G12 and Heroic Raid Reward Changes [MEGA]

"TyloRen;d-173288" wrote:
DEV POST

"CG_SBCrumb;d-173286" wrote:

This gear inflow was far beyond our original intent, and without changes would have driven a gap between the top 0.1% of players and the rest of the game that would have been impossible to close. It would have caused us to be unable to keep rewards and incentives balanced across gear levels in the long run. However, between the difficulty of the Raid, the changes to on-damage effects in Phases 3 & 4, the changes to the Expose mechanic, we decided to leave the rewards in as implemented until G12+ was ready, out of respect for the massive investment players made into their Sith Raid teams at launch. Our first pass at changing raid rewards was not well-received, further confirming that changes could only be made when we were ready to introduce a new, exclusive reward.

DEV POST

I guess I don't understand how this change addresses this problem? People who've been clearing this raid for 3 months now have a huge stockpile of left-side 'old' G12 gear, and anyone coming into HSTR will be unable to ever catch up with them short of finishing top 10 in their guild for a 'chance' (lol) at one piece. I don't understand how turning off the gear tap at this point does anything other than exacerbate the gap between the high end guilds and everyone else. If you were uncomfortable with the old rewards structure making G12 pieces too trivial, the time to address that was 3 months ago. This change is pretty far from equitable, given those G12 pieces are now going to be trivial for just some of the player base

This seems similar to the pre-crafting issues from a few years ago - people who got in on the ground floor are advantaged and everyone else can deal with being on the back foot forever. I have no idea why parity and equality of opportunity are not priorities in designing this game.