Despite having SSX in my possession, I've been taking intermittent turns between that game and other things, mostly in order to give my fingers a rest from doing insane goddamn runs over and over. The main game I keep returning to is The Old Republic, a game which many have had complaints about while I've been mostly alright with. The experience has been fun as hell, and there are a ton of positives about that game. Last night, unfortunately, I ran into one problem that just pisses me off a little more than I care for.

That problem is the normal Operations. For those not in the know, Old Republic breaks its instances down into two groups: Flashpoints (your normal instances) and Operations (raids). Flashpoints come in the normal and hard mode varieties, offering separate loot tables for each. Each hard mode Flashpoint drops one piece of Columi gear from the end boss, the second best tier set in the game. Meanwhile, the raids come in three different varieties: normal, hard, and nightmare. The Hard and Nightmare modes drop the best tier set in the game, Rakata. Meanwhile, the normal mode drops Columi and Tionese (Tionese being the third best set in the game by most considerations). This sounds all fine and dandy...until you look at the actual statistics of it as well as how goddamn infuriating it is that such a flawed design can happen with raids.

That's not to say that flawed design choices don't exist elsewhere in the game. However, the way looting works in raids is kind of fucking stupid. In Hard and Nightmare, you can either flat-out roll for the gear like you would any other instance...or I'm assuming you can set up master looter. Maybe not. I haven't seen it happen once. However, in normal mode raids, the loot that drops...which is Columi, remember that...is automatically rolled on amongst the classes that could use said piece of gear - even if they already have that piece of gear or something better.

O_O

FUCKING REALLY? Don't get me wrong, folks: I'm already geared out in Columi and Rakata mix, so I don't need anything from the normal mode raids. I got lucky in the one Hard Mode raid that I've done so far to get a good handful of gear already, plus I've been running hard mode Flashpoints for a while. I also understand the purpose of why the normal mode raid looting system is set up this way: it helps to stop ninjas from stealing gear in PUGs. However, it creates another problem: denying people the gear that they could very much use. Moreover, why would you even BOTHER running a normal mode operation AT ALL when you KNOW you can just do a particular flashpoint at least seven times in one week...which will more than likely total the amount of time you spend in a normal operation ANYWAYS...

The math just doesn't work out, folks. It doesn't, and it's frustrating to see such poor design in a game that I personally feel is pretty damn solid for what has been released. I'm still always finding stuff to do, and I haven't gotten to do a whole lot of progression through the raids and such yet. I've got achievements, crafting, mounts, all kinds of stupid shit to keep me occupied in the game, even if all of it isn't the most important shit in the world according to the world of Old Republic.

However, how do you actually launch such a flawed raid setup and continue to let it live like this when you as a company are more than likely sitting around saying "goddamn, this is so fucking stupid, what were we thinking?"

So...last night, I did my first...and beyond getting any achievements out of them...last normal mode operation. They are pointless. There's no need for it. It's a waste of space and development time that could've gone towards...I don't know...fixing some bugs that still exist in the game.

I'm not unsubbing or anything. I just need to vent my frustrations. That's all. With the 1.2 patch on the horizon, a lot of things are changing up and being fixed. Hopefully, this is one of those things.

Until next time, piece.