Customer support about equipment removal

[xxHellsmokexx]

After reading all this I can give my 2 credits..

 

1. You just added the outfit designer.

2. You just made companions easy to dress as the gear doesn't do anything for their stats.

 

Now more than ever those vendors would be a place to go look through to find nice outfits. Removing them is just plain stupid.

 

Another thing is that it was without warning. Had you warned us I would have went through and picked up the bits I liked. But that was intended wasn't it? Add them as rewards for something else and force people into a certain part of the game to go grind and hope they get lucky. Easy way out of having to make new rewards.

 

For me looks are everything and they are already rare due to retarded butt flaps or other things that simply leave you shaking your head. Limiting options on looks in this game is not a good move, one of the worst in this expansion.

[Narratja]

(...) Taking a bite out of the people who can help with getting you back into the game, helping you restore missing items or characters, and addressing any billing issues, really isn’t a good use of your time, or theirs. As a general note, if you guys have feedback or questions about design decisions or development philosophy, come to the forums and raise it here. Going to Customer Support is not the correct place for that (and we will ask CS agents to direct you appropriately). (...)

 

Also I myself haven't contacted Customer Support with this, I can understand, why people do this: we get little to no official response in the forums. Seems like one out of thousand posts might be lucky and get read by officials. So the only way to have a higher chance for your concerns being read is writing to Customer Support.

 

It would help, if there would be more often a reaction like e.g. this:

We are currently working on getting Andronikos and Corso looked at! I don't have any ETA on a change, but it's on our radar.

[wildcoast]

http://tor-fashion.com/diatium-onslaught-pub/

 

http://tor-fashion.com/troopers-exalted/

 

Neither of these shells can be dyed to match the TH-15a Patrol set, so once again I ask Eric, how can the RP community get the TH-15a Patrol set.

[Icestar]

They took our 44 achievements, after that I am not surprised they removed the equipment aswell.

 

I like old gear and had plans to gear up companions in it.

[dwillyjpox]

I think Eric should step down. If anyone spent a little time looking over his post history his reply to this topic looks like childs play. Let's get someone with some passion for the game!

 

Edit. Or let tait take over. At least you can see some passion and trust from him.

Edited October 24, 2015 by dwillyjpox

[eartharioch]

virtually all...

 

The majority of the old armor sets...

 

"Almost Pregnant"

 

Seriously, why should *we* have to tell *you* what's missing? Somebody at BW deleted the vendors and their items -- just make a list, like what was done for mats being removed. If you'd added the item as a drop somewhere else, say where. If you didn't add it somewhere else, assume *somebody* will be pissed and figure out a good way to add it back in. A vendor in the Supplies area of Fleet would be a good first guess...

Edited October 24, 2015 by eartharioch

[MrBorsh]

Been searching for similar gear. You don't find anything which looks the same. I just did a flashpoint which drops good trooper equipment. Equipment which looks pretty cool. What I got was an ugly earpiece and a few relics.

[forstyle]

Just a thought, but maybe they're going to put the gear/weapons everyone wants that was just removed in Cartel Market packs so someone has to pay real money for it, then if you want it you can buy it from the GTN or pay up.

[Makillda]

I haven't looked into this personally but I'm assuming this means the moddable offhands from Nar Shadda are gone? The vibrosword (MD-5 Shock Viper or something like that) is gone from Taris? Stuff like that?

 

That's some ******** right there. Saying they were removed due to the stat changes is pure bull, too. Run a script on the item database that changes the main stat to mastery on everything: done. Removing the mods would work, too. Both would have been far preferable to the outright removal of the gear from the game.

 

I'm in agreement with some of the posters here. This stuff will simply appear in a gambling box someday. The instant I see that, I will quit again, For good this time.

[-Spc]

https://youtu.be/6lw49OwqKaw

Found this on youtube regarding the disturbing removal of several equipments and the equipment vendors on the fleet. Apparently they do not seem to care much about the roleplaying community.

Well i'd also like rakata gear back, but hey, they removed the vendors.

[fragnor]

if you guys have feedback or questions about design decisions or development philosophy, come to the forums and raise it here. Going to Customer Support is not the correct place for that (and we will ask CS agents to direct you appropriately).

 

Where we can be completely ignored.

[sangwine]

I've probably opened about 100 alliance crates and so has the friend I play with but so far, there hasn't been a single drop of oriconian or deciever gear (ex ultimate gear). Is this obtainable some other way or is it no longer possible to get it? This was the whole reason why I went ahead and did so much content, because we were told old comms gear would be obtainable this way. Please explain, devs? Has anyone else seen an oriconian piece of gear drop?

[DanNV]

Hey folks,

 

For the question at hand about why equipment was removed from various vendors, this is due primarily to stat changes. With the release of Fallen Empire, we essentially made that gear obsolete due to the new stat configurations and formulas. This meant the best option was to remove those items. Obviously, this raises the main concern of the support call which is the appearances of those armor sets.

 

The dev team informs us that virtually all of the core armor appearances previously on those vendors can still be located throughout the game. The majority of the old armor sets can be found via Crafting rewards, Missions, and Heroic Mission rewards. Now, there may be some variants of these core armor sets which are no longer available, but we’ll adjust that over time and slowly re-add pieces. If there are specific armor sets that can no longer be found, send the information to the Community Team and we’ll pass it along.

 

Taking a bite out of the people who can help with getting you back into the game, helping you restore missing items or characters, and addressing any billing issues, really isn’t a good use of your time, or theirs. As a general note, if you guys have feedback or questions about design decisions or development philosophy, come to the forums and raise it here. Going to Customer Support is not the correct place for that (and we will ask CS agents to direct you appropriately).

 

Thank you all for your understanding and hope that clears up any confusion on the issue.

 

-eric

 

Eric,

 

If you responded to complaints here, people wouldn't feel so inclined to call customer support. However, complaints in the forum go mostly unanswered. How would you respond if you were paying for something, made complaints and got ignored? Wouldn't you call?

[DanNV]

Plus stuff in Alliance crates does zero good to people who aren't running KOTFE (aren't high enough level, have previous stuff they want to finish first, didn't buy the expac, etc) and so are SOL. I know they want to bad their numbers and tell their bosses that the player base is all over KOTFE, but moving most of the drops there to try and push us, particularly when the leveling areas are the meat of this particular mmo, thats just no bueno.

 

The alliance crates are a disaster of an idea. You get bits and pieces of all sorts of sets. It's totally random and is just filling up my storage with junk I don't want and can't even sell on the GTN.

 

There is a lot of really good stuff in KOTFE, but some of the details were pretty poor. The packs and removal of gear shells people liked being some of it. Forcing PVP to get a companion was another. The new cartel packs are a joke and no one should buy those, either.

[-Spc]

Hey folks,

If there are specific armor sets that can no longer be found, send the information to the Community Team and we’ll pass it along.

 

Thank you all for your understanding and hope that clears up any confusion on the issue.

 

-eric

Well rakata gear is no longer obtainable in game, i am talking about this:

http://netsky.org/rakata.png

https://torcommunity.com/database/search/all/?name=rakata+weapon

 

All rakata sets for all classes would be very nice, but without mods and armorings ofcourse.

 

If you can make it drop from flashpoints or make a vendor for it, i'd be very very happy.

Edited October 24, 2015 by -Spc

[Kurin]

Eric, while BioWare may want all of its paying customers to know exactly where to direct it's customer service issues, the reality is, this isn't our job. In fact, it is your job. Shifting the blame of your employee's mistake on to the customer is not the right answer. Accept that this one employee made a mistake, and leave it at that. If you wanted to also point out the best forum for players to get this sort of support, fine. Your post to these forums should have apologized for the untrained employee, acknowledged BioWare is following up on training, and then (maybe) also educated the players that the best way to get the support for this type of issue was in a different forum.

 

You did 2 of the things above. But missed the most important one. And you did them in the wrong order. You started off by blaming the customer for calling the wrong person.

 

I point this out, because as the community manager I expect better from you personally. The CS guy that was a bit too cavalier in their responses is likely an anomaly within the CS organization. It's highly likely that the majority of the CS responses are exactly as CS management has scripted for them. It's also quite possible that CS is being "overwhelmed" with a greater than usual number of support calls for things outside their sphere of control, and so they asked you to help bring the community in line...fine. But you personally can do better. Don't start off by saying the customer is "wasting their time". Honestly...that's wrong. You are wrong. And BioWare and you should apologize. Otherwise, you simply look arrogant and uncaring about your customers.

[Telaris]

How about this gear?

 

http://tor-fashion.com/heroics/

http://tor-fashion.com/missions-rewards-weapons/

 

I assume all of this is just gone now right?

 

And unique things like http://tor-fashion.com/flashy/ are just gone so new players can't get them?

 

Part of the reason I like playing this game is to get all that orange moddable stuff.

[Reno_Tarshil]

How about this gear?

 

http://tor-fashion.com/heroics/

http://tor-fashion.com/missions-rewards-weapons/

 

I assume all of this is just gone now right?

 

And unique things like http://tor-fashion.com/flashy/ are just gone so new players can't get them?

 

Part of the reason I like playing this game is to get all that orange moddable stuff.

 

Flashy is a class reward for Smugglers. Who says it's gone? It's not the first time they removed vendors, not the last.

[JediJRB]

I'm an older member of the community, and this is my first MMO (been playing about 2 years), and I can honestly say I've never encountered any other area of life where there is such an abundance of whiners (in forums, FPs, Ops, genchat...).

 

That said, many complain that devs don't listen to their complaints, yet Eric posted a response here (i.e., did not ignore us) to give a decent overview of the reasons, as well as letting us know most of these items are still available elsewhere and that more will be added over time. If you really want a comprehensive report listing all those items and where each can be found, well, get over your sense of entitlement. This game has thousands of moving parts and there are more important things to address. I enjoy the RP aspect of the game and the look of my toons/comps. But the possible armor/color configurations are infinite, and there is no way any game can provide the millions of color combinations required to fit everyone's imagination.

 

BW did a good job of communicating the 4.0 changes including dev posts and videos - they covered a LOT of ground (thank you, Eric, et.al.). They missed this item on the vendors. It seems no matter how well they do people are going to hate. I, for one, appreciate all the effort they put into preparing us for 4.0. The only thing that surprised me was my comps not having pants (which was actually pretty funny - I'd love to find out that this was an intentional joke!), as well as the difficulty of Tactical FPs.

 

As far as how BW handled the CS tech that went "off script", that's frankly none of our business. What they said to him and how they handled it is between employer and employee. Eric took the right road and let us know about the core of the concern - the status of the equipment vendor changes. Even if everyone isn't happy about the answer, it was a decent answer.

 

There are thousands of forum posts and complaints, and really most of them are hateful enough so as not to be constructive (Eric, I don't know how you tolerate it....kudos). There is no way any team can respond to every single one of them, and many threads are repetitive to each other. Also, from experience I can say that sometimes an incomplete answer is worse than no answer - given time to properly research an issue means a better answer later. Giving a short, incomplete answer just means more hateful comments from this community. Some issues are more important than others and should be prioritized (and don't expect it to match YOUR priority because each of us has different priorities). There are so many negative comments complaining that BW is not doing anything, yet I have seen tons of improvements over time (new heroic system? streamlined crafting? updated SHs? GTN? more versatile comps? outfit designer? comps you don't have to gear for stats? new races? etc...).

 

It sure does seem like BW is listening and taking action to improve the game. No game will ever meet all the expectations of its players, because all the players have different (conflicting) ideas of how it "should" be. Play the game if you enjoy it, even though it isn't (and cannot ever be) perfect. If you truly don't enjoy it, then it's really time to move on, at least for a while.

[IanArgent]

I've been generally happy and supportive of the 4.0 changes, and I understand that there might be some difficulties in retaining the vendors, but removing the appearance items and maybe putting them back in random drops/scavenger hunts that are BoL? Not cool.

 

Once things have cooled down a bit; maybe consider putting a couple of vendors back on fleet with the empty shells of these items for people to buy with comms?

[Mikahrone]

How about this gear?

 

http://tor-fashion.com/heroics/

http://tor-fashion.com/missions-rewards-weapons/

 

I assume all of this is just gone now right?

 

And unique things like http://tor-fashion.com/flashy/ are just gone so new players can't get them?

 

Part of the reason I like playing this game is to get all that orange moddable stuff.

 

Vast majority of those are crafatble (if not all) and for weapons check PvP weapons vendor on fleet.

 

http://tor-fashion.com/synthweaver-crafted-sets/

http://tor-fashion.com/armormech-crafted-sets/

 

Also gear still drop of mobs, so i would say lots of stuff can drop. Maybe not in form of "orange set piece" but with appearance slot it doesnt really matter.

Edited October 24, 2015 by Mikahrone

[IanArgent]

Vast majority of those are crafatble (if not all) and for weapons check PvP weapons vendor on fleet.

 

Also gear still drop of mobs, so i would say lots of stuff can drop. Maybe not in form of "orange set piece" but with appearance slot it doesnt really matter.

 

Until they put weapons in appearance designer, it matters for weapons.

[Mikahrone]

Until they put weapons in appearance designer, it matters for weapons.

 

Pretty much all of those models are on PvP weapon vendor on fleet and quite a few are craftable.

Edited October 24, 2015 by Mikahrone

[Starbros]

Hey folks,

 

For the question at hand about why equipment was removed from various vendors, this is due primarily to stat changes. With the release of Fallen Empire, we essentially made that gear obsolete due to the new stat configurations and formulas. This meant the best option was to remove those items. Obviously, this raises the main concern of the support call which is the appearances of those armor sets.

 

The dev team informs us that virtually all of the core armor appearances previously on those vendors can still be located throughout the game. The majority of the old armor sets can be found via Crafting rewards, Missions, and Heroic Mission rewards. Now, there may be some variants of these core armor sets which are no longer available, but we’ll adjust that over time and slowly re-add pieces. If there are specific armor sets that can no longer be found, send the information to the Community Team and we’ll pass it along.

 

Taking a bite out of the people who can help with getting you back into the game, helping you restore missing items or characters, and addressing any billing issues, really isn’t a good use of your time, or theirs. As a general note, if you guys have feedback or questions about design decisions or development philosophy, come to the forums and raise it here. Going to Customer Support is not the correct place for that (and we will ask CS agents to direct you appropriately).

 

Thank you all for your understanding and hope that clears up any confusion on the issue.

 

-eric

 

 

Monday evening (prior to patch), I was browsing the Basic Comm equipment vendors on the Fleet, lining up which armor pieces and weapons I would preview on my brand-new KotFE story companions after the update, and ultimately purchase with my saved-up commendations. Now I find myself waiting to play until next Tuesday's patch -- in the hope that staying out of the game until then I'll somehow avoid permanent bugging/ item loss on my existing characters -- while reading other players' dismaying reports on the forums that not only are these Fleet vendors gone in 4.0, but KotFE story companions cannot change outfits.

 

In my view, story may be the core of SWTOR, but visual customization makes that story matter to me as a player. Although each separate Chapter 1-3 class storyline follows the same well-worn path, I take ownership of each story by establishing unique looks for my characters and their companions, imbuing them with a sense of identity and attachment and thereby setting my game experience apart from those of countless other players who've gone before. For this reason I've had a very positive opinion of add-ons like the Cartel Market and Cartel Packs, which introduced a vast variety of costume and weapon designs which I've enjoyed collecting to further personalize my characters. The freedom to pick and choose costume pieces through vendors, Collections, and mission drops greatly enhanced my Imperial Agent most of all, whom I equipped with changes of gear appropriate in story context for disguises and planetary climates -- think of the iconic winter clothes that the Star Wars movie characters wore on Hoth -- all fully modded, no less, before the Outfit Designer came along.

 

Mr. Musco, I ask that your team please reinstate the Fleet equipment vendors, and allow players to equip gear on Lana and the other new companions in Knights of the Fallen Empire to change their looks to whatever they like. Preserving choices for customization is always the best option, and without the ability to make my KotFE companions look any different from anybody else's, I might just as well watch the story cutscenes unfold on YouTube.

[X_Vindictuz_X]

Monday evening (prior to patch), I was browsing the Basic Comm equipment vendors on the Fleet, lining up which armor pieces and weapons I would preview on my brand-new KotFE story companions after the update, and ultimately purchase with my saved-up commendations. Now I find myself waiting to play until next Tuesday's patch -- in the hope that staying out of the game until then I'll somehow avoid permanent bugging/ item loss on my existing characters -- while reading other players' dismaying reports on the forums that not only are these Fleet vendors gone in 4.0, but KotFE story companions cannot change outfits.

 

In my view, story may be the core of SWTOR, but visual customization makes that story matter to me as a player. Although each separate Chapter 1-3 class storyline follows the same well-worn path, I take ownership of each story by establishing unique looks for my characters and their companions, imbuing them with a sense of identity and attachment and thereby setting my game experience apart from those of countless other players who've gone before. For this reason I've had a very positive opinion of add-ons like the Cartel Market and Cartel Packs, which introduced a vast variety of costume and weapon designs which I've enjoyed collecting to further personalize my characters. The freedom to pick and choose costume pieces through vendors, Collections, and mission drops greatly enhanced my Imperial Agent most of all, whom I equipped with changes of gear appropriate in story context for disguises and planetary climates -- think of the iconic winter clothes that the Star Wars movie characters wore on Hoth -- all fully modded, no less, before the Outfit Designer came along.

 

Mr. Musco, I ask that your team please reinstate the Fleet equipment vendors, and allow players to equip gear on Lana and the other new companions in Knights of the Fallen Empire to change their looks to whatever they like. Preserving choices for customization is always the best option, and without the ability to make my KotFE companions look any different from anybody else's, I might just as well watch the story cutscenes unfold on YouTube.

 

while i applaud your dedication you cannot pause the game and anything that was bugged or delete dis already off your characters