Items that will be removed at 7.0

[juliushorst]

encouraged negative gameplay

 

Would you kindly define "negative gameplay"? Because I get an impression that the dev team believes the only "positive" gameplay is soulcrushing grind and NiM ops.

[Exly]

Would you kindly define "negative gameplay"? Because I get an impression that the dev team believes the only "positive" gameplay is soulcrushing grind and NiM ops.

 

I think they meant too many people were having fun.

[Rolodome]

I think they meant too many people were having fun.

Fun is probably the worst thing that can happen to a video game. One day, people are enjoying themselves. Next thing you know they're paying you without you having to browbeat them into it and they feel like they're getting their money's worth. Before you know it, they're loyal customers who actively appreciate what you do. And at that point, it's too late to do anything but sabotage everything you built and tell them to go away. Dangerous path to go down, fun should be avoided at all costs.

[MystyqeofXev]

Sheldon Cooper : I had to leave. They were having fun wrong.

[Matimus]

Preface - I've seen this sentiment before

SNIP

 

I am not going to go point by point on this, but I will try to respond. This is getting a little outside the specifics of removing the list of tacticals, but I will try to keep it on target. Going to ignore most of the stuff not related to the items being removed.

 

Part of removing most of those tacticals is trying to help balance the classes. Not sure if they will be successful, but we will see. Part of the reason is that the tacticals effects are being baked into the class (as options usually). Player choice and class balance need to both be considered when doing anything. Jackie did respond with some more info though I don't think it really helped.

 

I guess we can agree to disagree that 1 million credits is a lot.

 

My view is that credit sinks in general are a good idea.

 

Though I will disagree that it isn't about me. It is. And it is about you, and every other person who plays the game. It is the reason I posted here at all. There is a ton of negative responses and I felt the need to provide a different perspective and a reminder that not everyone is feeling negative about this.

 

Hope is me playing on the PTS and feeling positive about what I saw. It wasn't perfect, but very little is.

 

I don't really want to get into WoW, but Titanforging was a bad system. It has also been hemorrhaging subscribers for a long time for a number of reasons. I have played on and off for a few expansions. I am not subbed right now (even though there is new content since last time I played) because of the company, not the game (IE Activision is a bad company that I don't want to give money to).

 

I saw this thread before the moderator got up this morning. Some of it was... not pretty. And that is being generous.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Matimus

[juliushorst]

There is a ton of negative responses and I felt the need to provide a different perspective and a reminder that not everyone is feeling negative about this.

 

Take any large enough group and you'll find some people who'll like various things. But proportions between negative and positive comments justify claim that general reception of those changes is negative.

[MystyqeofXev]

I am not going to go point by point on this, but I will try to respond. This is getting a little outside the specifics of removing the list of tacticals, but I will try to keep it on target. Going to ignore most of the stuff not related to the items being removed.

 

Part of removing most of those tacticals is trying to help balance the classes. Not sure if they will be successful, but we will see. Part of the reason is that the tacticals effects are being baked into the class (as options usually). Player choice and class balance need to both be considered when doing anything. Jackie did respond with some more info though I don't think it really helped.

 

I guess we can agree to disagree that 1 million credits is a lot.

 

My view is that credit sinks in general are a good idea.

 

Though I will disagree that it isn't about me. It is. And it is about you, and every other person who plays the game. It is the reason I posted here at all. There is a ton of negative responses and I felt the need to provide a different perspective and a reminder that not everyone is feeling negative about this.

 

Hope is me playing on the PTS and feeling positive about what I saw. It wasn't perfect, but very little is.

 

I don't really want to get into WoW, but Titanforging was a bad system. It has also been hemorrhaging subscribers for a long time for a number of reasons. I have played on and off for a few expansions. I am not subbed right now (even though there is new content since last time I played) because of the company, not the game (IE Activision is a bad company that I don't want to give money to).

 

I saw this thread before the moderator got up this morning. Some of it was... not pretty. And that is being generous.

 

I show the board how and when WoW began hemorraghing subs, point out that people don't come back and your tepid response is "for a number of reasons"? Yeah, I KNOW.

 

Removing content was one of those reasons.

 

Removing quests was one of those reasons.

 

REMOVING PLAYER CHOICE was one of those reasons.

 

"Titanforging was a bad system". Oh please, tell us WHY it was a bad system.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

I am not going to go point by point on this, but I will try to respond. This is getting a little outside the specifics of removing the list of tacticals, but I will try to keep it on target. Going to ignore most of the stuff not related to the items being removed.

 

Part of removing most of those tacticals is trying to help balance the classes. Not sure if they will be successful, but we will see. Part of the reason is that the tacticals effects are being baked into the class (as options usually). Player choice and class balance need to both be considered when doing anything. Jackie did respond with some more info though I don't think it really helped.

 

I guess we can agree to disagree that 1 million credits is a lot.

 

1 million credits is only part of the cost of a Tactical. They also cost Tech Fragments, in the order of about 3000. TFs will not only be less plentiful in 7.0 due to the loss of Renown and the various Conquest nerfs, but you need 10000 of them to buy a Legendary item, so we have more uses for them now that will be a large drain. Players that are losing their tacticals now have to waste 3000 of them to buy a new one while players that were lucky enough to not lose theirs don't have to do that and can move right on to the Legendary items.

 

That's really what the issue is. It's understandable that they'd need to remove some of them, even if I have my complaints about specific ones. But the blow would be far less if they actually tried to give the affected players a reasonable compensation for losing their tacticals. I'm sure you and I can both agree that 100 credits is nothing if you don't think 1 million is a lot. It's 0.01% of a tactical's credit cost (which, again, ignores that they also cost 3000 Tech Fragments), or like 2 enemies killed on a starter planet. When not everybody is losing their tacticals, and the ones that are are being treated this poorly, of course there's going to be negativity.

 

How would you feel if in 7.1, after you did the grinding to get to your new Legendary in 7.0, Bioware removed it and gave you 100 credits for it because "it didn't work as intended", but every other class gets to keep theirs? That wouldn't feel great, would it? Somebody brought up that nobody's complaining about set bonuses earlier in this thread, and this is why. Because set bonuses were even. Nobody gets to keep their set bonuses, everybody's on even footing. That's not the case with tacticals. Most tacticals are staying, but some specs are losing their BIS tacticals, meaning those players are going to have to make a choice that other players don't have to make on whether to go without a tactical for a while or delay their legendary item purchases.

 

I'm glad you're fine with it, really. Contrary to what some apparently think, I'm not looking for reasons to be mad here, I was excited about 7.0 too before I started getting involved with the PTS. I wanted to love it, I love this game. But call a spade a spade, please. There were so many ways they could have handled this that would have been better than what they did, this was the worst possible one. I'd say it's even worse than giving nothing at all, because this shows they clearly understand that it'd be poorly received to give us nothing (since they're giving credits in exchange), but then turned around and gave us something in exchange that's so worthless it might as well be nothing. I'd say, as a result of that, they've earned the negativity.

[Ghost_Spectre]

To everyone:

 

I would recommend, if you can afford to do so, sell your soon to be deleted tacticals back to the appropriate vendors. I sold my Thermonuclear tactical for 6800 credits. It's a loss to be sure; however, nothing compared to the face slapping 100 credits.

[casirabit]

You're keep unsubscribing since a year or so rofl

 

She has actually unsubbed before and then they made some changes and she came back but I wouldn't expect someone that has made two entire posts to know that. Trix has been here since launch and even though she and I disagree on things, I do know that there have been times she has left and then came back. She never said never come back, now did she?

[Matimus]

SNIP

 

I was agreeing with you about WoW losing subs, not sure why you seem so angry about it. And yes, all of those reason likely are related to why they are losing subs.

 

I get that you are trying to show that the path WoW went down is a cautionary tale. And I agree. I want SWtOR to have lots of players too. I just don't see the changes (specifically the removal of these tacticals) as a reason that SWtOR is going to go down the drain.

 

I can't tell you why people unsub, but I would imagine that the aged engine (causing lag, desync, etc) and the slow content drip would be more likely. I know those are the things that bother ME the most! Bioware likely does as I think you can put down a reason you are cancelling your sub.

 

With regards to titanforging, I don't want to get into WoW on a SWtOR forum any more than we already have. My post is already way off topic and I don't want to derail the thread anymore that I already did.

 

Only reason I am here is because I wanted to give the devs some feedback to balance some of the negativity. I know a lot of players that don't post in the forums, generally I am one of them. My super anecdotal evidence with people I know who play the game but don't post here says that the expansion has some issues, but it isn't nearly as bad as forum goers seem to think.

 

I guess we will find out once the expansion drops and what the population looks like. I do think that players should at least play the expansion before the declare it dead or bad. I played the PTS to get the rewards and I enjoyed my time with it.

 

Good luck.

[NogueiraA]

The salt in this chat!

 

Calm down! Obviously there will be new tacticals. If you think the 1 mil credits you spent on a tactical is a lot you are super poor because most people have BILLIONS in this game, a million credits is pocket change. I will personally give you your 1 mil refunds.

 

Nightmare Crystals getting removed is great, they never should have existed in the first place. I know a lot of "NIM" guilds who won't be able to clear anything now because of this, because they weren't real NIM guilds.

 

Also someone in here said 6.0 gearing was the best system ever? I strongly disagree. 2.0 gearing was amazing and it sounds like we are going back to that.

 

Calm down, wait it out, see what happens then make your conclusions.

???????????????????

It's NOT about the credits, it's about completely destroying some specs for zero reason while other specs have its BiS Tactical.

Can you understand that simple thing?

Don't be naive thinking they gonna introduce new tacticals.

[Matimus]

SNIP

 

I think they should just remove them and the players get nothing, but that is just me. I also think they should have disabled buying them on the vendor in the last week if they knew they were going away (same thing with the nightmare crystal schematic). Or at least a pop up that warns you that the item will be doing away in a week. But they didn't.

 

We saw tacticals get rebalanced in 6.0. And set bonuses. BiS set for a sorc healer changed. If a legendary gets its effect changed mid expansion, that is fine. To be honest, I am surprised that any tactical is staying around. I figured they would but a level limit on it and we would need to repurchase them. Usually gear doesn't get to stay around from expansion to expansion.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

I think they should just remove them and the players get nothing, but that is just me. I also think they should have disabled buying them on the vendor in the last week if they knew they were going away (same thing with the nightmare crystal schematic). Or at least a pop up that warns you that the item will be doing away in a week. But they didn't.

 

We saw tacticals get rebalanced in 6.0. And set bonuses. BiS set for a sorc healer changed. If a legendary gets its effect changed mid expansion, that is fine. To be honest, I am surprised that any tactical is staying around. I figured they would but a level limit on it and we would need to repurchase them. Usually gear doesn't get to stay around from expansion to expansion.

 

The difference between the rebalances in 6.0 and this is that they didn't delete them from players' inventories when they rebalanced them. You could still use the tactical or set bonus you had, it was just changed. You don't have a choice to just stick with the rebalanced one here, because they didn't rebalance them, they deleted them. And you're right, usually gear doesn't stick around from expansion to expansion, but gear did stick around here. Most tacticals are staying just as they are, no need to buy anything new. We know they were capable of redesigning some of these tacticals, too, because again, they did it with Andeddu's Malevolence (it was a permanent 50% Precision in 6.0, in 7.0 it's a 10s/10k DOT on Lance). Somebody else mentioned Grit Teeth which got changed as well, etc. Point being, they've completely redesigned some of them and the people who had them get to keep them. It's just players who had tacticals that Bioware decided not to bother with that have to go out and buy new ones.

 

If you're fine with nothing in this case, given how uneven things are, we will have to agree to disagree there. I don't think you can be surprised when there's negativity from players when you're treating them this unevenly. I spitballed several different options in one of my previous posts (a token to exchange for a different tactical, a cache of tech fragments, a straight up conversion to a different tactical, etc). I'm confident Bioware could come up with something that would make things more even here so that we don't have this big disparity based on whether or not you got unlucky and they removed your tactical or not.

 

And I agree with you that they should have had a warning in game to warn players from buying these tacticals, but they should have had it in months ago. I know they were planning to remove FGF for months, it was off the vendors on PTS in the fall, well before the final iteration. They were asked what this meant and what was happening to tacticals that were removed, and they never said a word about it. The fact that we're only hearing about it now, 5 days before the expansion launch, makes this all even worse.

Edited February 11, 2022 by The-Kaitou-Kid

[Matimus]

SNIP

 

Yeah, mid expansions you get rebalance. Expansion to expansion, you (generally) need to get it all again.

 

I think that is the sticking point for most people. I was expecting to carry nothing over. New currency instead of tech frags. New tacticals with the current ones level locked to 79 and under (like the gear is). New set bonuses (though those are will be legendary items in 7.0 of course). In previous expansions, you vendored your old gear. I don't remember what it would vendor for, but it wasn't a lot. Or keep it for leveling if you want.

 

I do find it amusing that you can vendor it now for more than they are going to give you. That seems silly. Though I think if they announced that everyone was going to get 6800 credits rather than 100, the outcry would be the same.

 

The fact that I can keep ANY of the tacticals is a bonus for me. The fact that you can go into the new expansion with a currency maxed out is really nice.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Matimus
fixed a thing

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Yeah, mid expansions you get rebalance. Expansion to expansion, you (generally) need to get it all again.

 

I think that is the sticking point for most people. I was expecting to carry nothing over. New currency instead of tech frags. New tacticals with the current ones level locked to 79 and under (like the gear is). New set bonuses (though those are will be legendary items in 7.0 of course). In previous expansions, you vendored your old gear. I don't remember what it would vendor for, but it wasn't a lot. Or keep it for leveling if you want.

 

I do find it amusing that you can vendor it now for more than they are going to give you. That seems silly. Though I think if they announced that everyone was going to get 6800 credits rather than 100, the outcry would be the same.

 

The fact that I can keep ANY of the tacticals is a bonus for me. The fact that you can go into the new expansion with a currency maxed out is really nice.

 

In old expansions, people actually used to keep the set bonus gear because in some instances it was better than the new expansion's set bonus. And it would still work, just with less stats due to the lower item rating (go look for guides that used to recommend things like an armoring from the 3.0 update cycle with mods/enhancements from 4.0, etc). That only changed with 6.0 when set bonuses were capped at level 75 to accommodate the new system. Gear sticking around isn't unheard of.

 

But again, it's not a matter of whether I expected them to make us buy all the tacticals again or not. Frankly, I actually did expect them to make us buy all tacticals again at first before I tested on the PTS, because that seemed like the easiest "fair" option if they were planning on removing some of them. Everybody would be on even footing and have to buy new tacticals for 7.0, or get new drops, or whatever. That's what's happening with set bonuses again (with Legendaries replacing them) and people aren't up in arms about it, as others have pointed out. They chose not to do that, though, and are instead deleting a select number of them out of our inventories and letting everybody else keep theirs up to level 80 no problem, leaving certain players in a worse situation than others based on which tactical their class/spec happened to use and whether Bioware decided to delete it or not.

 

Is it really unreasonable to be annoyed by that? Am I wrong to have expected Bioware to come up with a solution that at least tries to lessen the impact on these players?

[Rolodome]

Yeah, mid expansions you get rebalance. Expansion to expansion, you (generally) need to get it all again.

 

I think that is the sticking point for most people. I was expecting to carry nothing over. New currency instead of tech frags. New tacticals with the current ones level locked to 79 and under (like the gear is). New set bonuses (though those are will be legendary items in 7.0 of course). In previous expansions, you vendored your old gear. I don't remember what it would vendor for, but it wasn't a lot. Or keep it for leveling if you want.

 

I do find it amusing that you can vendor it now for more than they are going to give you. That seems silly. Though I think if they announced that everyone was going to get 6800 credits rather than 100, the outcry would be the same.

 

The fact that I can keep ANY of the tacticals is a bonus for me. The fact that you can go into the new expansion with a currency maxed out is really nice.

It is pretty generous to let us keep some things. Usually with an expansion you'd expect them to delete all of your characters and then break into your home and steal your computer, but now you can keep some of your tacticals and a few widgets you've stockpiled to buy you like a whole one item in the new artificial gear treadmill, that's just unfathomably nice of them. I know people are like "I want my progress to matter, I'd like to keep some of the things I put months of my life into," but if you kept stuff, then how would you be able to put more months of your life into getting things they'll take away again? That makes it kind of hard to waste this one life we have on a purposefully sisyphean progression treadmill in a video game designed to keep you subbing in lieu of them actually providing new and interesting content. I mean, doing a business is hard and if they are not making millions in revenue each quarter, then what is even the point of overworking underpaid employees to deliver systems specifically designed to keep people coming back for virtually nothing.

[Sethenon]

It is pretty generous to let us keep some things. Usually with an expansion you'd expect them to delete all of your characters and then break into your home and steal your computer, but now you can keep some of your tacticals and a few widgets you've stockpiled to buy you like a whole one item in the new artificial gear treadmill, that's just unfathomably nice of them. I know people are like "I want my progress to matter, I'd like to keep some of the things I put months of my life into," but if you kept stuff, then how would you be able to put more months of your life into getting things they'll take away again? That makes it kind of hard to waste this one life we have on a purposefully sisyphean progression treadmill in a video game designed to keep you subbing in lieu of them actually providing new and interesting content. I mean, doing a business is hard and if they are not making millions in revenue each quarter, then what is even the point of overworking underpaid employees to deliver systems specifically designed to keep people coming back for virtually nothing.

 

Rofl, This is what's really going on. The number of people that willing to pay BW to literally waste their lives is astounding

[TrixxieTriss]

You're keep unsubscribing since a year or so rofl

 

Actually it’s been 3 months. Learn to count. I would already be gone if their system hadn’t automatically renewed me for 3 months the day I went to unsubscribe. So I will continue to post until it run out with the hope my voice can influence some change. I’ve already disabled my renewal and credit card payments so it can’t “accidentally renew”.

Plus you don’t have to leave the game, you just have to stop paying for it because that’s all BioWare care about. If EVERYONE went free to play for a few weeks, I’m pretty sure EA would notice a loss in revenue and ask BioWare what the hell they did.

That’s all I’m suggesting, send BioWare and EA a financial message. You can keep playing player as preferred while you do. Then when BioWare posts an apology or some explanation / compensation to player feedback that is acceptable to you, then resubscribe.

BioWare only pay attention if their revenue dips drastically. It’s what happened with the 5.0 fiasco too. They messed up, they took a financial hit when there was a mass exodus. Next thing we got a new producer and they started listening to feed back. Sadly, they stopped listening again and have become tone deaf to player feedback.

Vote with your wallet. If you disagree, disable you’re reoccurring sub. If you agree with everything they are doing, keep subbing. It’s as simple as that.

Edited February 12, 2022 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

To everyone:

 

I would recommend, if you can afford to do so, sell your soon to be deleted tacticals back to the appropriate vendors. I sold my Thermonuclear tactical for 6800 credits. It's a loss to be sure; however, nothing compared to the face slapping 100 credits.

 

Yeah, my wife did that yesterday with everything on that list, including social boosts etc. it’s a good idea if you want more than BioWares measly 100 credits.

Edited February 12, 2022 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

Would you kindly define "negative gameplay"? Because I get an impression that the dev team believes the only "positive" gameplay is soulcrushing grind and NiM ops.

 

BioWare love letter to players : “We will make you have fun OUR WAY if it’s the last thing we do”

[TheFenux]

(1) Because the NiM raiders they talk to in Discord (yes, that's a thing) weren't getting enough sales, or were whining that we plebes were seeing NiM content, or we plebes were getting the same gear. Or a combination.

 

No Nightmare Crystals will potentially mean less sales. A lot of the teams use the crystals now to cover the DPS of the person that's being carried. The people who kept complaining about sales runs should see this as a good thing.

[Gyronamics]

*Holds his thermonuclear fusion missile*

 

You will never take my tactical away from me!!! :'(

 

The meh news is that its a perk choice in 7.0 and each HSM/Demo Round will do 25% damage instead of the current 100% damage.

[juliushorst]

Then when BioWare posts an apology or some explanation / compensation to player feedback that is acceptable to you, then resubscribe.

 

I don't need an apology - I can't play their (probably insincere) apology, I can play the game so all I want is them to make it playable again.

And they would probably hide behind Jackie's back like they did for the last few months and send her to apologize for their mistakes.

[Toraak]

Yeah, mid expansions you get rebalance. Expansion to expansion, you (generally) need to get it all again.

 

I think that is the sticking point for most people. I was expecting to carry nothing over. New currency instead of tech frags. New tacticals with the current ones level locked to 79 and under (like the gear is). New set bonuses (though those are will be legendary items in 7.0 of course). In previous expansions, you vendored your old gear. I don't remember what it would vendor for, but it wasn't a lot. Or keep it for leveling if you want.

 

I do find it amusing that you can vendor it now for more than they are going to give you. That seems silly. Though I think if they announced that everyone was going to get 6800 credits rather than 100, the outcry would be the same.

 

The fact that I can keep ANY of the tacticals is a bonus for me. The fact that you can go into the new expansion with a currency maxed out is really nice.

 

This is generally how I expect for an expansion. All my gear gets outdated. In this case set bonus, and tacticals included. Start fresh when expansion launches.

 

The fact we get to keep 90% of the useful tacticals is a bonus for us, and the ones that are removed we'll simply replace. 1 mil credits is nothing, so no need for a refund there, and 3k tech frags you can get in less then a day, so no need for compensation there either.

 

The only thing BW should have done is let us know weeks ago what was being removed, so people didn't buy them in the meantime. Better communication here should have happened.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Toraak