here, there was no reason or need to increase the level cap to 70 (or even 65 for KotFE) and rescale old content while resetting players and pushing this RNG gearing system just for a few hours of instanced story content.

I am constantly running boosts on all my characters, including a couple with BIS. If I don't, my storage will be choked with boosts. Thousands of tokens just build up in my stash.

I have a number of alts that all have thousands of command tokens still in their command stash. I don't bother to take em out because why buy boosts? You get plenty of them from the crates.

Also why do solo sm heros need bis nim gear? Oh they dont?

Well, if we take the normal MMORPG approach of awarding BiS Gear, namely for completing the hardest content, then progression raiders don't "need" BiS gear either.

They've just completed the hardest content to get the BiS Gear - there's nothing harder for them to do, and they just did the hardest content in Non-BiS gear.

They don't need it.

Now, you could argue the so called "sm hero" struggling to make the grade for higher difficulty content clearly DOES need the boost that BiS Gear will given him/her - and getting it will enable that player to progress to harder content.

The truth is I've never yet seen an End-Game Content/Gear Progression System where anyone needs BiS gear, because BiS is the reward for for completing "hardest content".

So it all really comes down to "player expectations", and as long as I (sm hero that I am) am paying the same as you (raid / PvP hero) I want the access to the same "shinies", even if it takes me ten times longer to get them.

All The Best

So it all really comes down to "player expectations", and as long as I (sm hero that I am) am paying the same as you (raid / PvP hero) I want the access to the same "shinies", even if it takes me ten times longer to get them.

I would agree with that assessment. The idea that need has anything to do with it is preposterous. People want something to work towards and you didn't have that as a solo/casual player.

This is one of the reasons why I am a proponent of a casual/solo reward tree that has BiS gear for that type of content and is different from raiding or pvp gear. Same rating, different stat division/bonuses geared towards solo stuff and fps. That way there is a BiS gear for that playstyle (and other BiS gear for raiding and pvp but same ratings).

In the end, once you get to 70 you want something to achieve or work towards no matter whether you're more casual in pve, a raider or a pvp'er. Not everyone of course but a lot of people do. Instead of one gearing tree or system for everyone and devaluating content in the process, I prefer having 3 directions that cover the vast majority of players and give people a choice what they want to progress towards.

It limits it all to 3 currencies and people can choose which content they want and get rewarded for it without creating the idea that you're "taking other people's gear without doing the effort" and such things. Cause in the end, I don't begrudge anyone their rewards but currently challenging content is not actually being rewarded fairly.