So...what's all the fuss about?

Principle.

BW went from "no gear in shop at all" to "only leveling gear, no endgame" and "only endgame crystals in shop", and now to endgame space gear in shop. This means their promises don't mean anything if there is money to be made, so you can expect everything people want to be avaible in cashshop, 'soon'er or later.

Space Mission gear was 'safe' to sell, because right now it's cool to hate them, so BW doesn't expect big fuss made about them or big backlash. This means only reason they are not selling EWH or Dreadguard is fear of people quitting for good.

so you can expect everything people want to be avaible in cashshop, 'soon'er or later.

Good, hope they get that implemented soon.

I'm a subscriber? Seriously, these are the dumbest arguments.

 

Sorry, just because someone made a forum post one time about how they didn't like space missions or that they want free-to-play doesn't justify everything and anything.

All those people don't want to pay a sub, so EA have to make up the lost money elsewhere.

All those people don't want to pay a sub, so EA have to make up the lost money elsewhere.

By pissing off subscribers?

Well, thats the problem. Everybody wants everything at the moment with no effort.

 

Pay or work for it. Stop raging, stop crying. You have several ways to get the space upgrades. And also several weeks to farm the money or the fleet commendations before this patch to take them today.

I was actually farming fleet commendations for a couple of weeks off and on before this patch hit. I've played since early access, never bought mat boxes, and like space reasonably well. I could afford one piece.

When faced with grinding a set of dailies that people abandoned even when they were new, and doing it over, and over, and over again in quantities nearly exceeding anything else this game has to offer, for what rewards-wise is another source of BH comms...

...and then you notice that the people you talked with on the PTR mentioned the commendation prices of the level 7 gear being half to a third what they're charging on live (although obviously this is the word of someone on the Internet)...

...and then you notice the whole set is offered by about $13, it's not unreasonable to make the connection that what was already going to be a long and tedious grind was made much longer for the sake of frustrating people into shelling out money.

It's crass, and it's not even slightly unreasonable to be pissed off about it, especially if you were looking forward to heroic space missions. And the biggest problem is that it seems to be exactly consistent with Bioware-EA's new focus.

One question to all of you:

 

 

What do you WIN?

 

 

So, if i buy the gear via cartel-shop i increase my chances to survive those missions. That makes me...what? Better then you? Don't think so. Rewards for those missions are some credits, 2 BH comms and some daily comms from what i see...again, does the reward make me special? Not at all.

 

So...what's all the fuss about?

Wow... way to completely miss the point.

Pay 2 Win is just a phrase that means Pay 2 get an in-game advantage with gameplay mechanics.

I almost feel bad that I had to point out the obvious.

With the space missions as terrible as they are I would say what you win from buying these extra parts is a great feeling of being cheated it is P2W.

If when they add the new set of armour (PvE or PvP) they offer it as either 2200 BH coms or 1200 cartel coins that would be the same thing and it would make the easiest way to get the new equipment from the cartel shop. As such would be considered fair or right for all the people that have worse gear thats taken months to get from runing ops?

Lol, what?

 

You're going off the assumption that Team B is lesser skilled.

No I am not. In fact, I stated "all else being equal." Again, Team B will have the gear advantage at the beginning of the Op, and thus have an easier learning curve while performing the Op. Since Team A will not have that advantage, they will have to rely on other things other than straight gear stats in order to succeed. As such, we can presume that they may fail more often than Team B, thus work out better strategies and teamplay in order to succeed - things that help improve player and team skill over time, and something that Team B will be missing out.

Therefore, over time, Team A will end up being the more skilled team by virtue of time played and experienced gained - something that Team B cannot gain by buying gear in the store.

If BW starts balancing content with cash shop purchases in mind, why have a subscription? My subscription should give me full access to space, operations, flashpoints and PvP balanced on my subscription. That's what it says on the website. The space missions are not balanced on a subscribers account, the balance is clearly around a subscriber purchasing at least some cash shop items, which is absurd.

Where on the website is the phrase "balanced on my subscription" appears? Amazing how players conveniently forget that all subs get a monthly allotment of CC which enable FREE purchases to be made from the store, therefore pretty much negates PAYING to buy anything.

BJ

By pissing off subscribers?

If each month cartel sales generate few times more ravneue than subs, then yeah, even by pissing off subscribers. Game will die as a result, but in turn they will get profit worth few years while putting in only fraction of work required if they wanted to get it all from subs.

It's very pessimistinc scenario, but this is what all cartel shop updates are pointing at.

I don't like slippery slope arguments and this won't affect the core game at all, but I'm not a fan of this. I also don't like having items that are attainable by in-game means being available straight-up in the Market because it creates an artificial floor for the value of the time/materials/investment of achievement. The entire structure of the game (outside of social interaction) depends on overcoming challenges and paying to completely subvert those is a problem.

I appreciated the necessary gear progression to kit out your ship and was impressed with BioWare's plan to make it non-trivial and rewarding in 1.6. Minigame progression existed, and it seemed like a fun side note. This was destroyed. Players don't need to spend commendations on upgrades at all. The schematics implemented are pointless due to the very high material cost to create it versus the minimal Cartel Coins required. The one part you straight-up buy with credits would be an OK Cartel Market purchase with me.

That being said, they added a medium-core grind to a casual minigame that was probably too steep for most people. In order to get commendations to buy the gear to help, they needed to grind inefficient older missions or complete the new missions (which you can't do without gear).

An optimal solution would be to offer blue, somewhat neutered options in the Cartel Store that are inferior to the BIS crafted/commendation pieces, but enought to complete some of the new heroic missions and earn commendations/progress. That way players could take a shortcut to catch up and complete some of the new heroic missions, while working on getting the purple pieces from crafters / commendations, like "Recruit" gear for space missions.

That cat is now out of the bag, though. I am strongly opposed to this implementation, and hope that it does not go this way in the future. BioWare will lose people if this becomes a trend, or this model is applied to other game systems.

It does. It rewards comms that have nothing to do with space that are spent to buy gear for PvE and it also provides the mats needed to craft the Grade 27 craftable mods that can be used for PvP. PvP can be done without PvP gear to get PvP gear. So it has everything to do with PvP and PvE.

That's a pretty far stretch..... PvE gear sucks in PvP Period.... Also show me a person who has not maxed out on Black Hole gear by now, I have 5 50's all wearing black hole gear, the com's to me are worthless unless i level another 50 toon.

And you still have to do the space missions and complete them in order to get the black hole com's so it's still not Pay2Win. Not to mention it probably wont take that long to grind out the missions to buy all the ship parts with space fleet com's, I was already maxed on on Space Fleet Com's before this patch came out...

Pay2Win would be buying War Hero Gear directly with Cartel Coins.

Bioware promised us this game would not become Pay-to-Win, but the first steps along those lines has been taken today.

The brand new, top end Space equipment is being sold on the Cartel Market for 500 coins for a pack of 3 pieces of the gear. Yes, you can make an epic grind of 400-700 Space Commendations for each piece of gear (or a pattern to craft the gear) if you'd like to earn them in-game, but the fact that Bioware is selling them directly for cash on the very day they first became available is a disappointing turn of events.

I'm not proclaiming the sky is falling, or that I'm rage quitting over this, but this is my feedback to Bioware that people are paying attention to this type of thing, that they've set a bad precedent, and I don't agree with this decision. If things like this continue, my time, and money spent, in this game will come to an end very quickly.

I know Bioware has to make money, but there are other, better ways. The Life Day and other Cartel Market fluff items are a great method. I hope they will invest their time and effort into those avenues for getting players to spend some money, rather than the path of selling the best equipment in the game whether it's for the main type of gameplay or side gameplay.

Collector's Edition Owner, Day 1 Subscriber, Guildmaster

I don't like slippery slope arguments and this won't affect the core game at all, but I'm not a fan of this.

 

*snip. good stuff, though*

 

I am strongly opposed to this implementation, and hope that it does not go this way in the future. BioWare will lose people if this becomes a trend, or this model is applied to other game systems.

See, here's my problem. This seems to be the exact same design philosophy that's guiding their F2P restrictions (a.k.a. the biggest Cartel Market thing): frustrating you into giving them money. It seems to be the beginning of a trend already.

That actually makes me much more pessimistic that they'll ease up the pettier restrictions when they're able to provide more bennies to subscribers, as well.

Oh noes you will have to play content that you say you enjoy for a whole week!!!! How dare they!

 

I am sure if you open a CS ticket they will just send you everything you are entitled to for free with no effort on your part.

 

Pay2Win is when the best things are ONLY on the market. This is just another option designed to milk the greedy and impatient "Must have it NOW!" crowd and there is nothing wrong with that.

WRONG! If a game provides incentive to spend real money to acquire top gear FASTER than via the normal game progression then it is P2W. I mean the question becomes why am I a subscriber then?!?! What am I getting from it...?

The direction they are taking is pathetic. This patch was mostly updates to cartel shop. There is so much stuff there now that you can't even get through regular game progression that it's sickening. They added 15 armor sets not a single set was added to the game, all via cartel shop. Plus things that cost 2400 cartel coins? *** is that all about? Hell why not 10000 I'm sure there is a kid out there whose father is a bastard wall street banker and can afford it...

Maybe that works them. Maybe they can sustain this game with only 100 players if they are all Rockefeller's and Rothschild's offspring. Good for you EA/BW. But I won't be there to see it. If I don't see some content created for the subscribers that is not PVP arena or another class rebalansing I'm out for good....

I agree completely. To be honest I think they are doing this to test the waters on selling equipment. I encourage people to give feedback on this.

The main problem I have is this: You do NOT make it buy this all for 1200 coins, or go farm an insane amount of commendations. It is at this point that you start punishing players for not paying money for items. If you are going to sell an item in the cartel shop, make it more midline in terms of obtaining, don't make it a giant grind.

This does not affect PVP at all.

The long and short of it is: Space Mission gear progression is largely irrelevant. It sucks though, because they squandered an opportunity to engage players, all while enraging people who care about the game (and also those who erupt into angry slippery slope P2W rants).

PVE gear progression is completely broken by crafting, which is fed by credits (obtainable through many means, including flipping Cartel Coin items) and Molecular Stabilizers (that you can get from PvP and space missions). This is a problem on the developers' radar (according to Dev Posts and speaking to them at events) and I hope they fix it with the next tier / Makeb, as it negatively impacts the PVE game greatly. This is the closest we have to P2W and is not a design intent, but a byproduct of several systems that have been iterated on since launch, and accelerated by some unintended functionality.

PVP gear progression is fine. It might be a ludicrous grind for BIS, but with 1.6 (and the very marginal power bump from War Hero to Elite War Hero), I think it is in the best shape it's ever been and actually pretty good. The only problem I would have is that PVE gear ratings eclipse Expertise gains, which is debatably the case for 1-2 gear slots.

No I am not. In fact, I stated "all else being equal." Again, Team B will have the gear advantage at the beginning of the Op, and thus have an easier learning curve while performing the Op. Since Team A will not have that advantage, they will have to rely on other things other than straight gear stats in order to succeed. As such, we can presume that they may fail more often than Team B, thus work out better strategies and teamplay in order to succeed - things that help improve player and team skill over time, and something that Team B will be missing out.

 

Therefore, over time, Team A will end up being the more skilled team by virtue of time played and experienced gained - something that Team B cannot gain by buying gear in the store.

Sorry, but my ability to "press buttons harder" for DPS has not increased since the first day I raided. There's only so much you can in terms of dps'ing, interrupting, clicking objects on screen, and staying out of fire. To say that I'm going to learn something new from any of these bosses is a joke. With every boss, it's just figuring out where to stand and how the company recycled the same raid mechanics wrapped in different effects. It's figuring out a strat that works, and then executing it... and none of that is learned better just because you have less gear. So please stop trying to prove this point.

Where on the website is the phrase "balanced on my subscription" appears? Amazing how players conveniently forget that all subs get a monthly allotment of CC which enable FREE purchases to be made from the store, therefore pretty much negates PAYING to buy anything.

If you don't have the CC's within the first week to buy all of the Ship Upgrades, then the rewards (BH comms) you're trying to earn that week are harder to obtain than the person who threw cash at the cartel market. That creates an advantage for the person paying extra cash. That's what people here are arguing.

To the whiners screaming "P2winn" and "Bioware reached new level of crap" (why the hell are you still paying for a sub then??): Get your facts straight about what IS and what is NOT p2win. P2Winn means that someone pays in order to get the upper hand in a direct confrontation against OTHER PLAYERS, be it in PvP or in PvE (the ability to perform better than others in operations / raids).

1st) EVERYTHING contained in the bundle is available via farming in game.

2nd) Space missions are nothing more than a mini game strictly against the A.I. It's a 100% single player experience. There are no leader/score boards and NO rewards are given affecting a players performance in PvP or PvE.

I hate to admit it but it does seem like the way things are going new content is going to be

1) Korean style Grind to get the items in game

or

2) Pay some real money to get it instantly.

Just the facts, either you go with it or you quit, I don't think Bioware is going to chagne course anytime soon.

WRONG! If a game provides incentive to spend real money to acquire top gear FASTER than via the normal game progression then it is P2W.

DOUBLE WRONG. Look up ZT Online and you will get the true definition of P2W. SWTOR isn't there yet.

BJ

DON'T BUY THEIR C***....Don't do the missions.

People I encourage you NOT to do any of this , talk with your wallet,send them a message.

I hate to admit it but it does seem like the way things are going new content is going to be

 

1) Korean style Grind to get the items in game

or

2) Pay some real money to get it instantly.

 

Just the facts, either you go with it or you quit, I don't think Bioware is going to chagne course anytime soon.

Yup and you know what sucks even more? That we will still actually play the game and participate in their little money making scheme. I guess the social engineers know us better than we know ourselves...