Upcoming Patch Schedule

[Skydawn]

On 3/14/2024 at 3:13 PM, EricMusco said:

The Conquest Change

This is surely the place we saw the most feedback here in the forums following the patch yesterday. First off, why did we even make this change? Well, this Objective is quite a bit outsized in just how many points you get relative to its effort. Not that we don’t want a range of Objectives, some of which can be completed very easily/quickly. But this Objective was a very large amount of points for what was required of you, and that’s why we ultimately nerfed it.

In connection to the first section is that although we lowered the points from this Conquest, our goal was to add in new objectives so that players who were jumping in for quick sessions and progression through Galactic Seasons, could then also be gaining Conquest points (the new Objectives focus on gaining GS levels).

Now, all of that being said, we definitely hear your feedback. We know that we hit this Objective pretty hard. And although it may have been needed to pull it into balance, we are actively discussing what adjustments we can make and I will let you know once I have those details.

But, Where was the Patch Note

Ok so before I peel back the curtain a little I want to get something out of the way, we didn’t try to hide any of this, it was just missed (I’ll tell you how in a minute). We know that a nerf like this is never fun and you having to discover it on your own adds so much more friction to the situation. But to be clear, any change that is player facing should be communicated to you, whether that is through patch notes, social media, forums, or some combination of all of the above. A change that affects you that is missed is never intentional. 

 

@EricMusco 

I'll counter your argument with one of my own that has been repeated ad nauseam for many years by community. If you feel the number of conquest points gained for rep was too high, many here have felt the increase to 100k for weekly was way too high as well. The rep reward was at least a manageable way to offset it. If you're going to get rid of it, then drop the CQ goal down to 50k or even 70k. It's a simple fix. One washes the other and you get rid of the "large number of points" that seemed to bother the devs so much all of a sudden, even though it caused zero harm to anyone.

This also helps with sustainability. The conquest system is unbalanced and has always only catered well toward PVP and GSF. There is not enough content to allow for small guild/group or solo play for subscribers with limited schedules, and every new change seems to give the message that those players are either not wanted or their opinions don't matter.

As for the patch notes issue - this is why you have a Public Test Server. This is a massive change to the amount of time it takes to reach CQ goal, which has been at this level for years now. Conquest runs everything now from gearing to guild progression which with every update becomes harder to do for people that have busy lives. I'm sorry, I can't believe for a minute there was no testing for this new patch and you simply forgot to include such a significant change in the patch notes. I'm glad you are hearing our feedback. I"m sorry you're starting on the backfoot from what we're used to with this game, but at this point, actions speak louder than words.

[tsteenburg]

To be fair, we are dealing with a team that has failed to fix a misaligned effect for temporary ability spawns for more than 2 years. They fixed it one patch and it was broken again by the next. 

 

I've said it in other context, but it really feels like the devs don't play they game, and the ones that do, purely play pvp and gsf (but mainly pvp). The entire ability pruning was about pvp "balance" and completely ignored the pve effects. And these changes feel like they continue to want to force more bait and fodder into pvp. 

 

The GS level objective should be infinitely repeatable. Or even make it just simply objective completion. The fact that gsf and pvp are the only ones with infinitely repeatable objectives in the current game at max level is beyond annoying. 

 

They talk about how they didn't like how people were spending a short time with many toons rather than just 1, but when conquest was easier, most multi-alt people would grind through the conquest in the first day or two, then spend the rest of the week on their mains doing the content they really wanted to do, whether it was fps, ops, pvp, or pushing through story. 

Edited March 17 by tsteenburg
typo

[VegaMist]

1 minute ago, tsteenburg said:

I've said it in other context, but it really feels like the devs don't play they game, and the ones that do, purely play pvp and gif (but mainly pvp). The entire ability pruning was about pvp "balance" and completely ignored the pve effects. And these changes feel like they continue to want to force more bait and fodder into pvp.

I doubt they play pvp either. Otherwise the bug of staying in combat while being in the dead zone - and as a result, being unable to heal (yes, sometimes you re-spawn with less than 100% health), stealth, or do anything else that requires one to be out of combat - would have been fixed ages ago.

[captainbladejk]

If they actually played as much as they want us to believe they would've realized that the pvp weeklys for starfighter and pvp matches pay out far far more points and people can literally afk it. Not that I want the pvp objectives nerfed because I'm glad those folks have something. But it's funny they'll whine about the rep thing paying out too much even though we had to actively engage with the game to get it done and get the token to start with, but sitting afk in a pvp match and doing nothing to get a full bar was okay. 

[TrixxieTriss]

4 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

and people can literally afk it.

Please remove this part, we don’t need to promote bad ideas that negatively affect PvP.

Ill delete this post once you’ve edited 😉

Edited March 18 by TrixxieTriss

[juliushorst]

3 hours ago, tsteenburg said:

To be fair, we are dealing with a team that has failed to fix a misaligned effect for temporary ability spawns for more than 2 years. They fixed it one patch and it was broken again by the next. 

I'm more forgiving when I see incompetence than I am when I see intentional malice.

 

56 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

If they actually played as much as they want us to believe they would've realized that the pvp weeklys for starfighter and pvp matches pay out far far more points and people can literally afk it.

GSF allows to kich someone who doesn't deal damage in some time (which is good but also discourages more strategic play).

[Kiafus]

I still can’t play since the last patch so I am here waiting for that I guess.

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Kiafus said:

I still can’t play since the last patch so I am here waiting for that I guess.

Fixing this problem for lot of players should be their number one priority at the moment & I really hope that it is. 

[captainbladejk]

5 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Please remove this part, we don’t need to promote bad ideas that negatively affect PvP.

I'm not deleting anything. I don't promote it either but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't happen either. Like it or not this is a discussion that's long overdue. 

[TrixxieTriss]

8 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

I'm not deleting anything. I don't promote it either but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't happen either. Like it or not this is a discussion that's long overdue. 

Well just know you will contribute to the issue by discussing it. Why do you think the devs never discuss exploits? Because just talking about will encourage some to do it. 

[oreom]

10 hours ago, Saeten said:

The only rational explanation is that the company doesn't give a crap about the player base and expected this reaction. "Never intentional" to not communicate is a flat out lie. This was their intent and decisive, whether planned or by dereliction of duty or by incompetence, it doesn't matter.  This is the state of their development or lack thereof.

I truly believe that BS do not care anymore. They're just here for maintenace mode of the game. They're gonna make changes without any regard of the playerbase and you just have to deal with it. The "patch" and problem it caused, how they're handling it shows that future updates will be like this too. "just suck it up and deal with it or go away"

[captainbladejk]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Well just know you will contribute to the issue by discussing it. Why do you think the devs never discuss exploits? Because just talking about will encourage some to do it. 

It's a jerk move but not an exploit. Even then you just prove my point for me that the devs don't listen. They've had how many years to combat AFK in pvp? Point still stands, I'm not going to walk on eggshells around people because they don't like facing the reality you can do literally nothing in pvp and get a full bar of conquest. Yet somehow I'm expected to believe my eating a rep token is a problem. Trying to blame me for someone abusing it is like trying to blame news reporters for bank robbery because they covered the story. If we're going to address issues with the game we may as well cover all the bases. 

[eabevella]

It's 2024, I don't need the devs to tell me about exploits to know them. They are so disconnected to the game that when they actually know about an exploit, it's already been known all over the dark side of the internet.

Not talking about the problem is just encourage them do do nothing.

Like they don't to PTS so they don't even have to pretend to test run their "updates".

[DawnAskham]

11 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

It's a jerk move but not an exploit. Even then you just prove my point for me that the devs don't listen. They've had how many years to combat AFK in pvp? Point still stands, I'm not going to walk on eggshells around people because they don't like facing the reality you can do literally nothing in pvp and get a full bar of conquest. Yet somehow I'm expected to believe my eating a rep token is a problem. Trying to blame me for someone abusing it is like trying to blame news reporters for bank robbery because they covered the story. If we're going to address issues with the game we may as well cover all the bases. 

Totally agree.

It is beyond ridiculous that almost all of the crafting stuff was removed (even in a week like this one where the overall conquest theme was originally based around crafting), while most solo PVE stuff was nerfed and also made once per day per legacy, while group PVE stuff (outside of crap no one cares to run like Uprisings) has also been nerfed or removed as well as made once per day per legacy.

Heck, Operations (which require a paid subscription by the way) don't even have a general weekly like everything else (e.g. complete n number of instances of d difficulty). Instead, we have the old specific named instance weeklies, which for some unknown reason now only include a few operations each week instead of all of them.

Sure, PVP and GSF may take time, but if I just cared about getting conquest, I could simply run SWTOR on the second screen and afk it while working / doing other things on my main screen, and not only that, but do so 24 / 7 as they have infinite repeatable objectives - which is just absurd.

Edited March 18 by DawnAskham

[Traceguy]

@EricMusco @JackieKo Where do we stand with 7.4.1b? Seeing as some players are unable to load the game, I feel like this should be critical priority. Continued community engagement is appreciated.

 

[wilkiealbert]

its not going to help us that got ripped off

 

[TrixxieTriss]

On 3/19/2024 at 11:43 AM, wilkiealbert said:

its not going to help us that got ripped off

 

But, how were you ripped off?

Edited March 20 by TrixxieTriss

[JamesDTea]

Hey i am going to jump into this forum It has been a week and still no fix for the people who can't log into the game. When are we getting that fix or are you just going to drag your feet about it and let most of the player base leave? This problem needs to be addressed now not later or i can see about of people asking for refunds for their accounts. Please stop worrying about stuff that was broken before the update and fix the stuff that broke with update the some of the player can't log in do to the bug you had in the patch.

[Trebor-droffig]

TrixxieTriss

 

how lets see you pay to play a game and your locked out of the game. after a week of a self pro-claimed moderator on bugs telling everyone to calm down and wait they say its gonna be on wensday for a fix..then its not..then its gonna be on thursday maybe we will maybe won't  see it ...its not looking very promising at this point ..when you pay for a service then don't provide that service thats called being ripped off

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Trebor-droffig said:

TrixxieTriss

 

how lets see you pay to play a game and your locked out of the game. after a week of a self pro-claimed moderator on bugs telling everyone to calm down and wait they say its gonna be on wensday for a fix..then its not..then its gonna be on thursday maybe we will maybe won't  see it ...its not looking very promising at this point ..when you pay for a service then don't provide that service thats called being ripped off

I was only asking them to be specific in their criticism. Saying “you’re ripped off” with zero context doesn’t help anyone. Not them, not other players who may have the same problem & not the devs to identify why they feel ripped off. 

If you look at all my posts for the past few weeks. You’ll see that I’ve been strongly advocating for BS to do something for players who can’t login or have been disqualified from getting free APAC transfers. So I think your rage is misdirected at me. 

[Trebor-droffig]

You asked why he felt ripped off..i told you ,it wasn't  "directed " at anyone simply stating the facts and a slight update now its gonna be next week sometime maybe ..you tell me how you would feel at this point..yes im very angry but not at you at the people who think people can afford to keep up with the joneses when it comes to new machines everytime they update the game, its a great game with awesome people to bad the company is dragging it down

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Trebor-droffig said:

You asked why he felt ripped off..i told you ,it wasn't  "directed " at anyone simply stating the facts and a slight update now its gonna be next week sometime maybe ..you tell me how you would feel at this point..yes im very angry but not at you at the people who think people can afford to keep up with the joneses when it comes to new machines everytime they update the game, its a great game with awesome people to bad the company is dragging it down

Highlighting my name in bold & underlining it sure looks like it was directed at me. 

[RadarOMalley]

On 3/15/2024 at 2:20 AM, Jedi_Max said:

Another problem is that you removed Galactic Season achievement that required reaching Legend in a season reputation track and added Blueprint Fragments achievement instead (1500 fragments) which is way too much to grind comparing to the previous achiev.

Old achiev could be done in ~10 weeks by doing 7 weeklies a week and the new achiev can be done only in 20 weeks by doing 7 weeklies a week, which is way too much. To get it inline with previous achiev, 1500 fragments should be reduced to 750 fragments.

This is not accurate. It would take 10 weeks to get to level 100 on the track, but 15 weeks to finish the Reputation track. Last week, just by doing regular content, I got to 100 fragments. Which if I keep that pace would put completion of that achievement at 15 weeks. It's would take the exact amount of time. 

[VegaMist]

Hi @JackieKo. Thank you for the patch notes - hope the patch goes smoothly. I saw the following "Fixed an abrupt player character transition during Koth’s date" and wanted to mention that there is also a weird transition happening during Theron's date. It's when they're already at the table ,and ,if I remember correctly, it happens after your character picks either 1st or 2nd answer from the wheel when it shows up. All of a sudden, camera angle makes it look like your character is at least half as large as Theron and is seating above the table.

Edited March 20 by VegaMist

[ARFett]

Instead of "balancing" things no one asked for and adjusting things no one asked for I would appreciate their energy put into CONTENT CREATION.

Besides:

The nerfs and especially the "credit initiative" is just hitting any new players hard as well as making long time players angry.

Instead of putting more screws on players be creative whith ways where people want to SPEND their money!

And slipping in severe conquest changes and then mumbling a dishonest "sorry" does not make me happy either.

It's just screwing over players for the sake of it.

As well as the massive changes for crafting, the total deletion of token drops and due to the stupid "loot only drops worthless shells which give NOTHING" which besides makes the Crew Mission Toolbox where you get only worthless SHELLS a total demotivation for players as well as just a money-burner without any kind of reward.

The whole package of changes only crushes any kind of player motivation as well as doing changes which were never asked for.

Edited March 20 by ARFett