G12 and Heroic Raid Reward Changes [MEGA]

This is utter junk. I created an account entirely to respond to this post. First off, lets talk about stuff that wasn't addressed at all. How about the lower tiers? The heroic doesn't need that many changes compared to... oh wait, EVERY OTHER TIER. Or how about the fix to raid rewards from before, where you removed the challenge gear and upped the tokens? Those were preferable. But now, nope, let's ignore all those other issues to bring you stuff no one wants! Literally, the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to this game would be 6* and 7* mods, and the second worst thing is increasing gear tiers. Adding two new slots, which are by your own admittance ridiculously overpowered, and calling it content is flat out stupid.

Next, let's address your hypocrisy. "...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".

How is adding ridiculously overpowered gear available to the top 0.1% of the players not driving a gap? I'm completely missing whatever you think qualifies for logic here. 'We should stop giving out g12 gear because it will make the people who can do Heroic Sith too strong, and instead, lets give out g12+ gear, which is even better!!!'

In fact, not only do you blatantly ignore one of your reasons, you proceed to make it even worse. The removal of the chance for fully crafted gear from ranks 11-50 means that ... oh wait, the top 20% of that .1% get even strong faster than everyone else! Good job, geniuses. You fail at basic math (and economics, I suppose. Rich get richer - faster - and the poor get poorer)

Yet another bit of poor planning is the equalization of all ranks 21-50 in terms of gear... but not in terms of shards or currency. That is just awful planning based upon your stated goals for what the HSith raid really is. So far, you have done a really damn good job of making this the absolute hardest content in the game. You've made it so there's absolutely no way to solo it, no way to cheese it, and no way for a strong top 10 carry the guild through it. That's all good (well, if you're willing to put in time and effort to progress, which HSith guilds clearly are).

The problem this creates with your new reward scheme is it is blatantly against your stated ideals. Goal #3 is to "To reward the effort of top performers, while preserving an incentive for lower-ranking players to advance". I don't think you understand the concept of advancing. You are LIMITING the top ranked spots. Let me paint you an example. You have 20 people in your high-end HSith guild, and they all have some really really good teams. They all have a full JTR team for p1, all have a Wampa/hermit team for p2, all have the 'chex mix' team for p3, and all have a fully kitted out Nightsister team for p4. All of them take the time and good RNG on their runs, and put out the same damage. Hey guess what, you just shafted 10 of them. The top 10, which literally (in this example) did zero more damage than the 10 below them, all have significantly increased gear. MASSIVELY so, if what you're saying about g12+ gear is true.

This isn't HAAT, where you can have one or 2 people do the work and get guaranteed top scores. This is HSITH, which is quite literally the most massive undertaking that any guild has had to do. 20 people with absolute best Chex Mix teams potentially won't even be able to fully kill phase 3. This is a massive guild-wide undertaking which requires tons and tons of people building good teams and gearing them, with zetas and absolute end-game gear. And yet 10 people can have crafted pieces, the rest can go screw off? How are you even justifying this to yourself, it's nonsensical.

And again, the concept of progress. So lets say we have someone who's hovering around rank 40 of 50 in the guild in terms of GP, and has a really good chex mix team THAT THE GUILD NEEDS TO KILL p3 (because it's an 'all hands on deck' phase. How can they 'improve' compared to the guy who takes 3rd who has the same team, JTR, and a NS team. Even if he got the exact same teams, and did just as much damage.... well guess what, if he goes up, then someone else has to go down. And then, taken to it's logical conclusion, when everyone has the same teams geared.... you're going to shaft 80% of the guild. This is not advancement, this is punishment. OH, and lets not forget that for ranking 40th in the raid, they can't get full gear, and get gear slower than everyone in the top 20, much less top 10 or top 3, meaning they can't catch up. HSith, for the majority of it's phases, actually really NEEDS g12 gear. Having the multi-tool g12 piece on R2, Resistance Trooper, and BB8 is almost necessary to get the full potential damage. Nerfing the guild's access to those pieces drastically weakens the entire guild.

Is this a blatant supply cut so that people will be forced to buy via crystals? Is that what this is? A thinly veiled attempt to punish those not will to pay real money? Because at this point it really seems so.

There are other issues of course, but the main one that comes to mind is the fact you're erasing the gear reward tiers from 21-50, but keeping the shards and the tokens scaled. Why is this different from HAAT. Can't we all get Traya shards? I really can't think of any logical reason to do so. If you're equalizing gear for those tiers, why not the rest. We've already established that HSith itself is something that requires the participation of near everyone. After all, Traya doesn't seem to have many uses for the raid according to the game testers, so why tier it. It doesn't follow in line with your stated goals.

Oh and for the love of god, remove the challenge gear. It's utterly ridiculous that you were apologetic when you reverted to the old reward system and had to put in the challenge gear, but now won't fix it here. Stop messing around and fix the things that are broken instead of breaking things by adding stuff.