I was curious about this, seeing many varied opinions on the matter. I will hold my opinion for the end.

 

When Galactic Command was first released I believe the reaction was mostly negative. Casuals that were used to getting gear from vendors and collecting commendations for gear, mats and companion gifts were not happy, and naturally Hardcore players were generally furious.

 

The system, as I understand its current state, has corrected some of the problems with its launch state, but It still requires some changes IMO. My opinion is that the system, in its current state is pretty good for casuals but still lacking for hardcore players.

 

I have posted suggestions on how they could improve the system, and will not repeat those suggestions here in this post...I would only ask the community if they feel Galactic Command has improved, if so in what way, and if it does have merit in what way should it change for the future?

 

What, if any changes would make it appealing to all player types?

 

Thanks for your input.

 

Here is a short list of suggestions compiled from the thread. I will scour the thread for more later.

 

1) Reduce gear costs by 1/3, keep UC rates the same

 

2) Major pass over all content and increase CXP gain in all areas across the board so that it is commensurate with time and difficulty

 

3) Completion of Gods from the Machine with a NiM version

 

4) Keep the bonuses after GC 300 intact

 

And my suggestion

 

1) Create one new tier for hard mode content, highest tier attainable, that drops armor pieces AND a single token that can be turned in for one armor piece. One can choose to roll against the armor piece or choose the token. This would only be for Hard content and would have a vendor for one:one tradein.

 

2) Remove material drops from hard content, or better yet add additional casual methods of acquiring materials, perhaps sold on a vendor for Command points.

Edited January 23, 2018 by LordArtemis

Generally I am against gear drops form RNG lootboxes, but for the sake of topic and discussion:

Improve the drop rate of yellow gear beyond rank 300. I have 4 characters above 300 and have grinded on them for a long time just to receive only blue stuff. Considering the drop rate of the lower tiers is not much higher, this is a problem even if you recieve UC. It is very unforgiving if you wanna roll alts. It is also low-rewarding playing a 300 rank character.

Now that disassembling gear doesn't give cxp the gaining rate is slow even with boosts. It should be higher, if not the rate of the double CXP event, something close to it. Its pretty showing that many people come to grind only on double events.

Maybe add some adaptive gear and weapons that are actually worth keeping and not directly trashed for cxp...

 

Ultimately there needs to me way more new content tied with GC to justify grinding, because as of now...a year of only grinding cxp on old content and another year of that incoming....paying sub for that only...not even remotely worth it for me. Its like some bad Korean MMO model, but there people pay not to grind...not the other way around. Also maybe stop nerfing classes just to put new tiers to GC....

 

Content should be done because you want to, not because you have to get some rng boxes. It burns people out. it gets boring, it gets repetitive and if you have to do that for a year...well. This is one of the reasons for the disaster 5.0 was.

Edited January 18, 2018 by ExarSun

What, if any changes would make it appealing to all player types?

In an absolute sense, that can't be done, because each player type has different, and sometimes contradictory, expectations of end-game gearing.

Well you did ask...

 

The short version is this: With 5.0 it was crap. Now it's crap but for different reasons.

 

So why do I think it's crap today?

1) I still don't like endgame gear dropping from RNG loot boxes. It devaluates doing harder content too much.

2) It also encourages high repetition of mind-numbingly easy content. Particulary last boss runs in the GF and group ranked mats farming. It's definitely easy, but encourages the wrong behaviour and if you have half a brain you will get either bored or burnt out in this game. So especially for the long term it's actually bad. But the system as it is rewards the easiest content most. Last boss runs in SM are generally dead easy (mechanics can generally be ignored) and ranked group warzones give you massive rewards for losing so all you have to do is show up and lose quickly.

3) One size fits all doesn't actually fit all. The rewards are the same, no matter if you're a casual player, raider or pvp'er. On the face of it that sounds appealing but it again devaluates content. One will be more rewarding than the others and therefore will be preferred and instead of using a variety of content types people will focus on very few specific activities which brings us again to point 2 but it also leads to the majority of content in this game not being touched by most players and in the case of last boss runs people don't even learn the other fights anymore. This also makes the step to Hard Mode Operations way too big for a lot of players.

4) CXP/minute thinking also means that when people do content the objective is do it as quickly as possible and skip as much as possible. So even in case of Flash Points bonuses are rarely done and people who want to do the full FP at a more leisurely pace will not get much out of the GF experience. Also to get the GF reward you have to select all options, but you will usually end up with at least person that has selected just that one or two FPs that are the fastest because that's still more rewarding than the GF reward...CXP/minute thinking.

 

What needs to happen I already described in other threads and the full answer would be too long to post. So I will just give some short snippest to give an idea. Just know it's not complete and there are issues that I have thought about but not mentioned here to not go too far:

 

1) Three reward trees: Casual, Raiding, PvP. Some rewards will be shared, some will be unique to that tier. Unique rewards that are expensive and have no stats should be tradeable. Some of them should be really expensive so that they are valuable and keep the currency (point 4) valid.

2) Three types of endgame gear based on point 1. Stats and bonuses optimized for that specific group so the are best in slot for their relevant playstyle.

3) Three gear tabs for characters where they can store 3 sets of gear without having to use inventory space.

4) One currency per reward tree.

5) Stat gear in raids is done via gear tokens and not currency.

6) Casual gear is done via currency only but higher tiers need to be unlocked by completing some simple tasks that are not that tasking but help prepare for the harder content. I propose there will be Heal, DPS and Tank tasks and that it's a legacy unlock. But people should have at least an idea why taunts, interrupts and cleanses are important as well as target priority. Again simple tasks that are there to show why these skills are useful. They'll need it for things like Master Mode but should stay simple to not prohibit gear access to the higher tiers of gear within that tree.

7) PvP gear I personally don't like but as it's an MMO and pvp balance doesn't exist I would suggest a gearing progression focussing on cosmetics and perhaps increased effectiveness of set bonuses rather than stats increases.

 

It's just a quick and dirty overview but what I want to achieve is the following:

All 3 reward trees have the same rating BiS gear so no one needs to feel left out.

Each group of players as identified has a reason to gain gear for their preferences and can get rewards that make sense for it. Unique rewards are there like mounts, deco's and cosmetics but tradeable to not prohibit the reward but making them valuable as they can be costly. This gives value to each tree without making it impossible for others to gain a certain reward...but they'll have to pay for it of course. I think that's fair.

Also with being able to equip up to 3 gear sets the game can autoswitch the gear set for you in default position (or manually in an advance setting where you can choose what your tabs are dedicated to).

 

Those are my ideas roughly. It's still a long post I guess but this is really the short version

Currently there are two First Order Tokens - UC and Command Tokens, we then use one of those to buy a Second Order Token - Unassembled X, and the use that and the other First Order Token to buy the gear we actually want.

 

When we move on to the next Tier of End Game Gear what we have just purchased is utterly useless and we have therefore, in effect, wasted those Tokens. This makes continued play of old content necessary - Bioware probably thinks this is a good idea, it isn't, it just makes players realise they a grinding old content, and that leads to player disengagement.

 

 

There should be ONE Token - with a 10,000 Token holding capacity.

 

Tier 1 Gear (230) should cost 75 Tokens per piece.

Tier 2 Gear (236) should cost the T1 Piece PLUS 200 Tokens.

Tier 3 Gear (242) should cost the T2 Piece PLUS 300 Tokens.

Tier 4 Gear (248) should cost the T3 Piece PLUS 400 Tokens.

 

The rate at which Tokens are awarded should be determined by the content played to earn them.

 

A Planetary H2+ quest should only award 2-5 tokens per player.

Scaling up to Ops awarding 50 or more Tokens per players.

 

Do away with Command Ranks, and RNG Command Crates entirely - because RNG has no place in Gear Progression outside of a Koreanesque Grindfest.

 

All The Best

Better than at launch, but would rather have the old 4.0 system with new content.

As a casual solo player, I like being able (theoretically) to get BiS gear (not that I know exactly which pieces would be BiS for my playstyle/spec, so let's just call it T4 gear ).

I personally don't need T4 gear, but I like that it's available for me.

 

What I don't like is that the grind, while much improved from the early days of GC, is still horrible.

I used the XP-bonus event over the holidays to finally grind out three more characters to Rank 300 so all my future grindees... uh, sorry, Alts I mean, can have an easier time.

....and the grind is still horrible.

Again, I don't need the gear. But I got this fantabulous idea in my head of getting one character of each class to 300, and maybe then I'd feel free to play whichever alt I want to. ...and then the bonus event ended and I haven't played much since then, because the CXP gains slowed down so much. My 8th character is not 300 yet.

 

I still feel like the only thing I should be doing ingame is farming CXP. I should be doing this by playing whatever content I can stomach that has the daily bonus so I'm not wasting my time. For me, that means weekly/daily planetary heroics, solo flash points and the occasional Warzones or Chapters if the stars are right.

Playing lowbie alts or decorating strongholds (with a gazillion holo trees from the LifeDay Gift CXP farming) feels like wasted time. The CXP gains from playing older story content, which I tried doing on that 8th rank 300 char, feels like wasted time. Right now, playing any of my other level 70s, both those at rank 300 and those under, feels like a waste of time.

 

What would make me a happier camper would be if all XP, both normal levelling up XP and CXP, were connected. Like Legacy XP - anything you do on any character in the Legacy counts toward the Legacy levels. RNG piñatas accumulated on sub-70 characters would be made available to the first lvl 70 the players logs in - probably with a failsafe in place because I'm sure a lot of people, including myself, would log in the wrong char.

All content should be fairly equal as for actual CXP rewards, to give players a better choice in what they do. It's not as if the daily/weekly quests on Yavin4 are any more difficult at level 70 than the class/planetary story on Taris, so the CXP quest rewards might as well reflect that.

The random daily bonus activities are kinda annoying, too. It would be nice if we could pick one per day (but each activity only once per week) instead of it being random - that would be more fair to those who aren't able to play every day. It might even improve people's enjoyment of especially group activities when half the (for example) WZ team wasn't there more or less against their will, only because the day's bonus happens to be WZs.

 

In short, the GC system isn't as horrible as it was, but if we're completely stuck with it, it still needs a shedload of improvements.

Well since the topic is here again..... I think people will be OK with the system in general, but the question is what type of player likes it more and what type likes it less.

 

Overall, I like it the way it is. Also I have all of my toons with BiS 248 (legacy slots) and several of the completely full 248s (left side included). I would be completely full 248 on all toons, but I have very limited playing time of the game. The only thing that I would like to point out is that the system is OK they way it is now. People are able to get LOADS of UCs and use them to get what ever piece they want. So even a person like me who plays 12 hours per week was able to get 248 on his toons.

 

However, I have to state, maybe only 10% of my 248 were actual drops at rank 300, everything else was 242s converted to 248 specific pieces. So yes, the drop rate for tier 4 is crap and the only good thing are the UCs.

Maybe add some adaptive gear and weapons that are actually worth keeping and not directly trashed for cxp...

So far I've kept two empty moddable shells: the Revanite MK-2 polesaber for one of my assassins, and the Revanite MK-2 sniper rifle. There are way far too many short stubby sniper rifles in this game, and that one is pretty much the total opposite.

In an absolute sense, that can't be done, because each player type has different, and sometimes contradictory, expectations of end-game gearing.

 

^^ I agree.

 

While I avoid the entire system, as does almost all my guild...... I do see what they were attempting to achieve that is different then most other MMOs ---> gear progression that is largely content independent.... but of course all gear progression in MMOs is by definition a grind designed to consume time. It's just a shame they did such a poor implementation to an otherwise innovative approach to end game gearing. Happily, there are other pathways in the game that can effectively meet most gearing needs without becoming enslaved to grinding for GC. Some will say that the old currency systems prior to 5.0 were better... but in my view they were somewhat simple, but not better as they denied most players access to top end gear. What saved them through all of this in my view was that they also improved the crafting system in 5.0 such that you could in many cases meet all your gear requirements at 70 without relying on GC to do it.

 

I don't buy in to all the RNG complaints.. as all MMOs are slathered heavily with RNG as part of game play as well as item acquisitions. If they had deployed the system and not used "boxes" or "crates" as the delivery mechanism.. I really do not think there would have been so much emotional reaction to RNG in GC. Unfortunately, using crates or boxes as a means to deliver simply triggers so much of the irrational outbursts that have been common for years now about the Cartel Market packs. I mean, it's not like end game gear progressions in other MMOs do not rely heavily on RNG as part of their calculation for what is actually rewarded to a player. If you cannot stand RNG.. probably best not to play MMOs.. or at least not play them seriously.

Edited January 18, 2018 by Andryah

I think the gearing system is in a very good place right now. I would recommend a couple tweaks. First my thoughts on why I like the recent changes.

 

1) RNG is Significantly Reduced after 5.6

 

Prior to Nov. 28th, criticisms against the system being too RNG-oriented were completely on the mark. After 5.6, and the advent of disintegrating loot into UCs, this is no longer the case. Interestingly, I expected a torrent of negative criticism post-Nov. 28th about the conversion rates. As it turns out, there was very little. I think they got the conversion rate right.

 

--What is particularly cool about the system is that now you can play newbie 70 alts and still benefit your main because the currency is universal (and vice-versa). This effectively makes your actual Galactic Command level largely irrelevant. I have a couple alts who just hit 70 and I could easily deck them out now in Ilvl 242 gear. I could also pretty easily deck them out left side with crafting. It really is a boon that crafting schematics are BoL.

 

--Contrary to what some say, you don't have to PvP to get the new augment mats. I'm swimming in them from crates, and, as expected, they are pretty cheap on the GTN. I don't have an exact number, but I think the drop rate from crates, regardless of GC level, is about 5%-7%.

 

2. Devaluing Content / Grinding Old Content

 

I start from the following assumption: BW is probably the slowest of any major MMO-company out there to release content. And, frankly, I would be devastatingly bored if the only Op / Raid to get the best gear from was Gods of the Machines and Iokath dailies for solo play. I very much like mixing up the terrain. If i'm tired of the metallic world of Iokath, I can go to icy worls like Hoth., desert worlds like Tatooine. Even the behemoth, WoW, is recycling old content (Timewalking, updating certain Dungeons, etc.).

 

Some suggest that this leads to people speedrunning, ignoring certain types of content, and finding the path of least resistance. My response to this is -- welcome to MMO's. This will ALWAYS be the case, and always has been the case in every MMO I've played. As it is, though, Ops are still one of the best ways to get BiS gear so I don't understand the complaint.

 

Regardless, if you choose to burn yourself out by doing the easy route-- that's on you. For example, this was the first Winter season I've played with level 70s since my return late 2016 after a three year hiatus from this game. I did not throw one 'friggin snowball at anyone or anything, despite reading that it was a very efficient way to grind CXP. Why not? Simple -- I didn't find it interesting (and I grew up in Wisconsin / Minnesota so I had enough snowball throwing in my life. )

 

As to devaluing high-end content. I couldn't care less if others have BiS. As long as I have the ability to acquire higher level gear, advance my character, and complete progressively higher levels of content, I'm fine. What others wear doesn't impact me. If I don't get BiS, so be it. Kind of indifferent on this one.

 

3. Things I would improve:

 

--I agree in the broader sense that the system is unnecessarily complex. One can play with the numbers, but I agree that making it one currency in 6.0 (yes, I think it will happen) is a good idea, which will make it less convoluted.

 

--An overhaul of CXP rewards across the board. For some reason, they chose to stick with the bugged planet dailies from late last summer. They should do a top to bottom review and reward CXP commensurate with difficulty and time. Newsflash: Ziost Dailies are neither difficult nor time consuming.

 

--Keep bonuses in place after you reach level GC 300. And reward a "Resolute Commander" title.

 

Cheers,

 

Dasty

Edited January 18, 2018 by Jdast

It's better than it was at launch but still not something I'd support if we actually had a vote on it.

 

I'd have much rather seen the 4.0 crystal system adjusted to accomplish something similar where gamers can work on specific gear and not have to deal with the down right terrible RNG system bioware loves.

 

If galactic command were to go away, I wouldn't shed a tear. That doesn't mean I believe bioware can come up with anything better and it's quite possible they could come up with something worse but at this point. I'd take my chances.

Well I might not be the one to ask, considering the two characters I play the most are at 300 and they are doing fairly well on gear.

 

My scoundrel healer is mostly 246/248.

 

My sage is mostly 248 (she need 2-3 more to give her complete 248).

 

No I don't pvp at all.

 

I have done some flashpoints but a lot have come from the command boxes from doing dailies. The extras, that I don't need on my mirror character then those are turned into UC and those are normally used for the ones still below 300.

Edited January 18, 2018 by casirabit

Still trash

RNG is the worst way to do itemisation and it has never worked.

raising the chances even by mere declaration doesn't change the fact you're still under the mercy of luck

Still trash

You can't upgrade 246 into 248

You can't upgrade 244 into 248

You can only upgrade 242 into 248

You can't acquire 242 from highest tier but they want you to use that to upgrade to 248

Logic much

 

Still trash...

Edited January 18, 2018 by Bonzenaattori

As a predominantly solo story player, Galactic Command pretty much doesn't exist for me. Sure, I can advance if I set out to grind for CXP, but the whole "gear up playing the content you enjoy" doesn't include non-FE/ET story.

It's better than it was but I'm still not a fan. I don't like the RNG but it isn't awful. I've had it worse so I'm not as uptight on this version. I actually liked it better before I got UCs for destructing, but that's just me probably because I'll never grind enough to buy anything with UCs and getting a whopping 2 UCs per piece isn't much of an improvement. It's still not alt-friendly at that pace.

 

I'm even less of a fan of the 300 (so far) extra GC levels. It doesn't progress your character in the least, vertically or horizontally. It's serves no purpose other than to slow you down. It's not even a gear gate. The only requirement on the gear is level 70. If I had a toon with boatloads of tokens (and time) I could fully kit out a fresh 70 alt bypassing the entire system. Pointless. My highest toon never even got fully kitted in Tier 1 gear before moving up the ladder, much less Tier 2, 3 or 4. Completely pointless. It's a time gate, nothing more.

Edited January 18, 2018 by kodrac

I will admit, overall the system is better than 5.0 launch. However, it still takes a PhD in obfuscated systems to understand, needlessly complicated. And it still takes WAY WAY WAY too long to gear up as a PvPer.

 

The whole thing could have been fixed from day one (and still today), by simply getting rid of the new currencies, reducing the pop rate of crates to about 1 per hour and EVERY 5 BOXES you pop a piece of gear of appropriate tiered gear THAT YOU DO NOT ALREADY HAVE. So you'll pop one on command level 5, 10, 15...etc. Nice easy expectations based gearing. Not fully geared by the end of each tier but that's still WAY better. Those who play an hour a day should get about 6 pieces a month.

 

Instead we have a horrifically low gear pop rate (last 500 crates I get like 1?), making crates meaningless. Currencies that Einstein couldn't comprehend, dozens of vendors for no reason, and RNG fatigue that koreans wouldn't be able to handle. Albeit its still better than the initial launch of 5.0.

Dumb system is dumb.

 

I just returned and while leveling GC is faster now, it sitll seems a lot of easy activities reward more than difficult / time consuming activities, not to mention all I get is junk to shard.

 

Gear stat inflation is absurd, with terrible players that can't dps themselves out of a wet paper bag wearing 246+ gear for running yolo WZ or farming heroics for the past six months.

 

Still no guaranteed drops from running the hardest content, other than the last boss token.

 

Overly complex - RNG boxes that provide 99% junk, coins (goes to currency), items from boxes that shard to unassembled bits (actual items in inventory), parts from ops, parts purchased for unassembled bits, upgrades for old shells plus coins plus unassembled bits.

 

Crafting is similarly overly complext as well - way too many different 'exotic' materials, from drops in some FPs to OPs to RNG in boxes to dailies on Iokath to PVP boxes to conquest materials - with schematics that come from RE'ing items from set, schematics in various boxes, some on vendors.

Edited January 18, 2018 by DawnAskham

With the UC's as a supplement I don't mind it, however, the CXP rates for Vanilla story and Exploration quests needs a buff. Also, the drops for crates is, 9/10, stuff I don't need or want and I also feel, that the UC rate vs the UC needed for gear is still too grindy. Edited January 18, 2018 by ZeroTypeR

This is the opinion of a player who left right after the command system was introduced and recently came back. Like I said I left after they introduced the command system To me it was a step in the wrong direction. I didn't like the idea of grinding command levels just to get my gear, after I Had already ground up to 70. I especially didn't like the rng boxes. I had been playing since the game was released so it was hard for me to leave but I just couldn't get with the new system.

 

I have recently re subbed after seeing the server merges and changes to the command system and I must say I am still not impressed. I like the merges though as I didn't lose any of my names and it looks like it doubled the pop on my once dying server. However I still don't like the gearing system. I don't understand what you do with the tokens and all the other currencies are confusing me to. I was never a hard core player. I mainly geared up through HM flash points and story mode ops with a bit of crafting in there but now I am utterly confused. I don't understand why they changed it to make it less confusing but it seems way more confusing now. From what I could gather you need like 2 different currencies to get some gear or you just hope the box treats you right. Where before you farmed comms and got your drops from the ops.

 

I guess you could say I am stuck in my ways and am having a very hard time adapting to the new system. But I'm gonna give it a go at least for this month since I paid my money to play and damn it if i'm not gonna use all my play time! But I at this point honestly don't know if I'm gonna keep subbing after this month. Many of the things I want to do are out of my reach since my gear is so god awful right now. But like I said I'm gonna give it a try for this month at least maybe by the end I'll have figured it out.

It actually got worse, they buffed the daily area weekly and nerfed everything else, including the drops inside the crates, we get less crates and with worse stuff inside them...yay?

 

Doing every quest in a planet will not give you one cxp crate after lvl 4.

It actually got worse, they buffed the daily area weekly and nerfed everything else, including the drops inside the crates, we get less crates and with worse stuff inside them...yay?

 

Doing every quest in a planet will not give you one cxp crate after lvl 4.

 

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

Edited January 19, 2018 by Jdast

Better than it was, but the core is still flawed. Galactic Command assumes that gear is the reward people need to play the game, but gear is the tool that let's you play what and how a player wants. The end result is people trying to get cxp as quickly and efficiently as possible just to get the gear grind over with leading to burnout and boredom from doing the same things over and over. Also add in how quickly the most efficient ways are nerfed, it's a long and boring grind.

 

The whole thing is a missed opportunity when you think about what the game could have had if so much time and effort hadn't been put into "fixing" Galactic Command.

I have recently re subbed after seeing the server merges and changes to the command system and I must say I am still not impressed. I like the merges though as I didn't lose any of my names and it looks like it doubled the pop on my once dying server. However I still don't like the gearing system. I don't understand what you do with the tokens and all the other currencies are confusing me to. I was never a hard core player. I mainly geared up through HM flash points and story mode ops with a bit of crafting in there but now I am utterly confused. I don't understand why they changed it to make it less confusing but it seems way more confusing now. From what I could gather you need like 2 different currencies to get some gear or you just hope the box treats you right. Where before you farmed comms and got your drops from the ops.

 

I feel you.

It might help if you got to the Fleet and take a look at what the new gear vendors have and want.

Until then, I suggest getting to Command Rank 300. Disintegrate all the gear you get from boxes except gold quality upgrades, since you'll need those to upgrade (the gold shells + tokens = next tier gear) if RNGesus doesn't like you.

Among the other loot in the crates, well, I personally keep minipets, some mounts, Companion brib... I mean, gifts, some reputation tokens and naturally CXP bonus items and boosts.

By rank 300 you start having a low chance at T4 gear. If you want, you can then go to the fleet and trade in your previous gold quality gear, for the shell and Command tokens. You can even buy T1 straight out if you're missing a piece, or want a different one for a different gear set.

 

It IS a convoluted system, especially for something that was supposed to make gearing easier. But it's not all that difficult to understand once you actually use it and see what the vendors want you to give them for the gear piece you need.

First - let me apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to give the changes to galactic command a complete look. I will put each section of "changes" under a spoiler tag to keep this post from seeming too overwhelming.

 

The Galactic Command system is greatly improved since the launch of 5.0. Here's a little history gleaned from patch notes for the course of 5.0, with my opinions about each change that was made along the way. For reference: Keith came on board right before patch 5.2 went live, so changes from 5.2 on were under his direction.

 

CXP Weekly Cap:

 

 

Operations Gear Drops in GC:

 

 

 

 

CXP Boosts and +% Events:

 

 

"Hey, let's add another currency!":

 

 

 

GC Amounts Adjusted, and Adjusted, and Adjusted Again:

 

 

 

Overall Assessment in my opinion:

When it became obvious that they were not going to get rid of Galactic Command, I was happy to see them make efforts at improving it as a system. I think it is extremely innovative in terms of finding a way to provide all levels of gear to players regardless of the content they are playing. The problem lies in the stingy rewards for those activities. It becomes obvious when you look at the reward amounts that Bioware wants you to play a certain way, play certain content, and help them meet benchmarks that lets them check the boxes next to their desired “metrics” of who is playing what content. It also is too grindy. Look, I understand that every single MMO on the market includes a grind somewhere – leveling, gearing, reputation, etc. But it has to feel worthwhile to motivate you to do it. Only when the CXP levels are at “bonus event” or “bugged to be way higher than we intend” levels has it ever felt that way. This is apparently not just a feeling for me, but for many as you can see the surge of people around during bonus CXP events. So they have some work to do to make it acceptable enough that we don't see the population rise and fall so dramatically.

 

The biggest factor really will be new content. Uprisings were a new kind of content put in the game last year, but they haven’t added any new ones and have instead gone back to the Flashpoint format with snippets of story to check both boxes of “new group content” and “story line” stuff. But it’s hollow and feels like the Uprisings are now just another game mode that is going to be ignored after implementation. I don’t necessarily mind if they only do one new raid a year, as long as the raid is good, complete, and goes into the game as part of a larger expansion that includes planets with daily quests, explorable areas (that are not instanced), and a decent CHUNK of story line that isn’t chasing our traitor companions around the galaxy and failing at ever accomplishing anything.

 

However, none of that is in review of the CXP system, except that if/when they do add said content, they reward it with a decent amount of CXP for the effort, along with everything else in the game to encourage us to continue to grind on it while we wait in the interim between content patches.

 

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. <3