Training Costs are a Thing of the Past

[OddballEasyEight]

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

 

Thanks?

 

Also means you got 12x XP for two months AND no skill costs for two months.

 

But I'm sure you didn't complain about not having to pay for your skills during that time?

 

And you got to get to level 60 before everyone else*.

And you got to max out your crafting skills before everyone else*.

And you got to experience the storyline and epic ending before everyone else*.

And so on and so forth.

 

(* before everyone else that didn't preorder in time of course)

 

And you'll never have to pay for skills again.

Ever.

On any character.

eeever.

[Andryah]

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.

 

/Agreed.

 

Though training costs from 40+ to cap level are significant and multiplied by say a million or so characters (assuming only one character per active player, so obviously it's a low estimate)... it will have some impact to the economy. But I do agree that most players would not even notice it and any adjustments made in the background by BW would also likely not be noticed by most players.

 

But I think the angry and self-interested QQers (and no I am not saying every critical concern express is, just the obvious ones where spittle is hitting their monitor screen as they type) will blame every perceived aberration in the economy on ---> "The Great 3.0 Early Access Debacle". Because let's face it.. this particular personality type needs boogey men to attack like Don Quixote macin' out on a Windmill.

[Andryah]

And you'll never have to pay for skills again.

Ever.

On any character.

eeever.

 

In other words... for a one time error on the part of the developers.... Bioware provided ALL players with a lifetime dividend to every character that they every level, no matter how many levels, or how many characters.

 

You would think that people could see forward and how much this benefits the player base. Of course a player has to be able to see beyond their own nose to see this for what it is.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Andryah

[Dawginole]

^^ 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.

 

Look who it is to ride in and save the day for Bioware! Your shoulders must get sooo tired carrying this company around.

 

You may agree with the happy hour analogy but the two of you are missing one key element.

 

The correct analogy is that it is 4:59pm and you order a beer. And the bar tender sells it to you for $7 and doesn't tell you that in 1min it will be 5pm and happy hour and that beer will cost you $3.

 

The point is that they knew on Tuesday that this was likely coming, and they purposefully did not mention it until Friday right before the weekend so that they could 1) Suck credits out of the market as a quick money sink; and; 2) so that like any other news cycle the weekend would protect them from much of the backlash.

 

They are hoping this will be washed away by Monday and forgotten.

[Andryah]

Look who it is to ride in and save the day for Bioware! Your shoulders must get sooo tired carrying this company around.

 

You may agree with the happy hour analogy but the two of you are missing one key element.

 

The correct analogy is that it is 4:59pm and you order a beer. And the bar tender sells it to you for $7 and doesn't tell you that in 1min it will be 5pm and happy hour and that beer will cost you $3.

 

The point is that they knew on Tuesday that this was likely coming, and they purposefully did not mention it until Friday right before the weekend so that they could 1) Suck credits out of the market as a quick money sink; and; 2) so that like any other news cycle the weekend would protect them from much of the backlash.

 

They are hoping this will be washed away by Monday and forgotten.

 

Complete nonsense, and speculation on your part. But I get it... you insist on being perpetually angry about this... to the point where you feel the need to make personal attacks. So no point in you and I conversing further.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Andryah

[Dawginole]

Complete nonsense, and speculation on your part. But I get it... you insist on being perpetually angry about this... to the point where you feel the need to make personal attacks. So no point in you and I conversing further.

 

Is that a QQ after telling everyone else they are QQ'ing?

 

My remarks are not a personal attack. Show me one post where you have ever pointed out BW was in the wrong about something that affected the community?

 

One post. I'll wait.

 

Secondly, how is it speculation? Eric said himself this was a long time discussion internally. If you think they all went into a meeting on Friday and without any warning decided to turn off ability costs on the 9th you are either extremely young or have never worked in a corporate environment. This decision would have been on the table for months, and the active implementation of it for weeks.

[RowanThursday]

 

Secondly, how is it speculation? Eric said himself this was a long time discussion internally. If you think they all went into a meeting on Friday and without any warning decided to turn off ability costs on the 9th you are either extremely young or have never worked in a corporate environment. This decision would have been on the table for months, and the active implementation of it for weeks.

 

Quite possibly, but, I think it would have been quite a breach of protocol for a dev to start 'leaking' the content of staff discussions to any small or large group of customers in order to give them a possible advantage on something that hadn't been finalised or formally announced.

 

If a dev (Dev A) had come on the boards and said "Hey, we're talking about scrapping all training costs in a couple of weeks, psst, nobody train anything..." ... and then at the next meeting someone more senior (Dev B) had stood up and said "Actually, now I've taken the time to read this through since last meeting, vetoed because it would mess with X,Y,Z..." ... and Dev A then had to say "Um, but actually, for customer service, I just totally undermined your authority and leaked it to the playerbase in advance- and they really love it so you'll be hated if we say no on your authority now"... then Dev B would be rightfully furious at being treated like that, and Dev A would probably have been out looking for a new job.

 

Customer service is one thing, but it's certainly not the only thing.

 

Is it fair to say that, of those who object to this announcement, what you object to is the timing- free skills for a while, then a sudden period of not only *having* to pay again, but also inadvertently having to pay a *lot*, due to what was probably a buggy or ill-thought out implementation of fees for new (or not-so-new) services, then followed by the announcement of this right *after* you'd paid out the credits?

[LordArtemis]

My remarks are not a personal attack. Show me one post where you have ever pointed out BW was in the wrong about something that affected the community?

 

One post. I'll wait.

 

Well, You made a personal attack right in the very statement where you indicated it was not a personal attack.

 

The insinuation, if I understand correctly, is that Andryah is a fanboi. I have known Andryah for quite some time, and though we do disagree quite often I have seen critical posts....grant it they are not harsh (at least the ones I have seen) but that speaks to more of a general sense of control than anything else.

 

Andryah is no fanboi. There is no blind defense. Andryah has demonstrated a set of values that is consistent in posting style, and that is the extent of it IMO.

Edited December 6, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Nadru]

Is it fair to say that, of those who object to this announcement, what you object to is the timing- free skills for a while, then a sudden period of not only *having* to pay again, but also inadvertently having to pay a *lot*, due to what was probably a buggy or ill-thought out implementation of fees for new (or not-so-new) services, then followed by the announcement of this right *after* you'd paid out the credits?

 

I feel that is fair to say. I personally wouldn't include the period of not paying in my gripe as I knew and expected that to end. However, I would add to my complaint that there is a subset of users hit higher with this then another. If this announcement was made next Friday to be implemented on the 16th, at least everyone would have been screwed over. If this was planned, then it was irresponsible to release such high training costs knowing they might be taking them out. If they hadn't gotten final approval, they could have approved a short term fix, like extension of the free training from pre-ordering, or even just putting in lower credit amounts on the skills.

[Dawginole]

Quite possibly, but, I think it would have been quite a breach of protocol for a dev to start 'leaking' the content of staff discussions to any small or large group of customers in order to give them a possible advantage on something that hadn't been finalised or formally announced.

 

I think you're missing my point. Eric said this was in discussion for awhile after they announced it. I'm not saying someone should have leaked this information to those that pre-ordered. I'm saying they already knew the announcement was coming and should have made it on Tuesday to save players their credits. The evidence points to the fact that they knew it was coming and held off the announcement either purposefully or due to incompetence. BW is suspect of both based on history.

[DarthTHC]

Once again another brilliant comment. This one assumes that all players everywhere will continue to level and that future savings make up for the four days in which BW knew they were about to turn off a money sink and failed to let their pre-order players, i.e. their most dedicated player base, get robbed.

 

If you feel like you're "getting robbed" by the game, you need to a) quit playing the game and b) get some perspective.

[Andryah]

The insinuation, if I understand correctly, is that Andryah is a fanboi. I have known Andryah for quite some time, and though we do disagree quite often I have seen critical posts....grant it they are not harsh (at least the ones I have seen) but that speaks to more of a general sense of control than anything else.

 

Which is why I am glad you are not going to unsub. We have had great discussions, with both agreement and disagreement. I appreciate that you embrace the ability to agree to disagree without resorting to old meme based MMO forum attacks.

 

As for Dawg.... he earned lifetime membership on my ignore list... so nothing he says matters anymore.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Andryah

[Grayseven]

Please learn the difference between something observable and a personal attack.

 

When you have a history of 100% support of every BW decision no matter what, you have not demonstrated lack of bias.

 

I gotta call you wrong on this in both cases. Andryah has on numerous occasions not supported certain EA/BW decisions, some of which I disagreed with.

 

As for the personal attack, it was simply an attack. You can try to spin it, but it's easy to see.

[Telanis]

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

 

Thank you, Eric & co., this is awesome. And apologies for all the people who are crabbing about refunds.

[TravelersWay]

I think you're missing my point. Eric said this was in discussion for awhile after they announced it. I'm not saying someone should have leaked this information to those that pre-ordered. I'm saying they already knew the announcement was coming and should have made it on Tuesday to save players their credits. The evidence points to the fact that they knew it was coming and held off the announcement either purposefully or due to incompetence. BW is suspect of both based on history.

 

Please provide this evidence you speak of - I have yet to see any of it. Plenty of things can and are in discussion at any point in time in a game's life. That doesn't mean anything has or ever will be decided one way or another. All I see is someone stating pure speculation on something they desperately want to believe as fact when there is nothing to support those statements.

[MorgenBlue]

Is it fair to say that, of those who object to this announcement, what you object to is the timing- free skills for a while, then a sudden period of not only *having* to pay again, but also inadvertently having to pay a *lot*, due to what was probably a buggy or ill-thought out implementation of fees for new (or not-so-new) services, then followed by the announcement of this right *after* you'd paid out the credits?

 

Pretty much, but also that the timing works out that only early access had this problem. If everyone had the problem that would be one thing but it is limited just to early access players.

[Katibabi]

Wow - 50 pages of complaining and accusing the devs of "shafting you." 1) It isn't REAL money folks. Get a life outside the realm of fantasy. 2) HOW did you get shafted? By pre-ordering you got time at 12xp, and time of free training. All "perks" you didn't have before.

 

Seriously...I paid, I benefited. I am doing dailies today to get more credits. BIG deal!!! It is a game. One I have fun playing and HAVE had fun and benefits from being pre-order and Sub for 3 years now - Since day 1.

 

Thanks for the update Eric. There are many of us who appreciate it and look forward to new fun things.

 

K

[DarthVengeant]

Utterly Fantastic.

 

Lucky I took my time getting to 60 on a few toons and this got posted before hand. Saving me ALOT of money. This is why I never rush doing new content. I'll wait until Tuesday to upgrade skills.

 

I'll just do crew skills and crafting new augs etc until then.

Edited December 6, 2014 by DarthVengeant

[Max_Killjoy]

Wow - 50 pages of complaining and accusing the devs of "shafting you." 1) It isn't REAL money folks. Get a life outside the realm of fantasy. 2) HOW did you get shafted? By pre-ordering you got time at 12xp, and time of free training. All "perks" you didn't have before.

 

Seriously...I paid, I benefited. I am doing dailies today to get more credits. BIG deal!!! It is a game. One I have fun playing and HAVE had fun and benefits from being pre-order and Sub for 3 years now - Since day 1.

 

Thanks for the update Eric. There are many of us who appreciate it and look forward to new fun things.

 

K

 

I can understand why they're upset, I just don't understand why some of them are SO upset.

 

I spent credits to train some characters before the future free training was announced. It sucks that those credits are gone, but I'm not going to lose my stuffing over it.

[Fluxsource]

And you'll never have to pay for skills again.

Ever.

On any character.

eeever.

 

Mainly because I've already paid them. Not sure how that's a benefit...

 

I understand that it's technically difficult/impossible to refund players who have spend credits on training since 3.0 went live, but surely it's easy to see how irritating this issue is?

 

The most dedicated players, who were the first to pre-order the expansion and spent the most time leveling multiple characters, your BEST customers, are not just expected to spend a huge amount of money on new skills, some of which they already had without cost before the patch - in the most hardcore players across multiple characters - and that from Tuesday onwards that cost is simply removed, but that they shouldn't expect any sympathy? That's particularly harsh, and I have to say the timing of this decision is absolutely terrible.

 

If this topic was already under discussion, the release of 3.0 (and this is supposed to be Early Access, not Beta) is the perfect time to implement it, not after a week during which your most dedicated customers have already shelled out.

 

While disappointing, I think a refund is unlikely, What I would like is an apology.

 

EDIT: It's not even like the Early Access works properly...

Edited December 7, 2014 by Fluxsource

[KTap]

The most dedicated players, who were the first to pre-order the expansion and spent the most time leveling multiple characters, your BEST customers

 

Their best customers spend a lot of money on cartel coins

[Fluxsource]

Their best customers spend a lot of money on cartel coins

 

Stop being sensible and correct please, you're ruining my point.

[Katibabi]

I can understand why they're upset, I just don't understand why some of them are SO upset.

 

I spent credits to train some characters before the future free training was announced. It sucks that those credits are gone, but I'm not going to lose my stuffing over it.

 

Ya, I can "understand". But all the screaming about getting ripped off etc is silly. We'd all like to keep money for "fun" things...but hey...the perks far outweigh the few things here and there that cost more than we'd like. And yes, I'll hold off on other toons...but not yelling because I had to spend some fake credits. In fact....gonna spend more.

[ImmortalLowlife]

Well let me add my $.02 to this....I'll use spoilers because I'm about to GO OFF!

 

 

Rabble rabble rabble rabble rabble!!!

 

 

 

 

Really tho....I preordered for the 12XP and early access. But considering the cost of re-training/training. I'll just wait until the 9th to play anymore. My in game money is "poverty level" to say the least on most of my characters. The one character I already spent credits on buying abilities is now almost broke, and my main is in the same boat. If BW decides to throw us a bone then cool.....regardless....it's in my best interest to wait till they implement the change....so I can keep a lil change.

 

Knowhatumtalmbout?

 

*drops mic and goes to play DA:I

[SBR_QuorTek]

Well though I somewhat disagree, then it is nice though... but personally I think it is more like a temporary bandaid compared to what is coming up next, there is alot of broken things and probably far from working as intended... for an instance certain classes that has been somewhat broken in some few ways with an individual skill or skill description here and there.

 

I don't want to thank them for this update though about we no longer have to pay for getting new skills, but I think they should had worked on the other issues first to begin with.

 

We should start with the groupfinder for starters since there is so little you can queu for, for at level 60 for a good start that is.