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

[DarthDymond]

Sounds like they tried balancing it with crew missions rates and got it seriously wrong. They should re-balance this again to at least be on par with crew missions for purples. As far as greens and blues...they definitely screwed up. I can go to Yavin and get more greens in 30 minutes then even before the slots got nerfed and blues are guaranteed multiples with every crew mission it was at little more convenient with slots because you don't have to wait on mission timer.

They should just come out and give a picture of their concept for the Slot Machine, they said it was "a fun idea" in response to the popularity of the Festival of Splendor Event, but they should clearly articulate if (as I assume):

• It was intended to center around giving players a new way to get Rep that has been off the market for a long time.
  
• It was never intended to center on the crafting materials, which were only included to add a bit of variety to the drops or as a consolation prize.
  
• It was meant to be something people would have fun playing around with for a bit, not necessarily to become a regular part of their gaming sessions.

[Pietrastor]

Jawa scrap hasn't just been reduced on the slot machine. It's pretty much non-existant now. 198 coins dropped in, not one bit of jawa scrap, junk, or droid parts. Tons and tons of rep items (way to much in fact), but no more jawa materials at all. At least not for me.

 

A lot more failed spins as well. Otherwise I didn't get anything but rep items on those spins.

ALong with Cartel Certificates which were NOT mention as being a 'problem' at all and they were NOT said to be essentially removed yesterday

[LordArtemis]

A few mistakes they made IMO.

 

First, they release this thing with scraps. This should have never dropped scraps in the first place.

 

Then they didnt set reasonable amounts for the drop rates. Instead of matching crew mission drop rates they made everything 10 percent. It should have been double that for greens, same for blues, half that (or less) for purples.

 

Then they said it was fine, working as intended but they would look at purple mats (jawa junk) and adjust them accordingly if needed.

 

THEN they nerfed almost everything out of existence....and added a mount with an impossible drop rate to compensate. They even nerfed certs. AND increased the price of the tokens on top of it all.

 

So many mistakes on how this was presented/handled.

[halcyon_havoc]

Please put back the drop rate of the Cartel Market Certificates and increase the odds of getting back a coin! We know the jawa scraps have been greatly reduced, but it's not still going to be "fun" to waste millions in coins for a mount that we'll probably never win.

[DarthVengeant]

Thank you Bioware for ruining one of the fun things in the game due to a FEW self centered people being loud. People who care more about a fake economy inside a video game than actually HAVING FUN. People who care more about themselves and how THEY play the game or how many credits in a video game they can make.

 

It was fun while it lasted. Yet ANOTHER thing ruined by the few....

Edited January 21, 2015 by DarthVengeant

[EnkiduNineEight]

Hahaha... you forgot a zero there my friend.

 

The drop rate isn't 0.01%

It's 0.001%

 

Thaaats right...

 

We don't know what the drop rate is. We have a post on reddit from someone who transcribed their datamining.

 

If they (bioware) did make the odds percentage based and not decimalised, they likely have made a mistake (which is entirely conceivable) when they were doing their maths.

 

For example, when I was suggesting .001 myself as the kingpin rancor odds, I was indicating it was roughly one in 1000 drops. This roughly equates to .09% as it rounds to .1%.

 

Frankly if they took my suggestion and put that in literally as a .001% chance that's a goof and I should expect them to fix it when it is understood how much of a goof it was.

 

Its also possible that perhaps whoever made the post on reddit was expressing things as percentages while the tables they were grabbing the numbers from were decimalized, though that would result in a value of 1.045 which is clearly wrong.

 

We don't know personally though the information. This is likely why Bioware does not appreciate/condone posting datamined information.

 

My intent was that the mount should be one in one thousand when I was making the suggestion. 0.001 of 1.000.

 

NOT .001% which is 0.00001 or one chance in one hundred thousand.

[Neglience]

Thank you Bioware for ruining one of the fun things in the game due to a FEW self centered people being loud. People who care more about a fake economy inside a video game than actually HAVING FUN. People who care more about themselves and how THEY play the game.

 

It was fun while it lasted. Yet ANOTHER thing ruined by the few....

 

Take a look at the forum and you will see who is loud here.

[DarthVengeant]

Take a look at the forum and you will see who is loud here.

 

And it is still a select few in comparison to the total number of players in the game, the total numbers who WERE having fun with the slot machine. They are simply being loud is all. They are a minority. Not a single person I know in the game cares about this, and we frankly think this is utterly pathetic as are the people throwing tantrums about the slot machine here. We care about HAVING FUN. Not "whaa whaaa I cant make 1000 million in a video game anymore".

 

Essentially a few loud babies have ruined the slot machine for the majority. Way to go. I am sick of everything nice and fun being RUINED by the few.

Edited January 21, 2015 by DarthVengeant

[DarkNecroCrusher]

100 times less chance to obtain Jawa junks is abusive. A tweak was needed, but not like the heavy nerf you did.

 

40 times less chance to obtain cartel certificates and nothing mentionned about this, as well as the 45% CHANCE TO LOSE instead of 25%.

 

YOU DIDN'T MENTION THIS AT ALL !

 

ARE YOU EVEN AWARE THAT 45% CHANCE TO LOSE IS ALMOST 1/2 TRY ?

 

You will have to give it another tweak before we stop buying cartel market packs for a while.

Edited January 21, 2015 by DarkNecroCrusher

[Andryah]

A few mistakes they made IMO.

 

First, they release this thing with scraps. This should have never dropped scraps in the first place.

 

Then they didnt set reasonable amounts for the drop rates. Instead of matching crew mission drop rates they made everything 10 percent. It should have been double that for greens, same for blues, half that (or less) for purples.

 

Then they said it was fine, working as intended but they would look at purple mats (jawa junk) and adjust them accordingly if needed.

 

THEN they nerfed almost everything out of existence....and added a mount with an impossible drop rate to compensate. They even nerfed certs. AND increased the price of the tokens on top of it all.

 

So many mistakes on how this was presented/handled.

 

This is where I drop by and remind players...... be careful what you complain about and wish for.

 

Setting aside all the line items you listed that are widely debatable between us...... they clearly broke the machine with today's patch. Broken = made it actually a bad thing to drop credits into.

 

Yeah, setting aside the day one hyperbolic thread about being able to make 4M credits per hour out of thin air.....Jawa Junk was too plentiful in most players minds after the slot released.... but that was really the only thing being notably complained about with any objectivity.

 

So.. in their infinite wisdom.. they not only tweak Jawa Junk rates downward, they pretty much kill all desire to play the slots, except for rep tokens. Perhaps that was their intention all along... that the slot only be worthwhile for easy gain of OLD REP.

 

Certificates were nerfed down to 0.05% which is a huge nerf to certs.

Loss spins raised to 45%

minor bump to green and blue rep items, no change to purple rep items.

 

Considering this, why on earth would they also raise the price on the coins too?

 

I don't think anyone is going to play these slots except for maxing rep now (which a lot of players did a long time ago for this first rep series.

 

So, working as intended now means ---> random rep drops only.... unless you are willing to drop 10s of millions of credits on a slot (which nobody is going to do). Tragedy? No. It does however turbo-charge players lack of trust in the dev team though. In that regard, this was a bone-headed move they did with this patch.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[Grayseven]

This is, hopefully, an object lesson for the development team about introducing changes to a game system that are outside of the scope of that system.

 

If the dev's felt that artifact level mission crafting mats like Midlithe Crystals or Doonium were too low, they should have adjusted the drop rates and amounts in the Crew Skill missions instead of using a Cartel Market item that completely unbalanced gathering artifact level materials.

 

If they thought a slot machine that gave prizes was a good idea, they should have stuck to Cartel Market items as prizes and stayed away from in game mechanics. If the slot machine were to award prizes comparable to the Contraband Cartel Packs, with odds similar to the drop rates of the packs themselves, people would be pumping coins into these things for a chance to get embargoed crate items.

 

It's not like they would be losing out on CM cash sales, since they constantly have new CM crates coming out.

 

Awarding the various scraps for Conquest isn't a bad deal, since you burn through more materials via conquest than the scrap rewards replace, but keep crafting and PvE and PvP and the story related things out of the CM.

[Andryah]

100 times less chance to obtain Jawa junks is abusive. A tweak was needed, but not like the heavy nerf you did.

 

40 times less chance to obtain cartel certificates and nothing mentionned about this, as well as the 45% CHANCE TO LOSE instead of 25%.

 

YOU DIDN'T MENTION THIS AT ALL !

 

Yeah... given that Eric made a specific point of outlining what they were going to do and why, to see that Certs got stealth nerfed to the point that you need on average 1.5M credits to gain a certificate now... and they kept that a secret... bad move... one of their worst (from a PR perspective) IMO.

 

And raising the lose percentage to nearly 50% while raising the credit cost for a coin to 750.... Better odds now......buying random items off the GTN while blindfolded.

[DarthDymond]

So.. in their infinite wisdom.. they not only tweak Jawa Junk rates downward, they pretty much kill all desire to play the slots, except for rep tokens. Perhaps that was their intention all along... that the slot only be worthwhile for easy gain of OLD REP.

I do think that is the intention (either 'all along' or at least in response to the complaints), and I'm perfectly fine with that as the design vision for this item.

 

But if the Jawa Junk was originally just there to add a bit of variety to the drops or as a consolation prize then they really dropped the ball in projecting what the actual effect of their setup would be.

 

I'm more comfortable with this item being a CM Rep focused item than with it having a Crafting focus, but I wish they had taken a lot more care in considering how to implement that vision or at least articulated that intent when they first responded to the uproar about it. As it is, they brought these widespread (on the forums at least*) feelings that there was a bait-and-switch, dishonesty, or at least incompetence on themselves.

 

*I think 'on the forums' is an important qualifier for all the outrage over this. I'm willing to bet a sizable portion of the player-base would look at these threads and simply respond "what slot machine?"

Edited January 21, 2015 by DarthDymond

[Andryah]

On the plus side of all of this nonsense... I bet slot machines are going to be severely discounted on the GTN beginning today ...

 

..... UNLESS Eric does the right thing and comes by and falls on his sword and admits he mislead the forum OR.. that they made yet another mistake in the dev team and will "fix" it "again".

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[Andryah]

I do think that is the intention (either 'all along' or at least in response to the complaints), and I'm perfectly fine with that as the design vision for this item.

 

But if the Jawa Junk was originally just there to add a bit of variety to the drops or as a consolation prize then they really dropped the ball in projecting what the actual effect of their setup would be.

 

I'm more comfortable with this item being a CM Rep focused item than with it having a Crafting focus, but I wish they had taken a lot more care in considering how to implement that vision or at least articulated that intent when they first responded to the uproar about it. As it is, they brought these widespread (on the forums at least*) feelings that there was a bait-and-switch, dishonesty, or at least incompetence on themselves.

 

*I think 'on the forums' is an important qualifier for all the outrage over this. I'm willing to bet a sizable portion of the player-base would look at these threads and simply respond "what slot machine?"

 

I don't disagree.... but then they should have left the drop rates on Certs the same. They are CM faction based tokens, for acquiring faction rep based items. If they had left Certs alone.. I bet we would only be seeing modest complaints today rather then the tidal wave rolling over the forum.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[LordArtemis]

This is where I drop by and remind players...... be careful what you complain about and wish for.

 

Boy, if there was EVER a person that deserves an "I told you so" it would be me Andryah. Should have listened to you from the get go. I expected Bioware to demonstrate more common sense than this.

[KarathAnno]

Increasing the cost of the tokens by 50% and cutting the drop rate of the (purple) Jawa Junk in half would have easily corrected the situation.

 

But almost doubling the failure rate while reducing the drop rate to 1/100 of what it was for everything but rep... I cannot even fathom what the design team was thinking with these changes. This was not correcting the machine drop rate, it was not even nerfing it, you effectively destroyed it as a means for getting anything but rep.

[LordArtemis]

If the dev's felt that artifact level mission crafting mats like Midlithe Crystals or Doonium were too low, they should have adjusted the drop rates and amounts in the Crew Skill missions instead of using a Cartel Market item that completely unbalanced gathering artifact level materials.

 

This.

 

You don't make a horse faster by strapping on roller skates.

 

Crew missions suck IMO. I don't think that is an opinion that is uncommon. Even Bioware seems to feel Level 11 mat availability was too light.

 

Fast respawn and exact locations for spawns on Rishi/Yavin....check, good move.

Set all schematics to use two pieces of material each....check, again, good move.

 

Release a machine that churns out high end mats, only to nerf it into oblivion less than a week later....not so good.

 

You skipped the most important change of all Bioware.

 

FIX CREW MISSIONS. The way you increase mat availability (especially high end) is by improving the main source of those mats...crew missions....not by slapping them on conquests, decorations and in cartel packs.

Edited January 21, 2015 by LordArtemis

[DarthDymond]

I don't disagree.... but then they should have left the drop rates on Certs the same. They are CM faction based tokens, for acquiring faction rep based items.

I think that was probably a separate (but related) issue where they realize they had screwed the pooch on setting up those win rates too. They probably took one look at the metrics and saw however many thousand Cartel Certs had been generated last week just from the Machine and had an epic "Oh S---" moment.

[Andryah]

Boy, if there was EVER a person that deserves an "I told you so" it would be me Andryah. Should have listened to you from the get go. I expected Bioware to demonstrate more common sense than this.

 

Hehe.... well even though I state it from time to time in the forums, I never expected it to be as relevant as it has been made with this nerf.

 

As for common sense in the dev team... apparently that was nerfed first and nerfed hard... before they went to work on the loot table for the slots.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[Andryah]

I think that was probably a separate (but related) issue where they realize they had screwed the pooch on setting up those win rates too. They probably took one look at the metrics and saw however many thousand Cartel Certs had been generated last week just from the Machine and had an epic "Oh S---" moment.

 

Yeah... if we take this change today as -----> "working as intended" (hard to take them seriously with that statement after they used it to role-play waffles in the forum this last week) .... then the message is clear:

 

1) we will give you slot machines to access year old cartel rep, for credits

2) if you want certs.. best be buying Cartel Packs to get those because they are now a "blue moon" drop from slots.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Andryah

[MillionsKNives]

Yeah... if we take this change today as -----> "working as intended" (hard to take them seriously with that statement after they used it to role-play waffles in the forum this last week) .... then the message is clear:

 

1) we will give you slot machines to access year old cartel rep, for credits

2) if you want certs.. best be buying Cartel Packs to get those because they are now a "blue moon" drop from slots.

 

Can we all reflect on the fact that Andryah is disappointed with the devs right now?

[Mowermanx]

I don't disagree.... but then they should have left the drop rates on Certs the same. They are CM faction based tokens, for acquiring faction rep based items. If they had left Certs alone.. I bet we would only be seeing modest complaints today rather then the tidal wave rolling over the forum.

 

I dont believe for a second, they wanted the certs to drop like they were, I mean, you get like 5 or 6 to a hypercrate if youre lucky, and yet they were dropping like candy from the slots.

IMO, this is why we got the fix for it in a hurry, and the much talked about jawa junk fix was just slipped in to appease the whingers.

[LordArtemis]

Can we all reflect on the fact that Andryah is disappointed with the devs right now?

 

This isnt the first time I assure you.

 

The most shocking one to me was bran....bran is rarely if ever annoyed by game changes. This one even irritated him.

Edited January 21, 2015 by LordArtemis

[Lyshar]

So anyone know if going after the mount would be a major disappointment or a unbelievably gigantic one? I'm still leaning to the latter, which means it's technically a believably gigantic one.

 

Still expecting the mounts to be Bind on Pickup (or bind to legacy at best.)

Still expecting the vendor trash value to be zero.

Still expecting it to be hideous, but disregarding that, why do they think people would keep playing indefinitely?