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BioWare, you have to make it clear when items rotate out from Galactic Seasons vendor


Phazonfreak

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When will people come to understand that Galactic Seasons was introduced as a monetisation mechanic. That’s all it is. A new way for EAware to add micro transactions to the game like they do with mobile apps.

 

They want you to use Cartel coins to get ahead. That’s why they removed stuff to incentivise people to use CC’s next time to jump ahead so you don’t miss out. It’s really an ingenious strategy, if not a little underhanded as well.

 

This. A thousand times, this.

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Galactic Seasons has been live for three weeks. GS tokens are awarded at levels 5, 8, and 24.

 

3 ( 8 + ( 3 * 2 * 7 ) + ( 12 * 2 ) ) = 222

 

222 / 8 = 27.75

 

If you has done everything since the start of the season you would have been at level 27 by Monday of this week, which means you would already have had three tokens and could have bought the jetpack. No need to spend Cartel Coins.

 

Not a single one of these claims about monetization schemes has held up under scrutiny.

 

The other thing to note from the announcement:

 

Which means that the jetpack was up for three weeks, so will now be gone for three weeks, and then will return for three weeks. I suggest a little more patience and a little less getting worked up over trivial things. It is better for your health.

 

The problem is the bugs or the system that gives you things you can’t get done.

In my wife’s case that’s operations because the few times she’s queued, she’s been forceably removed from the group for being too new and not understanding.

In my case, the system bugged out and it auto completed a bunch of my things and I didn’t get the points.

Customer service hasn’t been helpful and neither have bug reports. They say they can’t do anything and actually encourage you to use CC’s to catch up. I don’t know if that’s the official line coming from management, but that was my experience.

Now BioWare go and remove things early from the vendor. What are people supposed to think except it’s a money grab.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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It got better for a bit. But now it’s gotten worse than before. I’m actually wondering if Jackie is still with the company because she hasn’t been active for a bit.

 

 

She has posted twice this month. She isn't much of a liaison. A lot of her posts have become little more than curt reminders to individual posters about how or where they should post.

 

Wanted to chime in since there are some skewed perceptions and I would like to address them. I'm still here and still active though yes, I haven't been active in terms of publicly posting the last couple weeks. I want to be mindful of what I post here because I know players are wanting updates to the game and there are many watchful eyes on the dev tracker. I learned early on how much a gold post means to people who use the forums.

 

I still read the forums, gather feedback I see here, through my PMs, and other platforms, provide it to the team, moderate, review and process reports, and work on various projects that affect different pockets of the community outside of the forums. I understand that because I'm not posting 100% of the time up front and center in the forums, the perception is that I am just not active at all, but I am, and still have the same drive to cultivate the relationship between dev and player here as when I first started.

 

I want every post I make to have meaning behind it whether that be providing game updates, news, or moderating to keep this place healthy and also welcoming to people who are either new or lurking. It's a balance that I am always working to be mindful of when posting here.

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"Hey if you dont wanna pay, just wait for few weeks" is where most vicious monetization of garbage like F2P mobile games kicks in too

Not exactly. The *most* vicious monetisation in mobile games is things like Game of War: Fire Age, where it quite abruptly becomes "just wait for a few billion years".

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Galactic Seasons has been live for three weeks. GS tokens are awarded at levels 5, 8, and 24.

 

3 ( 8 + ( 3 * 2 * 7 ) + ( 12 * 2 ) ) = 222

 

222 / 8 = 27.75

 

If you has done everything since the start of the season you would have been at level 27 by Monday of this week, which means you would already have had three tokens and could have bought the jetpack. No need to spend Cartel Coins.

 

That is exactly my point. They didn't even stick to the announced time window of 3 weeks minimum and did the changeover on a tuesday during regular reset time when Galactic Seasons started, but yanked the jetpack from the vendor at least one day earlier before the 3 weeks were up. Why give us a time window of 3-5 weeks if it is only 2 weeks and 6 days all of a sudden?

 

Not a single one of these claims about monetization schemes has held up under scrutiny.

 

I have never accused them of any wrongdoing regarding their monetization strategies. In fact, if you read the thread about Galactic Seasons as a cash shop front, I pretty much disagreed with the other posters who accused them of it. I was always the one who wrote that I am quite happy with Galactic Seasons and that you are able to work for your Cartel Coins now instead of using the referral link scheme.

 

I don't even think this thing was planned and that they have ulterior motives for doing so. I just think it is simply one of the several things that fell victim to the lacking quality assurance for new content, hence the many bugged priority objectives and non-unlockable companions.

Edited by Phazonfreak
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Wanted to chime in since there are some skewed perceptions and I would like to address them. I'm still here and still active though yes, I haven't been active in terms of publicly posting the last couple weeks. I want to be mindful of what I post here because I know players are wanting updates to the game and there are many watchful eyes on the dev tracker. I learned early on how much a gold post means to people who use the forums.

 

I still read the forums, gather feedback I see here, through my PMs, and other platforms, provide it to the team, moderate, review and process reports, and work on various projects that affect different pockets of the community outside of the forums. I understand that because I'm not posting 100% of the time up front and center in the forums, the perception is that I am just not active at all, but I am, and still have the same drive to cultivate the relationship between dev and player here as when I first started.

 

I want every post I make to have meaning behind it whether that be providing game updates, news, or moderating to keep this place healthy and also welcoming to people who are either new or lurking. It's a balance that I am always working to be mindful of when posting here.

Jackie don't worry you've been doing a wonderful job:D

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Wanted to chime in since there are some skewed perceptions and I would like to address them. I'm still here and still active though yes, I haven't been active in terms of publicly posting the last couple weeks. I want to be mindful of what I post here because I know players are wanting updates to the game and there are many watchful eyes on the dev tracker. I learned early on how much a gold post means to people who use the forums.

 

Jackie, just to make it clear: I have no qualms with your communication here on the forums and I am glad that you are here. I just hope that you could communicate to the ones responsible for Galactic Seasons that the players need a more projectable time window for the item rotation, if you want to minimize seemingly ridiculous reactions like I described in my initial post.

Edited by Phazonfreak
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I still read the forums, gather feedback I see here, through my PMs, and other platforms, provide it to the team, moderate, review and process reports, and work on various projects that affect different pockets of the community outside of the forums. I understand that because I'm not posting 100% of the time up front and center in the forums, the perception is that I am just not active at all, but I am, and still have the same drive to cultivate the relationship between dev and player here as when I first started.

 

This seems to be one of the most popular lines used by the community team, to paraphrase 'I'm focusing on more important groups that don't include the forum users who are paying a subscription to post on the official SWTOR forums.'

 

Who are these more important groups and why are they more important that they get the focus of your time. In the past it was suggested it was influencers, the front page of the website has some getting to know these people but they were very sparse and haven't happened for a while. There was also the suggestion that people that use discord or reddit are more important and that is where the real feedback is found, if so put a link on the top of these forums and tell us to go there and we will head off there.

 

Or is it facebook and twitter, though having seen those the news feeds are a couple of line saying this week pirate incursion or last chance at double xp so it doesn't seem overly likely. But if this is the place to go, it kind of gives the impression that paying customers are not as important as potential markets. How is ignoring the customers base going, in an effort to chase this mythical player untapped player base.

 

Or could it possibly be the claim that whilst not here somewhere else is a line that is used to placate the fools on the forums. Much like every delay is because we aren't happy with the quality of the product and then its still a bug ridden mess but you know people will be cheering for delays cause it means a much high quality product. Even though it ends up just being a delay to allow a year with even less content and nothing to do with quality?

 

Cause it seems most the feedback on Galactic Seasons is ignored, whatever is planned for the 10th anniversary or the rest of the year is a mystery and that it looks like the story arc for this year is going to be Ilum v2. Much as Knights of the... was the Jedi story v2. Seriously Malgus has gone rogue, we threw him down a reactor shaft, he has magically been brought back to life and low and behold his gone rogue again. The entire decent story could have been summed up as an e-mail from Malgus hi, broken conditioning, picked up book and artefact, see you in 6 months for 10th Anniversary Ilum v2. So if there is any cultivating a relationship between feedback and the dev/story team it doesn't seem evident from the forums or the direction of the content.

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Wanted to chime in since there are some skewed perceptions and I would like to address them.

Sorry but that's what happens when there is little to no communication from the developers to the player base.

 

I want every post I make to have meaning behind it whether that be providing game updates, news, or moderating to keep this place healthy and also welcoming to people who are either new or lurking. It's a balance that I am always working to be mindful of when posting here.

Sorry but these forums are not exactly booming with player activity. Many have just given up on them...and yes there is a lot of negativity. Average players don't understand the data you collect...nor do they care. They want to know that the $$ they pay is going to pay off with more than just Cartel Market additions. That as paying customers their voices and opinions are heard...even if no action is taken.

 

Galactic Seasons has numerous threads discussing things that don't work for various people. Everyone is different. While I'm sure people get that not every post or thread can or will be responded to...there needs to be some communication in regards to feedback. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to be frustrated by this feeling of lack of communication....it didn't just happen....its been like this for years.

 

I get you have to be careful when posting...I think everyone gets that, and appreciates when you post something its generally well taken. But until there is a more active/direct/reliable/ongoing communication from developers...wether that is more news, more streams, more posts merely acknowledging issues, people will jump to all kinds of ideas out of frustration. Maybe they will regardless...but it can't hurt to try

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This seems to be one of the most popular lines used by the community team, to paraphrase 'I'm focusing on more important groups that don't include the forum users who are paying a subscription to post on the official SWTOR forums.'

 

I think it important to remember that nobody at BioWare answers to any individual player even if, to me at least, it seems like TrixieTriss gets more replies from Jackie than anybody else. You and others want more than BioWare is willing to give and you can't force them to do what you want.

 

Galactic Seasons is new and needs adjustments and I expect BioWare will make adjustments over time just like they've done with Galactic Conquest. BioWare usually does not get everything right in the first go but in my view they fix most of the issues that impact large numbers of players. BioWare will review their metrics for GS participation and whatever other feedback mechanisms they collect info from to inform future GS decisions. I certainly feel that it would be more effective to have an in-game method to communicate when items are leaving the GS vendor, maybe like a countdown timer on any item listing that will be leaving.

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Who are these more important groups and why are they more important that they get the focus of your time.

 

The answer to that is a well known. At this point people who actively and frequently post on forums are lifers, who pretty much will never go away until death do us part, and relatives cancel the paypal accounts. There is zero reason to cater to those people because they a) demand have "Karen"- like mentality, and demand disproportionate amount of attention.

b) Will not spend more or less regardless how they are treated.

 

More important groups are people trying game for the first time, or returning players. To other point mentioned, schedule is rotating, so yes it encourages impatient people to just BUY their way into a season, like that chap who paid for 42 weeks of Seasons on DAY 1 to get a bugged companion.

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I want to be mindful of what I post here because I know players are wanting updates to the game and there are many watchful eyes on the dev tracker. I learned early on how much a gold post means to people who use the forums.

 

I appreciate that there are good intentions here. And yes, communication from the dev team is unfortunately so rare that it does carry significant meaning when it happens. So, "communication means a lot; we will communicate less so that gold posts are more meaningful" is a bizarre take on the problem. "Communication means a lot; we will endeavour to communicate more frequently" is the response that we have been hoping to see acted upon for a long, long, long time. Gold posts do not need to always be important updates about the game, or even carry a huge amount of meaning. They do not need to say what is being worked on, address concerns, or make sweeping declarations about the state of the game. They can simply show that members of the SWTOR team are present, listening, and are part of this community, and inject a small amount of transparency that we sorely need.

 

Again, I appreciate that this was a well-intentioned move, but I do think it is the wrong one.

 

All the best,

-J

Edited by JarenWelen
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I appreciate that there are good intentions here. And yes, communication from the dev team is unfortunately so rare that it does carry significant meaning when it happens. So, "communication means a lot; we will communicate less so that gold posts are more meaningful" is a bizarre take on the problem. "Communication means a lot; we will endeavour to communicate more frequently" is the response that we have been hoping to see acted upon for a long, long, long time. Gold posts do not need to always be important updates about the game, or even carry a huge amount of meaning. They do not need to say what is being worked on, address concerns, or make sweeping declarations about the state of the game. They can simply show that members of the SWTOR team are present, listening, and are part of this community, and inject a small amount of transparency that we sorely need.

 

Again, I appreciate that this was a well-intentioned move, but I do think it is the wrong one.

 

All the best,

-J

 

In all honesty, if you were a dev, would you ever want to communicate on these forums? Have you seen how people here behave when somebody disagrees with them on game mechanics? lol. If any dev wrote a single opinnionated sentence about TOR development, folks who disagree with what got said would jump on the poor dev en masse.

 

...I wish they did communicate bit more though,blog posts or something like that. Little occasional essays where they get kinda candid and explain what they want to achieve with GS and so on. Stuff where they actually unwrap the actual thought process and logic behind things. Instead of stuff that reads like polished PR speak.Of late, that's kinda how lots of the " devs talking about stuff" comes across. its very calculated and EA and press release-ish. Wish they had some semi official venue where they can just talk about things without fearing some scandal or massive outrage if not every word is fully polished. None of that is part of devs job though.

Edited by Stradlin
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In all honesty, if you were a dev, would you ever want to communicate on these forums? .

 

Yes.

 

And i used to engage all the time, with anyone & everyone, when i was helping develop/staff original 'SWGEmu' .

 

Of course, being non-profit organization, we weren't beholden to any corporate entity nor paying "customer$".

 

But still, imho, more communication (and more transparency) is typically the better way.

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Wanted to chime in since there are some skewed perceptions and I would like to address them. I'm still here and still active though yes, I haven't been active in terms of publicly posting the last couple weeks.

 

I am sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you aren't busy. I'm sure you are kept very busy indeed, though I did wonder if you were being siphoned off toward other aspects of the business...

 

I'm an old woman who's been playing MMOs a long time. I remember the golden days when developers could actually be part of the community and didn't even have community relations managers. They could be silly and chummy and talk about whatever, without needing to have every word parsed by overseers. I do wonder if someone like yourself posted a lot, about all sorts of trivial things, if the "gold post" phenomena would be watered down enough that each word wouldn't be analyzed to death. I miss seeing staff engaging with the community on a friendly, casual, level. I don't want a corporate mouth piece, I want someone who I feel cares about the players, understands us, is one of us.

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They didn't give us a schedule for Kai Zykken either. I'm pretty sure it's on purpose. These vendors -- and a lot of the interface "improvements" -- are following a mobile app strategy. I wouldn't be surprised if the 10 year anniversary was to make this game for mobile lol.

 

Also, I'm sure players will create a schedule once it repeats.

 

After what happened at Blizzcon 2018 with the announcement of a mobile version of Diablo called Diablo Immortal, no game company has any excuse for ever making that mistake again.

 

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This seems to be one of the most popular lines used by the community team, to paraphrase 'I'm focusing on more important groups that don't include the forum users who are paying a subscription to post on the official SWTOR forums.'

 

Who are these more important groups and why are they more important that they get the focus of your time. In the past it was suggested it was influencers, the front page of the website has some getting to know these people but they were very sparse and haven't happened for a while. There was also the suggestion that people that use discord or reddit are more important and that is where the real feedback is found, if so put a link on the top of these forums and tell us to go there and we will head off there.

 

Or is it facebook and twitter, though having seen those the news feeds are a couple of line saying this week pirate incursion or last chance at double xp so it doesn't seem overly likely. But if this is the place to go, it kind of gives the impression that paying customers are not as important as potential markets. How is ignoring the customers base going, in an effort to chase this mythical player untapped player base.

 

Or could it possibly be the claim that whilst not here somewhere else is a line that is used to placate the fools on the forums. Much like every delay is because we aren't happy with the quality of the product and then its still a bug ridden mess but you know people will be cheering for delays cause it means a much high quality product. Even though it ends up just being a delay to allow a year with even less content and nothing to do with quality?

 

Cause it seems most the feedback on Galactic Seasons is ignored, whatever is planned for the 10th anniversary or the rest of the year is a mystery and that it looks like the story arc for this year is going to be Ilum v2. Much as Knights of the... was the Jedi story v2. Seriously Malgus has gone rogue, we threw him down a reactor shaft, he has magically been brought back to life and low and behold his gone rogue again. The entire decent story could have been summed up as an e-mail from Malgus hi, broken conditioning, picked up book and artefact, see you in 6 months for 10th Anniversary Ilum v2. So if there is any cultivating a relationship between feedback and the dev/story team it doesn't seem evident from the forums or the direction of the content.

 

Oh so very well said! Thank you, Costello, for calling them on their Bravo Sierrra. I especially like the first paragraph where you remind her that those of us allowed to post here are the ones paying a monthly sub.

 

We are tired of being ignored, and we need not be shy about saying so.

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I am sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you aren't busy. I'm sure you are kept very busy indeed, though I did wonder if you were being siphoned off toward other aspects of the business...

 

I'm an old woman who's been playing MMOs a long time. I remember the golden days when developers could actually be part of the community and didn't even have community relations managers. They could be silly and chummy and talk about whatever, without needing to have every word parsed by overseers. I do wonder if someone like yourself posted a lot, about all sorts of trivial things, if the "gold post" phenomena would be watered down enough that each word wouldn't be analyzed to death. I miss seeing staff engaging with the community on a friendly, casual, level. I don't want a corporate mouth piece, I want someone who I feel cares about the players, understands us, is one of us.

 

nice post. I DO remember the days when "forum folks" used to actually play the game and show up online and knew what players were talking about without the..." I'll get back to you after I discuss with dev team.... " times are a changin'

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I appreciate that there are good intentions here. And yes, communication from the dev team is unfortunately so rare that it does carry significant meaning when it happens. So, "communication means a lot; we will communicate less so that gold posts are more meaningful" is a bizarre take on the problem. "Communication means a lot; we will endeavour to communicate more frequently" is the response that we have been hoping to see acted upon for a long, long, long time. Gold posts do not need to always be important updates about the game, or even carry a huge amount of meaning. They do not need to say what is being worked on, address concerns, or make sweeping declarations about the state of the game. They can simply show that members of the SWTOR team are present, listening, and are part of this community, and inject a small amount of transparency that we sorely need.

 

Again, I appreciate that this was a well-intentioned move, but I do think it is the wrong one.

 

All the best,

-J

 

I was going to make my own post but I think you hit the nail on the head. Gold Posts mean a lot because we are STARVED for them. To me I would rather have 20 "thanks for the feedback I sent a summary to the dev team" copy and pasted posts in forums that just see a handful of "Hey guys, please be respectful"

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Gold Posts mean a lot because we are STARVED for them. To me I would rather have 20 "thanks for the feedback I sent a summary to the dev team" copy and pasted posts in forums that just see a handful of "Hey guys, please be respectful"

 

Jackie, I think this sums up how many of us have felt over the years.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Jackie, I think this sums up how many of us have felt over the years.

 

Just look at the dev tracker for Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), a far more niche game that is almost 6 years older.

 

https://www.ddo.com/en/forums/post_tracker.php?tracker=devtracker

 

In the past week there have been four post on the SWTOR dev tracker. In the same time frame there are 13 posts on the DDO dev tracker. In more than a few of those posts you will see that the Community Manager actually interacts with the community. And no, this is not increased activity due to an upcoming or recent update. This is normal activity.

 

DDO certainly has its problems but an absentee Community Manager is not one of them.

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  • 5 weeks later...
When will people come to understand that Galactic Seasons was introduced as a monetisation mechanic. That’s all it is. A new way for EAware to add micro transactions to the game like they do with mobile apps.

 

They want you to use Cartel coins to get ahead. That’s why they removed stuff to incentivise people to use CC’s next time to jump ahead so you don’t miss out. It’s really an ingenious strategy, if not a little underhanded as well.

 

well some of those items were NOT via CC and never was. And still AREN'T

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well some of those items were NOT via CC and never was. And still AREN'T

 

Actually, you can, (sort of), you can use cc's (to BUY) your way through the levels, instead of working through them, and with that, you get the tokens.....so, in a round about ways, they can now be bought with cc's ;)

Edited by DarkTergon
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