The idea behind Galactic Command is solid. Reward players for experiencing all types of content (instead of just operations) so they don't get bored. RNG has always been part of the game, and 224 set armorings can still be used in 5.0 alongside 230+ mods and enhancements if you get unlucky. There are three main issues I see:

1. Players want to be able to do every type of content within a few weeks of playing, not months. This can be fixed by reducing the level requirement for t2/t3 and making set armoring more common and transferable to other gear slots.

2. Hardcore players will be inclined to do the exact opposite of a diversified playstyle, as they'll grind the content which rewards the most CXP per hour. This can be fixed by increasing the rewards for dailies/weeklies.

3. Preferred players are completely gated out of the endgame. This was an issue in 4.0 as well, and can be fixed by offering alternate payment methods.

To sum it up, I think the system gets a bad reputation. It sought to diversify the playstyle by shifting it away from Operations grinding, but the byproduct was making it worse for players who are used to Operations. This can be fixed, and it wouldn't be too difficult to do so.

The idea is good. It just needs to be refined.

However like Artifact Power in WoW, the major problem with GXP is that you cannot see it how far you are progressing. You cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. You feel completely helpless against the power of RNG, compared to the old token system where at least you know what you're getting, and you can then gauge how much you need to do.

For all we know, CXP could be better for you than the old token system, but currently there is a perception problem. It is an unknown, it confuses and scares people, and it causes people to stress.

But we do need to rule out people who just want everything on a silver platter. These people plague WoW too and their opinions on wanting everything within a week can be ignored.

However, if CXP really is bad, we should discuss ways to improve it, such as less reliance on RNG.

For example, I do believe they need to implement some form of "bad luck protection", to eliminate the extremes of RNG.

There are always going to be things, that sound good on paper, but are horrible in practice. This is just one of them. I'm not going to argue with you. If you think the system is great, then great, more power to you. I honestly believe those that support the system are all either trolls or insane. However for those that really do like it, well as I said, "more power to you". Personally my sub runs out at some point today. Though I've stopped playing 3 days ago, after beating the story with early access, and then getting a few toons to GC 20, and some others to various CG levels. I just have no desire to do these mindless grinds.

It sucks, because over the course of the game's life I've spent thousands of dollars on it, between the sub and the purchase of CCs, and now that's all for nothing. However I can not, and will not support this horrible direction, the game is going. I'll probably check the server populations once or twice every few months, just to see if this is the one that that puts the nail in the coffin. A part of me hopes it's not the case, for those who still enjoy the game it would suck to see them loose it. However another part of me feels that the greed, lack of insight, horrible communication, ignoring the community as a whole among other issues does need to be punished, and I'd lie if I said I wouldn't get any satisfaction from seeing this expansion completely fail.

However I can not, and will not support this horrible direction, the game is going. I'll probably check the server populations once or twice every few months, just to see if this is the one that that puts the nail in the coffin. A part of me hopes it's not the case, for those who still enjoy the game it would suck to see them loose it. However another part of me feels that the greed, lack of insight, horrible communication, ignoring the community as a whole among other issues does need to be punished, and I'd lie if I said I wouldn't get any satisfaction from seeing this expansion completely fail.

You could sum up this whole paragraph with two letters: EA.

Expecially the last 3 lines.

and 224 set armorings can still be used in 5.0 alongside 230+ mods and enhancements if you get unlucky.

Unless of course you're a newer player who never got to obtain those pieces or something like that.

But good effort though.

Unless of course you're a newer player who never got to obtain those pieces or something like that.

 

But good effort though.

Good job ignoring the part where I said sets should be more easily obtainable.

You could sum up this whole paragraph with two letters: EA.

Expecially the last 3 lines.

Don't get me wrong, I despise EA, as much as the next guy. It is my opinion that EA is the reason they maintain a skeleton crew and don't have the people to create quality content aside from their story. Why they cheap out, and cut corners on every possible level. Why they just reskin old crap, put a bow on it, and say hey guys new content / items etc. That said I don't think GC is EA's doing. I believe EA did give Bioware crap about changing their system to bring in more players etc. I can totally see that happening. However the very concept of GC, it's RNG nature, it's crap xp, it's long grind and everything else about it, I pretty much believe is the sole responsibility of the Bioware staff.

The new system has some merits, but as someone said before it needs refinement. I'll say this though, its gotten me to try PvP again on the side after 3 years.

Actually the system destroys alt playing at its very core. I can't play alts because that takes away from my main's cxp. Every moment I am doing something on an alt it hurts my main's chance to actually get gear. So far no set pieces, nothing but junk, lots of junk. This is not a system worth even trying to save as it has no redeeming qualities no merits nothing but a time sink that takes away from the rest of the game.

I could do the story a second time now only my dark side assassin...oh but that's time my main isn't gaining command ranks. I could do some PvP on my commando...nope time taken away from my main. I could swap to my healing op for this raid...but no I need the cxp on my main so sorry guess we just aren't doing it. After all not doing that op actually means nothing I can gain as much or really much more cxp from PvP or just about anything else.

Galactic command is nothing, who cares about it, its the random gearing that wrecks every aspect of the game, no refining will fix that. Only removing it is a viable option. Everything else is just candy coating on sh.., it maybe covered in candy but in the end your still eating sh...

This honestly could be fixed by at least having them be rewarded properly each time a grate is earned.

All it bloody needs to be is have it always drop artefact gear that may or may not have the set bonus. Or have multiple set bonuses for which it can randomly pick from and have the damn thing be legacy wide. So at least it's not a complete waste when you pick up a piece good for a caster on your bloody warrior or something.

That’s it. Honestly, I don’t see how something like this could be messed up so badly.

This whole thing is made worse because folks can’t even get their baseline 70 gear, never mind having the set bonus. Come on bioware. Take a look at ESO or something, Christ.

Good job ignoring the part where I said sets should be more easily obtainable.

Now now, be a good jedi and don't be so instantly combative. You'll slide to the dark side too quickly like this and more important you'll derail your own thread by being this aggressive.

You say RNG has always been part of it but that's not a fair representation. In the past bosses dropped fixed loot. The loot tables were known and they dropped tokens which were class neutral. People had found elegant ways of dealing with the minimal RNG that was represented there even in pugs with basic loot rules. So yes, there was some RNG on that level but it was a type of RNG you could easily deal with, particularly as a guild.

Before 5.0 went live calculations were already made, including some that were using proper probability calculations. Even if you would get a proper token quality drop in every single gear crate, it would still take a while to get your set complete and because the tokens are spec specific, they cannot be used as tokens to gear up any of your alts unless they are of the same (mirror) class.

That's quite a few RNG additions in one go they added on top of the poor drop rate of good items to begin with. Players went from having a good amount of control over their gearing to having close to zero control (only grind till you find is left) and this difference is enormous.

If you don't care much about progression gearing this is not any issue but if you do, this is disastrous, especially if you have many alts, which this game fully facilitates by allowing 52 character slots, giving away free tokens, streamlining the level 1-60 leveling, double xp events, the dvl xp armour, etc.

Say what you want but it makes no sense to basically have people push loads of characters through to 70 and then hit them with a brick wall of RNG.

Now, I am not saying your ideas aren't any good. They do have merit, but I think they don't go far enough.

The only thing that hurts alts is the time it takes to reach T3. Once you reach T3, the system actually encourages playing with alts as they take less time to level up than your main.

Incorrect.

Getting 10, 20, 30, whatever alts in just baseline 230 gear with optimised stats and full set bonuses is already a ridiculous grind.

The idea behind Galactic Command is solid. Reward players for experiencing all types of content (instead of just operations) so they don't get bored. RNG has always been part of the game, and 224 set armorings can still be used in 5.0 alongside 230+ mods and enhancements if you get unlucky. There are three main issues I see:

 

1. Players want to be able to do every type of content within a few weeks of playing, not months. This can be fixed by reducing the level requirement for t2/t3 and making set armoring more common and transferable to other gear slots.

 

2. Hardcore players will be inclined to do the exact opposite of a diversified playstyle, as they'll grind the content which rewards the most CXP per hour. This can be fixed by increasing the rewards for dailies/weeklies.

 

3. Preferred players are completely gated out of the endgame. This was an issue in 4.0 as well, and can be fixed by offering alternate payment methods.

 

To sum it up, I think the system gets a bad reputation. It sought to diversify the playstyle by shifting it away from Operations grinding, but the byproduct was making it worse for players who are used to Operations. This can be fixed, and it wouldn't be too difficult to do so.

The idea of Galactic Command is good sure....but they built it for the wrong reasons. They could care less about players being rewarded...they want to be rewarded....

If they wanted this system to be fun and rewarding for all play styles they would have put way more thought into nerfing Gold mob CXP....Instead they nerfed it to the ground and never said a word....because its a win for their new system and easy.

In their minds that nerf just made sure people will stay longer.....

The team is designing this game for the wrong reasons and it shows....and that will insure this game is always going to be disappointing until the designers are concerned about the player having fun first and foremost......

With 5.0 I don't think its hard to see they were thinking solely about forcing higher sub retention on players via a ridiculous grind.

5.0 stinks because it was designed for Bioware and EA not it's player base.

The idea behind Galactic Command is solid. Reward players for experiencing all types of content (instead of just operations) so they don't get bored. RNG has always been part of the game, and 224 set armorings can still be used in 5.0 alongside 230+ mods and enhancements if you get unlucky.

Main issue I see is

Unlucky = NO REWARD at all. Fundamental problem with this system imo and why I unsubbed Friday. (I crafted a better set than what has dropped for me your argument about 224's is worthless) - 1 piece out of 30 is usable. and since I would never see 30 command levels in a week again I suppose you think a reward (better gear than I already have) every two or three weeks (or four or five weeks if I stayed long enough to hit tier 3) would keep me not bored? Nope, it will frustrate me and drive me away. I won't be resubbing unless they fix this.

.

After seeing a discussion in guild chat yesterday where many of the 'veteran' players were talking about just letting their subscriptions run out and stop playing because of the RNG factor of the CXP grind, I realized that this is most likely because their gear starting point (with the expansion) is at a much higher level than mine.

During the recent double xp grind fest I ground up probably 10 toons between two different accounts. Their gear tops out at 208.

My "main" toons gear tops out at non set bonus 220, prior to the expansion.

The people in the guild talking about leaving have 220 set bonus, or even 224.

While I'm getting decent upgrades for my main, and great upgrades for my newer toons, they are not.

With the recent CXP decrease for gold mobs (from 10 per to 1 per) it just makes it THAT much longer of a grind.

--Honestly, after playing for a few days under each amount, a good compromise would be boosting them up to 5 each.....high enough to feel worthwhile, but not high enough to ONLY farm mobs out in the open world---

None of my toons are even at GC lvl 10. The highest I have is at 8. I've gotten probably 8 of the 230 purple schematics, two 230 set bonus pieces (not on the same toon) and some other goodies. I've started to disintegrate the empty shells.

I do like getting the reputation items. There still stuff I haven't ground out and it's a nice bonus. I also like the jawa junk because many of my toons are crafters and mats are always needed.

I think they need to make this legacy wide, like legacy XP.

I think they need to drop universal tokens in ops/flashpoints instead of the CXP stuff. One style token for everything token related.

Since uprisings are directly tied into GC, those should continue to give out CXP grants.

The daily/weekly CXP missions from the planetary button also needs to have the CXP values increased.

The only thing that hurts alts is the time it takes to reach T3. Once you reach T3, the system actually encourages playing with alts as they take less time to level up than your main.

That is not correct.

Your alts do not benefit from any time you spent playing your main characters. That was a pretty big factor in 1.X and onwards: There was the possibility of grinding stuff for your legacy by doing it on multiple alts. Let me make a few examples:

You were able to trade PvP tokens across characters in 4.0. You could easily farm enough tokens for a set on your main (equipped) character, and then send them over to your newly leveled alt for PvP.

You were able to trade PvE tokens by buying the set piece for the class you want to trade it to, and then sending the mods over via legacy bound gear. You could raid on an alt and still finish that set on your sentinel. The same applies to equipping twinks: You could easily roll on the items and get a set bonus piece for your alts.

Grinding reputations was always legacy wide. It has been for years.

Even conquest was (slightly) legacy compatible.

Those are just some examples of how alt-friendly SWTOR used to be. The GC system, seeing that it is the sole distributing factor when gear is concerned, is discouraging people from logging into alts. This was somewhat bearable by golden mobs dropping 10 command XP, seeing you could reach a decent command level in a matter of 3 weeks of casual playing, but it was now wrecked by the first change. I cannot play my alt without having this nagging in my mind. This feeling that I am losing progress and fall behind on the gear curve. It has reached a point at which I can't even decide which of my three semi-mains I should play. My Sage? My Assassin? My Sentinel? My mercenary and my (new) Juggernaut are out of the question. I used to "main" my Sentinel in 3.0 and 4.0, but I can't even do that now. There's this feeling that I might need my Sage healer for progression in the future, but equipping him for HM progression would mean that I can't equip my Sentinel.

Just to make clear that there are many more aspects limiting alt-friendly behaviour with the GC system. As for the actual argument in your claim: That's wrong. Another limiting factor is the RNG gear in combination with higher grinding times. The initial idea was ~2 crates an hour. As most people report, the average is more like one crate every hour / 1:15. Even gaining a full set of non-set bonus, purple gear of 230 rating could take upwards of 50-60 hours.

The previous mechanic was that I could level a character through 1-65 and buy a baseline purple set of 208 tank or DPS gear from the crystals I farmed. That's how I equipped my new Juggernaut during DvL. That's not the case anymore.

Incorrect.

 

Getting 10, 20, 30, whatever alts in just baseline 230 gear with optimised stats and full set bonuses is already a ridiculous grind.

You can craft/buy all 228/230 gear (enhancements/mods/implants/etc) except the set bonus armorings. That's literally the only thing that requires you to grind on your alts if all you want is 230 set gear. That's why my suggested solutions are an easier time obtaining set gear and an easier time reaching T3 crates.

That is not correct.

 

Your alts do not benefit from any time you spent playing your main characters.

False. You get schematics, crafting materials and transferable mods/enhancements among other things. The only things you wouldn't want to give to your alts are the set bonus armorings.

You can craft/buy all 228/230 gear (enhancements/mods/implants/etc) except the set bonus armorings. That's literally the only thing that requires you to grind on your alts if all you want is 230 set gear. That's why my suggested solutions are an easier time obtaining set gear and an easier time reaching T3 crates.

Don't even start with 228. The baseline tier 1 gear is 230 for endgearing. As far as I understand it crafting endgame level gear requires purple and blue special mats that you have to grind then to get. So you tell me.

If I want to gear 10 or 20 characters fully with 230 crafted gear, how many mats do I need to grind and how long do you think that will take?

People like you really need to get a reality check done and realise that buying/crafting is not something that's free unless you suggest we should buy credits from gold sellers?

Sorry OP the only way that this horribly broken system can be "saved" is if Bioware

1. Makes CXP legacy wide and buff the CXP values instead of nerfing them like they've already done. There wouldn't have to be a thread about "exploits" from Musco if Bioware didn't make a horrible system that is anti-raider and anti-PVPer. It is the pinnacle of foolishness to think that the paying hard core players will simply drink the cool aid and regrind all of the GC levels for their main and all of their alts. Grinding the Alliance levels to 20 in 4.0 on my main was bad enough, I'm not grinding 24 toons to 300 GC level...if I did that I'd never get to do what I sub to SWTOR to do, Raid with my guild.

2. Bring back Unassembled Operations armor tokens as drops in Operations while leaving the Glactic Command stuff for the non-raiding PVE guys to be able to get gear. Why should we have to grind unrelated content to be able to raid? I am part of a raiding guild, I have 24 toons to raid with between Harbinger and Red Eclipse, and in 4.0 I could raid as much as I want (you know getting my money's worth doing what I actually want to do in the game instead of grinding unrelated content) and while doing it gear my main spec, my off spec, and then gear my alts. Why is this important as a raider? Because I can help my raid group so we can progress to the harder content. I can also help my guild at large because if another OPS group needs a healer or DPS to fill in for their scheduled raids because someone can't make it I can fill in and they don't have to cancel or find a PUG that will cause them to repeatedly wipe. Bringing back tokens wouldn't only help us gear but honestly the drops from Operations now is absolutely pathetic; it's only crafting mats, schematics, mounts that I've had for years from Operations, and 216 com gear, and "sometimes" and occasional 230 piece. They need to make the quality of the Ops drops much much better. If Unassembled armor tokens are not brought back raiding in 5.0 will simply die.

3. Bring back PVP gear for the PVP guys. I don't PVP in SWTOR unless I have to, but when I had to grind PVP to get MAJ Pierce it was a nice feeling of accomplishment to have earned a complete set of PVP gear, and the real PVPers seem to want it back so I'll add my voice to support them.

That's literally the only thing that requires you to grind on your alts if all you want is 230 set gear.

An unefficient solution.

An average piece of 230 purple, non-set bonus gear is 2.2m credits on my server. Decking out an entire character in purple 230 baseline gear would require 14x2m credits. 28m credits per character. Add another million on top of that for augmentations. We're rounded up to 30m credits per alt in 230 baseline gear.

Your suggestion is that I buy the baseline gear seven times for over 210m credits across my legacy just to be able to do some baseline story mode operations/end game progression on my alts now?

And don't start with this self-sufficient crafting nonsense. I have Synthweave, Artifice and Armourmech on 600. If a single piece of gear needs a single Exotic Isotope Stabilizer (rank 2) to craft, and a twink needs 14 pieces of gear? That's fourteen pieces of EIS2 to craft said gear set. If we assume I want one character of each class, the total is 98. I'm not farming close to a hundred EIS2 for the singular purpose of getting baseline gear on my classes. Let alone the fact that I'd need to find all the necessary schematics for eight classes first.

In a ding-reward model, which is what they are switching to here, the entire premise for feasibility is the correlation between the two.

Galactic Command fails because there is a long road to the ding, and far too high a chance of absolutely no reward to go with it. This pushes down any incentive to go for the next ding.

It is just bad, bad design. It goes against all MMO design theory from the industry itself. My guess is someone thinks they know better than 15 years of player history. They are currently being proved wrong.