Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ - Road Map 2017

[XhrisShan]

You'll be able to buy a full set of gear for your alts, including set bonus, weapons, ear piece, relics, and implants with Command Tokens in a couple weeks. This doesn't fix everything about gearing (we'll discuss that in the coming weeks), but consider when we used to all earn crystals just to buy high endurance gear with no set bonuses.

 

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

 

I do realize for those of us who play on multiple servers, we'll need to buy it and transfer a toon (which is cheaper than the cost of the perk) - it's how I personally handle keeping my Legacy current on all servers. There are a number of Perks and Achievements I'd like to see us make account wide, but we haven't fully investigated the effort, so I'll add that our growing list of ideas.

 

---Keith

 

Speaking of perks, I'd rather the mount speed perk was just something we learned from our Trainer, but if it has to be a perk, PLEASE make it

• Legacywide
  
• 5mil max
  

[stoopicus]

Yeah no, if you're gonna bring the no-premades argument here, we're presenting the opposite side too.

 

It seems a recurring thing for some posters to think that having friends is an OP tactic.

 

I like how WoW solves this. They just put instructions for how to queue premade in a tutorial in-game.

 

Yeah, four people on voice comms have an advantage. No MMO has ever stopped this well, nor really should they. If BW wanted to address it they would have to incentivize granked more or provide a grouped regs queue, which would just up the pop times even more.

 

(before the accusations fly, I have literally never rolled in a premade in SWTOR. Not once. They just don't scare me; they are a fact of life and not necessarily negative, just another variable in regs. Yolo ranked is a cesspool this season anyway, so why complain for it?)

Edited June 5, 2017 by stoopicus

[Damask_Rose]

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

---Keith

 

Well, this isn't something I'll need to worry about since I'm not likely to get a character to Command Rank 300 before the next expansion. Like many people who play many alts, but no real main, I will have many characters in ranks 1 & 2 and none close to 4 since gcx is per character rather than legacy wide. The lovely catch up perk does nothing for the likes of me.

[Glzmo]

You'll be able to buy a full set of gear for your alts, including set bonus, weapons, ear piece, relics, and implants with Command Tokens in a couple weeks. This doesn't fix everything about gearing (we'll discuss that in the coming weeks), but consider when we used to all earn crystals just to buy high endurance gear with no set bonuses.

 

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

 

I do realize for those of us who play on multiple servers, we'll need to buy it and transfer a toon (which is cheaper than the cost of the perk) - it's how I personally handle keeping my Legacy current on all servers. There are a number of Perks and Achievements I'd like to see us make account wide, but we haven't fully investigated the effort, so I'll add that our growing list of ideas.

 

---Keith

Only 25%? Come on, that's laughable. It should be at least 250% if not more (I'd go with 500%) if you really want to make it easier and more fun to catch up alternate characters.

Also, please don't make it cost millions, not everyone is a millionaire and raising costs will only derail economy further as people will charge even more ridiculous prices on the GTN and it will encourage more people to buy from gold sellers (a problem which you can't get in check anyhow - a great way to do this would be to sell credits on the Cartel Market for prices no credit seller can possibly match to drive them out of business, but I digress).

 

That said, as a player who doesn't have a single main but enjoys playing many different characters, I'd greatly prefer that the command rank and command XP would be legacy wide and set to highest command rank any character in the legacy has so every character could contribute to advancement of the characters in their "family". Give players a choice which character they play and which character is needed in a group and advancing all their characters instead of shoehorning them into playing just one.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Glzmo

[Ibokagain]

Can you please respond to this as it is the biggest problem with pvp atm is that this game needs a proper team matching system so you don't get unbalanced teams and so that premades only fight premades and pugs fight pugs.

 

What they are talking about has nothing to do with groups queue syncing ext, it/s class balancing aka mercs getting buffed down or maybe buffed up more.

 

However one thing they could do is program into the queue system for that as well it would slow queues down a little bit however it would ensure that random pugs don't fight a full preamde pug team. One other thing they can do is also make it so premade 4 teams can't queue in more than 1 healer or 1 tank.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Ibokagain

[Icykill_]

Well, this isn't something I'll need to worry about since I'm not likely to get a character to Command Rank 300 before the next expansion. Like many people who play many alts, but no real main, I will have many characters in ranks 1 & 2 and none close to 4 since gcx is per character rather than legacy wide. The lovely catch up perk does nothing for the likes of me.

 

I too think CXP should be legacy wide. I play all my Alts, not just 1 or 2. I have probably 23 that I could viably play at lvl 70. But I don't because of CXP. I've basically stopped playing my lvl 70s because this CXP grind is too depressing. I doubt I could have more than a few to tier four before the end of the year.

I am pretty disappoint in this 25% legacy boost as it does nothing to really help me because I don't even have one at 300. On top of that they want us to pay for it 😡

Maybe, and this is just a maybe, I might be on board with it if it was a 125% legacy boost and realively cheap. It would also help if it opened for all your alts prior to you getting one to 300. It could scale as you go until you get your first character to 300. ie, if you only have a tier one toon it could be 30%, tier two could be 60%, tier three could be 90% and tier four could be 125%.

At least then it would be a "real incentive" for Alt collectors to lvl up to tier four. We could spread our game play between all our alts like we used too and level them together without being penalised. The current and proposed system will still penalise people who want to play alts.

My biggest gripe is not being able to play lvl 70 pvp without there being a gear gap. So even if I was to get "one" toon to 300, I would still need to grind all my Alts to 300 and put up with this gear gap all over again. I like to switch alts depending on the composition of teams popping and also on my mood and lag. When it's really laggy it's nigh impossible to play melee, so I have to play ranged.

I'm getting to the point of no return. I know they are doing things, I'm giving them a chance, but if it's not going to even come close to an adequate fix to close the gear gap in pvp and make the game "actually Alt friendly again", then I'm afraid I can't stick around.

I appreacite and commend Keith for taking action and especially for communicating with us. But if I can't play the game the way I enjoy for pvp, then there is no reason for me to keep playing.

 

You'll be able to buy a full set of gear for your alts, including set bonus, weapons, ear piece, relics, and implants with Command Tokens in a couple weeks. This doesn't fix everything about gearing (we'll discuss that in the coming weeks), but consider when we used to all earn crystals just to buy high endurance gear with no set bonuses.

 

What do you mean by full set? I assume you mean entry lvl gear which we can already buy. Or do you mean tier four? Will this be dependent on what tier your highest Alt is?

You say consider how we used to earn crystals. Have you considered how we all hated it? Have you considered that pvpers liked how we geared in 4.x because it allowed us to gear up fast to play without a gear gap? Have you considered how much of a backwards step this is? By having a system that we all hate and then saying "consider when we used to all earn crystals just to buy high endurance gear.." it only makes us think back to how we really, really hated that system and this won't be that much better... it's a bit of a backwards slap in the face.. two steps forward, one step back 😢

 

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

 

I don't like this system, but I could live with it if it would actually help in reality. A 25% is no incentive or real help. Making it 125% is what would help for people with multiple alts they play in pvp. (Please look at my comments earlier in this post)

 

I do realize for those of us who play on multiple servers, we'll need to buy it and transfer a toon (which is cheaper than the cost of the perk) - it's how I personally handle keeping my Legacy current on all servers. There are a number of Perks and Achievements I'd like to see us make account wide, but we haven't fully investigated the effort, so I'll add that our growing list of ideas.

 

Keith, paying 90cc to move characters around servers doesn't help me or anyone else who has the majority of alts on the one server. Plus 90cc might not seem a lot to you because you get them for free (I'm guessing), but for others, especially for paying customers, it is a bit of a slap in the face.

I'm glad you've got ideas to make things account wide, its good to know you care enough to see that is beneficial for your subscribers.

While we are on server transfers, It would also be good if we could have some communication about low server populations

Also closing the gear gap in pvp, hopefully by raising Bolster, like one of my previous posts below suggested

 

There have been a multitude of suggestions in threads and posts on how to address this issue and I'm surprised we've not had any feed back yet. But in case Keith hasn't seen them... here is mine

 

Increase Bolster to what the highest gear lvl is. At the moment that is 248. This will boost entry lvl gear up to a certain lvl they can be competitive in. People in BiS gear will still have gear bonuses and will still have slightly higher stats as we've seen how Bolster has done this in the past when we had pvp gear.

To make that BiS gear grind still relevant in pvp, keep all the current systems in place for acquiring said gear through pvp. But the gear itself is really only relevant so people can do pve content if they so choose. This way pve people will still want to pvp to get gear and pvp people don't have a massive gear gap. It's a win - win for everyone and those trying out pvp for the first time to gear up for pve won't have such a terrible experience and then stop playing it altogether.

Another suggestion for Keith is to make lower lvl pvp relevant again. The only way you are going to do this is to allow people to accumulate unassembled components from all lvls of pvp. The same as we did with pvp Comms. The amount doesn't need to be huge, but getting some would encourage people to play pvp as they lvl up. For people such as myself who only lvl in pvp, this would make a huge difference to us gearing when we hit lvl 70 and would also improve queue times in pre lvl 70 pvp, which are nearly non existent.

 

Sorry for the long post. I figured it would be better than making multiple ones.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[JediLarson]

...

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

...

---Keith

 

A legacy wide 25% CXP Bonus for “alts” is utter bonkiers…

Better crunch some numbers again, I suggest using a modern day calculator or maple/mathematica if using a computer.

 

But a slide ruler will work if that’s all you got handy...It did get us to the moon.

 

As a sub, I’ll pay for the CXP bonus perk even tho I want to scream at the thought (it should be free), but not at 25%. And bumping it to 50% or 75% isn’t looking good.

I’ll pay but make it great…

[Ibokagain]

A legacy wide 25% CXP Bonus for “alts” is utter bonkiers…

Better crunch some numbers again, I suggest using a modern day calculator or maple/mathematica if using a computer.

 

But a slide ruler will work if that’s all you got handy...It did get us to the moon.

 

As a sub, I’ll pay for the CXP bonus perk even tho I want to scream at the thought (it should be free), but not at 25%. And bumping it to 50% or 75% isn’t looking good.

I’ll pay but make it great…

 

 

Agree it should at the min be 100% however they should honestly put it at 200% imo.

[Icykill_]

Only 25%? Come on, that's laughable. It should be at least 250% if not more (I'd go with 500%) if you really want to make it easier and more fun to catch up alternate characters.

Also, please don't make it cost millions, not everyone is a millionaire and raising costs will only derail economy further as people will charge even more ridiculous prices on the GTN and it will encourage more people to buy from gold sellers (a problem which you can't get in check anyhow - a great way to do this would be to sell credits on the Cartel Market for prices no credit seller can possibly match to drive them out of business, but I digress).

 

That said, as a player who doesn't have a single main but enjoys playing many different characters, I'd greatly prefer that the command rank and command XP would be legacy wide and set to highest command rank any character in the legacy has so every character could contribute to advancement of the characters in their "family". Give players a choice which character they play and which character is needed in a group and advancing all their characters instead of shoehorning them into playing just one.

 

I think this is a great idea... and your points about credit sellers are spot on

 

I also really love this particular blue txt. It makes it really easy for me to read (I have bad eyes)... can we please get this as peoples standard forum txt colour 😉

Edited June 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[phillynew]

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

 

---Keith

 

I don't understand why you don't just let us unlock a command tier once it is completed on our first toon, this would eliminate the need for constantly looking for ways to buff up cxp for us. Even if I have to pay to unlock tier 4 on an alt it would be worth it to save the time of grinding on toons that take me away from my main.

[Eli_Porter]

25% can be seen as skipping T1 since T1 CXP is 10% or so of the 300 total.

[royren]

Use this thread to discuss the 2017 road map from Keith, which can be found here.

 

-eric

 

Thanks for the info, as a player who has been playing since late 2011, at this point I only care about below things:

1. Nerf Merc/Mando please, they are too op everybody think so

2. Please make command stash legacy wide please, with this RNG system we got so many duplicates of gears which going to completely waste, it is so unfair

3. Ranked PVP queue with gear requirement like 4.0. And possible even better change would be matching teams based on player's rank. So many unbalanced match and so many under-geared players in the same team with you, it makes ranked pvp so unbalanced and less fun

 

thanks

Edited June 5, 2017 by royren

[Eli_Porter]

Thanks for the info, as a player who has been playing since late 2011, at this point I only care about 2 things:

1. Nerf Merc/Mando please, they are too op everybody think so

2. Please make command stash legacy wide please, with this RNG system we got so many duplicates of gears which going to completely waste, it is so unfair

 

thanks

 

The only gear you can't transfer is left-side gear, which GC gives you schematics for.

[Inkatta]

25% - that has to be a joke right. This system is such an incredible grind for very little reward (117 ranks with NO gold quality armor). It need to be a lot higher than that.

[Lordgrimley]

Kieth I agree with everyone else concerning the CXP legacy perk, its needs to be a substantial amount to make it worth getting 25% is not worth it because its still gonna take extreamly long to get our alts up and geared! make it at;least 100% at the minimum if not more!

[Eli_Porter]

Again, you don't need GC ranks on alts to gear them up because of crafting, legacy gear transfers, set bonuses via command tokens and operations.

 

GC is already a very strong alternative to raiding, there's no need to significantly buff it any further. Buff it up to 100% and you'll make the raiders feel cheated. Buff it up to 500% and the game will become hammer station online.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Eli_Porter

[Vlanzche]

@KeithKanneg

 

*sigh*

 

The Longer you ignore the main-problems, the worse its going to get.

The statements i mentioned in my post are long-term problems - long overdue in fact.

 

But I'm certain you won't ignore more Players ending their Subscriptions due to many re-occurring problems.

 

I truley like how you guys are finally talking back to others within the Community ... but I promise you it want matter if its just going to be recycled " ThemePark " Scenarios.

 

You can't ignore how their are countless Daily Area rarely ever visited anymore.

 

And thats just one of the many

 

( don't know what I'm talking about ? go back to Page 33 and view my Post )

[ScottishDrunk]

Keith, I want you to do well, however you're making the same mistakes

 

A solution a problem is not to sell us something

[EzioMessi]

Keith, the Roadmap mentions "special rewards for certain activities on Iokath" under the story section. Is there any possibility that the addition of PvP objectives and rewards is one of those things?

 

The return of the Relics of the Gree reminded me how much fun spontaneous Open World PvP can be, and how thoroughly lacking it is right now in-game. The thing that brought me back to the game was an email from swtor mentioning that Iokath was a PvP world.

 

Imagine my horror when I come here to find that Iokath allows players to be immune to PvP for some reason, and gives no reason whatsoever to ever PvP, AND allows Imps and Pubs to fight in separate areas, protected by champion-tier mobs, to make sure that they never cross paths?

 

Was that point in the roadmap meant to be a tease of better things to come for Iokath, and if so, when exactly can you tell us what they are?

 

Please, when making plans for this planet, do keep in mind that there is simply no shortage of Dailies for PvErs to do on PvE instances (especially with level-sync'd Heroics being added too) but there are literally just 2 areas in the entire GAME where players can have unexpected OWPvP: Outlaw's Den (which is always dead) and Ilum's Western Ice Shelf (which is only active during a 1-week event). The PvP instance on the "PvP World" Iokath never has more than 3 players, because of the terrible segregation and allowing players to choose to turn "off" PvP when it's too inconvenient.

Edited June 5, 2017 by EzioMessi

[DanNV]

Reposting from the 2017 thread and adding that my comment at the end is based on what BW did to my Sage which forced me to change to a different class in order to still be welcome raiding. (This time i don't have another class to switch to thanks to 5.x and the disaster it is for alts and BWs refusal to really go back to a reasonable gearing system instead of "tweaking" and pretending everything is good.

 

(snip)

 

Other than that:

• PvP news: still broken.
  
• OW PvP: still not happening.
  
• Story: written by a 10-year old who watched the cartoons once.
  
• Epic things to do at endgame: none
  
• Mundane things you've done a zillion times beforehand: lots, but by a different name. - So billed as shiny and new.
  
• OPS: A couple of bosses that don't interest a lot of people, and the ones that do have defeated them lots.
  
• GSF: Still the runt of the littler, that people love, but Bioware starves for kicks.
  
• Lana Beniko gets a new face, just as plastic as the previous two, but with extra scowling.
  
• Theron Shan turns completely into Tintin and gets himself a dog.
  
• A bug gest fixed with great big announcement, but lots of other things get broken. Other bugs still ignored.
  
• Top guy at Bioware gets removed Klingon style for next young pretender.
  
• Galactic command gets another 1/2 dozen reworks, before being scrapped for the old system which no-one had much of a problem with.
  
• - With great fanfare, there being nothing else to do in-game, they increase the level cap.
  

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

Unfortunately, all too accurate, I am afraid. But don't forget nerfing whatever classes people are griping about but ignoring real issues and forgetting to see if classes can still do the content after the nerf.

[Zafaria]

Is Sniper class being adjusted. They are so over powered it is an instant loss especially in void star when two are on a team the plant the fire in front of the doors no one can do anything but die. Either the fire ring need a cool down or the damage needs to be way reduced.. To get stuck in , and then them being able to stun you and not break fire ring is an instant death. Not a very fair class in pvp. People are now leaving if they see more then one in a match.

[Deewe]

Keith,

You're not listening to your players on this topic. We wanted legacy-wide CXP. After making and leveling a bunch of alts pre-5.0, we want to play those alts and we do not want to have to CXP-grind on them after insanely grinding a main to 300. When your roadmap mentioned adding a legacy perk to address this issue instead of implementing legacy-wide CXP, I assumed you'd have perk levels like 6X and 12X CXP. A 25% boost is a joke, it does nothing for us. We can already buy a 2X boost, for gosh sake. Either go big on the perk, or don't bother.

Hi Keith,

 

I'm afraid the above statement is right.

We get that you guys want to keep players busy but don't have the required cash to develop the needed content. Although the mentioned fix won't be a good enough mitigation. Then remember players will always outsmart whatever you do and read between the lines.

 

So all in all you should truly facilitate playing alts.

 

I guess a quote is needed here: "There is no try."

[Toraak]

Hi Keith,

 

I'm afraid the above statement is right.

We get that you guys want to keep players busy but don't have the required cash to develop the needed content. Although the mentioned fix won't be a good enough mitigation. Then remember players will always outsmart whatever you do and read between the lines.

 

So all in all you should truly facilitate playing alts.

 

I guess a quote is needed here: "There is no try."

 

I'm truly sorry, however playing and gearing alts after 5.2 is not hard. Getting CXP is easy. heck last week (while spending hours of ingame time farming mats, not playing for GC at all during those hours), I managed to get 90+ GC ranks on 1 alt. (and this is after having 6 characters in tier 3. 3 of which are 300, 3 more that are 250+. GC doesn't stop you from playing alts whatsoever, especially with how raids are now giving out Token drops, and PvP lets you upgrade those drops to BiS.

[Going]

You'll be able to buy a full set of gear for your alts, including set bonus, weapons, ear piece, relics, and implants with Command Tokens in a couple weeks. This doesn't fix everything about gearing (we'll discuss that in the coming weeks), but consider when we used to all earn crystals just to buy high endurance gear with no set bonuses.

 

To set expectations, this 25% Command Rank Perk is not going to be free. You don't need to buy it, but since it is Legacy wide, it'll be a one time purchase (credits or cartel coins) and I anticipate a worthwhile investment.

 

I do realize for those of us who play on multiple servers, we'll need to buy it and transfer a toon (which is cheaper than the cost of the perk) - it's how I personally handle keeping my Legacy current on all servers. There are a number of Perks and Achievements I'd like to see us make account wide, but we haven't fully investigated the effort, so I'll add that our growing list of ideas.

 

---Keith

 

This is a great change. Gj!

[TUXs]

Keith,

You're not listening to your players on this topic. We wanted legacy-wide CXP. After making and leveling a bunch of alts pre-5.0, we want to play those alts and we do not want to have to CXP-grind on them after insanely grinding a main to 300. When your roadmap mentioned adding a legacy perk to address this issue instead of implementing legacy-wide CXP, I assumed you'd have perk levels like 6X and 12X CXP. A 25% boost is a joke, it does nothing for us. We can already buy a 2X boost, for gosh sake. Either go big on the perk, or don't bother.

I'm in full agreement...but...I'd be OK with it being a Legacy wide boost if it was a substantial boost...25% isn't substantial enough. If it were 200%, I'd be good with that...not 25%.

 

I can live with regrinding to 300 on multiple toons, as long as that 300 is shorter and faster (much faster) than the first 300 was...even a start at tier 2 option would be better...but starting an alt at CXP level 1 sucks...because there's literally nothing for that toon for the first 180 levels imo. Anything I would want to do already bolsters me above tier 2, which makes grinding levels 1-180 moot.