Devs: When you nerf a component, give full refund of requisition used to upgrade it

[Nemarus]

I think we all can agree that at some point, sooner or later, the devs will need to make adjustments to various components in order to maintain balance in GSF. This is perilous, since many players have spent significant time (and in some cases significant cartel coins) to fully upgrade a component's tree.

 

Regardless of what components do get nerfed, I think it is vital that when such a nerf occurs, the upgrade tree for that component gets reset for everyone, and any requisition spent in upgrading that component is refunded.

 

For example, let's say that the devs determine Rapid Fire Laser Cannons are too powerful (using them as an example because I'm fairly sure no one thinks they are actually OP), and the devs make several changes to them. Regardless of what those changes are, everyone who has upgraded Rapid Laser Cannons should get those upgrades re-locked, and they should get a refund of all requisition spent upgrading Rapid Laser Cannons.

 

<changed my mind>

I also recommend that all of the refunded requisition be in the form of Fleet Requisition, even if the original upgrade purchases were not all made with Fleet Requisition. Why? Because it is very possible that a single overpowered component heavily influenced a player to focus on upgrading one particular ship. That player may have spent an inordinate amount of time playing that ship in particular in order to earn the requisition necessary to upgrade the broken component, or he may have used cartel coins to convert other ships' requisition into Fleet Req in order to do so.

 

There's no way BioWare can know for sure how the power of a component affected a player's grinding focus and purchase decisions, so the safest and fairest way to refund is to make it all Fleet Requisition. That way, the player can then either reinvest in the component that was nerfed, or they can choose to abandon that component--or even that ship and use the Fleet Requisition for something else.

</changed my mind>

Upon reading some of the responses, I've changed my mind on the above request that the refund be entirely Fleet Requisition. I do think that a small portion of the refund should be Fleet Requisition--perhaps 25%. But I do agree with others who have responded that if the entire refund is Fleet Requisition, then there is a risk of people jumping from FOTM to FOTM.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Nemarus

[Cashal]

+1 agree

[Uber_the_Goober]

Absolutely agree.

[Grayseven]

Nope, have to disagree with this.

 

You picked the "flavor of the month" and you got the full benefit of it, so asking for a refund is akin to saying "give me free the next flavor of the month".

 

Balance is ongoing, and right now we all know that there are serious balance issues with certain aspects of GSF. At some point there will be a tweak of every single aspect of GSF so what you are asking is pretty much ridiculous.

 

Even nerfed, whatever you spent req on will still be good, it just won't be the FotM it once was.

[Nemarus]

Nope, have to disagree with this.

 

You picked the "flavor of the month" and you got the full benefit of it, so asking for a refund is akin to saying "give me free the next flavor of the month".

 

Balance is ongoing, and right now we all know that there are serious balance issues with certain aspects of GSF. At some point there will be a tweak of every single aspect of GSF so what you are asking is pretty much ridiculous.

 

Even nerfed, whatever you spent req on will still be good, it just won't be the FotM it once was.

 

Punishing players for investing in what looks good, whether it turns out to be a FotM or not, is not fair. Additionally, if BioWare starts arbitrarily nerfing what players have invested time/money into upgrading, then players will stop investing time/money for fear of it being wasted.

[Cashal]

Nope, have to disagree with this.

 

You picked the "flavor of the month" and you got the full benefit of it, so asking for a refund is akin to saying "give me free the next flavor of the month".

 

Balance is ongoing, and right now we all know that there are serious balance issues with certain aspects of GSF. At some point there will be a tweak of every single aspect of GSF so what you are asking is pretty much ridiculous.

 

Even nerfed, whatever you spent req on will still be good, it just won't be the FotM it once was.

 

So do you notice when they make changes to the trees for your characters, they give a free refund of the stats? Same principle.

[Uber_the_Goober]

Nope, have to disagree with this.

 

You picked the "flavor of the month" and you got the full benefit of it, so asking for a refund is akin to saying "give me free the next flavor of the month".

 

Balance is ongoing, and right now we all know that there are serious balance issues with certain aspects of GSF. At some point there will be a tweak of every single aspect of GSF so what you are asking is pretty much ridiculous.

 

Even nerfed, whatever you spent req on will still be good, it just won't be the FotM it once was.

 

See here:

 

So do you notice when they make changes to the trees for your characters, they give a free refund of the stats? Same principle.

[Sportiva]

Agree with OP

[Itkovian]

I'm guessing that they WILL give ship requisitions refunds when they fix balance issues, but I seriously doubt any will be flee (maybe a % will be, but even then I doubt it).

 

Converting fleet reqs is one of their main revenue generators, so I doubt we'll be getting refunds in fleet.

 

And quite frankly, I don't think getting it back in ship refunds is necessarily unfair. You still get a refund, and can instead try out a different build. If the only reason you picked a specific ship was specifically for that build that was nerfed, I'd say that's a fitting penalty for just pursuing the flavour of the month.

 

But regardless, don't be surprised if it comes out as ship reqs only.

[Grayseven]

So do you notice when they make changes to the trees for your characters, they give a free refund of the stats? Same principle.

 

I get a free refund as a sub regardless, so that makes no sense. The "refunded" skill points are more for the benefit of players to realize changes have been made to the tree and they need to rebuild.

 

So no, not the same at all, as a modded component is still useful. You can not compare skill trees to component upgrade trees, they are apples and rocks.

 

If you have an upgraded comp and it gets tweaked in some way, you have the option of buying one of the other comps and upgrading it, which gives you much more flexibility. You can swap out components freely and once modded you will always have that modded option in your hanger.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Grayseven

[Nemarus]

I spend time/money to invest in something I see as written.

 

BioWare changes what is written.

 

I get time/money (req) back.

[TUXs]

100% agree! It would be criminal not to do this, especially when real $ is being used to convert req.

[Grayseven]

I spend time/money to invest in something I see as written.

 

BioWare changes what is written.

 

I get time/money (req) back.

 

If that were true, every change in the game would involve refunds of commendations. You play under the expectation that changes will be made. You gain the benefits of what you have "as written" and then when it is changed you still have the benefits but they are now different...this is called "balance".

 

Seems to me some GS pilots see the writing on the wall.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

I don't see any harm in this.

 

I'd like to add that they should add a "respec" type function where you can refund the req on components. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who invested in various components to test them out and see which fit my style best and wishes they could refund the components they tried and didn't like.

[Ridickilis]

Yes to a requisition refund when BW changes game mechanics and yes to a respec feature as well please.

 

Though, to be fair I don't think we should get any fleet requisition back that you may have spent along the way to augment unlocking that next tier. We should get back full value's worth in ship requisitions, but not fleet.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Ridickilis

[Nemarus]

If that were true, every change in the game would involve refunds of commendations. You play under the expectation that changes will be made. You gain the benefits of what you have "as written" and then when it is changed you still have the benefits but they are now different...this is called "balance".

 

Seems to me some GS pilots see the writing on the wall.

 

Actually I wrote the wall myself.

 

But I still do not feel it is fair to pull what is effectively a bait and switch.

 

Let's take the Ion Railgun, for example, which I agree is broken. However, at the time I upgraded it, I did not know it was broken.

 

I read through its upgrade tree and saw that at the end of the tree, it applies a Slow on hit. I assumed this slow was only applied when you hit with a full charge. Either way, I figured that would be useful--slowing targets would make it easier for me to follow up with a killing Slug Railgun shot. So I spent CC to grab requisition off my other ships and got fleet requisition enough to upgrade my Ion Railgun to full.

 

It was a modest CC investment (about the same as a cartel pack), but more importantly, it was taking requisition from all of my other ships.

 

Now, to my surprise, when I tried using the upgraded Ion Railgun, I discovered that it applied its slow even on a minimally charged hit. My immediate response was "Well crap, this is broken." So I came to the forum and wrote a post about it, calling for it to be changed.

 

Now if BioWare does my suggested fix (making the magnitude of the Slow proportional to the charge of the railgun), then I'll be happy to continue to use my Ion Railgun.

 

But what if they instead remove the Slow completely? Let's say, hypothetically, that they change the final upgrade to instead be that it applies a debuff to the damage the target fighter does. Sure, that's a useful ability, but I'm not at all interested in. It doesn't fit with my playstyle, and I never would've spent CC or my other ships' requisition to unlock it.

 

Perhaps I decide to not even play a Gunship anymore. At that point I'd want that fleet requisition back so that I can go upgrade a different ship.

[Lord_Of_Sith]

I spend time/money to invest in something I see as written.

 

BioWare changes what is written.

 

I get time/money (req) back.

 

I think we all can agree that at some point, sooner or later, the devs will need to make adjustments to various components in order to maintain balance in GSF.

 

Clearly you spent time/money to invest in something that you expect to change.

 

Regardless of what components do get nerfed, I think it is vital that when such a nerf occurs, the upgrade tree for that component gets reset for everyone, and any requisition spent in upgrading that component is refunded.

I am honestly conflicted as to whether or not I agree with this.

 

I don't think any comparison can be made to character talent trees; talent points have always been freely refundable, and have had free regardless of frequency for quite some time. Further, there are a finite number of talent points that one may gain, while one may always earn more requisition. In fact, once you have mastered a ship, you gain an extra 10% requisition while using that ship.

 

I think that major tweaks/nerfs which change the use of an ability should be refunded (e.g. if rocket pods were changed to have a lock-on time), but minor tweaks should not (e.g. a damage boost upgrade is changed from 5% to 4%). However, I don't like the idea of arbitrary decisions for whether something is 'major' or 'minor', hence why I am conflicted as to whether or not I agree with your statement.

 

I also recommend that all of the refunded requisition be in the form of Fleet Requisition, even if the original upgrade purchases were not all made with Fleet Requisition. Why? Because it is very possible that a single overpowered component heavily influenced a player to focus on upgrading one particular ship. That player may have spent an inordinate amount of time playing that ship in particular in order to earn the requisition necessary to upgrade the broken component, or he may have used cartel coins to convert other ships' requisition into Fleet Req in order to do so.

 

This would be truly absurd. I can't see how this is a good idea aside from wanting every player to only use FOTM OP components. You say that someone may have only chosen a ship because they wanted a single overpowered and broken component, and if that broken component is fixed they may not want to play that ship anymore. As with pursuing broken items, it has always been an at-your-own-risk activity with the expectation that it will get fixed sooner-or-later, the benefit being a temporary boost over other players. Should healers and dps have been given full wz/rwz comm refunds when they fixed reactive warding relics? Few players would say yes (although I'm sure that those utilizing the exploit would do so).

[Ridickilis]

No way to fleet requisitions as a refund. Why so you can have 50k+ and unlock every new ship that becomes available? Nah, I think that would be game breaking and rather cheesy. You want to spend real money in the form of CC's to convert your refund to fleet, fine. But no way should they give them to us on a respec or reset.

 

However I still think a respec or refund for ship requisitions is warrented if our gear is going to be treated, and take place of, a skill talent tree. In the event they do add pilot talent trees and treat gear as gear, then no because you can't refund your ground gear. That could be why there is no re-specing in game yet.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Ridickilis

[Armonddd]

I disagree - hear me out before you decide I'm wrong.

 

Yes, it feels like it takes a lot of time and effort to invest in a ship. Upgrading a ship from stock to mastered costs around 150k requisition (assuming I'm remembering the costs correctly, and accounting for a few components swapped around, and possibly realizing that you don't actually want that component after buying it). On the surface, that sounds like a lot - after all, you only get 800 or so requisition for a match, and less if you lose! Well, like many things in life, appearances here are deceiving.

 

For people like me, who do not have access to the gunship, there are six ships to unlock, and thus something on the order of a million requisition to spend upgrading and fiddling with all of them. But... the Ocula and Sting are duplicates, as are the Rycer and Gladiator. Oh, and the Quell is bad, and I'm not convinced my Blackbolt skills are salvageable. So, really, I only have around 300k requisition to worry about for my Ocula and Rycer (let's be generous and call it 375k, because I did spend more than some requisition in bad places on both ships). And between dailies, weeklies, and just playing with my friends, my Ocula is fully upgraded and my Rycer is 45k requisition away from being finished.

 

With six ships unlocked, my daily gives me 4500 requisition and each ship gets another 3000 or so ship requisition before it runs out of the "daily double" (you could argue that it's slightly less, but there's also fleet requisition earned to consider). That's around 22,000 requisition I make each day just doing my dailies, and believe me, I keep playing after I'm done with those. If I wanted to, I could keep all that requisition on the ships I earned it on... but as a competitive player, it's well worth my money to convert it to fleet requisition (and by the way I make 600 coins/month as a subscriber who's smart enough to add an authenticator). You could argue that it adds up and gets expensive, but, well, it's kind of not. I don't have a job and I still don't consider it a waste of money. If I did, I'd start ignoring ships I don't plan to use and focus on getting the requisition on my mains.

 

Just by doing my dailies, I can now master a ship in the course of a week. If a change comes along and I need to switch out a weapon (the most expensive major component) for another one, it takes me three days to fully upgrade the new weapon, two if I'm really serious about it.

 

This problem of refunding requisition spent on something you can no longer use is what I like to call a one month problem. After a month of play - probably less - it simply disappears. Give the players enough time to get used to the playing field, and they'll find it much, much easier to adapt to new conditions. Give me a solid month in GS - starting in January, because I'm leaving tomorrow for the holidays - and I'll no longer care about costs to upgrade my ships.

 

New players are going to run into this problem as well, but I don't think it's unfair to expect a new player to lag behind everyone else for a while. Or, more accurately, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Bioware to design the game that way - that's how the rest of the gearing process works, anyway.

 

I don't think it's appropriate to compare starship upgrades to skill point allocations. Yes, they're similar in that they can be changed dramatically by Bioware in a way that forces you to respec and reconsider how you want to play your character, and yes, they're both represented in-game by small boxes with pretty pictures on them. However, that's about where the similarities end - your skill points don't dramatically change as you get better at running a certain build, whereas your starship upgrades do. You don't participate in competitive PvP to upgrade your skill tree (with an exception I'll cover later) - but you have to if you want to upgrade your starship. Starship upgrades are much more comparable to gear than skill points, and while I've been pretty far out of touch with the ground game since launch, I don't think Bioware offers refunds for gear when they change either the stats on the gear or the desirability of those stats. Update make you wish you had stacked surge instead of power? Well, better go get surge gear, because no one's giving you free handouts. And, notably, everyone's still on the same footing after an update like that. Some people will recover faster than others, but that's due to differences in skill and dedication as anything else - both of which I see no problem in rewarding.

 

I mentioned an exception to the rule about PvP not granting you superior skill point allocation. This occurs when leveling, when warzones and whatnot grant you a good chunk of exp in addition to commendations. This gives you more skill points to spend and thus gives you an advantage when building your skill trees. But let's analyze this for a minute - you're making your way to max level, a goal which you're pretty much assumed to have completed for competitive PvP or even a lot of cooperative play (operations, hard mode flashpoints, etc). Everything else is considered "lowbie" and "you'll stop doing it eventually - you have to". I've even seen people in fleet chat berate others for queuing for level 30 warzones because "you're too low level for it to matter/be fun/be fair". So perhaps it would be better to say that requisition is like experience, and once people start hitting "max level", refunding requisition for certain purchases is going to be more annoyance than convenience. Again, these are the symptoms of a one month problem.

 

So, to combat the inevitable argument of "you play way more than most people do" - would you argue that it's unfair that I level faster at the start of a new expansion or similar if I stayed online more than you do?

 

Now, if you want to argue that requisition costs for upgrades are too high and they're preventing people from playing on an even field, I'm all ears. I agree that it takes a long time to master a ship and that a less upgraded ship is at a huge disadvantage (particularly scouts, who just kind of... fall over when things look at them), and would not be opposed to making upgrades cheaper in the interests of getting everyone on the same level. I think it's more interesting when a matchup is determined by who made the better choice of components and higher tier upgrades, not who has the team with the most upgraded ships.

 

And Nemarus, no, I'm not actually agreeing with all of your points. I also think your proposed gunship changes are bandage fixes that don't address the core problems (those being that sniper ships require less skill than dogfighting starfighters, gunships are not fun to play against and sitting in one spot sniping people also sounds boring to me, and extremely long range units should not ever be able to accidentally put out 30k damage and top charts with their "utility" ion gun) and your proposed bypass change is just pants on head (you're not fixing the actual problem, you're just nerfing a fairly well balanced ability that everyone else has to use skillfully to excel), but I don't have the time to type up another gigantic wall of text.

[Slivovidze]

If they would refund full req, here is what would happen:

now: pretty balanced game

soon: unbalance due to nerfs/buffs, everyone builds up to the FotM

after that: nerf of FotM, full refund, new FotM appears, everyone builds new FotM instantly

after that: repeat indefinitely.

 

By "everyone" I mean those who don't bother being themselves, running the strongest stuff instead, no matter what it is.

 

I would be against the OP's proposition, or at least make it only half refund.

 

But tbh I don't care much as I know that I will probably stay in my NovaDive forever, unless they release more beautiful and fast ship. My guess is that I will have everything purchased and fully upgraded by March or April, so I won't care much for any refunds.

[Loc_n_lol]

I also recommend that all of the refunded requisition be in the form of Fleet Requisition

 

Pretty sure that won't happen. No way. Nope.

This is like giving you a free AC change in the ground game.

 

Fully agree otherwise.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Loc_n_lol

[Armonddd]

But tbh I don't care much as I know that I will probably stay in my NovaDive forever, unless they release more beautiful and fast ship.

 

Flashfire is the sexiest ship in the game and if you disagree I will fite you.

[Nemarus]

Upon reading some of the responses, I've changed my mind on the OP request that the refund be entirely Fleet Requisition. I do think that a small portion of the refund should be Fleet Requisition--perhaps 25%. But I do agree with others who have responded that if the entire refund is Fleet Requisition, then there is a risk of people jumping from FOTM to FOTM.

 

I've greyed out that part of my post and added the update. Thanks for the feedback!

[TUXs]

Upon reading some of the responses, I've changed my mind on the OP request that the refund be entirely Fleet Requisition. I do think that a small portion of the refund should be Fleet Requisition--perhaps 25%. But I do agree with others who have responded that if the entire refund is Fleet Requisition, then there is a risk of people jumping from FOTM to FOTM.

 

I've greyed out that part of my post and added the update. Thanks for the feedback!

I've never understood this argument...why does it matter if they want to run the FOTM build? You can too. We ALL have access to it. Balance is Bioware's job and they need to take it more seriously than they do in every aspect of this game.

[Armonddd]

Upon reading some of the responses, I've changed my mind on the OP request that the refund be entirely Fleet Requisition. I do think that a small portion of the refund should be Fleet Requisition--perhaps 25%. But I do agree with others who have responded that if the entire refund is Fleet Requisition, then there is a risk of people jumping from FOTM to FOTM.

 

I've greyed out that part of my post and added the update. Thanks for the feedback!

 

Since normally only 10% of your earned requisition is fleet requisition, why should any refund be more than 10% fleet requisition? Not that I think you should get a refund in the first place, but.