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Training Costs are a Thing of the Past


EricMusco

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My argument wasn't over which group of people got hosed. It's pretty clear that this change affects early access people.

 

My argument is that any time you rush in and are the first one to try to adopt a product, you take on the risks that you may encounter frustrations and problems that are smoothed out later on down the road and not encountered by those who purchase the product once it is more mature.

 

I agree that it is frustrating, but I'm also not surprised that big tweaks are following a new expansion, nor that those tweaks will have a bigger impact on those who are the first to buy.

 

Early access was suppose to be a reward not secret Beta testing...

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Fair question azudelphi! Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills, we felt this was a better approach to the overall cost to players. As a result, we will not be providing refunds for the cost of training.

 

Hope that clarifies our thoughts on the situation.

 

-eric

 

So basically since we pre-ordered and supported your game AND have been a continued subscriber we get shafted? Last time I make that mistake.

 

Buggy story finale which you still haven't fixed.

 

Pre-orders spend over 1 million in credits on training costs, and you remove them from game thus letting everyone who didn't pre-order not have to spend those credits and will get to play a less buggy expansion.

 

You'll forgive me if I'm upset that I was used as a glorified beta tester while you fixed your bugs and tuned your game all the while I was being promised that this was a "perk".

 

This doesn't feel like a perk. It feels like subscribers and supporters of your game yet again get screwed over. I've learned my lesson. Buy artifact equipment authorization, warzone and raid passes, and stop subscribing and pre-ordering since you clearly care nothing about your supporters.

 

Thanks Bioware.

Edited by Ezenthor
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Hey folks,

 

Let’s talk a bit about training costs for your characters abilities. One thing has become clear from the player feedback in not only this thread, but since launch: players do not like training costs.

 

**snip**

 

What does this mean for you? This means that starting next week, instead of spending your credits on training skills, you can now spend them on literally, anything else you want. Note that this only affects ability training, you will still need to spend credits to training schematics for Crew Skills, etc.

 

Thank you again for your feedback.

 

-eric

Hello Eric,

 

Thanks for stepping in, it's really appreciated.

 

Now I might be wrong but the issue with training wasn't really the cost by itself but:

  • Having to go back and forth to a trainer, which was considered as a waste of time
  • And now the fact people who pre-ordered have to pay for training to play on the same level they where before.

 

 

As such I'm not sure totally removing the training cost is that good as it removes a money sink.

A better move would have been to remove the mods extraction as it would have promoted character customization and as such a feeling of uniqueness.

 

Then we both know, players who already spend quite a bit of credits to be able to play aren't compensated. And what's worse it's the loyal supporters, who pre-ordered that are being hit. I'd suggest you guys to look a bit more into it and find a way to compensate players, a gesture of sort. You have much more to earn this way. And you'll see most players can be reasonable ;)

 

Thanks.

D.

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so early access gets ****ed and spends millions of credits training abilities and then people that didn't pre-order the expansion get an added benefit that the early access players didn't get. This is ********. I'm glad for other people, obviously, but this is terrible for pre-order people that just wasted millions of credits. GG

 

EXACTLY THIS ^^

 

well played Bioware, the reward for pre-ordering and supporting the game with our money is to get ****ed over, while if we had held our cash and waited a week we would be better off.

 

You just created one enormous reason to deter people from future pre-orders, smart business move.

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Now, here is the thing. What happened, happened. No one can time travel back to Dec 2. They had to work with the current situation, and while I understand that it's frustrating for those who already paid training costs in the past couple days, I choose to be realistic: 1) They cannot change the past. No amount of complaining will change that. 2) Offering refunds would most likely open an exploit the size of a barn door. As I see it, the few toons on which training has already been paid for are the very short term price to pay for a very long term positive effect. If people have already leveled all their 16 characters to level 60 in the past 72 hours then I'm really dreadfully sorry, because they apparently have no life beyond this game and not slept for entirely too long.

But now instead, a lot of people might decide to just wait playing until next Tuesday to avoid paying the fees. If they simple offered a refund for the costs incurred from 12/2 through 12/9, people would still (probably) happily play and pay the cost knowing it'll get refunded. As for me, I'll just continue on the characters I've already leveled and leave the rest for next week. Not what I planned to do but why purposely incur the fees at this point?

Considering I made more than 2 million credits selling crafting mats in the first 36 hours after early access started (and more after that!), I certainly don't feel like I got screwed by pre-ordering!

The fact that you've made money does not diminish the fact that you've spent money you didn't need to. That's a pretty poor way to validate this imo.

Edited by Kadin
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Free training wasn't something I even thought of, but I'm not complaining. That said, it's not really fair to punish those that pre-ordered and raced through an expansion with bugs to level characters to the benefit of testing it for everyone that didn't pre-order it and will be able to play without bugs or training costs. For that privilege we get to pay hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of credits, more vs. those that didn't pre-order.

 

I realize it's not really cost effective to devote dev resources to figuring out who spent what on skills and issuing refunds. I propose that instead you add an additional free item to the pre-order vendor. And while you're at it, how about raising that decoration limit above 1?

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So basically, you are totally screwing over the early access people which is most likely your lifeblood of the game. Way to go Bioware. I have leveled up 4 characters and spent over 4million in retraining and training. Thanks for sh@t$!@* all over your subs. Edited by Viraxis
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Yeah... That's pretty cold. Great way to treat your most loyal customers. On my 16 characters, I'm in it over 4.5 million credits I won't get back. So, thanks for that. I mean at 60, there are more than a dozen abilities to train at over 43k a piece.

 

You guys need to work on figuring out your market before you get them all upset.

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Just let this be a lesson for future, give someone free stuff, expect lots of mitch and boaning when it gets taken away.....

 

And this surprises you? Give someone anything then take it away there'll be trouble. You act like that's unfathomable.

 

If you're gonna give something, let it stay given. It may require more forethought as to what you give. But everyone will be happier in the end.

 

Anyway I'm here to acknowledge this as a good thing. Sadly I've lost quite a bit of creds to (re)training already but at least it will never be an issue again. I still dislike a lot of things about this patch but this is pretty sweet.

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Fair question azudelphi! Since the change we are making is a global one, affecting all players and skills, we felt this was a better approach to the overall cost to players. As a result, we will not be providing refunds for the cost of training.

 

Hope that clarifies our thoughts on the situation.

 

-eric

 

Eric,

Since you are taking on "fair questions", then here is a fair question. We were lead to believe that in ordering this exp we would receive benefits and perks that others who did not pre-order would not get. Granted we got 7 days early access, a decoration, etc; however I fail to see how making people that bought this exp as supporters of this game can see having to spend hundreds of thousands or in some cases millions as a perk. This really smacks of bait them in with promises then switch the situation to penalize them for doing so. That is considered fraud by many, so I am just asking for your explanation. Again, just a "fair question" not an accusation of anything.

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Now, here is the thing. What happened, happened. No one can time travel back to Dec 2. They had to work with the current situation, and while I understand that it's frustrating for those who already paid training costs in the past couple days, I choose to be realistic: 1) They cannot change the past. No amount of complaining will change that. 2) Offering refunds would most likely open an exploit the size of a barn door. As I see it, the few toons on which training has already been paid for are the very short term price to pay for a very long term positive effect. If people have already leveled all their 16 characters to level 60 in the past 72 hours then I'm really dreadfully sorry, because they apparently have no life beyond this game and not slept for entirely too long.

 

1. I'm not asking them to change the past. I'm saying that they had x number of months to prepare for this expac and that when 12x XP was a thing, they noticed that people were SUPREMELY happy about free training of abilities. They also had a private beta. They very easily could have found the time to be like YOU KNOW WHAT, WE SHOULD GET RID OF ABILITY COSTS BECAUSE IT IS AN ARCHAIC SYSTEM. You're telling me it took them until day 3 of a new expac when the game has been out for multiple years to see this? If that is the case, that's an entirely different problem.

 

2. Ways to give refunds: level 60 character achievements dated PRE update that gives free ability training for levels 55-60 get the costs of those abilities refunded. Any abilities before level 55 or any characters leveled after that date don't get refund. There's no opening for exploit there. Also, I don't want cartel coins I don't want a refund of my xpac and I don't want to unsub or threaten to. I just want it clear that this is entirely poor timing and messaging by bioware.

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I suspect that a refund is technically not feasible and/or that the risk of an exploit is too high (i.e. people holding off training and getting the refund for fully trained level 60s etc.). For a fair refund to everyone, you would need data on the AC, level and trained tier of each ability and when it was trained to figure out how much to refund every character. While the data sure is there *somewhere*, filtering it out and creating an automated refund process may require a tad bit more of those precious development resources and surely wouldn't be done over the weekend, either.

 

This obviously wasn't planned, it's the quickest fix with the most benefits to most players they could come up with. I'll take what I can get. I'll pay through on my two raid toons for the weekend and wait with the rest.

 

1. I'm not asking them to change the past. I'm saying that they had x number of months to prepare for this expac and that when 12x XP was a thing, they noticed that people were SUPREMELY happy about free training of abilities. They also had a private beta. They very easily could have found the time to be like YOU KNOW WHAT, WE SHOULD GET RID OF ABILITY COSTS BECAUSE IT IS AN ARCHAIC SYSTEM. You're telling me it took them until day 3 of a new expac when the game has been out for multiple years to see this? If that is the case, that's an entirely different problem.

 

No, you're not asking them to change the past, You're just ranting about about the proverbial spilled milk. It's done. It happened. It's time to figure out what to do. And if refunds were technically easy to do, don't you think that's what they would have done in the first place to fix this?

Edited by KyaniteD
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Wow. 1.3 million dollar screw over. I applaud the fact that you are removing a stupid money sink from the game, especially seeing that the game economy gets unbalanced because of game issues, mostly the CM. However, not to make it retroactive for the early access people is nothing short of a slap in the face. I almost never post anything on these forums and generally enjoy the game, this expansion and services I've received since launch,but this "too bad" response has all but decimated that. Hell, if you're worried about further imbalancing the game economy, give us beta testers a unique bound mount or something. Just to leave us out of it all shows a lack of respect for your customers.
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Total cost I believe is around 1.1 million credits, but may vary by class. This does not take into account credits earned by questing 55-60 but I had a net loss on my main and one alt, barely broke even on a 2nd alt.

 

I don't know the total, but I know when I hit lvl 60 on my knight, I spent about 550K just on lvl 60 abilities

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