Training Costs are a Thing of the Past

[justinplainview]

*Sigh*. Thanks devs for this early Christmas gift, thank you Eric for the info and for braving the lions' den in which you just cannot win.

 

You can easily win by having this change occur on December 2. You can easily win by not screwing over people who are dedicated to this game and pre order from the jump only to give non pre order people a benefit they didn't get when the content dropped. Criticism that is valid is not unfair and it's not a lions den in which they can't win.

[DOHboy]

This is bull. We should be refunded for our previous training costs, seriously, we paid over a million for training only to a week later to get the rug pulled.

 

that didn't take long...you missed slap in the face...

 

and just in case you feel slighted to threaten to unsub if don't get a refund, can i have your stuff?

[DimmuJanKaarl]

I do understand the plight of folks that already paid for abilities before this change.

 

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.

 

This is not an attempt to stifle your complaints...im in that "already paid" boat with a few of my toons. I just think that this change is VERY positive, and we should move forward to finding our own solutions at this point.

 

QFT. I've easily spent a half million credits across a few toons since 3.0 hit. I will say, however, that I noted the credits earned from the full solo run of FA and it was something like 250k credits for a few hours worth of work. Just something to keep in mind. I definitely hate it when people respond with things like "oh but credits are so easy to come by". That's definitely not my personal experience. I rarely make money hand over fist on the GTN like some people claim, and I simply don't have the time to farm dailies, etc. for credits like some people seem to as well. That said, I'm too thrilled by the fact that we, the community, collectively cried out and were heard, and as a direct result of speaking up a huge change was made to the game. It's simply too awesome to get mad over lost credits. I will also say as I've mentioned in other threads, it's worth also thinking about a particular fundamental concept of finance: the theorem of the time-value of money dictates that losing some credits now has far, far less impact than the loss of those credits over time; since we'll never have to pay for skills again, just imagine how many more credits we'll have as we level more toons and when level caps go up later, and the overall extrinsic value of those saved credits as it relates to our ability to save more and buy more and bigger things later.

Edited December 5, 2014 by DimmuJanKaarl

[Kadin]

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

hrm... yeah that doesn't sit well with me. So you guys realized that the costs are excessive and have taken a step to fix it yet the people who are clearly affected by it most, those of us who are in early access, get hit the hardest. Why is it so difficult for you guys to simply refund any and all training costs since the launch of early access? If that means refunding everyone else as well, that's great for them as well. You took a good step to correct this, please finish with the proper next step.

 

I highly doubt this is a technical limitation based on your response above so I'm failing to see why you guys can't do it properly right from the start.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Kadin

[NYYankee]

so early access gets ****ed and spends millions of credits training abilities and then people that didn't pre-order the expansion get an added benefit that the early access players didn't get. This is ********. I'm glad for other people, obviously, but this is terrible for pre-order people that just wasted millions of credits. GG

 

Early Access (of which I am part) did not get screwed. We got exactly what was expected. We all expected to pay training costs and we all did. The removal of training costs is not a negative to early access, but a benefit that is equally applied to all.

 

Does it stink to have invested in something that is now cheaper (or in this case free) to obtain. Yes it does, but that's the risk of being an early adopter of any product. Early adopters tend to suffer through higher costs, lower functionality, and additional bugs. After the product is out for a while, the supplier usually offers the same product, but more polished and at a lower price.

 

If I buy the newest phone the day it hits the shelves, then later go back and find out the manufacturer not only lowered the price, but made the frame and glass more rugged, I didn't get screwed. I got exactly what I expected and paid for. If I had held off and waited, I could have gotten the nicer phone, but I also wouldn't have been enjoying the new phone in the interim.

[Projawa]

Thanks Bioware.

How about also removing all mod extraction costs? Or at least making free mod extraction a subscriber-only perk?

[Blurch]

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

 

Thanks for telling us at the start of 3.0 spent close to a million on training thanks for the wasting of time and credits, along with my other post you people at BioWare and EA cant get you heads out of your butts.

[cs_zoltan]

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

 

[UTlNNl]

I've already got four level 60's fully trained. That's 2.4million credits for the level 60 training alone. This is just stupid.

[Kadin]

Early Access (of which I am part) did not get screwed. We got exactly what was expected. We all expected to pay training costs and we all did. The removal of training costs is not a negative to early access, but a benefit that is equally applied to all.

 

Does it stink to have invested in something that is now cheaper (or in this case free) to obtain. Yes it does, but that's the risk of being an early adopter of any product. Early adopters tend to suffer through higher costs, lower functionality, and additional bugs. After the product is out for a while, the supplier usually offers the same product, but more polished and at a lower price.

 

If I buy the newest phone the day it hits the shelves, then later go back and find out the manufacturer not only lowered the price, but made the frame and glass more rugged, I didn't get screwed. I got exactly what I expected and paid for. If I had held off and waited, I could have gotten the nicer phone, but I also wouldn't have been enjoying the new phone in the interim.

If your phone dropped in price within a week, you'd get the money back from just about every retailer that a I know of.

 

This situation came about because of SoR and the high cost. They made the change based on the feedback so I don't think it's too much to question why we couldn't get a refund of the fees.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Kadin

[justinplainview]

Early Access (of which I am part) did not get screwed. We got exactly what was expected. We all expected to pay training costs and we all did. The removal of training costs is not a negative to early access, but a benefit that is equally applied to all.

 

Does it stink to have invested in something that is now cheaper (or in this case free) to obtain. Yes it does, but that's the risk of being an early adopter of any product. Early adopters tend to suffer through higher costs, lower functionality, and additional bugs. After the product is out for a while, the supplier usually offers the same product, but more polished and at a lower price.

 

If I buy the newest phone the day it hits the shelves, then later go back and find out the manufacturer not only lowered the price, but made the frame and glass more rugged, I didn't get screwed. I got exactly what I expected and paid for. If I had held off and waited, I could have gotten the nicer phone, but I also wouldn't have been enjoying the new phone in the interim.

 

Considering that the change is being put in quite literally when the expac drops for everybody, yes, it is early access people getting hosed. Look at a calendar. It's fairly simple.

[JourrnoRush]

So let me get this straight,

 

I ordered early access for a week (Before Nov 2) received this:

 

Revan Huge Statue

Access to lvl 60 (only leveled one character thank geddy lee)

Spent about 1 mil in training costs (i feel bad for the people who are working on their legacy before next week)

A bugged final fight of the expansion

Bugged gear

Bugged final fight for gear of both new operations

 

Then the icing on the cake, "thanks for subscribing and buying early access, but sorry for the inconvenience of using you as beta testers"

 

It seems those who preordered after nov 2 are the real winners

 

[khsolo]

I'm...honestly shocked and speechless. All I can say is: well done, Bioware, well done.

 

Indeed, great decision congrats, still have 10 more toons to go from 55 to 60 and was spending around 400 k in each toon to retrain, pretty expensive

[justinplainview]

So let me get this straight,

 

I ordered early access for a week (Before Nov 2) received this:

 

Revan Huge Statue

Access to lvl 60 (only leveled one character thank geddy lee)

Spent about 1 mil in training costs (i feel bad for the people who are working on their legacy before next week)

A bugged final fight of the expansion

Bugged gear

Bugged final fight for gear of both new operations

 

Then the icing on the cake, "thanks for subscribing and buying early access, but sorry for the inconvenience of using you as beta testers"

 

It seems those who preordered after nov 2 are the real winners

 

You got a huge revan statue? Because I'm pretty sure you just get a rishi idol that is not a huge revan statue, unless I'm getting a different deco than other people.

[sheabr]

well this kinf of suck since all of your loyal subscribers (that pre ordered before nov 2nd) have already spent the credits and are SoL. ( over 2 mil spent on 2 toons for skills for me) i do think there should be some sort of refund or compensation for players that have trained skill at level 60 who have early access.

[TandyUK]

Over multiple characters, definitely possible.

 

Personally I have wasted 4 million credits retraining skills across 15 characters.

Very pissed off that there will be no compensation whatsoever.

[CloudCastle]

Thank you, oh my goodness, thank you!

 

This is a wonderful change. I have felt for a while now that the credit sinks were getting a bit extreme in this game. This makes me feel much better.

[KyaniteD]

You can easily win by having this change occur on December 2. You can easily win by not screwing over people who are dedicated to this game and pre order from the jump only to give non pre order people a benefit they didn't get when the content dropped. Criticism that is valid is not unfair and it's not a lions den in which they can't win.

 

Now, here is the thing. What happened, happened. No one can time travel back to Dec 2. They had to work with the current situation, and while I understand that it's frustrating for those who already paid training costs in the past couple days, I choose to be realistic: 1) They cannot change the past. No amount of complaining will change that. 2) Offering refunds would most likely open an exploit the size of a barn door. As I see it, the few toons on which training has already been paid for are the very short term price to pay for a very long term positive effect. If people have already leveled all their 16 characters to level 60 in the past 72 hours then I'm really dreadfully sorry, because they apparently have no life beyond this game and not slept for entirely too long.

[crubel]

Thank you for making this change.

 

If training is now going to be free, could you just grant the upgrade automatically so we do not have to go see a trainer at all? If you do that, I only ask that you re-purpose the existing holo trainers to be vendors or something else of some sort.

 

 

Thanks!

[pieceofjunk]

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

 

You are punishing people in game for purchasing SoR in time to gain early access. Especially those of us who are not credit rich. I will be advising everyone in my guild to not level anymore characters until the patch drops, which will take away quite a bit of the point of having early access.

[ArcadioBuenida]

Millions? Just training abilities?

 

I mean, it costs 650k to train JUST your level 60 abilities, so I'm thinking everyone who dinged this week spent about 1.5 mill per toon on training abilities. The 50k retrain at 55 wasn't that big a deal for me, though. I'm gonna spend that four times a night on repair bills now. I'm just happy the new ops have TFB/SnV amounts of money in them again. 4k per trash pull helps a lot.

[Seltonik]

You got a huge revan statue? Because I'm pretty sure you just get a rishi idol that is not a huge revan statue, unless I'm getting a different deco than other people.

 

If I am not mistaken, there is a vendor that sells the huge revan statue for free or 1 credit. dont remember where it is though, read about it on reddit and saw a screenshot.

 

Edit: Next to security key vendor, 0 credits. http://imgur.com/Jgo3dOb

Edited December 5, 2014 by Seltonik

[NYYankee]

Considering that the change is being put in quite literally when the expac drops for everybody, yes, it is early access people getting hosed. Look at a calendar. It's fairly simple.

 

My argument wasn't over which group of people got hosed. It's pretty clear that this change affects early access people.

 

My argument is that any time you rush in and are the first one to try to adopt a product, you take on the risks that you may encounter frustrations and problems that are smoothed out later on down the road and not encountered by those who purchase the product once it is more mature.

 

I agree that it is frustrating, but I'm also not surprised that big tweaks are following a new expansion, nor that those tweaks will have a bigger impact on those who are the first to buy.

[Warrgames]

If I am not mistaken, there is a vendor that sells the huge revan statue for free or 1 credit. dont remember where it is though, read about it on reddit and saw a screenshot.

 

It cost 0 credits and I know that is way to much for some players. The location is by the security key vendor.

[DarthZaul]

Awesome.