Game Update 7.2.1 coming March 28th!

[LD_Little_Dragon]

1 minute ago, FlameYOL said:

Level 70 and level 75 players will not have the gear and stats needed to hit enemies, hell level 70s couldn't even hit level 80 enemies.

They have bolster for the veteran flashpoints, and story mode operations are not much harder than those (they're way easier than MM fp that's for sure).

I don't know how hard it would be to add a bolster to the operations, but if it's a simple matter then why not do it?   Plenty of players will be getting to the point in the storyline where the earlier operations fit in well before they actually reach level 80.

[FlameYOL]

21 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

They have bolster for the veteran flashpoints, and story mode operations are not much harder than those (they're way easier than MM fp that's for sure).

I don't know how hard it would be to add a bolster to the operations, but if it's a simple matter then why not do it?   Plenty of players will be getting to the point in the storyline where the earlier operations fit in well before they actually reach level 80.

The bolster only boosts stats, it doesn't give you the skills or passives that leveling up normally does. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

3 hours ago, FlameYOL said:

The bolster only boosts stats, it doesn't give you the skills or passives that leveling up normally does. 

I am aware of that, that's why the what vet fp players can queue for are limited by level.

They could do the same thing for operations.  It's pretty much only R4 now that you would have to limit to level 80s.  All story-mode ops have been nerfed so much that anyone level 70 or higher could easily do them if they were boosted (level 50s would probably be fine too).  Even Dxun was nerfed to be faceroll easy.

[FlameYOL]

1 hour ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

I am aware of that, that's why the what vet fp players can queue for are limited by level.

They could do the same thing for operations.  It's pretty much only R4 now that you would have to limit to level 80s.  All story-mode ops have been nerfed so much that anyone level 70 or higher could easily do them if they were boosted (level 50s would probably be fine too).  Even Dxun was nerfed to be faceroll easy.

I'd rather not go through content with players who don't even have their full rotation yet. 

[Ardrossan]

On 3/28/2023 at 8:34 AM, JackieKo said:

If you try to pull credit from the mail, only the amount that will cap you can get pulled from it. The UI does not refresh until you close/reopen the mail. F2P and Preferred accounts will still have their credit caps in place and will never be able to hold more than 1 million credits. The email will eventually expire, so you will need to keep an eye on it.

Yup! All details here: https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20230324

So, preferred can't use escrow to go above the credit cap anymore, i.e the entire reason escrows were made in the first place? I assume this is another attempt by BW to 'fix' the economy by doing the complete opposite, limiting the number of buyers and sellers at the GTN?

What frustrates me the most is that as usual BW made no mention of this in patchnotes, it's a stealth nerf that completely changes something that has been part of the preferred / F2P experience for years. 

I'm done, and I don't say that lightly, have never said it before. I'm sick of this studio taking its players for granted and making stupid, short sighted changes no one asked for. @JackieKo you lost a player and a sub who has been here since January 2013 because of this change. 

[Ardrossan]

On 3/28/2023 at 11:35 AM, remylion said:

this could work out for preferred players in the long run. They can now keep withdrawing 1 million at a time from mail and depositing that 1 million into the legacy bank until they withdraw all the credits in the mail. Previously it just deleted the excess credits once you hit the personal credit cap.

 This change kills the ability for preferred to trade competitively on the GTN, it has ZERO benefits for non-subs, and it won't do a thing to help the economy either.

Is there a single thing in this game that you criticize? For a new player you're reaching historic levels of white knighting every bad decision Bioware's made.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Ardrossan

[remylion]

1 minute ago, Ardrossan said:

Damn you really are Eric Musco's alt account aren't you? An equal opportunity shill. This change kills the ability for preferred to trade competitively on the GTN, it has ZERO benefits for non-subs, and it won't do a thing to help the economy either.

^ LOL

yeah, I'm an alt account from a developer who has nothing better to do than post on the forums. lol

[Ardrossan]

16 minutes ago, remylion said:

^ LOL

yeah, I'm an alt account from a developer who has nothing better to do than post on the forums. lol

He's not a "developer", he has no training whatsoever in game design.
 

But yes, never assume that it's an alt account when the reality is that some fans can't wait to leap to bioware's defense for everything and invent rationalizations for them.

I can't wait for you to keep commenting on something I edited out rather than actually speak to the main point I made: is there any decision Bioware's made, ever, that you're critical of? Or at least unwilling to defend to the death the way you have the QT tax?

Edited April 3, 2023 by Ardrossan

[remylion]

11 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

He's not a "developer", he has no training whatsoever in game design.
 

But yes, never assume that it's an alt account when the reality is that some fans can't wait to leap to bioware's defense for everything and invent rationalizations for them.

so you can't fathom why, in a credit economy suffering hyper-inflation where a single Cartel Market set can easily sell for 1 billion credits on the GTN, it is beneficial for credits to not self delete once a character goes past their character credit limit when withdrawing GTN sales from the mail box.

I can write a step by step for you if you need but I assumed most people could understand that credits deleting themselves after the character credit limit is a bad thing.

Edited April 3, 2023 by remylion

[DWho]

So do the mails get deleted after 30 days like they did before. Lots of people lost items and credits from GTN sales because they didn't pull them out of the mail before it auto-deleted

[Ardrossan]

8 minutes ago, remylion said:

so you can't fathom why, in a credit economy suffering hyper-inflation where a single Cartel Market set can easily sell for 1 billion credits on the GTN, it is beneficial for credits to not self delete once a character goes past their character credit limit when withdrawing GTN sales from the mail box.

I can write a step by step for you if you need but I assumed most people could understand that credits deleting themselves after the character credit limit is a bad thing.

Few people reach a 4.29 billion credit limit. I certainly never have. That is not the purpose of this change, that is a smoke screen you invented to rationalize the decision. The purpose is to keep F2P and preferred from being able to trade on the GTN and to use escrows the way they have been intended since their inception.

This is even worse than the QT tax and has a much more significant impact, but because preferred and F2P can't post on this snobbish forum there's hardly anything being said about it. If I hadn't been randomly checking threads I wouldn't have even seen it.  

Edited April 3, 2023 by Ardrossan

[remylion]

2 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Few people reach a 4.29 billion credit limit. I certainly never have. That is not the purpose of this change, that is a smoke screen you invented to rationalize the decision. The purpose is to keep F2P and preferred from being able to trade on the GTN and to use escrows the way they have been intended since their inception. 

so credits not deleting themselves once you go over the 4,294,967,294 isn't useful?

ok, I mean if you haven't hit the 4,294,967,294 credit limit I'm sure no one else has...

[remylion]

2 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Let's make this easy. @remylion have you ever been preferred? Do you plan to be in the near future?

Because if the answer is anything except 'yes', then you have no business defending these changes or acting like you give a crap about preferred players. I on the other hand am frequently preferred and will be going down in a few days, so whereas for you this topic, like every other topic, is just a way for you to fellate the studio, for me and many preferred, the result it that it will keep us out of the player economy permanently. 

Seriously, you are not required to inject your ignorant, smug opinions into every topic. 

I started out FTP.

[Ardrossan]

On 4/3/2023 at 3:13 PM, remylion said:

I started out FTP.

I asked if you had been preferred or were going to be in the future. I don't care what you started as, if you are not affected by these changes then your opinion on the subject is meaningless. I on the other hand am affected, or would have been if this had been true.

I tested it for myself and it still works the way it always has: you get credits from mail up to the F2P/preferred cap (1M) and the rest goes into escrow, if you then use an escrow, it will raise your cap by 50k, 150k or 600k (and escrows stack) until you spend it. In other words, the claim below is wrong. 

To be clear, if it had actually worked this way, it would have been catastrophic to the quality of life of preferred and F2P and it would have done nothing to fix inflation, serving only to lock F2P players out of the GTN market. It would have made escrows worthless, and they're already not very good given the piddling amounts they let you take out. All to catch a few exploiters smh. Fix the exploit and punish those responsible, not EVERYBODY. 

On 3/28/2023 at 8:34 AM, JackieKo said:

If you try to pull credit from the mail, only the amount that will cap you can get pulled from it. The UI does not refresh until you close/reopen the mail. F2P and Preferred accounts will still have their credit caps in place and will never be able to hold more than 1 million credits. The email will eventually expire, so you will need to keep an eye on it.

Yup! All details here: https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20230324

[remylion]

2 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

I asked if you had been preferred or were going to be in the future. I don't care what you started as, if you are not affected by these changes then your opinion on the subject is meaningless. I on the other hand am affected, or would have been if this had been true.

I tested it for myself and it still works the way it always has: you get credits from mail up to the F2P/preferred cap (1M) and the rest goes into escrow, if you then use an escrow, it will raise your cap by 50k, 150k or 600k (and escrows stack) until you spend it. In other words, the claim below is wrong. 

To be clear, if it had actually worked this way, it would have been catastrophic to the quality of life of preferred and F2P and it would have done nothing to fix inflation, serving only to lock F2P players out of the GTN market. It would have made escrows worthless, and they're already not very good given the piddling amounts they let you take out. All to catch a few exploiters smh. Fix the exploit and punish those responsible, not EVERYBODY. 

I'm sure I'll hit preferred status when I end my subscription though. But uh... considering I won't be paying money to play SWTOR, I don't expect to have full access like I do when I pay... the uh... subscription.

You don't expect to have full access to everything you do while subscribed when you stop paying your subscription do you?

I'm new but I'll share a couple of tips I read on the SWTOR discord about trading while preferred.

Have a friend set up multiple 1 million credit junk items on the GTN to fufill a purchase. When you buy those items they will turn around and buy the item you want for and mail it to you. You might be able to directly trade 1 million at a time as preferred, I'm not fully versed on trade window restrictions as a preferred player.

Use OEMs and RPMs to trade. Though you can only do this if you are high enough to obtain Tech Fragments. Tech Fragments are an end game currency you can get through unlimited PvP and GSF (?) along with running certain Operations which are end game raids.

I don't craft so I just sell the OEMs and RPMs on the GTN but I have heard some traders will accept these en lieu of currency to buy items off the GTN for people.

Edited April 7, 2023 by remylion

[Ardrossan]

3 hours ago, remylion said:

I'm sure I'll hit preferred status when I end my subscription though. But uh... considering I won't be paying money to play SWTOR, I don't expect to have full access like I do when I pay... the uh... subscription.

You don't expect to have full access to everything you do while subscribed when you stop paying your subscription do you?

Dude, I've been playing this game since 2013 and preferred for much of that time, and I'll thank you not to tell me how the game works or what "full access" means. "full access" has nothing to do with how escrows work, which have been in the game for eight years. smh 

The rest of your post has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. 

You can keep white knighting for the devs, but not only will they not reward you for it, they are more likely to do the opposite of what you presume they want. Again, that is something you learn with experience. 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Ardrossan

[remylion]

27 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

Dude, I've been playing this game since 2013 and preferred for much of that time, and I'll thank you not to tell me how the game works or what "full access" means. "full access" has nothing to do with how escrows work, which have been in the game for eight years. smh 

The rest of your post has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. 

You can keep white knighting for the devs, but not only will they not reward you for it, they are more likely to do the opposite of what you presume they want. Again, that is something you learn with experience. 

I'll be shocked if the devs even read more than the first page of responses to their own posts asking for player feedback.

You just seem like a new player with a lot of complaints that quick travel fees are too expensive and being preferred is too limiting.

Edited April 7, 2023 by remylion

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

5 hours ago, Ardrossan said:

I tested it for myself and it still works the way it always has: you get credits from mail up to the F2P/preferred cap (1M) and the rest goes into escrow, if you then use an escrow, it will raise your cap by 50k, 150k or 600k (and escrows stack) until you spend it. In other words, the claim below is wrong. 

To be clear, if it had actually worked this way, it would have been catastrophic to the quality of life of preferred and F2P and it would have done nothing to fix inflation, serving only to lock F2P players out of the GTN market. It would have made escrows worthless, and they're already not very good given the piddling amounts they let you take out. All to catch a few exploiters smh. Fix the exploit and punish those responsible, not EVERYBODY. 

 

So, to be clear, your concern was that not having all of the excess credits from a GTN sale go to escrow would prevent you from having those credits in escrow to then use an escrow transfer to go over the cap and make >1m purchases?

 

Is it not possible to cause credits to go to escrow in other ways? For instance, can you not take credits from your legacy bay, go buy some item off a vendor, then take more credits out of your legacy bay and sell the item back to go over the cap? Easiest example would be the new adaptive gear they added on the planets. I don't know if those are F2P/Preferred accessible in the first place without artifact authorization, but assuming they are, you pull out 1m, pop out to Coruscant or wherever, buy 5 pieces of that armor, go back to your SH, pull out 1m credits again, and then refund those 5 pieces. Unless the game just doesn't allow you to sell to vendors when you're at the credit cap (been way too long for me, so I have no clue, but that'd be awful design due to the issues it'd cause with inventory management) that should place 1m in your escrow. Repeat as needed.

 

Assuming that works, this change would have been a win for F2P/Preferred if it worked as expected, since you'd have finer control over what goes into your escrow. Sure, that process is complicated, but you then have free access to more of your credits (since you could then sell for more than 1m on the GTN without it all going to escrow automatically) and thus can more easily control when you want to use the escrow via escrow transfers. That should be a good thing.

 

If you're using escrow transfers on a regular enough basis such that even a workaround like I mentioned above would be unworkable for you, that seems like a waste of money to me. You'd be better off holding off on those purchases until you can sub (or having a friend make them and trade them credits from your legacy bay). An escrow transfer is, at best, 240CC for 600k, you're not getting far with that without probably spending money on CCs, at which point you'd be better off subbing for a one off month and making all the purchases you want during that month. It's your money (and CC), so ultimately you can do whatever you want with it, but I feel like this change would have been a better deal overall for F2P/Preferred even with that in mind.

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, The-Kaitou-Kid said:

 

So, to be clear, your concern was that not having all of the excess credits from a GTN sale go to escrow would prevent you from having those credits in escrow to then use an escrow transfer to go over the cap and make >1m purchases?

 

Is it not possible to cause credits to go to escrow in other ways? For instance, can you not take credits from your legacy bay, go buy some item off a vendor, then take more credits out of your legacy bay and sell the item back to go over the cap? Easiest example would be the new adaptive gear they added on the planets. I don't know if those are F2P/Preferred accessible in the first place without artifact authorization, but assuming they are, you pull out 1m, pop out to Coruscant or wherever, buy 5 pieces of that armor, go back to your SH, pull out 1m credits again, and then refund those 5 pieces. Unless the game just doesn't allow you to sell to vendors when you're at the credit cap (been way too long for me, so I have no clue, but that'd be awful design due to the issues it'd cause with inventory management) that should place 1m in your escrow. Repeat as needed.

 

Assuming that works, this change would have been a win for F2P/Preferred if it worked as expected, since you'd have finer control over what goes into your escrow. Sure, that process is complicated, but you then have free access to more of your credits (since you could then sell for more than 1m on the GTN without it all going to escrow automatically) and thus can more easily control when you want to use the escrow via escrow transfers. That should be a good thing.

 

If you're using escrow transfers on a regular enough basis such that even a workaround like I mentioned above would be unworkable for you, that seems like a waste of money to me. You'd be better off holding off on those purchases until you can sub (or having a friend make them and trade them credits from your legacy bay). An escrow transfer is, at best, 240CC for 600k, you're not getting far with that without probably spending money on CCs, at which point you'd be better off subbing for a one off month and making all the purchases you want during that month. It's your money (and CC), so ultimately you can do whatever you want with it, but I feel like this change would have been a better deal overall for F2P/Preferred even with that in mind.

If I sell one of those OEMs for ~160M, that goes into escrow and I can save it up for when I resub. If I go by the way it was made out to work, then I only get 1M out of that sale and the rest stays in the email, and I have to laboriously transfer 1M at a time to legacy storage. To say that it's 'complicated' would be a ridiculous understatement. As others have mentioned, very few would do that or prefer it to the current system. The reality is that I simply wouldn't sell anything on the GTN ever again unless the item was only worth 1M.

The other ideas you mentioned are also complicated and time consuming, no thanks. Why don't you make a F2P account for yourself and try doing some of these ideas and see if they work. See how enjoyable it would be to do it your way. And then you would actually have some basis to compare to the current system, rather than, like this other poster, making assumptions about being preferred that would not affect you if said ideas were implemented. 

Escrows transfers stack, meaning you can have a bunch of 600k escrows to take out as much as you want. It's still not a lot, that's a flaw in the system, but the flaw was there from the getgo. A better system would have been to allow players to specify how much they need to take out at one time and then correspondingly raise the price of the consumable to 1000CC, which would put it in line with other CM consumables. As it is, I only buy escrows when I sub and only from the GTN. 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Ardrossan

[Ardrossan]

1 hour ago, remylion said:

I'll be shocked if the devs even read more than the first page of responses to their own posts asking for player feedback.

You just seem like a new player with a lot of complaints that quick travel fees are too expensive and being preferred is too limiting.

To clarify, I--and every other player posting about this--have pointed out that the QT fee will not fix inflation. That is the purpose of the criticisms regardless of how many times you and others strawman it as wanting stuff for free. It's not expensive to me, it's nothing to me. It might be expensive to new players who don't play the GTN like you do. Preferred is not 'too limiting', it's okay the way it is. I am arguing against bioware making changes to it that would be a big step backwards from the current system.

Yes, Bioware doesn't read feedback--including yours. You've been here for a month and I would be surprised if you lasted a year. 

[remylion]

4 minutes ago, Ardrossan said:

To clarify, I--and every other player posting about this--have pointed out that the QT fee will not fix inflation. That is the purpose of the criticisms regardless of how many times you and others strawman it as wanting stuff for free. It's not expensive to me, it's nothing to me. It might be expensive to new players who don't play the GTN like you do. Preferred is not 'too limiting', it's okay the way it is. I am arguing against bioware making changes to it that would be a big step backwards from the current system.

Yes, Bioware doesn't read feedback--including yours. You've been here for a month and I would be surprised if you lasted a year. 

I don't think anyone here is claiming credit sinks single-handedly fix years of hyper-inflation over night.

I'll link the devs quote.

  

On 2/9/2023 at 10:29 AM, JackieKo said:

Hi everyone, 

This is a follow up to the information we released in the Game Update 7.2.1 PTS blog post. ICYMI, 7.2.1 will be introducing initiatives to combat the inflation that is present in the game. We’ve seen conversations surrounding this topic, and we share similar sentiment to the concerns about the game’s economy. This will be an ongoing initiative that will be rolled out over several updates as we want to slowly introduce these new changes and give players time to adjust and also provide opportunities to give us feedback. 

We understand that there is demand to fix things now, but we are taking special care to introduce these measures over time as correcting the economy is not something that can be done overnight. Immediate implementation can have the opposite effect and potentially crash the economy instead. 

We have been identifying key areas where improvements and changes can be made, and weighing how these will impact both the player experience and the economy. Our general economic balancing goals are as follows: 

• Reduce tax/credit cost avoidance
• Reintroduce credit sinks as some were removed in the past
• Adjust inflow in certain repeatable content
• Use these changes as opportunities to improve the experience while also reducing credits
• Monitor how these changes impact the economy over time and adjust accordingly if needed

With the 7.2.1 PTS opening soon, players will be able to see the following adjustments:

• Quick Travel now has a credit cost associated, with a minimum cost of 100 credits and a maximum cost of 5000. The cost to travel is dependent on the distance traveled.
• Priority Transport Terminal now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between daily areas.
• Travel to Strongholds now costs the original planet travel costs to transfer between planets.
• Repair cost formulas have been adjusted across the entirety of the game so that repair costs increase in relation to item level.
• Durability of equipment should now be lost at a LOWER rate on death, but a slightly HIGHER rate in normal gameplay. 

We ask that players submit their feedback here after they have have experienced these changes on the PTS. General discussion should be kept to this thread. 

While we cannot give a definitive timeline on when the future changes will be deployed, you should expect to continue seeing more changes in future game updates. As always, we will communicate the finer details, the timeline in which these changes can be tested, and when they will go live. 

Thanks all! 

I trust these devs as much as I trust any developer which is very little, but since I only have about 30 days of history to go by, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Ardrossan]

2 minutes ago, remylion said:

I don't think anyone here is claiming credit sinks single-handedly fix years of hyper-inflation over night.

Yes you've said that too. I see we've reached the point in the discussion where we just go around and around in circles. Instead of just repeating what I've said before, I'll give you a quote that sums it up much better than I have, and possibly you'll read it and be informed, but if not, it's worth repeating for others' benefit:

On 3/16/2023 at 11:25 AM, ceryxp said:

Will this tax remove credits from the game?  Absolutely, they will get you either with the tax or the taxi.  Credits will trickle out over time, but this will not, and is not intended to, fix inflation.  This is a microstep.  Something that BW does all the time.  They take these small, almost imperscriptible steps so they can say they are doing something, so they can say they are going to move slowly, and make incremental changes, and then move so glacially slow that they never actually get to the next step before they change their mind and do something else.  How do we know?  Because BW only has two modes of action: go at a snail's pace or nuke it from orbit.  When they want to do nothing they make small, incremental changes.  When they actually want to change something they go so far overboard, so over the top, so big that it is a paradigm shift (and then often have to pull back, revamp, and redesign because they did not think it through in the first place).  This has been their standard operating procedure for years.

They say they want to do something about inflation, so they introduce these changes: new travel costs, increased repair bills, etc., and yet running Onderon dailies on the PTS, with these new travel costs and repair costs, I still earned a few hundred thousand credits.  Being charged to quick travel, being charged to travel to my stronghold (because that was, when I was on, still active on the PTS), being charged more to repair, and I still received a few hundred thousand credits for doing Onderon.

BW has no real interest in fixing inflation because in-game inflation drives people to purchase Cartel Coins and then purchase directly from the Cartel Market.  Or did someone actually believe BW when they said that they reduced the CC rewards in Season 3 because the free CC's from Season's 1 and 2 contributed to inflation.  Rubbish.  They reduced them because, and BW even stated this, people where maximizing their CC's gains by completing the seasons on multiple servers.  And that cut into Cartel Coin sales.

 

[DWho]

10 minutes ago, remylion said:

I trust these devs as much as I trust any developer which is very little, but since I only have about 30 days of history to go by, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Interesting that the Inventory unlock module is now "Featured" on the Cartel Market right after they slashed the credits new players will have to spare (Inventory management is a problem for new players and inventory unlocks are expensive credit wise). Must just be a coincidence.

[remylion]

4 minutes ago, DWho said:

Interesting that the Inventory unlock module is now "Featured" on the Cartel Market right after they slashed the credits new players will have to spare (Inventory management is a problem for new players and inventory unlocks are expensive credit wise). Must just be a coincidence.

what is that? I see the Flash Sale of Renowned Duelist, featured Wastland Tech, Mandalorian Nomad, Shipyard Decoration, Elite Raider Gafi stick, B2-k2 Blaster Rifle, Security Offic decoration, Master Datacron, and Hypercrate. I'm not seeing an inventory unlock module.

Link for reference https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/12ej04q/flash_sale_07_april_2023_renowned_duelist_armor/

[DWho]

7 minutes ago, remylion said:

what is that? I see the Flash Sale of Renowned Duelist, featured Wastland Tech, Mandalorian Nomad, Shipyard Decoration, Elite Raider Gafi stick, B2-k2 Blaster Rifle, Security Offic decoration, Master Datacron, and Hypercrate. I'm not seeing an inventory unlock module.

Link for reference https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/12ej04q/flash_sale_07_april_2023_renowned_duelist_armor/

They all just changed. It was there for a week