Training Costs are a Thing of the Past

[Heal-To-Full]

Asking them to refund the costs to the players ... is not asking for too much.

It is asking too much. Can you imagine the logistics?

 

It's game money and it's not a lot of game money.

 

Again those who pre-ordered are getting

...to be beta-testers at their own expense. Anything else you expected? Edited December 6, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[LordArtemis]

Nicely done. It's the correct solution (because it largely solves the issues players are having, and it's a simple thing to do on Bioware's end of things).

 

Also...it will continue to benefit players moving forward... which IMO makes up for any expenditures done before this goes in to effect.

 

One clarification, in advance, Eric .. does this apply to all players, including F2P and Preferred?

 

Thats a good question. I would like to know that as well. I have to admit, though this may upset some folks, that I would not mind one bit if this was subscriber only.

 

But naturally I would welcome it if it was for everyone.

[LordArtemis]

Its not early access, its paid open beta.

 

I kind of see it this way as well...and I am actually fine with that.

[Andryah]

Again those who pre-ordered are getting ****ed.

 

I preorderd, and I disagree.

 

A) They gave you incentives to preorder and you lapped 'em up. Many people did.

 

B) Personally, my preorder benefitted me far more then this snafu over retraining cost me, because I took advantage of the 12x perk.

 

C) Unless you NEVER, EVER, plan to level a character in this game again.. then you reap the benefit of free training for the life the game (for as long as you play).

 

You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to speak for me, or for others.

 

P.S. I do not buy MMO expacs for early access. I learned that years ago, and it has served me well in managing my own personal expectations. Besides.... there is no rush to finish the content..... except maybe so one can whine about how there is once again "nothing to do".

Edited December 6, 2014 by Andryah

[Fractal_Eye]

. . .

Just my take. Certainly not directed at your post BTW. Just a general statement.

 

Oh, no worries; I gathered it wasn't. I also agree with you about the team not taking peoples' feedback when it's overly vicious, etc. Whether we get any form of compensation, I fully intend to continue to support and play this game.

 

(In fact, as soon as I'm doing watching an episode of Once Upon A Time, I think I'll go and level up one of my Assassins, heh. I just definitely won't buy her level 60 skills if I get her there (which I probably will) before the change takes effect. )

[JourrnoRush]

Just bribe me with some cartel coins and I'll be happy again.

[Propecius]

Ahem:

 

W00T!!!!

 

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled forum.

 

(And thank you!)

[Kadin]

It is asking too much. Can you imagine the logistics?

 

It's game money and it's not a lot of game money.

Running some type of script to find all the credits that were spent across characters within a given week and sending that amount back via an in-game mail is really that hard to do? Yeah I guess actually it might be seeing as how other small issues seemed to take forever to get fixed. Good point.

 

As to it not being a lot of money, how did you come to this conclusion?

Edited December 6, 2014 by Kadin

[Grayseven]

I've spent, as of last check, over 1.5 million credits training skills.

 

And I don't care.

 

EA/BW could have said nothing, and let us keep sinking credits into skills over the weekend and sprung this on us Monday but they were nice enough to tell us today. That means I won't drop another 1 to 2 million over the weekend because I can simply get the bare minimum of skills to be viable to 60.

 

Credits are easy, even if you spent millions on skills you'll easily get them back. I love expac launches because it allows massive credit gains with very little effort. Even sinking credits into skills I've had a net gain in credits and it's only going to get better.

 

So thanks for not waiting til the last minute to tell us. Now I can spend millions of credits on fancy garb and yanking mods and Mk-10 kit installs.

[Vhaegrant]

I've scaled up my reaction to this from 'non-plussed' to 'miffed'.

 

I thought the design concept of training costs was to act as a credit sink and restrict inflation of costs on the GTN?

And it's only a cost you have to bear once as you level, after that any credits you earn are yours to keep.

 

Thankfully I've only had the time to run two of my characters through to 60 (I'm not sure about total costs but I know that last level 59>60 was a pretty big hit).

In fact the reason I found out about this was it was mentioned on Makeb while I was running dailies to earn enough for my next character to make the 5 level journey.

With another 14 characters to put through to 60 I stand to make far more than I've lost, but it is that initial reaction that as an active supporter of SWTOR my loyalty is taken for granted.

The time spent running the old dailies to earn enough so I can enjoy the new content has been wasted, it's that sour taste that will take time to go.

 

I'll get over it. After all it's not the first time that an expensive in game credit sink has been removed (the few that spring to mind, the ridiculous cost of those final bank tabs replaced with account wide unlocks that didn't scale, the rapid transport for dailies replaced by the far more functional terminals, and the ship GTN terminal unlocked for a handful of cartel coins thankfully I never paid the 5 million to unlock it).

As a game matures features that once cost a lot to unlock may be cheapened or even removed.

But, to effect such a change less than a week after the launch of the expansion pack must be a new record.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Vhaegrant

[Max_Killjoy]

I am confused as to why it is that Bioware trying to do the right thing here seems to be making people even madder than when Bioware was screwing up on this matter...

 

Unless you look at Bioware as twirling their collective mustache, having planned this all along... but why? It's not like they really gain anything out of an "accidental credit sink" caper, other than a torqued-off playerbase.

 

Bioware does plenty of things to be angry about -- misfeasance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance. I'll give them a pass here for at least trying to get this right in the end.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Max_Killjoy

[Andryah]

I am confused as to why it is that Bioware trying to do the right thing here seems to be making people even madder than when Bioware was screwing up on this matter...

 

Unless you look at Bioware as twirling their collective mustache, having planned this all along... but why? It's not like they really gain anything out of an "accidental credit sink" caper, other than a torqued-off playerbase.

 

Puzzling, isn't it?

 

I think some people simply must have their lb of flesh no matter what.

[Lotharofxev]

its paid open beta.

 

Ayep.

[Quraswren]

Thanks for shafting us for pre ordering early!

 

I fell about the same too.

 

Sure its only credits but it still feels like your getting shafted when you shouldn't be.

[Edzew]

Thanks for shafting us for pre ordering early!

 

QFT!!!!!

 

 

It is asking too much. Can you imagine the logistics?

 

It's game money and it's not a lot of game money.

 

...to be beta-testers at their own expense. Anything else you expected?

 

just because you dont think that its a lot of money to others it is a lot of money!! to others that is all of their in game money! i nearly went broke and i only had two level 55s and i haven't even started on any of the new quests that just from logging in and choosing my new skills. those two and a few of my lower toons that are in the low 30s and a couple mid 40s. i blew threw close to a million credits just training those and i haven't even started on the new content yet B^P

 

kinda surprised by the number of biodrones in this thread still backing up bioware and thinking they can do no wrong

[Crawelc]

As a Founder, who has taken dozens of toons to 50 and then 55 and now working on 60, I demand a refund. From early access, through ROTHC, and up until now. You have broken my immersion in the game, and I have severe psychological trauma.

[StefanInter]

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

 

Nice to see you care about your early access player. Nice to see us get shafted again...

[Andryah]

I don't give a flying fk. This is the last straw. This game is run by fking imbeciles and I can't take it anymore. I also refuse to sit silently by while dumb cnts like Andryah try to put a positive spin on this abortion. I already uninstalled, so you dikholes have fun with this joke of a game.

 

You uninstalled the game...... yet forgot to log out of the forum.

 

Your agenda is crystal clear here.

[StefanInter]

 

I would ask that those players consider easy ways to earn the credits back...I know that may not be fair, but perhaps there is no way they can issue proper refunds.

 

.

 

There is a way, the same way they refund people items when they by mistake bought the wrong. BW is just unwilling to put in the effort. They just don't care about their early access customers...

[Tracyycc]

Im curious when they decided they were gonna do this change and why they waited till after 3.0 when people spent the credits to train new skills.

[DomiSotto]

wow, wish I saw this thread like an hour ago, just trained L58 character.... at a cost of 30 thou per ability. Heh. But, wow! No more training costs! YAY!

[Oyranos]

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

 

59-60 lvl = 700.000 credits, its the most ridiculous ever happened in mmo history.

 

And not counting the credits fro 55-59... We need compensation the least and those who took that decision to be removed from their places... Move them in other departments " because with their ideas, they harm the game" and I find it the least rude to take that decision now... while we paid for early access, not for beta testing.

 

Personally I am not sure if I want to lvl up another character... I did 2 characters and the game is unbalanced and draining all our credits. And at the end when we get 60 and pay all these stupid 2-3 million of credits for training, we are left out with a nerfed class, pointless gear that we cannot even play heroics.

 

Heroics are unplayable as an OP healer... My op is 42k, the tank couldnt keep the damage away from me, we wiped 10 times and we abandon it. The damage the tank gets is hilarious.... And u nerfed the healers. We couldnt pass through first boss in Tython heroic because the adds killing the healers in 2-3 seconds and we cannot maintain the group with heals. Gonna quit healing but now my character is with 0 gear, all my gear was heal.

 

1) revan is bugged we die many times because his mechanics stuck and its a solo wipe.

2) green items 55-60 lvl, in reverse engineer give 0 results

3) many items altered and while my characters where 37k now they are 34k, so its not only class nerfing, but armor spec nerfs. You didnt respected our efforts to progress our characters.

4) many bugs and its well known that the swtor team, never cares about the bugs.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Oyranos

[Slurmez]

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

 

SO its just those who paid to beta test your product who get screwed? Interesting business model you guys run.....

[DarthDymond]

Im curious when they decided they were gonna do this change and why they waited till after 3.0 when people spent the credits to train new skills.

Given it's not being implemented until next week, I would guess the decision was finalized at about 4:00-4:30pm EST today, aka just before Eric announced it.

[vathouille]

That was the one decent thing to do after a 40+ pages thread popping out. Thanks for making the right call.

 

A bit saddened that this had to happen after many players (including me) had to pour a few millions down the drain, but I can also understand that figuring out refund amounts could be a real pain and I can live with that.

 

Had cancelled my sub this morning after I saw the previous disastrous official statement regarding the issue, I may consider re-subbing if the bigger bugs get hammered before my time runs out ^^