New Pack Opening Experience

[Nothing_Shines]

And if they did spend a year coming up with new ops, people would b*tch that they haven't done an expansion since Revan. Expansions take time and resources. So do Ops. Just because you're unsatisfied with what they HAVE been delivering doesn't mean they have been sitting idle. And again, it has nothing to do with the team throwing us a quick win when people (probably myself included) complained about the earned DVL packs being usable only by the character that opened them. It's like getting a piece of birthday cake and then whining because you didn't get the whole cake. Just shut up and enjoy the cake.

 

Yeah! Everyone just shut up and eat your dry, stale, banana raisin cake that no one asked for after you've already eaten a crap dessert that's given you constipation. Eat it! Your developer slaved all month on it and you will like it! Shut up and EAT IT!

Edited August 6, 2016 by Nothing_Shines

[jimmorrisson]

We asked for a solution to the DvL pack issue and here it is. Yes the new pack experience is overkill however it's now there for the next time packs are used as game bait. Edited August 11, 2016 by jimmorrisson

[Bomyne]

What I want to see is a button that lets me open ALL packs instantly, without any kind of visual effect, and without a cast timer.

[aeterno]

When they phone it in with a pack of recolored assets devs get blasted for cheap CM cash grabs. When they put effort in the CM they get blasted for wasting development resources.

 

Having been here through it all I have to say this playerbase complaining that the devs don't listen to what players want and instead waste development resources is hilarious to me. The amount of projects BW poured effort in on behest of people demanding it on forums and at cantinas is mind boggling. And the result? One discontinued and abandoned feature after the other. Had to have space at launch. Had to redo space. Had to have guild flagships. Had to have strongholds (tho that one is actually probably quite successful). And we know they banged their heads at the flipping speeder racing concept but gave up cos of tech issues. And with all that people are now throwing hissy fits about some effort going into the part of the game that pretty much keeps the show going lol. If they stopped listening to the community it would seem they did so just in he nick of time to stay afloat.

[Nothing_Shines]

So it's the community's fault the devs came up with a half-baked idea like GSF (despite people asking for free-form space PVE from day 0, not static, disconnected from the story space PVP) and then promptly abandoned doing anything with it or fixing any of the numerous, glaring issues it has just being what it is, nevermind what people want it to be?

 

Please.

 

"It's your fault we let go of most of our staff and slashed the budget for anything not related to laying more "story" railroad track or CM boxes within boxes. I mean, yeah, we could have taken more than five minutes on GSF and actually developed it to fully integrate into the current game, but we decided just dropping it into the gamespace like a big lumpy turd and looking for another shiny object to dazzle you all with was the way to go."

 

Plans for ranked GSF seasons? Actually trying to balance the classes? Doing something about the steep learning curve for noobs? Releasing some more maps or game modes? Porting unlocked ships into Legacy hangars so you're not stuck on your GSF toon all day if you want to play? Building on the NPCs you added (with voice, mind you) with story content outside of the actual matches? Tying victories in the various battles to missions on their respective planets or buffs, anything? Battles between guildships? The equivalent of space ops with groups of players against NPC fighter groups? Nope. A few random patches and then nothing. GSF is a graveyard. It's the same people all the time, except when a few batches of noobs find it, port in and are farmed until they quit and never return, just like what happened with the DVL "event". People who never played GSF showed up for their five matches, got annihilated by tricked out top aces, and then went away.

 

Apparently, EA is strangling BW's budget and they have to be very careful with what they work on and they decide aping Overwatch is a worthwhile use of funds? We're supposed to be excited about this? They've made it easier to spend more money on their game. Awesome. I'm sure your stockholders are thrilled. You realize people who don't hold stock pay for this game, right? Players? Why didn't they tell people this before letting them blow through half their DVL crates? Why even make the DVL crates different than every other CM crate? You can only get them once per legacy. Who cares if people sell crap they don't want after jumping through the grindiest of grindhoops to get it? Apparently, BW cares. If they can't monetize it, then better break it.

 

"We can't just give away the equivalent of a hypercrate to people who just played the game the way we told them to play it! Are you crazy? Make that reward objectively worse than buying a hypercrate, which we will sell shortly after the event begins for a huge price increase over past versions!"

 

This was a solution to a problem THEY DELIBERATELY CREATED. They didn't accidentally make the DVL crates BOP. That was a choice. Someone who doesn't even play the game spoke up in a committee meeting and suggested it "because metrics" and they all nodded sagely, took a voice vote and then broke for lunch. They didn't not know that they had a plan for that inconvenience coming down the pipe. Aping Overwatch took several months, minimum. They chose not to even hint at it. Why? Because if people knew there was a solution to BOP crates, some would have waited until next week's update dropped before even bothering, and BW needs DVL to pad their numbers during the late summer/early fall downtime. OR some wouldn't buy the DVL hypercrates because they would have gotten their fill with the event rewards that weren't bound on random characters. Either way, it comes down to greed.

 

I didn't even lose out on the crates (as I haven't bothered to run DVL) and I'm infuriated that they want people to be thrilled they fixed a problem they deliberately caused through greed. Every single step of this "event" has been a blundered opportunity to generate renewed interest and goodwill for the game.

 

I could take a crew of people off this forum, a mix of those who have been both vocally for and against this event (half of whom probably have me on ignore at this point), but who play the crap out of this game, sit them in a chat room and tell them to come up with a better version of DVL using the same resources BW had available and with the caveats that it had to incorporate the CM and fill the time between story seasons. Whatever they came up with would be better than this. Common sense isn't magic. This isn't a cult where the higher ups know all the secrets so only they can come up with good ideas and, of course, all their ideas are good, and the rank and file must toe the line and proclaim how awesome those ideas are. If the devs actually played their own game -for years and without console commands- they wouldn't so continuously do things to make the game less fun to play or introduce genuine improvements in such a stumblebum manner as this.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Nothing_Shines

[DarkSaberMaster]

So it's the community's fault the devs came up with a half-baked idea like GSF (despite people asking for free-form space PVE from day 0, not static, disconnected from the story space PVP) and then promptly abandoned doing anything with it or fixing any of the numerous, glaring issues it has just being what it is, nevermind what people want it to be?

 

Please.

 

"It's your fault we let go of most of our staff and slashed the budget for anything not related to laying more "story" railroad track or CM boxes within boxes. I mean, yeah, we could have taken more than five minutes on GSF and actually developed it to fully integrate into the current game, but we decided just dropping it into the gamespace like a big lumpy turd and looking for another shiny object to dazzle you all with was the way to go."

 

Plans for ranked GSF seasons? Actually trying to balance the classes? Doing something about the steep learning curve for noobs? Releasing some more maps or game modes? Porting unlocked ships into Legacy hangars so you're not stuck on your GSF toon all day if you want to play? Building on the NPCs you added (with voice, mind you) with story content outside of the actual matches? Tying victories in the various battles to missions on their respective planets or buffs, anything? Battles between guildships? The equivalent of space ops with groups of players against NPC fighter groups? Nope. A few random patches and then nothing. GSF is a graveyard. It's the same people all the time, except when a few batches of noobs find it, port in and are farmed until they quit and never return, just like what happened with the DVL "event". People who never played GSF showed up for their five matches, got annihilated by tricked out top aces, and then went away.

 

Apparently, EA is strangling BW's budget and they have to be very careful with what they work on and they decide aping Overwatch is a worthwhile use of funds? We're supposed to be excited about this? They've made it easier to spend more money on their game. Awesome. I'm sure your stockholders are thrilled. You realize people who don't hold stock pay for this game, right? Players? Why didn't they tell people this before letting them blow through half their DVL crates? Why even make the DVL crates different than every other CM crate? You can only get them once per legacy. Who cares if people sell crap they don't want after jumping through the grindiest of grindhoops to get it? Apparently, BW cares. If they can't monetize it, then better break it.

 

"We can't just give away the equivalent of a hypercrate to people who just played the game the way we told them to play it! Are you crazy? Make that reward objectively worse than buying a hypercrate, which we will sell shortly after the event begins for a huge price increase over past versions!"

 

This was a solution to a problem THEY DELIBERATELY CREATED. They didn't accidentally make the DVL crates BOP. That was a choice. Someone who doesn't even play the game spoke up in a committee meeting and suggested it "because metrics" and they all nodded sagely, took a voice vote and then broke for lunch. They didn't not know that they had a plan for that inconvenience coming down the pipe. Aping Overwatch took several months, minimum. They chose not to even hint at it. Why? Because if people knew there was a solution to BOP crates, some would have waited until next week's update dropped before even bothering, and BW needs DVL to pad their numbers during the late summer/early fall downtime. OR some wouldn't buy the DVL hypercrates because they would have gotten their fill with the event rewards that weren't bound on random characters. Either way, it comes down to greed.

 

I didn't even lose out on the crates (as I haven't bothered to run DVL) and I'm infuriated that they want people to be thrilled they fixed a problem they deliberately caused through greed. Every single step of this "event" has been a blundered opportunity to generate renewed interest and goodwill for the game.

 

I could take a crew of people off this forum, a mix of those who have been both vocally for and against this event (half of whom probably have me on ignore at this point), but who play the crap out of this game, sit them in a chat room and tell them to come up with a better version of DVL using the same resources BW had available and with the caveats that it had to incorporate the CM and fill the time between story seasons. Whatever they came up with would be better than this. Common sense isn't magic. This isn't a cult where the higher ups know all the secrets so only they can come up with good ideas and, of course, all their ideas are good, and the rank and file must toe the line and proclaim how awesome those ideas are. If the devs actually played their own game -for years and without console commands- they wouldn't so continuously do things to make the game less fun to play or introduce genuine improvements in such a stumblebum manner as this.

 

Got dang this needs to be mandatory reading. Perfectly stated the entire issue. Outstanding good sir. But I know the usual defenders will come and try to downplay this entire post. At this point, I just see them as intentional liars.

Edited August 7, 2016 by DarkSaberMaster

[Tharandil]

The fact that packs are now BOL is actually an improvement. Babysteps are still steps forward

[Canmore]

my god there are so many game bugs needing fixed in the general game world , yet they devote time to this ?

[mdahm]

My personal new "pack opening experience" is that i simply HATE to buy packs from Cartel Market or anywhere else, because it costs huge amounts of time to open this stuff now - in at least three steps:

- Open the crate - feels(!) like one minute which is TOTALLY useless and boring, despite the pseudo-thrilling graphic (which is in fact much ado bout nothing)

- Display the actual items (move them to the stash) - feels like another useless and boring minute. And then, yeah! I receive a minor space mission boost or whatever

- Transfer the items from the stash to the actual inventory, fairly clumsily by clicking and clicking. It's not even possible to mark multiple items and transfer them with one click. No, sir. Keep clicking please.

 

Oh, and every time after claiming an item (=after moving it to the toon's inventory), the attention will be back on the top item. So we are forced to scroll down again to wherever we were before claiming the previous item. That's good clean fun and indeed a "new experience"... (

 

Of course, opening packs took some time before. But when I opened all packs from a hypercrate before, I could use the opening time to rearrange my inventory and arrange the contents of the packs. Now it's just pure waiting, being captured in the pack menu.

 

Nice idea to have kind of a legacy distribution of contents, but the whole thing is NOT an improvement at all (except for the potentially irrelevant DvL boxes). It's just a menace. Contents of usual Cartel packs could be sent to the whole legacy before, after the bind timer expired.

 

I hope that Bioware will aim for an actual user-friendly way to open packs. Which would mean to accellerate the speed very, very much, and to be able to skip the ever-same, pretentious, torturingly boring animation while opening and "revealing" the contents. Please have mercy!

Edited August 9, 2016 by mdahm

[gabigool]

My personal new "pack opening experience" is that i simply HATE to buy packs from Cartel Market or anywhere else, because it costs huge amounts of time to open this stuff now - in at least three steps:

- Open the crate - feels(!) like one minute which is TOTALLY useless and boring, despite the pseudo-thrilling graphic (which is in fact much ado bout nothing)

- Display the actual items (move them to the stash) - feels like another useless and boring minute. And then, yeah! I receive a minor space mission boost or whatever

- Transfer the items from the stash to the actual inventory, fairly clumsily by clicking and clicking. It's not even possible to mark multiple items and transfer them with one click. No, sir. Keep clicking please.

 

Oh, and every time after claiming an item (=after moving it to the toon's inventory), the attention will be back on the top item. So we are forced to scroll down again to wherever we were before claiming the previous item. That's good clean fun and indeed a "new experience"... (

 

Of course, opening packs took some time before. But when I opened all packs from a hypercrate before, I could use the opening time to rearrange my inventory and arrange the contents of the packs. Now it's just pure waiting, being captured in the pack menu.

 

Nice idea to have kind of a legacy distribution of contents, but the whole thing is NOT an improvement at all (except for the potentially irrelevant DvL boxes). It's just a menace. Contents of usual Cartel packs could be sent to the whole legacy before, after the bind timer expired.

 

I hope that Bioware will aim for an actual user-friendly way to open packs. Which would mean to accellerate the speed very, very much, and to be able to skip the ever-same, pretentious, torturingly boring animation while opening and "revealing" the contents. Please have mercy!

 

While I agree with literally everything you say (except for me it was an abundance of Social Boosts lol), reality is this is not something I care to see fixed.

 

It's strange that the development team would be so out of touch to think people want to sit through 30 pack opening animations. Or 60. Or whatever. It's just one more disconnect.

 

The repository is great. Totally unnecessary for anything other than DVL, and totally unnecessary for DVL since the drop rate of actual good items was obviously nerfed. And totally unnecessary for the average player who at most opens one hypercrate a month. At most.

 

But, still, it's cute. I wish I didn't have another stupid icon I can't take off my screen, but on it's own, as a repository, it's nice.

 

But the idea that the animation, without the ability to eliminate it, or a "open all" function, is bad. It's something an MMO developer in 2016 should not need to have us tell them. How did this not get shown to a room full of employees, and not one person raised their hand to ask "won't people not want to sit through that 30x?"

 

And while I'm sure there will be a legacy unlock to speed up the animation or perhaps add some of the essentially mandatory functionality this is missing, reality is I hope they do not spend another second making this right.

 

If they have so many people in this "team" to push out stuff like this but not enough people on the other "teams", they need to adjust team sizes.

 

5 minutes more spent on this is 5 minutes too long.

 

No. One. Cares.

 

No one quits because they don't enjoy their pack opening experience.

[Halinalle]

Of course, opening packs took some time before. But when I opened all packs from a hypercrate before, I could use the opening time to rearrange my inventory and arrange the contents of the packs. Now it's just pure waiting, being captured in the pack menu.

 

Because game does that for you now. That's an improvement. All the packs you don't open are in one stack, all items you get are automatically stacked etc.

 

Relax a bit. You will burn out if you play games like they are work or something.

[Master_Morak]

I hope that Bioware will aim for an actual user-friendly way to open packs. Which would mean to accellerate the speed very, very much, and to be able to skip the ever-same, pretentious, torturingly boring animation while opening and "revealing" the contents. Please have mercy!

 

Best way: an Option to disable this ********.

[Deewe]

This kinda reminds me the Crew Skill missions.

 

Reading the small story tied to each missions might be fun, for some, though not for long.

 

I wonder how much few % of the players actually read the texts before eventually selecting the mission they want, based on the reward output. Yet we don't have any option to hide the text at all and are still obliged to scroll through the missions to check them.

 

One can say it's a non needed QoL, though it would be handy.

 

Back on topic: the same will apply to the opening animations while they are certainly cool the first time, they'll get boring and then will be perceived as a hassle. Interesting enough the very people targeted by the feature, the ones buying the most crates, will be the ones the most annoyed by the animation.

 

As a mitigation you have now the option to select next without previewing the crates. Not a perfect solution though, again, a good enough mitigation until they agreed on fixing the issue with a QoL.

 

P.S.: while the focus here is on the waste of time guess nobody can deny it's indeed a good QoL to actually store the opened crates out the inventory and BoL the items. For that we can thank the devs.

[aeterno]

I don't think the opening animation takes much longer than the pack opening castbar/animation did before, and if it does, the time you save by not having to sort the contents of every pack opened manually in your inventory dwarfs any time loss. Even by clicking back and into stash to preview the interesting thing I just opened every 4th pack I still opened 30 DvL packs way faster than a hypercrate in the old system.

 

It's a massive QoL upgrade and visually joins the current decade 6 years late. Thumbs up from me.

Edited August 9, 2016 by aeterno

[ludoviccb]

As someone that sell a lot of those packs on the GTN. The changes they made to the way packs stacks is a massive decrease in the QoL. I now got to spend time unpack them 1 by 1 before selling them. If at least they had put a function in split that the entire stack could be split by 1, 2, 3... items per stack. it wouldn't be that bad. Edited August 10, 2016 by ludoviccb

[VirtualMorrigan]

Opened two hypercrates yesterday. With those idiotic animations, this is painful beyond words. Make that optional, at the very least....

[Deewe]

I see people not happy about the new system and well here's a trick.

[Tharandil]

As someone that sell a lot of those packs on the GTN. The changes they made to the way packs stacks is a massive decrease in the QoL. I now got to spend time unpack them 1 by 1 before selling them. If at least they had put a function in split that the entire stack could be split by 1, 2, 3... items per stack. it wouldn't be that bad.

 

Devs said they were working on improving this system, I agree the animations take too long but the fact that it is BoL to me is an improvement.

[Kyuuu]

this animation to open packs is one the stupidest things BW thought up, the item stash was great idea though.

 

50 pack would took like 10 seconds to open now with the animation it take 3 minutes and even you hit escape after hit open pack 50 times it still take longer,

[arciliuson]

Personally, the whole system of storing packs is pretty nice, but i did notice one thing that slightly bugs me that came with this change. And it is that in the collections page there is no way too really break down the armor or color crystal catagories, into smaller sections outside what is gotten from packs, what is bought straight off CM, and what is "special" items. This is a minor QoL downgrade for me, as it broke the pages into sections, which i found easier too go through, instead of 10+ pages of items. Would just like too see a way of better sorting through some of the categories of collection items, especially since i can almost never remember what the names of them are.

[Degan]

Love the items stash, but the opening animations is not helpful at all. Can we have the option to not go through the animation but have the items go into an item stash please?

[biffmasterr]

I think the focus should be on game play. NOT opening some silly crate

[Yunaselly]

I think the focus should be on game play. NOT opening some silly crate

 

Agree.. that totally wasting resource allocation..

[Bomyne]

I think the focus should be on game play. NOT opening some silly crate

 

The people working on this would be the UI team They wouldn't have anything to do with gameplay

[TX_Angel]

Why on earth was time & money even spent on this, when there are more pressing things that need developed?!

 

Do you really have to ask that question? Really?