This doesn't address the issue of Commando having to retrain Charged Bolts while a Mercenary's Power Shot is untouched, or why a Consular needs to retrain Force Lift but an Inquisitor's Whirlwind is unmolested by these "working as intended" training costs.

 

This makes the above explanation seem like boilerplate PR illustrating a lack of actual understanding in regards to the issue reported. Please review the plethora of posted information regarding non-mirrored costs of mirrored class training.

* claps enthusiastically, especially the first paragraph *

My issue is it totally snuck up on me. I just came back (left pre RotHC), was playing, trained, and I was like "oh nice, ty BW!". While I was enjoying the xp boost every time I trained I was thinking that was so cool of them.

Then post patch I was doing my 1st forced respec and blammo.

I have the creds. BUT I kinda wanted to re skin all my characters with some cool new skins and buy some of the cool new stuff that came out in my absence.

I have been out of the economic loop, and although I'm confident I can still earn now that I am back, the reality is I can't really be that sure. So doing a spending spree wouldn't be super smart.

IDK. In summation:

A) I thought free training was a cool QoL bone to throw the players. Something real, that was just all good for everyone, no matter play style.

B) Had I known I would of prepared. -Or at least an opportunity to do so would of been nice .

I have had a few eyebrow raises since I came back and I'm a tad worried. I mean "death by a thousand cuts" is a thing, and TBH this kinda felt like another cut...

Hey folks,

 

With this in mind, the need to train/re-train abilities in 3.0 is intended and therefore we are not planning on making any changes at this time. I apologize sincerely for the inconvenience this has caused.

 

Thank you for your understanding.

 

-eric

Wut? You intended for max level toons to retrain abilities they aready had because they would have gotten them at a different point in leveling? So if i used to get an ability at level 10, and now i get it at level 20, that justifies retraining even though i'm 55? Sorry if i feel that this retraining issue smells more like lax oversight than intention.

Why not make things easy and just say that with every game update you're going to levy a tax on credits in advance. Preferably a tax biased against commandos and in favor of sorcs.

I have to say... I haven't got any 55's. I've a 50 Gunslinger and several other toons right around 15 - 25. I left and did not come back for a long time after the free to play thing dropped and turned the whole thing into a 'pay to win' scenario. To a large degree, being a free player meant having to pay for things piecemeal that I'd had already when I bought the game a long time ago. Being double-dipped for anything is a hot button issue for me. After finding out this year that the stuff you had is stuff you continue to have with a sub, I thought about it a while and decided I'd give it another shot this October. I was still relearning how to do some things up til now, but have generally been enjoying playing this with my wife, whom we got an account of her own.

I have not upgraded or paid this new 'Here's a poke in the eye' tax on having higher level characters yet. Seeing that I was going to have to relearn how my high level gunslinger worked all over again, it was a bit much to hop right out to a trainer and pay for skills I thought I ought to already have.

More disturbing was seeing several things had been taken away that I'd invested skill points in to start with. Some of which I'll never get back cos you only get so many points to put into regular, masterful and heroic skills, so you're having to cherry pick from stuff you really liked having in your build on the basis of what you'd like to lose the least.

Even more disturbing is that seemingly, some of the stuff I already had in my old skill trees was now removed and moved up to level 60. So it's not so much that the cap for levelling has been raised to 60 with new skills added to it. It's more like all my skills and abilities have been nerfed or taken, and if I want them back, well, you can level up to 60 to get em back, hoss. You got the credits to buy those things again? Nothing has been added. Merely redistributed upwards away from me.

Being a founder, and before that, a veteran of Star Wars Galaxies (which leaves me with a healthy aversion to any MMO administrated by SOE) this smacks of the old COMBAT REBALANCE which I left SWG over. Or worse still, the revamp of their game engine. If double dipping is quite okay with the devs of this game, I will have to speak to my wife and see what she thinks about continuing our subscriptions. 30 bucks a month is a bit much for a poke in the eye.

Hey folks,

 

Ok so I have an update on the training/re-training of abilities with the launch of 3.0. With all of the changes that hit with 3.0 to Disciplines, it is intended that there are abilities that need to be trained/re-trained. Here are some of the criteria that could cause this to happen:

• If an existing ability changed, in name or functionality. This could especially affect Disciplines which used to share an overlapping name and set of abilities, such as Lethality Sniper/Operative.
  
• We adjusted at what level you would acquire certain ranks of skills. If you are a character pre-55 you may be training skills at ranks that were previously unavailable.
  
• In some cases we moved abilities from the Base Class to the Advanced Class or vice-versa. This technically means you could have to retrain an ability you already had, since it changed where/how you got it.
  

I had not realized the scope of abilities that would need to be trained or I would have been more proactive in alerting everyone to this prior to 3.0. With this in mind, the need to train/re-train abilities in 3.0 is intended and therefore we are not planning on making any changes at this time. I apologize sincerely for the inconvenience this has caused.

 

Thank you for your understanding.

 

-eric

So it was intended I retrain speeder 3 when I purchased it from legacy using cartel coins? You apologize for the inconvenience? I have every profession at 55, the differences on the cost of what we have retrain is FING ridiculous. Some have to retrain level 5 or 10 skills? While another has to spend 30k per skill because "it changed" and it happens to be a level 50 skill. Just admit it, you f'd up and say you can't fix it now that it's live. Telling me this working as intended makes me think you guys are a bunch of jack *****.

 

And now having to pay for abilities like we have been since day one. Sure some you have to repurchase big deal but those claiming the upgrades to those abilities are also part of that are purposely misleading others.

 

/QUOTE]

 

So no one should say anything when they log in their Marauder and find they have to train the interrupt again, when the Sentinel they just logged off didn't have to? All the Sages and Shadows shouldn't say anything because they had to retrain a skill their mirror classes didn't? Commandos, hey just suck it up and redo those ~8 skills while Mercs only had ~4.

 

Points for getting in a 'complaining about complaining' post.

Mr. Musco,

While I appreciate your response, I have to add my voice to those who are disappointed and believe we deserve compensation for the changes.

The system change is something done by Bioware to make their lives easier in balancing the game. It was not something requested by the player base. While I have no problems with the change I the system, to expect players to have to spend earned virtual currency in order to play their characters in the same way they were playing them the day _before_ the patch and implementation is a poor business decision because of what it says about how you feel about your customers.

While the end costs may not be that much for some characters it is still not a warranted cost. My transition from 2.10.x to 3.0 should not cost my character a dime. I understand you _intend_ for the skills to have to be purchased in the _future_ with new characters and I don't think a single person in this thread will disagree with that need/necessity. _EXISTING_ characters though should not have to re-buy things they already had, or buy new things they did not have, because it is part of the new system.

You have, as a company, made a poor PR decision. Working as intended is not a good answer.

I suggest you assuage the hurt feelings of your customers with any number of methods available to you by providing all the 'pre access' players with some form of additional reward. Me< I would suggest that you calculate an 'average' cost (say 250,000 credits) and distribute to every character on every account with pre-access a vendor sellable item worth $250,000.

The, the next time around when you make general availability, send it again to _all_ accounts (including those already compensated). I understand this may benefit lower level characters who would not have seen the same training cost debacle, but it really serves as a nice apology for your actions as a company in this matter.

My character prior to the patch was fully functional. After the patch I had to make significant changes to each of my characters (20 in total, though 4 are vender bots) in order for them to be functional again. Needing to reselect skills, juggle things on the skill bar layouts, etc, inconvenient but not too troublesome. Paying credits to get my character back to where they were.. troublesome.

It is almost amusing how different people think in different countries.

In my country this case would be described as a catastrophe both in business and PR.

 

A totally unnecessary idea (generates no direct revenue) that results unsatisfied customers (direct revenue loss) and to make things worse - as usual - comes a PR message that pisses everyone off (trying to reason on a terrible idea instead of admitting it and display respect for the feedback of customers), resulting further loss of revenue.

 

If I was a teacher at business/PR school, I would quote this game quite often.

I tip my hat, Sir. Well said.

This is textbook 1-0-1 on how to annoy and alienate your customers.

It might be best to wait to return to the game once they get all of their ducks in a row on this one.

Honestly I'm really surprised someone supporting the game like you, also cancelled.

Seems to me you nailed it:

This just doesn't feel right.

I suggest you assuage the hurt feelings of your customers with any number of methods available to you by providing all the 'pre access' players with some form of additional reward.

While I, in gemeral, find this idea quite good, could you please explain why this compensation should be limited to those who pre-ordered the expansion? I didn't pre-order (and don't intend to buy the expansion in the near future), but my toons are nevertheless also as wrecked as those of any of those who pre-ordered. The changes made with the discipline system is currently enforced on all players, pre-ordered or not, subscriber or not. So the compensation should also be aimed at every current toon of every current player, regardless of his status or wether hi did buy the expansion or not.

subscriber or not

I hadn't even thought about F2P and Preferred. There's probably a very large silenced # of ticked off players with the training costs that can't even voice their displeasure. And they have credit caps to boot.

With every hour and day that goes by, they are making this a bigger mountain to deal with in terms of credit reversals/reimbursements. This was a forced respec due to the new build, every character should get one free respec w/no training costs, up to their current level, whatever that may be. This is something that seems so ridiculous to even have to suggest, you would think this would be the Devs plan from the get-go. Why we are even having to suggest this / request this seems quite unsettling.

They should just make skill training for 55 and under free till the first of the year, and give everyone a month's worth of cartel coins.

This would help to compensate the early adopters, and give them time to make adjustments.

I think there are two issues at work here.

1) What Eric stated in his post. Abilities that have changed, moved to base abilities from specs, new abilities, etc. cost credits to train. I can understand this and have no issue doing it, but understand why some players would disagree. It's certainly worthy of discussion.

2) Players talking about abilities that do not fit into the categories listed by Eric having to be retrained. Things like Force Lift needing to be retrained when Whirlwind was not when they are mirrored abilities. What appears to be an extremely broken Commando skill system based on what people have posted. I can say that I have no had to train any abilities that did not meet Eric's criteria, so it would be good to know if players complaining had missed skills previously or if there is an additional bug that is making abilities have to be trained that should not be.

I suggest starting a new thread specifically for issue number 2 to collect data and investigate and allow discussion around issue number 1 to continue here.

Ok so I have an update on the training/re-training of abilities with the launch of 3.0. With all of the changes that hit with 3.0 to Disciplines, it is intended that there are abilities that need to be trained/re-trained. Here are some of the criteria that could cause this to happen:

• If an existing ability changed, in name or functionality. This could especially affect Disciplines which used to share an overlapping name and set of abilities, such as Lethality Sniper/Operative.
  
• We adjusted at what level you would acquire certain ranks of skills. If you are a character pre-55 you may be training skills at ranks that were previously unavailable.
  
• In some cases we moved abilities from the Base Class to the Advanced Class or vice-versa. This technically means you could have to retrain an ability you already had, since it changed where/how you got it.
  

I had not realized the scope of abilities that would need to be trained or I would have been more proactive in alerting everyone to this prior to 3.0. With this in mind, the need to train/re-train abilities in 3.0 is intended and therefore we are not planning on making any changes at this time. I apologize sincerely for the inconvenience this has caused.

This was a bad move, but your excuse is worse. And "Thanks for your understanding" is just insulting.

Forgetting to mention it is one thing; it's just a mistake that happens. Refusing to admit that it's a problem and to do something about it after the fact is not something "understandable." It's just dumb, and it's souring peoples' opinions of the launch while doing absolutely nothing to help you or the game.

Just do some little thing to offset the cost of retraining previously trained skills. Problem solved. Give everyone a limited time click-to-complete quest that awards 250k at level 55 or something. Or zero out the costs on the skills that were at or below your level on launch day.

It was a dumb move, but a forgiveable one, if you did something to make up for it. Doing nothing and just telling everyone who complained to take a hike is condescending and lame.

I hadn't even thought about F2P and Preferred. There's probably a very large silenced # of ticked off players with the training costs that can't even voice their displeasure. And they have credit caps to boot.

 

With every hour and day that goes by, they are making this a bigger mountain to deal with in terms of credit reversals/reimbursements. This was a forced respec due to the new build, every character should get one free respec w/no training costs, up to their current level, whatever that may be. This is something that seems so ridiculous to even have to suggest, you would think this would be the Devs plan from the get-go. Why we are even having to suggest this / request this seems quite unsettling.

Hadn't thought about them either....but you're right, I'll bet there's a LOT of f2p and preferred players saying "to Hell with this nonsense". Way to p!$$ on your player base and tell us it's rain BW.

Personally I've got quite a few alts that it actually makes more sense to just start over. But without the 12xp boost, I can't see spending another 6months per character to lvl from 1-50 again.

I had not realized the scope of abilities that would need to be trained or I would have been more proactive in alerting everyone to this prior to 3.0. With this in mind, the need to train/re-train abilities in 3.0 is intended and therefore we are not planning on making any changes at this time. I apologize sincerely for the inconvenience this has caused.

 

Thank you for your understanding.

 

-eric

Not good enough... Didn't realize the scope... Sorry I know better...

Bioware people:

I think you need to reconsider this position on believing that relearning skills is working as intended. It isn't, or at least, it shouldn't be.

Forced changes to a player's character are generally handled with no cost to the player's toon. Changing from one system to a completely new system shouldn't be any different. Whether or not a player likes the new system, or doesn't, that doesn't matter. What matters is we're stuck with it and it was your idea.

Ok, fine. I either choose to keep playing or cancel. That's up to me and each of your subscribers/players on an individual basis.

You can rationalize the 'moving of skills' around, and 'different skills' or 'different names on skills' but the bottom line is you don't WANT to do it. Someone, or a lot of people, didn't think it through and now, after the fact, there's a mess.

Clean up your mess.

Have someone go through each class and figure out how much retraining costs. If it costs 500k on a Inquisitor and 350k on an operative, refund at the appropriate cost.

Yes, it will require some inventive coding on your part, but that's all it is, coding.

In a former Star Wars MMO all players were told, over and over again, was that "it couldn't be done" because the code wouldn't allow it. From transferring resources from one server to another, to any number of other things. Things that were eventually introduced as the formerly 'impossible coding' was actually implemented.

Spend the money, make the code, fix your problem.

Keep your customers happy.

Not good enough... Didn't realize the scope... Sorry I know better...

I had to learn interrupt skill on my guardian but did not have to learn it on my sentinel. it tells me all i have to know ; the system is bugged. but of course the "outstanding eaware devs" who excels in creating more bug with each and every patch would not be able to see the simplest thing, if they were capable we would not still have bugs from closed beta test in game still..

I understand the need to retrain. I do NOT understand why I am being charged for it. These were not voluntary changes, and players should not have to pay credits to train their characters back to the same level they were before this change.

 

****

This "Discipline System Tax" is a bad, bad idea.

^this

While I, in gemeral, find this idea quite good, could you please explain why this compensation should be limited to those who pre-ordered the expansion? I didn't pre-order (and don't intend to buy the expansion in the near future), but my toons are nevertheless also as wrecked as those of any of those who pre-ordered. The changes made with the discipline system is currently enforced on all players, pre-ordered or not, subscriber or not. So the compensation should also be aimed at every current toon of every current player, regardless of his status or wether hi did buy the expansion or not.

It was early, I wasn't thinking.

Yeah, the skill changes went to everyone. For whatever reason I was thinking in my head at 5amish that this affected only some people.

mea culpa

Just FYI, Eric, there are more comments on this issue (and more likes for the comments griping about it) than anything else mentioned in this article:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/03/leaderboard-are-you-playing-shadow-of-revan-this-week/

You guys may want to rethink your position a bit.

And if that doesn't move you: