Response to dev post in "Training costs are a thing of the past"

[OddballEasyEight]

And you couldn't post this in THAT thread because????

 

 

Oh, right... it woldn't have gotten the attention it "deserved"...

 

Read your entire post... don't agree one bit.

 

Sounds like a bunch of entitlement to me.

[xFREYx]

Khevar, what we are talking about is the 5 day period where pre-orders leveled from 55 to 60 and had to pay around 600k per character, only to be later told it would be free for everyone who did not preorder.

 

Of course free training is a good thing. We are upset because the most dedicated players who preordered and then leveled multiple toons right after 3.0 launch are the ones getting screwed.

 

Many many people spent millions on this, many of my guildies leveled one toon per day from 55 to 60 before the announcement. Personally I don't even look at the cost of the training, I just click and go. However I am trying to speak for others who leveled many alts right after 3.0 and now do not get a refund. We should not have to pay millions of in game credits to test a beta release if it will be free for everyone else later on. It has been said that it would not be possible to refund those costs accurately, all I'm saying is they should give us something else as thanks.

.

 

I absolutley agree with this.

If i had been told that if i wait for a week and just start playing on the actual expac release date and i would save just short of 1 million creds per toon, then i would have waited.

After i found out that training (that i had already paid for on my only two toons) was going to be free i was initially very pissed off, but i tried to look at the positives that at least i will get to complete the story earlier than normal (i was worried story would get spoiled). After trying the Revan fight around 12 times and bugging everytime (im not even starting on about the repair costs!!!!) i had to give up and just wait for normal release date patch anyway!!

Finally finished the story after the patch but some ******* in general chat ruined the story ending.

[-Damask-]

Fact is they made a conscious decision to make training cost 600k. They knew about this "for some time" and had been debating making training free for a while. They didn't just have this idea pop into their heads right when they announced it, so they made a conscious choice to screw over pre-orders by not saying anything until after many of us leveled and trained.

 

I guess many of you are happy to pay credits to beta test an expansion for them. Some of us are not. I see some of you are happy with no additional content or rewards for people with 8 or more characters. Again, some of us are not. There will always be people who are satisfied with less. There are always people who can put their faith in something that cannot or will not ever deliver (look at the catholic church for example). Some of us want more. I will not apologize for that, especially when the more would be so easy to implement from a coding standpoint.

Edited December 14, 2014 by -Damask-

[Savej]

...

I guess many of you are happy to pay credits...

 

Ecstatic, no. But credits are not a very big deal in this game - you're rage is way out of proportion to your loss and way out of line, imo. We aren't talking about real $ (I don't care how you twist it, even if you bought your creds from illegal sites - credits != $). You'll get those creds back - stop fuming and you can make them back in a couple days (or hours if you've got it down) using half the zeal it took you to level, train and spend them in the tiny window between pre-access opening and BW deciding "training's gonna be free".

[Rafaman]

So... you seem to be speaking about loyal customers who pre-ordered and got the shaft? Taking up the standard for the rest of us loyal customers then? Well... put it down. Speak for yourself.

 

I've been here since launch etc. etc. I don't feel slighted in the least. I paid for training with no problem. It rains creds in this game so it was no issue. The fact that they changed it for the greater good is fine. They didn't have too IMO.

 

You are entitled to your opinion, but your crap about others not understanding value because they don't have an issue with it is just that, crap. The value was in being in there first. The value was in enjoying the story as soon as it was released. The training issue had no impact on that what so ever. In game creds have no real value outside of the game. And you make them... by playing the game.

[CharleyDanger]

Ok, sorry for the double post, but this thought just occurred to me...

 

Why should Bioware give us cool stuff just because we have played the game for so long? I mean I never viewed max legacy has an achievement. It is no more of an achievement than waiting in the dentist office. All it takes is time, right? Now some of those NiM drops and RPVP rewards are pretty bad ***. It seems Bioware put some time into making some sweet loot for actual achievements, right?

 

I have played since launch, and since launch I have enjoyed my time playing the game. I feel that a good game (minus a few setbacks lol) is reward enough for me. Hell, if you breakdown the hours played vs dollars spent on this game.... I spend literally pocket change per hour to play. By far the cheapest entertainment I have seen. I have spent more on a single bar tab than I spend in a year playing SWTOR. Thanks Bioware!

[arunav]

I've been here for 3 years and am also exactly the type of player you describe, with 10 55s before the 12x XP and having done all the class stories, then started on the ACs I didn't have but wanted on either faction. In other words, plenty of time playing SWTOR.

 

Based on what I've seen since the training costs were removed, you accumulate about 700-800k credits leveling from 55-60.

 

So, basically, you didn't really pay for your training costs that week, and now if you level from 55 to 60, you get something akin to a nice speeder or some other CM item on the GTN out of it.

 

The one thing I do agree with you on is: there should be some better legacy perks for players like us, who have lots of characters, have actually played all the content and stuck with the game's ups and downs, even when content hasn't been great (I'm looking at you 2014), and probably overlap with those that spend the most on the CM.

 

Better legacy perks have been brought up many times on the forums. If they are coming, BW will tell us about it. If not, it is simply a system that was a very good idea that never was implemented to its potential. A lot of the game is like that, unfortunately.

 

We'll see what happens this year. I believe Jeff Hickman and James Ohlen mentioned plenty of BW cinematic stuff and that things in SWTOR were going to ramp up. They may have just been hyping SoR, but I'm hoping that there's more in the updates in 2015, especially for the core game (FPs, WZs, Ops, solo-story and daily areas). If there's another species/customization update, I'd love to see a stat-free character appearance tab, as many others have mentioned.

Edited December 14, 2014 by arunav

[Willcutt]

I preordered. I credit dumped when the disciplines came. Doesnt bother me one bit. I was stoked at the news that training costs were going away. Because ill never have to spend another credit on training again. The pre order gave you 12x, no training costs during 12x, early access to the new content, and unnerfed rishi chests. More than what was promised.

[JediJuliusDavin]

I preordered. I credit dumped when the disciplines came. Doesnt bother me one bit. I was stoked at the news that training costs were going away. Because ill never have to spend another credit on training again. The pre order gave you 12x, no training costs during 12x, early access to the new content, and unnerfed rishi chests. More than what was promised.

 

^This right here. I commend this person for his sanity.

[Edzew]

You're not doing this simply because "players do not like training costs", that's total nonsense imo. There are hundreds of things in the game players "do not like" but they stay in because it equals more play time and by extension more profit for BW. Same thing with the 12x xp- that was nothing more than a great idea by the devs to get people to pre-order, and in turn to spend more time leveling that they would have not done otherwise, and now those people have X number of extra toons to gear which equals, you guessed it, more play time.

 

You're likely doing this because you feel having training costs might alienate an already transient f2p population and they may decide the game sucks and quit. That's really who this is benefiting. So many changes of late have been for the sole benefit of that class of player; you're motivations are so transparent! The game was already laughably easy before 3.0, so much so that only soloing 4-man content provided any real challenge. Yet you make more nerfs to leveling difficulty so its even easier now- instead of requiring that new players learn what an interrupt is and require they use it to pass their class bosses. 90% of the time when someone is on DK asking for help killing their class boss it is because they don't even know they can interrupt; and anyone who groups with them and helps them or kills the boss for them does them a huge disservice. How 'bout actually teaching players how not to suck, bioware? How about teaching players why they need to keep their hilt and barrel updated, and why they shouldn't be mixing strength and aim gear, and why they need to augment, instead of giving them ridiculous god mode Makeb bolster that supports non-existent skills and terrible gear?!?

 

The fact remains that this change in training costs is of little benefit to long time, loyal subscribers who have already leveled their toons before the change was announced, or for players who can afford the cost of training; or for someone who already has their character cap and plans on leveling no more toons. (I know people will respond by saying "You're wrong, Ive played for years and I only have 200k, I'm terrible at managing money, I waste all my credits on cartel junk" etc..., but all you would have had to do to remedy that would be lower the costs of training to a reasonable level. You could have simply said in the patch notes "we have lowered the cost of training to coincide with inflation" or whatever. )

 

What people are really upset about that you guys don't seem to understand is that it was the pre-order players, and some of your most loyal customers- who got the shaft! We spent our money to test your beta release for you, and the others who don't give enough of a crap about the game to pre-order and/or who just started playing yesterday are the ones who are seeing the rewards of this. That is not right!

 

Bioware needs to start adding more features for the player who has 8-16 max level characters. Everything in game currently supports low-character legacies and low skill levels. When I heard on the livestream that you were removing pushback because players having to know what channeled ability ticks were and how they worked was too difficult for most players- it made me sick! Instead of tailoring the game to people with Forrest Gump level of intelligence, how 'bout actually developing training missions that teach necessary skills! You started to do that but abandoned it on Korriban after the this is what mod stations are mission. Help players to make themselves better- don't keep dumbing down the game like you are now, until a monkey could play it!

 

Another prime example of the your abysmally low image of the player base is how you think 10mil credits is actually an achievement! You can make a million a day easily by simply doing dailies! Some players have over a billion ffs! The fact that you think 10mil is actually something to strive for is representative to how bad you think we all are at gaming! Its highly insulting! I know you guys don't play seriously (I have watched the streams), but just because you only have one or two toons and only play a few hours a week doesn't mean we do! How about adding some reasonable credit titles that actually give us something to strive for (100mil, 500mil, 1bil)???

 

You really don't want to lose your founder players in favor of gaining a few transient players who sub for a few months and move on. Or maybe you do. Perhaps you never learned how its much more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep an existing one.

 

It's obvious that you don't expect players to have multiple characters- that's very clear to us. The way you re-use ability icons across classes and factions proves that. I could list a dozen conflicting icons right now and so could anyone else who has one of each 8 ACs. And while that's not a huge problem (unless you play all of those classes regularly), it shows the level of attention to detail you guys work with over there at BW. Currently there is nothing in game that you get as a reward for a full legacy that actually matters. Sure you get a cool-down on quick travel, a title, maybe something else minor, but really nothing decent; certainly nothing that comes close to 600k credits per toon. (Of course you guys have a totally fubar view of what constitutes a lot of credits- reminds me of the BH class mission when Mako says something like "more credits than you've ever seen in your life" , and then the mission rewards less than 5k" )

 

If I were bioware I would make a 5th, totally OP, dps class that you can only unlock when you hit max presence. Give people a tangible reason to level alts! As it is now you give people a reason not to level alts- specifically if they have and use HK

 

Do the right thing Eric- give us something free that we can actually use. Give us free extractions from legacy gear for ever for anyone who preordered! Give us something that shows that you actually care about the guy who has played the game religiously every week for two years, and something that we actually want (current CE and pre-order vendors are a joke). That's the only thing that will alleviate the high level of hostility I have for you guys after what you just did to those of us who showed our faith in you and bioware by pre-ordering Shadow of Revan.

 

Now bring on the idiot teenage trolls who say "umadbro" or "If you dont like it leave" and mindless bioware fan-boys who disagree with my entire post but fail to address a single point.

 

 

in a nut shell this wall o text says im a l33t player that has billions of credits and i have been around since the beginning and have all my toons at max level and i preorderd the new expansion so give me something free that is good and not crappy. and in the middle there is a bunch o bioware bashing.

 

 

for someone accusing bioware of reusing things you sure do repeat your self a lot.

 

i have been around since launch as well. i only have 2 toons level 55, i got them to level 55 last month, it took me that long to do this why?? because the stories were boring as hell and the 12x let me skip all the super super boring quest and let me focus on the not as boring but still kinda boring class quest stories. and honestly i will not do daily quest even if they rewarded you with a billion credits, i find those type of quest to be even more boring than the planetary quests. sure there are easy ways to make money in this game, like you said you can do the daily quests or you can do what oddball duz and play the GTN with real money. i and many others dont want/like doing either of those so by your standards we are poor. its not that we miss manage money and waist credits on the GTN, for me its leveling up my crafters, and well after 3.0 hit i went broke making sure all my toons had all their training, i had a lil over 2 million got down to a lil over 100K and said screw this they can wait, only got half of my toons trained up, i have at least one of every class, 2 jedi Knights and 2 bounty hunters.

 

by what you said above i dont deserve anything. where as you are a special snowflake and deserve all kinds of special treatment.

 

now dont get me wrong i do plenty of bioware and biodrone bashing my self and i think this game needs some major improvements but to say a very small groop of people needs to be treated differently from the rest and deserve special treatment is just plain stupid!

[MSchuyler]

Precisely the kind of intelligent conversation I was hoping for. I'd be amazed if you read past the first paragraph. Thanks for proving my point about how bioware is developing for the player with a short attention span.

 

I must disagree with your assertion however; simply the fact that the last dev post was on page 3 of a 90+ page thread proves that the issue is very much alive. It will remain so until they do something about it.

 

Why should anyone read past the first paragraph? You are the only one in love with your words. You seem to feel you are entitled to verbose replies agreeing with you. You are not (repeat: NOT) going to get any satisfaction here. The devs are not (repeat: NOT) going to "do something about it." They already did. They took off training costs. You didn't like it when they were on. Now you complain about because they are off. They can't win, no matter what they do. And what YOU need to do is get over it. We've already discussed it in the 90 page thread you referenced. Why do YOU need your own special snowflake thread on the same thing? The horse is dead. That's all you need to know. That IS intelligent conversation, succinct and to the point.

[JattaGin]

<-- Player since first beta weekend, constantly playing since early start. Have seen everything in the game. Etc. pp.

 

Here's my point of view: I don't feel pity with anyone who is so keen to rush through everything right away and immediately. Players don't take their time anymore. I can't believe that the first players hit 60 only a few hours after 3.0 pre-order went live. What's the point? Why the rush?

 

It was so obvious that there would be problems and that they would use us again for proper beta testing. We were beta testing for them from 1.0 until at least 2.0. Of course they would try 3.0 out on us, too. Don't act surprised.

 

What did I do? I waited. Waited for the bug reports and the bug fixes. Now I have my main at level 60, enjoyed the expansion, had no issues (except for the lag), didn't waste any credits (just 99 comms, but that's not a big deal).

 

I'm happy.

 

Why am I happy? Because I take my time with the game and don't rush. If I would rush, I would encounter bugs, problems, errors and would get bored earlier. And then I would maybe have to come to ze interwebz and complain about stuffz.

 

TL;DR: I disagree with most of the OP, however, I think swapping mods should be FREE for subs!

[Taf-Kuf]

OP is right about training costs. It was purely catering to the F2P crowd. The fanbois who enjoy the shaft to the backside aren't surprising anyone with the oh well attitude.

Some folks, like myself, resubbed for this expansion and did not have millions of credits to just throw away on training. I didn't mind paying for the training, but rather than open up the credit limit for F2P (or make them manage their banks) they just gave them all no-cost training. MMO Players are used to this stuff, but doesn't mean we have to like it.

Now I'll have to grind dailies to get the cash I would have had, and that F2P will have that cash without the grind. Not sure what kind of player would say thanks for adding a bunch of grinding to my game time...dolts for sure

[Infernixx]

You're not doing this -snip- .

 

Wouldn't this have been better posted in the original thread?

 

Or were you of the opinion that your novel-response deserves its own thread so we can all see it?

[g_land]

Somebody buy this person an achievement title that says wealthy a**hole.

 

Lol at thinking that being a founder means anything, have you seen all the recent posts about "returning founder gone for 2 years, how do I play this game?"

 

Or do you want 7 days free sub for your minor inconvenience of spending fake money that as you say is very easy to get anyways (really foolish suggestion by another poster).

 

What's your plan for teaching people how to play through quests when almost everything can be skipped? Let's alienate the players who can't do it or dont care because... well... reasons

Edited December 14, 2014 by g_land

[Tsillah]

I am sure it's great news especially for f2p players but as a subbed player I am ok with this.

 

1) I am happy with it myself as a player. It makes my life easier in game sub or not.

2) I never really understood the double punishment of not being able to make as many credits and then having to pay more for things like skills.

3) F2P has a tough credit limit. It needs to be there in part to limit gold seller activities. Sure it's not perfect but you don't want to make it too easy for gold sellers to abuse F2P accounts either. So I think this is a good solution. You can keep the limit there but make the game more enjoyable also for F2P players.

 

So all in all I don't see an issue here for them to do this because I think it benefits everybody.

[Cordarn]

I am apparently one of the only ones who didn't immediately blow their money on training costs and later find out that they were going to do away with training costs so still didn't spend money on skills until then. I'm not sure why people would blow so much money right away on something that didn't even give a decent upgrade.

 

Aside from that, I don't agree with most the thing on your post. Demanding your credits back is extremely far fetched. their is no way bioware could accurately compensate everyone for the credits they spent. Granted they could have atleast rewarded everyone with a extra complimentary 500 cartel coins.

 

I agree that there should be a special reward for getting level 50 legacy, but getting access to an op class? Yeah that will make the game soooo much better, a mount would do just fine.

 

You seem to be very upset about minor changes to combat like reducing pushback and something about making interrupting pointless. Fact of the matter is that the game seems to punish you MORE if you don't interrupt now. Especially with silvers.

 

Also, you seem to be verbally assaulting everyone who disagrees with you or makes a snide remark. Its kind of immature.

[StrangeDais]

You're not doing this simply because "players do not like training costs", that's total nonsense imo. There are hundreds of things in the game players "do not like" but they stay in because it equals more play time and by extension more profit for BW. Same thing with the 12x xp- that was nothing more than a great idea by the devs to get people to pre-order, and in turn to spend more time leveling that they would have not done otherwise, and now those people have X number of extra toons to gear which equals, you guessed it, more play time.

 

You're likely doing this because you feel having training costs might alienate an already transient f2p population and they may decide the game sucks and quit. That's really who this is benefiting. So many changes of late have been for the sole benefit of that class of player; you're motivations are so transparent! The game was already laughably easy before 3.0, so much so that only soloing 4-man content provided any real challenge. Yet you make more nerfs to leveling difficulty so its even easier now- instead of requiring that new players learn what an interrupt is and require they use it to pass their class bosses. 90% of the time when someone is on DK asking for help killing their class boss it is because they don't even know they can interrupt; and anyone who groups with them and helps them or kills the boss for them does them a huge disservice. How 'bout actually teaching players how not to suck, bioware? How about teaching players why they need to keep their hilt and barrel updated, and why they shouldn't be mixing strength and aim gear, and why they need to augment, instead of giving them ridiculous god mode Makeb bolster that supports non-existent skills and terrible gear?!?

 

The fact remains that this change in training costs is of little benefit to long time, loyal subscribers who have already leveled their toons before the change was announced, or for players who can afford the cost of training; or for someone who already has their character cap and plans on leveling no more toons. (I know people will respond by saying "You're wrong, Ive played for years and I only have 200k, I'm terrible at managing money, I waste all my credits on cartel junk" etc..., but all you would have had to do to remedy that would be lower the costs of training to a reasonable level. You could have simply said in the patch notes "we have lowered the cost of training to coincide with inflation" or whatever. )

 

What people are really upset about that you guys don't seem to understand is that it was the pre-order players, and some of your most loyal customers- who got the shaft! We spent our money to test your beta release for you, and the others who don't give enough of a crap about the game to pre-order and/or who just started playing yesterday are the ones who are seeing the rewards of this. That is not right!

 

Bioware needs to start adding more features for the player who has 8-16 max level characters. Everything in game currently supports low-character legacies and low skill levels. When I heard on the livestream that you were removing pushback because players having to know what channeled ability ticks were and how they worked was too difficult for most players- it made me sick! Instead of tailoring the game to people with Forrest Gump level of intelligence, how 'bout actually developing training missions that teach necessary skills! You started to do that but abandoned it on Korriban after the this is what mod stations are mission. Help players to make themselves better- don't keep dumbing down the game like you are now, until a monkey could play it!

 

Another prime example of the your abysmally low image of the player base is how you think 10mil credits is actually an achievement! You can make a million a day easily by simply doing dailies! Some players have over a billion ffs! The fact that you think 10mil is actually something to strive for is representative to how bad you think we all are at gaming! Its highly insulting! I know you guys don't play seriously (I have watched the streams), but just because you only have one or two toons and only play a few hours a week doesn't mean we do! How about adding some reasonable credit titles that actually give us something to strive for (100mil, 500mil, 1bil)???

 

You really don't want to lose your founder players in favor of gaining a few transient players who sub for a few months and move on. Or maybe you do. Perhaps you never learned how its much more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep an existing one.

 

It's obvious that you don't expect players to have multiple characters- that's very clear to us. The way you re-use ability icons across classes and factions proves that. I could list a dozen conflicting icons right now and so could anyone else who has one of each 8 ACs. And while that's not a huge problem (unless you play all of those classes regularly), it shows the level of attention to detail you guys work with over there at BW. Currently there is nothing in game that you get as a reward for a full legacy that actually matters. Sure you get a cool-down on quick travel, a title, maybe something else minor, but really nothing decent; certainly nothing that comes close to 600k credits per toon. (Of course you guys have a totally fubar view of what constitutes a lot of credits- reminds me of the BH class mission when Mako says something like "more credits than you've ever seen in your life" , and then the mission rewards less than 5k" )

 

If I were bioware I would make a 5th, totally OP, dps class that you can only unlock when you hit max presence. Give people a tangible reason to level alts! As it is now you give people a reason not to level alts- specifically if they have and use HK

 

Do the right thing Eric- give us something free that we can actually use. Give us free extractions from legacy gear for ever for anyone who preordered! Give us something that shows that you actually care about the guy who has played the game religiously every week for two years, and something that we actually want (current CE and pre-order vendors are a joke). That's the only thing that will alleviate the high level of hostility I have for you guys after what you just did to those of us who showed our faith in you and bioware by pre-ordering Shadow of Revan.

 

Now bring on the idiot teenage trolls who say "umadbro" or "If you dont like it leave" and mindless bioware fan-boys who disagree with my entire post but fail to address a single point.

 

Love this. Think you hit the mark dead center.

 

Addendum - though I feel no need for recompense for skill training during early access. Had the funds and credits are readily earned in the game.

Edited December 14, 2014 by StrangeDais

[Muljo_Stpho]

I don't play through the game in some mad rush to get as much as possible done as fast as possible like some people seem to (or like some people like to imply is normal for the average player), so my experience with 12x and early access went more like this:

 

1) I ran about 3 characters from 40+ to 50+ finishing the last 3 class stories I hadn't finished yet. A couple of these started on the low end of that, and with the free training during 12x they were able to save on the 150k price tag of speeder III and the 40k+ price tags on each skill in that level range. I ran a few other characters from around the 20s / 30s to 50+ as well. So they also got those savings. I did not start any new characters to run only on 12x, but skills never really seemed that expensive before the 40s anyway.

 

2) I ran 1 character from 55 to 60 in early access and I was holding off on purchasing upgrades for skills starting at 56 or 57 anyway. If I had pushed to get a 2nd or 3rd character leveled to 60 in that time, they would have been holding off on those upgrades as well. (I also did this with previous characters for their upgrades through that level 40+ range. I got around to making those upgrades slowly over time.) But even if I had jumped blindly into spending on those upgrades before we found out that costs would be removed again, didn't I already save more than that on training during 12x anyway? (Probably 750k was saved on speeder III alone during 12x.)

[Andryah]

*Points at horse you are beating* Its dead Jim.

 

+10 ^^

 

Nothing unique here that has not already been beaten to death, other then begging for more freebies.

Edited December 14, 2014 by Andryah

[MaximusRex]

While I think pre-orders should have received some kind of compensation, if not an exact refund, there was already a main thread on this with a dev post in it, and I hate people making spam topics. Hopefully this thread will be deleted as being spam soon.

[TheSeventhJedi]

TL;DR something something slap in the face?

Move along, bro.