Changes and New Features in 7.0

[DeannaVoyager]

Daily and Weekly Mission Reset

First, we’re making some changes to how Daily and Weekly Missions reset. Currently, uncompleted Daily and Weekly Missions sit in that character’s logs until the Mission is completed. Once the Mission is completed, that character can no longer pick up the Weekly again for that week (or daily for that day).

 

In 7.0, uncompleted Daily and Weekly Missions will be removed from players once the Daily or Weekly reset time passes (currently Tuesday, 12:00am UTC). The primary reason for this change is that we are restructuring the way we present content each week. 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.

 

Unnecessary change, and makes it pointless to even start some weekly when it will never be completed. I'm talking about PVP, GSF, flashpoints, uprisings and whatnot. Maybe you don't play your own game, but it's a waste of time and conquest points to finish any of those weeklies on one alt, when theres several others that still need to be capped. I don't know about others, but it takes me weeks to finish flashpoints weeklies, because I usually solo them and I need to cap a lot of alts. Not just one - several. You are destroying that part of the game from people with multiple alts.

 

 

Economy Adjustments

We have been studying and measuring economic indicators around the game’s economy, specifically in regards to Credit inflation. What this means is that more Credits are being created in the economy than are being spent, which drives the GTN prices upwards over time on all items. One of the steps we’re taking to address this is the reduction of credits awarded by completing Conquests.

 

We’re also planning on removing Solid Resource Matrix items from Conquest rewards and instead putting them on Jawa vendors available for purchase with Jawa Junk.

 

This will help address Credit creation issues in the economy. We will be sharing more details on these changes in a follow up post in the near future.

 

That will do nothing to the inflation. It will only hurt new players who don't have a lot of credits yet. Billionaires couldn't care less.

 

 

Shared Tagging

Another big improvement supporting the new weekly content rotation is Shared Tagging.

 

When we refer to ‘tagging’, we’re talking about who gets credit for defeating an NPC (Mission credit and ability to loot primarily). Currently, the default tagging behavior is tied to whether or not the player is in a group or not. So if you are grouped with other players, and someone in that group does damage to an NPC, credit is shared for the entire group.

 

For 7.0, we are changing this default behavior to be tied to the faction instead. So if a player is attacking an NPC, and another player of the same faction helps kill the NPC whether grouped up or not, both players will share Mission credit and loot on that NPC.

 

In some cases, we will allow credit to be shared with any player regardless of faction. The first content that will take advantage of this ‘open tagging’ will be World Bosses. This should minimize griefing opportunities and really encourage players to help each other out in order to defeat these bosses!

 

As an added bonus, we’ve also updated the rules for tagging to include healers. In addition to dealing damage to an NPC in order to tag it for credit, healing another player who has damaged that NPC will also grant credit.

 

Someone already mentioned Dreadtooth and Ancient Threat, I'll add Yavin walker to the list. And what's that czerka mount people used to farm, very rare drop. Not to mention the sith and the jedi commanders. If I understood this correctly, anyone can now wait in stealth and have some group do all the hard work for them, then hit the boss once and run away with the loot, some of it quite valuable. Great idea - not!

 

The only circumstances where this is a good thing are worldbosses without anything valuable on them and basic trash on let's say heroic areas.

 

 

Combat Change - Vanish

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.

 

We understand the benefit of resurrecting more frequently in group content, so we are removing the Operation wide lockout timer from combat rezzing. As a balance measure, we've made it so only healing disciplines have access to combat revives. We'll be monitoring this and will adjust the cooldown as needed.

 

I don't see the difference why pvp players get to keep their vanish but pve players won't? What's with the special treatment for pvp players? Maybe instead of doing this you should reconsider the mob density in some flashpoints. Especially in the last few flashpoints you have added SHIELDS on trash mobs, not to mention million knockbacks, roots and snares, to make them as melee unfriendly as possible. People stealth skip them for a reason. It's not their fault, it's yours.

 

 

Weapons in Outfitter

 

-eric

 

Thank you, this has been waited for.

[Morteistno]

Unfortunately you are wrong on everything you write. Inflation is an increase of the total money supply. All the things you mention are the result not the cause of inflation

 

All your examples are in essence transactions of money (credits) from one player to another. There is no increase of credits in total actually even the reverse as the gtn takes a share out of the game.

 

Ie player 1 has 100 credits, player 2 has zero.

 

Player 2 crafts something and sells it to player 1 for 100 credits.

 

End result still 100 credits in the game (- gtn commision) inflation = zero.

 

The inflation comes exclusively from new credits added to the game (or loot sold for credits to a vendor). It does NOT come from player to player transactions.

 

Same comment. You misunderstand cause and effect. Inflation DOES NOT come from player to player transactions.

 

It originates from credits being inserted in the game. And this insertion comes from credit rewards and selling loot to vendors.

 

The ways to fix it are limited and bound to be unpopular.

 

- sharp increase of gtn tax (deflationary effect) Probably the best way though.

- Make more credit sinks like the refilling of amplifiers, travel costs, repair costs, or a constant stream of popular items (eg decorations) that can only be bought from a vendor for in game credits..

- decrease credit payouts and value of loot sold to vendor.

 

Number 1 is the most efficient as you can have the biggest effect and not impact new players too much. Eg if you put like a 25pct tax it is only 2500 credits on a 10k item but will be 25 million on a 100 million item.

 

The other options will be slow in having an effect and especially brutal on players that don't have a lot of credits to start with. If you have a billion and need to pay 50k to go to fleet it wont hurt you. If yiu just started it will make your life horrible...

 

 

More credit sinks would work as well but from a bioware pov they would rather sell them for cartel coins as that gives them rl money. Still the amplifiers refill was a valiant idea in that direction.

[Crystal_Mind]

Alright, now that I've had a day to think about this, I don't think this is all bad. Weapons in outfitter is fine. Vanish/rez changes are slightly baffling, but I can work with it. Or at least I'll give it a fair shake. Getting into what I don't like...

 

Hey folks,

Daily and Weekly Mission Reset

...In 7.0, uncompleted Daily and Weekly Missions will be removed from players once the Daily or Weekly reset time passes (currently Tuesday, 12:00am UTC). The primary reason for this change is that we are restructuring the way we present content each week. 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.

 

Not a fan. I can see the reasoning, but it does seem like it's going to punish people who--for whatever reason--don't finish a given weekly. I've got plenty of toons sitting at partial flashpoint weekly completion, and many more with the unranked Warzone weekly partially-finished. Why should I be punished for flipping alts after meeting conquest and coming back to a weekly later? (And make no mistake, having all my progress wiped out of existence at reset is not a neutral event). There are also some achievements for "complete x weekly mission n times." If you limit weekly availability, you limit the opportunities your players have to finish those achievements on their own time.

 

Shared Tagging

...Currently, the default tagging behavior is tied to whether or not the player is in a group or not. So if you are grouped with other players, and someone in that group does damage to an NPC, credit is shared for the entire group.

 

For 7.0, we are changing this default behavior to be tied to the faction instead. So if a player is attacking an NPC, and another player of the same faction helps kill the NPC whether grouped up or not, both players will share Mission credit and loot on that NPC.

 

In some cases, we will allow credit to be shared with any player regardless of faction. The first content that will take advantage of this ‘open tagging’ will be World Bosses. This should minimize griefing opportunities and really encourage players to help each other out in order to defeat these bosses!

 

In most cases, I think the shared tagging will be a good thing. It won't solve the problem with open-world clickables, but it should ease some of the burden you're creating by herding players into the same gamespace every week. HOWEVER, there are (3) exceptions I can think of off the top of my head:

 

1.) Nightmare Pilgrim - Due to the Nightmare Paranoia effect, this boss has a group-cap of 16-players. How will shared tagging affect how this debuff is applied? This is a case where shared tagging might actually be exploited FOR griefing as opposed to preventing it.

 

2.) Dreadtooth - I have some hopes that the Drouk Hunter mechanic might mitigate opportunities for other players to sneak their way into your group, but this is a boss that drops unique loot items per-pull (Essences, Masks). Are participants who are not part of the initial tag-group eligible for these items in addition to their own personal loot? Will the 2-hour trade timer work in situations like this?

 

3.) Rare Spawns with Rare Drops - CZ-198 and Oricon spring to mind, dropping a mount and a headpiece, respectively. Same situation as Dreadtooth above, but without the potentially mitigating effect of the Drouk Hunter mechanic.

---

So yeah, my response to this set of changes tilts out on the side of "wary."

[AdjeYo]

I don't see the difference why pvp players get to keep their vanish but pve players won't? What's with the special treatment for pvp players? Maybe instead of doing this you should reconsider the mob density in some flashpoints. Especially in the last few flashpoints you have added SHIELDS on trash mobs, not to mention million knockbacks, roots and snares, to make them as melee unfriendly as possible. People stealth skip them for a reason. It's not their fault, it's yours.

 

The change is made to address Assassins being able to complete avoid certain mechanics by Vanishing. This is especially clear in MM operations where the combination of Shroud and Vanish make them the best tank, that every group takes at least one of, often two.

 

PvP doesn't have such mechanics (nor does open world PvE/PvP) so the change does not apply there, only in Operations and Flashpoints where mechanics cheesing can be an issue.

[khamseen_air]

I am not a fan of the changes to the weekly missions. Forced resets is silly. Weekly missions like the PvP one usually take me a few weeks to complete because I don't play a huge amount of PvP so with this change I'll just never finish that weekly any more.

 

The other part of the weekly change, specifically "Weekly Missions will rotate in availability each week in 7.0", this is just dumb. You keep talking about wanting to give people more choices in 7.0 but here you are deciding that you'll only have a limited number of select weeklies available each week thus not allowing players to choose which weeklies to do any given week and funnelling us all in to a handful of places so we all have to deal with over populated areas and fighting over the same objectives.

 

Sure the changes to tagging might help a little with kill target objectives, that remains to be seen, but not for objectives where you need to interact with containers/consoles etc. So this is just going to be annoying. Generally I pick the lowest pop locations to go do weeklies in at any given time but that only works because we have access to all of them every week (outside of event weeklies).

 

The other changes are mostly meh.

Economy isn't going to be fixed by reducing credit rewards from conquest, people are still going to list items for 100s of millions of EC, but sure let's go with that.

 

Shared tagging, as I said above this may help in some situations but since it's only going to be world bosses at launch (from the way the post is worded) it may take a while to see if this actually helps in busy zones.

 

Vanish changes, there were a few places this was useful but yeah it was a cheese to use and often buggy anyway and didn't actually drop you from combat as intended so I can understand this change. The removal of lockouts on healers reviving in ops/fps is probably a much bigger benefit.

 

Weapons in outfitter, can only be a positive and is something I've been wanting for years so it's a welcome change.

 

TLDR, mostly meh or positive changes but those changes to weeklies are just plain dumb.

Edited October 28, 2021 by khamseen_air

[mrwayn]

The change is made to address Assassins being able to complete avoid certain mechanics by Vanishing. This is especially clear in MM operations where the combination of Shroud and Vanish make them the best tank, that every group takes at least one of, often two.

 

PvP doesn't have such mechanics (nor does open world PvE/PvP) so the change does not apply there, only in Operations and Flashpoints where mechanics cheesing can be an issue.

 

Which mechanics require you to leave combat on top of vanishing? If you're talking about interrupting a cast by vanishing, I don't see, why that wouldn't work anymore after the change. And if shroud in combination with vanish is the problem, I see even less of a reason for that to no longer work, because you'll still get your shroud, wether you stay in combat or not.

To me, it seems like the actual reason behind the change is to prevent people from loadout-changing in the middle of a fight. So that you can't start the fight as a sin-tank and then vanish, hit the mara-dps button and finish the fight as dps.Which seems fair enough to me. Stealth-rez's were simply colataral damage imho.

[DeannaVoyager]

The change is made to address Assassins being able to complete avoid certain mechanics by Vanishing. This is especially clear in MM operations where the combination of Shroud and Vanish make them the best tank, that every group takes at least one of, often two.

 

PvP doesn't have such mechanics (nor does open world PvE/PvP) so the change does not apply there, only in Operations and Flashpoints where mechanics cheesing can be an issue.

 

I've played enough pvp in my life that I know being able to vanish from combat is an advantage most classes don't have. That's why people bring stealthers into pvp. They can reset medpack, they can escape a fight they can't win and heal up behind a corner. They can attack non stealthers from stealth and vanish again so that they can hit them back then do it again before the other guy heals up, and so on. There is no reason why pvp should be treated differently regarding vanish. Either remove it from pvp too or leave it as it is for pve.

[Baletraeger]

Mission Reset

While I can agree with the UX change to move dailies and weeklies into a system similar to Conquest and GS, having them auto reset like this is a net negative to the casual player experience. You are telling players that if they want to get rewards, they have to be done at the pace YOU dictate, and not their own. This is bad game design.

 

Economy Adjustments

I guess reducing gold rewards from Conquest can help, but there are far more effective gold generation activities in the game that you need to address as well.

Moving SRM to the Jawas is not a new idea, you already have done this in previous expansions.

You need to spend more time looking at where players earn credits, and where they spend credits, and address those behaviours with your system design. The heavy reliance of CM items, the selling of Achievements, and the complete lack of meaningful crafting are just a few issues that you should be looking at.

 

Shared Tagging

Yup, this is a good idea.

 

Vanish Nerf

This is a terrible change. You are nerfing a core class ability after 10 years because players are not playing the way YOU want them to. This is bad game design. When you see players enjoy a certain style of play, you should be asking how you can make the game better for that style to be more effective, not punishing players.

 

Battle Rez Nerf

This is a terrible change. Removing yet more unique class flavour might make sense to you from a class design perspective, but when you end up with classes and specs that are now mechanically identical and only cosmetically different, you have killed a major RPG element in the game.

 

Weapons in Outfitter

Yes, cosmetic personalization is always great, players want it, and you're delivering. You'll forgive me for being jaded that this is the final part of your post to give me a warm feeling after all the negative emotions of core gameplay changes you have planned.

 

Overall I am disappointed Eric. In 7.0 you are introducing some really great changes to the game with Combat Styles, Loadouts, Cosmetics. But the changes to classes, specs, abilities, gearing - the actual gameplay part of the game - are incredibly focused streamlining, on content corralling, on very mobile game design mechanics. I am deeply concerned that where SWTOR is going to be in 12 months time is a shell of a game where there is no depth, no player agency outside of cosmetic personalization, and zero emergent gameplay to challenge you as designers and producers.

[AdjeYo]

I've played enough pvp in my life that I know being able to vanish from combat is an advantage most classes don't have. That's why people bring stealthers into pvp. They can reset medpack, they can escape a fight they can't win and heal up behind a corner. They can attack non stealthers from stealth and vanish again so that they can hit them back then do it again before the other guy heals up, and so on. There is no reason why pvp should be treated differently regarding vanish. Either remove it from pvp too or leave it as it is for pve.

 

Of course it is an advantage, but there's a fundamental difference between being able to completely avoid a mechanic in an operation versus having an advantage in PvP.

[AdjeYo]

Which mechanics require you to leave combat on top of vanishing? If you're talking about interrupting a cast by vanishing, I don't see, why that wouldn't work anymore after the change. And if shroud in combination with vanish is the problem, I see even less of a reason for that to no longer work, because you'll still get your shroud, wether you stay in combat or not.

 

I'm expecting this will make it impossible to interrupt channels by vanishing, though I might be wrrong in that regard. If it doesn't then this change won't do all that much, except getting rid of stealth revives and medpack resets. We'll see I guess.

 

As for the Shroud part. I meant having both the ability to cheese mechanics with Vanish (interrupting casts) and the ability to cheese other mechanics with Shroud. Though Shroud needs to be adressed in combination with certain mechanics as well. Specifically Shroud resisting stacks should probably be looked at in a fair number of fights.

[Galbsadi]

Daily and Weekly Mission Reset

 

I like this change. It's not 100% for everyone, but it can be a time saver and is useful.

 

Economy Adjustments

 

These are a good start, but given current inflation, it'd probably be a good idea to also raise the GTN price caps (and maybe increase the tax above the current cap), and maybe do something to convince players with hordes of credits to dump them (a la AH mount that WoW did type of thing).

 

Shared Tagging

 

Yes, yes, yes yes. This is a great change.

 

Combat Change - Vanish

 

I have to admit, I'm a little concerned here regarding this affecting "dirty" rezzing and how that might impact the value of certain classes in certain high end content, especially when it's been a thing for nearly a decade now. The other changes might mitigate this, however, so I'll apply a "wait and see" mindset here.

 

Weapons in Outfitter

 

THANK YOU!

[DeannaVoyager]

Of course it is an advantage, but there's a fundamental difference between being able to completely avoid a mechanic in an operation versus having an advantage in PvP.

 

No. It's exactly the same thing. In pvp you also avoid a mechanic (= getting killed) by vanishing before your HP reaches zero or for other reasons. Vanishing gets you out of combat, you get to heal up and your medpack will be reset if you used any. That is what makes stealther classes unique. If they are going to be destroyed from being viable in pve, they should get the same treatment in pvp. I'm all against butchering and destroying the current classes, but since they are going to be destroyed anyhow, they should be equally destroyed in all game modes.

 

Just for the record: I rarely tank on a sin/shadow, not even MM because it's not my favorite class. I was willing to change that as guardian/jugg tanks won't be viable after 7.0, but guess that won't be happening now. The only thing left is VG/PT. I find it utterly ridicilous that I'm playing a star wars game and won't be able to play on force user classes anymore.

[fire-breath]

Regarding the changes to dailies and weeklies.

I don't know if it's technically possible to revert this. But this is a really bad change BioWare ....

Essentially you are stealing progress away from your players. This is NOT a QoL change. Well .... I guess it is. As the quality of life will be reduced :rak_02:

 

There are several reasons why you would want to not fully complete weeklies:

- not enough time or mood to finish a weekly (Makeb anyone???)

- saving up weeklies to turn in during a conquest week when your guild is pushing for a win

 

In my case, I like to play PvP. But I rarely can complete a weekly as for group comp reasons I tend to shift between several toons.

I also am someone who saves up many weeklies so I only need to do 1 more daily and turn in the weekly. For example, I tend to have 7 chars on 9/10 for the PvP weekly so that I only need to win 1 more match in PvP. The rest of the time I can then spend doing other content such as daily areas.

 

 

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.

Auto-completing missions is not an improvement to QoL. I like to be able to choose WHEN I turn in a mission. This is tied to my wish to stack weeklies for conquest.

[xKurisaki]

I've played enough pvp in my life that I know being able to vanish from combat is an advantage most classes don't have. That's why people bring stealthers into pvp. They can reset medpack, they can escape a fight they can't win and heal up behind a corner. They can attack non stealthers from stealth and vanish again so that they can hit them back then do it again before the other guy heals up, and so on. There is no reason why pvp should be treated differently regarding vanish. Either remove it from pvp too or leave it as it is for pve.

 

Why are you so hellbent on nerfing the only characteristic stealthers have in PvP? You say you’ve done enough PvP but clearly not enough. Let’s go back to the stealth-heal argument: In a 1vX environment and you whittled down one person then you need to heal out of combat, that gives the other people to heal out of combat as well OR run around the map to find you in your vulnerable state. One person could run around to 1v1 you but that’s a matter of skill whether or not the stealther wins.

 

They can attack non stealthers from stealth and vanish again so that they can hit them back then do it again before the other guy heals up, and so on

Then what was the point of stealthing out if your intent was to hit them again BEFORE they heal? Or are you implying that they hit them, stealth out to heal (and at which point, the other guy also has the option to heal in a 1v1 scenario).

 

You’re never really “out of combat” in PvP, there are instances where you can get away to heal but there are also instances where you’re hunted down. That’s the difference between NPCs and Players. Players will use their brains while NPCs stick to a preprogrammed code.

 

 

 

 

Vanish was NEVER intended to skip a mechanic in PvE. It’s basically a long overdue bug that just happened to be considered “acceptable” and the norm to certain phases, Tyth Knockback and Brontes Channel in P2 as a couple example. And yes, it’s the devs that are at fault only fixing it now.

 

Especially in the last few flashpoints you have added SHIELDS on trash mobs, not to mention million knockbacks, roots and snares to make them melee unfriendly as possible.

Sorry but there are people who have soloed the new flashpoints on Mastermode as a PT. The last few flashpoints might be melee unfriendly but isn’t it a test of skill to be able to work around it?

 

And yes, I’m saying: Get Good.

[xKurisaki]

No. It's exactly the same thing. In pvp you also avoid a mechanic (= getting killed) by vanishing before your HP reaches zero or for other reasons. Vanishing gets you out of combat, you get to heal up and your medpack will be reset if you used any. That is what makes stealther classes unique. If they are going to be destroyed from being viable in pve, they should get the same treatment in pvp. I'm all against butchering and destroying the current classes, but since they are going to be destroyed anyhow, they should be equally destroyed in all game modes.

 

Just for the record: I rarely tank on a sin/shadow, not even MM because it's not my favorite class. I was willing to change that as guardian/jugg tanks won't be viable after 7.0, but guess that won't be happening now. The only thing left is VG/PT. I find it utterly ridicilous that I'm playing a star wars game and won't be able to play on force user classes anymore.

 

Sorry but this is quite possibly the worst reasoning I have ever read. You’re reasoning is almost the same exact reasoning as “hey lets bring a Sin DPS for the extra stealth utility” and not for how well they play their class.

 

The meta is shifting yes. Does that mean that all other classes won’t become viable? No. You simply adapt to the change.

 

 

For the record, “don’t die” is a mechanic in any game. If you need to rely on stealth to “not die”, have you ever considered that maybe you’re the problem?

[Sarova]

 

Daily and Weekly Mission ResetIn 7.0, uncompleted Daily and Weekly Missions will be removed from players once the Daily or Weekly reset time passes (currently Tuesday, 12:00am UTC). The primary reason for this change is that we are restructuring the way we present content each week. 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.

If this change includes the Unranked weekly: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. No. Nope. No. Nein. Non. No.

For those of us who like to do unranked when the mood takes us, or for GS that unranked weekly now takes me well over a week to complete since the changes.

Unless you are going to allow losing an unranked PvP match to count toward the weekly again, this is not good at all.

[SteveTheCynic]

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?

Nah. People will do what they do now, and not bother.

[SteveTheCynic]

Thank you, this has been waited for.

That's a strange way of writing "dreaded". Seriously. it's pretty much the worst way possible of making "outfit-like weapons", since it ties together (in an unbreakable fashion) the appearance of the outfit (er, you know, clothes) and the appearance of the weapon, and I'm far from the only one who dislikes them being tied together like that.

 

For me, developing weapons-in-outfits was time wasted, since I won't be using the feature, so they could have used that time better doing almost anything else for the game.

[AdjeYo]

No. It's exactly the same thing. In pvp you also avoid a mechanic (= getting killed) by vanishing before your HP reaches zero or for other reasons. Vanishing gets you out of combat, you get to heal up and your medpack will be reset if you used any. That is what makes stealther classes unique. If they are going to be destroyed from being viable in pve, they should get the same treatment in pvp. I'm all against butchering and destroying the current classes, but since they are going to be destroyed anyhow, they should be equally destroyed in all game modes.

Vanishing out of combat to cheese boss mechanics is not same as vanishing to keep yourself from dying. One is an intended use of the skill, the other is not (and has been a problem, trivialising certain boss mechanics for years). This is exactly the kind of thing people have asked for for years, skill that function differently in PvE and PvP. Vanish is a problem in endgame PvE, but not in PvP. Therefore it's getting nerfed in PvE, but left as is in PvP. That's great and I hope Bioware will take that route more often when dealing with skill that cause problems in PvE and PvP specifically.

Just for the record: I rarely tank on a sin/shadow, not even MM because it's not my favorite class. I was willing to change that as guardian/jugg tanks won't be viable after 7.0, but guess that won't be happening now. The only thing left is VG/PT. I find it utterly ridicilous that I'm playing a star wars game and won't be able to play on force user classes anymore.

 

Assassins are going to be just fine in 7.0. They won't have the same cheese factor that they do now, but they're still very solid tanks regardless. Shroud is absolutely amazing, and they're not losing any defensive cooldowns as per the current PTS iteration. They'll probably remain top tier in NiM operations.

 

Juggs are being hit a bit harder. Having to choose between Reflect and Mad Dash sucks, we'll have to see how Bioware handles their operation rebalancing. Still they'll probably remain very much playable, very much outshining VG/PT in all areas except damage if Emergency Power isn't introduced back into the game through Legendary Items.

[Nee-Elder]

I wanted to share some of the new features and changes coming in 7.0 that we haven’t talked about yet.

 

Cool , thanks for the post Eric....but here's the problem (for me & other beta-testing subscribers like me) :

 

I see nothing about GSF.

 

I see nothing about CRAFTING.

 

I see nothing about FUNCTIONAL COMBAT MOUNTS.

 

I see nothing about ENCOURAGING A PLAYER-DRIVEN ECONOMY. (instead of constant Cartel Market re-skin "sale" baits from corporate, popping-up in our face each time we login a toon)

 

Put simply, so far, i see nothing here (yet) other than more band-aids on the path toward rumored 'console porting' of SWTOR. (aka dumbing things down like ESO did) ---- I'm still looking forward to whatever mystery your Legacy of the Sith expansion STORY content turns out to be....but aside from that, tbqh, my hope is waning for this game's future.

 

2 months or so to go (until December 7.0 release) to entice me & other loyal subscribers like me (assuming EA even cares about our section of the playerbase) . I look forward to the possibility of being wrong with my skepticism. And to the possibility that this upcoming *10th Anniversary* will grant us much more than just another non-functional re-skinned astromech "pet" in the mail.

 

p.s.. i'm baffled by all the hoopla about 'weapons outfitter' and i personally think a 'weapons outfitter' is silly, unrealistic, & pandering. From purely a STAR WARS & RP aspect, here's a better idea: Allow only IMP Agents & Republic Smugglers to obfuscate their appearances....using the 'outfitter' tab. Otherwise, imo, combat should = player equips X, player uses X. Period. (Unless u guys wanna implement a shape-shifter species? )

Edited October 28, 2021 by Nee-Elder
why can't EA allow u guys to do BOTH (pander for $$$'s AND make the game more immersive & player-driven, like SWG)

[Damask_Rose]

p.s.. i'm baffled by all the hoopla about 'weapons outfitter' and i personally think a 'weapons outfitter' is silly, unrealistic, & pandering. From purely a STAR WARS & RP aspect, here's a better idea: Allow only IMP Agents & Republic Smugglers to obfuscate their appearances....using the 'outfitter' tab. Otherwise, imo, combat should = player equips X, player uses X. Period. (Unless u guys wanna implement a shape-shifter species? )

 

I am really confused about how you think the weapons designer will work. There is no indication that it will let you have a rifle equipped, but show a lightsaber. To quote Eric, "stamp the appearance of another weapon of the same type". So your lightsaber stamp will only show if you are equipping a lightsaber. What difference does it make if I'm equipping a silver colored lightsaber, but my stamp is showing a gold colored one?

[robwettengel]

Re: Inflation

 

In economics, concerns over rising inflation is typically brought about because too much money is being injected into the economy. Credits are added into this game from only a handful of ways: selling items to in-game vendors for a fixed price, selling harvested mats to a vendor for a fixed price, and mission rewards. Deflationary options are also controlled by BW entirely--the GTN fee, vendor costs for items and repairs, Legacy Perks (if paid for with credits), amplifier respeccing. These credits paid by players disappear into the digital ether. Player-to-player sales do not contribute to inflation because the total amount of credits is still in the game--it is just that the sellers' account is credited for the amount of the sale, while the seller's account is debited the same amount. Credit=Debit; therefore inflation is zero. Even if a seller puts mats up for sale greater than the cost to gather them, there still isn't any inflation because new money is not being created. The buyer is paying the full cost with credits-on-hand. Players cannot turn to a lending institution and use deficit spending to acquire an item.

 

Without the ability to take on debt, players are not contributing to inflation. Are some of those GTN prices beyond the pale and scandalous? Yes, but are they the driving force behind inflation? No. The sellers either know or believe that their price can be met OR they insist on selling at that price for whatever reason--either greed or they need that much money to afford some other bauble on the GTN.

 

Here is my idea for what I hope would be an effective credit-sink. There have been many cosmetics removed from the game over the years. As a credit-sink for crafters, there could be a vendor that would sell schematics for these retired gear sets or pieces. As a credit-sink for others, the gear pieces could be sold. Prices should be the same on both vendors. Perhaps these vendors could be some of Kai Zaiken's crew that have setup in the Cartel Bazaar.

 

Another potential for taking credits out could be a wealth tax upon guilds--and only guilds. Say take out 5%-10% of the amount in guild banks for a "registrar maintenance fee."

[Nee-Elder]

What difference does it make if I'm equipping a silver colored lightsaber, but my stamp is showing a gold colored one?

 

Because it's phony. (silver is silver , not gold ---Just like other certain characteristics are inherently defined., regardless of how one "presents" themself. But i digress. )

 

Phony is fine, however, IF it's tied to something legitimate & functional (canon-wise) , like my Agent/Smuggler idea. Or like my 'shape-shifter' species wish. Or, like ESO does with usage of 'costumes' (for certain quests & situations & such) .

 

I fully realize i'm in the minority here (at least from a vocal "majority" perception to the Devs) . And again: i have no problem with the a-tab or weapon-outfitter tab IF it's tied to something STAR WARS lore & canon related.

 

I'm just not a fan of arbitrary code that panders to requests from a certain section of the playerbase but lazily isn't also supported by STORY or Star Wars functionality, quests, & realism. In other words, taking your basic seemingly harmless example: Maybe there's more of a gameplay reason why your character uses 'silver' crystal but presents 'gold' ? Like say, 'silver' has the EFFECT (a certain DoT or whatever) that you want for combat, but 'gold' COLOR is less likely to attract attention from Bounty Hunters or the Empire or whatever. (again, i'm just using your vanilla example to demonstrate a hypothetical)

 

Another solution, which probably won't be "popular" either, is for BioWare to just completely remove the credit COST of swapping out mods from your own weapons/armor . After all, why would it cost ME credits to tinker with MY OWN weapons & armor lol it's totally illogical (and merely an arbitrary coded credit sink that doesn't even affect the rich players and instead only serves to annoy regular players who just want to play & level without having to worry about inconvenience or hassle.

 

But anyways, BioWare has already decided & coded for 7.0 , so i'm simply expressing an opinion on public forums. I certainly don't expect them (or anyone with power) to be swayed by such an "unpopular" opinion, no matter how many constructive alternative ideas i try to propose.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Nee-Elder
why not use STAR WARS lore & canon (re: Agent, Smuggler, etc. ) to support your code & implementation ?

[coffeepyromaniac]

While quite a few of these changes make sense (especially outfits for weapons, but also normal enemies in daily areas counting regardless of group), I have certain concerns regarding faction shared credit/loot for world bosses.

 

What, for example, if you're doing a guild group for dreadtooth 10 stacks, to get the amulet for dreadful entity and perhaps some missing masks for the group that is going for it. If someone not in group attacks it too and happens to win the random roll for those items, the whole point of it is gone.

I don't mind everyone getting the achievment / xp / regular loot, but maybe tag those limited items to be rolled among the group that started it only.

[corsacalin]

Without wishing to seem rude or anything, but you (the studio collectively) suck. Weapons, as I've been saying ever since Outfit Designer was released, should be in a separate system *like* Outfit Designer, but selectable independently of it.

 

Why? Because my characters' weapons are not part of their outfits.

 

Without wishing to seem rude or anything but i disagree. Pay more atention to what they said.