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7.0 Follow Up


KeithKanneg

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Umm, I have run several dailies and weeklies and not a single Noble Decurion Distribution Chest has given me an upgrade. All I get is exactly what I already have. Went through the process to get a 326 Autocannon. Opened a chest, got a 326 Autocannon even though I still have 320 armor. Opened a chest and got more 320 armor. Not one upgrade after countless chests.

 

 

 

Again, not working. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Same experience here. Dropped crates have contained no upgrades.

 

Edit: Also as to shared tagging. In the last week I have encountered at least half a dozen people during my very limited leveling sojourn, who throw a weak AOE into the group you are fighting to "tag" them and then stand there and wait for you to finish the battle so they get the credit for it.

Edited by DWho
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We did make key changes to the way we approach rewards in 7.0. We rotate content (including Flashpoints available in Groupfinder and Weekly missions for Daily Areas) for a couple of reasons. First, it allows all reward calendars to be aligned. Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and the Featured weekly content all line up, which means players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once.

 

...

 

I know that doesn't address being shoe-horned into content, but I hope it does provide the insight as to why we decided to make these changes. What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

 

 

FINALLY!

 

Thank you Keith for getting in the room and finding the right level.

 

BUT, and this is a substantial but...

 

Why remove all the other, less rewarding but still available content from the QoL consoles so we can still play what we want with the same ease of use?

Sure pin the featured weeklies to the top of the listing but why bury the other content that players might prefer to play?

 

Addressing this balance of experience could've been done years ago in open forum as a truly valuable and respected form of community engagement that would do wonders to build faith between Dev team and customers.

 

I now genuinely look forward to seeing more substantive replies to all the other elephants in the room.

Get your coffee and Red Bull in, it's going to be a long week Mr Keith in getting us all back on side.

 

I wish you success.

Edited by Morten_Venisse
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The more I check posts about the latest expansion, the more I feel sorry and disgusted with the behavior of many of its users. I understand - you are dissatisfied with the fact how it turned out, but is it really necessary to be nasty out here? Unpalatable? Aggressive? To send threats to the programmers, attack people with words, pour out on them your aggresion, anger? Does it really make you all feel better? I dare to doubt.

 

I understand you. The new expansion and the implemented changes are not as satisfactory as you would expect. And I can assure you - I think that the creators themselves have such feelings. Because there was always something that could be done better. In this case, a lot. I have my own 'but' to how Bioware approached the expansion, in relation to the promotion it got. But I find it hard to blame them. They really wanted to impress us, to give us something very good. However, with limited human resources on their team (as far as I know), not much can be done. I also bet that they were chased by many top-down deadlines, completely unmissable, because they probably had to stick to the imposed release window.

 

And they probably did everything they could to make this expansion work as well as possible. I have a hard time blaming them. Really! You can see their work put into it, you can see their heart poured out on how they continue to unfold the plot of the main game. How they try to contact us all, enter into dialogue. And I understand them all that they don't want to do it now. That they prefer to post at the end of the day on Friday because they've already seen the backlash from the 'fans'. How many bad words can one read without even going through a single page of forum posts? Many of you here and on other topics write about the disrespect of the team towards community. But have you thought about how little, or even not at all, your respect is there for them? How painful it must be to wade through the sewage of your reproaches, aggressive remarks that can ALWAYS be conveyed in another way? Think about it before clicking on 'submit reply' on any topic again.

 

Getting back to the point - I understand the anger at not listening to players' comments after the PTS. After all, this is why it is triggered to provide feedback. I also understand the anger at the 'too short expansion' because we all want epic content for dozens of hours. It is hard for me to judge whether the currently implemented new plot is long, etc. (hanve't played it yet). But I was expecting it, like many of you. And I still have the hype to play it and explore it to the fullest.

 

Little private matter: I would also like to thank those responsible for making Arn a romance option. I hope it will develop in the future and that he will become a full-blown, permanent companion. I would like to show Arn the world around them. And take him on a date on many, many planets. Thank you once again and I look forward to the development of the situation.

 

There are many things Bioware could do better, that they had any influence on. There are also some that they don't have. However, attacking them for everything is not fair. And it only shows how unpleasant a fanbase group can be.

 

Also, saying that SO MANY players have left the game is far beyond exaggeration. Why? There are still a lot of players in the game, I think there might be even more than before 7.0. Many people like new changes, even though they also see bugs and want them to be fixed. I also think that the creators themselves know very well how many players are still active. Just because you, or someone around you who is as frustrated as you, refused to play, doesn't mean it's the majority. Often it is also enough for emotions to subside and suddenly people do not plan to leave at all, but they still deicde to throw passive-aggressive comments under the influence of emotions. Another reason to step away from the monitor from time to time and take a break, occupying your mind with something else.

 

And hey! If the current state of the game doesn't suit you, feel free to play something else! Wait for them to make changes and decide if you want to come back or not. It will stop you froma a lot of unpleasantness that may come to your mind to pour over the developers of the game.

 

I myself expect changes (and I keep playing because I want to, because I like it, because it helps me to cope with everyday life, which does not spoil us - to put it lightly ...). And a post by Keith gives me hope. I look forward to these corrections, these news. I want to be able to experience the game in the best condition the team can deliver. Of course, there will be bitterness and sadness because not everything goes my / our way. Because it could be better, more polished. However, I trust that the team can still do a lot and surprise us positively. And I know all the way there will be more mistakes, more sadness and frustration, but you can communicate things so much better. And be in good terms with the people who create the game. Make sure that they do not have to deal with the painful, aggressive backlash from the fanbase in their everyday lives.

 

To conclude my post - dear team working on the game, I hope you will do your best. I will be looking forward to corrections, and thank you for the information on the current state of the whole project. Thank you for Arn and the other things that make me smile while playing this game (which I have been doing for the last 8 years, continuously). Dear forum members - I wish you a little more patience, good manners and soft skills, allowing you to communicate how you feel, without being aggressive towards people to whom you address your dilemmas.

 

P.S. Sorry for my bad English, it's not my mother tongue. :)

Edited by Myrtar
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First of all: thanks for the update. It took too long to get one, but I know that's not your fault. I had a question, though:

 

So does this mean that tertiary stats are scaling as intended, and not a bug? That's troubling if so. Alacrity affects the GCD directly, accuracy affects whether or not you can even land an attack, and crit affects a variety of procs. Presence changes how useful your companions feel.

 

Can you explain the rationale behind scaling all of these now, when previously they did not scale? That's one of the worst changes of this update, aside from the UI.

Edited by DakhathKilrathi
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Mr. Kanneg, would it be possible to stop the 24hrs, to complete Heroics? Doing them in one shot can hurt my hands. (I have Cerebral Palsy with Severe Chronic Pain and Fatigue,) a little consideration for that would be nice to have again.
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Weekly rotation of heroics for specific planets weeklies giving a higher bonus sure I get that that.

 

However in the past 6.0 to get groupfinder rewards didn't all the flashpoints have to be checked? Now its limited to like 6 or less I forget exact number because I dont want to do any of the flashpoints on the schedule lol.

 

People literally look at the schedule and say yep I'm not doing flashpoints at all this week. I'm not sure thats the exact definition of "making it fun"

 

Also some guilds are casual and run sm operations, but now are limited to sm weekly raids their guilds didnt want to do. So now they go run a raid not on the schedule and don't get any rewards.

 

I get the intentions here but limiting content each week I wouldnt say is a Improvement.

 

What I see here is dissapointed content Creators sad that certain modes, flashpoints, Raids, just don't want to be played by the mass majority of players.

 

"Force" feeding specific content doesn't sit well with most people because the players are not "weak minded"

 

Perhaps you can readjust how this works

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Is galactic seasons really important to people to justify this change in idea?

 

I don’t give a damn about galactic seasons, nor login rewards. While galactic seasons was over, I entirely forgot about the login thing, until the email dump of rewards I didn’t care about. They keep focusing on stuff other games have, rather than looking at the game they do write for, and making it better. I play SWTOR, because it’s SWTOR, not because it has a poor mockery of a feature that some other, more popular mmo has. That’s really the crux of it though. We keep getting features of other games, grafted into our game, without a thought of how those features complicate (or even ruin) OUR gameplay.

 

If I wanted to get a login reward, I’d login to Guild Wars, that’s got a proper system. I’m assuming most of these (broken) features are stolen from Final Fantasy, or WoW, both of which probably have far superior versions of these systems that don’t feel grafted, shoehorned, or even axed in. To upend ‘play your way’ and make conquest grind-y again, I can only guess one of these other games did that, too.

 

SWTOR is about story, has always been. The player classes, the choices we make, should have an effect on our characters. Maybe if y’all devs need reference material, fire up KOTOR, and KOTOR II then let your imaginations fill in what a persistent version of that, replete with players filling in for merchants, side quest sources (like player bounties, for instance), love interests, etc. That, is what we want. Stop looking at other MMO’s that have -nothing- to do with ours, and trying to break this game, to implement those games. So frustrating.

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Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun. In 7.0, we rotate content to mix and match some of the shortest and longest flashpoints and weeklies each week. As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing. Instead of gathering a sheer quantity of items to sort through to find an upgrade in 6.0, which required more and more efficient runs to maximize the amount of gear acquired, we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week. At the end of the day it results in a quality over quantity philosophy.

 

Here's the problem with this: players are just going to spam whatever one thing is most effective, and you guys can't change that by limiting the content that's available. GSF is far and away the most efficient way to gear right now, and so that's what everyone is doing.

 

The trouble with this is, they aren't really trying to play, because you get the weekly whether you win or not, so they just AFK twelve games per toon to get easy rewards. I am not asking you to nerf the rewards, to be clear. I mention it as an example of how this philosophy doesn't accomplish anything; it has only reduced match quality while increasing their quantity. I don't think anyone on the dev team considered how that might impact gameplay for that game mode. Games like this one or this one are more common now than they should be.

 

Those are two different ends of the same spectrum: matches have always been unbalanced but it's worse now than it has been in a long time.

 

You can see the same thing with flashpoints: people just spam whichever one is easiest that week. I don't think it's good to try to control what people run in the first place, but a better approach - just as an example - would be to do something like limit the rewards for each time a single instance is run consecutively, or a single boss is killed consecutively.

 

Or, as others have suggested, make content that takes longer reward you more. If the rewards are roughly equal based on time spent then people are less likely to spam things because there is no benefit for doing so.

Edited by DakhathKilrathi
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(snip)

What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

 

 

Ever been to CZ-198 last week during rush hours? Which was pretty much any hour, day or night. Took me anywhere between 2 and 4 respawns of the big droid to get H2 completed - no idea where that shared tagging went to, sorry. And waiting to sabotage 5 droid containers was taking forever, even on stealth characters, due to respawn time of locks on said containers. It's not even "shoehorning" - it's literally throwing people into brutally long queues. There's not a single drop of fun in that, while it used to. How about aligning missions with some basic fun instead of whatever it is you're aligning missions with?

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To the whole Bioware/EA team. Are you f*ing kidding me? The only way to gear to 326 purple Thyrsian (best gear available without doing Nightmare content) easily is doing weekly GSF now. It's horrid. This quote is absolutely ludicrous and does nothing to gear up to the highest possible gear.

 

"As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing"

 

"we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week"

 

Y'all screwed the pooch on this one. It's frustrating, causing bad behavior and your new gearing system sucks.

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Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun.

 

Sooooooo, my guess is that the constant World Boss farming currently going on wasn't the intended consequence? These changes are not going to stop the constant farming. Build a better mouse trap, and the mouse will figure a way out of it. People are going to farm whatever currency is needed in order to gear up. That is just the way it is. And punishing the rest of us is not the way to go about stopping it.

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Second, we heard loud and clear from

 

The MINORITY. That is who you heard from. Its clear from the changes made you only listened to PvPers and Elitist OPS players by the changes made. Do you actually think the rest of us are going to read this nonsense and believe it? That we are just going to go...oh, yeah thats right, me and all my friends in game that were NOT doing that, were actually doing it and we forgot!

 

No. This entire UPDATE, was a massive nerf against the entire population to get people to stop doing something SOME were doing. Just like the massive conquest nerf. It was a punishment to everyone, because some were doing something. A kneejerk reaction move and like all kneejerk reactions, has had wider effects like trashing GSF with people that dont want to do it to reach conquest goals but have no other choice and so either AFK, or just fly around ruining it for those there because they WANT TO BE.

 

WANT TO BE...crazy thing in a video game ehh? A thing you GUTTED by trying to force everyone into a neat little box you want to try to control. The worst thing you can do in an MMO.

 

SOME people CHOSE to do Hammer station over and over. SOME. Others CHOSE to do it via Conquest boxes. SOME CHOSE OTHER WAYS. Now, we have NO CHOICES.

 

Congrats. 7.0 = SWG Combat Upgrades. It removed the FUN from the game and just like SWG, we have developers NOT LISTENING to the majority, just the minority.

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We did make key changes to the way we approach rewards in 7.0. We rotate content (including Flashpoints available in Groupfinder and Weekly missions for Daily Areas) for a couple of reasons. First, it allows all reward calendars to be aligned. Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and the Featured weekly content all line up, which means players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once.

 

This makes no sense. If all weeklies, Flashpoints, etc, are available at once, players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once if they choose to, or not, if they choose not to. That's how variety in content options works.

 

Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun. In 7.0, we rotate content to mix and match some of the shortest and longest flashpoints and weeklies each week. As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing. Instead of gathering a sheer quantity of items to sort through to find an upgrade in 6.0, which required more and more efficient runs to maximize the amount of gear acquired, we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week. At the end of the day it results in a quality over quantity philosophy.

 

When content is not in rotation, it is still available and rewards are still offered, but to a lesser degree. For example, all Flashpoints are accessible by walking into their entrance, however since Groupfinder is the delivery method for ensuring upgrade rewards, not all Flashpoints are available in Groupfinder each week unless they are featured.

 

This here is a big example, again, of you not actually listening to feedback. You saw complaints about people not liking Hammer Station spam and so you gave us rotating flashpoints in the queue despite numerous problems with that method of gating content. What you did not do, despite hinting at it later on in this post, is make all flashpoints equally rewarding. That's why people were spamming Hammer Station, or SM Toborro's Courtyard, or anything of that nature. Because all flashpoints, all ops, all heroics, they're all treated the same even if they're not the same. When the rewards are the same, players will gravitate towards the easier and faster options, always.

 

This hasn't even changed with 7.0! All you've done is change what's easier and faster, but you haven't addressed the actual problem. Flashpoints like Traitor Among the Chiss are a slog to play through GF. I've mentioned this in other posts, it's a flashpoint I've seen people consistently straight up drop upon load in because it's not worth it. It's too hard and too long for no extra rewards. When you treat Hammer Station and Traitor Among the Chiss exactly the same reward wise, players that are only concerned with the rewards will prefer Hammer Station.

 

It is your job as the development team to make them all worth doing equally so there's no inherent benefit to spamming one singular piece of content. If Traitor Among the Chiss gave rewards equal to the effort it required in comparison to something like Hammer Station, and that was then also true for the rest of the FPs in the queue that are harder or longer, more people would have been willing to run random. But as it stands, they're not, because you implemented a system that solves a symptom of a problem, but leaves the inherent problem still intact.

 

And now you've doubled down on that mistake by removing the minimum level requirement, despite the precedent we have from previous expansions on why that's a bad idea. Because you refuse to admit that this reward strategy was a mistake.

 

Like I said in a previous post, I get that it's hard to admit when you've made a mistake, but doubling down on it when players push back is going to make things worse. We all make mistakes, nobody's perfect, but you have to be willing to admit when you messed up so you can acknowledge the path forward. From what I've seen in this thread and over the course of 7.0's development cycle, you aren't. That needs to change.

 

For Daily missions, we have Weekly mission wrappers ('do 6 dailies') for each area, which are the delivery method for larger rewards. These weekly missions are only available when the rewards are available, which is if they are featured that week. However all of the dailies associated with these missions are still available at all times, and still reward items relevant to gearing or upgrading gear, just at a slower rate than the featured content.

 

Without the weeklies available, Conquest, rep grinds, achievement hunting, etc, are all affected. You guys made a very similar change in the 6.0 cycle where you tried to limit planetaries in Conquest to only planets that were on the Conquest rotation that week and it was soundly rejected to the point that, at the time, you actually admitted it was a bad idea and went back on the change. It was a welcome change, but during 6.0 PTS actually seemed to have a purpose and feedback was actually listened to, at least moreso than 7.0.

 

When I'm in the mood for solo play, this change has just put me off entirely. I have no desire to go run Makeb dailies, for instance. I tried it recently, won't be doing it again, if they're highlighted, I'm skipping them. So if the daily areas I'd like to run aren't available, I'm probably not gonna play much in that regard. That playtime won't shift to other content, it'll just shift to another game entirely.

 

All of that boils down to featured content is about aligning different reward tracks such as conquest and Galactic Seasons, plus mixing up content with short and long completion times together to prevent some of the issues that awarding all content equally brought to the table in the 6.0 era.

 

Except, as I mentioned, you're still rewarding all content equally. Short and long completion times, easy and hard, it doesn't matter. All the same for the reward tracks currently, all that differs is what's the fastest one this week. Until you understand that and balance accordingly, players will always find the fastest way.

 

I'm sure this will get no response, and that's fine. Again, I get it. I've been harsh, and I'm genuinely sorry about that. I don't want to be frustrated with this game. It's one of my favorite games of all time, I want to enjoy playing. With how things have been going, though, and the way you guys have either outright ignored or even blatantly disregarded player feedback is so incredibly frustrating. However, whether or not you want to respond to this post, there's something even better you could do for me:

 

Go to your team, specifically the people that are responsible for designing and balancing the reward tracks in the game, and have them play some content. Have them spend 3 hours playing content on the live servers, or however much makes sense to you. Have some of them limit their GF queue to Athiss (or whatever the sub 50 FP of the week is next week, or the shortest, easiest one if there are none again). Have others queue for Traitor Among the Chiss, or Spirit of Vengeance, or any other level 70+ FP. At the end of the time period you gave them, compare their rewards. Ideally, based on the logic of all the systems you gutted for this update, they should be the same, right? They spent the same amount of time running flashpoints. When it's not the same, because it won't be, I want you to have a frank discussion with that team on why you think that reward method is fun for players.

 

Also, please prepare some stats for us so we can know how many sub-50 players get kicked from Copero or SoV or etc solely because of their level after 7.0.1 launches, because I'm going to guess it'll be quite a few.

Edited by The-Kaitou-Kid
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Hello SWTOR Community,

Hello Keith.

 

Secondly, we know that 7.0 was not a smooth transition for some players, so we have been very busy since launch day resolving issues, minimizing any downtime, while fixing key issues without requiring a game patch. For example, during our first 72 hours, we identified critical bugs such as the issues with keybinding resets, empty gear boxes, and combat styles on characters not displaying properly and we corrected them all.

 

That's quite the understatement. In your attempt to make things easier, you made it more complicated. In your attempt to improve on things, you made them worse. Smooth transition is not at all the words to use here. I will give your team credit for fixing the things they did fast, however, waiting more than a month after release to push out a proper patch with fixes is just insanely stupid. With the amount of bugs encountered, most of us were expecting, as well as hoping for, a patch around the first weekly reset after the release of this content patch. Add a month to that? You're insane. It's not like most of these bugs are newly discovered. Many carried over from PTS, but were seemingly ignored in order to reach the launch date.

 

Players can currently preview many of these changes on our Public Test Server (PTS) that was opened earlier this week. We are also working on putting together some preliminary PTS Patch Notes together, so everyone playing on PTS will have an understanding of what bugs are fixed. Jackie will post them in these forums once they are available.

 

This should have been written and published immediately following your post. You already know there's 200+ things in it, you have a list already. It should have been done.

 

As of this post, this patch will include at least 200+ fixes of varying degrees. The player facing fixes will be reflected in the patch notes. Because we are implementing all of these fixes in one push, we want to ensure the necessary time is allocated to test them all to quality. We are currently targeting March 22 for 7.0.1, but we will update you all with a confirmed date as we get closer.

 

I will repeat the use of "insane" to describe the situation. You're insane to not only wait so long with the fixes, but also to push that many at once. Everyone and their grandma knows the story about the eggs in a basket. If you push out 5 fixes a day, you can more easily spot if anything's wrong within a particular set of fixes. If you fix 500 in one day, you're gonna end up spending a long time trying to figure out wut da fuk is causing the new issues that most likely will come after the patch.

 

7.0 is a foundational update to the game.

 

But not an expansion. A few storymissions and a single flashpoint at launch, that's not an expansion, that's a content patch. An expansion should have an expansion worth of new content to play at launch, with additional content added throughout the lifespan of the expansion. The fact that Manaan isn't even available for testing at this point is just..... bad.

 

The fundamental refactoring of all abilities and Advanced Classes into Combat Styles, the addition of the long-requested Loadouts feature, and the beginnings of new UI/UX and Itemization constitute the most significant systemic changes made to SWTOR since launch.

 

And you're already on the way to changing some of those things, based on feedback made post-launch, even though the exact same feedback was given during PTS. Like, "my eyes are bleeding/burning" in regards to the inventory. Which they still are, btw, because for some reason you choose to wait more than a month before fixing it. Loadouts are poorly implemented and even though I am enjoying my secondary Style, the UI for those two also sucks donkey balls. Which brings me back to the earlier statement of an "improvement" that just made things worse.

 

These are only the first steps toward the ambitious and inspiring vision we have for SWTOR's future. We are excited to continue bringing this vision to life in the ongoing updates and additions coming to the game this year and beyond.

 

Ambitious and Inspiring vision? What? Where? And most importantly, WHY??? Was the game not in a bad enough state already? If what we have now represents part of your vision, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be part of it. When this content patch was on the PTS, I jumped on a few times to see how things felt. And in short, there were far more "Nope" than "Yay" coming out of my mouth when talking to my friends about it. I can see the ambition, if the intention was to drive people away. But that's not exactly inspiring.

 

More story will be coming including new locations to explore, a PvP revamp, and more visual and modernization improvements are also underway. It was always intended that 7.0 would receive multiple updates in 2022 and beyond to celebrate ten years of SWTOR.

 

Again, you're already planning stuff that should have been part of the launch content. Why not implement MORE STORY at launch? Why not implement NEW LOCATIONS at launch? Why not take the time to implement the PVP REVAMP at the exact same time as the launch, where everyone would have to re-learn their classes and disciplines, or at least adapt to the other changes made with the content patch. Why wait?

 

Not only does the launch of Legacy of the Sith begin the journey into updating the game, but this update also opens the doors to new players who have never experienced SWTOR before. 7.0 is meant to invite new players to the game while also bringing new experiences to returning and veteran players.

 

It saddens me that you think this is a great time to invite new players to the game. It's the exact opposite. The state of the game is not fun, not recommendable for new players. Far too many restrictions, far too much "our way or the highway". Not a lot of fun stuff. You call it an expansion, but you have not really expanded on anything. You should call it a reduction instead. Or as I do, a content patch.

 

SWTOR is a ten year old game that is very dear to all of us, and we look forward to continuing the journey of a series of updates to make the game the best it can be.

You claim it is very dear to you, yet you somehow managed to take away most of what was good and replace it with something bad. Do I want to continue of this journey? Not really.

You claim it's going to make the game the best it can be. Why didn't you do that with 7.0 instead of waiting for .1, .2, .3 etc..........?

 

Edit to add, as this was posted while typing:

 

What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

 

This is very obvious. Before, everyone was doing the content they personally enjoyed the most and were still rewarded with type of rewards they wanted. Now you pick and choose where players go, leaving most of the galaxy just as empty as before. Yes, there are more players playing together now. Yes, the game feels less empty than it did. But it's even more empty now everywhere else.

Edited by Ambrodel
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Well so much hipocrisy on the original post...

 

Mr. Keith... what you and your team did do with the 2 month delay you asked to the player base (after many have resub just for the new expansion).

 

From the looks of it.. nothing... or even worse add things that where not needed and did not need fixing.

Like many have already write here, it seems that you don´t really care about the playerbase vision... and its only YOUR vision that matters...

 

7.0 for you is a "new" foundation for the future... What future? Do you think ppl will stay and play a game on the current state?

Many pay to play the game, and its not CHEAP!

 

Im baffled for the lack of honesty of your part, where nothing about the lack of story content, companion story content, class development, etc... is refered...

 

I understand... i understand... 90% of the budget was poured on the CGI Trailer to "WOW" the StarWars Community... and to pursuate many new ppl to come and play the game...

 

But the 10% where spend on what? Recriating UI? did we need it? did we wanted or asked for?

 

This is not an innocent post... after almost 3 weeks, many that have resub for just on month, have just one week more before, being charged... You want to give players motive to resub again for another month...

 

But how about this... the SUB playerbase, should all DE-Sub, and only RE-Sub again when the promisses are kept...

 

The playerbase, must start voting with their wallets, and punish the liars, and reward the honest ones...

 

What you will be Mr. Keith?

 

Best Regards,

 

LPC

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Thank you, for posting some details about the updates.

 

For all of the people who shared additional problems with the UI (not only for its high contrast), I do hope you'll be addressing their issues as well.

 

... and the beginnings of new UI/UX and Itemization constitute the most significant systemic changes made to SWTOR since launch....

👆 Also, this right here made me feel a bit worried. And also speechless, considering the state, in which that new UI has been released, and the overall UX we've been getting from it.

 

In addition, would you also comment on the new system, that vastly feels punitive and restrictive, instead of appealing and FU* (which has vastly become a dirty word in 7.0):

 

- No more than 5 alts?

- So should we be creating new chars and playing with them?

- What about my old chars and all the ones that can't do conquest because ... 👇

- Conquest is harder and grindier to do (the rewards don't show for it)

- Leading to guilds suffering, but especially small guilds

- Being tunneled to play specific curated content, instead of what I feel like playing on that day, w/ that toon.

- Feeling punished if I play something else, by getting meager rewards.

- Also taking away our quick travels to planets. What are orbital stations for, anyway?

- Shared tagging is cool, but what about the clickies that take X minutes to resp? It sure is fu* to wait in line. And you should see the lines, oh, they're magnificent!

- Neutering companions, I mean, why even bother with them anymore?

- No self heal and comps being a little more than a talking pet at this point? Erm ...

- Things take forever to clear. Even white mobs. Yay for them, I guess?

- This reminds me, I have an active sub that is being wasted, because it's physically hurting me to play the game. Got any suggestions?

But back to the new system ...

- Skill tree at the top is very unbalanced. I'm forced to make either a big sacrifice, or any of two other big sacrifices and the result is an old lady with a worn out gear that sometimes jams so she gets knocked in the teeth by the weakest scum in the Galaxy. I heard repairing the gear has gotten more expensive, so .... economy problem solved, I guess?

 

Compare that to the powerhouse my char used to be with their shiny 306 gear, actives and passives, the carefully mixed and matched gear bonus, mods, amplifiers (gee, these were sooooooooo expensive! So expensive .... so ... it still hurts how expensive, I can almost cry. All gone!). I felt like on a treasure hunt, looking for the right mods. And now... The new gear doesn't even have a green arrow to it, it's so anti-climactic. I just have to play whatever you tell me to play, burn a bunch of resources bc they're capped, and slowly and painstakingly grind my way to another green gear with no green arrow to it ... Multiply this by X alts we all have and you get ... you guessed it - not Fu*

 

And we're coming to my next point, why do I need a Senya statue anymore? It was good popping the trainer and reading and understanding that new skill, and how it ties with my other skills. Now I didn't even know I progressed in that department. For a vet player this may pass as a non-issue, but add 7.0 skills into the mix and I'm at a loss what's happening. Can't imagine what a new player would make of this.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of other problems with this "new vision" for SWTOR, but as I haven't played past the first week, this is all I've got. Luckily, other people have documented their experience in plenty detail and the information is in here, in the forum, gen chat ingame, as well as I'm sure, social media, DM/s, and PM/s. Like you said, you have plenty of data. Bring the Fu* back, please!

 

It would be great if we can get some insight on all of this.

Thanks.

 

(P.S. I feel like I should point out that Fu* = Fun, so this post doesn't somehow get unnecessarily moderated)

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We did make key changes to the way we approach rewards in 7.0. We rotate content (including Flashpoints available in Groupfinder and Weekly missions for Daily Areas) for a couple of reasons. First, it allows all reward calendars to be aligned. Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and the Featured weekly content all line up, which means players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see how having all content available in Group Finder and Weekly missions didn't allow players to make progress towards multiple rewards at once. Seriously. I could look at what was necessary for the rewards I was pursuing just fine without having rotating content. The net effect is simply that there is less rewarding content available.

Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun.

Allow me to introduce you to Nefra.

In 7.0, we rotate content to mix and match some of the shortest and longest flashpoints and weeklies each week. As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing.

There is no more variety in the type of content that the gearing system rewards. Absolutely none. The same activities all still exist that existed before, and in 6.0 playing any and all of them was rewarded. Steering people to fewer options is not a case of less is more. Less is literally less.

Instead of gathering a sheer quantity of items to sort through to find an upgrade in 6.0, which required more and more efficient runs to maximize the amount of gear acquired, we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week. At the end of the day it results in a quality over quantity philosophy.

The sheer number of mod and gear variations was definitely problematic in 6.0... but that was a design choice, not a player-created issue. The way you chose to address it was not the only possible option. As has been pointed out already, this system does not 'virtually guarantee' upgrades to gear. It guarantees currency bloat (which was not a problem in 6.0) along with a convoluted path that guarantees less variety to upgrade gear because the currencies are all locked to specific content types. And again, 'featured' content = less content than was rewarded before. I think we must have vastly different opinions about the philosophy of quality here.

When content is not in rotation, it is still available and rewards are still offered, but to a lesser degree. For example, all Flashpoints are accessible by walking into their entrance, however since Groupfinder is the delivery method for ensuring upgrade rewards, not all Flashpoints are available in Groupfinder each week unless they are featured.

Yes, we know that. What you are not hearing is that this is not liked by all players because, again, less is less. You have also removed a huge QOL feature in GF by limiting the content available in it, even if it were to be rewarded less. There are reasons to want to run FPs that are not limited to gearing, but now finding a group to do them if they aren't on the list is problematic.

For Daily missions, we have Weekly mission wrappers ('do 6 dailies') for each area, which are the delivery method for larger rewards. These weekly missions are only available when the rewards are available, which is if they are featured that week. However all of the dailies associated with these missions are still available at all times, and still reward items relevant to gearing or upgrading gear, just at a slower rate than the featured content.

Again, we understand how it works now. For reals. What you are not hearing is the displeasure with the continued gaslighting claim that somehow less is something other than less.

All of that boils down to featured content is about aligning different reward tracks such as conquest and Galactic Seasons, plus mixing up content with short and long completion times together to prevent some of the issues that awarding all content equally brought to the table in the 6.0 era.

Again, there was no difficulty in progressing toward rewards before. If your concern was about preventing people from finding the shortest route to their goal, Nefra would like to remind you that's a futile gesture. Players are always going to find the shortest route to what they want. Perhaps finding a way to make the content with longer completion times more rewarding, without making the shorter ones unrewarding, would be a better tack to take.

I know that doesn't address being shoe-horned into content, but I hope it does provide the insight as to why we decided to make these changes. What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

The insight gained is that you do not understand your players as human beings rather than statistics. As a player, I tend to want more options, not fewer. I do not like having options removed without reasons, and I do not view gaslighting as valid reasons either.

 

Your claim about shared tagging as some kind of panacea is also not on point. While it has helped some of the kill quests, there remain mobs for which it does not work. It also does nothing to help with interactive objects. It definitely does not alleviate the problem that less is less. Telling me I should be happy because you provided a partial solution to the shoe-horning problem you created is neither useful nor appreciated.

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Umm, I have run several dailies and weeklies and not a single Noble Decurion Distribution Chest has given me an upgrade. All I get is exactly what I already have. Went through the process to get a 326 Autocannon. Opened a chest, got a 326 Autocannon even though I still have 320 armor. Opened a chest and got more 320 armor. Not one upgrade after countless chests..

 

 

 

Distribution chests do not give you direct upgrades from your current item rating. So if it drops a mainhand and the mainhand you currently have equipped is 326, the box isn't going to drop anything higher than 326

 

The boxes that say requisition instead of distribution are direct upgrades and will drop something that has a higher item rating than what you have equipped for whatever specific piece drops from the chest.

Edited by Darth_Xyphos
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While you're at it, how about you finally after all these years fix camera suddenly moving to look up at the ceiling? I am so sick of this happening several times during a session. 3 computer, 2 news computer build, 2 different mice, and 2 of the same mouse. Fix this already
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Hello Keith, thank you for the update. The post was well-structured, and despite many of the negative replies, I found it to be informative and, at the very least, truthful about the state of the game post 7.0's release. However, with this most recent post, I do have a question that I haven't seen addressed anywhere.

 

With 7.0.1's release slated for March 22nd, when do you intend to release the 7.1 update with the Manaan daily area, the operation, and weapons in outfit slots? Are these things delayed yet again, or is the update still on track to being released in the month after the 7.0 expansion, as was suggested in previous dev posts?

 

Thank you for taking the time.

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For Daily missions, we have Weekly mission wrappers ('do 6 dailies') for each area, which are the delivery method for larger rewards. These weekly missions are only available when the rewards are available, which is if they are featured that week. However all of the dailies associated with these missions are still available at all times, and still reward items relevant to gearing or upgrading gear, just at a slower rate than the featured content.

 

All of that boils down to featured content is about aligning different reward tracks such as conquest and Galactic Seasons, plus mixing up content with short and long completion times together to prevent some of the issues that awarding all content equally brought to the table in the 6.0 era.

 

Honestly I think it's fine if certain weeklies are featured for different weeks, same with the heroics. Problem is that by restricting the ones we can do, that also restricts the conquest points we can earn on any given character, and with conquest objectives tied to legacy rather than character and the personal conquest target being raised to 100k (which again, is fine if it's done right) it makes everything more grindy and significantly less fun.

 

Part of the draw for me and many of the people I know who play this game is having a lot of alts. I like hitting conquest on all my alts by doing a lot of different content with each of them, not just because I find it to be an enjoyable way to spend my time, but also to help the guild I'm in. By making the target 100k and limiting the content I can get a good amount of cq points for, I feel obligated to spend my time doing content that I really do not want to do.

 

I get that that maybe wasn't the point you were making, and that you were talking about the gear rewards. I get that.

 

But as a person who loves this game, I feel obligated to voice that the current direction- the swinging in the entirely opposite direction of "play your way"- feels grindy, unenjoyable, tedious, and more like sitting down to work than like sitting down to play a game I love.

 

It's fine if you want to limit the gear rewards to only the featured content for the week.

 

I don't necessarily agree, but I'm also not a game developer so I won't try to figure out of the logic behind it.

 

But I do ask that you keep in mind that a lot of the weekly areas may not be accessible to all players. If I have a character who's boosted since I've played long enough to not always feel like leveling from the ground up, but story-wise still at the beginning of the game, I can't do Ossus or Onderon or any of the later weeklies that might be featured. If I haven't done the introduction to Oricon, then I can't do the Oricon weekly on that character. And in that way, we're a lot more limited now than you seem to realize, and are funneled into the content that's "always" available like heroics and the like, that have also been heavily nerfed in terms of conquest point gain.

 

An easy fix would be to tie the conquest point rewards to character, which would mean that the content could be played again on a different character for that same day, and still be given something more than a measly less than 1k conquest points per mission.

 

Another possible way to make it feel actually worth it beyond the upgrade currency & gear rewards would be to raise the conquest point gain for the featured weeklies. So if you'd originally get 10k for the CZ-198 weekly with max stronghold bonus, perhaps, if the area is featured that week, double or triple that. Same for the kill x amount of enemies on a featured planet, maybe boost the conquest point gains for that too, while keeping it the same as usual on non-featured planets. If a planet's heroics are in the weeklies for a week, give a conquest point reward for completing all of them, on the same level as the other more traditional weekly areas. Say if I do the five required to finish Belsavis, I get a decent chunk of conquest points for completing all of them for example.

 

TL;DR- It's fine if limiting gear and currency rewards is part of the point of the saga of the rotating weeklies. What isn't fine is that it currently feels like something I should be paid to do, not something I should pay to do, which is how I- and honestly a lot of other people too, it seems like- feel. Please consider ways of fixing that so I and many others can go back to actually enjoying the game with both our mains and our alts, rather than feeling like we need to delete our alts to not feel overwhelmed by the amount of work we have to do for something that doesn't even really feel like a reward.

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For example, during our first 72 hours, we identified critical bugs such as the issues with keybinding resets, empty gear boxes, and combat styles on characters not displaying properly and we corrected them all.

 

I'm just gonna call the thing I highlighted on bold being false.

My Thystian gear boxes on some of my characters are still giving my no gear whatsoever.

 

Why are you still lying to your playerbase?

 

Better yet, the fact that there's no apology on how 7.0 launched just proves how completely disconnected you are from the people that actually play the game because I doubt you have anyone in the development team that actually plays the game that would justify it's state.

 

The fundamental refactoring of all abilities and Advanced Classes into Combat Styles, the addition of the long-requested Loadouts feature, and the beginnings of new UI/UX and Itemization constitute the most significant systemic changes made to SWTOR since launch. These are only the first steps toward the ambitious and inspiring vision we have for SWTOR's future. We are excited to continue bringing this vision to life in the ongoing updates and additions coming to the game this year and beyond.

 

So you're basically saying you're staying your course, with the over-complicating of the gear system and continuing to change systems we didn't ask to be changed, while messing up existing systems? Because if this is what that means, then it only shows how disconnected you are.

Edited by SolaireSandworm
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Three things to improve 7.0 from my perspective as a story and alt leveling and some fp player. 1. on pts the new 7.0 originally the new ui made me so nauseous i was literally unable to play the pts and test anything. so reverting all the ui changes to the 6.0 would be a great improvement the 6.0 was still a massive downgrade of the ui but it would at least not make people unwell and it would be more functional and useful. 2. remove the rotation for flashpoints etc it is a stupid change that prevents me from playing fp's i want to. Also i loved spamming hammer station over and over outside its easyness it was one of the few that didn't feel annyoing in many ways while traversing through it so being able to spam it was great cus it gave you the option to not have to repeat one of the dungeons u hated over and over. 3. whatever else feedback you will get on the working of sets. you must make an exception for the xp set in terms of set bonuses not working above 75. but then 7.0 launch showed you ignore feedback and pts testing feedback info as much as some people ignore the truth. which had been obvious for a long time already but 7.0 has proved it definitively. which was the last thing we expected to be proven with 7.0 in addition to horrible and or idiotic changes that player said we don't want or tried to warn wasnt gonna work on pts you still implemented load of changes nobody wanted or needed. and as such has massivly downgrade the quality of the game in all aspects for all players. if you want to know how badly messed up 7.0 is i rarely post stuff on the forums and this is probably my longest post ever.

p.s. another idiotic change is the auto removal of the heroics and weekly quests etc upon reset times.

Edited by Jevnaker
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That's a catchy name. I'll discuss with Charles, but not sure he'll buy into it. In the meantime, we'll just use 7.0.1 for the bug patch update. Which reminds me, it's worth noting that 200+ bug fixes may not be reflected as 200+ patch notes. I mentioned player facing earlier and that simply means the ones a player might encounter. All of these would be in the patch notes.

 

We also have other issues we fix you may never see/experience, but those are included and picked up during our build process. For example, an internal tool adjustment, or a server side change.

 

Keith, are you going to fix the bug that has my 10 y/o Immortal Jugg locked out of his primary and locked into his secondary (Darkness Assassin)? Secondly, a new bug "not receiving guild conquest rewards" even when personal conquest is completed and annotated in the guild logs.

 

Right now, I'm sidelining all my characters from participating in Conquest because of this bug unless I'm doing the 'Legendary Implant Technology Mission.' Conversely, I am putting aside my Immortal Jugg...Darkness Assassin until the issue with Combat Styles is fix. Furthermore, I won't be using Combat Styles until I am assured that this bug is fixed permanently.

 

So, will these be addressed in 7.0.1 or not?

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