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JediBoadicea

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  1. I haven't posted here since Broadsword took over so I don't know how well they've been trending in being responsive to forum suggestions, but I know that in the past the actual Suggestion Box forum was pretty much totally ignored and the only way to get any attention was to post here in General, so here I am! Strongholds are one of the few things that still get me excited in this game. (To each their own!) The fact that a SH is being used as a Seasons incentive now suggests what many of us have long assumed based on the frequency of decoration CM releases - that strongholds and decorations do make money for the game. Given that, it's years past time for strongholds to get some dev attention. Many of the issues called out in this forum post (and many others) from nearly five years ago are still unaddressed. But I've come back in the hope that at least ONE issue can be addressed soon: Please increase the stronghold cap! And, related: Please allow us to buy stronghold slots and duplicate copies of strongholds as a CC purchase! Regarding the stronghold cap: Some years back the cap was increased to 15 (it might be more now, it's hard to judge this with higher-than-cap numbers still potentially being grandfathered in for some users and no clear indication in the game UI of the cap). Since then, four more strongholds have been released, and Copero will make a 5th. I'm sure there are more on the way. Back when servers were merged, many of us had decorated strongholds on multiple servers, so when the merge happened all those SHs were (rightly!!!) preserved. After the merge, people had as many as 35 strongholds with zero performance issues. These were all in excess of the cap so in order to ever unlock any of the newly released strongholds we had to delete as many as 20+ strongholds we'd paid for and invested in. This was already really not cool, to say the least. (I had to do this myself, it was heart breaking to lose that work since layouts can't be saved.) But with every new stronghold released more and more people will hit the cap. The merge proved the game could sustain far more strongholds per player than we are being permitted. Please, please, please consider raising the cap by however much the team is willing to allow! It would be helpful if we could be told what the current cap actually is and what plans are to expand it (if any) since maybe this request is actually moot if the cap was secretly raised to like 50 or something, but we have no way to know that based on what can be seen in game. As it is right now, there's a chance that unless the cap is raised I can't even unlock a new SH, so what's my incentive to engage with the new Season? And in this same vein, the game continues to miss out on a golden revenue opportunity: Allow players to unlock duplicate copies of a stronghold as a CC purchase. Again, the merge already proved that we can have duplicate strongholds on an account, many of us still have them. Avid decorators are always going to want more stages to play out different ideas. Give stronghold slots a +slot unlock CM purchase just like you do for characters, and let people purchase duplicates of the same stronghold if they want them, up to whatever cap is ultimately implemented (and indicated just like the character slot cap is clearly indicated). That way the game gets more revenue (and not just from the unlock, but from all the decos people will want to acquire to fill the new SH), and the players who like to decorate aren't barred from the very reason they want to play the game by arbitrary caps. It's a win/win for everyone. Unfortunately those of us who had to delete strongholds we already had in order to get under previous caps will never be able to get that lost investment back without an option like this. Our money has already been deleted once (it took paying for server transfers and SH unlocks to get those duplicates when the servers merged) and it galls to have to pay it again, but I'd rather have the option than not!
  2. I understand wanting to push back against forum hyperbole, because it's pretty awful. But allow me to say, more respectfully than perhaps is warranted by the tone your post here strikes, that it sounds like you are lacking knowledge on the subject you're speaking about. Do you tell people with a serious food allergy to see a mental health therapist about their anxiety and just continue to eat the food they're allergic to? Because as ridiculous as that comparison sounds, it's pretty much what you're telling someone who suffers from ocular migraines or many other type of headaches (such as occipital neuralgia) or astigmatisms to do. You are effectively suggesting that those people go to an "expert" who has zero power to change the trigger in question in order to keep playing the game. Which, of course, will not in fact help them to continue playing the game at all, because no one's doctor can make Bioware change the UI, and modern medicine still does not know how to cure flipping migraines. Which someone familiar with migraines would already know. People have posted in many of the other topics on this issue with much more informative posts than I can offer. They've spoken to the specifics of UI design, the physiology of the human eye and the mechanics of human sight, color theory, and many other things. There are very specific reasons why this UI design, specifically in the inventory window, is causing people trouble. This is not about "oh noes it's different from what I'm used to and I cannot cope with change!" I too get very frustrated with the almost hypochondriac tone you can get out of people complaining about their maladies on the internet. We can't definitively parse truth from exaggeration (and there is a lot of exaggeration) on these forums any more than we can anywhere else where people can post truth or lies or sympathy-seeking rambles freely. So, forced as we are to take the complaints at face value, it's only right to note that people are claiming serious negative side effects to this change. And here's my sticking point: The change to the UI that is causing this trouble is cosmetic, and it wasn't addressing anything that was actually broken. It's not going to impact game mechanics. Changing it back to something more similar to the previous visual design (rounded corners, textured background, different border color, adjusting the black space to prevent optical illusion, all sorts of things) won't affect those who aren't negatively impacted in the slightest way whatsoever. But it will help people who can no longer comfortably engage with the interface, and who may be prevented from playing the game because of it. Not because they don't like the game, not because they don't want to play, but because they now can't. If you are not a migraine sufferer whose migraines can be triggered by visual triggers, I am happy for you, and you should count yourself fortunate. But if you aren't, then I respectfully request that you understand that you do not have the experience required to dismiss the claims people are making as invalid. A migraine can be triggered in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes even far less. Depending on how severe the person's susceptibility to migraines is, it can sincerely take days to fully recover. We learn to work very hard to avoid things that might trigger a migraine, but we can't control our environment at all times. And in fact no, the current UI design is not at all the same as a blank page on your word processor. A blank page on my word processor does not create optical illusions, for one (even people who won't have a headache triggered by it can report seeing those phantom dots at the intersections of the inventory boxes). It is not about brightness alone. If anyone actually cares enough about the question to pass judgements, then I should hope they are also actually reading the posts they are disparaging. If they were, then they might have seen the many posts where people were explaining the elements that are at fault. I do hope Bioware considers adjusting the inventory UI. As I've said elsewhere, I don't care if they changed up menus, I don't care if they changed the grid shape, I don't care if they made things different from what I'm used to. All of those things, I can get used to all over again with the simple passage of time. But I can now no longer actually use the inventory screen without risking a migraine, not even for short periods of time, and inventory management - in a game where the need for two separate cargo holds with six tabs each in it was recognized - is not something people spend only a "short period of time" on. They could leave all of the new menus just as is (including inventory where it's now connected to the character screen) and I personally wouldn't care, as long as they revert just the stand-alone inventory and cargo holds. Anyway, that is my hope. Others will disagree. But if they're disagreeing just because they don't want to believe those of us who are reporting a different experience than they are, then I would ask them to recognize their own good fortune rather than trying to say the rest of us are crazy.
  3. Thank you so much for this post. Very information and I hope the team gives it thought. I typically don't like piling onto angry posts on the forums, since I think the devs get a lot of hate and hyperbole thrown their way and people need to remember to be kind, but on this topic I really feel they need to understand that this isn't about entitled gamers just not liking change, this is about a design choice that is quite literally making it difficult for many players to even look at their screens. I have honestly been taken aback by how disorienting it really is to me. The UI wasn't broken. It worked absolutely fine. By all means change the inventory grid to 8x10 to make it fit next to the character screen, that's minor. By all means give us new menus, move things from one menu to the next to accommodate new features. All of that makes sense, and some of it is legitimately useful. But please, please consider reversing the graphic design elements that are physically making it harder for many to play. These were completely arbitrary, there was no need to change the visual look at all, it felt like a superfluous and superficial change made to masquerade as a substantive change/upgrade. Let the content speak for itself, and please don't "fix" what's not broken. This and the genuine now and newly broken functionality to the preview screen is sucking my enthusiasm out of exploring the actual new content, since the interface manages, you know, how I interface with the game. It's worth noting that many of the same elements that are causing some players physical discomfort or pain are also the ones that are creating simpler annoyances for other players - the ridiculously bright cyan borders making it almost impossible to see the bright white outline that is supposed to tell us something is selected, or making it difficult to distinguish junk (gray) items in inventory. The perfectly square boxes, the lack of background texture, all of it is causing inconvenience and annoyance for some, and the exact same things are causing outright pain for others. I know it's probably not a simple fix to revert these changes. But the fact that these things were called out during PTS makes it feel all the more egregious and warranted. I do hope it's not just left ignored in the hope we'll stop mentioning it. I'm trying to find reasons to stay interested in this game into which I have invested many years of my life and much enthusiasm, but this unfortunately is not helping. I would even accept that the "inventory" which pops up as connected to the Character screen remain as it is now if that's all one piece and can't be adjusted without breaking the bigger whole. But when we open Inventory directly by itself, or our Cargo Holds, perhaps that could revert back to the old UI? At least then I would have the option of a safe mode in which to do inventory management.
  4. I have to speak up as another migraine sufferer and say that the new inventory is extremely difficult to deal with, and left me feeling pretty dizzy. I stopped playing before it got too bad, but that is absolutely not something I want to find myself having to do. I get why they changed the inventory to a taller grid, it's not hard to see why - they wanted it to be connected when you open the character panel, and you couldn't do that with the previous 10x8 grid. I don't like it, but whatever, I could get used to that, that's just about the shape we're accustomed to seeing, and I get the reason. But the removal of contrast that used to exist by virtue of the texturing that used to exist inside the inventory boxes, and the new perfectly square boxes, are painful. The phantom "circles" I see between the boxes are absolutely migraine-triggering. And I don't think this is a small issue, because absolutely anyone who plays or works on an MMO knows that players can spend a lot of time on inventory management. That is a huge deal. We have multiple tabs in multiple cargo holds specifically because we knew there was a demand for people to manage enormous inventory. That's not just an occasional thing, that's staple MMO activity. So I don't think it's right to say that this is just an annoyance we can hand-wave off like we do a quest menu or something. No one spends much time looking at quest menus, just a few seconds and you're done. But we absolutely DO spend HOURS staring at inventory. I sincerely hope that this can be addressed, for both player inventory and cargo holds. I don't care if you leave the grid as a 8x10, but please, please make it easier to actually look at. If this is an accessibility thing, please give us a toggle option for one or the other. I know that's probably a much bigger ask than it sounds like. But I think it's genuinely a worthwhile investment of resources.
  5. Exactly this. In fact one could argue that model started with the Umbara FP, it's just that one only had four decos, one per boss. But it was with Traitor/Copero that they introduced 12-25 decos per FP with a guaranteed drop on every boss. They continued that model with Nathema and Objective Meridian, both of which drop a deco on each boss without fail. We've already said all of this in the course of the thread, though. This was one of the many things that went into triggering a hard burnout for me on the game, after playing since beta, and I mostly took a break for a good half year. But now that I'm warming up to jump back in with 7.0, it's depressing to find that something as simple as this QOL fix hasn't been addressed. With another FP to come, I really hope they'll revisit it ASAP. We LOVE that you design so many new decos for each FP, and they're usually great decos. You're doing that for decorators, so please understand that decorators are willing to grind this content for those decos when it's a guarantee. The one-guaranteed-deco-per-boss model is absolutely perfect. Because you're designing so many decos per FP, that means that we still have to grind a FP many times if we hope to beat the RNG out to collect all of them. In the meantime, as we get duplicates we either needed them anyway (chairs, pillars, etc) or we are now feeding the game economy by putting them up for sale. There's absolutely no point to designing 20+ decos per FP and then creating totally unnecessary enforced scarcity. Did you really design this with the intention that a stronghold enthusiast should have to solo grind one FP eighty times to maybe beat the RNG to get all 20+ decos? That's just madness. Only your deco fans even care about this issue, and they're the only ones that scarcity punishes. Please reconsider, and make Vengeance, Enclave, and all future FPs use the Copera/Nathema/Meridian/StarFortress model of one deco per boss.
  6. I checked on this by placing every crystal container deco available in the game (the Shifting and Void are not available, as mentioned here and elsewhere), and can confirm that it's only the preview window that is incorrect. When the decos are actually placed, all crystals are the correct color. The preview window errors, which do appear to be newly introduced (or at least I never noticed them before), are: Crimson Crystal Container - previews as blue Storm Crystal Container - previews as blue Violet Crystal Container - previews as green Viridian Crystal Container - previews as orange
  7. I was encouraged by the fixes to some decorations bugs in the last patch to revisit and update my spreadsheet. Because of course what the bugs-squashing team wants once they've squashed some bugs is someone to point out more bugs! Players are insatiable. To make it even easier this time (and because it would be a lot of text to throw into a post), in my decoration spreadsheet I have now created a second tab that is already filtered to all the decos that I'm calling out in this post. The note/comment on each decoration name cell (the Item column) explains the issue for each. In that filtered selection you'll see a lot of decorations which have been in the decos UI for ages but which have never actually made it into the game. Based on my familiarity with the system and the history here, I believe that a lot of these decos were scrapped and possibly never developed enough to actually be ready to be put in game. However, there are a few that I'd specifically like to call out either because they once were available and now are missing, or because they look like ones that were legitimately intended to be in the game but may have just slipped through the cracks. Decos that seem likely candidates for legitimate oversights (or are definitely bugs): Illumination Probe Crate - This one absolutely used to drop in Blood Hunt, I've been present to see it drop and know people who have it unlocked. I would love this to be returned to the game, as it has now become unattainable. Onderon City Wall - This was introduced into the UI with Onderon and feels like it was probably intended to be on the reputation vendor like the tooltip suggests, but it never has been. Given how awesome the wall decos are, it would be great if this was just an oversight that could be restored. Copero Resort Rug - This has never actually dropped in the Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint, but it appears that that may have been an oversight. Or at least I'm hoping it's just an oversight and this can still be added, because it's a great deco. Corellian AA Turret - Another deco that has never dropped in the Objective Meridian flashpoint, but which I hope was an oversight and might still be added. Ood Bnar Memorial - As called out in this topic here on the forums, this deco has not been reported by anyone even though it says 'achievement' as its source and would seem to be connected to the Ossus datacrons. It has been confirmed that completing all the Ossus datacron achievements is not currently rewarding this deco. Void Crystal Container - This one has never actually dropped on Ossus, and given the variety of other crystal containers that are in the game it feels like it might have been just an oversight. Shifting Crystal Container - Same as above. Hopefully it can be added! The reputation or decos vendors on Ossus seem good candidates. Starship Fuel Tank - People were reporting that this used to drop years ago, right when strongholds were first released, from PVE activities on Ilum. I cannot confirm this, but I can confirm that it has been unavailable for most of the time since. If it ever was dropping in game it would be great to have it restored. Decos I'm less sure of having been actually intended for the game, but which seem finished enough in the preview window to be worth calling out: Festival Flags - This one has only ever appeared in the decos UI and not ever appeared in game. (Unless it is such an exceedingly rare drop in the Ultimate crates that it will never be found.) If it is a real deco, I'd suggest releasing it for direct sale. If it's never actually made it into the game, it would be great if it could. Luxurious Oval Rug (Purple) - Exactly the same as the Festival Flags above. Republic Travel Station - The same as above. Imperial Travel Station - The same as above. And although these aren't technically "missing" from the game i would like to point out that the Irrigated Garden and the Withered Tree decorations that drop from the Ossus world bosses were so difficult to get previously that they're almost unicorns, and are now almost impossible given the irrelevance of Ossus world bosses (and the attendant exceedingly remote chance to ever get a group to run those, unlike Operations which are still routinely run). Personally, I would love to see these added to the Ossus reputation vendors for Legend reputation and 1,000 Relics of Ossus (the relics cap). This would make grinding Ossus relevant again.
  8. This post represents more strongholds bugs that got some attention this patch - thank you! Most of this list was resolved with today's patch (that's awesome!), including even the items that could only be donated by physical donation (the extra mile!). I'm heartened to see these fixes. This is just to call out that there are still some that got missed, hopefully for a future fix. These can still be found on on my decorations spreadsheet by filtering on the Guild Donation Price column to N/A and Physical Donation. Poor 3rd Anniversary decos get left behind again. Maybe it's deliberate for this set? 3rd Anniversary Fireworks Launcher 3rd Anniversary Galactic Memorial Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Coruscant Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Dromund Kaas Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Korriban Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Nar Shaddaa Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Rishi Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Tatooine Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Tython Art: 3rd Anniversary Celebration - Yavin 4 These two can still be donated by physical donation (having a copy of the deco you drag and drop into the guild bank), but not by credit cost. Considering these are now the only physical donation outliers I'm assuming they were just missed. Fabrication Droid (Martial) Guardian Droid
  9. Ah, an attempt was made to fix the poor headless Padawan! Thank you, guys! Sincerely. I'm always pleased to see old bugs being tackled. Unfortunately, her regeneration therapy was only partly successful. They almost all have heads now, at least, which makes most of them much more useful (a single arm can be forgiven). Here's the breakdown, alphabetically: Holofire Jedi Padawan Shrine - now missing just her left arm Ossan Jedi Memorial - still missing her head, saber, and her left arm Small Jedi Padawan Fountain Shrine - now missing just her left arm Small Jedi Padawan Shrine - now missing just her left arm Torch Jedi Padawan Shrine - now missing just her left arm
  10. Thanks for the response, Jackie! It's always encouraging to see yellow posts that confirm our feedback is being received. To clarify, however, I think there are two issues. One a bug, and the other critique of the model. One is what seems to be an actual bug, in that it is completely possible to run this FP in Story (I'm talking about after the campaign mission, when you're just re-running it however many times from the terminal) and not receive any deco at all. I personally have run it multiple times and not received that box at the end with a guaranteed drop. The OP reported the same. So if the FP is supposed to have at least one guaranteed deco drop at the end, then there is a bug that is preventing that. Further, if decos do actually have a chance to drop from every boss, then the RNG table here is completely whacked, as I (and others in this thread) can confirm runs with zero decos and the OP reported as many as 15 with zero drops, so that may be a bug too. The argument for changing the manner in which the decos drop is a second and separate issue. As has already been said in this thread, there's definitely a preference for seeing the deco drops in the Spirit and Secrets FPs use the one-guaranteed-deco-per-boss model that Traitor, Nathema, and Meridian use. I really, truly hope this change will be made, as the current ultra-scarcity model it has made all of these decorations extremely rare and/or ridiculously expensive, which doesn't feel like it was really the point? Not when 18-20 decos are being made per FP, which a model that only began with the one-deco-per-boss FPs. So, fingers crossed for a model change, but definitely there's also a bug about the last chest not dropping a deco at all.
  11. Interesting that you got a deco every other run. Did you get it in a special box awarded at the end of the FP, or were they dropping off bosses? My own experience, and the other experiences reported in the thread, are that no runs except he first have rewarded anything, so your data on when and how you're getting them might help point out the bug. And yes, there are actually 21 new decos introduced with this new FP, so the chances of getting them all, even if we were guaranteed one deco per run, are super low when RNG is taken into account. Whereas the guaranteed one-deco-per-boss model makes RNG much more tolerable and lets us get duplicates or feed more decos into the GTN. I could not stomach running SOV mutiple times for just one deco per run and an entire FP full of mobs that see through stealth. I actually really want these new Secrets FP decos, but I just will not run this whole thing hundreds of times for it, just no, not unless it's made one-deco-per-boss. Horrible eternal grind activities make sense when they're dailies that are also increasing a Reputation track and netting us multiple Conquest objectives as we go, but that just doesn't translate to a FP without those side benefits. I wouldn't be surprised if someone at the studio with visibility into the game's metrics could report that Traitor and Nathema are more regularly run than other FPs, and the reason would be those decos.
  12. Exactly this. I got a box the first time I did the FP as part of the solo story chain, with one deco. I have not gotten that ever again in the subsequent runs. That happened with Spirit of Vengeance too and eventually they "fixed" it to make it so that the box with one deco is supposed to drop at the end of every SOV run (I can't confirm that, because the inability to stealth through that FP made it so that I'll never play it again for grinding purposes). So I suppose they might do a similar "fix" for Spirits. However I really can't emphasize enough what a completely awful model that is. Introducing 18-20 decos per FP was done hand-in-hand with a model that had each boss in a FP drop a random deco. Which is GREAT. But introducing 21 decos with a new FP with at best only one single random deco per run (assuming the current issue even gets fixed)? That's terrible. Making the Spirit and Secrets FPs operate like their predecessors with one-deco-per-boss actually helps absolutely everyone. It helps deco enthusiasts who are incentivized to run the FP repeatedly to get all the decos and multiples (who the heck needs just one column?). It helps anyone who is running the FP for other reasons to get the additional bonus of multiple deco drops they can sell for some profit. It helps everyone who has to buy decos off the GTN by keeping the prices reasonable rather than stupidly exorbitant due to completely unnecessary scarcity. Absolutely no one is hurt by making it one-deco-per-boss, whereas the people for whom the decos are specifically made - the actual decorators - are absolutely the only ones hurt by the current model. I really hope the devs will consider changing this.
  13. I am encountering a similar issue to the OP. I came here looking for a bug report because I just completed three runs where no deco was rewarded at all. So I'm making this post for two reasons. One, to report the bug and to hope that this is in fact a bug (not a deliberate design choice) that can be addressed asap. But second, to put out there for dev consideration that the way decos have been handled in the new Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave flashpoints is really terrible. The Traitor Among the Chiss FP started an excellent trend for flashpoint decos, which was carried on into Nathema and Objective Meridian. (Arguably this half-way started with Umbara, but it started best with Traitor.) Prior to that point, a Flashpoint only ever had one unique decoration associated with it (with the exception of Blood Hunt that had two until the Illumination Probe Crate deco was bugged completely out of the game), which eventually was made a guaranteed reward upon FP completion. But Traitor, Nathema, and Meridian introduced a wonderfully large amount of decos associated with each FP (between 18-20 each), and made it so that every boss was guaranteed to drop a random deco from that selection. That model is WONDERFUL. It means that anyone has a chance to work and grind for all those decos, all they need is modest patience and a bit of effort to keep running that FP, knowing that even if the RNG drop is against them on a specific deco, they're still getting deco duplicates to either unlock or sell. It also means that a good supply of those decos filters into the GTN at reasonable prices. But Spirit and Secrets have a completely TERRIBLE model. You're still introducing a very large number of decos associated with the FP (21 for Secrets, the most of any FP yet) which is great... but there's no longer a guarantee of even ONE deco at the end of the FP. The effort-to-reward ratio here is completely ABYSMAL. It means a dedicated solo grinder has almost no chance of playing the RNG game to get all those decos in anything less than honestly hundreds of hours; just look at the OP's report of 15 runs yielding only one single deco. Even if he'd gotten one deco each time, it wouldn't have been enough to get all the decos the FP has to offer. This super-scarce model also means that the prices are ridiculously high on the GTN (and you can see that they stay that way, just look at the prices for the Spirit decos even now; deliberately creating even more GTN inflation with a model like this feels poorly thought out). This honestly doesn't make any sense. Why design so many decos to be associated with a FP, even more than were associated Traitor or Nathema which introduced the one-deco-per-boss model, only to make it so incredibly tedious to acquire them? I sincerely hope you will consider reversing this terrible model and make the Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave flashpoints drop one guaranteed deco per boss like the previous FPs do.
  14. Adding my voice to the chorus! I love animal companions, and this one would be a no-brainer.
  15. Thanks for checking, though! At the very least it confirms what appears to still be the case: that this deco is one of several that is in the the decos inventory as if they're supposed to be attached to a Flashpoint or an Achievement, and yet have been bugged and never actually granted. It's a serious bummer. I hope it someday gets looked into and fixed.
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