Changes and New Features in 7.0

[Master_Vaner]

Auto-completion hurts bonus missions very badly. In heroics, where it is already a thing, sometimes bonus missions (mostly those with multiple steps) require extra effort and attention to be finished BEFORE the main quest. If you apply the mechanic on dailies too, it will make our lives (or my life at least) less convenient which is the polar opposite of your intentions. By the way with quick travel we can turn-in those missions very quickly already. The "benefit/cost" just isn't worth it.

What I recommend instead, is a toggle on/off thingy in Options, and along with it BRING BACK THE ENDING CUTSCENES FOR HEROICS. PLEASE! I started with 6.0 so I never could experience those dialogues.

Those of us who like to delve into the story and not just squeeze missions for credits and renown points, every cutscene is a treasure. And they already exist, you spent a lot of time and money to make them anno, please use them! Add more content, don't cripple them!

[SteveTheCynic]

The only good things are:

 

- Weapons in Outfit slots

That's a bad thing. Weapons should not be in Outfit slots. They should be Outfit-like, but in their own independent slots.

[klizilii]

You forgot how to properly structure a "crap sandwich" You are supposed to put the good news on top and bottom with all the crap in the middle. Anyways, my constructive/critical feedback:

 

Daily and Weekly Mission Reset - Although I like and support the idea of rotating weekly missions that incentivizes play, the reset is absolutely not a welcome change for me. Some of the weekly missions take a lot of time and effort to complete and now we're going to be punished because of that?

 

Economy Adjustments - I have no idea how changing Solid Resource matrix has anything to do with creation of credits in game. I have no idea how far you plan to go in terms of reducing the ability of bots to farm credits, but I have every suspicion that nothing effective is going to be implemented and credit farming/selling RMT will still continue to drive up inflation. The only thing changing SRM does is shift wealth and distribute it more evenly (which does cause inflation as we saw with the introduction of OEM and RPM for tech frags). Can we please do something more meaningful to introduce credit sinks on all transfers in the game while actually looking to cripple the ability of credit farmers to use automated scripts to sell 1b credits for $5?

 

Shared tagging - This sounds great. Overall, I think it's a welcomed change. I can see how there could be some potential issues of players getting jealous that a random person comes and gets credit for a world boss kill just because they shot at it. I'm more concerned about bosses that have mechanics like ancient threat and nightmare pilgrim. Will it work like the current system where if people outside your group help, nothing really changes, or will that boss suddenly think "oh I now have x + y players attacking me, let's adjust how I do my mechanics."

 

Combat Change Vanish - Why? Why do you hate the endgame community is how this makes me feel. It's a source of pride and enjoyment to be able to get good at a special trick like this. It's not like it's some easy trick to get infinite revives.

 

Weapons in Outfitter - Yes, pretty much everyone is going to be happy about this one. Such a minor thing but very welcome.

[Baletraeger]

Currently, Vanish allows players to circumvent intended game mechanics, especially ones that require a target. It also allows for players to revive out of combat, and change their ability/discipline in the middle of an encounter. Vanish abilities are being slightly redesigned to remove unintended use, specifically dropping from combat and reviving in specified situations.

 

For all Flashpoints and Operations, Vanish abilities will instantly drop all threat and allow players to enter stealth at max level, however, players will no longer exit combat. This restriction does not apply to the open world PvE/PvP or Warzones.

This is ridiculous. The entire point of the vanish ability is to be able to exit combat so you can do stuff like revive an ally, escape a fight etc. You are taking away the core function of this ability because we are using it they way we are supposed to as opposed to playing the game they way YOU WANT US TO.

 

As a balance measure, we've made it so only healing disciplines have access to combat revives.

 

Literally ***? This is some lowkey swimlane BS Eric. You're already gutting all the classes with your ill researched ability overhaul, now casually drop that battle rez will be removed from Merc/Op/Sorc if they are in a DPS spec? How does this work in Veteran FPs where there usually is no healer? Or grouping for heroics or class stories or Chapters or Star Fortresses? Win or die unless you have a healer, and if they can't rez you in time while they are keeping the rest of the group up, then wipe and try again? That is not a fun player experience.

 

_____

 

What happened to player agency? You, collectively the designers and producers of this game, need to take off those big brain game theory hats and think about making the game fun for players to play. Stop with all this engagement metric, intended mechanics, etc. This isn't a mobile game, this isn't a looter shooter. There are some great changes coming to the game in 7.0, don't get me wrong, but the core of character class design and changes like the two I have highlighted are prime examples where you aren't thinking about the player experience, you are thinking about yourself.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Baletraeger

[Medullah]

Weapons in outfit designer is awesome, thanks for finally getting it in.

 

Please, please, please keep Snipers and Commandos able to use Blaster Rifles. I have a bad feeling once Combat Styles are in place they'll remove any of the dual proficincies like this, and I really like the idea of being able to use the disintegrator with my Sniper without the damage loss.

[WHTJunior]

Overall, I lie the update. I was hoping for news about a hood toggle, but I'll just have to keep on hoping.

 

For the inflation bit, I would also have preferred a solution that limits the sale prices, rather than a reduction in incoming funds. I am rarely above poor quality on my Legacies, other than in one case, where I had maybe 750m credits, and am down to about 320m now. My other two Legacies are maybe 240m and 750k credits. The people causing the inflation will not be affected, and their inflated items will likely still sell. If anything, this is a long-term solution, but will probably just result in a wider gap between GTN players and people who just do missions, FPs, Ops, and just want to be able to buy the things they want without having to play the GTN in their spare time.

 

For outfitter, my dream is to move to a wardrobe UI, and not keep extracting weapons and outfits from Collections to stamp onto outfit slots. This would have allowed for the weapons to be handled differently as well, since you could then use Collections and/or the Preview window, to apply a whole look to an outfit slot, companion, or save for later. Weapons could have then been given their own UI, or stamped with a set. I assume the go-forward solution is the best-case scenario, where building a whole new UI wasn't feasible. I will wait to see how it feels, since most of my characters generally don't change weapons at all for cutscenes, and decide how I feel then.

 

Now, about that hood toggle option...

[LD_Little_Dragon]

 

Daily/Weekly resets

if the quest carries over you should leave it. Some quests take a fair effort to finish, and those of us that play multiple characters will have issues fully completing some within a given week.

For example the PvP weekly, it isnt always done within the week, resetting it makes us lose progress for a quest thats going to still be there week to week to week, unless this would be exempt as a pvp quest?

^ This. It's annoying enough that every minor update erases weekly progress, now that will happen on a daily/weekly basis? I don't see why it matters if someone spreads out a weekly over a couple of weeks or even longer.

 

Economy adjustments

This isnt the issue in my opinion at all. Giving lower rewards only punished those that never did any exploits as we will now be poorer which the rich shrug and move on.

^Agree. We need more purely cosmetic credit sinks in the game, not to punish casual or newer players.

 

More attractive in-game cosmetic drops (or toys) that are bind on equip instead of bind on pick-up would help balance things out too. Let newer players farm items and sell them to richer players. It's not creating credits, but just moving them around.

 

Combat Change - Vanish

 

For all Flashpoints and Operations, Vanish abilities will instantly drop all threat and allow players to enter stealth at max level, however, players will no longer exit combat.

As a balance measure, we've made it so only healing disciplines have access to combat revives.

Are you going to compensate stealth classes for no longer having medpack resets? Scoundrel/Operatives have some self-heals left, although you are are taking away some of their major dcds, but shadow/sins have ... overload saber. No medpack reset will really hurt their ability to stay alive.

 

What really makes no sense, especially for flashpoints, is taking away off-heals ability to do combat revives. There is one healer, one, in flashpoints, and if you can't do combat or stealth revives, that means when the healer dies, that's it, game over.

 

For years you have had dps able to hold boss aggro long enough to get a tank back up and functioning, as well as off-heals able to help out if a healer gets overwhelmed (or dies), that's part of the game. Being versatile, and doing more than just strictly dps, tank, OR heals, is part of the fun. Or it was. Now there will be very little a player can do to compensate if a tank, dps, or healer makes a mistake.

 

Currently I mostly pug MM fp for group-content, and there are several times that a raid is successful only because I can combat rez the healer, or pop enough dcds to hold the boss for the few seconds it takes to get a tank back up and healed enough to get back on the tank. With what I see of 7.0. either the harder MM fp will become next to impossible to pug, or the difficulty level will be nerfed so all fp are around Hammer Station level.

[VilianSW]

Weekly Missions will rotate in availability each week in 7.0, and we want to ensure that all players are on the same Weekly Missions each week in order keep those Mission areas feeling dynamic and filled with other people to group or share Mission credit with. This should result in content like Heroic Missions being completed more quickly and efficiently. You can still access Missions that aren’t a part of the rotation if you choose, they will just have reduced rewards.

In a nutshell - you're punishing people that prefer to not play in crowded areas. Or, prefer to complete content solo for variety of reasons, including personal challenges or the need to have a haven in SWTOR from the rest of the world. That is not a welcomed change, not at all.

 

The weapons in Outfitter though - YAY!

[Master_Vaner]

Regarding the inflation thing: it's simple. Introduce a maximum price for everything.

For example the maximum price for level 1 crafting materials would be 1000 credits per item. If there're just a few offers out there, they will hit the maximum price. If there are more, the price will drop because everybody wants to sell their items thus they will offer them cheaper and cheaper. I saw this method in many browser games and prices were never a problem.

I know there are way too many items in SWTOR, but you can do the pricing along rarity, item rating, currently existing offers, determining a cartel coins / credits exchange ratio, for crafted items an invested time / credits ratio, etc.

I'm sure the first version of such system won't be perfect, but still better than the currect one. By the time I earned enough credits to buy a 200 mil armor set, the lowest price was 500 mil. For new players such prices aren't motivating at all.

[menofhorror]

Weapons in outfit designer!

Thanks so much swtor team!

[Darcmoon]

Regarding the inflation thing: it's simple. Introduce a maximum price for everything.

For example the maximum price for level 1 crafting materials would be 1000 credits per item. If there're just a few offers out there, they will hit the maximum price. If there are more, the price will drop because everybody wants to sell their items thus they will offer them cheaper and cheaper. I saw this method in many browser games and prices were never a problem.

I know there are way too many items in SWTOR, but you can do the pricing along rarity, item rating, currently existing offers, determining a cartel coins / credits exchange ratio, for crafted items an invested time / credits ratio, etc.

I'm sure the first version of such system won't be perfect, but still better than the currect one. By the time I earned enough credits to buy a 200 mil armor set, the lowest price was 500 mil. For new players such prices aren't motivating at all.

 

And how many will just buy up all the items and then sell them on fleet. It seems like I’m seeing more and more items being advertised that way nowadays.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Darcmoon

[Ruvalie]

Alongside this change we will also introduce a number of quality of life improvements, including auto-completing Missions where we are able to when characters are on the turn-in step.

If this is only for dailies and weeklies it's fine, but I will be furious if you remove more cutscenes the way you did with heroics. I've still never had the chance to see those.

 

Shared tagging and adding weapons to outfit designer are good changes though.

[SteveTheCynic]

Shared tagging and adding weapons to outfit designer are good changes though.

No. Adding weapons *to* Outfit Designer is a *bad* change. Adding them in their own system like Outfit Designer but separate from it would be a good change.

[Jamtas]

My two cents:

 

Daily and Weekly Mission Reset

Not an improvement. Feels like a punishment for someone who either a) can't take the time to complete the entire mission, or b) stops and pauses it b/c they already reached conquest and moved to another character. Not a huge deal for me, but I know this will affect others

 

Economy Adjustments

Doesn't seem to make any difference at all. You hit the nail on the head that there were more ways to make money than credit sinks, but just lessened the ways to make a small amount of the credits in the economy with no desired credit sink. Open up credits to pay for things instead of cartel coins and you may just find that sink.

Also, on credit sellers- I find it unbelievable that a certain website is able to type out it's address in chat and not have some script to automatically block it. "Go to websitename and buy credits" is in my general chat several times an hour.

 

Shared Tagging

Sounds good until you realize there may be a person who spent hours camping a rare spawn (say in CZ) finally gets the spawn, attacks it only for another player to run by, hit it once and then get the assigned rare loot given to them.

 

Combat Change - Vanish

Feels like another case of PVP behavior ruining other game aspects. For a dps with a revive capability to have that taken away takes away some of their utility in end game operations or MM fps. If the healer(s) go down and they can't be revived that pretty much ruins the battle. Being able to get off a stealth rez during a fight should also be something that is allowed since it requires some thought and skill.

 

Weapons in Outfitter

Good news in the midst of all this. A welcome change finally.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Jamtas

[JLazarillo]

No. Adding weapons *to* Outfit Designer is a *bad* change. Adding them in their own system like Outfit Designer but separate from it would be a good change.

Look at it this way: it'll also help solve the inflation problems by introducing a credit sink for people who want to mix and match weapons with different outfits at different times?

[Master_Vaner]

And how many will just buy up all the items and then sell them on fleet. It seems like I’m seeing more and more items being advertised that way nowadays.

 

Simple: limit interpersonal trading to "item for item" or make those max prices be relevant even on fleet trading and not just GTN.

You see more and more because this way you don't pay the 8% gtn tax and can sell items for more than a billion credits since gtn limits max price in 1 billion. Greed ruins the game just like it ruins the real world.

Also on gtn you find items only if you look for them, but many times you don't even know they exist (like some decos), so people advertise them in chat so you can see their offer even if you haven't heard of said items before. It's not a bad thing, only the prices.

[OasisKid]

Okay. So Eric Musco. What are you all really thinking or doing? Why are taking stealth out of the game I mean so you are going to leave it in for PVP but take it out for PVE? Funny you all can remove something from what type of play but yet you could not balance PVP and PVE together like for years people talked and asked for you to make A B C do X Y or Z in PVP and not in PVE. Oddly you all are going to remove stealth out and then the entire make only healers have rez...... WHY?

[LordCamTheGreat]

I was feeling a bit down after the last set of combat style changes hit the PTS, but these changes all look really nice!

 

Daily and weekly mission resets sounds great for boosting content activity - but is also very troubling for certain pieces of content which rely on interactable world objects. There are some extremely lengthy rest timers for mission objectives and though the shared tagging change helps a tonne for a lot of content, there are still many heroics and quests that force you to wait for up to 10 minutes while you wait for something to reset.

 

Economy adjustments are a step in the right direction, but I worry that reducing conquest rewards cracks down far too hard on new players and f2p players who rely on conquest for early sources of credits.

 

Shared tagging. I have wanted this feature for YEARS. It makes me so so so happy that this is finally a thing. Tying tagging to your whole faction removes an insanely large amount of frustration from playing open world content. The only thing extra I'd want is the thing I mentioned above - either reduce interactable object respawn times or make it so that if someone in your faction interacts with it while you are within say, 30m, it completes it for you too. Adding tagging for heals and cross faction tagging on world bosses are the cherries on top.

 

The Vanish changes are really good for reducing some of the massive amounts of utility that stealth bring and will help prevent everyone from picking a stealth class for their second combat style. As a healer, I worry that the in combat resurrect timers might be too high - especially for story mode operations - where I rely on off healers to resurrect groupmates once my in combat res goes onto its lengthy 5 minute cooldown. Good to know that this is being monitored though!

 

Lastly, it's been talked about for years and has been teased for just as long but finally we are seeing weapons in outfitter. Huge props to the dev team for this.

[Darcmoon]

Simple: limit interpersonal trading to "item for item" or make those max prices be relevant even on fleet trading and not just GTN.

You see more and more because this way you don't pay the 8% gtn tax and can sell items for more than a billion credits since gtn limits max price in 1 billion. Greed ruins the game just like it ruins the real world.

Also on gtn you find items only if you look for them, but many times you don't even know they exist (like some decos), so people advertise them in chat so you can see their offer even if you haven't heard of said items before. It's not a bad thing, only the prices.

 

I don’t see how they could do that. Item for item trades would be a disaster. Limiting the amount you can give someone would just make them trade multiple times to give the fall amount the charged for an item.

[ISmileLikeJoker]

If you want to get more money out of the economy spent you need to add more items to buy with credits, not reduce availability of items being sold to other players or reduce money rewards.

 

Rotate Cartel Market items in and out of a Credit shop. Convert some items that are on reputation currencies or Tech Fragments to Credits. In general add more cosmetic items for Credits.

This...

 

This solution might slow credits getting into the economy, but there are way too many credits in the economy to begin with. Players will still bring in more credits that what leaves the server.

[Ruvalie]

What I recommend instead, is a toggle on/off thingy in Options, and along with it BRING BACK THE ENDING CUTSCENES FOR HEROICS. PLEASE! I started with 6.0 so I never could experience those dialogues.

Those of us who like to delve into the story and not just squeeze missions for credits and renown points, every cutscene is a treasure. And they already exist, you spent a lot of time and money to make them anno, please use them! Add more content, don't cripple them!

 

^ I strongly endorse this comment.

[Ruvalie]

No. Adding weapons *to* Outfit Designer is a *bad* change. Adding them in their own system like Outfit Designer but separate from it would be a good change.

 

Why? What's the difference, other than an unneccessary extra window?

[A_Guy_Called_Bob]

As awesome as it is to hear about the weapon outfitter, will we be able to change the actual sounds of the weapons? Some have really horrible audio cues.

 

As a follow up, has the team made any progress on an invisible head piece to remove hoods as an alternative to a hood toggle?

[xKurisaki]

My two cents:

Combat Change - Vanish

Feels like another case of PVP behavior ruining other game aspects. For a dps with a revive capability to have that taken away takes away some of their utility in end game operations or MM fps. If the healer(s) go down and they can't be revived that pretty much ruins the battle. Being able to get off a stealth rez during a fight should also be something that is allowed since it requires some thought and skill.

 

I can't tell if this is a legitimate feedback or a troll post to blame PvPers for this change but care to explain why this is another case of PVP behavior? Please re-read:

For all Flashpoints and Operations, Vanish abilities will instantly drop all threat and allow players to enter stealth at max level, however, players will no longer exit combat. This restriction does not apply to the open world PvE/PvP or Warzones.

This change does not affect PVP whatsoever so please explain to me why a change that has no effect on PVP is somehow "another case of PVP behavior ruining other game aspects."

[Falensawino]

All DPS veteran flashpoints just got harder without combat rez