I have to say this thread reads my mind and frustration. I agree with the OP.

I am not a PvPer, never have been and never will be. My region of the world the server lag is terrible, and Ive even had to step away from raiding (which I loved) I managed to bring myself to push my toons through WZ to earn the unique sabers that simply don't drop anywhere anymore. Im an RP player for the most part... and for my jedi/sith characters, yanno, their saber is very damn special! Now numerous of my toons have the red inventory, and no longer can use their weapons... They ant just change the requirements on rewards like that, we met the requirements and earned those rewards at the time we got them.

 

I actually did write a ticket expressing the issue, and requested that they perhaps revert the requirements on pre-5.0 ones, and keep the 5.0+ ones with their new requirements, but it was a polite reply of basically 'cant do anything about it, find new lightsabers.'

You getting that response seems to confirm that these new Valor restrictions were fully intended, not 'just a mistake' as some white knights would like to claim. If it was a bug, you'd get a 'this is a bug, send a bug report' boilerplate response.

They absolutely did not make good on that promise. Casual play gives you tiny amounts of Command points. For example, I have been told each Warzone gives you only 20 CXP. It would take many, many hours of casual solo play to earn even one Command rank. By contrast, I did a 16 man SM run of SnV (the longest op in the game with the most bosses) last night and earned... a whole Command level and a half for my time. And that crate awarded me nothing but Jawa junk and companion gifts.

That's ... extremely disappointing. SnV is one of the two ops I've done, and it's reallly long. If you only got a C level and a half out of that at 16 man SM? That's not at all what I would have expected from the hype. I would have expected at least 4 in the first "level band" and maybe tapering off to 3 or so at the very highest end, for SM 16-man.

You getting that response seems to confirm that these new Valor restrictions were fully intended, not 'just a mistake' as some white knights would like to claim. If it was a bug, you'd get a 'this is a bug, send a bug report' boilerplate response.

For myself, I don't doubt it was intentional. Which is why I expressed myself strongly above.

For myself, I don't doubt it was intentional. Which is why I expressed myself strongly above.

Unfortunately, yes, I think they went into this with their eyes open to what they were doing.

The evidence is this thread, in which Bioware was highly active, clearly reading feedback and quickly responding, and were even persuaded by us to abandon their original idea:

All of the purely cosmetic items you can buy for PvP Commendations will still be in the game but purchasable for the prior Ranked Season tokens.

That's right...the original idea was to change the items to sell for ranked tokens. In retrospect, that might have been better for me, if it meant the requirements to equip them wouldn't have changed, but it would have sucked for new players who didn't already have them.

Anyway, Bioware was obviously paying attention to that thread, where this was posted - this was from back in October:

Also, consider how many characters of various valor rankings there are running around using these weapons right now. If the valor requirement is just to buy the weapons, there shouldn't be a problem, but if you add a valor requirement to equip them, come 5.0 there will be some characters with suddenly unequippable weapons.

So, yeah, I think they were well aware this would happen.

That's ... extremely disappointing. SnV is one of the two ops I've done, and it's reallly long. If you only got a C level and a half out of that at 16 man SM? That's not at all what I would have expected from the hype. I would have expected at least 4 in the first "level band" and maybe tapering off to 3 or so at the very highest end, for SM 16-man.

Yep. Hence why I'm upset. Not only did they break their promises, but these RNG crates are so terrible in their drop rates that I've lost all urge to grind Command levels at all even on my main, to say nothing of the several alts I used to do end game content on. I don't need a second job, and that's the kind of time commitment it would take for months on end to even TRY to get back to the same level I was already at the day before 5.0 dropped!

Yep. Hence why I'm upset. Not only did they break their promises, but these RNG crates are so terrible in their drop rates that I've lost all urge to grind Command levels at all even on my main, to say nothing of the several alts I used to do end game content on. I don't need a second job, and that's the kind of time commitment it would take for months on end to even TRY to get back to the same level I was already at the day before 5.0 dropped!

A crate an hour for "hardcore casual" play would have justified, or even necessitated, the reported crate drop rates to mitigate speed-CXP-gathering and fast gearing. A crate and a half for 16-Man SM SnV does not. Rather the opposite.

For myself, I don't doubt it was intentional. Which is why I expressed myself strongly above.

Agree. Retroactive requirements are bad.

Unless the requirements were actually lowered... but that's not the case here.

Ran into this issue on my operative whom I only PvP'ed enough on to get a certain blaster rifle.

Now I can no longer use it, so this thread definitely deserves a bump.

This is retarded beyond all belief.

Agree. Retroactive requirements are bad.

 

Unless the requirements were actually lowered... but that's not the case here.

Couldn't they have just made it a purchase requirement, rather than a usage requirement?

Couldn't they have just changed the ones on the vendor to be a new version?

Just checked my Original Sniper that did PvP for a certain looking Sniper Rifle and it's now unusable because it require Valor 42 and I only got up to 16 when I did the pvp all those years ago.

This needs to be changed.

Agree. Retroactive requirements are bad.

 

Unless the requirements were actually lowered... but that's not the case here.

But everything EA does is perfect-how can they ever be wrong?

Ah, this takes me back to the days I used to MUD. They updated one day and suddenly I couldn't wear any of my gear. Bunch of us quit in disgust. I'm sure that MUD who's name I can't remember is doing fine today.

Anyway if you have artifact gear on and your sub runs out, you get "Authorized by previous subscription" or something. You can use what's bound to you but anything new requires authorization. I don't see why this should be any different. Add it to the ever growing and disturbingly long list of gripes about 5.0.

And you're right the white knights have been very very quiet the last few days.... in fact in the last month. Curious, that...

When we discussed valor requirements on items prior to 5.0, because BW wanted to keep the items exclusive to PvPers (since comms were going away) I was imagining a vendor purchasing restriction, not a restriction on the item itself that apparently ****s up your ability to use it even if you already own it.

Personally I'm not even o.k. with making valor rank 38 or 46 the purchase requirement. They took away pretty much all PvE options to obtain original weapon models, so the remaining models should be available to PvEers, too, without requiring too much of a game aspect they don't enjoy. Requiring them to do some PvP, to get them out of their comfort zone for a bit to earn cosmetic rewards is acceptable, something between valor rank 5 and 10, max. 15 maybe, since it's per character.

What the...

This is not cool nor acceptable. I seriously hope this is a bug, if not then communication was extremely lacking - and more so a bad move.

Personally I'm not even o.k. with making valor rank 38 or 46 the purchase requirement. They took away pretty much all PvE options to obtain original weapon models, so the remaining models should be available to PvEers, too, without requiring too much of a game aspect they don't enjoy. Requiring them to do some PvP, to get them out of their comfort zone for a bit to earn cosmetic rewards is acceptable, something between valor rank 5 and 10, max. 15 maybe, since it's per character.

The thread that Eric started asking the community what "fair" valor levels was seemed to settle down around Valor 5-10, with some people holding out for stuff like 50-60. This, is neither of those.

And, for that matter, tellign people they can't use already-equipped items? Dirty pool.

And, for that matter, telling people they can't use already-equipped items? Dirty pool.

I read this in Raúl Juliá's voice.

Hey guys.

I have bad news ....

I also created a ticket and here is the response I received from the customer service:

I fully appreciate why you find this disappointing on a weapon that you had been able to use previously and can understand that it's frustrating. I am sorry to say that this is working as designed by the studio and it not something which our support team is in a position to fix or work around. I know this isn't the response you would have wanted and I am sorry for that, I have granted some Major Valor boosts to your character ingame as a small token to help you achieve the valor requirement more quickly.

I equipped half a dozen characters with these weapons.

I earned the tokens with a single character --which I have since deleted--, so they are all at valor rank 1 (0/1000).

I am not a PvP player and I do not have the will to get all these characters to rank 34 or 36 ....

It is very frustrating because for me these weapons were part of the outfits.

I have bad news ....

At least they admitted that the boosts were only a small token. :| They were certainly right about that...

And I can further confirm that this was a design decision, not a bug, based on my ticket response this afternoon.

While I can personally sympathise [sic] with your point of view here, I'm sure you understand that we here in Customer Services have neither insight nor input into the development process.

 

If you'd like to share your feedback, please do so on the suggestion forums on swtor.com.

I'm sure sharing our feedback here on the forums is going to do a LOT of good ...

Just posting to say that while this issue has zero affect on me, I feel this deserves as much attention as the DvL Cheevo issue that has no affect at all on game play. Not that the DvL thing wasn't equally important to those who cared.

I hope they get this sorted for you all.

Hey folks,

 

This is unintended, the items should not have a valor requirement. The team is looking into ways to correct this in a future patch. I will pass on updates regarding how and when as I have them.

 

-eric

That's very good to hear. Hope the fix comes soon!

EDIT: I should add, I'll certainly remain unsubbed until it does.

Hey folks,

 

This is unintended, the items should not have a valor requirement. The team is looking into ways to correct this in a future patch. I will pass on updates regarding how and when as I have them.

 

-eric

Eric,

Very relieved to hear this. Thank you for posting and addressing this.