112008-end-game-itemization-changes

== Content ==
			
                Alright, so now that some people have a vague idea of who I am and what I’ve been working on, I figure it’s a decent time to try to address some of the questions/concerns/complaints (…overwhelming joy?) that some of you have regarding what I talked about on the livestream last week. For those of you that didn’t watch, well, I’m one of the itemization devs, and I’ve got some things planned.
 
               To keep things relatively simple starting out, I’m just gonna go point by point detailing some of the major intended changes for adventure/dungeon/raid loot. I worry that I may not have done the best job conveying some of the finer details during the stream, so I will also do my best to expand upon each bullet as I get to it. (As I reread this post, I realize that it gets pretty wordy. So umm…sorry.)
Gear Progression
With these changes, we want to create a more solidly structured gear progression for players at end-game. That is, we don’t want pieces of adventure gear being BiS until Datascape, or blue crafted gear to be on par with Genetic Archives drops in terms of effectiveness. Although we do have a tiered structure in place currently, we are looking to reinforce this a bit more through stat and item level adjustments to create a more noticeable transition from adventures into dungeons, and dungeons into raids. As I mentioned during the livestream, we will also be displaying item level in tooltips in the future, allowing for a much more definite indication of an item’s power level.
I should also note that, with these changes, the intent is not to phase out crafting. If a tie-in is made with dungeons and raids, requiring participation in order to craft certain items, then yes, these should certainly be just as powerful as the items that drop alongside said ingredients or schematics. For the crafted items that do not require any sort of group coordination or gameplay, however, then it should be expected that they are less potent than what can be obtained in some of the game’s hardest content.
Stats
Although not the case with every piece of gear, we have noticed a large number of items that are either split in their class prioritization, or contain stats that just aren’t all that beneficial to the intended roles (yes, we realize that brutality and strikethrough are not all that attractive to healers). Our intent here is to go through every drop and ensure that it is geared towards a specific class and role (there may still be some generalities – heavy tank armor, melee dps accessories, healing accessories, etc), and that all stats present are useful. Players will also start to notice more of a Grit presence in order to better prepare them for future challenges.
Given the number of changes that are required here, the most efficient solution is likely going to be that we release brand new gear into these spaces. We are retiring a large number of items as it is, and worry that making adjustments to existing gear could end up nerfing/buffing too many players too randomly and unpredictably, due to changes in item level and class/role intention. We do not want you to feel as though time in the spaces has been wasted, however, so we are also looking into viable means of compensating players that have already dedicated a fair amount of time here.
Loot Tables
Table Size: As a player, I hate the idea of going into a fight knowing that I have a 1 in 24 chance of seeing the item I want, noticing that I have a few other players in the raid to roll against, and then realizing that if I don’t get it, I have to wait another week to try again. Some RNG is good. This RNG is bad. I would much rather see each boss in our game with a much smaller, more specific loot pool, than go into a space knowing that there is a lot more gear variety, but having it be due to the fact that 5 bosses drop boots for an Assault Warrior that are just as good for an Assault Engineer. These giant tables are most prevalent in our raids, but I will be making some adjustments in adventures and dungeons as well.
Shared Tables: Although not quite as prevalent, there are a number of points where some of you may have noticed shared loot across minibosses. Although I can see some merit (an individual table for every miniboss in Datascape is a bit much), I am still looking to mix the loot up a bit more than what we have now, as well as offer some other non-equippable item incentives to keep the tables fresh.
Class Piece Tokens (Raid Only)
This is a point that I want to clarify a bit more, as I feel that a lot of you are slightly confused as to what exactly I was referring to with these. With the new layout, I am looking to make class-specific items the most potent, desirable items in the raids. As such, I want to make them difficult to acquire, but not impossible. The intent with these tokens is to have a set number (1-2) of them drop from raid bosses specifically (not minibosses). Upon receiving these tokens, players be able to turn them in directly for a piece of gear relevant to their class. Alongside these tokens, players will still be obtaining less potent gear directly from the bosses they kill, as to not completely remove the element of surprise/RNG. Right now the intended breakdown is as follows:
Heavy (Warrior/Engineer)
Head
Shoulders
Chest
Legs
Hands
Feet
Medium (Medic/Stalker)
Head
Shoulders
Chest
Legs
Hands
Feet
Light (Spellslinger/Esper)
Head
Shoulders
Chest
Legs
Hands
Feet
This change will also help to cut down on clutter considerably (we’re effectively condensing 72 items into 18), and will increase the likelihood of raids being able to consistently see usable drops.
Class-Specific Pieces (Raid Only)As it stands, we have class-specific raid drops with their own unique appearances, which are otherwise no better than a majority of the other gear that is dropping in the same space. Therefore, we thought it would be nice to make these pieces stand out to players a bit more, and give you a little something extra to strive for. So, aside from their new token association, these pieces will be bumped up to become the most powerful tiers of gear in their respective raids, and will also be modified to provide a number of guaranteed Omni slots.
Phew. Alright, well with all that said, I do just want to say that all of these changes are being done with you, the players, in mind.  As such, I am hoping for a lot of feedback, and will do my best to check back periodically to respond where I can.
 	
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			Sounds great! Lets hope the implementation is just as promesing! :)	
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will also be modified to provide a number of guaranteed Omni slots
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This part is the part I am currently interested in and a slightly bit confused about. Only omni slots or partially omni slots? (easiest question you'll probably have to answer, it's either 1 or the other.)
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			is this planed for drop 3?	
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			Will the buff to set drops be retroactive? Maybe not the rune slots, but I'd rather not have to re-acquire the entire set I've spent the last two months accumulating all over again.	
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I should also note that, with these changes, the intent is not to phase out crafting. If a tie-in is made with dungeons and raids, requiring participation in order to craft certain items, then yes, these should certainly be just as powerful as the items that drop alongside said ingredients or schematics. For the crafted items that do not require any sort of group coordination or gameplay, however, then it should be expected that they are less potent than what can be obtained in some of the game’s hardest content.
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So where does this put research gear, especially the first four tiers?  Seeing as some of the pieces can take 54 days to unlock, it seems like a waste of time if adventure drops will outclass them completely.
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I find the changes to be pretty good and welcome the idea as often we are the point that we get something and nobody really wants it and yes the class sets being turned into tokens is also great as it means less items going to waste. The "carrot" is a part this game has been lacking in and cleaning this up will go a long way, mind you some people won't like farming gear again.A point of feedback you might or might not be able to answer, with pieces being added that are more powerful does this not merit that the encounters should be looked at again (raid wise)? As essentially progression will be made easier and this pretty much does mean going back into GA if you're in DS or soon to get there.  My concern is that somethings might become too easy but hands might be tied as you don't want to bump up the HP values of bosses to negatively effect people that have already cleared it.
 
Is this something that was taken into account regards the re-balancing and bumping of stats in GA gear? 
 
 
A final addition where do these new GA weapon patterns fit in in terms of item power and what are the plans behind crafting them? Do they require raid reagents or just plans?	
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Will the buff to set drops be retroactive? Maybe not the rune slots, but I'd rather not have to re-acquire the entire set I've spent the last two months accumulating all over again.
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So where does this put research gear, especially the first four tiers?  Seeing as some of the pieces can take 54 days to unlock, it seems like a waste of time if adventure drops will outclass them completely.
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			For those class tokens that drop,do we roll on them or does everyone get it for the boss kill.in swtor we had the tokens tied to quest to kill raid bosses.kill the boss,turn in the quest,and get your raid tokens.so plz explain how that will work in wildstar.	
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For those class tokens that drop,do we roll on them or does everyone get it for the boss kill.in swtor we had the tokens tied to quest to kill raid bosses.kill the boss,turn in the quest,and get your raid tokens.so plz explain how that will work in wildstar.
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			I thought he said tokens that you can trade in to a vendor on the live stream O.o. I could be mistaken	
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Class-Specific Pieces (Raid Only)As it stands, we have class-specific raid drops with their own unique appearances, which are otherwise no better than a majority of the other gear that is dropping in the same space. Therefore, we thought it would be nice to make these pieces stand out to players a bit more, and give you a little something extra to strive for. So, aside from their new token association, these pieces will be bumped up to become the most powerful tiers of gear in their respective raids, and will also be modified to provide a number of guaranteed Omni slots.
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Crafting (or more specifically, crafters) seem to be getting a bit of the shaft here. Why can the items not be as potent as raid items without participation in the raid? I mean, that's effectively phasing our crafting… throwing a bone to crafters to make one or two BiS items but ONLY if they're raiding doesn't seem right.
 
Can't there be some type of crafting progression that would let non-raiders (dedicated crafters who may not be raiding) make these powerful items to supply raiders that want them?  Please don't let crafting just be another time and money sink… make it a viable alternative gear progression path outside of raiding. Remember there's supposed to be content outside of raids? That really hasn't been delivered on (though the Defile looks promising!)
 
Edit: And i think everyone has read my thread about concern over the direction of tokenizing itemization.	
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Are there any plans to add some kind of set boni to the class sets? It seems like the easiest solution to differentiate them from the normal gear, and being used to tier sets from so many other games I´m kind of missing them here in Wildstar.
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			Is this just PVE gear?. What about PVP? Deflect shouldn't be on dps gear.	
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I thought he said tokens that you can trade in to a vendor on the live stream O.o. I could be mistaken
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			What is being done about Attack Power, Brutality (or whatever stat gives you AP), and Strikethrough Rating (up to soft cap) being an order of magnitude better than any other stat for DPS?	
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Is this just PVE gear?. What about PVP? Deflect shouldn't be on dps gear.
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Given the number of changes that are required here, the most efficient solution is likely going to be that we release brand new gear into these spaces. We are retiring a large number of items as it is, and worry that making adjustments to existing gear could end up nerfing/buffing too many players too randomly and unpredictably, due to changes in item level and class/role intention. We do not want you to feel as though time in the spaces has been wasted, however, so we are also looking into viable means of compensating players that have already dedicated a fair amount of time here.
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@Alfalfa
 
Basically, they're making old gear stop dropping (making them collector's items), and putting new optimized gear on the loot tables instead.  They're not completely invalidating all existing gear, they're just patching in new stuff that may or may not be better than what you're currently using on a case by case basis up until raid gear, and ultimately better from raids.
 
I don't think they're changing any existing gear.  Think of it like a new raid with all new gear.	
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yea i completly understand that, but my main concern is especialy for the set pieces, it is clearly stated that for those particular items the stats and rune slots effectiveness will increase. In that case wasting the time of those who already aquiered some.
 
For other raid drops I kinda care less about them becoming slightly beter or worse than the new gears that will replace them in the loot tables	
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I saw someone ask basically the same question, but I will ask again.  Are there to be any changes made to how the primary stats contribute to our overall dps?  As an example, on my esper I only care about moxie (contributes toward AP) and AP itself.  The contribution that finesse (contributes toward crit %) makes to my overall dps is very small.  Allowing us to see tangible benefits from stats other than the one that contributes directly to AP, will not only increase build diversity, it will also increase the value of rune slots other than those that add directly to AP (although I understand that different rune options are already being added to each element as a part of the rune update).
 
It would be nice to see some gear strategies out there other than stack AP as high as you can.
 
I apologize in advance if this question has been answered somewhere, and I missed it.	
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Are there any plans to add some kind of set boni to the class sets? It seems like the easiest solution to differentiate them from the normal gear, and being used to tier sets from so many other games I´m kind of missing them here in Wildstar.
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what are the chances you can just overhaul stats period?  why can't the stats be normalized?  esper/SS get assault power from either moxie or finesse, stalker/medic get it from tech, warrior/engi get it from brutality.  this not only helps itemization, but it also works out lore-wise.
 
support power is at least somewhat normalized.  stats are the same for healers as far as what gives support power, but tanks are slightly skewed.
 
none of it makes sense and it's so ridiculously inconsistent....	
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Are we taking the new power cores into consideration here?
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^
Rune-Sets are nice but a bonus specifically for your class... to boost some of your unique abilities would be amazing.
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Players will also start to notice more of a Grit presence in order to better prepare them for future challenges.
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I hope the item specials stay included with maybe something of an overhaul alongside these changes. It's kind of hard to get overly excited about swapping out your boots of moxie(lots) for slippers of moxie(more) for the umpteenth time in a row. That was one of the things that pretty much killed WoW for me when each and every item upgrade was identical to the one from two days ago and still the same a year later aside from a name no one bothers to remember.
An upgrade to the level 47 light runspeed boots would be nice as well, the only available lvl 50's are unbelievably bad or loaded with pvp stats :P .	
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			Is there any chance that you will go back and reivisit how items drop in Adventures?  As a Stalker, currenly there are next to no upgrades in Veteran Dungeons for me, so I have been running War of the Wilds over and over and over and over and seen three Epic pieces drop ever (none of which - of course - were the tank claws or medium DPS shoulders).  I couldn't tell you how many times I have gotten a Gold medal in War of the Wilds and seen only Blue quality items drop.  Almost every run I do is Gold, even with guild.  It feels defeating.  I understood the changes for Veteran Dungeons where getting Gold requires a very intense amount of skill and knowledge.  Adventures are rather easy when it comes to obtaining Silver and Gold, and most people still attempt their Gold strategies (none of which are all that difficult) regardless of the loot changes because you get more loot.  Putting so much effort into trying to get through one of the only places that has upgrades for me to yield nothing every time is so tiring that I'm about ready to give up.  Please consider making Gold Adventures a guaranteed epic drop again, especially if your loot changes are raid-centric as you've made it sound, given that the largest majority of your player base isn't raiding.	
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Crafting (or more specifically, crafters) seem to be getting a bit of the shaft here. Why can the items not be as potent as raid items without participation in the raid? I mean, that's effectively phasing our crafting… throwing a bone to crafters to make one or two BiS items but ONLY if they're raiding doesn't seem right.
 
Can't there be some type of crafting progression that would let non-raiders (dedicated crafters who may not be raiding) make these powerful items to supply raiders that want them?  Please don't let crafting just be another time and money sink… make it a viable alternative gear progression path outside of raiding. Remember there's supposed to be content outside of raids? That really hasn't been delivered on (though the Defile looks promising!)
 
Edit: And i think everyone has read my thread about concern over the direction of tokenizing itemization.
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Hmm this look like it has the potential to be another gating mechanic (maybe a tin foil hat moment as well)
 
To explain, there are bosses in other MMO's that deal an un-interruptable raid wide damage that requires players to have x health in order to survive.  So we have raiders swapping in PvP or Tank gear, re-runing, you name it to try and hit these targets.  This in turn makes any DPS/HPS checks more difficult to achieve and voila you have another gate.
 
Other than that I actually like these "planned" changes :)
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The reason behind crafted gear being worse than raid gear should be obvious. As in any mmorpg in the world, you will need to do more difficult content to get better gear... ofcourse this includes crafting aswell. If you want to be able to craft the best crafted thingys in the game. You need to do the most difficult content in the game to craft it.
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There may as well not be a crafting system if it's just going to end up another line of busy work with a time and gold sink. It's entirely irrelevant that "it's a theme park" and there can and should be a design where a dedicated crafter can make things as good or better then item drops.
 
Carbine stood on their head to prmise elder game progression for solo, small group and raids… and you'd be heard pressed to see any of that besides raids. Crafting should be one avenue for fulfill that promise at least for itemization.
Also, tokens are dumb and lazy as I've demonstrated at length in my other thread. I'd love to hear an explanation why "no tokens" were a good idea for 9 years of development, but 3 months after, they are.
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			too late..	
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			I don't quite understand what the removal of certain items will mean. The items we've already obtained will be taken away and we're given compensation for said item? I'm a bit skeptical to this, but if you feel it's absolutely necessary to remove the items entirely from the game and from players. 	
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Really excited to see these changes, as the current situation makes loot such a depressing part of a kill.
 
One suggestion though: Rune sets. Make part of entering Datascape (and beyond) that Datascape has unique rune sets available, and so on with new content. Give the people in the hardest content more than just the same, and thus boring rune sets that they are constantly jigging around (yes, I realise that elder rune sets are supposed to fill this gap, but that's only because there are more sockets available that these become viable. In principle, anyone can equip these, not just the best raiders).	
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While you're at it, how about throwing in some diverse looking items? I find myself repeating more and more how every warrior is running around with 1 of 2 different 2 handers 1 being 1800 and the other being 1500 rated weapon, unless of course you got the 1 of 2 pve weapons meteor shard? and the raid weapon...
 
come on 3 realistically ..wait and I do apologize for my sarcasm but it just comes to me, 2 2 hand swords the meteor shard and the 1500 weap, unless you raid or pay for your 1800 rating.
 
 
Just because you're boosting brutality to be appealing doesn't mean I don't want a sword with less brutality and a high crit stat...what if I want to build a crit build...Runes aren't going to push me there combined with amps as a warrior I'm not gonna hit the magnificient 60% crit rating or higher.. like engineers do.
 
What If I want a crit bonus build with mediocre Brut, cant you guys make this happen or is every item gonna be copy paste stats for safe zone developing?
 
By the way did I mention the amount of different models is pathetic, especially a slap in the face between Support/Assault Gear looking exactly the same per class via pvp vendor, I know you didn't mention pvp
in your post but I cannot assume that it's any different with raiding pve assault/support class specific gear, and if it is UU TEE EFF.
 
Btw, I'm sure at this point people aren't really trippin off of the other guy in the raid, it's more about what your loot table for that mob provides thats concerning, how many items for my class, how many unique items
how many items for my class are much rarer and more unique that make me and others want to keep coming back to this specific boss beyond the just need to gear up, getting more than geared up and BAM THAT FKN RARE SUPER COOL ITEM DROPPED AND IM DAMN STOKED YESSSSSSS WILDSTAR I LOVE THIS GAME.	
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yes, we realize that brutality and strikethrough are not all that attractive to healers
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			You had me at healing gear being done with brutality.	
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The question is WHEN
WHEN is the question...
 
 
SOON is the answer.	
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There may as well not be a crafting system if it's just going to end up another line of busy work with a time and gold sink. It's entirely irrelevant that "it's a theme park" and there can and should be a design where a dedicated crafter can make things as good or better then item drops.
 
Carbine stood on their head to prmise elder game progression for solo, small group and raids… and you'd be heard pressed to see any of that besides raids. Crafting should be one avenue for fulfill that promise at least for itemization.
Also, tokens are dumb and lazy as I've demonstrated at length in my other thread. I'd love to hear an explanation why "no tokens" were a good idea for 9 years of development, but 3 months after, they are.
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Crafting as the EG vendor is a back up method of getting gear.
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They never said that.
 
 
 
I raid, and I don't care. Tokens are dumb and unnecessary unless you're trying to build a game that WildStar is not.
 
And you may need to visit Gortok's post to clear your mind about what was said about crafting itemization...
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If you raid and are against it you're simply not getting enough loot to hand out, that simple really. 
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I don't think you understand Lethality's Wildstar mentality.  -_-
Feel free to disagree with him (I do, a lot), but these "you think like this only because ******" just doesn't cut it in his case.
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Ah, now we're talking.
Much better arguments than "if you had trait X, you would definitely have opinion Y". :P
 
By the way, I'm all for tokens. I'm just against arguing with pure ad hominem.	
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StatsAlthough not the case with every piece of gear, we have noticed a large number of items that are either split in their class prioritization, or contain stats that just aren’t all that beneficial to the intended roles (yes, we realize that brutality and strikethrough are not all that attractive to healers). Our intent here is to go through every drop and ensure that it is geared towards a specific class and role (there may still be some generalities – heavy tank armor, melee dps accessories, healing accessories, etc), and that all stats present are useful. Players will also start to notice more of a Grit presence in order to better prepare them for future challenges
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I find the changes to be pretty good and welcome the idea as often we are the point that we get something and nobody really wants it and yes the class sets being turned into tokens is also great as it means less items going to waste. The "carrot" is a part this game has been lacking in and cleaning this up will go a long way, mind you some people won't like farming gear again.
 
 
A point of feedback you might or might not be able to answer, with pieces being added that are more powerful does this not merit that the encounters should be looked at again (raid wise)? As essentially progression will be made easier and this pretty much does mean going back into GA if you're in DS or soon to get there.  My concern is that somethings might become too easy but hands might be tied as you don't want to bump up the HP values of bosses to negatively effect people that have already cleared it.
 
Is this something that was taken into account regards the re-balancing and bumping of stats in GA gear? 
 
 
A final addition where do these new GA weapon patterns fit in in terms of item power and what are the plans behind crafting them? Do they require raid reagents or just plans?
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			I want to know what will happen to all my current 'set' gear that I spent my DKP on.  Is it obsolete with the token-based 'set' gear or will it be converted to match?	
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 Its been mentioned a few times that the gear would naturally nerf the hardcore content for more players pass through the raids... probably to get closer to projected raid quotas im assuming this is the first wave of it. So going back and aquiring the new gear from GA will help with the DS progression.
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I want to know what will happen to all my current 'set' gear that I spent my DKP on.  Is it obsolete with the token-based 'set' gear or will it be converted to match?
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			I guess I don't have enough energy to care anymore. Enjoy turning WildStar into every game.	
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Is eldar gem gear going to also increase in power?
 
If it is, will we we able to sell back any EG equipment that we currently have for a full refund so that we can buy the new updated versions?
 
Is anything going to be done about the 1800 rating pvp weapons being best in slot for many classes until Ohmna? It is currently even better than the eldar gem weapons because of the impact special.
 
Is the "impact" special on weapons either going to be nerfed, or given to all the raid weapons and eldar gems weapons that currently do not have it?	
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Alright, so I'm not gonna bother to attempt to qoute some of the responses since, well, there's a lot of them, but I think I did a pretty good job of pulling all the individual points I need to address. Soooo here goes:
 
In its current state, research gear will be more on-par with a number of Veteran Dungeon drops. As an end-game feature that does require a fairly significant time investment, I would say that it warrants surpassing some of the "entry-level" end-game gear (aka Adventure gear). However, as the challenge associated with such a system does not really rival that of Veteran Dungeons, you should still expect to find a large number of items in these spaces that are more potent than what can be crafted.
Regarding crafting gear, however, there are schematic drops in Genetic Archives that will allow players to craft items that are comparable to a number of items that drop from the space. Going with what I mentioned before, given their participation in the raid, these do warrant a comparable power level.
Before any of these changes go live, we will be checking to see what sort of an effect they have on raid difficulty. If it opens up access a bit more to players that have dedicated time to gearing up, then that's fine. However, we have no intention of releasing new gear that would just completely invalidate any and all raid difficulty that is currently in place.
With these changes, the intent is to release brand new gear into the affected spaces, with no effect on any gear that players have already obtained. When I mentioned compensation, it was more along the lines of easing the transition over to this new gear rather than simply taking away everything you had and giving you something else. Again, I do need to see what I can viably accomplish (in regards to compensation) on my end before making any sort of promises though.
Given the nature of these changes, I may be able to swing simply update the class sets without any sort of randomization or unintended effect. As such, it is something that I will certainly look into for consideration, but again must refrain from making a definite promise.
When it comes to class tokens, much like the current class pieces, they will be rolled on by the group. The intent is to make gearing a bit easier, but not a cakewalk :-P
Although I'm going to refrain from going into any more detail on this particular subject in this thread, I will say that PvP gear will be getting a look at. As the PvE changes are the big thing on my plate for the time being though, I do not really have any more info to provide.
In regards to stat changes, again, I can't really provide too much detail as it does technically not fall under itemization's jurisdiction. With the intended changes, however, I am looking to take the current state of stats into consideration, as well as any future adjustments that might be made, as to not have done most of this for nothing.
I do not intend to remove item specials from gear. When these changes go live, you should still see them mixed in on a number of drops.
There will be new rune sets at some point in the future, but sadly not with these changes.
As much as I would love to introduce some new item apperances on a regular basis, this is also sadly out of my control. I have some modeling experience, but yea, I'm pretty sure you don't want to see anything I can make show up in-game. We do, however, have some new armor and weapons goign live with Protogames so there is that to look forward to  :-D
Lastly, in hopes of clearing up a bit more confusion, I want to include an intended layout of gear for end-game spaces. As it stands, this is the intent for gear progression, but there may be a few tweaks during implentation:
Adventures:
Tier 0           Dungeons:
Tier 1           Tier 1                Protogames:
Tier 2                Tier 2                  Genetic Archives:
     Tier 3                  Tier 3
            Tier 4                           Datascape:
            Tier 5                           Tier 5
                            Tier 6
                            Tier 7
 
With this, I am hoping to create enough overlap to transition from one tier of content to the next, without dealing with huge jumps in gear potency. At the same time, I also want to ensure that players are not jumping past certain spaces simply because they lucked out on drops in easier spaces, or they simply grinded them into the grounded.	
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 We do not want you to feel as though time in the spaces has been wasted, however, so we are also looking into viable means of compensating players that have already dedicated a fair amount of time here.
                
 
How will these changes transfer over to the Gem vendor? On the stream you mentioned an issue that I'm all to familiar with wherein the armor available to me (a DPS warrior) on the gem vendor is almost entirely engineer gear. As of now I've spent enough time in GA to unlock all the GA items on the gem vendor. Killed the first floor maybe 5 times each, prototypes/phagemaw maybe 3 times. I still do not have a single usable drop to show for it (I use 2 items from gem vendor though, gadget and weapon). I think I qualify as having spent a fair amount of time there.
 
This is in large part because I have not seen a single class restricted DPS warrior item (even assigned to fellow raiders), and also in part because many items are not upgrades (side grades at best). You are addressing these problems for the future, which is good. However, I'd like to know how the gem vendor will help me out now. 	
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itemization for PvP gear is fine, only change they could consider is it giving you a larger health pool.
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			Soo correct me if I'm mistaken. If i have drops from GA now, and their stats change, it won't be retroactive to the ones I have? Essentially making what I've earned and runed a lesser version of what will be available in the future?	
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In its current state, research gear will be more on-par with a number of Veteran Dungeon drops. As an end-game feature that does require a fairly significant time investment, I would say that it warrants surpassing some of the "entry-level" end-game gear (aka Adventure gear). However, as the challenge associated with such a system does not really rival that of Veteran Dungeons, you should still expect to find a large number of items in these spaces that are more potent than what can be crafted.
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Alright, so I'm not gonna bother to attempt to qoute some of the responses since, well, there's a lot of them, but I think I did a pretty good job of pulling all the individual points I need to address. Soooo here goes:
 
In its current state, research gear will be more on-par with a number of Veteran Dungeon drops. As an end-game feature that does require a fairly significant time investment, I would say that it warrants surpassing some of the "entry-level" end-game gear (aka Adventure gear). However, as the challenge associated with such a system does not really rival that of Veteran Dungeons, you should still expect to find a large number of items in these spaces that are more potent than what can be crafted.
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So it sounds like you want crafting research to get you gear of quality approximately Tier 1.5.  If that's the case, then once ProtoGames is out, you can either run crafting dailies for two full months and spend probably 25+ plat worth of materials and components, *or* you can just pug Vet ProtoGames and get better gear immediately?  Sure, ProtoGames is probably more difficult, but is a two month time investment plus 3-4 CREDD worth of monetary investment *really* worth that little?
 
Like, if that's the case then I'll just stop crafting right now.  The cost/benefit ratio is already pretty bad...
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Some of the  stats on pieces shouldn't be their tanking stats on dps gear? sure thing! fine!
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It's been pretty apparent for a while now that this will be the case. Which is unfortunate, because as you say there's a significant time and energy investment to craft high-quality gear. Of course it can be bought, but the eldan data rations put a limit on what can be made.
 
For me, I've moved on to other activities in game. Crafting is fun, but crafting pointless things isn't.
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Hopefully they wont make crafting gear useless between voucher schematics and raid schematics.
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			Keep up the changes comings guys :)	
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The Tier 5 schematics that are going to drop in GA are off of the tech tree and in their own independent node.  You don't need to mess with tiers one through four in order to learn the tier five.  So if the first four tiers aren't useful in their own right then there's little point in messing with the whole research system.  You won't even need to mess with eldan data fragments.  Ironically, Technologist Research may be one of the few worth investing in when its implemented, which could happen simultaneously with the gutting of the other researches.
 
 
Crafted gear being BiS depends heavily on getting near perfect runes, which can take hundreds of crafts, so if that only cost you a couple of plat then you were extremely lucky (especially considering the cost of dual hybrids).  The rune changes alone will do a lot to reduce the relative power of crafted gear, both in limiting the rune slots they can get and allowing people to improve the runes of dropped gear without needing to obtain the drop again. 
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			Going to gear up for those Single player dungeons. Rofl.	
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ie crafting
 
(disclaimer: numbers in this post probably need to be tweaked, tested, tweaked again, tested again, and then completely rerolled)
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add 10 man mobs on 1 hour(ish) timers that drop crafting items.
create 1 or 2 pieces of epic crafted gear (per craft) that require 15-20 of these new crafting drops.
make these new pieces of gear on par with GA gear.
 
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add platinum level objectives to dungeons.
add crafting drops for platinum level rewards for dungeons.
create 1 or 2 pieces of epic crafted gear (per craft) that require 10 of these new crafting drops.
make these new pieces of gear on par with DS gear.
 
TLDR: just make 1 or 2 pieces of crafted gear that are on par with raid gear, but do not require raid zone participation.
 
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the only issue I can see for this is that everyone will be specialized to maximize that one piece of gear .. so maybe there is a way to make it so that those pieces of gear are not effected by specialization?
 
alternately, make it so that each person can only ever learn 1 pattern of GA level gear and 1 pattern of DS level gear. Once they learn one they are completely incapable from ever changing that choice.	
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Alright, so I'm not gonna bother to attempt to qoute some of the responses since, well, there's a lot of them, but I think I did a pretty good job of pulling all the individual points I need to address. Soooo here goes:
 
In its current state, research gear will be more on-par with a number of Veteran Dungeon drops. As an end-game feature that does require a fairly significant time investment, I would say that it warrants surpassing some of the "entry-level" end-game gear (aka Adventure gear). However, as the challenge associated with such a system does not really rival that of Veteran Dungeons, you should still expect to find a large number of items in these spaces that are more potent than what can be crafted.
Regarding crafting gear, however, there are schematic drops in Genetic Archives that will allow players to craft items that are comparable to a number of items that drop from the space. Going with what I mentioned before, given their participation in the raid, these do warrant a comparable power level.
Before any of these changes go live, we will be checking to see what sort of an effect they have on raid difficulty. If it opens up access a bit more to players that have dedicated time to gearing up, then that's fine. However, we have no intention of releasing new gear that would just completely invalidate any and all raid difficulty that is currently in place.
With these changes, the intent is to release brand new gear into the affected spaces, with no effect on any gear that players have already obtained. When I mentioned compensation, it was more along the lines of easing the transition over to this new gear rather than simply taking away everything you had and giving you something else. Again, I do need to see what I can viably accomplish (in regards to compensation) on my end before making any sort of promises though.
Given the nature of these changes, I may be able to swing simply update the class sets without any sort of randomization or unintended effect. As such, it is something that I will certainly look into for consideration, but again must refrain from making a definite promise.
When it comes to class tokens, much like the current class pieces, they will be rolled on by the group. The intent is to make gearing a bit easier, but not a cakewalk :-P
Although I'm going to refrain from going into any more detail on this particular subject in this thread, I will say that PvP gear will be getting a look at. As the PvE changes are the big thing on my plate for the time being though, I do not really have any more info to provide.
In regards to stat changes, again, I can't really provide too much detail as it does technically not fall under itemization's jurisdiction. With the intended changes, however, I am looking to take the current state of stats into consideration, as well as any future adjustments that might be made, as to not have done most of this for nothing.
I do not intend to remove item specials from gear. When these changes go live, you should still see them mixed in on a number of drops.
There will be new rune sets at some point in the future, but sadly not with these changes.
As much as I would love to introduce some new item apperances on a regular basis, this is also sadly out of my control. I have some modeling experience, but yea, I'm pretty sure you don't want to see anything I can make show up in-game. We do, however, have some new armor and weapons goign live with Protogames so there is that to look forward to  :-D
Lastly, in hopes of clearing up a bit more confusion, I want to include an intended layout of gear for end-game spaces. As it stands, this is the intent for gear progression, but there may be a few tweaks during implentation:
Adventures:
Tier 0           Dungeons:
Tier 1           Tier 1                Protogames:
Tier 2                Tier 2                  Genetic Archives:
     Tier 3                  Tier 3
            Tier 4                           Datascape:
            Tier 5                           Tier 5
                            Tier 6
                            Tier 7
 
With this, I am hoping to create enough overlap to transition from one tier of content to the next, without dealing with huge jumps in gear potency. At the same time, I also want to ensure that players are not jumping past certain spaces simply because they lucked out on drops in easier spaces, or they simply grinded them into the grounded.
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EDIT: Oh, it was necromance! Of course. Should have checked the date. (facepalms) Welp, I still took the time to write this so...uh...something or other!
 
I have some problems with these ideas. Anything I don't mention is probably alright on my book and I don't see any problems with it. 
Basically, if I'm not complaining about it, it's because I agree with the change right now.
 
-Gear Progression
 
I don't like that you are going head on into the "raid or bust" direction. You are not only forcing crafters to participate in them, you are also screwing over soloers and small-groupies progression after reaching level 50. Don't they deserve to progress past level 50 as much as raiders? If your answer is "No, because raids are much more difficult!" then I will point out that raids are more difficult than any other content because the developers insist on making it the most difficult content. Imagine you were playing a game that, for 50 levels, told you and actively allowed you to progress your character only via raids, if you wished to. How would you, raiders, feel if that game suddenly said "Nope! Raids are a no go from now on!" at level 50? What if the only means of progressing your character (getting new gear, more stats, becoming more powerful, etc) was to do forced solo content? Or crafting BoP gear? Or gathering? Wouldn't you be pissed off that during 50 levels the game implied your playstyle was acceptable only to throw it off the window when reaching endgame? I think you would be pissed off. I would be.
 
Carbine, you should add options for the soloers and crafters. Give them a system so they can progress as much as raiders. I suggest using tokens (we already have the useless, useless 'Elder Points' at level cap that only reward people who do dungeons/raids). Give them more Omnicore-like solo dungeons. Or preferably make content that scales with the ammount of players. Heck, give greater rewards if you have more people, if you want to. But give them options.
 
-Class Piece Tokens (Raid Only) and Class-Specific Pieces (Raid Only)
 
I really like the idea of allowing players to acquire gear via tokens instead of only having to relly on the Random Number Gods. I approve. What I don't like is that your plan is to do this only for raids rather than for all content, while also (apparently) not letting us get the best gear this way. I know you really, -really- want players to do your raids, but most of us won't bother ever. Stop bribing us with the promise of "this is the only way to progress". It will only make us bitter that we had to do content we don't like.	
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@Ildur
 
There is, and will continue to be progression for soloers too, you just can't expect it to be the same quality gear as the most recent raid content.  It would be a tremendous amount of work to create solo encounters difficult enough to justify that kind of loot without making a specific version adjusted for the bleeding edge capabilities of every class.
 
By its very nature, the solo content is the easiest content in the game so that every class has equal opportunity to complete it.  Content is tiered by difficulty, obviously, and solo content just happens to be at the bottom of that particular totem pole for reasons that include, but are not limited to "because it was designed to be".
 
I lament the ease with which you can solo level in modern MMOs because it is an unrealistic portrayal of the amount of cooperative play they feature due to their very nature as a massive multiplayer game.	
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