[Regal Apparel Mini Skirt now shows leggins ingame]

And here I was afraid it was supposed to be with leggings always! I love my Cathar smuggler showing off her fur. lol

[Yo Jackie, where ya at?]

 

On 12/7/2022 at 5:03 PM, JackieKo said:

I'm here  Happy to say we announced 7.2's launch date today. I understand that players are very eager to hear news, and please know there are few others who are more excited than myself to tell players all the details. But we also want to take care that everything is lined up and prepared before releasing info publicly.  Appreciate your patience! 

 

With all due respect, I believe we deserve better communication and transparency. Even if you can't say anything definitively, something like "Yes, life day is coming and will be out this month!" or "We're aiming to have 7.2 out by the end of the year but can't promise anything." Those would be fine!

Have you not learned from the past year that we HATE being in the dark? It's not in the fun way like Shadow of Revan prelude. You can be careful while still communicating to your ever shrinking playerbase.

[In-game events for December]

The GS objectives went out today, and Unranked is still mentioned on the furthest week out.

I think it's safe to say, based on their silence (which sadly is the norm now), that Life Day is delayed, and 7.2 ain't coming by the end of the year.

Can you please COMMUNICATE WITH US?

[In-game events for December]

What's going on with Life Day and 7.2? I would've expected the PTS to come down this week with Life Day starting next week along with 7.2.

If more testing for 7.2 is needed, that's fine. I want a quality patch. But Life day? We delaying that too???

[7.2 PvP Feedback: The Death of The PvP Community]

Ranked PVP has had such a low playerbase and is toxic AF to boot. Ranked isn't worth it if it's that few people competing, and a majority of ranked PVPers will tell you to uninstall or worse if you aren't absolutely perfect.

I am not huge on PVP, I only played ranked for mats during 5.8/5.9, and I barely play FPs but this change makes me want to play it more. So consider me throwing a party for the death of ranked

[Ruhnuk Planet Feedback]

I'm trying to go in blind to Ruhnuk, so haven't checked it on the PTS, only seen some screenshots online.

BUT PLEASE LET US FREE THE OVERBURDENED DEWBACK. Make it a chivo or something. HE DESERVES FREEDOM

[Class Balance Changes Feedback]

The annhi changes, while mostly harmless, are annoying. Seems like I'm always just 1 ability shy of having 30 stacks, and depending on how much resource I have, it may take 2 extra hits before I can Zen.

I'd rather keep Annhi the way it is on live. This re-tweaking is getting annoying. Madness at least needed it because the tactical was broken, but Annhi is fine rotation wise now. Just leave it alone, or properly buff it along with every other spec.

[Class Balance Changes Feedback]

Not sure that Annhi needed the tweeking. It seems like a buff, but reports from people on the PTS so far seem to indicate it as a nerf. I'll give it a test myself soon enough as well. If it is an overall nerf, it's absolutely the wrong move.

That said, why are we nerfing Fury and Carnage even more? I currently run Sent/Sorc on my main raiding toons, and I'm running out of decent burst specs to use when DOTs aren't as viable.

Lightning? Nerfed.

Combat? Nerfed (with an absolute awful rotation to boot).

Concentration? Nerfed.

 

I get burst spec is supposed to be the lower performing spec, but again, for the 500th time on these forums, I'll say that it is better to buff the underperforming specs, rather than nerf the overperforming. Stop listening to the top 1% of players who clear everything day 1 and then get bored. Every spec should be viable for every fight, and it's very clear in LOTS more than ever that if you play anything other than like 5 dps specs out of 18, you're handicapping yourself.

[Increase the GSI Mission Spawn Rate]

PLEASE increase the GSI mission spawnrates. All those nodes that you have to use the seeker droid on, and ESPECIALLY the larva from Buried in Time on Tat. This mission should not take me an hour each time I do it.

[Maintenance: October 18, 2022]

31 minutes ago, JackieKo said:

No update to share right now, but I assure you the team is working as quickly as possible to get GS3 out to you all. 

Not too quickly I hope. I'm heavily dreading the grind as per use. Hope it isn't too bad this time around and we actually have a bit more time between hitting 100 and GS3 ending.

Edit: The main problem being that you need 100 weekly objectives for everything. That takes forever. It really should be just hit 100.

[I hate 0T 1H on DF SM]

I know, I know it's the norm. I know it can be done. I've done it many times. And it always is a complete mess. Sure we clear, but so many people will rush the group, pull without everyone (even the healer), just because they wanna do DF as fast as humanly possible. Half the bosses get cleared with half the party down.

I'd rather have at least 1T 1H. Or even 0T 2H. But 0T 1H? Nah. Screw that. I'm done signing up for those ops. They are always awful experiences for me personally.

I kinda want Bioware to buff some of the tank mechanics in SM ops. We really shouldn't be going tankless. I get it, you want more dps for faster clear. It's still annoying. Make the cleaves hit a bit harder, make the hands on 6 fingers Brontes hit harder. Just something to justify bringing a tank. Because 7D runs are just chaos and frankly, I'm sick of them being the norm.

I'm very sure I'm in the minority here. But I really hate groups that throw out gamer etiquette and have zero patience when forming. Y'all can do that without me from now on.

[Possible to merge Satele Shan server and Star Forge server?]

I swapped off of SatShan because the population was so low.

Both servers are in the same location physically, so doesn't impact my connection. And people are on at all times still.

Instances solve most other issues. My only qualm is that some old toxic guildies I left behind on SatShan may pop up again. lol

[Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1]

2 hours ago, Shabir_Dhillon said:

Hello everyone, 

 

Shabir here and I am a Gameplay Designer on SWTOR. I wanted to start by saying we appreciate everyone for taking the time and effort to give feedback on the changes. I wanted to explain some of the changes we are making in the upcoming patch: 

 

Lightning/Telekinetics:

• Patch Notes:  

• Convection/Clamoring Force - Critical hit damage bonus goes to 12% (down from 15%).

• Thundering Blast/Turbulence - Second arc of damage deals 20% of Turbulence's damage (down from 25%).  

• Storm watch damage decreased by 4%

• Halted Offensive/Power of the Force cast time increased to 3.0 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds). Alacrity still affects cast time. 

• Decrease Halted Offensive’s/Power of the Force’s damage by 15%.

• Convection/Clamoring Force - Thundering Blast/ Turbulence grants Reserved Darkness/Reserved Light, making Dark Heal/Benevolence an instant cast and increasing its healing by 30%. Stacks up to 2 times.

• Thunder and Lightning/Incoming Turbulence ability mod have their damage increased to 10% (up from 5%) and includes Halted Offensive/ Power of the Force.

Developer Feedback:

• Lightning/Telekinetics is exceeding our DPS targets as a Ranged Burst spec role. For this reason, we are making the following changes:

  • Halted Offensive/Power of the Force cast time increased to 3.0 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds).

    • An increase to cast time allows players to not feel as if they have to hard cast this ability especially in situations that require mobility. 

  • Decrease Halted Offensive’s/Power of the Force’s damage by 15%

    • This change was made to bring the ability’s damage into line to its intended damage value and bring the Ranged Burst spec’s damage correctly into line with the DPS targets. 

  • Convection/Clamoring Force - Thundering Blast/Turbulence grants Reserved Darkness/Reserved Light, making Dark Heal/Benevolence an instant cast and increasing its healing by 30%. Stacks up to 2 times.

    • The change to the Convection/Clamoring Force passive is made in addition to the currently existing passive. The new buff is not replacing the old version of Convection/Clamoring Force. In the future, we will make changes like these much clearer. 

  • Thunder and Lightning/Incoming Turbulence ability mod have their damage increased to 10% up from 5% and includes Halted Offensive/Power of the Force.

    • This change is being made to make the burst option more appealing in comparison to the sustain and utility based option. 

 

Madness/ Balance: 

• Patch Notes: 

• Disintegration/Critical Kinesis - Death Field/Force in Balance and Death Brand/Shifted Balance grant Vitiate's Malice/Warden’s Vigor, giving Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw 20% Lifesteal for 12 seconds. 

• Force Horrors/Drain Thoughts - Increase periodic damage to 20% (up from 15%). 

• Lightning Barrage/Telekinetic balance - Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw reduced damage changed to -20% from -25%.

• Tempest of Rho - Correctly applies 50% chance for Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw to trigger periodic effects down from 75%. 

 

• Developer Feedback:

  • The change to the Tempest of Rho Tactical was designed to first bring it in line with its original power level. And in addition to that, changes were made to distribute that DPS back into the class itself. 

  • We also wanted to discourage players from prioritizing Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw over Lightning Strike/ Disturbance when proced in order to get the best DPS output. 

 

Advanced Prototype/Tactics:

• Patch Notes: 

• Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage reduced by 14%. 

• Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod stacks damage bonus reduced to 4% per stack down from 5% per stack. (total of 16% damage bonus to thermal det down from 20%). 

• Serrated Blades damage reduced to 5% down from 15%. (combined into Prototype Rail/High Friction Bolts)

• Blood Tracker/Triumph damage increase to bleeding targets is reduced to 3% down from 5%. 

• Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells damage reduced by 50%.

 

• Developer Feedback: 

  • Advanced Prototype/Tactics is exceeding our DPS targets as a Melee Burst spec role. For this reason we made the following changes: 

  • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage reduced by 14%. 

    • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge damage was reduced to lower sustain and reduce the amount of DPS this ability contributed to an overall parse. 

    • Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge is intended to be a filler ability and not make up a majority of the DPS output on a burst melee class. 

  • Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod stacks damage bonus reduced to 4% per stack down from 5% per stack. (total of 16% damage bonus to thermal det down from 20%). 

    • The change to Power Burst/High Yield Explosives mod was made to bring the mod more in line with the intended DPS increase a player should receive from a burst DPS mod. 

  • Serrated Blades damage reduced to 5% down from 15%. (combined into Prototype Rail/High Friction Bolts)

    • Much like the Magnetic Blast/Tactical Surge changes this change was made to reduce the sustain of the spec.

  • Blood Tracker/Triumph damage increase to bleeding targets is reduced to 3% down from 5%. 

    • The change to Blood Tracker/Triumph was also made to reduce the sustain of the class. 

  • Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells damage reduced by 50%.

    • The change to Lingering Heat/Superheated Cells mod was made to bring the mod further in line with what a sustain mod should give within a burst melee spec.
       

What will happen after 7.1.1: 

 

• We are going to be taking a look at the tank balance within the game as well as a variety of quality of life changes for various classes. 

• We will be taking a look at other mods across classes and balancing them in order to make them more competitive with the go-to options players tend to take. 

I just wanted to close by thanking everyone for their feedback and hope to keep seeing more of it in the future. I hope these notes added some additional transparency on the changes and that the feedback keeps on coming. And as always balance is an ongoing process and we will keep you all updated with class changes coming your way in the future.

Take it easy,
Shabir

I don't mind the change to madness. That tactical error explains why Tempest has been doing so well, and the extra mobility while moving damage into the spec itself is appreciated. (We'll still see what the final result is.)

 

BUT WHY NERF LIGHTNING? Why nerf anything at this point? Maybe instead of nerfing the rare out-performing specs, you buff the underperforming ones. Ever think of that?

[Feedback on Gearing in The R-4 Anomaly Operation]

• Do you feel your group was able to progress in power through the Operation?
  Not really. My groups aren't NiM based, and we expected hard mode difficulty when we went in. Not NiM. Watchdog and Kanoth are the only ones that feel somewhat balanced. IP is awful and we haven't even attempted Lady Dom.
   
• Do you think improvements could be made to make it easier to progress as a group? If so, what do these improvements look like?
  1 less big red circle on IP would be fantastic. Also, reducing the damage from those circles a bit. Lady Dom's knockback chain is brutal even on SM. I can't imagine how much of a pain it is on HM. Beyond that, the dps checks need to be lower. They are way too brutal.
  
  Also, the hallway. Gotta make the hallway easier to understand to newbies, and nerf how many ads are spawning. I've never seen anyone one shot the hallway on SM, let alone HM. (If someone has on HM, send me the clip so I can see your black magic in action.) It requires dying and running back. That's bad game design.
  
  SM also needs severe nerfs. SM should be able to have everyone join from a random pug on fleet, no voice coms needed, nothing. R4 is absolutely not tuned for this. SM feels like HM, and HM feels like NiM. Please stop appealing to the top 1% of raid teams and focus on the rest of us down here.
   
• Did you want to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  Yes. I did. I thought this would be a quick easy way to get to 340 blues since we only needed 14 VM tokens and would upgrade with SM tokens. Instead SM tokens were made absolutely useless.
   
• How quickly were you able to upgrade your Hazardous gear?
  Not fast at all. If you wanted to get all 340 blues, that would take clearing OVER 70 BOSSES. That's frankly unacceptable with weekly lockouts. Not everyone has optimized alts they can spam the bosses with.
   
• Was  Hazardous gear helpful in completing The R-4 Anomaly?
  I mean, better than nothing? Really feels like it's tuned for 340 gear, not 330 gear.
   
• The R-4 Anomaly came with 12 new sets of vanity armor, purchasable with Story and Veteran R-4 tokens. Story tokens can be used to purchase 4 sets of armor and Veteran tokens can be used to purchase 8 sets of armor.
   
• Do you like the look of these armor sets?
  Didn't care for looks.
   
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn these armor sets?
  Not for the style, no. We all want better stats because everything feels so much weaker in LOTS. The balancing was admittedly too easy in 6.0, but this is an overcorrection.
   
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations armors?
  Easier to obtain. I shouldn't need to run an operation getting full clears over 10 weeks in a row for the best gear. If you went with the original post of upgrading blue gear to 340 with SM tokens, I'd be complaining way less. Unlock the gear with a VM clear, upgrade with SM clear. SM is currently useless unless you just want the story now since 330 Rakata (or equivalent from mod vendors) is better than 330 Columi/blues.
   
• Do you like the look of this mount?
  Yeah looks cool. I got the nihrot tuning and will likely make an alt focusing on Nihrot themes.
   
• Did you attempt to clear The R-4 Anomaly to earn this mount?
  Not for the mount specifically, but it's a nice extra incentive for Kanoth. Glad it isn't with Lady Dom. And I'll pick it up eventually. Took a break from R4 due to balancing, all the bugs (player shows up as dead, endless loading screen, IP through the floor, broken watchdog LO. Players have had to find our own workarounds while you appear to ignore them because you can't recreate them on the dev server. Maybe actually play undercover with other regular players on the main server so you can see em for yourself. This goes for balancing too.), and slow gear progression. Gonna start getting back into it now, but it's still frustrating how slowly you gear.
   
• Is there anything you’d like to see from future Operations mounts?
  I think the mount is handled fine. Wings are dope. But some more variety on mounts could be cool.

[Love the Sab Story and Love the Alliance]

Oh thank god, my post is still here after the migration. TOTALLY forgot to back it up before the swap. It's super ez to point to when I tell people why the JK story into the expacs is FANTASTIC.

[New SWTOR Forums are coming!]

Constructive criticism is welcome and always has been. We've stated that multiple times. If criticisms were entirely removed from the forums, the vast majority of the threads that currently exist would be gone, and we certainly wouldn't be moving forward with a new platform. I'm always on board with reading and gathering feedback that is helpful and constructive. My only ask has ever been that people are respectful to us and to each other.

 

With all due respect, I think we've all seen over-enforcement on this both on the forums and on Twitch. I agree a good chunk of the fanbase can be quite disrespectful, but many people have also been silenced while giving constructive, well intentioned feedback in good faith.

 

I simply hope you keep this policy in check moving forward on all platforms and actually listen to player feedback, since too often it feels like it falls on deaf ears. More so over the past year than ever before.

[Drop Esselles from FP queue rotation]

I still think all FPs should be able to be in the queue. I love the variety they bring.

 

However, we need 2 separate queues. One for the quicker ones, and one for the longer ones. Make the rewards line up better, and not punishing people for filtering the longer FPs out.

 

And yes, every FP probably needs a story mode (I think this is very easy to achieve), and every VM/MM fp should have no more cutscenes than Hammer Station/Athiss/Mando Raiders/Red Reaper.

 

I absolutely loved that they started taking this into consideration with the Fractured Alliance arc. It's a perfect way to handle the SM/VM+MM difference. Now just gotta bring all the old fps up to speed.

 

Also, I would love to see Colicoid War Games level synced and re-added to the queue. (Again, probably the "long queue" like I said.)

[increase planet levels, level sync is making it worse]

Bolster has never worked the best, since you miss passives and critical abilities, including perks from gear.

 

I think Veteran's Edge on planets (outside of ops and pvp) was 100% okay.

 

Yes, you will outlevel the planet. That's because you are a subscriber, or even pref using leftover XP boosts. I do not want to go back to having to grind out exploration missions on every, single, planet or use FPs to "catch up".

 

I really don't think it's necessary, but if enough people absolutely despise being overleveled, they can bring the white helix module back. (Think they removed it with 7.0)

[PSA for veteran group finder flashpoints.]

Not every flashpoint has a solo mode FYI. And are you really losing sleep over people not skipping the 3 lines of dialogue in Hammer Station?

 

If it has a solo mode, I understand. But I'm never gonna get upset at someone for not skipping a cutscene in an FP that doesn't have one.

[Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1]

I really don't know why Lightning is being nerfed. A better game design philosophy is to BUFF underperforming classes. Nerfs are needed, but we got PLENTY of that with 7.0 launch.

 

Your damage, survivability, and heals stats in the character menu are WAY OFF. It's closer to about 60%-75% of those values.

 

Whatever you are doing on the dev server, it isn't what's happening on live. Go make some accounts, go join some prog teams under cover, and actually learn the game. Do the game on live, interact with players, and learn how we play so you can better tune the game for us.

 

And again, buffing the lower specs is much better than nerfing the top ones. Buffs are just inherently better game design. Stop listening to the top 1% of players. Listen to the rest of us.

[Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1]

Disintegration - Death Field and Death Brand grant Vitiate's Malice, giving Force Lightning 20% Lifesteal for 12 seconds. (This looks very interesting given how much we spam force lightning. Just a straight buff.)

Force Horrors - Increase periodic damage from 15% to 20%. (Another straight buff)

Lightning Barrage - Force Lightning reduced damage changed to -20% from -25%. (Again, a straight buff. Love to see it. (OG forgot how the passive worked and thought this was a nerf)

Tempest of Rho - Correctly applies 50% chance for Force Lightning to trigger periodic effects down from 75% (Ah, there it is. That's why Force Lightning spam was doing so well. Objectively better proc than Lightning Strike. Still, with the buff to Disintegration, it's still gonna be best to spam force lightning, but less penalizing if you need to use Lightning Strike while moving around).

 

I'm excited for these changes tbh. The Rho adjustment is fine, and it seems we'll have a bit more mobility with less punishing dps losses.

 

It'd be nice if every DPS class could reliably put out 30k dps if you know your rotation. That's kinda what 7.0 calls for imo. More fights could be done with 4D that way.

[Planned Balance Changes for 7.1.1]

Not sure on the DPS nerfs. I'd rather you buff the classes that are underperforming.

 

The heal stuff seems nice overall. Operative though...I hope you tweaked those raw numbers enough. Otherwise you might've just smacked em out of the meta entirely.

[Major server lag on SF right now]

Yeah half our prog team is still having issues rn

[R4 Anomaly Needs a Nerf]

The people commenting "it's doable with the gear you get" are part of those elitists we were mentioning.

 

Yes. It's doable...for the top 1% of teams. NiM should be accessible to way more than 1% of teams. And I think the big post I last quoted/replied to is a good target for that group of people. This needs to be accessible to way more of the playerbase.

 

It doesn't need to be a pushover, I don't want it to be for HM. But I want the difficulty to match. Even if HM is really hardmare for R4, it's still overtuned. People are looking for Kanoth and Watchdog lockouts (myself included), because they are fair fights for your current gear. IP and Lady Dom are not. They need nerfs. And I'd argue the other 2 bosses could use a bit of tweaking too, just to a far less extent. If it was just Lady Dom who required higher gear to get to this point, then yeah, probably fair. But the first boss? Really? I get it, you don't want us farming a single boss for easy gear, but that's exactly what we are doing. And again, it isn't easy. Kanoth isn't a pushover. Don't make a new NiM Nefra that's really a training dummy. But IP could've been a challenging but fair fight. It isn't. Not with 330 gear. Not with more than 1% of top raiders.

 

The top 1% of players should not be the only people completing this. And again, every single ops, every single boss, on EVERY SINGLE DIFFICULTY should be completable with 2T 4D 2H. Running 1T 5D or 1T 6D or 6D 2H or whatever else should be something you CAN do, not something you HAVE TO do.

[R4 Anomaly Needs a Nerf]

It should be plainly obvious that Veteran Mode, which you can enter in 330 gear maximum, should be balanced around wearing 330 gear, not 340 gear. And the top 1% of players are, you know, 1%ers. They will never stop complaining that a game is "too easy"; they, by definition, are the ones who find it the "easiest".

 

100% agree here too. The top 0.1% of ops teams are not the ones you should balance for. All content should be achievable if you know what you are doing. Every ops needs to be doable with the gear you get BEFORE GOING IN, and with the standard 2T 4D 2H of ANY spec.

 

I like being challenged. 6.0 Ancient Threat was a great example of this. Most legacy HM and NiM provide this. R4 does not.

 

I hope we never get an ops as hard as Gods and R4 again. EVER. R4 has some very fun mechanics. But it is too unforgiving for an HM, and too demanding even for a NiM imo given the 330 gear cap and current spec balancing.