It’s definitely a bottleneck. With infinite stun guns the time and effort to get most of the other similar-level gear would be relatively minor. (Remember with infinite stun guns all the resources devoted to stun guns could be focused elsewhere.) Their own actions selling them for 2500 crystals each suggest it’s an intentional bottleneck. I’m fine with it. Somehow it doesn’t feel as obnoxious as WoW bottlenecks.
Carbs / MK 5 Thermals / MK 8 Implants will all continue to be limiting in the world of unlimited stun guns. Anything we don't get in high frequency from raids that is fairly common will be a bottleneck for gearing. It's a good thing, otherwise people wouldn't play the game for long.
The reason for the "bottleneck" feeling is because of the difficulty of acquiring stun gun pieces combined with the constant carbanti shortage. Pretty much any other gear piece you can buy from the guild store, and so it feels like you can make serious progress. Stun guns however only show up 6 salvage at a time in shard shop. Also can show up in event shop but that currency is usually needed for wampa/Yoda or G12 gear.
I know I get temporarily slowed by other pieces at times when gearing, but because I can buy them from the guild store, those are more of speed bumps. Stun guns (really its carbanti) are the largest overall bottleneck tho.
If there were no gear bottlenecks then everyone would have yellow accords the board - no roster differentiation.
The bottlenecks force us to make choices on farms and on where to spend crystals and which characters to focus on.
Maybe we focus on stun guns and carbantis and gold balls so much because this game makes some of the other parts TOO accessible. If they were all in short supply we would just feel like gearing up takes time and requires hard choices.
Let’s make the rest of the gear harder to get!
Or we can leave it the way it is and use crystals and farming for those few gear pieces we seem to always be lacking
Except the determining factor is how much real money one spends and not so much about the choices. It's been proven that the vast majority of players will farm the most overpowered factions in declining order and even if they don't do it on their own their guilds will most likely advise them on that path for guild related events. Which is why whenever I look into people's accounts for GA I find that almost everyone tends to have the same characters and squads developed and whenever I look into off factions I'm never surprised to see they are underdeveloped. Minor deviations exist but overall nobody will choose to gear Jawas and let their CLS and raid Han with no gear or choose to gear scoundrels when their RJT is not geared.
On top of that I would argue that more players having more goldies makes modes like GA and TW much more engaging and enjoyable overall.
Doesn’t really matter to me. Something will be bottlenecked. If it isn’t stun guns it would be something else. There will always be something to slow progress.
I mean, that's exactly what a bottleneck is: the slowest grind. Of course if you had infinite stun guns something else would become the bottleneck. That doesn't make the stun gun bottleneck an illusion.
I get your point, mk6 Nubian design tech that is mostly pit raid only gear doesn't drop all that often and now that I am gearing ewoks, definitely wont have enough. The cost of those in any of the stores is huge as well!
I fail to see how they're *not* bottlenecks. Sure, if we get enough to clear the choke and move on and then get stuck on other gears it'll be other *gears* - emphasis on plurals. It's a huge difference.
Maybe it'll be the golden balls, maybe not. The point is that instead of 20+ toons stuck in limbo, all 1Carbanti away from G9 because I'm saving my carbantis for a last-minute event that CG loves to foist on us, I'd have them at G9-10, in bunches that are waiting for different gears. I can then farm those gears in parallel, or focus only on the toons I want - it's a much better alternative. I just realized it took me all the way till this week to promote Jyn from G8 to G9...that's a couple years. The bottleneck is ridiculous.
The real illusion is people saying "gear X is needed 100x for all my characters!" That's similar to going to a restaurant and complaining that there isn't enough ketchup in the bottle on the table to cover every item on the menu. You're not going to be gearing up all those characters at once in the same way you won't be ordering every item on the menu in that one sitting.
What's important is the needs of the characters you are currently gearing, which should be a pretty small subset of your roster. That's where stun guns become really annoying because in any given set of characters I'm gearing, almost all of them need at least 1 set in various gear levels. Tack on that they're hard to get a hold of and you've got a very limited supply of gear (only in Shard, Shipments, and GE stores and fairly uncommon at that, rarely drop in only the Rancor raid, hard to farm, not available from TB or TW). I usually equip 1 gun, then a couple of carbs or det, then another gun. It only goes faster if I buy the 20 pack from Shipments, if I can spare the crystals.
The real illusion is people saying "gear X is needed 100x for all my characters!" That's similar to going to a restaurant and complaining that there isn't enough ketchup in the bottle on the table to cover every item on the menu. You're not going to be gearing up all those characters at once in the same way you won't be ordering every item on the menu in that one sitting.
What's important is the needs of the characters you are currently gearing, which should be a pretty small subset of your roster. That's where stun guns become really annoying because in any given set of characters I'm gearing, almost all of them need at least 1 set in various gear levels. Tack on that they're hard to get a hold of and you've got a very limited supply of gear (only in Shard, Shipments, and GE stores and fairly uncommon at that, rarely drop in only the Rancor raid, hard to farm, not available from TB or TW). I usually equip 1 gun, then a couple of carbs or det, then another gun. It only goes faster if I buy the 20 pack from Shipments, if I can spare the crystals.
It’s not the same though. You’re not ordering eveything on the menu because 1 it cost too much money and 2 you’ll have absurdly more food than you need, both those things having nothing to do with the ketchup. On the other hand you don’t gear up all your characters precisely because of the ketchup. If you had access to twice as much gear as now, you would gear twice as much characters.
If there are multiple posts about the same thing = bottleneck.
I do appreciate going against the grain though. And I will say gear improvements are there. Cuffs were a problem for a long time but not as much now.
I said it once I’ll say it again. They must make a killing on gear. They have basically quadrupled down on the same gear over and over and over and over.
Lol I'm stuck on furnaces and holo projectors atm.. Could always use stun guns and carbantis tho too, but it's less pressing
There are certain factions that need a ton of those. If you played through the old metas, you would realise that back then nobody complained about carbantis. Actually, most people complained about having too many mk3 carbantis, but look where we are now?
Also, the above was probably the reason why they got rid of gear selling. Many would have sold carbantis back then
Nothing to see here folks. Anyone who thinks that Stun Guns aren't a bottleneck is either delusional or doesn't play enough to see that it IS the bottleneck of bottlenecks!
Gearing in this game has ALWAYS been the real grind, even more than stars.
And it's not just the high end gear, I still find myself wanting for tier 1 and 2 gear pieces that are needed as part of crafting higher level gear as often as I'm always out of Mk. V stun guns.
But it's always been about grinding up past that next tier of gear. Gear 12+ awaits you!
On one point this could seem legit... but no, I have stored a lot of gear waiting for stun guns, even carbantis, but never ever ever have I stored stun guns waiting for something else... maybe one, but right after using it I have a place for it and right away the bottle neck starts again...
The main thing I think that may not have been considered is that when you have multiple characters requiring different gear pieces, many of the salvages can be farmed concurrently (either from raid/event drops, the various stores in which salvage appears ect.) You can feasibly make progress on the mk v Droid caller by buying salvage from the Guild Store and shard shop, as well as progress on the Carbanti from the dailies and shard shop (all hypothetically of course). Once you finish one, you are starting at some percentage of completion for the next, because you have already picked up some of the necessary salvage.
But the bottleneck pieces are an issue because you are farming the SAME piece. So every time you finish one, you are back to square one, to start the next. And it starts to feel like an insurmountable climb for certain teams (looking at you Phoenix Squadron).
EDIT: Didnt immediately realize this post was old. Now I regret bothering
Replies
Carbs / MK 5 Thermals / MK 8 Implants will all continue to be limiting in the world of unlimited stun guns. Anything we don't get in high frequency from raids that is fairly common will be a bottleneck for gearing. It's a good thing, otherwise people wouldn't play the game for long.
I know I get temporarily slowed by other pieces at times when gearing, but because I can buy them from the guild store, those are more of speed bumps. Stun guns (really its carbanti) are the largest overall bottleneck tho.
Except the determining factor is how much real money one spends and not so much about the choices. It's been proven that the vast majority of players will farm the most overpowered factions in declining order and even if they don't do it on their own their guilds will most likely advise them on that path for guild related events. Which is why whenever I look into people's accounts for GA I find that almost everyone tends to have the same characters and squads developed and whenever I look into off factions I'm never surprised to see they are underdeveloped. Minor deviations exist but overall nobody will choose to gear Jawas and let their CLS and raid Han with no gear or choose to gear scoundrels when their RJT is not geared.
On top of that I would argue that more players having more goldies makes modes like GA and TW much more engaging and enjoyable overall.
Idk about that but they would certainly cover their operating costs for a couple years
Maybe it'll be the golden balls, maybe not. The point is that instead of 20+ toons stuck in limbo, all 1Carbanti away from G9 because I'm saving my carbantis for a last-minute event that CG loves to foist on us, I'd have them at G9-10, in bunches that are waiting for different gears. I can then farm those gears in parallel, or focus only on the toons I want - it's a much better alternative. I just realized it took me all the way till this week to promote Jyn from G8 to G9...that's a couple years. The bottleneck is ridiculous.
What's important is the needs of the characters you are currently gearing, which should be a pretty small subset of your roster. That's where stun guns become really annoying because in any given set of characters I'm gearing, almost all of them need at least 1 set in various gear levels. Tack on that they're hard to get a hold of and you've got a very limited supply of gear (only in Shard, Shipments, and GE stores and fairly uncommon at that, rarely drop in only the Rancor raid, hard to farm, not available from TB or TW). I usually equip 1 gun, then a couple of carbs or det, then another gun. It only goes faster if I buy the 20 pack from Shipments, if I can spare the crystals.
It’s not the same though. You’re not ordering eveything on the menu because 1 it cost too much money and 2 you’ll have absurdly more food than you need, both those things having nothing to do with the ketchup. On the other hand you don’t gear up all your characters precisely because of the ketchup. If you had access to twice as much gear as now, you would gear twice as much characters.
If there are multiple posts about the same thing = bottleneck.
I do appreciate going against the grain though. And I will say gear improvements are there. Cuffs were a problem for a long time but not as much now.
I said it once I’ll say it again. They must make a killing on gear. They have basically quadrupled down on the same gear over and over and over and over.
There are certain factions that need a ton of those. If you played through the old metas, you would realise that back then nobody complained about carbantis. Actually, most people complained about having too many mk3 carbantis, but look where we are now?
Also, the above was probably the reason why they got rid of gear selling. Many would have sold carbantis back then
Tier 5 Rancor: Mk5 Stun Guns salvage AND full Mk5 Stun Gun prototype
Guess why there's no full prototype in the higher raid tier. CG knows what's up
He’s not even good and he’s a pain in the **** to gear.
And it's not just the high end gear, I still find myself wanting for tier 1 and 2 gear pieces that are needed as part of crafting higher level gear as often as I'm always out of Mk. V stun guns.
But it's always been about grinding up past that next tier of gear. Gear 12+ awaits you!
But the bottleneck pieces are an issue because you are farming the SAME piece. So every time you finish one, you are back to square one, to start the next. And it starts to feel like an insurmountable climb for certain teams (looking at you Phoenix Squadron).
EDIT: Didnt immediately realize this post was old. Now I regret bothering