Revisiting Maximus would be a closer examination of issues that haven't had greater voice or momentum and depending on the success (dev responses), I will do more of these
On August 27, 2017, Capital Games added Gear 12 to the game, and the gear pieces needed to push our characters to gear 12 by introducing three new Gear 11 pieces
<<LINK>>
They can be obtained in the following places:
- Territory Battles Mystery Box prize pool (Low RNG to get it)
- Darkside Battles (Normal) 9-C, and 9-D
- Lightside Battles (Normal) 9-C
- Fleet Battles (Normal) 5-B, 5-C, 5-D
- Guild Store (380 Guild Tokens for 5 Salvage piece)
- Shipments (Crystals)
- Donations
The Problem:
The game has a linear progression where you can get gear needed to progress beyond Gear 8 using The Pit raid (Carbantis, Stun Guns, Stun Cuffs etc.). Eventually you will hit another road block, usually in g10 and g11 requiring raid rewards from The Tank raid. You will then have the Sith Raid rewarding you with Gear 11 pieces to push your toons to Gear 12 and Gear 12 / Gear 12+ pieces to equip to your toons to push them to the absolute best that is currently possible. The raids give you a linear progression of development of your overall roster. However, none of the two places reward you with G11+ gear.
You are literally on a roadblock. Sith Raid keeps rewarding you with Gear you cannot use and the other raids do not give you the gear you need. The G11+ gear is in limbo and it does not make any sense why none of the raids provide you with G11+ Gear. There is a lack of consistency in character progression once they require G11+ Gear. The drop rate in Territory Battles is so low that you cannot rely on TB to acquire them. You can argue that you can farm them using LS/DS normal battles but its not worth the effort. The only place is using crystals (Paywall) or Guild Store (Requires 3800 Guild Tokens to get one salvage piece fully crafted for usage). Some characters require two or more G11+ Piece to attain Gear 12 status. To repeat, we are in a situation where we have this G12 / G12+ gear but we cannot get our toons to g12. I keep getting the same g11 gear but its not the g11 gear I need to develop my toons.
The Solution:
tl;dr Gear 11+ really needs to be added to the Raid Rewards (Tank or Sith Triumvirate Raid).
The problem will worsen as more Gear Tiers are added since newer content will cater to g12 / g13 stuff
21
Replies
I'm confused as to what pieces you're specifically talking about. There are no pieces not available in the two bigger raids for g11
Mk 6 Arakyd Droid Caller Salvage ( https://swgoh.gg/db/gear/149Salvage/mk-6-arakyd-droid-caller-salvage/ )
Mk 4 Zaltin Bacta Gel Salvage ( https://swgoh.gg/db/gear/150Salvage/mk-4-zaltin-bacta-gel-salvage/ )
Mk 9 BioTech Implant Salvage ( https://swgoh.gg/db/gear/153Salvage/mk-9-biotech-implant-salvage/ )
And is required by every toon at Gear 11
This is a list of Tank raid rewards: https://swgoh.gg/db/raids/tank-takedown/rewards/
You can confirm the same set of gear pieces when you look at the rewards in game
My issue is that these pieces are NOT available in the raids but is required by every single character. Its super weird and I don't think most of the community knows that they aren't in the raid rewards for any raid
Yeah but all those pieces are easily farmable from multiple nodes and rewarded from territory wars as well. The real bottleneck for gear is actually around gear 9/10. I need 300 mark 5 stun guns for a single character and no easy way to get them.
I agree some reworks are needed for gear but let's be honest both pit and haat raids are and have been trivial for a long time so changing those rewards probably won't and shouldn't happen.
That said, I think it would be nice for them to add some to the heroic raids.
I know stun guns are a bottleneck but you can still get those gear in Rancor or lower tiers of Sith Raid. You won't get it always but sometimes RNG is in your favor and you will get a carb or stun gun salvage eventually. Stun Guns / Carganti crunch is a bottleneck debate. This gear is inaccessible and is always going to be a roadblock at gear 11 and I wouldn't mind if it was as rare to get these gear salvages as it is to get a carbanti / stun gun / stun cuff salvage from the rancor raid
I can't find the Territory Wars reward pool box so I cannot validate the accuracy of that claim
Yeah I agree that the pit and tank raid have become trivial but seeing as the Sith Raid is endgame content, it should provide us gear salvage to push our toons to g12 so that we can equip those endgame gear (g12+ gear) to our characters.
Sure I'd like them to be in raids. But I have much worse trouble with other gear.
But, if they ever actually do anything positive to alleviate that bottleneck you are right that it would begin to become an issue with these 3 pieces.
You can go find every single piece of gear you need from g7 all the way up to g12 using raid gear except the g11+ pieces
From a design perspective, raids provide you the necessary gear you need to push a character to the latest currently available gear. That's what CG's intention looks like.
In Rancor Raid, you can get the gear needed to go between g8 to g10. Tank has gear needed to go from g9 to g11. Sith Raid is g10 and beyond. The progression is "If you have Rancor on farm, your toons should be at the level where they can attempt the tank raid and if you have that on farm, you can attempt the Sith Raid" but now its like "If you have the Sith Raid on farm, you still need to buy gear from the guild store to get your toons ready for the next big thing"
Yes, its available in guild store and shard shop but those require currency. Guild store has a bunch of other competing resources such as Mk II Pulse and then it becomes a choice of gear vs mods in that store. Those who are still farming characters are delayed by a couple of months from progressing to G12 if they farm exclusive guild store toons. Its not a bottleneck issue, its a progression issue. You literally cannot progress using just raid gear, and this is a fact only because of the three g11+ pieces. Previously you could max out any and every character using just the three Raids, and you still can if those 3 pieces are added into those raids
They should move the gear bottleneck from g8 to g10-11 range. Rosters and the # of toons have changed but the % of the g8 stuff hasnt increased to compensate.
I dont deny they should make money. But I think more people would pay for gear to take a character from g11 -> g12 than they would pay to move from g8->g9. Just my opinion.
The problem isn't the G11 pieces indicated in the OP. I constantly have a surplus of 3 crafted of each, ready to go. The problem is what do I do when I hit 50 salvage of stun cuffs? G12.5 slot, push a toon from 8 to 9, or 10 to 11, or use it on the stored pieces to get to G12.
And this isn't even considering the heavy reliance on mk 8 implants (gold eyeballs) that go far faster than the medpacks and datapads that were introduced at the same time. 4k+ of the other 2, takes 2 weeks to get enough of the challenge gear of eyeballs to keep up with what comes from guild store / shipments.
All raids reward us plenty of currency with which we can buy the exact type of gear 11+ gear we need. I don't see a roadblock. It may be inconsistent, that the gear doesn't drop in the tank raid itself, but there's no roadblock.
To repear: You get plenty of currency to buy exactly what you need. If you have trouble getting your characters to gear level 12, it's not because of lack of g11+.
I don't see a problem with how we obtain g11+ gear.
This is my problem. Sure, mk4 bactas are annoying, but you can assemble one relatively quickly between the guild and shard stores.
On the other hand, constantly needing a total of 300-500 carbanti salvage to take ONE character to G12 is absurd.
Also there is no full gun (gun+carb+holo) anywhere in the game besides shipments.
Removing stun guns shouldn't be an issue either since you can get them from the GET store (Sith Raid provides GET) and shard shop. Just like the g11+ pieces are available in two stores (Guild Store and Shard Shop). You need 3,800 Guild Store currency to get one fully crafted g11+ piece and 2800 Guild Store currency to get a full Carbanti. Complaining about Carbanti is senseless because you get plenty of currency to buy exactly what you need.
Keep in mind, I don't have issues getting my toons to g12. This is an underlying problem that will worsen over time and it competes with other much needed gear resources (Holo lens, Gold Balls, Stun Cuffs etc) that you can get for free through raids. One of the g12+ gear requires the g11+ gear, and I'm sure as newer gear is released in the game, they will also require g11+ gear as crafting components.
I am well aware that I can just buy them from the guild store, but that's not a good solution. What's the point of awarding g12 gear when you can buy them from GET?
Do you remember when CG changed the reward structure of STR and made it distributed? The entire guild receives the same prize box but they gave more GET so you can focus on what G12 gear you needed specifically?
This is pretty much the same thing. And the community instantly asked for a roll back. Sure, you can just buy the gear you want but it ends up being more harmful than good. Its better to just have the gear in the prize box.
EDIT: Looks like the bulk of my post is addressing to @Jarvind too. As far as my usage of the word roadblock goes, I respectfully disagree that you don't think its a roadblock. My definition of roadblock here is that If you remove all the stores from the game, no other gear prevents character gear progression other than G11+. This is a roadblock. 100 percent.
That's not what we're discussing here, you and I. You claimed, that there's a roadblock since g11+ gear doesn't drop from tank raids. I disagree. That's what we're discussing.
So, you agree, that there's no roadblock, even though you previously claimed, there is. Great. We seem to agree then :-)
(To repeat myself: "It may be inconsistent, that the gear doesn't drop in the tank raid itself, but there's no roadblock.")
As long as g11+ isn't the bottle neck when gearing up to g12 I don't see a problem - not even an underlying problem. There's inconsistency, yes, but no problem.
I loved it, when they added all this gear to the guild shop. Now we can buy the type of gear, we need.
So, you still agree, that since we still have the stores in the game, there's no roadblock, right?
Edit / added: It may potentially become a roadblock if stores are removed, yes, but it's not currently blocking your way to g12.
If EA can make you pay for something you are already farming for free, that is free money and no reason at all to change.
Posts like these need to happen for transparency and to keep these companies honest.
You keep bringing up guild store but that is missing my point. I am well aware of what the Guild Store is and what it includes. I understand you are trying to explain to me what its purpose and benefits are but using guild store as the only source of G11+ gear is another topic entirely. I have some issues with guild store being the only reliable source of G11+ and 6 dot slicing materials. If this is the trend, then you will have less resources for store exclusive stuff
If this is an oversight by CG, I'm trying to raise awareness that hey, maybe reconsider putting these gear pieces back into the prize box because it seems to contradict the system they have created or try and see if this was intentionally done
The road is not blocked. Who cares if they can be blocked (your definition)? They are not blocked. That's what counts for me.
I higly doubt this. If CG intended something else, they would have implemented it differently. I'm quite sure, the intention is, that g11+ pieces don't drop in hAAT.
I believe, it's safe to assume, that the design is, that g11+ doesn't drop in hAAT.
No, it isn't. You can have plenty in guild shop and shard shop. You receive plenty of currency for guild shop. The road is not blocked by g11+ gear, no matter how many times you repeat your statement.
Ok. Let's say I accept your definition (that the road would be blocked, if g11+ wasn't available in stores). The situation is then:
Yes, there's a roadblock, since the road COULD be blocked, by removing g11+ gear from stores. However, since g11+ is readily available in stores, and you get plenty of currency in raids, the road to g12 is not blocked. - even if by your definition there's a roadblock.
You're right. And it's inconsistent. I've agreed on this before, and I still do. My point is, that this is no problem, since g11+ is available from other sources - guild shope. You get plenty of currency for that store from raids, including..... tadaaaaaa! Yes! Tank raids.
I didn't miss your point. I simply disagree, that there's a problem. An inconsistency, yes, but not a problem.
So in effect the road is blocked well before G11+
You can get the full piece that that salvage is used to make
Yep, I got one last week.