Training Costs are a Thing of the Past

[Benchpresser]

That is awesome for your guild (and I actually mean that in a non-sarcastic way). It shows you have a strong guild. But let me counter your anecdote with my own. I was in the Rishi zone yesterday when somebody mentioned this change. There were about 35 people in zone (+/-) and the reaction went something like this:

 

About five people had a reaction of "What? That can't be right."

Another two people had a "gosh darn it!" reaction

And one person started attacking everyone who expressed outrage and/or disappointment

Nobody knows what the silent majority thought (maybe they didn't see, maybe they saw and didn't care, maybe they saw and cared but just kept it to themselves).

 

It is the silent ones that BW has to be extra careful with. If they are angry, they will just leave and Bioware will never know why.

 

And, just for the record, this has had a minimal effect on me personally as I have only spent about 200k in training so far. That said, Bioware has put me in the uncomfortable position of paying for early access then creating a situation where I feel that playing the game is a bad decision since waiting until Tuesday will save me a bunch of credits. Making your customers feel like they are putting themselves at a disadvantage by playing your game is NEVER a good business policy. EVER.

 

SCIn you expressed it as succinctly as possible.. BW has completely soured me on playing ANY new content until Tuesday. While this welcome change is long overdue, it really is a middle finger to those who wanted and played early access. Basically, it has taught me, unless BW offers 12X XP again or something alike... NEVER buy a pre-order- early access is a scam, and because of sloppy work/execution, BW will screw you over to cover their asses...

 

A great idea once again soured by BW's bad execution.. I just have to shake my head... might as well take time off the game till Tuesday with all but lowbie toons.. it's a waste.

[Grayseven]

What you seem to fail to comprehend is this issue is three-fold.

1) People had to retrain abilities they already had. I do not know of a single other MMO that has ever done this.

2) The high cost of 56-60 skills. I actually have zero issue with this, but others did.

3) The manner in which this was handled.

 

In regards to item one, like I said I know of no other MMO that has ever done this. While the argument is that these were "tree" items that weren't previously paid for, we also had base abilities we did pay for moved into the tree. This should have been a zero cost endeavor and shows lack of foresight that it was not. Even if we concede it was acceptable to charge, we have proof of inconsistencies between mirror classes. This means it was not working as intended as you say but a bug.

 

WoW, Wrath of the LIch King. We saw the same thing.

 

In regards to item two, like I said I actually did not have an issue with this. Training is a one-time cost, or at least should be, see item one. Level 50 training was just as costly in the time reference of that era. What compounded the high cost, was the indiscriminate recharging for skills that took training out of the "one-time" cost realm.

 

Common sense would say skill costs for 56-60 would be higher than 51-55 from the previous expac and you should plan accordingly. The actual cost of "retraining" 1-55 skills was negligible so no one lost all that much to begin with. The Dev's also explained why this was and since it wasn't a major cost it was no big deal.

 

With the third item, the response has been totally botched. First they said it was working as intended when it clearly was not. Second, they implemented a solution that was, in my opinion, rushed and incorrect. They also ignored the biggest issue of the problem/solution, reimbursement for those effected by a bug.

 

How so? It was very clearly working as intended. They intended those costs to be that high and they stated so quite clearly. They didn't "implement a solution", they flat out changed their minds about requiring credit payment for skills. It wasn't a bug fix, it was a QoL change that they only decided on after SoR went live. And they didn't ignore reimbursement, they stated (again, quite clearly) that it wasn't going to happen. It was in no way, shape or form "a bug".

 

 

Still not talking about 1-55 skills. That cost was nothing compared to the repair costs most people are dealing with wiping on the last fight. They are certainly less than the cost of training the level 56 skills. I have made it to 60 on one toon already not having purchased a single skill past the re-buys for 55 and below and will continue to do it until Tuesday. As for paying customers...you got what you paid for. "Game experience is subject to change". Congratulations, you experienced a change in game play and it happens dang near every patch. You are whining about credits which are ridiculously easy to earn.

 

If this is the case, say so! But even if they cannot use this as an excuse to not solve the issue. They don't have to give a 100% credit for credit refund. If they had come in and said player who trained skills this week get 70,000 credits for those under 56 or 500,000 for those that leveled to 60 would have gone a long way to diffusing this situation. And those figures aren't set in stone, come up with an acceptable number.

 

Zero is an acceptable number. When I paid for my skills that was the way the system was set up. I figure I more than made up for it with the 12x XP and free training just in Speeder training costs alone. And quite frankly, if you can't take the Dev's response without having it laid out in a 3 page response it isn't the Dev's responsibility to hold your hand and explain it in detail. They said "no refund" and that's it. You can try a reasoned debate to get them to change their mind, but calling a designed system a bug isn't reasoned debate.

 

Ultimately, you still got exactly what you paid for: Early access to the expac and for anyone who has played more than one MMO you'll know that the first week of an expac has bugs because live servers are different from test servers and sometimes things happen. They are working on it but it isn't an instant fix.

 

If you don't like it, stop buying early access to MMO expac's and simply wait the extra week or two. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with the simple fact that issues are going to happen and you may not like the solutions.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Grayseven

[Heal-To-Full]

I'm still not really upset about no reimbursements of credits for us who paid for the skills, but I still think some kind of gesture from BW would be nice.

A gesture would be nice.

 

But some people - and they always try to speak for a huge chunk of the playerbase, like "we the preorder customers" - act like they're entitled to an immediate full refund with an extra bonus on top as reparations for this great injustice committed upon them.

 

People do this IRL too. It's a whole industry of competing about who is the greater victim, with great rewards bestowed upon the winners. But IRL we can't even say it, because you're labeled a bigot if you do. Here it's ridiculous and nothing else, so laughing at people acting all violated over spending a few more video game credits than someone will next week is par for the course.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[Fractal_Eye]

A gesture would be nice.

 

But some people - and they always try to speak for a huge chunk of the playerbase, like "we the preorder customers" - act like they're entitled to an immediate full refund with an extra bonus on top as reparations for this great injustice committed upon them.

 

People do this IRL too. It's a whole industry of competing about who is the greater victim, with great rewards bestowed upon the winners. But IRL we can't even say it, because you're labeled a bigot if you do. Here it's ridiculous and nothing else, so laughing at people acting all violated over spending a few more video game credits than someone will next week is par for the course.

 

Ahh, the ol' "they're doing something I think is wrong, so I'll just go ahead and make the situation worse by doing something wrong as well!" rationale. Gotcha.

[DarthDymond]

There's no uproar in-game, this seems to be a forum thing. Like race riots, everyone's united on a moral high ground, till someone from the crowd breaks a store window, then everyone's trampling over one another to grab the biggest TV set and frantically drag it home.

People do this IRL too. It's a whole industry of competing about who is the greater victim, with great rewards bestowed upon the winners. But IRL we can't even say it, because you're labeled a bigot if you do. Here it's ridiculous and nothing else, so laughing at people acting all violated over spending a few more video game credits than someone will next week is par for the course.

Wow, got something else on your mind much?

[Gwena]

Just wanted to chime in and mention how much I love this change! I admit, I was finding it rather daunting logging into all my characters and not only finding their action bars to be a mess and needing to fiddle with disciplines, but having to pay a boatload of credits on some of them for training -- even though I made sure were all caught up on training on the 1st! That, combined with hearing how 56-60 training cost a fortune, put a bit of a damper on my excitement.

 

Lucky for me, I'm not the type to dive into brand new content -- I'm more the "dip a toe in and see if anyone who dove in gets eaten by sharks" type. So I had only trained up two of my characters, and thankfully neither of them had too much to train. I wish I had waited and not spent those credits, but hey, better late than never, and I shall certainly appreciate the free training on my other characters and any future ones I make.

 

TBH, I thought that the "adjusted" training costs weren't all that bad (y'know, after the days of having to save up for rank 3 speeder piloting at level 50). But it always seemed a little silly for Jedi masters to charge credits for training, and it seems that the costs got a lot higher near the end levels.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Gwena

[Heal-To-Full]

Wow, got something else on your mind much?

See, you're doing just that, fishing out anything to assign a label to. Common tactic for IRL topics. But in here there's no misdirection to pull; everyone in this game is on equal terms, and almost everyone in this specific thread has preordered the xpac.

 

Ahh, the ol' "they're doing something I think is wrong, so I'll just go ahead and make the situation worse by doing something wrong as well!" rationale. Gotcha.

This thread has served its purpose with the first post. It's an announcement thread, not an opinion poll.

 

The rest is just an online battleground, where everyone is free to pick a side. And mine is the one that says, "Would be nice if there was some gesture, but spending credits doesn't entitle you to a refund the moment the price drops".

 

Rather than beat this dead horse, how about we switch subjects?

 

If training costs paid in early access are eventually refunded, how should Bioware then compensate those who refrained from training due to the announcement?

Edited December 6, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[DamascusAdontise]

Not that this will be read by any developer..... but wanted to chime in anyway/ First off THANK YOU for removing the costs, it was really a bad idea in the first place (nothing like watching all your creds drain away for no other reason than leveling, lets save that cash for gear eh!)

 

Second, I think the decision not to refund peoples money spent is a little short sighted. I have spent so far around 500k on abilities since 3.0 dropped, this announcement is keeping me from playing to 60 during my pre-order time since I dont want to:

 

A) have subpar abilities, causing the game to be harder

 

or

 

B) Pay for any ability before this patch drops

 

So what in essence this has done is caused me to not be able to play during the pre-order time (and I ordered the first day) Please reconsider, and to make it easy I have an idea.

 

Idea: Only refund the cost of abilities spent since 3.0 dropped. This should be really easy to calculate based only on the players level. Abilities cost roughly 33500 credits each starting at level 55, for me I had about 6 abilities per level = about 200k per level.

 

players could be refunded credits based on level and whether or not they actually paid the ability cost, starting at around 200k for a level 56 moving up to 800k-1m by 60.

 

 

My .02 c on this is that it punishes the people who payed to get into the game early, by making them pay almost 1m credits (no paltry sum) more than people who will get in on launch Tuesday. I thought the idea was to reward your loyal customers who always buy first

[Ratea]

make a fool of me?

 

5 characters on 60 -> a round about 5millions credits for nothing .... greetz to bugware ...

 

what the ****!!!!!

[DragonArt]

Well, I have been paying for training, but.. I am not going to complain.. I am thrilled with this change. Thank you Bioware!

[Nadru]

Still not talking about 1-55 skills.

 

Which again completely misses the point. If you buy the "we've been discussing this for a while and decided to announce it now and change it Tuesday" crap I have a some beachfront property in Arizona I am looking to sell. This change was implemented in response to a 40 page post of complaints on this forum titled: "Just spent around 50k at the trainer for skills that I already earned." So tell me how this change has NOTHING to do with skills 1-55...

 

How so? It was very clearly working as intended. They intended those costs to be that high and they stated so quite clearly. They didn't "implement a solution", they flat out changed their minds about requiring credit payment for skills. It wasn't a bug fix, it was a QoL change that they only decided on after SoR went live. And they didn't ignore reimbursement, they stated (again, quite clearly) that it wasn't going to happen. It was in no way, shape or form "a bug".

 

It was VERY CLEARLY NOT working as intended with skill 1-55. There are documented differences between mirror classes on skills that changed or did not change requiring retraining. There is no way that is working as intended. Tell me how that is working as intended. Now if BioWare admitted a bug, there would have been a lot of demand for reimbursement. Instead they released their "long talked about" solution in an attempt to avoid reimbursement, probably because they do not have a system set up to easily identify who does and does not deserve a refund...

 

Zero is an acceptable number. When I paid for my skills that was the way the system was set up. I figure I more than made up for it with the 12x XP and free training just in Speeder training costs alone. And quite frankly, if you can't take the Dev's response without having it laid out in a 3 page response it isn't the Dev's responsibility to hold your hand and explain it in detail. They said "no refund" and that's it. You can try a reasoned debate to get them to change their mind, but calling a designed system a bug isn't reasoned debate.

 

That is exactly what this thread is. This one hit 40 pages way faster than the other. The other got a response from BioWare, it is only a matter of time before this one does. I will continue to follow it until it does.

 

If you don't like it, stop buying early access to MMO expac's and simply wait the extra week or two. Otherwise, suck it up and deal with the simple fact that issues are going to happen and you may not like the solutions.

 

It's an option I will certainly consider. I am sure BioWare would prefer me to preorder though. So we are letting them know how we feel so they can make amends and we can preorder the next expansion. They are certainly under no obligation, but it is in their interest to have happy customers and it costs them nothing to find a workable solution. A refund might be too costly for them, but they can still do some sort of credit at zero cost.

[Tysu_Lanx]

I'm glad that training will no longer cost credits since that always seemed pointless.

 

But I'm angry that I've pointlessly spent over a million credits already on training in the expansion and am dismayed that there will be no refund or other form of restitution towards pre-order customers.

 

One thing is for certain, I'm with the others in this thread who will not be pre-ordering any future expansions. People pre-ordered your game for perks, not for punishments.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Tysu_Lanx

[RavenVera]

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

 

Man you guys really dropped the ball here ! (don't worry I'm not going to spaz out on you)

 

I am a Indy dev (its a hobby) and I actually do understand how this works a little. Let me say I am an avid player in fact I am partially disabled so I play ALOT! Lol ... While this is really disappointing that I spent alot on training I can get over it because the other 21 characters I have will Apparently not have to do the same and this is good. But your timing is pretty terrible for the announce which I'm sure your finding out. Now I am 100% sure that your intentions were not to screw over the dedicated players that preordered SoR (I know How Important The preorder Members are to you. they are the ones that create the buzz , the ones that talk about your new product, and in a sense they are the ones that sell your product for you or at least the driving force because they create the "man I can't wait to buy cause if I do I am Going to miss out" which drives up the sales) But , what you have done here is just smacked all your preorder customers in the face because as they are going to see it you just charged all of them a premium to play early in addition to the cost of the expansion that they paid in cash. I mean Think about it for a second , Put yourself in the shoes of the players here on this posting. Again Let me say to you ERIC I know it is not your fault I understand what a Community Manager does and I Know it is not your fault this happened. On the whole its very cool that the fees are going away but I do not recall seeing on the list of preorder perks that all preorder customers would get screwed by preordering. long story short you guys should not have said a thing till after SOR did full launch! And you cant really take it back now because the damage is already done!

 

For Me I have to say that IT DOES SUCK but I"ll get over it but that's just me. It looks like there is alot of people that wont Good luck on that!

 

OK That being said this part goes out to all of the rest of you .

 

I feel your pain I spent over a mill myself however It was a mistake I am 1000% sure that they did not intend on screwing all of us it was just bad timing for a great idea but dont loose sight of the fact that its still a great idea and soon you wont have to pay for new abilities. Yes people who did not preorder get the benefit whit out the sacrifice but to this i say so be it, let it go and know that your sacrifice will be rewarded some how. I am sure once the powers that be see what has happened they will make some kind of compensation to us It may not be the credits we spent but it will be something that only we who preordered SOR will receive, I'm sure they will see that it's not really ok to let this happen to the loyal customers that just helped them to launch the new product! So Calm down and let them sort it out! And If nothing happens then you have a choice here you can stop spending the $14 a month for sub and the $100 a month for coins or you can just deal with it as I suspect many will do Because the truth of the matter is we love the game It's just really a crap roll it went down this way

 

 

anyway always remember to game hard and never forget the work that goes into the products that let us!

Raven

[Kane_Ren]

My Expansion fee has cost me an extra 2 million+ creds. Someone just buying it doesn't pay those costs.

My rl cash has bought me less.

A nice big sarcastic thanks to devs

[Elagong]

My main character is one I've had since launch. I didn't get any skills upgraded in the recent x12 event. I know some of you are sitting on piles of credits that would Croesus weep, but I'm not in a position to just throw a million plus credits down the toilet.

 

I'd like to add my voices to those asking for some refund of our in-game credits spent on skills since Tuesday. Why? Because the system has to have been bugged.

 

People have been complaining about the cost and BW have addressed that, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is that on the way between 55 and 60, you have to upgrade a number of skills several times with no apparent effect on their abilities. I've easily spent over a million in-game credits on skills with most of them having no discernible impact on their power or effectiveness.

 

I honestly wouldn't care if skills were free forevermore or not. But I do object to paying over a million in-game credits for upgraded and 're-learnt' skills when they apparently have nothing new added.

[EAbovee]

I know I'm a bit late to the thread but I just wanted to throw in my $0.02.

 

The launch has been less than smooth if these forums are any indication. However, even with the exorbitant training costs incurred on those who pre-ordered, this is still a welcome change that may (hopefully) help smooth things over a bit. While I hate feeling like I wasted credits on leveling my main toon (I can only imagine those who have leveled multiple characters already), it is good to hear that I won't have to spend quite so much leveling my other 55s to 60.

[LordArtemis]

I have seen a few new suggestions, so I added them to the list.

 

I would like to note that I do not explicitly support any of the suggested recompense, nor am I seeking it, though I would obviously welcome whatever Bioware decides.

 

This is what I have seen so far.

 

1) Full refund of all ability training that has been purchased since the start of Early Access (Dec 2nd)

2) 5 days of subscription time

3) 7 days of subscription time

4) One time stipend of 200CC

5) One time stipend of 500CC

6) A special mount or weapon

7) Return of 12XP, even if just for early access

8) Free legacy unlocks for a short period

9) Free legacy unlock for Field Respecialization

10) Reduction of mod extraction costs

11) Reduction of "death tax" in story mode flashpoints and operations

12) Addition of 3 more tabs to Legacy Storage, paid or unpaid

14) Additional speeder speed tier of 120%

15) Free Priority Transport terminal for Strongholds

16) A one time stipend of credits..50-70k for characters below 56, 500-600k for characters at 60

 

If I have missed any, or need to add any new suggestions let me know. I will expand the list and repost it when needed.

Edited December 6, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Nadru]

If I have missed any, or need to add any new suggestions let me know. I will expand the list and repost it when needed.

 

A one time stipend of credits. It may be technologically impossible for actual credit reimbursement. My suggestion would be 50-70k for characters below 56, 500-600k for characters at 60.

[RavenVera]

I have seen a few new suggestions, so I added them to the list.

 

I would like to note that I do not explicitly support any of the suggested recompense, nor am I seeking it, though I would obviously welcome whatever Bioware decides.

 

This is what I have seen so far.

 

1) Full refund of all ability training that has been purchased since the start of Early Access (Dec 2nd)

2) 5 days of subscription time

3) 7 days of subscription time

4) One time stipend of 200CC

5) One time stipend of 500CC

6) A special mount or weapon

7) Return of 12XP

8) Free legacy unlocks for a short period

9) Free legacy unlock for Field Respecialization

10) Reduction of mod extraction costs

11) Reduction of "death tax" in story mode flashpoints and operations

12) Addition of 3 more tabs to Legacy Storage, paid or unpaid

14) Additional speeder speed tier of 120%

15) Free Priority Transport terminal for Strongholds

 

If I have missed any, or need to add any new suggestions let me know. I will expand the list and repost it when needed.

 

a return of the 12xp for at least the remaining early access would be nice!

[Andryah]

But the question is:

How this will affect in-game economy?

 

Are we going to see GTN prices to go through the roof because players will have more credits to spend?

 

I believe the reason that Eric stated they had already been looking at making training free (even before the issue arose and feedback avalanched) is because they wanted to work out how to balance the in/out of the economy.

 

The seriousness of this issue in players eyes I believe encouraged them to just go ahead and do it now (since they clearly had the ability, as demonstrated during 12x) and continue to weigh and sort economy balance afterwards.

 

Yes, they will need to rebalance input/output in the economy in some manner, but they have some time because the server economies are well established and healthy... so some modest inflation in the short term will not really be noticeable to players.

[Andryah]

It's not a product, it's a service.

 

You don't get a refund if you just missed the happy hour.

 

You don't get a refund if I posted a Mk10 for 200k and someone else posted it for 50k the next hour.

 

You looked at the price, decided it was worth paying, and paid it.

 

^^ 100% agree.

 

So many QQs alleging that they were somehow forced to both buy the preorder and then binge on the new expac 5 minutes after it went live.

[Tamanous]

So early access means we get to lose a ton of credits for the privilege of playing early.

 

Thanks?

[LordArtemis]

A one time stipend of credits. It may be technologically impossible for actual credit reimbursement. My suggestion would be 50-70k for characters below 56, 500-600k for characters at 60.

 

a return of the 12xp for at least the remaining early access would be nice!

 

Ok, both are added to the list.

[DarthDymond]

I believe the reason that Eric stated they had already been looking at making training free (even before the issue arose and feedback avalanched) is because they wanted to work out how to balance the in/out of the economy.

 

The seriousness of this issue in players eyes I believe encouraged them to just go ahead and do it now (since they clearly had the ability, as demonstrated during 12x) and continue to weigh and sort economy balance afterwards.

 

Yes, they will need to rebalance input/output in the economy in some manner, but they have some time because the server economies are well established and healthy... so some modest inflation in the short term will not really be noticeable to players.

Well training costs were only ever a one-time credit sink per character. In the end the difference between having them or not is about the difference between whether a character ran their dailies 12 times in a given month or 13 times. Probably not going to be a super-relevant change to the overall economy.

[dipstik]

very much appreciated.