During development of the Collections system, a couple of problems became apparent in terms of how things are architected on the back end of SWTOR. The short form is that making all items in a collection separate items had a lot of nasty side effects. It increased the amount of data storage per character considerably, it increased login times to handle versioning up your character, and it also quintupled the number of things in the collections GUI, making that GUI an unreadable mess. The team working on this feature looked at these problems and decided that the best possible solution to these issues was to consolidate these items into sets.

I understand this reasoning and can't actually see any good way around it, which is why I don't expect what people are asking for here ever to happen.

However, can you explain why the Covert Energy "set" is broken up into three subsets, two of which contain only one item? Why do you treat that "set" special when other "sets" like Revan's have to be complete in order to unlock? If anything, this is annoying in the opposite way, because I have to pay three set unlock charges which are probably more than what I should legitimately pay to unlock the Covert Energy "set" if it was treated all as one "set."

The bottom line here is that if you just made Revan's set an exception to this rule, like the Eradicator's set is, put the mask in one "set" and the rest of it in another "set," you would clear up 95% of all the legitimate gripes you would ever have on this feature. Most of the real pain you're seeing in here is from people seeing silly things like the Covert set that show you "can" do this on a limited number of items, but you have chosen not to do it on one particular set that people who play this game get overly wound up about.

None of the sets other than Revan's are either rare enough or expensive enough for the whining about completeness to deserve much weight. And there aren't any other sets where people so peculiarly and stridently insist on using and wanting only one piece of it, while the rest is widely despised and forgotten.

 

So, yeah, that's on the design team. I swear, not because we're evil jerk designers, we just kinda failed to fully realize how the feature would end up playing out . We now have a better grasp of the ramifications of this decision, and we're aware of the unhappiness it caused.

It's interesting to see you post this. I think a lot of the disconnect between BioWare Austin and the subscribers can be traced to this mindset right there. There's seems to be a serious lack of thinking things through from a customer service side. That then wastes everyones time and loses you guys subscribers when you then have to eat crow and go back and do the thing you said you weren't (or couldn't) do. Two examples jump out at me are Revan's chestpiece and the free month only for level 50s. Had either of those two things been thought all the way through, the backlash on them could be predicted.

Same thing for this collections issue. Yes it works from a financial and technical point of view, but did no one seriously consider the potential for backlash from a customer's perspective?

One of the main problems with this idea is the fact that so many of the sets come piece by piece from gamble packs, so it's quite difficult to get the full set. If it's determined that the scope of effort for individual pieces is too much then a fix could be to do the following:

- Give some kind of buy option to get the remaining options from a partial set via the collections GUI

- In any future packs instead of including 1 item, put an entire set in a box (like the belt bracers boxes) so you get the whole set if you get an item.

It's interesting to see you post this. I think a lot of the disconnect between BioWare Austin and the subscribers can be traced to this mindset right there. There's seems to be a serious lack of thinking things through from a customer service side. That then wastes everyones time and loses you guys subscribers when you then have to eat crow and go back and do the thing you said you weren't (or couldn't) do. Two examples jump out at me are Revan's chestpiece and the free month only for level 50s. Had either of those two things been thought all the way through, the backlash on them could be predicted.

 

Same thing for this collections issue. Yes it works from a financial and technical point of view, but did no one seriously consider the potential for backlash from a customer's perspective?

I think this is true as well. I wonder if this went through any non-developer play testing and how extensive it was.

Hey, guys, let me give a little background on this decision and how it came to be.

 

During development of the Collections system, a couple of problems became apparent in terms of how things are architected on the back end of SWTOR. The short form is that making all items in a collection separate items had a lot of nasty side effects. It increased the amount of data storage per character considerably, it increased login times to handle versioning up your character, and it also quintupled the number of things in the collections GUI, making that GUI an unreadable mess. The team working on this feature looked at these problems and decided that the best possible solution to these issues was to consolidate these items into sets.

 

So, yeah, that's on the design team. I swear, not because we're evil jerk designers, we just kinda failed to fully realize how the feature would end up playing out . We now have a better grasp of the ramifications of this decision, and we're aware of the unhappiness it caused.

 

We're also aware that using Revan's Mask as an example was a pretty poor call on our part.

 

We're in the process of evaluating other options that would allow us to give players the functionality that they want, while at the same time address the very real technical and GUI concerns that we faced with our initial architecture of the system. Unfortunately, no option that we come up with is likely to be doable very quickly -- on top of solving the technical problems, we also need to now deal with ensuring anyone who purchases the collected items with the current system end up being correctly credited if we convert something over. As such, I have no ETA for when we will address this.

How about just some consistency then? Nihilus mask = separate; Eradicator mask = separate; Revan's mask = have to get complete set. Huh? You promised me all my toons could wear Revan's mask, but now I have to save up for the stupid gloves and sash first? This is a cruel thing you've done.

Isn't the game already tracking individual items?

I had covert belt and wrists bound and in my assassin's bank. Ply haven't worn them in 3 months. I picked up the covert energy chest, equipped it, and the set unlocked.

The game is already tracking which items we have. So I don't think it can be said that it would involve more work/memory/processing to track the items. I do understand that the user interface for collections would have to change to accomodate individual items.

I'm also wondering why this wasn't know about a week before the patch came out. Was it just expected that an additional layer of complexity would be added on, or was that the part about misscommunication between departments?

How about just some consistency then? Nihilus mask = separate; Eradicator mask = separate; Revan's mask = have to get complete set. Huh? You promised me all my toons could wear Revan's mask, but now I have to save up for the stupid gloves and sash first? This is a cruel thing you've done.

The other aspect of this is that the Revan set has 3 rare pieces - helmet, belt and gloves and costs 600 CC to unlock the set. Yet, the Nihilus mask is only 1 piece, but has the same 600 CC unlock price.

Hey, guys, let me give a little background on this decision and how it came to be.

 

During development of the Collections system, a couple of problems became apparent in terms of how things are architected on the back end of SWTOR. The short form is that making all items in a collection separate items had a lot of nasty side effects. It increased the amount of data storage per character considerably, it increased login times to handle versioning up your character, and it also quintupled the number of things in the collections GUI, making that GUI an unreadable mess. The team working on this feature looked at these problems and decided that the best possible solution to these issues was to consolidate these items into sets.

 

So, yeah, that's on the design team. I swear, not because we're evil jerk designers, we just kinda failed to fully realize how the feature would end up playing out . We now have a better grasp of the ramifications of this decision, and we're aware of the unhappiness it caused.

 

We're also aware that using Revan's Mask as an example was a pretty poor call on our part.

 

We're in the process of evaluating other options that would allow us to give players the functionality that they want, while at the same time address the very real technical and GUI concerns that we faced with our initial architecture of the system. Unfortunately, no option that we come up with is likely to be doable very quickly -- on top of solving the technical problems, we also need to now deal with ensuring anyone who purchases the collected items with the current system end up being correctly credited if we convert something over. As such, I have no ETA for when we will address this.

might I suggest that subs get to unlock the entire set if they have only one piece? Or perhaps a majority of the set?

not only a bone for subs, bout should neatly fix the issue most people myself included seem to have with it. and shouldn't take up any more space than it already does.

Thanks for the response.

ps make the dyes NOT random, nobody is happy about that either.

So, yeah, that's on the design team. I swear, not because we're evil jerk designers, we just kinda failed to fully realize how the feature would end up playing out . We now have a better grasp of the ramifications of this decision, and we're aware of the unhappiness it caused.

This is yet another reminder to the devs to USE THE PTS! Get some testing and feedback instead of just throwing stuff over the wall to the players.

Hey, guys, let me give a little background on this decision and how it came to be.

Thank you for taking the time to post here and talk to us. I do understand where you are coming from and I appreciate the honesty. The Collections system is really great even as-is, IMHO most of the people that are upset are upset because of that poor wording and poorly chosen example. Going forward, I think the Collection system will work a lot smoother because people will know from the start that they have to collect all of the pieces, and won't bind them to separate alts or have to go chasing down older, rarer items on the GTN to complete a set.

However, it would be really great if you guys could make the Covert Energy pieces separate -- at least the belt and bracers, which are very expensive compared to the more modestly priced gloves that are separate already. It is beyond ridiculous (and very irritating) that the pieces are not all separate as they came in several different packs rather than being released as a full set. Making Revan's Mask separate as well would certainly earn you a lot of brownie points with the players you got the hopes up of with your poor choice of wording, especially since other rare masks are separate. Just my 2 credits. ^^

99% of the butt hurt for this thread would be corrected if they just listed Revan's Mask separately.

AMIRIGHT?

and it also quintupled the number of things in the collections GUI, making that GUI an unreadable mess. The team working on this feature looked at these problems and decided that the best possible solution to these issues was to consolidate these items into sets.

The GUI pane for collections is already an unreadable mess. And I've got the advantage of seeing it on a 30 inch 2560x1600 screen.

If adding more items made the GUI an unreadable mess, shouldn't this have been taken as an indication that the GUI design is bad, and should be redone? After all, its going to have to keep track of more items new things are added to the Cartel Market anyway.

This is yet another reminder to the devs to USE THE PTS! Get some testing and feedback instead of just throwing stuff over the wall to the players.

You misunderstand the purpose of PTS IMO. By the time the content is on the PTS.. they have a release date dialed in.. and PTS is to bug test.. and notice if a simple bug pops up.. usually fixed.. if a nasty bug pops on PTS.. that content does not make it to the live patch.

Besides.. there has been clear evidence that they use player alph/beta test teams locally in Austin. So yeah, I'm sure they get feedback.. but just because you get feedback does not mean you change something. There are other factors at play then just player desire.

I understand the explanation we got today.. and honestly.. when we see constraints like this.. it is something encumbent in the design structure they are working with.. and until they figure out a solution (if ever), players do not get everything their little hearts desire... because reality kicks in under the hood of the game code and databases. Once you release a product and are working within the constraints of a code base and db setup...you run into unintended issues... Ask any software engineer working on code produced by a large team over a period of time. I'm sure they can share plenty of /facepalm examples with you. Point is.. once you have a code base, you have constraints that can bite you when you want to add something else completely novel into it.

Regarding the item sets : In my case, it's the total opposite : The "Slicer's Longcoat" isn't even a set, but an separate item - yet it can NOT be "copied" from within the Collection ! There just isn't any option for making it "copyable", but instead it says that it can ONLY be bought from the Cartel Market !

To me, that's not logical at all, since items which *any* of my characters gets via in-game mail - like the Party Jawa - *still* can be made "copyable" through Cartel Coins !

I find it disturbing that there were so many bad wordings and calls on Bioware's side in such a short period of time.

Yeah, better for them to just go back to the old days and clam up completely and not disclose anything until after a patch goes live.

Can't have it both ways Alec. You want to be treated like a mushroom or a sunflower?

Regarding the item sets : In my case, it's the total opposite : The "Slicer's Longcoat" isn't even a set, but an separate item - yet it can NOT be "copied" from within the Collection ! There just isn't any option for making it "copyable", but instead it says that it can ONLY be bought from the Cartel Market !

Because it has mods in it. Am I right?

That would get exploited by players just for the mods.

Gear with mods in it is a whole other ball of wax they have not completely worked out yet. I'm hoping they resolve this by giving you shells without mods once you unlock them,

99% of the butt hurt for this thread would be corrected if they just listed Revan's Mask separately.

 

AMIRIGHT?

A sad testimony on player fixation with pixels IMO if that is true.

A sad testimony on player fixation with pixels IMO if that is true.

Isn't everything you see and do on the screen made of pixels? Isn't that what the entire "Collections" system is about?

Because it has mods in it. Am I right?

 

That would get exploited by players just for the mods.

 

Gear with mods in it is a whole other ball of wax they have not completely worked out yet. I'm hoping they resolve this by giving you shells without mods once you unlock them,

I bought it for my Sage for the Nar Shadaa class story quest - how could he do it in his "Sage Armor" ?

Now I have a useless piece of armor I can only give to his companions, because he can't use it as it is now.

Plus, it isn't even typical to a Sage !

If this is so, then I won't buy anything with Modifications in it again.

I bought it for my Sage for the Nar Shadaa class story quest - how could he do it in his "Sage Armor" ?

 

Now I have a useless piece of armor I can only give to his companions, because he can't use it as it is now.

 

If this is so, then I won't buy anything with Modifications in it again.

Pretty sure you don't have to worry about that -- haven't they stopped putting mods in CM gear completely?

I checked it - it does contain mods.

For a Smuggler, of course.

And I just didn't know that this kind of items wouldn't be "copyable" from within the Collection.