1. #1
    Deleted

    Is There A Gear Treadmill In This Game?

    I'm looking for an MMO that has a good endgame gear treadmill, with new more powerful gear available to get constantly from PvE. I've played the hell out of WoW, and was thinking of trying this out. I know the stories are what the game is all about, but how is the endgame in terms of gearing? Is it like GW2 or ESO, where I just need to grind for the one set of gear, and that's it, no more upgrades ever? Or is it like WoW with new gear available constantly at endgame?

    Also, from an honest unbiased view, how is the population in game? Will I be queueing for hours to get into a dungeon/raid?


    Thanks guys.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Vanchatron View Post
    SNIP... I know the stories are what the game is all about, but how is the endgame in terms of gearing? Is it like GW2 or ESO, where I just need to grind for the one set of gear, and that's it, no more upgrades ever? Or is it like WoW with new gear available constantly at endgame?
    It's more like wow. Currently you will be grinding in some way for gear that ranges from 228 (green, blue, purple and legendary) all the way to 248.

    You can only run the group finder in story mode for OPS. The easiest of the difficulty levels. (GF doesn't work on Vet and Master)
    You can run dungeons called flash points in SW in all modes (Story, veteran, master). Not all have a master mode.

    Some of this just changed in the last patch a week ago so I'm going off memory.

    228 gear is the lowest gear and IIRC, bw is going to put 230 gear on vendor type addition thats not yet in game so you can buy that starter gear.

    You can run story mode OPs for 236 gear.
    Veteran OPS for 242.
    Master for 248

    Each OPS boss now drops a particular item of gear similar to wow. Here are the loot tables if you want to loo at OPS/raid bosses.
    http://dulfy.net/2017/03/03/swtor-op...ble-patch-5-2/

    Plus at max level you start a different kind of levleing. CXP - you can do any content at max level for CXP (think EXP after max level) be it OPS, grinding mobs, flash points or heroic solo missions. It's like continuing to level up without actually leveling up. There are 4 CXP tiers.

    T1 is 1-89 CXP levels and gives a random chance at 228-230 gear.
    T2 is 90=189 levels and gives a random chance at 232 - 238 gear.
    T3 is 190 - 299 levels and gives a random chance at 238 - 242 gear.
    T4 is 299 - 300 repeated over and over for a chance at 244 - 248 gear.

    That chance comes from each time you level up in CXP, you get a RNG crate that may or may not give you gear. It's not a good system to be honest but that is currently what we are stuck with. Muchlike wow, it's too much RNG.

    Same gear for PVP and PVE so no separate grinding.

    Also, from an honest unbiased view, how is the population in game? Will I be queueing for hours to get into a dungeon/raid?
    Thanks guys.
    Depends on which server you are on. I run Jedi covenant (US - East) and Harbringer (US- west) and they have decent populations for swtor. The game has suffered a larger than normal population decline since 5.0 patch a number of months ago and has not recovered if it ever does. Not only because the patch was just terrible but we also learned content would be really light for the coming year. biowares currently plans for OPS is one boss every two months and one raid might be finished by December of 2017. Thats a pretty slow pace for any game company. Nothing about pvp or anything else but a daily area we just got and it kinda sucks.

    bw tried to fix a few things with the most recent patch of 5.2 but the damage is done and the patch wasn't as well received as bw hoped it would be I'm sure. That being the first raid boss in years (yes - only one) and a daily grind area that pretty much sucks ass. Some of the daily quests you have to grind shards to pay for just to get the daily quest. Then you are to grind those for rep but having to buy them each time you want to do the daily quest. What makes all that worse is the rep vendors offer terrible rewards for the double grind and the reward for doing those quests always puts you in the negative. It costs more to do them than you will ever get out of them. Always going in the hole.

    If you were going PVE mainly, I'd take one of the two servers I mentioned depending on where you are.

    You seem new so you wont be as jaded as some of us long time players suffering from little to no content (PVP and PVE). You will have things to do but given how things are, group content might be a bit harder to pull off if you want harder difficulties. Better if you can get into a decent guild of course.

    Just know that every server is light on population but for some, if you read the forums, they are pretty much ghost towns.
    Last edited by quras; 2017-04-27 at 08:53 PM.

  3. #3
    its less of a gear treadmill and more of a gear pachinko system
    "It's 2013 and I still view the internet on a 560x192 resolution monitor!"

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by quras View Post
    SNIP..

    Just know that every server is light on population but for some, if you read the forums, they are pretty much ghost towns.
    That is what happens if you target roughly 500k player total at the beginning of the development and do everything you can do to push "surpluses" out of the game if it exceeds that number.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Lynkeus View Post
    That is what happens if you target roughly 500k player total at the beginning of the development and do everything you can do to push "surpluses" out of the game if it exceeds that number.
    However, that is not what happened in swtor.

    Their target was much bigger than that but what bw didn't have a clue on was actually how to do it and retain those customers. They screwed up by relying on so much story as if that would retain players while not having enough end game. They hoped the stories would hold gamers over but that simply wasn't ever going to happen.

    Story is nice but not enough. There actually has to be a fair amount of interesting repeatable content and bw didn't provide that when the game launched. Resulting in the game going F2P faster than any game I know of save one.

    You can read a little about their troubles here but they didn't willingly push out players. bioware being incompetent did.

    http://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-gdc-p...-old-republic/

  6. #6
    It was a nice read, thanks. You are right I suppose they were incompetent and inexperienced.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Lynkeus View Post
    It was a nice read, thanks. You are right I suppose they were incompetent and inexperienced.
    They are.

    Problem is they still fall into the incompetent / inexperienced area even now.

    They are still relying on story content to carry the game and it's still just not cutting it. There is just little to no reason to do it more than a couple times. A player retention mechanic is it not for an MMO. Just like at launch.

    They hope 2-5 year old end game OPS and daily areas are enough to retain players. Historically, we know gamers dislike old content. They dislike rehashed content all the while paying the same amount per month. Gamers expect more and expect more at end game.

    Right now and for a few years bioawre has screwed up on many fronts be it lack of content to bugs but 5.0 was a disaster for this game and no story was ever going to help. One new OPS in nearly 2.5 years isn't enough while stretching out the remainder of the OPS till December 2017. WTF!

    One new daily area that has quests you have to grind to buy then grind to get the rep is viewed as another WTF moment in BW game design and development.

    To this day it's as if BW is still flying by the seat of their pants. If Star Wars wasn't as strong of an IP as it is. We would not be having this discussion about swtor. It wouldn't still be live.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by quras View Post
    To this day it's as if BW is still flying by the seat of their pants. If Star Wars wasn't as strong of an IP as it is. We would not be having this discussion about swtor. It wouldn't still be live.
    This is the only reason I still pay attention this game, it's Star Wars and I love Star Wars. If this were any other IP, this game would have shut down a LONG time ago.

  9. #9
    Doing the same OPS as I did when the game launched is not in any way shape or form fun. SWTOR had such promise and at every turn Bioware showed they are way out of their depth and kept stepping on their own toes. Sadly I like the game, but it quickly reminds me why I have quit in the past.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by quras View Post
    To this day it's as if BW is still flying by the seat of their pants. If Star Wars wasn't as strong of an IP as it is. We would not be having this discussion about swtor. It wouldn't still be live.
    I don't know the game would have lasted a year if it wasn't Star Wars. It is like they were given a free money printing machine and opted for it to make pennies.
    "Privilege is invisible to those who have it."

  10. #10
    It's one of those rare, ironic cases where Bioware, known for it's writing, actually tried too hard in making it all about story and less about endgame content, and wound up pleasing no one.

    I'm the fatheads up in the high posh chairs were slapping each other on the backs when this idea came up.

    "Bioware, and Star Wars, and MMO combined. How can this go wrong?"

    Well chucklefucks, people still are able to fuck up instant coffee.
    "It's 2013 and I still view the internet on a 560x192 resolution monitor!"

  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans Racthoh's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    FL
    Posts
    2,501
    Quote Originally Posted by NoiseTank13 View Post
    It's one of those rare, ironic cases where Bioware, known for it's writing, actually tried too hard in making it all about story and less about endgame content, and wound up pleasing no one.

    I'm the fatheads up in the high posh chairs were slapping each other on the backs when this idea came up.

    "Bioware, and Star Wars, and MMO combined. How can this go wrong?"

    Well chucklefucks, people still are able to fuck up instant coffee.
    i blame the hero engine. game ran so poorly on every single computer (still true today) that they really didn't have a chance to correct anything else wrong with the game because everyone unsubbed immediately. then everyone at bioware austin got the quick boot.

  12. #12
    I am Murloc! DaGhostDS's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Somewhere in the void
    Posts
    5,297
    Quote Originally Posted by Racthoh View Post
    i blame the hero engine. game ran so poorly on every single computer (still true today) that they really didn't have a chance to correct anything else wrong with the game because everyone unsubbed immediately. then everyone at bioware austin got the quick boot.
    I blame the suit that went with the Alpha version of hero-engine, asked it to be modified in-house and then kick said programmers out and hire a new one which had no idea how to fix any of the first guy patchjob.

    The moral of that story is not to let your game die and go in hibernation and just rerelease it as Freemium, do like ESO invest in it, add new stuff, listen to feedback, i played for more than 2 years and the lack of new ops that werent recycled was baffling, Terror from Beyond for 3 tiers (50 hm, 50 NM and 55 NM) burnout assured, YAY!

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •