Problem is that Combat Medics / Bodyguards don't work anymore.

 

But would a respec fix that?

How can some people claim that a respec isn't necessary. If my spec changes depending on the nerfs/buffs that went into talents in a patch, that requires me to respec my talents. Some talents that I used before are no longer worth the talent points or in some cases i might value a talent more relative to the other options. That is restructuring the talent tree. Is 98K alot to pay? no. Is it annoying? Yes

Yeah I don't understand. They say swapping a 5 point talent to a 3 point talent and not giving a respec is unfair...

 

But they swapped change a few talents in the combat medic tree to (effectively) 0 point talents. How can they possibly think that people aren't going to want to spec out of stuff like trauma probe or kolto residue?

How can some people claim that a respec isn't necessary. If my spec changes depending on the nerfs/buffs that went into talents in a patch, that requires me to respec my talents. Some talents that I used before are no longer worth the talent points or in some cases i might value a talent more relative to the other options. That is restructuring the talent tree. Is 98K alot to pay? no. Is it annoying? Yes

 

you've used all of your respecs for the week in two days?

 

seriously?

you've used all of your respecs for the week in two days?

 

seriously?

 

In trying new builds, since they borked my old build, yes. Thats just trying to salvage my time on that character and still have fun with the game. Fun after all is the point, and the fun factor of combat medic just had the gas taken out of it.

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

That's a very logical train of thought that is almost entirely tangential to the issue at hand and all too capable of upsetting your customers more than they already are. Well done. You're an engineer aren't you?

 

Between your posts and GZ's posts I'm willing to bet that the only reason the entirety of the SWTOR Community Management team hasn't already died of blood alcohol poisoning must either be A) an inability to comprehend written English, B) gross incompetence, or C) unusually high alcohol tolerance, or D) some combination of the above.

 

A slightly less logical idea, that doesn't aggravate customers whom you've already irritated, might be to recognize that a certain significant fraction of customers will be annoyed by any tweaks to their class and give free respecs to all players affected by any change to their class at all. I cannot imagine it costing your guys too much in the way of effort and, while it might not gain you any good will, it certainly wouldn't increase your net ill will at all either.

 

Something to think about.

I know that as an individual, it's easy to rationalize this line of thinking, but understand that we cannot make everyone happy.

 

If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did not receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of "neglecting" that class (just like in this thread!). If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of admitting the spec got "gutted," to use your words. And why wouldn't players think that - we just handed them free tickets to go elsewhere, right?

 

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

 

Or, Commando skill points weren't refunded for the reasons I've already given and elaborated on.

 

Also, devs get standard-issue troll resistance when they join the biz, just FYI.

 

 

I understand what you're saying... but you still should have given Commandos and Mercenaries the free resepec.

 

I actually sent in a /bug report for it last night because my Mercenary was the last charactaer I logged into last night (I was doing aoo my Imps) and he was literaly the only one that didn't get a resepc so I thought it was a bug.

 

 

Seriously, there's a reason people hate "Rules Lawers" in RPGs. There needs to be a human element involved in any sweeping decisions like this. SOMEONE should have taken a step back when we got close to the go live date and said "Wait a second, EVERY other class in the game is getting the free resepc except for the Merc/Commando" and then decided in this instance to go ahead and include them in on it.

 

Serioulsy, you can come in here and hide behind "we have a hard set rule you can only do this if the talent tree structure changes" and then finish up with your witty little remark about "standard-issue troll resistance", but you're making yourself look like that same smart *** from your DnD campaign that says "But it says right on page 42 of the reviesed warriors supplemental guide that you have to let me do that".

 

This kind of small callous (in?)decision just gives credibitly to the people that say "Oh no, big Business EA is ruining Bioware" when you make uncomprimising absolutes like this.

 

And for the record, the respec itself isn't a big deal for me. My Merc is still speced fine, and for my Commanod, I think he's logged off at the fleet (I'll play my Reps tonight). I'll just run over and use my free respec so he's Full Grav and not split a Hybrid Heal/Grav.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Jerid

I know that as an individual, it's easy to rationalize this line of thinking, but understand that we cannot make everyone happy.

 

If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did not receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of "neglecting" that class (just like in this thread!). If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of admitting the spec got "gutted," to use your words. And why wouldn't players think that - we just handed them free tickets to go elsewhere, right?

 

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

 

Or, Commando skill points weren't refunded for the reasons I've already given and elaborated on.

 

Also, devs get standard-issue troll resistance when they join the biz, just FYI.

 

Hurray for translation delay...

 

As I said before, there is certainly sound logic to the reason behind how you choose to give respecs.

 

I think, however, that you do a massive disservice to the game and the community with statements like these two:

 

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

Also, devs get standard-issue troll resistance when they join the biz, just FYI.

 

1) To assume that critique is trolling automatically creates an us vs them mentality that discourages constructive dialogue. It also primes you to resist what you are hearing, instead of listening.

 

2) This brings us to the larger problem, and in a way to the first statement in the quote excerpt. One of the biggest problems that the Healing community (by which I mean the active posters on the healer forums and healer AC subforums) has to do with a lack of communication. We don't feel like we are told what we feel we need to know, and we certainly don't feel like we are heard. Part of this is likely due to "us vs them" mental resistance that comes from defining criticism as trolling.

 

There are other ways of deciding when a free respec is warranted.

• Purely technical. As you can see this can upset the players of an AC like Commandos and Mercs who feel that their class changed a great deal even if the structure of the trees did not.
  
• Substantial Change. You present a false choice in the above. You do not need to admit that you gutted a class or broke it to acknowledge that players may no longer want to keep the same build after the changes you make. You can say: "We made substantial changes, which we think improve the state of the game, but we realize that some players may wish to change their skill builds around after in light of the modified skill trees."
  
• Universal. There is no need to judge at all. This simply gives everyone their talents back after a major patch regardless. For minor patches, you can still fall back to technical because those are necessary and unavoidable. While this could be inconvenient for classes with no or little change, it avoids any favoritism accusations.
  
• Community Feedback. While there was close to zero Developer response to any of the healer feedback and testing threads on the PTS, and there were only the smallest of changes in response (the Noble Sacrifice reduction skill increase) I find it hard to believe that you were ignorant of the response. In the odd chance that you didn't read any of the PTS feedback on healers, it largely mirrored/predicted the current Live 1.2 response, ie mass discontent. Again, if you stop considering all criticism as trolling you can use the PTS response as a gauge of whether or not a large part of an AC community will want to respec. This one is more subjective, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth consideration.
  

 

I realize that you and the other Developers have spent a lot of time and effort on this game, and, more recently, on this patch. But bear in mind that many players and community members also have a substantial investment in this game and its success, and while you are paid for your time with SWTOR, we pay for the privilege.

 

We do not make recommendations and criticism to weaken the game. That is in no one's interest. We make recommendations and criticism to strengthen the game, and to make it more enjoyable to play. We protest changes that we think will decrease our enjoyment, because when we stop enjoying it we will stop playing and (key point I think you guys miss) we want to keep playing. Some suggestions will be bad, some critiques poorly thought out/irrational/invalid even. Others, however will be good suggestions and valid/rational criticism.

 

You would do well to not lump all of that together as trolling. While some people will always complain about anything you do, I can assure that this current backlash is not that. If you can start communicating with your community more, and treating the community with respect and partners in the common goal of creating a great game that is fun* to play, you just might be surprised at the results.

 

*On the topic of fun:

 

Excellent response RuQu. I found this peckenpaugh guy's replies rather blunt and rude. My gut reaction was, "This guy is being a jerk for no reason. Why?"

Excellent response RuQu. I found this peckenpaugh guy's replies rather blunt and rude. My gut reaction was, "This guy is being a jerk for no reason. Why?"

 

It's understandable. Can you imagine putting in 5-years of work and having to face large doses of criticism on a daily basis afterwards, and then to top it off people start complaining about something as small as not getting 1 free respec when the respec cost resets weekly?

 

They may get "standard issue troll resistance," but my guess is that this armor of theirs lacks any "legitimate flame resistance" or "injured pride resistance."

 

I like to think that I'm fairly mature and I am extremely self-confident, but I think I'd be a bit upset, at the very least disappointed, if something I put so much time into had this much negative pushback from the fans I was hoping to please.

 

That's why even when I disagree with something they do I try and be polite. They want to make a fun game, they want it to be well-received. Nothing they do is out of malice, it just sometimes is the wrong answer/move, especially with their approach to healing. More constructive discussion can help fix that and make the process better for everyone, but that's a two-way street.

Free respecs are only given when the structure of the skill tree changes, such that if you were to log in and NOT receive a free respec, your character would be broken.

 

For example, if you used to have 3/3 in a skill box, and we changed that skill so that it now required another skill that you didn't have, or we changed it so that it only had 2 points and you now had 3/2, you'd have a broken character. And that would be bad.

 

We don't give out free respecs based on an arbitrary judgement call as to how many changes were made; we give them out so your characters will continue to work. Hope that makes sense.

 

Then explain why Shadows got a re-skill lol. I have a Shadow Tank and the only things that were changed were visual (a tooltip was changed, and 2 animations were changed that have no effect on combat). Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got another free respec, but I'm not sure why I did!

Or, Commando skill points weren't refunded for the reasons I've already given and elaborated on.

 

Also, devs get standard-issue troll resistance when they join the biz, just FYI.

 

Wow, that was so unwarranted. RuQu is one of the most mature, concise posters on the SWTOR forums. A conversation about free respecs is perhaps not the most critical discussion in the world, but I really don't understand where this condescending response is coming from.

 

I'm disgusted that this is the time and manner that the Devs choose to finally respond to RuQu. He has made dozens of concise, thought-providing threads/posts and provided mountains of useful data and analysis--and was met with silence. I cannot begin to describe how frustrated I am that this is where he finally gets a response, and that the response is essentially to go f himself.

I know that as an individual, it's easy to rationalize this line of thinking, but understand that we cannot make everyone happy.

 

If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did not receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of "neglecting" that class (just like in this thread!). If we made judgement calls for who to give respecs to, and a class did receive a free respec after a change, we'd be accused of admitting the spec got "gutted," to use your words. And why wouldn't players think that - we just handed them free tickets to go elsewhere, right?

 

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

 

Or, Commando skill points weren't refunded for the reasons I've already given and elaborated on.

 

Also, devs get standard-issue troll resistance when they join the biz, just FYI.

 

You honestly have not given a reason as to why the Commando, which received many changes, did not get a free respec yet my Jedi Shadow which received no changes got a free respec. Im really starting to worry about this game after reading such nonsense.

You honestly have not given a reason as to why the Commando, which received many changes, did not get a free respec yet my Jedi Shadow which received no changes got a free respec. Im really starting to worry about this game after reading such nonsense.

 

For reference, here are the complete notes for Shadows and the Consular general notes (mutual to Sage/Shadow).

Jedi Consular

• General
  
  • Deflection's visual effects are now more noticeable.
    
  • The Unity ability has been removed from the Jedi Consular class. A similar ability can now be unlocked through the Legacy System.
    
  • Force Slow's visual effects now begin and end at the correct times.
    

   

  [*]Shadow

  • Mass Mind Control: Updated this tooltip to correctly state that the ability does not break stealth. The ability's functionality has not changed.
     
    
  • Kinetic Combat
    
  • Kinetic Ward's appearance now refreshes properly when reapplied.
     
    
  • Balance (Shadow)
    
  • Force Synergy's activation effects are now more visible.
    
  • Force in Balance no longer heals the caster if no targets are hit.
    

 

I hadn't seen any changes on my tank, but I don't follow that as closely as healer changes. I thought perhaps there were some Infiltration or Balance changes. Turns out there were no Infiltration changes at all, and the rest of the changes were mostly tooltip or visual effect changes.

 

In fact, the only real changes are the change to Force in Balance which sounds more like a bug fix and the removal of Unity, which wasn't in the skill trees at all.

So I just logged in on my Combat Medic... and... NO FREE RESPEC? What the heck? My class got gutted and they didn't even bother to give me a respec? What the heck?

 

Some of my other characters that I logged in on, got their free respecs. So why not my Combat Medic?

 

I'M REALLY TICKED OFF ATM!!!

 

I hope BW has a good explanation for why Combat Medics didn't get a free respec!

 

I think the 'free respec' was a pain in the ***. 2 of my 3 characters got one, and it wasn't wanted on either frankly. Not a forced respec at least, would have been nice if they just set the cost to zero next time though.

(delete) Edited April 17, 2012 by amantheil

I do hope that he recieved a warning from the moderators for calling RuQu a troll.

 

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

 

IMO, the only fair, honest, and logical way is to give EVERYONE a free respec when you make these many changes. At the very least, even if you only reset talent trees for classes that had their structure changed, at least give them the option of getting a free respec and resetting the cost escalation if they already used one during the week.

 

EDIT: I meant to say "even if you only reset talent trees for classes that had their structure changed, give the other classes the option of getting a free respec".

Edited April 17, 2012 by amantheil

They can keep the damn free re-spec, the free 1 month sub for lvl 50s and the free 1 day compensation due to server downtime, just gimme back my pre 1.2 Commando Medic!!!

IMO, the only fair, honest, and logical way is to give EVERYONE a free respec when you make these many changes. At the very least, even if you only reset talent trees for classes that had their structure changed, at least give them the option of getting a free respec and resetting the cost escalation if they already used one during the week.

 

DUH! You're hired!

Out of all the posts I've read on the forum today, and I've read a fair few... this is by far the most petty.

 

The reason given makes perfect sense, classes got talent respecs so that you could LOG ONTO YOUR CHARACTER, they couldn't simply set the cost to 0 and let you toggle a respec as you'd have points in a skill you couldn't possibly get, talents were moved to other trees and re-designed.

 

I'm going to take a wild guess and say you've respec'd 0-1 time in the week leading up to 1.2, a cost of 0 credits or less then 2k, that's terrible.

 

After reading the OPs post and subsequent posts I wonder why you've not un-subbed yet, you don't seem to get any enjoyment out of the game, pre or post patch.

 

So much BW bashing, if it's this bad go play AoC.

This thread is unbelievably petty.

 

Talent resets were given because not doing so would cause someone to have 40 or 39 or whatever points rather than the appropriate 41. This is a very common practice in MMOs when talent trees are restructured. It has nothing to do with how much these structural changes affect the gameplay of that class (i.e. Focus/Rage trees for knight/warrior had one talent removed but become baseline. For someone with that talent already, there would be no change, but without a reset they'd be missing a point.)

 

Also respecs are cheap.

 

Please realize that commandos have bigger problems and don't make CS annoyed over useless stuff like this.

 

Actually, in my experience in both SWG, and in WoW, if any changes happened to your profession/class respectively you got a free skill reset.

 

I think the same thing happened with Rift, but I only played so much of it, and don't really recall all that well if it did happen while I was active in it.

 

In Eve Online, whenever a skill you had was eliminated, or combined with another, you got the points that you trained into that skill refunded.

 

You may see this as useless stuff, but when a skill tree is "rebalanced" it is industry standard practice to refund all skill points.

The only fair, honest, and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on technical necessity.

 

Actually the only fair, honest and logical way to give free respecs is to base them on if there was a change that affected a skill tree talent, just like every other MMO company does.

Gut a class, severely change the mechanics of several abilities, no free respec = screwed.

 

Anytime you make major changes to a classes mechanics you should give players the option of chosing a different path than previously taken. Did the Mercs/Commandos ask you to make these changes? The answer would be no. Did you ask if you could make the changes? The answer would be no. Without prior consent, I do not see any logic in NOT allowing players to change how they allocated their skill points.

 

On an entirely cynical note, I made a BH Merc before the patch. I knew they would gut Merc healing since I read the patch notes and could not comprehend why they were making such massive changes to the healing ability of Merc/Commando. So I spec'd into one of the DPS trees like Bioware seems to want you to anyway. In this case foresight prevented a lot of aggravation.