Changes Coming in Tomorrow's (1/21) Maintenance

[BuriDogshin]

I would assume they underestimated just how willing people are to stand in one spot and click... and click... and click... and click...

They had the Nar Shadaa Nightlife event as a baseline.

And all the NSN slots dropped were BoP and BtL items, you couldn't make money on them.

Still, many players dropped millions of credits into them, each.

 

So how stupid do you think they are? Heck, is there even a lower bound to that?

I used to think the Maltese dogs were the dumbest mammals on the planet. Now, I'm not so sure.

Edited January 21, 2015 by BuriDogshin

[RandyL]

Here's one in case it hasn't already been suggested. Add a debuff like they do to the stronghold decoration gathering nodes. So each spin you have a 5% (or 10%?) chance to get the debuff that lasts 4 hours. Once debuffed, you can't play the machines anymore on that character until it wears off. Revert the original odds back onto the machines.

 

Call the debuff "feeling unlucky"

 

As someone else said, the odds weren't the problem. It was the ability to get unlimited mats and certs depending on how many hours you wanted to devote to clicking. As it is now, I can spend hours clicking and basically have nothing to show for it but less credits. THAT sounds fun.

Edited January 21, 2015 by RandyL

[EnkiduNineEight]

That ship sailed and sunk already, IMO.

 

Collectively, we did that over the last week -----> ignoring radical extreme opinions floated by some...... common consensus = Jawa Junk drops are too rich, tone them down. Eric acknowledged the concern and said they would review it.

 

They completely did their own thing here with the correction in this patch, going waaaaaaayyyy beyond what community consensus advised.

 

Personally, I am not heavily invested in the slots (emotionally, or financially)... so I don't care that much what they do. However, that said, there is simply no way to justify what they did with this patch on the slots. It's over the top and lacks any sense of balance or reason.

 

I can agree with you on that point but so far my hypothesis is that the changes were not intentional. in fact, here is the scenario in my head.

 

Eric points out the thread on the subject to his developer. I know I have postedin that thread and I posted multiple times that they should consider a bonus jackpot with odds like the Kingpin Rancor and then I would say .001. so, developer, who has been asked to 'fix this ASAP because Jeebus Dudes, we did a data mine and their are guilds with over 10,000 jawa junk newly acquired and this is on the low end!!' reads the thread, goes through the rational ideas and starts making the fix.

 

Except, he (or she) sees .001 and treats that as a perentage so .001 become .001% which becomes .00001. Not thinking, they then start working math backwards to make their .001% combine with other arbitrarily but 'fair seeming' x.xyz%'s so that their math shows X + Y + Z = 100% and they then pass it off and say, 'FIXED!'

 

Code gets rolled intot he patch, patch gets released, reditors datamine and say *** DUDE!? people who don't think to check the message boards or reddit etc for stats log in and find the new slots and say *** DUDE?! and it all is because someone just made a coding mistake and is probably feeling it hardcore right now because I am sure that this response hasn't made the community team or EA/Bioware any more happy than it made their customers.

 

I do not believe any grand conspiracy theory as it is too much easier to see where it was a simple programmer error where they just don't really get the difference between a .001 chance and a .001% chance and they changes to the numbers to accommodate .001% tilted the whole system into crazy town.

 

So I feel bad for this programmer, somewhat bad for the QA folks who passed it through, but expect it may not have even been given a QA and was fasttracked because HOLY GOD the prior object was badly broken once they looked at the numbers, and well.. here we are.

 

It does say some potentially embarrassing thngs about the processes in place at BioWare. I hope that things are learned and put into place that prevent sucha problem in the future. I'm pretty forgiving of crap like this, no big worry aslong as you don't do it TOO many times in a row.

 

But it does need another pass and correction. And I honestly think the majority of our community would agree with a fix that made the Jawa Junk essentially cost about 150 to 200% the cost of Purple Materials from class missions. some would grouse, but they also want to login to instant 60's in full 192 gear. I think overall, most everyone would be pleased and it would turn out to be one of the better items in the game, but not one that is a necessity to have.

 

I think BioWare has though its answer on how broken it was prior by how many haveleapt out of the woodwork and specifically plopped real world cash for the item because it was approaching necessity with how crazy good the results were. (sure, there were open strongholds but that wasn;t going to last either...)

[ivanhedgehog]

They also screwed 2 years worth of items that were only exclusive to paying real $ for as well

 

they were NEVER EVER EVER exclusive. only in your brain. do you complain about the people that bought them when they were on sale? many people bought them with credits, not cc. are you butthurt over that? no one ever promised you exclusive. the only things they promised that was pvp season rewards. and thousands of people got the pvp rancor...

[EnkiduNineEight]

Here's one in case it hasn't already been suggested. Add a debuff like they do to the stronghold decoration gathering nodes. So each spin you have a 5% (or 10%?) chance to get the debuff that lasts 4 hours. Once debuffed, you can't play the machines anymore on that character until it wears off. Revert the original odds back onto the machines.

 

Call the debuff "feeling unlucky"

 

As someone else said, the odds weren't the problem. It was the ability to get unlimited mats and certs depending on how many hours you wanted to devote to clicking. As it is now, I can spend hours clicking and basically have nothing to show for it but less credits. THAT sounds fun.

 

 

Whoever said the oddswerent the problem was incorrect.

 

Odds were absolutely the problem.

 

You have a 1 in 10 chance of getting Jawa Junk. So, for $5,000 credits, you are very likely to have received 1 jawa junk, directly transferrable to many (not all) purple crafting materials of any grade. You also received a chance to have blue and green crafting materials in the form of jawa junk as well as free spin tokens, rep items to be sold back to a vendor, etc. It was around a 60% reduction in the initial cost of your tokens purchased, so instead of $5,000 credits spent it was about $2,000 after you sold just the rep items. add to this, you had a chance to get certificate that you could conver into, conservatively $25,000 credits easily. For a stack of 99, the game essentially gave you the ability to make more money from the slot and resulting transactions than you put in. and for a stack of 99, you may very well end up with 12.5 Jawa junk, on average. I repeatedly had much much more.

 

Ask any crafter how much a single artifact quality drop of grade 11 quality costs them to harvest? At a 20-25% chance of dropping a criti result on a Rich mission to get 3 of them, the cost was higher than $5,000. So even if we couldn't sell anything back, it was more expensive to run crew skills than play the slots. But since we could sell some tuff back and make decent profit on othe stuff, the 'cost' to us for the materials was essentially free. now, if its free (essentially) from playing slots but still costs credits grom crew skillgathering, do you still think there is not a problem with the percentage rate of return for jawa junk?

 

The odds very much were the problem. Your 'solution' would still make taking your allotted number of spins per day _more_ profitable and more likely to get you what you needed than crafting gathering missions. because the odds of jawa junk were still too high.

 

Now, the current odds of 1 in 1000 spins is WAY to low.

The pot isn't sweetened by a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting an unnamed speeder that is merely a reskin with reportedly only 90% speed buff.

 

So the adjustment was much to much.

 

Bring it backso that the cost of the Jawa Junk you acquire costs you a number of credits that exceed mission gained mats (my own suggestion is 150 to 200% the cost of gathering gained mats) which means you lower the odds significantly, but not to the crazy levels they were, and BOTH methods are viable and game balance is served.

 

But the odds were decidedly what was wrong with the prior slots.

[Theeko]

they were NEVER EVER EVER exclusive. only in your brain. do you complain about the people that bought them when they were on sale? many people bought them with credits, not cc. are you butthurt over that? no one ever promised you exclusive. the only things they promised that was pvp season rewards. and thousands of people got the pvp rancor...

 

The source of the packs are from real $, not credits no matter who bought them

[wolfyde]

They also screwed 2 years worth of items that were only exclusive to paying real $ for as well

 

Bit of an overreaction perhaps?

Raising your reputation with the Contraband reputation vendor gives you the possibility to acquire 10 items from the first wave of Cartel packs. That's 10 out of 147 items that are a little less exclusive than they were before, plus the items on the secondary vendor.

That means 137 items from those packs still remain unobtainable and exclusive to you if you got them back then. Popular example, the Revan gear; yes a player starting out today can get the mask this way, but he can't acquire the rest of the armour through any 'easy' methods except spending massive amounts of money on the GTN, which he can do in any case.

 

Similarly the items from the Contraband packs you bought gaining Contraband reputation will remain as exclusive as before, except for the fraction of them on sale on the Bounty Supply vendor, when a followup slotmachine is introduced to that effect.

And so on.

Such a tiny percentage of the original itempool being made available through a secondary method of acquisition is hardly 'screwin 2 years worth of items', no?

Edited January 21, 2015 by wolfyde

[Eanelinea]

I had no problem with them needing to nerf the slot machines SOME so the drop rates were a LITTLE lower. Understandable, I could burn through 4 stacks of coins and get about 40 purple mats and sometimes 20 certificates. I UNDERSTAND there needed to be a nerf. But they made the slots now mostly only drop rep (which I haven't needed since contraband was new and shiny), and added in a mount with a veeeeeeery low drop rate. Which, okay, mounts should be a tad hard to get, also understandable.

 

But what bioware fails to realize is that people who already have their reps maxed out (which IS a fair amount of people, especially after last week) will no longer play the slot machines even on the off chance they MIGHT get a mount. I have lots of toons and max out reputation very easily.

 

EA or Bioware or whoever, needs to look over their people and maybe hire MORE people or look over their current people, cause they are either being VERY lazy lately with NOT fixing things completely broken STILL, or they have no idea HOW to fix the bugged stuff.

 

Maybe LESS emphasis on new shinies from the market all the time and more emphasis on fixing what is broken and fixing it PROPERLY. I know coding is a tricky mistress but seriously. I LOVE this game and want to keep playing but ever since 3.0 came out it's like they've given up or just don't care and that makes me sad because I want to see this game thrive. But their pissing their customers off more than making them happy.

[DarthNecromus]

I agree, they nerfed the slots rather severely. I can understand making the Jawa Junk slightly harder to get, but they didn't have to go overboard and nerf the whole thing. I can't believe that the vocal minority got their way on this. Just because they thought they weren't going to be making the millions of credits on purple items. I call BS on that. Most of the people that buy the purples on the GTN would still do so because either they don't have the skill level required, or they are too lazy to craft the stuff. Either way, the crafting people still would have had a business.

 

The rep drop was fine as it was, it didn't need to be increased. People can hit legend in 2 weeks now. I thought the cost of the chips was reasonable, there was no reason at this point to add another 250 credits to the cost. The Cartel Certificates are gone as far as I can tell. I went through a whole stack of chips and didn't see a single one.

 

I noticed that the "target" area on the slots was made a bit smaller as well. So it's harder to hit something, harder to get something of worth, and costs more to do it. Way too heavy-handed.

 

Also which walker is it that they added to this thing? Is it the same walkers that are on the rep vendor on Yavin, or are they unique to the slot machine? Since the drop rate for one is non-existent anyway, they might as well have given you a free stronghold slot if you hit the jackpot. We all know it will never happen.

[buckman]

Not a fan of the magnitude of the nerf.

 

I am maxed on the Reputation, so those tokens are nothing more than credits. The amount of credits gained from these tokens do not feel like a "jackpot." Maybe you could add in those 25k or 50k tokens?

 

I feel that Scrap drops are too low right now, a middle ground between here and the original drop rate would be better.

[Ilhares]

Everybody will have their issues with things, but let's be fair.

 

• The drop rate on all Jawa scraps, has been greatly reduced
  

Greatly reduced is a gross understatement. A more accurate statement would be "Jawa scraps have been virtually eliminated."

 

I'm not arguing the merits of it one way or the other, I'd just like for a bit of accuracy and honesty. Both where possible.

 

• Lastly, we have increased the cost of each Slot Machine coin from 500 to 750 credits. It was always our intent that the coin cost would increase over time as we add more Slot Machines that accept the coin
  

Thanks everyone!

 

-eric

Okay, this last one I take serious issue with. "It was always our intent that the coin cost would increase over time as we add more Slot Machines that accept the coin."

 

Except you didn't add more slot machines that accept the coin. We're still on the 1st one. The coin was introduced at a price of 500 credits. It took you until now to even introduce a slot machine that would take the coin. You then reduced the payouts from the machine to virtually nil usefulness or interest, AND you hiked the proce if the coin upwards by 50%. You did not introduce a new slot machine. So the price was 500 when we had no use, but now that there is 1 way to use it, it costs 750? REALLY?

 

This reminds me of a joke.

 

Hey, I heard you guys sell the AR-15 here, is that true?

Yes it is.

What's it cost?

We're selling them for $800.

$800? That's outrageous! The guy across town is selling them for $450!

Well, go buy your rifle from him, then, it's hard to argue with such a price.

I can't, he's sold out!

Oh! Oh, well, that's different. When we're all sold out we sell them for $250.

I mean, it must be, right? Because that last quote most certainly feels to be a joke.

[Zorvan]

Hey folks,

 

First, as Tait alluded to we will be having a maintenance tomorrow, on Wednesday the 21st. We didn't have our regular Tuesday maintenance due to the federal holiday here in the states. I wanted to let you know a few of the things coming in tomorrow’s patch:

• Item rarity borders will now show properly
  
• No more getting stuck in Blood Hunt if someone dies to Jos or Valk Beroya
  
• The Underlurker will no longer rush extremely quickly back to his target after leaping
  
• There have been adjustments made to the Contraband Slot Machine (more on this in a second)
  
• There is also one other fix, check the final patch notes for more info
  

Let’s talk about the changes coming to the Contraband Slot Machine. When we were going into 3.0.2, we wanted to make Grade 11 materials more accessible to more players than they were at the time. As you know, we simultaneously put in the Contraband Slot Machine, which afforded you a fairly good chance to get Jawa Junk and other Jawa vendor scrap parts. This had two effects:

• It had the risk of taking the Grade 11 material costs in the economy, in the long term, to a price below where we would like
  
• It created a situation where it could be more profitable to completely ignore crew skills by use of the Slot Machine
  

With those in mind, we decided to make the following changes, which will be live tomorrow:

• The drop rate on all Jawa scraps, has been greatly reduced
  
• The drop rate on Contraband Reputation items, has been increased
  
• To insure that the Slot Machine is still an awesome item to strive for, we have added a faction specific walker mount as a very rare drop
  
• Lastly, we have increased the cost of each Slot Machine coin from 500 to 750 credits. It was always our intent that the coin cost would increase over time as we add more Slot Machines that accept the coin
  

Thanks everyone!

 

-eric

 

ESO just went buy-to-play. I think you're screwed.

[BrianDavion]

ESO just went buy-to-play. I think you're screwed.

 

 

ESO didn't even touch this game when both where sub based games so I doubt it

[Zorvan]

ESO didn't even touch this game when both where sub based games so I doubt it

 

ESO didn't have the advantage of EAware pissing off most of it's playerbase with Ravager exploits and casino machine nerfs. Add in the GW2 monetary model and ESO just pushed themselves ahead.

[Neglience]

ESO didn't have the advantage of EAware pissing off most of it's playerbase with Ravager exploits and casino machine nerfs. Add in the GW2 monetary model and ESO just pushed themselves ahead.

 

What did you do in in swtor before the casino gamble! machine was released ? nothing all day ? maybe its time to leave then, right.

[TheSandManzzz]

You would probably have better luck getting struck by lightning...

 

After using a full cargo bay full of tokens aka (7920 tokens) i have gotten 31 cartel market certificates and a ton of rep tokens. (Not sure exactly how many due to selling them after a full stack.) With that i received no jawa junk or walker mount. Odds of getting struck by lightning in one year = 1 in 700,000, in a lifetime = 1 in 3,000. I can assume odds of getting walker mount are less than 1-7920 (according to my data). So yes quite literally you are more than 2x as likely to get struck by lightning in your lifetime than to get this walker mount.

 

With that said i can assume one of three things.

1. Bioware wants this mount to be super hard to get.

2. I have extremely bad luck.

3. The slots are bugged and dont actually drop this "walker mount".

[Zorvan]

What did you do in in swtor before the casino gamble! machine was released ? nothing all day ? maybe its time to leave then, right.

 

I've noticed you like to play Cap'n Sav-A-Ho everytime someone doesn't kiss EAware's feet in regards to the casino machine. That must get tiring. All that butthurt eating at you constantly.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Zorvan

[DarthDymond]

While I sympathize with those who put in any serious money or effort to get one of these machines and now feel subject to a bait-and-switch, I am genuinely surprised at how many people the forum makes it seem were financially or emotionally invested in this single interactive stronghold decoration.

 

BW screwed up by ever letting the initial version get to the live server as it was. The current version would have been a neat addition if it had just been released as it is today, but a lot of people seem to have gotten excited (for some reason) about the OP version and chased it down - apparently spending a decent chunk of change in the process. Once that sort of investment is made, it makes sense to be upset when the item is then changed on you.

 

BW compounded the mistake by not listing the Cartel Cert Rate nerf or the Loss Rate increase on either Eric's update yesterday or the Patch notes, and by not giving a heads-up that the nerf was going to be so substantial, giving people more legitimate gripes. (On top of the people who I can only assume willfully misread Eric's initial post about it not being bugged or an exploit, and other people who seem to think that just because last week they started by looking at Jawa Junk rates it means they weren't allowed to adjust anything other than that one specific item.)

 

It was a screwup, but it's still weird that this all didn't end up being regarded as a screwup on the level of the dealership putting a citrus-scented air-freshener in your new car when you were promised a pine-scented one.

 

This item seems like the sort of thing that should have been a minor blip on the radar, and the change to it no more of a big deal than when they changed the look of Gav Daragon's Belt and Tunic post-release. But, as it turned out, people claim they were going after this item and going after it hard. So now you have people unsubscribing over a decoration (and probably at least a few EA execs wondering just why they should bother investing development costs into Ops and WZs if this is what the players care about). "Straw that broke the camel's back" or not, there's something... off about that.

Edited January 22, 2015 by DarthDymond

[Tolunart]

ESO just went buy-to-play. I think you're screwed.

 

If you are very quiet and listen real hard you can hear the sounds of everyone not giving a damn.

 

Pssst... also, the subs don't go away until March. In two months no one is going to even remember these threads.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Tolunart

[grombrinda]

What i'm wondering is why the hard nerf? Why couldn't they just make lvl 11 trade in ratio higher? Like a 5 to 1 trade??

 

thins is it is not just the slot machine but a series of problems that have arisen and they do not seem to prioritize the issues right. On one hand we saw a broken op that was kept live for almost a month...yet we get a rapid flash fix within the week , even after getting reassurances from them....for a cartel item.

[Zorvan]

If you are very quiet and listen real hard you can hear the sounds of everyone not giving a damn.

 

You mean like every time you speak?

[Tolunart]

You mean like every time you speak?

 

Oh snap!

[LordArtemis]

I know I am probably going to get flamed for this, but I feel like the one that got the worst end of the deal here is actually Bioware.

 

For us, we got to get a good amount of goodies for a while, at least those that took advantage of the machine, so for those folks moving forward that can sustain them for a while.

 

My guess would be many made their money back in the 5 days this was SWTOR welfare....fun mechanic, I enjoyed it too, but that is what it was IMO. A mechanic added that simply demonstrated the suck that is crew missions.

 

Some of us perhaps were shafted one way or another, I'm not denying that. But in the end, the one that was hurt the most by this multiple blunder was Bioware.

 

IMO they flushed most of the goodwill they had from the last 4 months down the toilet with a whole slew of bad decisions since the launch of 3.0.

 

Think about how many folks were feeling great about the game and where it was going....the boost from the 12XP event was substantial. But then....

 

Broken items in the patch...LOTS OF THEM.

Lag galore

Disciplines released with the expansion

Disciplines that were not developed or structured properly

Disciplines that caused folks to have to pay for abilities they already had or had paid for

NarShadda Nightlife achievements vanish.

Bosses that drop no loot

Bosses that can be exploited

People returning to the game to find it in this state

Everyone on staff disappears

 

Ok, so they do increase spawn rates and plant single locations for top tier mats, add solo mode for FA, reduce mat requirements for top tier schematics, and remove training costs...so that brought back SOME good will. Then they release the CSM.....and that is a huge good will gesture.

 

Again, many folks are having fun and forgetting about the nightmares that came with 3.0 to some extent.

 

Then 5 days later they slaughter the damn thing....and most of that good will evaporates.

 

Roller coaster ride. We are in a low at the moment. It is a shame, because most of the opportunities to gain some good will have been squandered by foolish decisions that are PLENTIFUL when it comes to 3.0 and some of the changes that followed.

 

At this point all of the hard work over the past four months has been for naught IMO....they have put some players right back into the rut they were in before the release of Strongholds.

 

They need to take a long hard look at how they have done things over the past four months and put someone in the drivers seat.

 

Because this bus seems to be missing a driver.

Edited January 22, 2015 by LordArtemis

[light_senshi]

I could have fixed 90% of the whining with one simple change: Make all prizes character bound. And so is everything you buy with it. Edited January 22, 2015 by light_senshi

[beasthunt]

Thanks for breaking the machines!