Estelindis
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Posts posted by Estelindis
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@EricMusco Thanks for your detailed post. Based on your summing up of what you see as the positions on this topic, to me it sounds like you've listened to players a lot. At the same time, the conclusions you've reached don't make complete sense to me.
Let me try to frame this from a business point of view. The rep token objective, at the previous level of conquest point reward, was a loss leader. Just as loss leader products at a store help to get people in the door, the rep token objective helped to get players to log in. Some players would just log in and use a token, just like some people just go to a store and only buy the loss leader products. But more people do other stuff when logged in, just as more people buy other products from the store while they're there. Accordingly, greatly reducing the efficiency of this objective, out of a sense that it offered a disproportional reward for the time invested, can result in many other activities that offer a "more proportional" reward not being completed by players who are no longer logging in.
Isn't it okay for people to get the satisfaction of a "bargain"? Doesn't allowing this satisfaction contribute to a wider sense of happiness and goodwill, which helps to promote engagement?
I think your ideas about allowing all legacy characters to access daily areas is good, but I also think that the rep token conquest reward should be returned to something close to what it was before.
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On 3/19/2024 at 5:53 PM, ExarSun said:
Lets face it. Arcann and Koth are on this Date Night only because "yass queen" "people" in charge of these decisions have a thing for them
It's pretty offensive to put the word people in quotation marks here. You can disagree about choices made by any game dev, but suggesting that they're not really people is too far.
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So far, I've only played the date nights for Theron and Arcann.
Pros:
- They exist at all. I am grateful for any companion-focused content, but particularly for romance stuff. There's so little, anything at all extra is a boon.
- Repeatable. This is very important! I like how they're written as the kinds of things the characters could plausibly do multiple times.
- The dates are sweet and appropriate to the characters.
- Facial expressions are very good; they seem a lot subtler than some of the terrifying expressions we've seen in older cutscenes.
- Animations are also very nice.
Cons:
- Very short.
I am looking forward to the next date nights, whenever they come out; I just hope they might be a bit longer.
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27 minutes ago, Ahndri said:
Did someone have a bad math moment? This is in no way equivalent, and it's obvious that the devs just want to control how players play the game.
This gives me flashbacks to some of the dev comments when we were playtesting 6.0 crafting. One of them commented that the intended way to get materials was via gathering, not running missions. But why does what the devs intend matter more than what players enjoy doing? Is there someone out there who thinks we should all be responding "Well, I like X, but since the devs intend me to do Y I guess I'll just have less fun"?
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Thank you very much for reconsidering! No one gets everything right the first time (or sometimes the tenth, speaking for myself), but it's also true that not everyone is willing to listen to feedback or change their minds. Fair play.
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17 hours ago, Darcmoon said:
could we please get the ability to first later our cartel items that are already in collections? It’s irritating trying to look at stuff on the GTN and have page after page of items I’ve already gotten but needing to look at the all for the ones I don’t have.
Seconded. It would be incredibly useful to be able to filter all items by collection status, instead of having to individually search for each uncollected item.
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I posted about this in another livestream reaction thread that has mysteriously disappeared, but the change I'm most looking forward to from the livestream is the updated GTN. Having only one entry for each item (vs. pages of the same item) will be a huge quality of life improvement.
The mandalorian civil war story has been very well implemented, with several really great moments on Ruhnuk. Nonetheless, as a story arc, I don't find it that engaging overall. Even though I'm mainly interested in this game for the story, the new story update for 7.4 therefore doesn't quite have me fired up. I'm glad that class companions like Torian and Akaavi are getting content, at least.
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I've never been able to figure out what achievements are supposed to unlock these?
It's irritating the BW replaced the look of our original circular sign decorations. The new looks should have been in the new decorations, not the other way around. I have a Havoc Squad HQ stronghold that used to have lots of Havoc signs (aka Trooper circular sign), and the one they replaced it with is just not the same.
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Well, from the sounds of things, letting someone else (well, a different company with a lot of the same people) run the game is precisely what EA is planning to do?
Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Third-Party as BioWare Focuses on Mass Effect and Dragon Age - IGN
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While I appreciate that this topic's question can be sincerely asked, I still find it surprising. I spend some time in my job updating people, but not a whole lot. The rest is spent researching and developing content, plus testing if the things I develop work the way I thought they would. I can't imagine my communication-to-other-work ratio is massively unusual compared with the average job. Or am I just out of touch? 😅
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18 minutes ago, Amodin said:
Wait a minute - you are now going to CHARGE people to make a trade? Really? So, someone nice out there who just wants to give someone a million is going to be charged almost 10% by being nice? Are you guys seriously thinking about these changes? There is ZERO reason to do this where GTN involvement is absent. You're over-reaching your taxing on this.
Trade has been a way to avoid GTN tax for a long time. In any serious effort to sort out the market, it would have to be addressed. I think that any person nice enough to give a randomer a bunch of credits is also nice enough to cover an extra 10%.
What I'm less sure about is how these changes will account for trades that don't involve any credits.
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3 hours ago, JoeStramaglia said:
- Is there anything you wish you could do on the GTN that you cannot do currently?
- Are there any specific filters, searches, or ways of finding items you particularly like or that you wish existed?
- What kinds of information do you use to decide when to make a purchase? If you could have more information what would you want?
First off, these changes look much more promising than the quick travel fees (which I still think are needlessly punishing to new players).
Regarding suggestions, it would be great to be able to pay for items on the GTN directly from the legacy bank. This is assuming that you intend to raise the GTN price cap, something it's hard to imagine not happening with these changes. There are so many credits in the economy. If the GTN is meant to be the main trading venue in the game, it needs to be able to trade items with prices above 1b. If the personal credit limit is an impediment to that, and there are issues that discourage you from raising the personal credit limit, the ability to pay directly from the legacy bank might be a way to get around that.
I would love to be able to search for items I haven't unlocked legacy-wide in collections. Way too much time can be wasted sifting through items that are of no use or interest to me (since I generally just want them for myself, not to resell).
Being able to see price trends on items would be cool.
Thanks for your efforts.
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I fiddled with my monitor settings a bit and it's looking far better now, thankfully.
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12 hours ago, tattoohero said:
No, you don't have to stand around for 10 minutes. You are making that choice. Nothing stopping you from doing something else, like heroics, go work on something else, to go the other planet you can meditate at:?
I decided to do this at the end of doing a bunch of other activities, and then log out so I could return at the same place the next day without having to wait - only to find that it didn't work that way. But why shouldn't the timer tick down while I'm logged out? The way it is now seems like an anti-convenience measure.
In this, as in a few other parts of the game, I don't see why "how the devs intend us to play" should be more important than how we want to play. Dev intentions are all very well, but why should they impede us having fun?
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I don't remember noticing the darkness when I gave the 64-bit client a quick spin on the PTS. Maybe it was because I wasn't in spaces whose looks are extremely familiar to me, like my personal strongholds. I wouldn't say that I notice it everywhere, even now. But in spaces that I would've previously described as "atmospheric," it's now often quite hard to make out details due to the increased darkness. For the record, I'd have reasonably high settings.
Thanks to others for posting about this, as I would've questioned if I was imagining this.
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I was stunned to see that this cooldown persists over logout. Why shouldn't we be able to avoid the wait by logging out and returning the next day?
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Eric, thanks for coming into this thread and giving us some details on your thoughts. This, and every other effort to explain the intent behind your choices, is genuinely appreciated. I really mean it. I know it can be difficult, but more communication is always better. There can't be any doubt that you understand the game from angles that we can't.
I hope there's also no doubt that the reverse is true: players also understand the day-to-day life of the game from an angle that isn't always accessible to devs (though yes, I do acknowledge that plenty of ye play the game). I feel like devs can be so focused on intended play as to sometimes lose sight of actual play. I'll always remember giving feedback on 6.0 crafting during that PTS, explaining (for instance) that there aren't enough grade 11 gathering missions that give green-quality materials, and being told that running gathering missions as a main source of materials was not intended play. I was stunned by that answer.
Intended play may matter to you. But I don't think it's helpful to imagine that it matters very much to us. Gamers will game things. It is fun for us to find ways to play the game that may not have been intended but are nonetheless enjoyable to some of us (e.g. finding areas of a map we're not supposed to be able to reach). Trying to appeal to us on the grounds that you don't want a particular behaviour won't get anywhere. If people can do something, and like doing it, they're going to do it. And why not?
Of course, you don't have to appeal to us. You can make the game however you deem fit. I feel like that's largely the approach you're going for with these economic measures. You know that gamers will act in their own personal interests, not with a lofty view of the overall good of the game and the wider playerbase. You're prepared to impose credit costs, for what you believe is the good of the game's economy, so that people don't have a choice other than to pay them if they want to use a range of common functions. However, while you can impose any measure you please, players are just as free to choose not to play. The more irritating the measures are, the more players you're likely to drive away, or just make miserable (which may lead them to leave later rather than sooner, but still leave). Because the increased credit costs you're suggesting will clearly, mathematically have an outsized impact on players with few credits - and because they're imposed on quality-of-life-improving features like quick travel - said costs will feel particularly unfair and annoying. That may have enough of a QoL impact on new players that it could be bad for the game's health.
But why should it have to be a contest between players' self-interest and your intent to improve the game's economic health? Surely the greatest chance of success lies in making allies of those two principles, not opposing them. Don't make the costs you're imposing feel like punishments. Make them feel like rewards. Then you will have people actively pursuing them, rather than (entirely rationally) trying to avoid them.
You will never persuade people to stop avoiding things they don't like. The more you try to close various loopholes, the more functionality you're likely to remove from players who weren't using those various functions for game-damaging exploits, just regular play. Instead, offer us things that we do like!
Want to put costs on travelling in and out of strongholds? Well here's an idea off the top of my head. Make a series of achievements that track how much is spent on such travels across a legacy, and have those achievements give decorations as rewards. The final level should be extremely high, so that this series of achievements continues to seem rewarding for a long period of continued travel payments. Similarly, you could have quick travel achievements that track that spending, and give mounts (and other travel-themed items) as rewards. Perhaps repair costs could have something similar (I don't spend enough on repairs to know what high-repair-cost people might like most). Etc, etc, for a range of other possible costs! Then, whenever people spend credits on one of these costs, they won't just feel like they're being nickel-and-dimed. It'll have some aspect of investment in a savings account, with an eventual reward in view. Yet credits will nonetheless be removed from the economy, just as you wanted.
My suggestion is just one idea. The specifics aren't important. The key is the principle: to work out how to get what you want while enabling and encouraging gameplay, not thwarting it.
6 hours ago, EricMusco said:You're Not Hurting the Rich!
Well, we aren't trying to, not specifically. Inflation in its simplest form is about the amount of credits entering the economy against the amount coming out of it. Over time we have shot ourselves in the foot a bit as we have removed or minimized most regular credit sinks (removing training costs, etc).The goal of these changes is to introduce passive, small credit removal to the game. This way we have credit removal a bit more in line with our credit generation. Removing singular batches of credits from a subset of players would not lower credit inflation (although it is an important component of it), and could not replace this type of passive removal.
I have to reply on the quoted point specifically, because I feel like you might not be getting the main thrust of our objection here. We know that it's not about punishing the rich. We know it's not about pointing at them and saying "this bloated economy is your fault, and we're going to take away your credits to punish you!" Rather, what we are saying is that your proposed measures do not hurt the rich, but they hurt the poor.
Not hurting the rich is chiefly mentioned to contrast with the hurt we expect to happen to the poor. So it feels like you miss the point, in this case, because you comment about not wanting to hurt the rich, but you don't seem to have any comment about not wanting or trying to hurt the poor.
To avoid overly harming players with fewer credits and actively impeding their gameplay to the point where quality of life feels drastically lower for those just starting the game, repeated costs for low-to-mid-level characters should be extremely small or non-existent. In higher levels, where it is easier to generate credits, costs should be higher.
One area I'm uncertain about is repair costs. Endgame content will, of course, be played mostly by high-level characters. Now, personally, I don't play content at the cutting edge of difficulty. I play story content with a wide range of alts, and otherwise enjoy dressing up my characters and strongholds. I don't witness the scenes mentioned by other posters here, where people spend hours wiping against tough content and lose a large amount of credits in repair fees, to the point where players with fewer credits can't afford to keep playing (even though they want to). I feel bad for those players when I read about that. Don't you? Tons of dev effort goes into making that content. You want people to play it, right? It feels counter-productive to stop players with fewer credits. Would it be possible, perhaps, to make single repair costs higher, but have a daily cap on total repair costs? I don't mean something that would help people that wipe just a few times; I mean something to help people who spend a long session with many wipes. That way, you could make the credit sink substantial, but beyond a certain point people wouldn't be punished for continuing to face the toughest challenges in the game. Like I said, this isn't an area of play with which I have much experience, so I'll admit that my angle here may be off. I just feel bad for players wanting to play the game and stopped by repair costs.
I admittedly don't know how well a daily repair cap would mesh with my system, proposed earlier, for rewarding various credit sinks via achievements. Perhaps a consumable item for turning off the limit, if someone actively wants to drive it up? (Like the consumable for lowering xp - the... acute white thingummy? - for people who want to level slower, for whatever reason.)
Anyway, I think I've said enough for now. I hope something here is helpful.
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1 hour ago, casirabit said:
Copying my reply from the other forum since they only want people that go to the test server to respond, even though everyone knows how this could or would affect them without testing it.
Exactly. I saw Jackie's clarification that only PTS-based feedback is desired in the other thread after I already posted my answer... But, like you said, we don't need to experience any of this directly to know exactly how it would affect us and the game! The numbers speak for themselves. For someone with billions of credits, it's completely meaningless to add a 100 credit cost here or a 5,000 credit cost there. As Sir-steve said...
1 hour ago, Sir-steve said:Consider, a billion credits isn't considered much these days but lets say we want to remove 1B on average per player. Even at the maximum amount of 5k per trip, taking 100 trips per day, playing 365 days a year, it would take over 5 and a half years to get to the 1B mark. And what would the player get in return for that 1B? Nothing. Zip, zero.....something they already have for free. Wait, maybe they have resentment which is not what you're shooting for.
This game needs to stop inventing new event currencies and let them spend CREDITS on in-game items so those credits are pulled out of the economy. I'm not suggesting credits be tradeable for Cartel Coins, or used to purchase things on the CM (since that's a sacred cash cow).....nor am I suggesting we gate content behind credits because that just leads to more credit farming.
We need fun/shiny/desirable/cosmetic things (new or old) to SPEND our credits on so we get something in return.....not have them 'taxed' away to use something we already paid for.
Even with such an extreme example as 100 trips a day, it would take an absurd amount of time to have a significant credit impact on a rich legacy - but it'll have a drastic impact on beginners with few-to-no credits. This isn't the way to do it.
Anti-inflation measures need to leave low-to-mid-wealth players alone and go for the high-credit players. BW need to add fun things to the game that cost tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and yes even billions or tens of billions of credits. To ensure a continuing impact, these would include highly repeatable purchases like decorations and dyes (as well as less-likely-to-be-repeated purchases like weapons, titles, outfits, flairs, mounts, tunings, etc.). Some could be new, while others could be old items that haven't been on the cartel market for some time.
Since my post in the PTS thread will probably be deleted due to not directly referencing PTS play, I'm going to replicate it here.
21 minutes ago, Estelindis said:The proposed changes seem like they will negatively impact players with few credits, especially complete beginners to the game, while having zero impact on players that have built up a big credits stockpile. Considering that ideally SWTOR would like to attract new players, these changes will not, in my opinion, have the positive impact that you intend, but rather a negative one.
I am a player with plenty of credits: sufficiently comfortable that these changes will not impact me, but not one of the super-mega-rich. However, I have occasionally tried playing on a different server, where my legacy has only a few credits, or with an alt F2P account (just to see what the F2P experience is like these days). It is extraordinary how much of a difference there is, in terms of quality of life, between a mature legacy with lots of credits and one just starting out. With zero credits to start, and new credits coming in very slowly while levelling one's first character, it can be a genuinely punishing experience trying to afford some basics. The proposed changes seem like they would only be more punishing to beginners.
Instead, please add a range of cool and desirable cosmetic items that can only be purchased for extremely large amounts of credits. These would function as genuine credit sinks targeting the upper echelons in the SWTOR economy. I appreciate that it may upset some people to have some content dangled out of their reach. Personally, I am imagining things sufficiently expensive that I probably wouldn't be able to afford many, if any, with all the credits in my legacy, so I expect to be among those missing out. However, I think that the overall effect on the in-game economy of this step would be much more positive for the whole game. If large amounts of credits leave circulation, prices on lots of things on the GTN will go down, and this will actually make many things more affordable for beginners (vs. the opposite effect, which I expect to happen based on what you're currently planning).
Why ever did SWTOR get rid of amplifiers, by the way? Those seemed precisely like helpful credit sinks.
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This is amazing. I've wanted something like this for so long. Every attempt to make a new outfit involves so much deleting. Looking forward to a smoother experience!
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Just popping in to add my support for this suggestion. It's a good-looking set. I would like to be able to dye it! I actually fully planned an outfit today via preview and applied a dye to a non-decurion part before discovering that the decurion parts don't have dye slots. It was disappointing, since they dyed in preview and one generally isn't accustomed to parts that don't take dye.
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I feel like there's an issue with updating old cartel items: they're changing things for which someone may have paid real money. Now we might say "it's an unequivocal upgrade, how can that be a problem?" But you might remember that when they upgraded the textures and changed some of the colours on player character eyes, not everyone was happy. Not everyone actually felt it was an improvement. A considered response to this could be, in future, when upgrading an old item, to make a second version with an updated, higher-quality texture, as a separate item that doesn't replace the original. And that seems like exactly what Bioware have done here. So I appreciate that it won't satisfy everyone, and, indeed, may even displease a lot of people. But I think there can be at least one good reason for it.
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10 hours ago, Tofu_Shark said:
Nope, it's 4, but if it seems the forum is set to display 3 1/2 lines without expanding the signature.
That's weird, because I have a three-line sig and it only displays the first two lines without expansion.
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I think the new forum looks good. I am a bit confused as to why the signature limit is 4 lines, but it seems like this actually only works out as 2. Like it's automatically double-spaced or something?
Anyway, enjoying the new features. I love messaging apps that allow adding reactions. If I enjoyed something someone said, I don't always want to post a text response, 'cos I don't always have something of my own to contribute. But I still want them to know that I liked their comment! So it's cool that we're able to use a form of that here now.
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This would be awesome. Big strongholds are great, but small ones are too! A small space can be more easily decorated fully and has a home-like feel.
Date Night - Going back and romancing companions?
in General Discussion
Posted
No, you can't. It's the same as with any other story decision that you make in chapters. The canon choice is the one you made on your first playthrough. You can make different choices on replays, but they only persist during the chapter.
Honestly, this is the only way that makes sense for a linear narrative. The game lets us repeat lots of content, but I think most of it is not meant to be seen as repeated in-character.