Genuine Questions about the Road Map for @Keith/@Eric

[PennyAnn]

The Road Map thread, because it was posted late into the week will go the entire weekend without reply from Keith/Eric (not begrudging them their time off, mind you!). In that time, as threads often do, it will fill with the echo chamber of people arguing with each other as they express their opinions and others feel the need to tell them that their opinions are wrong, wayward discussion and review of unrelated things about the game, and other "distractions" (even when valid points) from the main topic at hand: Questions about the Winter/Spring 2018 Road Map Update.

 

I feel like the following are fair questions, and ones that merit consideration/answers, and because of the fear of them being lost in the ever growing list of unrelated posts and bickering in the other thread, I am posting them again here in the hope that it will be easier to answer, and therefore more likely to get a response. There is lots of other truly good constructive feedback in that other thread among the usual not so helpful stuff, so it is my hope that the thread will be read in it's entirety and that more questions will be answered and discussion that includes the Developers happens. Cheers!

 

March 13 – Game Update 5.8 - Command Authority

Operations:

• Izax, The Destroyer - The 5th and final boss from the Gods from the Machine Operation. There will be two modes with Izax; Story and Master mode. This also means we will not be offering a full Master Mode for all bosses in the Operation. This was an especially difficult decision for me to make, as I have loved the interaction between developers and our raiding community. Yet, based on what we’re planning for this year and beyond, it’s better to focus on the upcoming group content.
  
• However, we are going to run a special Izax event for those who are worthy enough to defeat him. Everyone who does will have an opportunity to receive a new achievement, a special and unique Title, and a new and very enticing Legacy-based reward.
  
• Note, we’ll deliver the Title and Reward when we launch Game Update 5.9 – The Nathema Conspiracy.
  

 

#1 - When you say: "it’s better to focus on the upcoming group content", what content are you talking about? Flashpoints? Because if you are not planning a new raid, or the promised difficulties for the raid you're finally getting around to finishing, what group content do you refer to? And based on the lack of any inclusion of PvP focused development, you can't mean that as the "group content" you intend to focus on... so I assume you had to sacrifice a Master Mode version of Gods because of focus on the Nathema Flashpoint? Please clarify if you can what "group content" is coming up. It's important to know that there is some in the pipeline beyond one new flashpoint.

 

#2 - How will having one boss at Master Mode level affect the completion of the weekly for VM for that raid? Can we also expect increased rewards for that boss and completion of the weekly since the final boss will not be the same tier as the rest of the raid?

 

Conquest Revamp:

• We have all enjoyed receiving our rewards each week! Ok, in reality, we’ve had our fair share of issues this past year, but going forward, we want Conquests to be a consistently fun activity for Guilds and individual participants.
  
• As a result, we’ve made substantial improvements to the Conquest system including a new interface, new daily objectives, new missions, and more. Most importantly, we have rewritten the backend system to ensure you benefit from your weekly efforts. Look for details in an upcoming blog or forum post.
  
• A new Conquest Vendor will appear for those who complete their personal conquests each week. It’ll initially have Decorations and a new Companion boost called the Commander’s Compendium which will increase your active companion to influence level 50. More on this below.
  

 

#3 - What currency will be used for the conquest vendor? Will it be a currency that is part of your personal conquest reward?

 

#4 - Will this currency be legacy-wide to make it easier to accumulate and spend? Not every conquest week sees the same characters competing. A crafting week I might complete conquest on a completely separate set of my characters than if it is a PvP objective focused week. This means that (like the Light and Dark tokens) a multitude of my characters will have tokens that are completely worthless because they can't ever be used. A legacy-wide currency would solve this problem, as I could build up a stack of said currency much like Unassembled Tokens, and spend when I have enough to buy... and with the character I want to use them on.

 

Commander’s Compendium – Personally, I like having various companions with influence level 50 available and depending on the fight, I might want a ranged DPS, or a melee type healer, or whatever. I also like the various animations and barks from a variety of our companions. We are introducing a new companion gift that can immediately raise the influence level of your companion to 50, but it’s expensive, requires some crafting, and requires you to complete your Personal Conquest objectives before you can purchase it from the vendor.

 

#4 Again - (Because I feel like this is really important to making this change awesome vs. worthless)

Will it be Bind on Pickup or Bound to Legacy? I think making it a legacy binding item is important, because the characters I wish to use it for are not necessarily going to be the ones who are regularly completing conquest each week and accumulating the currency to purchase this item. I do not believe this item should be able to be sold or traded to others after purchase, but should ABSOLUTELY be bound to legacy to be very worthwhile at all.

 

April – Game Update 5.9 - The Nathema Conspiracy

Flashpoint:

• This year’s story has shown the final ramifications of the path that Valkorion first chose when he devastated Nathema, so it’s only natural that we go there to bring that story to its exciting conclusion.
  
• We’ve added powerful new Augments for those who need additional stats to help take down Izax in Master Mode. Or, you simply want to be OP! In this new Flashpoint, we’ll provide legacy-based Crafting Patterns (Bind-on-Pickup – BOP) which will drop randomly off mobs and Bosses. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may also find a Bind-on-Equip (BOE) version of the same patterns. We’ll follow up with the materials needed to craft the Augments.
  

 

#5 - Why are there new augments again already? Doesn't this make the investment in the ones you just released 2 patches ago a waste?

 

#6 - How can Bind-on-Pickup (BOP) be legacy-based?? This makes no sense as written.

 

Operations:

• Izax offers an amazing new reward
  
• We are providing a new vendor just outside the Gods from the Machine Operation offering special items to those players who have earned an achievement for killing Izax, The Destroyer.
  

#7 - What currency will be used to purchase items from this vendor? Will anyone in your legacy be able to purchase them? Since the achievement is legacy-wide it would make sense that the rewards would be also, but some confirmation would be great.

 

Companions:

• Companion Return: Felix Iresso – The Jedi Consular’s loyal soldier has had a rough time these last few years – can the Consular help him?
  
• Companion Return: Mako and Akaavi - Bounty Hunters and Smugglers are reunited with this duo, who’ve been working together during the players’ absence.
  

#8 - Are these returns going to be for the original class only?

Edit: This has already been answered, thank you. Those interested but that missed the answer, Keith said:

Hey there, following up on Eric's investigation about this yesterday. The companion returns are based on finishing Chapter 9 of KOTET and they return to their original class. There is one exception...

 

 

Mako and Akaavi - they are working together, so both Smuggler and Bounty Hunter will have option to acquire both.

 

 

 

Beyond April – Discussion Topic!

As we look back to 2017 and now beyond the conclusion of the traitor storyline, we are planning to continue delivering content in the same manner throughout 2018. When you look at the total year, you received a wide variety of both multi-player and solo activities including a new story, Strongholds, Starfighter updates, a new Warzone, two new Flashpoints, and a new Operation, along with many Quality of Life improvements.

 

We heard feedback from some of you indicating you missed having a more “traditional” expansion and you’d rather wait so it all comes at once. I like having updates released regularly versus waiting long periods of time in-between patches. Although this remains our current plan, we are also laying out what we’ll include in a 6.0 Game Update. We’ll keep you informed of our summer, fall and winter plans throughout the coming months.

 

#9 - Does "delivering content in the same manner throughout 2018" mean that there will also be another new operation that is released one boss at a time over the course of 2018?

 

#10 - Do you intend to (generally) provide the same types of other content and in the same amounts as you did in 2017? Or can we expect now that Galactic Command fixes and server merges won't interfere that we'll see an uptick in the content release cadence?

 

Thanks in advance for your responses to any/all of these questions.

 

.

 

I also wanted to add that I feel like consideration of the inclusion of weapons in the Outfit Designer should be moved up in priority. As many have stated, it is a QoL aspect that will make you MONEY. It is greatly desired by just about everybody, and does not need to be overly complicated. Make it so that if we are a blaster pistol user, we can use any blaster pistol in our collections as the "look" and "sound" of our primary weapon. Same for light sabers, etc.

 

Another suggestion in the thread that I think is also worthy of pointing out was the suggestion to make Experience Boost items able to be exchanged for CXP boosts, such that you can make use of the amount of Major Experience Boost items that many have that are bound to their characters, but they have no use for because they are at max level. A Vendor that lets you exchange these items 1:1 in both directions would be a terrific addition to the game.

 

Thanks again for reading.

Edited February 18, 2018 by PennyAnn

[CrazyCT]

#6 - How can Bind-on-Pickup (BOP) be legacy-based?? This makes no sense as written.

 

The augment it makes is BOP, but the recipe is BOL?

[PennyAnn]

#6 - How can Bind-on-Pickup (BOP) be legacy-based?? This makes no sense as written.

 

The augment it makes is BOP, but the recipe is BOL?

 

It is confusing the way it is written and should get some clarification. I assume that they mean that the schematics are Bound to Legacy, as many other schematics in 5.0 have been... but I do not wish to make assumptions when they could just clarify what this means.

[LordFell]

I'd just like to voice support of these questions being addressed.

[JennyFlynn]

I'd like to ask for confirmation Theron's 'traitor' arc will finish up with the April flashpoint. As in, will we get proper closure to the entire Iokath/Umbara/Copero stuff?

[Lunafox]

I'd like to ask for confirmation Theron's 'traitor' arc will finish up with the April flashpoint. As in, will we get proper closure to the entire Iokath/Umbara/Copero stuff?

 

I'd like to know this as well.

 

Also, can we expect Scourge this year?

[Eshvara]

Thanks Penny for making this thread, it should be a lot easier for the Devs to navigate through and answer these questions!

[JennyFlynn]

I'd like to know this as well.

 

Also, can we expect Scourge this year?

Yes, curious minds would like to know as well.

 

Good thread Penny--people do clutter the official Roadmap thread far too much with debate and discussion that belongs elsewhere and valid questions and concerns get buried, unfortunately.

[Zerileth]

 

#5 - Why are there new augments again already? Doesn't this make the investment in the ones you just released 2 patches ago a waste?

 

 

This? So this!

[KumbayaGOD]

#1 - When you say: "it’s better to focus on the upcoming group content", what content are you talking about? Flashpoints? Because if you are not planning a new raid, or the promised difficulties for the raid you're finally getting around to finishing, what group content do you refer to? And based on the lack of any inclusion of PvP focused development, you can't mean that as the "group content" you intend to focus on... so I assume you had to sacrifice a Master Mode version of Gods because of focus on the Nathema Flashpoint? Please clarify if you can what "group content" is coming up. It's important to know that there is some in the pipeline beyond one new flashpoint.

 

--- its been plan meaning they now discussing it , and if you ask that question they don have planned yet prolly they plan around march

 

#2 - How will having one boss at Master Mode level affect the completion of the weekly for VM for that raid? Can we also expect increased rewards for that boss and completion of the weekly since the final boss will not be the same tier as the rest of the raid?

 

---> they will give exclusive title and achievent , but yes this hardmare is considered HM even it is hardmare

so in short this is a VM mode that will be nerf later

 

 

#3 - What currency will be used for the conquest vendor? Will it be a currency that is part of your personal conquest reward?

 

===> i think maybe unassembled component or the other token i forgot whats its called that you get from crates (command token?)

 

#4 - Will this currency be legacy-wide to make it easier to accumulate and spend? Not every conquest week sees the same characters competing. A crafting week I might complete conquest on a completely separate set of my characters than if it is a PvP objective focused week. This means that (like the Light and Dark tokens) a multitude of my characters will have tokens that are completely worthless because they can't ever be used. A legacy-wide currency would solve this problem, as I could build up a stack of said currency much like Unassembled Tokens, and spend when I have enough to buy... and with the character I want to use them on.

 

+==> most likely legacy wide

 

 

#4 Again - (Because I feel like this is really important to making this change awesome vs. worthless)

Will it be Bind on Pickup or Bound to Legacy? I think making it a legacy binding item is important, because the characters I wish to use it for are not necessarily going to be the ones who are regularly completing conquest each week and accumulating the currency to purchase this item. I do not believe this item should be able to be sold or traded to others after purchase, but should ABSOLUTELY be bound to legacy to be very worthwhile at all.

 

===> bOL is a better choice but must wait bioware infinite wisdom to answer

 

#5 - Why are there new augments again already? Doesn't this make the investment in the ones you just released 2 patches ago a waste?

 

===> new grind to do which is disgusting , the cost of current augments 236 is hovering around 2.7m tp 3.5m in SS which is very expensive but this will replace by the new much more expensive augment

bioware wake up dude !

 

#6 - How can Bind-on-Pickup (BOP) be legacy-based?? This makes no sense as written.

=== working as intended

 

 

#7 - What currency will be used to purchase items from this vendor? Will anyone in your legacy be able to purchase them? Since the achievement is legacy-wide it would make sense that the rewards would be also, but some confirmation would be great.

 

===> estimation would be the current existing currency like command token or unassembled component but bioware have tendency to make things more complicated

 

 

#8 - Are these returns going to be for the original class only?

Edit: This has already been answered, thank you. Those interested but that missed the answer, Keith said:

 

#9 - Does "delivering content in the same manner throughout 2018" mean that there will also be another new operation that is released one boss at a time over the course of 2018?

 

=== most likely as kieth said he prefer to do small updates per month rather than 1x bigger one so expect similar permonth say 1 OP boss per month or 2 months , 1 fp per 2 months, 1 qol, 2 companion return permonths

since their main objective to companion return so expect this pattern

 

 

#10 - Do you intend to (generally) provide the same types of other content and in the same amounts as you did in 2017? Or can we expect now that Galactic Command fixes and server merges won't interfere that we'll see an uptick in the content release cadence?

 

=== yes most likely the same pace release as 2017

 

 

Another suggestion in the thread that I think is also worthy of pointing out was the suggestion to make Experience Boost items able to be exchanged for CXP boosts, such that you can make use of the amount of Major Experience Boost items that many have that are bound to their characters, but they have no use for because they are at max level. A Vendor that lets you exchange these items 1:1 in both directions would be a terrific addition to the game.

 

=== it been plan but not in this 2 months roadmap

Edited February 19, 2018 by KumbayaGOD

[PennyAnn]

BIG SNIP...

 

While I appreciate you trying to give your interpretation of what the developers mean to do or intend and answer these questions, I really am only looking for actual developer feedback. Guessing at the answers to these questions doesn't really answer them, and I hope that a gold post will appear to enlighten us all on not only my questions, but everyone else's in this thread also.

 

Thanks for the support all, let's please keep this thread "clean" so that the developers can come here and read just our questions for the Road Map, uncluttered by random discussion. My thanks in advance for your cooperation in this effort.

 

If you have a question about the Road Map Update post, please feel free to ask it here.

[Jdast]

From the original thread, which got lost in the shuffle...

 

Two quick questions, one comment:

 

1) For new augments, do they still fit in MK-10 slots?

 

2) Did you mean Bind on Legacy instead of Bind on Pickup for the crafting recipes in new FP for said augments?

 

Comment: Not disappointed in Roadmap because it was what you guys foreshadowed. Forewarned is forearmed, though I completely agree that it is better to call it "Update vice Roadmap" since many of us come from sectors (in my case government and private) where roadmap has a very different meaning than applied here. With that said, agree with the gist of PennyAnn's comment that the ability to only forecast a couple months out suggests you guys are living paycheck to paycheck, metaphorically speaking.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you though for the Companion Compendium. There was a fierce debate over on Reddit about whether this was pay to win. I didn't think so, and think even less so now. But, and this is not a lie, on a couple occasions I poured myself a nice martini (or two) and started binge watching a program and just clicked a button for several hours to level up a few companions -- that is hardly compelling gameplay.

 

In the end, my subscription will remain intact, but need to hear more about 6.0 before buying any new CCs.

 

Dasty

Edited February 19, 2018 by Jdast

[PennyAnn]

Yes, thanks Dasty. Please let me know if you think there are others that I should quote into this thread just to have them in one place. I will try to make time to look also.

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

A lot of us have expressed our disagreement with a choice to push through the Arcann Romance. I'd love to see a Yellow Post address that... and, at least, let us know if we'll have the option to exile (at least) our unwanted Arcann companions.

 

I'd still like to get a Yellow response addressing the angry, vociferous community that is not at all happy about Arcann being advanced as a romance.

 

...will we at least have the option to exile him?

Edited February 19, 2018 by PennyAnn

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update therad:

Can you tell us if there will be another double XP / CXP event really soon?

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

Can you take a moment and fix the companion bugs?

 

1. When I travel (happens a lot on Makeb), companion dies

 

2. Come out of an elevator, companion is gone (have to use the N to take it out again), happens a LOT on Star Fortress

 

I know the problems with companions on elevators etc have always existed. But having it just disappear is just super annoying.

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

You mention a conquest currency to purchase the new companion boost. Could you also make it take Invasion Forces since everybody has loads of those and there is not much to do with them. Thank you

 

And YES PLEASE!!

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

Hi Eric and Keith,

 

Does 5.9 mark the end of the traitor storyline? Can I finally get Theron back?

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

Vaylin coming back?

 

Will we get a kill option for Theron?

 

I realize this may be too "spoilery" and asking for something that they won't give due to spoilers, but I'm trying to include as many genuine questions from the thread as possible from the last yellow dev post.

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring road map:

I was curious, with the potential story of concluding what happened on Nathema and the increase demand of a more 'traditional' setting for the next expac, would it be possible to expand on some Lore in regards to other races of the Empire. In this case I ask directly about Sith Purebloods. There is also the known yet unaddressed issue of their impending extinction. Is it possible to hear more Lore wise from upcoming stories as to how the Empire would react to such a thing? Or even for any changes internally within the Empire at all such as Empress Acina's more modernistic view becoming more widespread and popular.

 

As well, and I'm certain this has been brought up already, what about the enormous split in story that got thrown on us? Are we going to get a lore confirmation of

Acina's death and Vowrawn becoming Emperor?

or if Acina stays in power? The same could be asked about the Republic side with their potential changes.

 

Thanks

 

Again, probably asking things that include too much "spoiler" information, but trying to represent all genuine questions in this thread.

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

So with the "new augments" are you saying that there are NEW beyond the 230s and 236s that were just released? Can you please provide additional details of this? Many of us have put in great effort to regear our toons and now we are faced with another tier of augments to regear into again?

 

Eric/Keith please say it isnt so!

[PennyAnn]

From Winter/Spring Update thread:

 

Question about Commander’s Compendium. Is it boos my companion to 50 affection permamently or for a while?

[PennyAnn]

From the Winter/Spring Update thread:

Any chance on a live stream sometime *soon* ?

 

Probably not but it doesn't hurt to ask.

[PennyAnn]

I have tried to skim through the Winter/Spring Update thread and include the genuine questions from that thread here so that the developers can potentially answer them more easily (and hopefully, they will!).

 

Today is a holiday, so I'm not sure anyone is in the office in Austin today, but I think it is important that the developers continue to engage in discussion about the upcoming content.

 

We can argue back and forth about it being enough or not being enough, it being good quality or not to our liking, etc. But none of that is productive in getting actual questions answered about what has been announced. So I appreciate the ongoing effort to keep this thread "clean" and just question based. There is nearly every other thread on the forums available for review/feedback/opinion.

 

Thanks again to all - and please... more gold posts to answer these questions!

[PennyAnn]

Also, if I have neglected to pull your question from the Winter/Spring Update thread, feel free to post it here with the hopes that this thread will make communication easier and cleaner for the developers, which means more communication and answers.

 

Apologies if I missed your question, but include it here and hopefully it will also get a reply with the rest!