Training Costs are a Thing of the Past

[Heezdedjim]

While I appreciate the change, and the difficulties of giving exact refunds, in a way you are telling players who opted to pre-purchase SOR early and got Early Access tough luck on tossing out hundreds of thousands of credits that our less loyal customers won't have to spend now. You guys could have at least given us something to help compensate, even if not perfect.

I can understand being a little unhappy about no refunds. On the other hand, look at it this way: You will save between 1 million and 2 million credits per character on skill training from 56-60 that you otherwise would have paid. I think that will more than cover anything you might have paid training 1-55 skills that won't be refunded. In fact it will pay for it three to five times over in most cases.

 

There isn't a downside to this for anyone, even without "refunds" as such. And you are getting a refund. A pretty freakin' huge one in fact.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Heezdedjim

[Rephe]

Bioware, you've been especially good to your game for the past week or so. I'm impressed. Keep it up please. Edited December 6, 2014 by Rephe

[Urantia]

Fair question azudelphi! Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills, we felt this was a better approach to the overall cost to players. As a result, we will not be providing refunds for the cost of training.

 

Hope that clarifies our thoughts on the situation.

 

-eric

 

Thanks for rewarding us for pre-ordering.

[Heezdedjim]

All valid points. I'm not saying my analysis was actually *right*, just that I didn't entirely understand the other perspective. I suppose from my perpetually in-game penniless point of view- I usually just level alts rather than do dailies etc, and 1 million is about the most I've *ever* had at a time, the view looks slightly different- i.e. "Wow, one huge and horrible expense I was never going to be able to pay in future suddenly *gone*!" rather than "Tch, one irritating nuisance I just clambered over removed right *after* I've done it.

I agree. When the game gets this much better in one stroke, I'm just glad to see it happen. I'm probably not going to stop leveling or paying for skills on my first level 57 just to wait for this patch either. So I'll waste a few more credits on skills before they're free. I won't miss them.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Heezdedjim

[RowanThursday]

I agree. When the game gets this much better in one stroke, I'm just glad to see it happen. I'm probably not going to stop leveling or paying for skills on my first level 57 just to wait for this patch either. So I'll waste a few more credits on skills before they're free. I won't miss them.

 

Indeed, I suspect my level 55 and level 52 *will* stop paying for skills until it happens, but only out of necessity, seeing as I think they've only about 20,000 credits between them at the moment, but the rest of the in-progress brigade likely won't.

[Sangrar]

YES!!! This is awesome!! Finally I can save a bit of money! Thank you Bioware!!! The game gets better with time, and I am glad that changes like this happen

[Snarfleblaster]

The biggest issue was the fact that our abilities that we ALREADY paid for once to train, got untrained, and then it cost us more money than we had in the bank to re-train, so we went to our alt characters to get money so we could get back to where we were before Revan came out... Only to then be told two days later that next week everyone gets that for free.

 

Even WoW got it right when they did the EXACT same thing in the past they made the retraining of pre-upgrade skills free, This is what Bioware should have done to start.

 

I've been subscribing to this game since the beginning, buying all of the expansions on pre-order, and even buying cartel coins when I don't need them - merely to support a game I love.

 

I do feel like I spent a lot of time and credits for something that I could have saved by NOT pre-ordering.

 

That being said, I do think the right thing to do would be to at least give the pre-order customers a bit of a perk next week. I know it can be complicated to refund something to only pre-order clients, but I think that even a small token to pre-order customers should be considered... Even if it was 10 basic credits or something would make people realize you care about the pre-order customers and you're not treating us as paying beta testers.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Snarfleblaster
Typo

[Grayseven]

I wouldn't mind a deco...say, the Peter Griffin in Carbonite?

[foxxecho]

Wow.

 

If anyone caught my needle in the post hay stack on this you'd see that I came back after a year during the 12xp event and I missed any announcement that training would be free for it. I just thought it was a cool QoL thing that BW did for us when I was away. It made me feel good about my decision to reinstall. So when "3.OH" dropped. I was like ???

 

IMO This was a great move across the board. It benefits every player. PvPers. PvEers. Soloists. You name it.

 

I trained quite a few characters already. I wanted them to be ready so I can play whomever freely. So I def feel for people who already spent. BUT I hope that we can take some comfort knowing that if we pan out, and try to view the big picture, this is a great thing for the players of the game.

 

With the funds I earmarked for training my alts not at cap, I am going to buy something cartel bought off the GTN or maybe even grab some coins to show my appreciation.

 

Of course In a perfect world there would be compensation. -Perhaps mail early access players something directly?

 

Either way thank you BW. Unfortunately Devs can be looked at and treated like a faceless machine or a "tin man" sometimes. So to me this is big, because no matter what has transpired in the past, doing this is proof positive that this tin man has a heart.

 

 

Now about that other issue...

 

Edited December 6, 2014 by foxxecho

[VMalcolm]

Thanks for listening to player feedback and making this change.

 

I wound up not playing or leveling during early access partly because of the costs, but I feel really bad for people who spent tons of credits. It would be nice to see some kind of gesture/token of appreciation for the pre-order crowd to make us less hesitant to pre-order the next expansion.

[Spiritinblack]

Thank you. This is something that has been talked about enough, and is finally being taken care of. Awesome that you have listened to us.

 

Again Thank You.

[DollQueen]

Uh... wow. This is completely unexpected, BioWare, but I want to throw all the devs a pizza party now. Thank you so much for this, BioWare! Keep doing what you're doing!

[MikWesten]

Luckily I didn't get early access, or I too could have spent a boat load of creds on training

 

I wonder why Bioware didn't include this change as part of 3.0? Well I think we all know the answer.

[Costello]

Got to ask if this will be retroactive.

 

Cause unless there is going to be another new expansion a lot of subscribers who got early access cause they pre-ordered will have spent the credits already. And there aren't any new skills to pick up with this change of cost.

 

So subscribers + pre-order have to pay

Non subscribers don't have to pay

Non pre-order don't have to pay

 

It seems to suggest that subscribers and pre-order are the least valued of your customers.You even mention people having spent millions of credits on training so long term customers wasted millions of credits, while new players get to spend them as they wish.

 

Yes I know they are virtual credits and they are easy to come by but given they are making the change it must be important to people so why is it not important to the people that have financial supported the game.,

[Heal-To-Full]

I wonder why Bioware didn't include this change as part of 3.0? Well I think we all know the answer.

We do indeed: because they didn't intend to, until customer QQ started pouring in.

[LordArtemis]

Well, I guess thanks for customer "QQ" is in order then.

 

Face it folks. One can say it is likely they do indeed solicit feedback. They may not always do what is asked, but I would say it is obvious they listen.

 

That may be a tough pill to swallow for some, but it is reality.

Edited December 6, 2014 by LordArtemis

[DefLynx]

Fair question azudelphi! Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills, we felt this was a better approach to the overall cost to players. As a result, we will not be providing refunds for the cost of training.

 

Hope that clarifies our thoughts on the situation.

 

-eric

 

That is terrible. I mean if it was few thousand or even a few hundred thousand sure, but if you've leveled more than one toon you're talking millions of credits lost ... because y'all did some silly .... AGAIN!

 

[dPuff]

Awesome!

[Yamahara]

Hey folks,

 

Let’s talk a bit about training costs for your characters abilities. One thing has become clear from the player feedback in not only this thread, but since launch: players do not like training costs. It is a situation where every level you will see your hard earned credits go to a holographic Hutt doctor in order to make yourself a bit stronger. We have been talking about this topic internally for quite some time and when you add player feedback to the mix one thing becomes clear… We should make training costs a thing of the past.

 

Since launch, you have spent millions of credits training skills across your characters. As of our maintenance next week all ability training costs will be completely removed from the game, forever!

 

What does this mean for you? This means that starting next week, instead of spending your credits on training skills, you can now spend them on literally, anything else you want. Note that this only affects ability training, you will still need to spend credits to training schematics for Crew Skills, etc.

 

Thank you again for your feedback.

 

-eric

 

Awesome..but what about ripping mods out? almost 10k per mod.. With us buying cartel packs and changing armor a lot it'd be nice not have to pay as much to rip our mods out. At least cut it in half to do so..

[AussieAlan]

Wait, does that count speeder piloting too?, that is what needs to be free given is what almost 200k for all 3 levels.

[x_Boots_x]

I've already spent well over 1 million on 3 toons , its garbage to be "punished" for pre-ordering and getting early access, and thats if I don't decide to level any more characters till its fixed.

[rspser]

Fair question azudelphi! Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills, we felt this was a better approach to the overall cost to players. As a result, we will not be providing refunds for the cost of training.

 

Hope that clarifies our thoughts on the situation.

 

-eric

 

Like probably most everyone else that you have shafted for pre-ordering, I gotta say I'm pretty pissed about this. I leveled 4 characters to 60 in the first few days and spend a hella load of credits buying skills, some of which I had already bought leveling to 55. Although I wasn't happy about doing that at the time and the fact that at level 60 alone I spent over 600k credits to upgrade my skills, it was part of the game. Now you're telling me that it was a waste of credits that I could have spent on other stuff, well yes, and THEN you're saying that you won't compensate me for doing so, even though everyone else and their dog that levels come next week won't have to pay what I did.

 

That is the most retarded thing I have ever heard come out of someone's "mouth".

Did you think about how stupid that sounded before you posted?

 

If you're claiming "Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills" then you have 2 options:

1: Keep the costs there so that preorder and non-preorder alike have to pay the outrageous amount to up skill.

2: Get rid of training costs as you intend to BUT refund the costs that preorder people have already spent while leveling their characters in the week prior to there being no costs.

 

Unless you want to piss off a lot of people, there is no option 3.

Edited December 6, 2014 by rspser

[Heal-To-Full]

It's not a bad thing to piss off a few over-entitled QQers once in a while.

[Rebirth_jt]

Feels like a F U to all preorders and a bonus to the f2pers, hope you plan on refunding all the people that paid for the game! down around 500k and sc****** up change for holodancers and spice.

[fire-breath]

players do not like training costs.

 

I dont like wiping at a boss without ever clearing it. Can we get a oneshot ability which becomes available after we have been at a boss for an x amount of time?

 

/sarcasm

 

Without joking now. I am amazed to see this kneefall to ignorent people who are QQing about something which always has been a part of SWTOR. Yes it may not be a very fun thing but there is more whats not fun. I want extra space in my legacy vaults for example to name one of the many many things which increases QoL.

Regarding the credit cost I really have to call BS on this one. Yesterday one of my 18 alts dinged lv60 and ended up with 110.000 credits in total. Before 3.0 hitted I made sure each toon would have around 200k credits which means I had lost around 90k credits during levelling.

 

I know I spend around 60k on underworld trading so I only lost 30k credits. Add in some repairbills, crafting schems and a few scav missions and I would break even.

 

I havent done anything else but doing missions in order to level up to lv60. Most likely I still gained gash even with buying the new skills. Why is it such a strange thing to pay up? We got the cash by doing missions with a certain goal and we still made money on it.

 

So .... considering we dont need cash anymore to level up our abilities please show balls bioware and lower the credit gains for missions. Afterall we need less cash now.

 

Anyways .. dont get me wrong I do like to not have to pay cash for skills but if there is kneefall on such a topic how easy would you all thing it will be to nerf a boss like Manaan bonusboss? Or the new hardmodes? I dont know. I only know the credit on abilities is NOT an issue since it was still credit positive to level up.