114664-okay-carbine-no-more-of-my-money-until-you-start-speaking-about-my-issues

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Okay, I choose a deliberately provocative title in order to get some attention on to this thread because this is something that we haven't seen much real talk about: endgame gear progression post Drop 3. Specifically for me, solo/non-raiding gear progression, but this really is an issue that affects everyone.
 
 
My questions are this:
 
 
1. What does the general road map for gear progression look like? Will there be pre-raid gear tiers that the raiders will need before moving onto raids?
 
2. Will loot drops still be the primary form of gear progression, or will players be able to upgrade via vendors?
 
3. Will there still be soloist/non-raider gear progression that does not hit a dead end with the gear that is intended as starting raid gear?
 
4. If the commitment to soloist/non-raider gear progression is still there, how exactly is that supposed to work? Will raid gear have unique stats not found on non-raid gear (ie. like the difference between PvP gear and PvE gear)? If there is not a PvE/PvP-like stat division between raid gear and non-raid gear, how is the progression supposed to look/feel any different from the "funnel everyone into raiding" progression that has become the norm?
 
5. Will gear progression be enforced (ie. you must complete the Tier 1 set before being able to purchase/equip the Tier 2 set; alternately, must have defeated Boss X before being able to purchase/equip this piece), or will it be unrestricted beyond character level (ie. only requirement is to be level 50)?
 
6. Where exactly does crafted gear fit into this scheme? Is it going to primarily be for introductory level 50 gear; or will crafters at some point get the ability to craft more customizable (stat-wise) near-raid level gear?
 
 
This list probably doesn't include every single question that the players have, but I think that it's a good starting point for questions that the Devs haven't been as forthcoming with as I would like, particularly in the solo/non-raider area where there's been a lot of talk about the new content we're going to be getting, but virtually no talk about the meaningful post-50 progression that was frequently discussed prior to launch.	
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			If you've been paying attention they are addressing a majority of your issues. I'm not going to provide sources as I have to leave really soon but I'm sure someone will oblige. 	
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yes
	yes and no...loot eventually will be from crafting, drops, and vendors in their respective fashion/manner
	yes...kinda...
	look up defile stuff some of it is there...
	this already exists for raid drops via the elder gem vendor where you must kill/clear content X
	Use search function	
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Caretaker and Teprop, thanks for the responses, but the truth is they haven't really spelled it out in terms of a simple roadmap: it's all been in pieces here and there still lacking a lot of the conective tissue.
 
Furthermore, when the devs have been asked about gear progression in terms of the soloist/non-raider, you get some mumbling about itemization... strikethrough was something something... but no solid answers. Before launch they talked about a having a distinct gear progression path for non-raiders, but once the game was released, once again we saw the same thing as every we see in every other MMO "ignore the fact that 60-65% of MMO players don't do large group content and funnel all progression into raiding". I don't see how they can create a parallel progression path without the same type of unique stat division that exists between PvE and PvP gear, but if they think it's possible I think it's time to start explaining to us how that's going to work.
 
This is something that shouldn't be buried in the middle of a 55 page itemization discussion in the crafting forum, this is the type of thing that needs to be talked about in the general discussion forums and on the Nexus Report. Every week they get pelted with these questions in regards to soloists during the Nexus Report and they keep ignoring them. It's great to hear what they have in store for housing and music, but this is on the minds of a huge number of players and it's time they told the soloers and non-raiders in plain and simple terms what they can expect their progression to look like post Drop 3, and General Discussion or the Nexus Report is the place those players are most likely to actually look for it.	
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			They can't spell everything out for you.  At some point you have to just play the game and look for answers yourself.  Otherwise, what would be the point of playing?	
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They can't spell everything out for you.  At some point you have to just play the game and look for answers yourself.  Otherwise, what would be the point of playing?
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You're right: I'm being entirely unreasonable. After all, it's not like concerns of PvPers and raiders have been directly addressed with their solutions spelled out in no uncertain terms in high profile posts and on the Nexus Report.
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Let me answer you based on what I've looked up and looked into. The most important piece of information I can lead you to is the Nexus Report from the last week in August where they are talking to Evan Graziano.  It takes a bit to sit through but there are some very nice snippets within it that do address or at least touch upon many of your questions.
 
Link is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09SJS85CSOc&list=UUhg9HfiT-DbivZnnMtjPUGw
 
Gear Progression Road Map:   From that Nexus Report, Evan states that the goal for gear progression will be:  veteran adventures < veteran dungeons </= crafted gear < 10 man raids < 20 man raids.  He did express some concerns that a lot of the crafted gear was a little too good.  He also addressed that before this coming overhaul, some Best-in-Slot items were found in some rather unlikely places.
 
Will Loot Drops be the Primary form of Gear Progression:  Yes with a 'but'.  Again, Evan touches on this.  At present, it can be very frustrating to try and gear up from random drops.  He's working hard with his team to streamline how loot drops.  They're looking into a token system similar to World of Warcraft's tier token drops to try and facilitate making ubiquitous, valuable loot when a boss is killed.  In addition, like now, there will be supplementary drops that can be purchased through vendors but I didn't hear him reference anything about being able to eventually buy entire equipment sets that way.
 
Soloist Gear:  From what Evan described, short of PUGing, Soloists will be restricted to craftable gear and quest drop gear.  From pickup groups, obviously adventure gear becomes available and this doesn't include PVP gear which has it's own progression.
 
On the Gear Funnel:  If you want better gear, you will have to PVP/Raid.  I didn't hear them speak on this Nexus Report about if questing rewards will upscale with newer content (for example, the Defile's quest rewards vs Blighthaven's quest rewards).
 
Will Gear Tiers be Enforced:  No, that's silly.  How is someone who joins Wildstar in January of 2015 supposed to hope to gear up to current content to play with their friends when most of the community is more focussed on playing newer content rather than constantly cycling back to older content?  This was the death knell of high tier raiding in World of Warcraft during the Burning Crusade expansion.
 
Crafted Gear:  See above.  Crafted gear is supposed to fit around veteran dungeon level if I understood Evan correctly.	
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You're right: clearly I'm being entirely unreasonable. After all, it's not like concerns of PvPers and raiders have been directly addressed with their solutions spelled out in no uncertain terms in high profile posts and on the Nexus Report. And /sarcasm off.
 
From Carbine's reported stats, 60-65% of MMO players do no engage in large group content (meaning raiding and most high end PvP). That means these questions concern two thirds of their current and/or perspective customers: that is a clear majority of the players. If they're going to spend time addressing the questions of PvPers, raiders and housing aficionados in high profile information outlets, then it's not unreasonable to ask them to do the same of the questions of soloists, and they have dodged giving straight answers about this since announcing the delay of Drop 3.
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1. What does the general road map for gear progression look like? Will there be pre-raid gear tiers that the raiders will need before moving onto raids?
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Carbine's not in the business of making single player games. Also, as others have pointed out, most of your concerns have been directly addressed, so I doubt you'd take the time to read their response even if they decided to give you one.
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J-Tal, thank you so much!!! This is exactly the type of information that I've found to be non-existent or scattered around the darkest corners of the forums and buried in cryptic sentences in the middle of threads about attunement. Sorry for the combative nature of the thread's title, but these questions haven't gotten much attention in the higher profile information outlets.
 
Seriously, you ought to take your answers and sticky them at the top of the General Discussion forum.	
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			Still a shame that solo/small group rewards will pale in comparison to zerg raid groups. Can't have an mmo that enables small groups, eh? Always have to have the more is more mentality. 'MURICA. 	
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Still a shame that solo/small group rewards will pale in comparison to zerg raid groups. Can't have an mmo that enables small groups, eh? Always have to have the more is more mentality. 'MURICA. 
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Still a shame that solo/small group rewards will pale in comparison to zerg raid groups. Can't have an mmo that enables small groups, eh? Always have to have the more is more mentality. 'MURICA. 
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snip
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A big part of the two new systems mentioned above is to directly address the solo/non-raider gear progression and its current limited scope. We are looking at ways to allow non-raiders to acquire gear of higher ilevel and higher quality (Legendary items) outside of the raid progression. This gear will still be below the effective ilevel of Genetic Archives and Datascape gear, but our goal is to expand the solo/small-group items progression.
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Carbine's not in the business of making single player games. Also, as others have pointed out, most of your concerns have been directly addressed, so I doubt you'd take the time to read their response even if they decided to give you one.
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This is a not a solo-based MMO. It's a guild/raid based MMO. Carbine even pushed that agenda too far("herp derp hardcore"), but they are not fixing things by going full "crazy", now towards the opposite direction, and turning WS into Hello Kitty casual MMO. It's only natural that this MMO will not reward small groups in the exact same level that it rewards the difficult content for 20/40man. And even if they add 10man raids, it would still follow the same logic: the most difficult and rewarding content lies in raids. It implies guilds and cooperative gameplay. 
 
There's Archeage if you are into solo/small group content.
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Crafted gear will eventually fit into every tier of progression. Drop 3 will introduce Archivos crafted gear that is equivalent to Genetic Archives drops. The Econ team is working on a more robust system for introducing crafting progression beyond Veterans for a future patch. Our goal is for crafted gear to remain relevant as players progress through tiers of content while not eclipsing the tier it was designed for.
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Here are my worries with their plans: that they will ignore what's broken with loot tables and reputation vendor itemization and just release more gear along those veins of delivery.
 
For example, loot tables are so disgustingly large in dungeons, that my chances of gearing up efficiently through them is a waste of time versus crafting my gear. Simply put, there are too many types of stats on different types of armor for me to have a reasonable chance of receiving optimal gear for my class/spec.
 
I have done Scorchwing/Tree on my medic alt various times already. So on top of the fact that getting a purple quality item is complete RNG and you get mostly salvage greens, the TWO TIMES I was lucky to get epic quality items, THEY WERE NOT RELEVANT STATWISE TO MY DPS MEDIC.
 
So, not only am I rolling against the RNG of gear quality, but I'm rolling against the RNG of stats on gear. WHY? Why would you reward my efforts with gear that is not relevant to my spec or playstyle? How many times have you given my medic spellslinger implants? Why is this still a thing?
 
And then there's rep vendors. I hope you realize that in order to get epics, you need to grind the dailies for over a month to get to beloved, and after all this time those epics are neither properly itemized for my DPS medic (in fact, there's barely any DPS medic rep loot at all, every item has insight on it). Moreover, by the time you've spent those 30 days grinding, said epic items are obsolete because by then you're already in veteran dungeons or GA, whose blue loot is better quality than epic quality rep items. The rep grind is too long and the items become long outdated.
 
Moreover, I can't even take advantage of elder gem vendors because your amp/tier ability tokens changes simply did not change the state of things. I got 2 ability points from path and grove rep. I still need 4 more ability point unlocks, or about 4 months of grind. Each ability point unlock drop is still so incredibly rare a drop rate, they're going for 50 plat on the AH, amp unlocks are 20 plat. Just doing dailies at EG cap I MAY make 2 plat that day, so it means 25 days worth of dailies farming plat alone for an ability unlock.
 
EXCEPT, runing costs are outrageous so I don't even get the luxury of just farming for ability unlocks. Gearing even on the PTR will be prohibitively expensive. I want to spend my time on the game playing, not grinding before I am ready to play.
 
The grind and heavy RNG with no feeling of reward (because the loot pool is so large your likelihood of coming out of an instance feeling rewarded is so low) is burning people out of your non-raid content.
 
P.S. My esper main simply skipped the RNG grind and crafted his gear for entry into GA. I don't know how you will fix this short of significantly buffing gear stats from dungeons and streamlining for better chances at acquisition specific to your class and spec. If you do the opposite and nerf crafted gear, and make people grind against your RNG wall of loot delivery, you will drive away what remains of your subscriberbase.
 
People DO NOT like RNG when they spend 1-2 hours on something and come out empty-handed or with suboptimal gear (I'm looking at rune slots).	
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I know you have a large group of morons screaming "SOLO!" at you in a multiplayer game, but looking over the rest of the forums, this idea seems detrimental. I see people quitting left and right, not for the sole purpose of, but commonly citing crafted gear being on par/better than progression gear. It's another incentive to not play the game. Even now, on the first page of these forums, you'll find several complaints about this, so I'm a little baffled as to what reasoning went into this decision.
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As much as my eyes grew and sparkled with desire from the dev post... all the more I became aware of the ball and chain pulling me down to the present.
 
I look forward to the changes and new systems, but I wont hold my breath, since I know they are far away...
 
Before you make people want even MORE things in the future, lets deal with the slimer pickings in the present eh?	
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Crafted gear will eventually fit into every tier of progression. Drop 3 will introduce Archivos crafted gear that is equivalent to Genetic Archives drops. The Econ team is working on a more robust system for introducing crafting progression beyond Veterans for a future patch. Our goal is for crafted gear to remain relevant as players progress through tiers of content while not eclipsing the tier it was designed for.
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J-Tal, thank you so much!!! This is exactly the type of information that I've found to be non-existent or scattered around the darkest corners of the forums and buried in cryptic sentences in the middle of threads about attunement. Sorry for the combative nature of the thread's title, but these questions haven't gotten much attention in the higher profile information outlets.
 
Seriously, you ought to take your answers and sticky them at the top of the General Discussion forum.
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