BW: Are you really not going to address your sub's concerns about comm xfer caps?

[Nempo]

It honestly doesn't bother me. I actually noticed that I do have comms on some characters. I've never hoarded them. If you never intended to use them, what's the big deal? Ah but you did, didn't you? You intended to use them to buy a whole set upon reaching 70. They've stopped you from doing that and that's why people are upset. They've lost a secret advantage. I don't hoard...I am not pleased about crystals aND companion gifts but I was prepared. I've been lvling companions in preparation. I will continue to do that. But let's be real...people thought they could get an edge and now they aren't happy that they can't. It's nothung to do with a 2M limit.

 

QFT

 

The PvPers crying about all of this are, honestly, just crying because they can't have an instant set of top tier shiny lvl 70 armor the same way they did when 55 became 60 became 65. I'm a part of the PvP community, and this has always been a thing. When it gets close-ish to a level increase to hoard like crazy in order to have an instant new set of gear. As for credits, they are mostly useless for us as PvPers yet it has been a hugely known thing that we converted our coms to decorations that others bought because they either didn't enjoy PvP or never knew those decos were from PvP vendors. Made a good chunk of money this way that is sadly going to end as now those decos will cost credits like everything else.

[teclado]

The PvPers crying about all of this are, honestly, just crying because they can't have an instant set of top tier shiny lvl 70 armor the same way they did when 55 became 60 became 65.

I think that Doc did a rather thorough and eloquent job explaining what the issue is. Nothing that he said complained about getting a fresh set of gear. He makes some valid points.

[auroroavalor]

QFT

 

The PvPers crying about all of this are, honestly, just crying because they can't have an instant set of top tier shiny lvl 70 armor the same way they did when 55 became 60 became 65. I'm a part of the PvP community, and this has always been a thing. When it gets close-ish to a level increase to hoard like crazy in order to have an instant new set of gear..

 

I think PVP'ers have a right to be upset here, they've had a viable form of gearing (Comm stacking) taken away from them on Day 1 of 5.0, when I queue ranked PVP on the first day of KotET in my Full BiS 224 toons at level 70 into Pre 5.0 PVP geared toons with wasted stats in EXPERTISE players far better than myself are going to be severely disadvantaged by the imbalance in our stat pools, some form of commendation conversion to Galactic Command XP would have helped to address this.

[Costello]

The point this raises is that upon the release of a new level increase there will be a new gear grind. Lately this has been a grind on old content OK.

 

Each time the devs have attempted to make it so you have to start the new gear grind right from the bottom or as close to that as they can get.

 

The reason for resetting the gear grind is to require players to put in a large number of hours playing content they probably wouldn't repeat 20 or 30 times because its simply stopped being fun and if it wasn't for the pay out you wouldn't get it.

 

However they cut it the gear grind only lasts a fraction of the time till the next level increase, this results in players having two choices, unsub and wait for the next level increase or stockpile gear and the like in advance of the next level increase.

 

In the case of the latter this time is shown to be pointless, anything you have got in the last year will be converted in such a way that it is nearly worthless. 2 million credits wont buy much these days. Rightly so people are a little peeved, last 6 months grinding out content to get crystals or coms or gear and in a months time at best it will be worth 2 million credits at worth it will be worse than basic level 70 gear.

 

Any but the most stupid of players will take from this, once you have maxed out gear this time round, unsub (which will allow you to do most things such as replay the skytrooper drops) unless there is something you specifically need to sub for. Don't stockpile cause it will be made worthless in 6.0 (I highly doubt we will see a 6.0) don't grind out content cause it will probably be rehashed in the next dvl event or the next tier of GC. I don't think it will do well for subscriptions and I think people will quit early in the new year, but how can players take it any other way. BW have made it clear any advancement after you have the gear you want is a waste of your time and will be better spent waiting till the next level increase and grinding out then.

[Quraswren]

The thing that gets me is that there is simply no reason to have this arbitrary cap, other than to deliberately offend pvp'ers. I guess, like Preferred players, they are no longer wanted.

 

With how it was announced and the timing of it as well as not saying the cap till after.

 

bw really did plan on screwing over some gamers. There is no idea how to tell just how many got robbed of millions of credits but it was clearly bws plan to mess with PVP'er from the start.

 

It was a planned and well executes action toward gamers to make sure they cut them out of credits.

[Keimanna]

That is EXACTLY what some players thought.. and why they did it.

 

We even discussed in the forums the merits, pros, and cons of the studio possibly crediting retired token currencies with either CXP directly, or the ability to keep them just to purchase CXP tokens after 5.0 went live.

 

See... what the PvP crowd really want is to not have to work for the gear but to simply buy it on day one when 5.0 goes live. They want/expect, begin PvP veterans, to be able to get the top tier gear, and immediately continue PvP with no time lag from the new expac whatsoever. Not all players by any means, but some players definitely wanted/expected this as the outcome (some have flatly said so).

 

(Slow slow clap). 10/10 on the sanctimony. Well done. People want to jump right into the next expansion and get geared up - GASP! The horror! They announce an expansion and some people have the nerve to KEEP PLAYING after already being fully geared under the silly assumption that with the next release there will be some conversion of current currency to whatever's next. Evil folks they are! What an unprecedented concept in this game - I mean that's never happened before!

 

And all that previous play isn't "work" mind you. "Work" only begins with a fresh reset and wipe of previous play. While we're at it, why even care about gear right - we should all just play for "fun" (of course, only "fun" as defined by others.) And a subscription-based game no less, where items and currency accumulate over months/years. How evil of subs to try to tailor the game to the way they enjoy playing it - GASP! THOU MUST RE-GRIND! Subs should HAVE to endure the "time lag". Why should anyone who's spent hundreds of dollars over time for a game have any right to hope that their accumulated digital goods will either continue to have value or be exchanged for fair value? It's atrocious to even ask for this!

 

So you BETTER NOT complain - haven't you read the TOS?! Just do what BW says and LIKE IT. Oh wait, it's only YOU who gets to huff and puff and rage and quit when things don't work the way YOU want. When it's anyone else, aspersions casted. That's the ultimate in hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.

[Coriantum]

It’s not about the commendations not being turned into CXP.

It’s not about the rate of commendations to credits.

It’s not about “gaining an advantage” by instantly gearing.

It’s not about the fact that we had a warzone cap of 4,000 regular and 12,000 ranked commendations go to eliminating the ranked commendations and establishing a ridiculous ceiling of 200,000.

It’s not about how they gave us the ability to transfer commendations a year ago to alternate characters or to stockpile.

 

It’s about how this was either a malevolent act or an incredibly ignorant one, two different connotations that I would hope never applies to a game developer for a large community.

 

It’s about how on 10/24/2016, we were given less than a day’s notice to either move commendations around or stockpile, with the vague information to “please ensure they are on the character you want them to be on before Tuesday’s maintenance.”

 

It’s about how on 10/26/2016, we were given the conversion rates and a cap. After we were no longer able to move commendations around using the legacy commendation transfer items.

 

It’s about how in every single previous iteration of the game, players have always held on to their commendations and/or warzone commendations as the next expansion neared. Once? (2.0) Bioware’s decision to give those few players who stockpiled an easy way to get new gear. Twice? (3.0) Bioware’s establishing a routine. Thrice? (4.0) The players haven’t seen a different decision about commendation stacking since never. That, and going along with the incredibly vague announcement about losing the ability to stockpile? Of course people stockpiled.

 

That, and you’re deliberately slapping subscribers who play Ranked in the face regarding Ranked Season 6 commendations. You said they’d go to Warzone commendations at the end of Ranked Season 7. This just happens to coincide with your expansion and the credit conversion. If you play a lot of ranked, you’ll always have leftovers because they’ve always converted to something useful such as warzone commendations. There are people with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ranked commendations that will simply get deleted from over abundance.

 

People need to see the bigger picture here on why those who stockpiled are upset. We’ve spent time and money to play the game. We shouldn’t be punished at all to have had the majority of our commendations on one character or spread across 50.

 

That, and the only response at all to a very vocal outcry from the community is about fleet commendations?

Doc said it perfectly.

 

 

All we got was a single sentence from Musco answering the softest of softball questions about fleet comms. This is simultaneously hilarious and infuriating.

 

[yellow_]

(Slow slow clap). 10/10 on the sanctimony. Well done. People want to jump right into the next expansion and get geared up - GASP! The horror! They announce an expansion and some people have the nerve to KEEP PLAYING after already being fully geared under the silly assumption that with the next release there will be some conversion of current currency to whatever's next. Evil folks they are! What an unprecedented concept in this game - I mean that's never happened before!

The gall of those people!

Edited November 4, 2016 by yellow_

[Andryah]

People need to see the bigger picture here on why those who stockpiled are upset. We’ve spent time and money to play the game. We shouldn’t be punished at all to have had the majority of our commendations on one character or spread across 50.

 

Why exactly did you stockpile coms?

 

If you choose to stockpile, why would you not stockpile them in your legacy storage, as a matter of flexibility and convenience across your legacy?

 

Why can't (or won't) you convert them to purchases from the currently available vendors, prior to 11/29, and thus take control of how you monetize them? You will yield more value then just letting the studio convert them at 50 per. You have an entire month to mitigate the results of their removal from the game.

 

Regardless of your answers (if you even answer) or your complaints... coms are going poof on 11/29... as in .. no more warzone coms.. period. And, obviously... nothing to spend them on after 11/29.

 

It's not a negotiation, the studio has made a decision to remove most token currencies from the game with 5.0. You don't have to like it, but there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Andryah

[eartharioch]

See... what the PvP crowd really want is to not have to work for the gear but to simply buy it on day one when 5.0 goes live. They want/expect, begin PvP veterans, to be able to get the top tier gear, and immediately continue PvP with no time lag from the new expac whatsoever. Not all players by any means, but some players definitely wanted/expected this as the outcome (some have flatly said so).

 

There are a large number of PVPers who think that PVP should be about skill and not gear, and improvements over the original RNG gearing made by previous expansions combined with a policy of allowing tokens to be carried forward and extremely affordable entry level gear made for an acceptably short and deterministic method. BW actively encouraged the stockpiling of comms by making the per character cap 250K. Regardless of *why* people stocked comms, they have a right to be upset at them not being compensated for them while PVE players effectively have no cap on theirs, as well as upset at the poor / last minute communication.

 

[Competitive] PVP isn't (IMO, at least) supposed to be out out gearing other players, and since PVP and PVE gear was largely separate before 5.0, this wasn't as much of an issue. PVPers aren't complaining that they can't get the "best gear" in the game. The main rewards for PVP the last few expansions has been Ranking and the Seasonal rewards it gives.

 

Basically, from a PVPers point of view, BW is saying: Yeah, we let you store 250K comms, and it looks like some of you worked hard to get a lot, but going forward, we aren't going to sell you what you were saving them for and we'll only compensate you for up to the first 40K (since PVE crystal conversions apply towards the cap).

 

It was a d*** move and people have a right to be pissed. No, it's not the end of the world, and yes, people can easily make more than 50 CR / comm by buying stuff for resale, but that doesn't make what they did better, just not as bad as it could have been.

 

Personally, I think they should just keep the WZ comms -- getting rid of Expertise is fine, just have the PVP vendors sell < Tier 1 gear with set bonus and have bolster take you to Tier 3. PVPers can start right into ranked, PVErs can't outgear PVPers, and PVPers still have to work just as hard to get the actual PVE gear Tiers. Like it is now, although with less bolster hassle.

Edited November 4, 2016 by eartharioch

[Schoock]

To EA the game is a revenue stream. But if you think this game means nothing to Bioware except money then you clearly have no idea who or what Bioware is. A cursory glance of Bioware's history will tell you that Bioware makes games to tell stories, and they are passionate about story telling. In that respect they are artists, not the fat cat capitalists that EA are. Bioware doesn't care about profit as much as they care about their art. This is the first Bioware game I've played and even I can see this as plain as day. And I imagine that spending so much time and effort on this game just for people like you to **** on them everyday on the forums is going to evoke some negativity amongst the company.

 

You know, I'm honestly wondering if you're an awesome troll or just insanely dumb.

[Andryah]

There are a large number of PVPers who think that PVP should be about skill and not gear

 

You can put me in this very camp. Personally, I feel PvP should be absent gear entirely, and everyone enters with a harmonized set of stats for their level + skills for level.

 

But my desire has nothing to do with the fact that some PvPers DO in fact want a gear advantage when they play, and they want it ahead of everyone else.. so they have an immediate advantage. Now, some will get this with the GC system for top gear coming in 5.0 anyway.. because some players play more and are more determined and driven for gear asap. Which brings us back to why I personally would prefer that gear provides no stat advantage in PvP at all.

 

Unlike some here.. I actually understand and recognize that my personal preference may or may not be met by any MMO I am playing.. so I don't get too worked up about it when I don't get my way.

[eartharioch]

But my desire has nothing to do with the fact that some PvPers DO in fact want a gear advantage when they play, and they want it ahead of everyone else.. so they have an immediate advantage.

 

There may be a few people like that out there, but I haven't seen in any post in this or any of the myriad other threads on the topic. The complaints I've seen are that BiS PVP gear is the minimum bar for entry into Ranked PVP (so that everybody *is* playing at the same gear level) and that the new system will make that harder to attain. The devs have said that Ranked PVP will be one of the highest rates of CXP gain, but that misses the point that Ranked PVPers don't want to *start* playing Ranked PVP *until* they have "minimal acceptable" gear (BiS).

 

This wasn't a problem before, since BiS PVP gear (208) is barely better than the minimum crafted gear for starting SM ops. Now that BWA is getting rid of Expertise (not a bad move in and of itself), but hasn't explained how Bolster will work on WZs, there is a genuine concern that this will move PVP back towards gear > skill.

[eriksarcasm]

You can put me in this very camp. Personally, I feel PvP should be absent gear entirely, and everyone enters with a harmonized set of stats for their level + skills for level.

 

Again I'm reminded of the idea I had of doing a SWTOR Fight Club. No weapons, no gear, no abilities, just punch jab uppercut and bash. Never got past the idea stage I'm afraid.

 

But my desire has nothing to do with the fact that some PvPers DO in fact want a gear advantage when they play, and they want it ahead of everyone else.. so they have an immediate advantage. Now, some will get this with the GC system for top gear coming in 5.0 anyway.. because some players play more and are more determined and driven for gear asap. Which brings us back to why I personally would prefer that gear provides no stat advantage in PvP at all.

 

I don't get why some of you are so against the idea of using currency one already earned to gear up quicker. Who exactly is that unfair to? You have a month to play and save up if you think the comm hoarders will have an advantage, and there's a set price cap for a full set of top gear. It's gonna cost the same for everyone. What's the objection?

 

Unlike some here.. I actually understand and recognize that my personal preference may or may not be met by any MMO I am playing.. so I don't get too worked up about it when I don't get my way.

I have no comment for this part.

[CaptRogue]

You know, I'm honestly wondering if you're an awesome troll or just insanely dumb.

 

Just check his post history & you will find it's the "troll" part in your question. Fail troll at that.

Come to Harbinger at night on Imp side you will see him there unless he's been banned again. lol

[Zulufoxtrot]

It’s not about the commendations not being turned into CXP.

It’s not about the rate of commendations to credits.

It’s not about “gaining an advantage” by instantly gearing.

It’s not about the fact that we had a warzone cap of 4,000 regular and 12,000 ranked commendations go to eliminating the ranked commendations and establishing a ridiculous ceiling of 200,000.

It’s not about how they gave us the ability to transfer commendations a year ago to alternate characters or to stockpile.

 

It’s about how this was either a malevolent act or an incredibly ignorant one, two different connotations that I would hope never applies to a game developer for a large community.

 

It’s about how on 10/24/2016, we were given less than a day’s notice to either move commendations around or stockpile, with the vague information to “please ensure they are on the character you want them to be on before Tuesday’s maintenance.”

 

It’s about how on 10/26/2016, we were given the conversion rates and a cap. After we were no longer able to move commendations around using the legacy commendation transfer items.

 

It’s about how in every single previous iteration of the game, players have always held on to their commendations and/or warzone commendations as the next expansion neared. Once? (2.0) Bioware’s decision to give those few players who stockpiled an easy way to get new gear. Twice? (3.0) Bioware’s establishing a routine. Thrice? (4.0) The players haven’t seen a different decision about commendation stacking since never. That, and going along with the incredibly vague announcement about losing the ability to stockpile? Of course people stockpiled.

 

That, and you’re deliberately slapping subscribers who play Ranked in the face regarding Ranked Season 6 commendations. You said they’d go to Warzone commendations at the end of Ranked Season 7. This just happens to coincide with your expansion and the credit conversion. If you play a lot of ranked, you’ll always have leftovers because they’ve always converted to something useful such as warzone commendations. There are people with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ranked commendations that will simply get deleted from over abundance.

 

People need to see the bigger picture here on why those who stockpiled are upset. We’ve spent time and money to play the game. We shouldn’t be punished at all to have had the majority of our commendations on one character or spread across 50.

 

That, and the only response at all to a very vocal outcry from the community is about fleet commendations?

Doc said it perfectly.

Pretty much this. The failure to address concerns over comms is part of a larger concern of a failure to address anything, and pretty terrible communication efforts. Especially for our non-English speaking compatriots who have an rougher time getting an answer on anything. There are a great many questions that have been answered to be sure, but none of them have been at the core of the concerns over the issues with 5.0 whether it's RNG or Comms.

 

Heck there still isn't an answer about the status of preferred going further just a non-committal "we're exploring options" which means absolutely nothing. Then you have things happening like the update where players weren't really given the information they needed, and other such failures that have frustrated subs and nonsubs alike. Add all that to a large amount of misspokes, clarifications, unclear posts, and confusion in answers and there is a very clear failure to communicate with the playerbase.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Zulufoxtrot

[Storm-Cutter]

Their reaction was to stick two fingers up, and put another two in their ears, a hand across their eyes and another across their mouths.

[peter_plankskull]

Strawmans about subscribers unsubscrbing and pretending you actually care if the studio gains/loses revenue in the process are absurd. None of us know, nor do any of us really genuinely care what their revenue stream is... other then to use it as a club to beat the studio with.

 

I'm quite confident that the studio knows it's revenue targets and has effective plans in place to actually achieve or exceed those targets. Much more so than any of us.. particularly those who like to use it to beat the studio up over anything and everything that is done to the game that somehow is considered "a slap in the face" to this, that, or the other person.

 

Wow... so much hypocrisy in this post it's not even funny.

 

I have no problem when people ride the high horse on morality, but when you turn around doing the same things, it's funny. You talk down upon people for not knowing the revenue stream and claim it's only used as a club to beat the studio, but you do the exact same thing assuming there investments are in place accordingly and use that assumption as a club to beat up others. Specifically those who claim to think the studio isn't measuring there metrics wisely.

[Transcendent]

You can put me in this very camp. Personally, I feel PvP should be absent gear entirely, and everyone enters with a harmonized set of stats for their level + skills for level.

 

But my desire has nothing to do with the fact that some PvPers DO in fact want a gear advantage when they play, and they want it ahead of everyone else.. so they have an immediate advantage. Now, some will get this with the GC system for top gear coming in 5.0 anyway.. because some players play more and are more determined and driven for gear asap. Which brings us back to why I personally would prefer that gear provides no stat advantage in PvP at all.

 

Unlike some here.. I actually understand and recognize that my personal preference may or may not be met by any MMO I am playing.. so I don't get too worked up about it when I don't get my way.

 

Well, although that line of thought about harmonised stats across the board may well be okay if the classes were balanced, it completely detracts from being able to go a slightly different direction with a build. We've already seen more than enough "harmonising" with the removal of skill trees, gear is the last place for any differentiation.

 

Reducing the meta play and dumbing things down even further? Bad development practice, if anything BioWare should be introducing more variety, not lessening it. That is of course my own opinion. 5.0 will bring some changes that will reduce this variety even further probably, add on top of this RNG gearing and it's not looking good at all.

 

It will only take a few more expansion cycles before everyone is playing the exact same class, and variety and meta game be damned.

 

Is that what you truly want to see in PvP? It doesn't come down to skill then, it just comes down to who can click buttons faster and team composition (and we all know how great matchmaking is in this game....).

 

Just my opinion on this. PvP will become stale very fast with less options on the table. Just because the developers still haven't grasped the intricate nature of class balance, it's highly unlikely they ever will.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Transcendent

[peter_plankskull]

They're just credits. Get over it.

 

Isn't this from the same person who campaigned for years, and still continues to do so, about a animation and went as far as claiming he can't play the game due its removal?

[Krazhez]

Remember when warzone coms capped at 1500, i think it was, good times. This outrage wouldn't happen if they never upped that. Edited November 7, 2016 by Krazhez

[Krazhez]

Less preferred players=not spending money in cartel market.

 

I know a guy(sub) that spends 600 dollars every time a new cartel pack drops, because he can. I'm sure he's not the only one like this. The game makes a lot of money off people with gambling problems.

[jimmorrisson]

When news broke of the no more commendations/crystals I immediately stopped farming them. The only valid criticism of Bioware I see is the 24hour notice of warzone commendations to alts.

 

At the very worst you are unable to gear up another character witth stock exemplar gear for a month or so. One can still load a legacy set with max warzone hilt/armor/mods/enhancements.

 

With the upccoming commemdatkom-crystals to credits, a lot of credits are going to be injected into the game economics, After the recent warzone bind change and the upcoming conversion one can still send credits to their alts

Edited November 9, 2016 by jimmorrisson

[ivanhedgehog]

How do you know that we would have less preferred. You a time traveler. You keep saying we will have a lot less people paying for subs and paying for stuff in the cartel market. You are just pulling all that out of thin air. Unless you have cold hard facts.

 

we will have less preferred because there will be no op passes, pvp passes, gear authorizations, gsf passes. people that used those will no longer be able to participate.

[Aowin]

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but BioWare didn't tell us about the commendation cap for obvious reasons. They did not want players hoarding and spreading comms to receive a ludicrous amount of credits. Inflation is already horrible on SWTOR. Nothing is reasonably priced on the GTN. Cutting down on the amount of credits players could have made goes a long way to reversing the issues of credits being too easy to accumulate in the game.

 

The next step is for BioWare to place a credit cap per character (100 mill seems like a reasonable cap) to continue to counteract the players running around with billions of credits. BioWare desperately needs to fix the economy.