Azru_Holylight Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Okay, So I've heard rumors that legacy gear may be removed at some point. This is one of the worst business model changes possible, and I'll explain why in a bit. First of all, Legacy Gear has been around for most of the game's lifespan, since they introduced the class specific legacy gear on capital planets years ago. Yes, people have used it to pass gear around to alts and shortcut the ridiculous gear grind, where most of the token gear is thrown away as useless enhancements and too many critical based mods are shoved down our throats. But let's look at this from another perspective. What about motivation to play, and customer satisfaction in terms of in-game quality of life? Early on, we were encouraged to level alts of each class to see all the stories, and legacy perks further encouraged us to build more alts for additional benefits. In fact, you need multiple characters to self-sufficiently craft your own gear. So, with all this encouragement to level alts, and we won't even mention 12x experience incentives, does BioWare REALLY expect us to want to spend the time to gear each alt individually? Especially since alternate faction alts are just copies of original faction 'toons! Not to mention the fact that there isn't a whole lot of interesting content to keep a single character engaged at end-game. Given such a focus on leveling alts, Legacy Gear becomes valuable to players, if not absolutely critical to maintaining manageable levels of gearing. Do you really think people would waste time gaining reputation if you could only get regular 'orange' gear for looks? We already have access to cartel markets and collections. And honestly, most of the gear from that or even legacy vendors don't even look that great. But people will continue to grind reputation for the chance to splash new flavor into their Legacy Gear wardrobe. (We'll also not mention the fact that legacy gear has been thrown at us in the form of 4 free sets for each new toon!) So, why is removing Legacy Gear one of the worst business decisions possible? There are two main reasons. The first reason is the detriment to player enjoyment, and thus customer satisfaction. Especially at a time when reasons to continue playing the game are falling away. There's almost no point to doing Flashpoints anymore, as you don't get gear that's worthwhile and "comms gear" is all but useless compared to easily obtained SM operations gear. The Second reason this is a bad business model, and the most potent reason at that, is that BioWare is throwing away the potential to make tons of money in the form of potential cartel coins and further incentives to subscribe! Think about a hypothetical scenario where, with a bit of code, you can flag gear with a Boolean that if (player.isSubscriber and item.isCartelMarket and item.isUnlockedToCollection) { enableLegacyBankFlag(item)}. You know, if people are willing to grind rep for cool looking Legacy Gear, they're also more inclined to keep/maintain their subscription to be able to continue to use the functional benefits of Legacy Gear. And by allowing Cartel Market gear to essentially function as legacy gear when unlocked to a collection, you give players a LOT of incentive to unlock more gear sets to their collections. This means more money in your pockets, BioWare!! Heck, why stop there. If you refactor your code such that each moddable set of of gear has a 'LegacyEnabled' attribute, you might even be able to sell special tokens for cartel coins which could flag a single regular item as Legacy Gear. If you sold them for 1000 Cartel Coins each, and allowed it to apply to earpieces, implants, and relics, you'd be able to get a potential of 14,000 cartel coins for a single class type and role. Not to mention the fact that you'd be able to get another 5,000 Cartel Coins each time that character was able to get new Earpieces, Implants, and Relic upgrades!! Then think of that in terms of dollars. If you have a person with several varieties of class types or roles, such as commando healer, sage dps, sage healer, etc, then you have a potential for 10's of thousands of Cartel Coins!! And there are people willing to spend that kind of money for the functionality and convenience of Legacy Gear that actually looks cool and interesting. So, let's do a little math. Say we have someone with 5 'different character types they'd like to buy Legacy Gear tokens for. Right off the bat, you'd potentially get 70,000 Cartel Coins for all the tokens they'd need. And then, say that they get a new set of Earpiece, Implants, and Relics for each archetype. That's another 25,000 cartel coins spent! Now say that your artists and content generators produce a MUST-HAVE super awesome looking set of amazing gear! Going the token route, that could mean at least 7,000 more credits to create a new set of legacy gear. Each new interesting saber or blaster design could net you another 1,000 coins per token spent, IN ADDITION to the original cartel coins spent to gain said equipment. We're looking at a potential for over 100,000 Cartel Coins worth of in-game content for a 'single user'! At the current rate for getting coins, say they spend 39.99 for 5500 coins. That's over $727.09 for a single user! And that could continue to grow! And you could even code it such that tokens can only be used by subscribers, or perhaps you can only keep the benefit of legacy gear by being a subscriber. That's another $15/month or so per account. If you implement this sort of code, you could potentially gain and/or maintain over $900 within a single year or so by account. Now, granted some of that may be reduced based on what people can afford to drop into the game. But there are certainly a good number of working professionals willing to pay for convenience and functionality in a game that would also be more enjoyable for them to play. Otherwise, if you remove Legacy Gear functionality, you risk alienating many subscribers and thus losing out on about $180/year per account in addition to the loss of potential gains. You make the call. Are you guys smart? Do you want to make money? Or, are you dumb, and have an aggressive hatred for material wealth and monetary resources for improving your cash cow? Also, another good idea for cartel coin unlock: 2000 Cartel Coins, or even 4000 Cartel Coins just to unlock the feature of a Legacy Bank upgrade to store credits ala Guild Banks. This would be highly sought after by many players for sheer convenience and better monetary tracking across their account! Yours Truly, A Current Customer and Fan. (provided you don't suddenly lose your senses and take away Legacy Gear, causing me to unsub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediJuliusDavin Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 (provided you don't suddenly lose your senses and take away Legacy Gear, causing me to unsub) A: You don't speak for all of us, I never use legacy gear, ever. B: If legacy gear is the only thing keeping you around, well, I don't even know what to say at that point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azru_Holylight Posted January 21, 2015 Author Share Posted January 21, 2015 A: Sure, not everyone uses Legacy Gear. But I know many who do. B: You're missing the point. I'm not sticking around solely for Legacy Gear, but having such a useful and functional aspect of the game removed after allowing players to use it for years, and even encouraging it, is really frustrating. The only reason I'd unsubscribe due to a removal of Legacy Gear, is that it would be the "straw that broke the camel's back" for me. I've felt as though many of BioWare's latest decisions have just been to artificially draw out and force players to waste more time doing the same stuff. There's a lot I could complain about, but I chose instead to offer positive reasons for keeping one aspect of the game going. And, if done right, Bioware could make a profit. Why not try to make money where possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth__Reaver Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 A: You don't speak for all of us, I never use legacy gear, ever. B: If legacy gear is the only thing keeping you around, well, I don't even know what to say at that point. A: your an idiot if your not using legacy gear to swap mods for alts. B: the removal of legecy gear will hurt the players that DO use it let it be mod swapping or for a fresh alt whatever the reason not everyone can play 24/7 and grind to get the gear that's needed. Without the legacy gear most alts will be gimped if you use the mod swaps a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediJuliusDavin Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 (edited) A: your an idiot if your not using legacy gear to swap mods for alts. B: the removal of legecy gear will hurt the players that DO use it let it be mod swapping or for a fresh alt whatever the reason not everyone can play 24/7 and grind to get the gear that's needed. Without the legacy gear most alts will be gimped if you use the mod swaps a lot. A: The hell are you attacking me for? B: I never even disagreed with the op, just pointing out the old unsub card. Jesus people! Looking at your post history you are quite the arrog- I mean self confident fellow. You shouldn't call me an idiot for not playing your way, you aren't perfect either. Edited January 22, 2015 by JediJuliusDavin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediJuliusDavin Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 A: your an idiot if your not using legacy gear to swap mods for alts. B: the removal of legecy gear will hurt the players that DO use it let it be mod swapping or for a fresh alt whatever the reason not everyone can play 24/7 and grind to get the gear that's needed. Without the legacy gear most alts will be gimped if you use the mod swaps a lot. Furthermore I have no need to use mod swapping, I get up to 186 on most characters, 192 if they are lucky, I don't want to do that mod swapping, if they are sub-optimal, too damn bad. But guess what, I support the op! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lorrimar Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Hey OP, can you cite your source for this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamieKirby Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I think it would be better to make legacy gear level up with the player, make it available from level 10, so you can't just use it from level 1 and it levels up to level 60 and is slightly worse then crafted blues of the same level. The items i suggest are all armor slots, main hand and offhand.....everything else is standard stuff and you could add in a legacy perk that is a per character basis, like the xp booster perks that increase all xp gained by 5% per legacy pieces equiped that would total to 45%. Its a good idea in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediJuliusDavin Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I think it would be better to make legacy gear level up with the player, make it available from level 10, so you can't just use it from level 1 and it levels up to level 60 and is slightly worse then crafted blues of the same level. The items i suggest are all armor slots, main hand and offhand.....everything else is standard stuff and you could add in a legacy perk that is a per character basis, like the xp booster perks that increase all xp gained by 5% per legacy pieces equiped that would total to 45%. Its a good idea in my opinion. Definitely some interesting options. I'd like to keep both kinds of legacy gear and the ones that have a set level leveling up with you instead sounds pretty cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Okay, So I've heard rumors that legacy gear may be removed at some point. This is one of the worst business model changes possible, and I'll explain why in a bit. Source? I am investing a fair bit in legacy sets at higher levels to be shared, so... who said Legacy is going to be gone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsovereign Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Tl:dr? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommanderKeeva Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Care to elaborate on where you heard this exactly OP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azru_Holylight Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) As I said, this was a rumor that I heard. I think the player who mentioned the fact that Legacy Gear may go away might have seen something on a dev stream, or something else. I asked them for clarification on where they got this information, and it may have been a bit of a jump from comments that legacy gear wasn't being used as it was intended. I'll try to find where they got their information and post it. Regardless, if the rumor is unfounded, that is ALL the BETTER! And, it doesn't detract at all from my suggestions for integrating new Cartel Market functionality related to Legacy Gear which would not only improve things for players, but also get BioWare a good profit. The majority of the OP was meant to establish my reasons for why enhancements to Legacy Banks and Legacy Tokens would be sought after by their customers. I firmly believe that even if all that was done in response was to finally add Cartel Market unlocks for shared Legacy Bank credit storage, that players would spend money to make life easier. Although, I'd still really like to see tokens to change single pieces of gear into legacy bound items. Edited January 23, 2015 by Azru_Holylight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JephosMispir Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I'm definitely in favor of keeping and expanding Legacy Gear. I've long felt that being able to pay for (or craft) an item (similar in application to an augment kit) that would convert regular gear to Legacy status would be awesome and improve player quality of life, especially since most Legacy Gear is lacking in appearance (which is certainly the case if you prefer a traditional/movie-looking Jedi robe aesthetic.) In the vein of player quality of life, I'd also fully support and would readily pay for the Cartel Coins to both expand the bays in the Legacy Bank and to have my credits pooled account-wide for fast, easy access! TL;DR: 1. Keep Legacy Gear. 2. Enable a means for regular gear to become Legacy. 3. Expand Legacy Bays. 4. Make credits pool/available account wide via Legacy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanisher Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I heard rumours that they lost 7500 subs over this cartel slot machine issue after they nerfed it I can see the thousands leaving after legacy gear gets removed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JouerTue Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 i have myself a lot of ''double'' alts: sorc/sage sin/shadow etc. i use legacy gear a lot, for pvp but also to be able to swap role if needed. i raid on republic side, and that's where i get mostly of my gear. if legacy gear is taken away i won't be able to play effectively on the other side, where tons of times i logged the last tank needed for a 16m raid by sending to that alt the set i needed to do the operation. isn't enough having to grind all the left side of our char sheet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GopherLuV Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 While I agree with most of the OP, those numbers you made up... I would have to quit the game... Some of us don't have hundreds and hundreds of extra dollars to spend on this. I would wind up taking a year or more in order to get the gear, you can't set prices that high because theres probably only a few % of players who could afford that, with real money that is... I do agree with most everything else, and really hope legacy gear doesn't go away, since 3 of my toons sport legacy gear in order to use on other alts atm.. i won't be spending the time to min/max those other toons again if legacy gear goes buy buy, it'll just be the straw that breaks the camels back, after the camel spent hours walking through ToS dieing on that *********** underlurker.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebevo Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I hope this is just a rumor as I am very much against the removable of legacy gear. I don’t wear it on any of my characters, but it is the only reason my dps has any gear. I run group content on my healers, I run solo content on my dps. Without legacy gear, what would be the point of running group content (except guild runs) on my healers. So sounds like a smart plan if you want less healers and tanks in group finder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeuroniaSW Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 A: You don't speak for all of us, I never use legacy gear, ever. B: If legacy gear is the only thing keeping you around, well, I don't even know what to say at that point. I'm going to agree with Julius (much as it pains me to agree with a Jedi as an Empire player...) I usually junk all the Legacy stuff. I can spend 200 CC to get Visas Marr or another Cartel outfit unlocked and just add mods as I go, so why use the Legacy gear at all? I'd rather they just give me new mods at the expected level, though I guess asking for 7-10 mods of each type might be too much, maybe just for the chest and weapon type? If anything, BW can rake in MY cash by giving me access to more dresses, formal outfits, Killik vestments etc so my companions and me can be snazzily dressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomcn Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I haven't seen or heard any rumors or evidence that legacy gear will be removed. Quite the contrary, in fact. In the 3.0 expansion, Bioware just added a whole bunch of Bind-to-Legacy companion gear. I'd say that is clear evidence that Bioware supports legacy gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EddieRedeye Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Legacy gear is here to stay. Can you imagine the backlash from the community if Legacy gear was nerfed or removed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
branmakmuffin Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Tl:dr? "Give me what I want or I am going to threaten to quit." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JephosMispir Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 "Give me what I want or I am going to threaten to quit." Point: missed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RiVaN_ Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Legacy gear is here to stay. Can you imagine the backlash from the community if Legacy gear was nerfed or removed? Have you read anything going on in this game lately? Do you think that the BW SWTOR team gives a rats stnikysmellyass about community backlash? BW has an agenda and what the players think/want be damned. Right now their agenda is tearing their community apart and turning their fans against them. I'm gonna put money on the bet that next week when the Ravagers punishment is announced there will be an abundance of outcry on Reddit and the beginning of an end shall be signaled. Let me be clear, They can't get this one right. No matter what they do it isn't gonna be enough in the eyes of the White Nights and it will be to harsh in the eyes of the exploiters. The few of us stuck in between will fall victim to the results of a decision that will be the wrong one no matter what. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azru_Holylight Posted January 27, 2015 Author Share Posted January 27, 2015 So, again. Not focusing so much on potential removal of legacy gear, as much as focusing on how BioWare can use that system to make money. At least one person said the cost would be too high. And I guess there's not as much motivation with customizable gear appearance. However, there's still the potential for money here. Legacy Bank storage of credits. So characters can deposit/withdraw from one overall legacy pool (1000-4000 Cartel Coins?)Legacy Tokens to make regular equipment item into legacy item, including earpieces, implants, and relics. At the very least, I'd like to be able to get some of my favorite hilts/blasters converted to legacy. (let's say 400-1000 Cartel Coins per token, consumable)Or, if no token system, then allow for Cartel Market items to be stored in legacy bank once they've been unlocked to the collection. (this would at the very least encourage the use of Cartel Coins to unlock more sets into people's collections - not nearly as profitable as tokens) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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