First, compliments where they are due - I enjoy the new story and renewed imp v pub focus, and the gearing is not as bad as I thought.

Now on to the substance - the reason I just took a 2 week pokehiatus (i.e. playing pokemon shield, and for the first time since emerald I took the time to complete a pokedex) and dont feel bad in the slightest.

First - the failure to scale content to 75.

The game is obviously not getting new content at any sort of sustainable pace. I accepted this a long time ago, or I wouldnt be a subscribing player. That said, their solution to this in the past was to scale all content to max level, thus all content was still "relevant".

Obviously, we'd all prefer more new content. Because this seems impossible, I suggest they go back to their prior method of raising the level cap for content. This is also related to gearing because, frankly, I am struggling to see a point behind getting optimized everything for my toons, when there is only one operation that it's actually "useful" in. More on the gear later.

I'm not sure if trying to push the new op on people is a factor in this, like it obviously was with ossus and gearing circa 5.10. If so, I suggest this is misguided. You are obviously incapable of making new ops at an appropriate pacing to make this feasible. Give it up and scale everything.

That brings me to the next point:

Second: the new group finder operations

I like the idea of encouraging more people to do operations. All this has done, however, is ensure that people do not get the group finder reward. As a frequent pug raid lead and main tank, theres no way I'm taking 7 random people into a monolith, not with the average player in this game. I suggest reverting it back to the way it was, or maybe making it 2 options, where the one boss op changes daily also.

As it stands now, I usually just dont bother going for the weekly reward, or if I do, I do the same thing I do with MM FP and game it with a friend. I run frequently with my healer friend. So we take turns, I'll queue random, and he queues hammer station. Then flip and we both get the daily reward for random, and since we're a tank and healer combo, we generally get matched together.

For operations, for instance, I would queue with 6 others and my friend would queue the gf of the day, if we do another one, we switch who gets the gf credit. And again, since we are a tank healer combo, and even more so since nobody randomly queues for ops, 7/8 people get credit for random op, minus the random.

Third: Gearing, my thoughts

First and foremost, I do prefer this to Ossus, though NOT to 5.9.

I do not like not having a way to target a specific piece or mod/enhancement. Getting to 306 gear was relatively easy, now getting BiS mods for every set of gear I want? Complete pain that is totally dependent on the RNG gods, and its 100k a pop to pull a mod out of a useless piece to put it in a useful one. Ouch, and credit sink #1.

I have also noticed that because of my second point in conjunction with the fastest way to gear being stealth RR and MM HS, ops queues have dried up. The issue here, of course, is that there are such a huge variety of items now that I cant simply suggest you add BIS gloves to say brontes (or whatever).

Because you want credit sinks, I suggest two things here:

1. Add a vendor to sell mods/enh for credits and/or tech fragments (and maybe one of the useless ones or lower ilevel ones or something, pay to trade). I've gotten probably a hundred lethal 80a mods, which do literally nothing for me.

2. Re-add tokens to ops bosses. If you want to leave the cost in credits, whatever. But to encourage people to ditch the MM HS grind (of which I myself am guilty), Ops should be a faster gearing method than FP grinding. Maybe say credits and say bestia drops a certificate you can trade for whatever set piece pants you want. Leave the tech frag system in place as is, so then you have a choice of methods.

Next in this section: PvP gearing

Gearing via pvp frankly sucks. I'm not entirely sure what to do here, the daily and weekly crates are ok, just as they are everywhere else they exist. Maybe up the tech fragment accrual rate via pvp.

Next, crafted tacticals. The schematics for these should be obtainable in a predictable, reliable manner. Two of the tacticals I want, i either missed while I was off on my pokehiatus or they dont even exist yet. Given how absurdly expensive crafting is, I fail to see why the applicable crafting skills cannot learn these from their trainer. You seem to like credit sinks. Make them expensive and throw them on the trainer.

Finally, last comment on gearing is my personal pet peeve of 6.0, and credit sink #2: amplifiers.

I've been saying for months these things were conceptually stupid. They obviously do make a difference in dps/hps, and thus, are min/max tools. They are also absurdly expensive and overly random. Either drop the cost to something tiny (I'm talking like 500 credits) or eliminate the randomness and let me pick which one I want for say, 1 mill an amplifier. Or better yet, scrap them altogether. But since I know that's not happening, use one of my two other options.

Fourth: the guild conquest window

Could we make this update and tally properly, please?

Fifth, and finally: crafting

Aka credit sink #3. This is so absurd that augmentation kits are going for over 1 mill each. Just, basic things like stims and augment kits should be relatively inexpensive for everyone. Make the expensive stuff the aforementioned tacticals. Another idea: if you dont like my vendor for mods/enh idea, make BIS ones craftable. It will inevitably be expensive and time consuming, but it would be a guaranteed method of getting them. Today's changes are a huge step in the right direction. I feel there is still work to be done, and hope you will continue to monitor the situation.

Some Final Thoughts

Your credit sinks are hurting your loyal players who arent manipulating the system, while simultaneously helping those who are, and I deign say the largest beneficiaries are the credit spammers. Let's use myself as an example here. I work 8-12 hour days, 5 days a week, the occasional weekend. I don't feel like spending my off time on a credit grind that then goes into one repair bill. I have never bought credits off the spammers. I had enough left from selling charged matters that I went into this expansion with say 300 million credits. I've spent them on nothing except gearing, repairs, etc, (i.e. nothing cosmetic off the GTN) and I'm down to 94 mill. Given my schedule I have no way of revamping this investment in game. Were there say, a credit token avaliable off the CM for actual money, just maybe I'd do that. In the meantime, what am I to do when I reach the inevitable point where I'm too poor to buy gear? Sure, I can take advantage of my friends who have more time than I do, but that shouldnt be my only option. Cut down the credit sinks and/or add creds for coins.

TLDR: the decision to not scale stuff to 75 was stupid, the new ops gf sucks, amplifiers are as stupid as I said they were, gearing has a few more issues, fix the guild conquest window, and crafting needs more improvements and additions.

Ok, i can't read all atm so i will only address the first point, wich i think is the most important, to say i agree.

The random caps on some stats but not others is very bizarre. It is telling the player to get a gear set for level 70 ops and another for level 75 ones. I am sure that is not the intention and it devalues the worth of the new level 75 gear we can acquire.

So, there needs to be something done. Either as suggested raise all ops to level cap and unlock all stats, or if your intent is to not have to do that with every expansion, change the way gear scales (or in fact doesn't) in level 70 ops.

I mean, i guess you can just lock all stats so at least there isn't the need to have 2 gear sets.

Things like power trinkets and adrenals/stims not having any effect cause of this cap is punitive as well. Please change this.

All of these are good points, but a big part of the problem is probably that this game had a rocky development leading to a controversial launch, with stories about how Mythic (the DAOC developer) had to throw 90% of the game together at the last minute since come the initial release date allegedly all Bioware had going for them was pride in their writing and sound design. If there is any truth to this, it explains why the game systems are Spaghetti, and fixing seemingly simple problems might not be as simple as you think as fixing one thing can break another when it comes to code. As this was not "The WoW-killer of legend" and while profitable was not what was hoped I have no idea what their design team is like.

See, I have some belief that they could say fix the armor set I am upset about being bugged, but anything major like level balancing or *lol* "fixing PVP" might be nearly impossible from a code perspective. I've done a lot of beta testing, and was a tester at a time before it simply became code for "morons who we can ignore while we stress test the servers" so having talked to MMO coders I know it's not as straight forward as many people think as from a code perspective a seemingly simple fix or change can cause a massive cascade of changes to other systems and break more stuff than it fixes. This is why seemingly unrelated things can suddenly fail when a patch makes a change. Simply put I cannot see any kind of sudden, radical, change in SWTOR, and honestly hoping for more content based around the broken systems in place is probably more practical (and probably better for the game in keeping people playing) is probably more reasonable than hoping for serious fixes to things like oh say... targeting (referencing another message talking about unresolved problems multiple-years old). Besides there is no point to a bunch of content people no longer play due to burning out on it now working perfectly... that can kill the game as sure as anything.

As far as the credit sinks in the game, I myself have some issues here. I do not like the idea that my repairs now cost more than I am likely to pull down in your average FP. On the other hand like any other MMO the economy right now is a victim of inflation, this happens in any environment where money is produced limitlessly by just killing stuff. Pretty much every MMO in history has run into the problem that everything becomes unaffordable to "balanced" low level characters based on what high level characters can make in theory, and what proportional value winds up being with most of the game players at endgame.

The thing is also MMO companies also refuse to police their game, tragically the biggest victim is allowing cheaters, exploiters, and people who are let's simply call bad sportsman take over. Right below that though is the fact that there are entire tribes of math and economic geeks who pride themselves on decimating fictional economies faster than they would fall on their own to "prove a point", or even just for lulz. I was here from the beginning of SWTOR and from day #1 we had people playing the market and laughing about how they were going to tank things in record time. On my old WoW server (Shadow Council) there was at one time a player called "Azureheart" who basically managed to take over the entire bloody economy and set prices on everything almost single handedly.... simply put the GMs refuse to intervene in PVP, economics, or anything else, they let the players run rampant, and thus these problems exist in every game. If some day we see a GOOD MMO, there will need to be among other things full time PVP refs, and GMs whose job it is to monitor and maintain the economy if nothing else..... that said I do not see this happening in the current era. Perhaps when MMOs die out and "come around again" in some form decades later (I''ll probably be 80) enough old fogeys will remember to finally do it right.... simply put an MMO is a playground, and as teachers learned from the beginnings of schools, the adults need to supervise. The ability of a handfull of people to have a tremendous impact on a server in an MMO should be well documented right now, as is the fact that mostly those people will act to annoy all the other people for "lulz" just because they can.

As far as fixing Operations, FPs, and other things... I've returned over the last few weeks, and I like what they are trying to do, but simply put they need to tweak almost all of them if they want to have a true "looking for raid" mode where a bunch of casuals can wing what was formerly hardcore endgame content. If nothing else your average PUG does not have the patience or capacity to learn. For example I was running "The NEthema Conspiracy" I think it was called, I plowed through to the last boss, replacing people who gave up all the way... we got to the final boss, and eventually I simply could not find people who were willing to put in the effort to learn it. The whole "wipe until we get it right" mentality that caused me to be one of the hardest people on my server in my era of WoW just does not exist with this level of player. Of course when your looking at the current repair bills (20k per death on average) I suppose that also prevents people from being willing to learn when it could take 120k credits just to wipe half a dozen times trying to figure out mechanics and try different approaches.

I think one big problem is to make the FPS and Ops all "puggable" they need to not just change numbers, but also code things so mechanics change based on group content, and disappear entirely or become more forgiving when on " casual mode". They might do this to some extent already ( am new to SWTOR endgame, I never cared before, and really being a filthy casual nowadays the LFR-type stuff is the only reason I bother) but if they do, they do not do so sufficiently. What's more there are no clues to what the mechanics might even be in some cases.... for example when I started that NEthema Conspiracy thing (I think I aced a single player version before my latest absence) nobody knew anything about it in the initial group, and none of the bosses gave ANY indication of their mechanics that I could see.... that is broken design. I am still not entirely sure how the final boss was supposed to work, and suspect it might have been bugging.

I was operating on the assumption that they were short staffed and sweeping changes were unlikely.

That assumption is why I was saying 6 months ago that they shouldn't make large sweeping changes they would be unable to fix later.

Alas, they did it anyway, and now it seems its here to stay, and theres no outcry like there was back in 5.0.

I guess I'm going to have to decide how to come up with credits to support myself somehow, because it seems everyone else is fine with repairs being ridiculous and having credit sinks everywhere.

Alas, they did it anyway, and now it seems its here to stay, and theres no outcry like there was back in 5.0.

 

I guess I'm going to have to decide how to come up with credits to support myself somehow, because it seems everyone else is fine with repairs being ridiculous and having credit sinks everywhere.

That is pretty much how I feel about 6.0 re: the points you've mentioned (most noticeably gearing). I don't like it for multiple reasons, but the people I've talked to in-game love or at least like it with few complaints, and I hear you on the lack of outcry here that I was expecting. It's simply gob-smacking to me the number of people that love, defend, tolerate running the same content hundreds of times like that was intended or "the right way" to do something, and then YOU are the problem for not doing it, too. It makes me feel very ambivalent anymore about bothering to join group content again. I've just gone back to my solo ways and don't see myself doing endgame content anymore.

I'm just taking gear as it comes now. Not chasing, not even thinking about it other than collecting each piece that will help unlock the achievements someday, hopefully before they "fix" gearing again in 7.0 and invalidate all the achievements anyway. I'll not be wasting my credits on buying gear. My Space Barbie-related GTN budget is thin enough as it is.

That is pretty much how I feel about 6.0 re: the points you've mentioned (most noticeably gearing). I don't like it for multiple reasons, but the people I've talked to in-game love or at least like it with few complaints, and I hear you on the lack of outcry here that I was expecting. It's simply gob-smacking to me the number of people that love, defend, tolerate running the same content hundreds of times like that was intended or "the right way" to do something, and then YOU are the problem for not doing it, too. It makes me feel very ambivalent anymore about bothering to join group content again. I've just gone back to my solo ways and don't see myself doing endgame content anymore.

 

I'm just taking gear as it comes now. Not chasing, not even thinking about it other than collecting each piece that will help unlock the achievements someday, hopefully before they "fix" gearing again in 7.0 and invalidate all the achievements anyway. I'll not be wasting my credits on buying gear. My Space Barbie-related GTN budget is thin enough as it is.

Honestly, I've accepted the lack of new content. It's the inevitable fact that new content is going to be slow coming, in conjunction wtih their failure to "raise" the level cap on old content, resulting in a gear grind that's 99% pointless.

While there are new and sometimes large credit sinks in the game, there are still billions in the economy and lots of ways to relieve other players ( quite legitimately) of their hard earned credits.

With rare mats going at 250K to 1.5M each, with dyes and crafted items being in demand, with raw materials needed, there is still the opportunity to prize credits from their characters and put it in one's own bank.

If you reduce your spending to minimum and just play the game, credits trickle in. If you play clever, you can make millions every week, by doing conquest, dailies, FPs, ops, PVP, GSF and stuff.

You dont always have to have a full gear set, with augments, in the exact style of your choosing from the CM.... Just cut your cloth to suit your budget.

GL.

First - the failure to scale content to 75.

Yeah, so they claimed that continually re-scaling all the old content every-time the level cap increased was unsustainable. So this wasn't as much a failure as intentional. But they never really explained why. If I asked once, I asked ten times:

1) Were the developers concerned about content being trivialized for players at level cap in near BiS gear?

2) Were the developers concerned that as the level cap was increased, and the delta between level 50s and capped players got wider and wider, that even Bolster would not be enough to make the lower levels competitive?

Maybe its a mixture of both. But whatever the primary motivation was, hiding it from us adversely affected the quality of feedback. We told them that the 1st version of the new scaling tech, that level locked players down to the original level of the content (think level 50 for EV/KP/EC, level 70 for GOTM, etc.), was still too easy. MM EC was apparently completed by a pair of players in 306 set bonus gear. But this new iteration, largely unchanged from PTS to live, with this strange level 70 scaling, seems more like a cop out than logical. I mean, the only reason to choose 70 is because they had already done all the work in previous expansions balancing the older content for the level cap at 70.

Personally, I think they should have just kept the original-level scaling tech and nerfed the player stats down to an iRating level commensurate to what the BiS was at the time, with a floor at the level of artifact crafted gear. So, a player going into any difficulty mode of, say, EV, would never have stats better than iRating 154. A player going into any difficulty mode of GOTM would be no higher than 258. And they would never have stats lower than iRating 228 (for GOTM) or 124 (for EV). This range would be compared to the range of the level 75 player's iRating, 270-306, and the "Veteran's Edge" stacking buff we have now would determine where in the range a player would fall. The stats in question would be mastery, power, Tech power, Force power, endurance, and critical rating. Accuracy and Alacrity would be retained since honestly these are sort of set goals rather than moving targets.

This would, in effect, keep harder but older content challenging (MM EC for example), but honestly, between set bonuses, tacticals, utilities, and upgraded abilities, a level cap player would still have a much easier time than an at-level player. SM EV would still be just as much of a cakewalk as it is currently, and fresh 50s wouldn't struggle.

It also allows the Devs to fix current issues existing with the scaling of the Eternal Championship, VM/MM Chapters, Star Fortresses, whatever.

I know lots of people just absolutely love the feeling of being powerful and curbstomping everything in their path because their gear in 5.x was so much more powerful with those excess tertiary stats plus a level sync often 2 levels higher than original. But most high end raiders would prefer the older content be more like its previous difficulty level. As I said, there are enough differences between a fresh 50 and a level 75 in 306 with full tacticals and set bonuses and all their utilities that I hardly doubt the level 75 will "struggle."

Second: the new group finder operations

I dunno. I think this is more the players fault than the devs. Colossal Monolith is highlighted as the only problem. The event bosses (when relevant), TC, and Hive Queen are easy enough or recent in people's collective memory. That being said, to this day I still encounter pugs who have never done, for example, Xenoanalyst, and it won't be long until the same things said about CM will be said about Hive Queen. Its two issues really:

1. First , maybe the devs have some responsibility to nerf the mechanics of SM CM so that its easier for pugs, or provide more system messages to steer players to the mechanics. I think that's a reasonable request.

2. It also falls on players to do the research, read the guides, teach what they know to other players, etc. It's definitely been a while since I've done CM but the guide is still on Dulfy and still relevant. Its fallen on me many times to go over mechanics of the bosses in DP all over text chat to more than one pug. I enjoy doing that. I realize many pugs include people with such limited attention-span who wish they could just blast through TC and get their reward, they're the same people who won't wait for me to swap out my gear before the next boss in Hammer Station, or leave if I ask to do the bonus bosses in "the main 4" as I like to call them (Master Mode Hammer, Mando, Cademimu, Athiss). There are impatient people in this game and in the world but for every impatient person there is also someone interested in learning. I'd rather take the chance there's someone new to ops who is educable than the chance I'd upset someone by leaving CM checked.

Third: Gearing, my thoughts

Yeah, this was definitely better than I expected. I was disappointed in the lack of crates associated with other weekly areas. I'm not sure the renown rewards are enough to partially offset the loss of a crate, but I realize they want people to play the new areas. I mean its basically what they did with Ossus. It isn't as much play your way as they made it seem, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either.

Compared to Galactic Command circa 5.9 though, I think SoW is better. I've always preferred systems that awarded personal loot in addition to the rolls. It was far too easy, even in 5.9, to end up with nothing at the end of an op, and the unassembled component yield from disintegrating tier 4 crates was nothing compared to what we get now.

BiS takes long because of the multiple iterations of lettered mods more than anything else. What they bring in customization has its costs in RNG. I do wish that would get pared down a bit, as it would help mitigate the RNG. I disagreed with the removal of refundability but I understand they wanted a credit and Tech Fragment sink. I don't know that BiS means the same thing anymore, its not quite as clear cut as it was in 5.x. There is still tons of debate around stat budgets. But once you get your set bonus and tactical pieces for your mains, this becomes a place to spend the TFs on. I fully realize you could buy hundreds of random Mods and never get the Lethal 80 unlettered mod you're seeking (or whatever). Perhaps if the lettered variants can't be pared down, the categories of item modifications could be expanded to help people narrow down the range of mods they're rolling on (higher mastery vs higher endurance vs higher secondary/tertiary stat). Perhaps Kai could sell a random BiS item modification in addition to his other wares each weekend. I think the system needs tweaking just like GC did.

Fifth, and finally: crafting

Totally with you on this one. The changes in 6.0.2 helped me to make Artifact assembly components/cell grafts/etc with less materials, and I learned the purple augments pretty quickly. But as for those purple augments, the rare exotic requirement for purple augments isn't worth the difference in tertiary stats over blues. Not to mention artifact grade 10 rating 228 augments have more tertiary stat than the blue grade 11s. And I don't think they touched the RE chance on biochem consumables at all. At least the artifact ones don't require any exotics. If it makes more sense for me to make the reusable grade 10 biochem stuff, and stick with grade 10 augments, then the system is broken.

The capping player levels for most of the content is indeed weird, and doesn't work that well (makes end game gearing less valuable most of the time). But for me, I think it is the compounding that really screws things up;

1) They didn't just raise that mat costs to craft. They dramatically raised the mat cost compounded with having to make lots of green components to make a few blue components, to make a couple purple components....compounded with making fp/ops only mats required....compounded with making conquest only mats required....compounded with drastic drops in reverse engineering rates...compounded with mats from several gathering skills needed to make things.

2) They not only cap players level and stats, but they nerf companions, they buff mobs, and they make repairs costly.

3) It's kind of the same with credit sinks. They didn't just create all kinds of credit sinks, but it is compounded by lower credit rewards, higher repair costs, higher gear prices (1 million credits per piece), combined with higher gtn prices due to crafting being more expensive and time consuming. So now any casual player that doesn't farm and/or craft for the gtn is going to be poor.

Then when they go to "fix" the problem they created, they don't think about compounding. They just look at each change separately.

The capping player levels for most of the content is indeed weird, and doesn't work that well (makes end game gearing less valuable most of the time). But for me, I think it is the compounding that really screws things up;

 

1) They didn't just raise that mat costs to craft. They dramatically raised the mat cost compounded with having to make lots of green components to make a few blue components, to make a couple purple components....compounded with making fp/ops only mats required....compounded with making conquest only mats required....compounded with drastic drops in reverse engineering rates...compounded with mats from several gathering skills needed to make things.

 

2) They not only cap players level and stats, but they nerf companions, they buff mobs, and they make repairs costly.

 

3) It's kind of the same with credit sinks. They didn't just create all kinds of credit sinks, but it is compounded by lower credit rewards, higher repair costs, higher gear prices (1 million credits per piece), combined with higher gtn prices due to crafting being more expensive and time consuming. So now any casual player that doesn't farm and/or craft for the gtn is going to be poor.

 

Then when they go to "fix" the problem they created, they don't think about compounding. They just look at each change separately.

Great post. 100% accurate.

Kendra, there is so much I want to add to what you’re written to expand and go into more details. But, I’ve honestly lost patience with these bozo’s. Everything you said was spot on and the sad thing is we know Bioware won’t read it or if they do, they won’t give a crap. So there isn’t much point in elaborating more.

I feel so jaded about this game “again” and so annoyed at myself for resubbing when it looked like they were finally interested in fixing the gear drop bug. Only to find out they’ve done absolutely nothing to fix it and Musco hasn’t the comon decency to come back to that bug thread “he started” to ask for info on what’s happening so they can fix it,

How damn hard is it for that man to do his *********** job and manage player expectation and communicate with us. He really needs to move on from this game for some new blood to take over because he obviously doesn’t give a crap anymore.

I *Very Much agree. I've gone into "Onslaught" on two characters so far and both times, came out with Noticeably, "Less" credits then I started with. I actually Did like the stories and locations the expansion itself is just way too short (not enough content and very short stories); That I believe is the result of dividing their time between "An Expansion" and this gear change (that most don't like). Had they focused on the expansion now that story could've been considerably "Larger" and the gearing *Later when it would've been received by players still happy from the expansion and Onslaught would not have been "Looked down on because of the gearing".

As a result of this "Expanded Credit Sink" I'm not taking anymore characters through unless things change (Doubtful).

I'm Not, one of the Galaxy sized "Billionaires", so as discussed many times before here the "Quick Fix", Hammer Handed" method has actually hurt more of the normal players and fewer of the target wealthy (Not to mention the wealthy recover quicker if they even noticed and the Gold Spammers will have a field day with all the business some will turn to).

Credit sinks. That's interesting to be fair, all prior expansions had some form of credit sink introduced alongside ways to also earn those credits while running content to remain fairly cost neutral.

6.0 is a completely different ball game, unless you run conquest and sell those materials or are a crafter of something that sells in quantity then you're pretty much going to lose credits in 6.0 with the way things have been designed by BioWare.

• Pulling useful mods? 95-100k
  
• Rolling useful amplifiers with large RNG pools? Starts at 21k per roll, gets obscene if RNG hates you.
  
• Buying gear with Tech Fragments? 1 million per pop.
  
• Repair bills from prolonged fights due to mob changes? Increased credit cost, selling any scraps dropped doesn't cover that bill.
  
• Upgrading crew skills? 500k per skill.
  
• Increase in required supplements for crafting? Increased cost.
  
• Poor RE chances? Increased cost.
  

Add into this the inflation on the GTN as players struggle to find suitable sources of credits in the game, BioWare has simply made things worse in terms of the in game economy. I suspect the players who already have billions of credits and sit on them are the only players unaffected by the drastic changes BioWare have introduced. Meanwhile all the "normal" players of the game (the ones that run content or gear characters) are pretty much screwed.

No wonder credit sellers have been more prevalent in 6.0, I'm sure they're doing a nice business thanks to BioWare not introducing the right types of credit sinks.

It isn't as much play your way as they made it seem, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either.

The more I read about what people (including me) say about "Play Your Way", the more I'm convinced that we've all, individually and collectively, misunderstood what they meant.

We seem to have mostly taken it to mean, "play the kind of content you want," but I'm thinking that it really meant, "play whatever content you're playing using a play-style that you want rather than a play-style dictated by the gearing structure." That's why there are so many different tacticals and amplifiers and set bonuses (so we can choose the combination we want, or at least propitiate the Mistress of Pain(1) so that she gives it to us), while at the same time the reward structure is so clearly oriented towards having us play the same sort of content that Keith likes. (Er, excessive cynicism??? not sure.)

(1) Habitual gamblers call Her "Lady Luck", while followers of Diskworld know Her as "The Lady". Heretics and blasphemers think Her name is "RNGesus".

Hello - dear community

Come down .... take controll of your minde (maybe use the force)

Ans ask yourself:

----------------- for what are you here --------------------

Are you on work ?

Are you on the run ?

Can you exchange the Credits in real $$$$$ ?

Is the max gear that important for to play a game ?

The amplifier are totally unnessantion for usual game play - so ignore it.

For veteran and master flashpoints you can use the random drop gear.

And if you are a ambitious player buy some set gear armor and you are good enough.

And no .. no no no ... only a few players are pros for NIM OP raids ....

And those plyers need as more as good max gear.

Those players need experince in game mechanic and learned it in many tries and practice.

Good gear don't make it easier and don't make you better this stuff is a must have for special content.

So don't waste your money into this hgh-pricy-rng-gear that ony fool you are a pro.

Learn to play a game again - with fun - for a good time - with friends ......

And if you want no will more - for what ?? For your small ego ... to show what a great pro player you are ...

OK - i accept ... play as you want ... it is your decission.

But - don't cry about this roundabout carousel of grinding and more grinding and more money.

And if you use the clever way and buy stuff in GTN you must pay credits many credits.

And serve the credit bots.

This is your way your decission and also your own agony of pain - not mine ......

So .... calm down and have a good time in SWTOR again

and

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

Credit sinks. That's interesting to be fair, all prior expansions had some form of credit sink introduced alongside ways to also earn those credits while running content to remain fairly cost neutral.

 

6.0 is a completely different ball game, unless you run conquest and sell those materials or are a crafter of something that sells in quantity then you're pretty much going to lose credits in 6.0 with the way things have been designed by BioWare.

 

• Pulling useful mods? 95-100k
  
• Rolling useful amplifiers with large RNG pools? Starts at 21k per roll, gets obscene if RNG hates you.
  
• Buying gear with Tech Fragments? 1 million per pop.
  
• Repair bills from prolonged fights due to mob changes? Increased credit cost, selling any scraps dropped doesn't cover that bill.
  
• Upgrading crew skills? 500k per skill.
  
• Increase in required supplements for crafting? Increased cost.
  
• Poor RE chances? Increased cost.
  

 

Add into this the inflation on the GTN as players struggle to find suitable sources of credits in the game, BioWare has simply made things worse in terms of the in game economy. I suspect the players who already have billions of credits and sit on them are the only players unaffected by the drastic changes BioWare have introduced. Meanwhile all the "normal" players of the game (the ones that run content or gear characters) are pretty much screwed.

 

No wonder credit sellers have been more prevalent in 6.0, I'm sure they're doing a nice business thanks to BioWare not introducing the right types of credit sinks.

100% on every point.

I would like to add somethings. Bioware were warned for months before this expansion went live that all the credit sinks and gambling mechanics linked to them would only benefit the credit sellers and not affect the super rich players sitting on the majority of the credits.

I personally made threads and posts to try and point out how this was only going to hurt the normal / average players and have zero impact on those with credits. The poor and middle “class” players have only gotten poor and the rich have only gotten richer. (Art imitating life )

The idea of credit sinks is to remove excess credits from the game. The problem is these credit sinks aren’t targeted at those with the credits. They are targeted at those who don’t have the credits or the majority of the credits in the game.

I’m personally sitting at over 1 billion credits and these credit sinks have not made an impact what so ever on me. I’ve actually been getting richer since the expansion. While everyone around me is getting poorer.

I’m not saying that to brag. I honestly want my fellow players to be able to play the game with no in game financial stress so they can have fun and enjoy it. Reducing or even increasing these current credit sinks the way they are will never affect players with billions of credits. But it will affect everyone else and either keep players in the game if they lower them or drive players from the game if they don’t. Which will affect me too and that’s the last thing I want.

I also predicted there were going to be more gold spammers than normal this patch because Bioware have created the perfect environment for them to operate.

Everything I warned them about has happened and the next thing you can tick off my list will be more players leaving than would have if Bioware hadn’t done this,

The perceived stupidity of Bioware absolutely blows my mind sometimes. I can only come to two conclusions after all these years of watching one misstep after another that “seems” to make players leave “on purpose”.

1. They are purposely trying to tank the game so those working on it can move to better projects in Bioware.

2. They are so totally business and customer incompetent that it’s lucky they know how to turn on a computer, let alone run a game successfully.

I’ve racked my brain for other reasons and as unlikely as number 1 is, damn if it doesn’t keep feel like they are purposefully sabotaging the game from within. Nobody could be so utterly stupid in the face of over whelming player feed back, logic and players unsubbing, to not see everything that would result from their decisions over the years. It’s a pattern that’s been repeated for the last 5 years and just gets worse and worse every 6 months.

I keep saying it “blows my mind” because each time, it happens, it does.

Just when I think they can’t do any worse and they go and prove me wrong. My expectations have been so low for so long that I’ve come to expect it, but each time they seem to still find a way to take that idiocy to whole other lvl. It seems so systemic that it doesn’t feel like they are just making mistakes anymore. It feels too orchestrated to make players want to quit or not have fun in the game anymore.

Yes, I know, I’m still here and one of the biggest suckers like a lot of us. And I also know how jaded I come across and how jaded I feel towards them as a collective because they have been destroying such a great game for years. Plus certain staff at Bioware (who I’m sick of publicly shaming) don’t do their (his) job like they should be and actually communicating between us and the dev team.

Am I pushing a conspiracy that Bioware are tanking the game? No, I don’t think a corporate business is that dumb.

Am I suggesting a few individuals might have the capacity to do that subtly and slowly tank the game for their own self reasons? Sure they could, but you’d think they’d get caught after so many years,

I don’t know if there’s a conspiracy or they are just stupid. To be totally honest, I’m past caring. The game is already a shell of what it was. I can’t see them ever being able to do anything to give it back the shine it used to have for me.

All I know is there is something that’s been rotting away at the insides of this game for 5+ years to make it less fun and less enjoyable. It’s driven player after loyal player from the game when they reach their personal limit of patience.

I’m still kicking myself for resubbing and I’m going to keep kicking myself and hope I don’t renew it again (but I’m obviously a swtor Addict at this point and breaking the habit seems really hard to do).

Anyway, I’m sorry I’m so negative at the moment, but Bioware are making it extremely hard to be positive anymore.

100% on every point.

 

I would like to add somethings. Bioware were warned for months before this expansion went live that all the credit sinks and gambling mechanics linked to them would only benefit the credit sellers and not affect the super rich players sitting on the majority of the credits.

I personally made threads and posts to try and point out how this was only going to hurt the normal / average players and have zero impact on those with credits. The poor and middle “class” players have only gotten poor and the rich have only gotten richer. (Art imitating life )

 

The idea of credit sinks is to remove excess credits from the game. The problem is these credit sinks aren’t targeted at those with the credits. They are targeted at those who don’t have the credits or the majority of the credits in the game.

I’m personally sitting at over 1 billion credits and these credit sinks have not made an impact what so ever on me. I’ve actually been getting richer since the expansion. While everyone around me is getting poorer.

The problem from my perspective is that BioWare have made a rod for their own backs here.

The game systems could easily exclude the requirement for credits to purchase anything, or remove mods or repair gear. However they can't simply do that due to having the GTN of which a large part of that is sales of Cartel Market items for which people pay BioWare real money to obtain (or use excess Cartel Coins from subscriber grants / security key grants / referral grants).

So the systems they have in place, simply have to work properly for all of the players (both old and new alike). BioWare need to find an optimal balance and currently they're failing on that front. There have been many suggestions at how to introduce credit sinks that are appealing to those with billions of in-game credits.

I have one, it's actually really straight forward for BioWare as well. Introduce a token that allows a player to buy a months subscription for 1+ billion credits, zero refund value and bound on pickup (not for sale on the GTN). If BioWare truly want to fix the economy they need to bring targeted solutions to the table and not the broad brush strokes they're currently employing. In conjunction with more targeted and much more frequent banning of credit sellers, as well as ensuring they get on top of credit exploits much faster (as well as barring any accounts involved from having access to the subscription token vendor) they should be able to control the economy a little bit better than they are now.

Credit sinks. That's interesting to be fair, all prior expansions had some form of credit sink introduced alongside ways to also earn those credits while running content to remain fairly cost neutral.

 

6.0 is a completely different ball game, unless you run conquest and sell those materials or are a crafter of something that sells in quantity then you're pretty much going to lose credits in 6.0 with the way things have been designed by BioWare.

 

• Pulling useful mods? 95-100k
  
• Rolling useful amplifiers with large RNG pools? Starts at 21k per roll, gets obscene if RNG hates you.
  
• Buying gear with Tech Fragments? 1 million per pop.
  
• Repair bills from prolonged fights due to mob changes? Increased credit cost, selling any scraps dropped doesn't cover that bill.
  
• Upgrading crew skills? 500k per skill.
  
• Increase in required supplements for crafting? Increased cost.
  
• Poor RE chances? Increased cost.
  

 

Add into this the inflation on the GTN as players struggle to find suitable sources of credits in the game, BioWare has simply made things worse in terms of the in game economy. I suspect the players who already have billions of credits and sit on them are the only players unaffected by the drastic changes BioWare have introduced. Meanwhile all the "normal" players of the game (the ones that run content or gear characters) are pretty much screwed.

 

No wonder credit sellers have been more prevalent in 6.0, I'm sure they're doing a nice business thanks to BioWare not introducing the right types of credit sinks.

Apart from what already was said about who does actually really need to pay all that money for the parts of the game they enjoy, I actually strongly disagree about the previous expansions being mostly credit neutral.

Without much effort most players came out with a credit plus in my experience. During 4.0 and 5.0 even without the exploits, the daily and h2 quests gave lots of credits and with how easy those parts of the game were, also due to the strong companions, repair cost were very low because people rarely died.

How many players actually played content during 5.0 that they really had to learn the hard way by dying over and over again and thus ramping up huge repair costs?

The most likely place where players had to pay like that was raiding HC and NIM, and also only if they really were doing progression in either old ops they didn't know or Gods. Everything old that was known probably had a few wipes here and there and then usually was played smoothly without many or none players dying. Especially once the gear rating exploded in comparison what the old ops were balanced for, even raiding for most players was a plus in credits not a minus, without earning any billions in sale raids or something like that, just by doing the weekly quests and depending the time maybe selling isotope stabilizers you won.

Now I remember that back in 1.X, 2.X and to a degree 3.X to go raiding regularly with my characters I had to go either farm materials to sell or do the daily route of Ilum, Voss, Belsavis, Yavin and so on at least once a week, to be able pay my repair costs and slowly make a small plus overall despite already being active in the trade with orange synth and armormech shells back then. Think back to when the set bonus still was on the shells too, when we had to rip out mods too for making our gear better and couldn't just save money by using legacy shells that didn't need to be augmented again and again.

After 4.0 hit and most of the stuff players previously had to pay for was gone, like skills from class trainers for example. For me the trade of orange shells alone suddenly was enough to keep my whole legacy afloat, even though I didn't sell more pieces nor did I really increase my prices, nor did I do more than look after my sales and send comps to gather or craft with the first and last login of my playtime, taking me about 10 to 15 minutes. So not that much effort compared to my usual playtime of several hours in one session.

Except for repair costs, mk kits/augs, there was nothing else that I really had to pay for to play the game.

So before 6.0 hit I sat comfortably at 250.000.000 credits without actually doing much to earn them . I would have had even more if I wouldn't have done some decorations or cartel market stuff shopping sprees once in a while as soon I got over 200.000.000.

Now since 6.0 I'm raiding with one main character and a handful of alts of different classes. Mainly the old content for now, so all that optimizing for DXUN HC can just be ignored. No need to get the new augments, new stims ect because for everything I did so far the old stuff was good enough and mostly ended up in the caps anyway and I didn't need to buy anything because I already can craft the old stuff myself.

I have all crew skills at least once and bought the Onderon version on every somewhat actively played character so 15 in total, still I made more credits out of that than I payed for that skill level upgrade, not by crafting but by simply selling the materials I got while questing or from sending my comps on missions while playing ops, FP or conquest to all those myriads of players too lazy or too impatient to gather them themselves. Through that I'm still overall in the positive with my credits even though I mostly bought the set tokens I have rather than having luck with the rolls.

And when it comes to gathering those materials I'm really lazy myself, I don't go out of my way to gather something and if I'm busy having fun usually forget to resend the comps after the first time too. Also only one rank 50 comp per crafting character, on pure gathering alts the comps have just what influence so far has accumulated through questing and sending them on missions. Nor do I check the prices every hour or so. Once during my session when I put the stuff into the GTN and that's it.

People who actually pay attention to what material is valuable at the GTN at what time and do a bit of effort to optimize their gathering, were and are able to earn tons of credits since 6.0.

Players who just play for fun, who do the story, a FP or SM Ops once in a while, a little conquest, don't need to crack their head about the costs at all, they can just play the game, all that pricey stuff is not really needed.

Of course if you jump on the train to have/get everything at once then you have to pay quite a lot, but think whether that's actually necessary for you at all first. If not, just ignore it.

I have one, it's actually really straight forward for BioWare as well. Introduce a token that allows a player to buy a months subscription for 1+ billion credits, zero refund value and bound on pickup (not for sale on the GTN). If BioWare truly want to fix the economy they need to bring targeted solutions to the table and not the broad brush strokes they're currently employing. In conjunction with more targeted and much more frequent banning of credit sellers, as well as ensuring they get on top of credit exploits much faster (as well as barring any accounts involved from having access to the subscription token vendor) they should be able to control the economy a little bit better than they are now.

I thought of another the other day, but haven’t posted it yet.

How about they sell cartel market certificates at a specific vendor. They are extremely rare to get now from slot machines and they no longer drop from CM boxes (as far as I know?)

Then increase the credit costs and number of certificates required to buy things from the vendors that use them as currency. They could even add more things to those vendors.

So here’s how the credit sink works to target and drain credits from the wealthy,

1. Sell the certificates from the vendor at a high credit price.

2. Increase the amount of certificates required when buying from those specific vendor for the gear/deco/pet/mount.

3. Increase the credit costs that go with the certificates when you are buying from those vendors.

You then have a double credit sink to buy from those vendors.

You could even use cartel market certificates as the currency For the subscription idea you have. Then people playing the slot machines and casino event would be more likely to drop more credits in the hope of getting cartel market certificates. (Two credit sinks in one)

4. You now have 4 credit sinks for the certificate idea that targets the the super wealthy the most and they don’t even need to do much to implement it.

5. Lastly, put on the casino event 3 times a year. That is a massive credit sink and it’s already in the game, how hard would it be to add in?? Not hard at all because it’s done.

There are so many ideas people have suggested that can work with little effort on Biowares part and then they can relax these over the top credit sinks that target the wrong players.

I ask you seriously, what the F are they thinking with their current sinks. Don’t they understand the basics. Of player’s behaviour? They are driving new players and credit poor players away and the wealthy are just laughing at these credit sinks like they are a joke.

How many times do we need to tell them wt F is going to happen and wt F is happening till they sit up and take notice?

It’s economics 101 and they all get an F for FAIL.

I too hope they take notice. That is the primary reason I am trying to be civil. To answer the common point I see:

They continue to be unable or unwilling to put out new content at a reasonable pace, and instead we have been getting gear for content. Ostensibly because, we have assumed, it's easier for them to add gear than to add content.

Then 6.0 drops with the failure to raise the level cap of old content, a bolster that makes their new convoluted gearing system pointless, and a plethora of new gear I'm supposed to go grind. And all of it is more expensive than in the past. I've spent 220 million credits on just gearing 4 classes (guardian tank, guardian dps, sent tactical (because the set is the same as my guardian), scoundrel heals, and about half a VG tank.) And the repairs/incidental costs in the process. I've been ignoring tacticals because of my, let's say personal opinion since I'm being civil.

As to selling mats, all mats I earn have been going to the crafter so he can learn the new stuff.

As to why I bother when it's not "needed" - nothing in this game is truly needed. I dont "need" to play the game. I want to play the game, and gearing and conquest are pretty much all there is left to do.

So throw us a bone and raise the level cap, and ditch some of the credit sinks or find a way to tax the actual moneymakers. Otherwise you're just making IRL money for the credit spammers.

Players who just play for fun, who do the story, a FP or SM Ops once in a while, a little conquest, don't need to crack their head about the costs at all, they can just play the game, all that pricey stuff is not really needed.

 

Of course if you jump on the train to have/get everything at once then you have to pay quite a lot, but think whether that's actually necessary for you at all first. If not, just ignore it.

The whole argument of "if you're not high level raiding, you don't need it" doesn't work for me. Set bonuses and tactical items directly influence how a character is played. They directly affect a character's power. Having those bonuses alone can make even 'easy' content quicker or more enjoyable. Not even talking about amplifiers here. Set bonuses, tactical bonuses, even crafting are part of character advancement. If none of those things are strictly needed in order to 'just play the game', then surely they're not important enough for the attached credit costs to be so punitive.

If I want to buy a set piece, I don't even think about it. Not even if it's my 20th alt. I'm sitting on so many credits that a million is not even a drop in the bucket to me. On the other hand, that million credits is a BIG deal to my wife, who has amassed maybe 10 million in our whole time of playing the game. My buying power is untouched, but hers takes a big hit. This kind of disparity is a problem when you implement money sinks this way.

Being a billionaire, I consider myself a target for removing credits out of the economy. Fine. Let's take a look at the current approach. Before beginning, I'll preface this saying...I make hundreds of millions of credits each month playing the GTN and crafting. Though crafting, I hardly do now because of the ridiculous changes.

1) 500k credits to open each crew skill to 700. 500k is nothing to me. If I were to do this on all of my crafters, it would delete maybe 15 million out of the economy big whoop. There's a problem here though. I won't do it. Not while crafting is in its current state. I can stick to crafting legacy items and make a profit for nearly no investment.

2) Amplifier rerolls. Nope. 100% nope. Care to guess why, Bioware? RNG is not fun. I will never spend a single credit on a mechanic so heavily based on RNG that 99.9% of the time I'll get some useless bollocks like "reduced fall damage" instead of the amp I want at the % I want. Make it so I can buy the amp I want for a flat cost, then we'll talk.

3) Credit cost for buying gear from vendors. Again, I bring credits in faster than I can spend them on something like this.

4) Increased credit costs on vendors in general. Nope. Increase the cost on an already useless slot machine token from 750 credits to thousands? Thanks, I enjoyed the laugh.

5) Higher repair costs. It's a given if you play the game. Still has no effect on me.

6) Increased costs in crafting. Not just the training. But the exorbitant materials requirements and asinine odds of reverse engineering new schematics. No thanks. Amount of credits removed from the economy by me leveraging crafting and sending companions on missions on 20+ characters? Oh that's right, zero. Fix crafting and maybe I'll trickle some credits out of the economy.

The problem is, none of these credit sinks really have any effect on my wealth. Most I just refuse to engage in, and the ones that are forced don't even make a dent in the wealth I build. Majority of players are not billionaires, so these credit sinks are a big deal to them.

How do you remove my credits then? I have to really want to spend them. The transparent nonsense we have now isn't going to do it. Take a page from games like World of Warcraft. 2-seater mounts with mats from vendors totaling 10k gold or more (back when that was considered huge). Cool status symbols that are also functional. I dropped 10s of thousands of gold on things like that in WoW. Let me buy Shae Vizla as a companion since I missed it. I'll plunk down a few hundred million on it right now. Give me a really rare and unique color crystal from a vendor, priced at millions and millions. I love color crystals so I'll snap that right up. Give me a unique tuning or vendor flair. Make me WANT to throw credits at a vendor and I'll do it.

Systems like we have now just ensure I'll spend as little as possible and keep the credits circulating the economy as I buy fun stuff from people on the GTN instead.

Cupelixx you are spot on my friend. I am a returning player who hasn't played since 50 was the level cap.. I am loving the game and am fully back into it, but honestly.. The credit sinks in 6.0 make the game very difficult for me to enjoy.

I am honestly bleeding credits trying to get my 3-4 toons geared in 306 set pieces.

I have no idea how I am supposed to actually make money in this game any more. Crafting seems such a terrible grind to me.

I have resorted twice now to buying masters datacrons with "real money" in the cartel market and selling them on the GTN, just so i can maintain solvency. Obviously EA would be delighted that I'm spending real world money to get credits but that's not sustainable.

Doing Heroics doesn't make me enough money to actually deal with the credit sinks, and to be honest, I'm too busy grinding tech fragments to finish the 306 pieces that I just don't have time.

As an example of a good (albeit obsolete) credit sink - the tauntaun mount on Hoth. You can get it the way I did on my toons originally, ages ago, and grind the required items in the overworld by feeding the baby tauntauns, or you can buy it outright.

This way if you had the credits you could bypass the grind, but nothing was unavailable to anyone due to not being able to afford it.

If I want to buy a set piece, I don't even think about it. Not even if it's my 20th alt. I'm sitting on so many credits that a million is not even a drop in the bucket to me. On the other hand, that million credits is a BIG deal to my wife, who has amassed maybe 10 million in our whole time of playing the game. My buying power is untouched, but hers takes a big hit. This kind of disparity is a problem when you implement money sinks this way.

And though there are ways to make enough credits in the game, there are really only a few that really work and that brings us to two problems:

A lot of people don't enjoy what it takes to get there and some of it, namely playing the GTN or selling craftables only works as long as most people don't do it. So you can never get to a situation where most people are ok.

I admit, I was like meh, credit sinks, whatever but the truth is that it is tough on a lot of people. Before 6.0 the only things that were really expensive was CM stuff. But now the regular cost of playing has increased dramatically. And I can understand that for a lot of people that's not a great situation.