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Are the collections prices intended or a bug?


Reno_Tarshil

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I want to add some clarity around what was wrong, what is intended, and what is being changed. First off, the what is wrong. There was a little confusion around things when we last talked about this issue. It appears that the current rarities in the pack are correct, however, the tooltips and rarity icons for those items are not.

-eric

 

Sorry but that makes zero sense when looked at objectively. Let's take the Nimble set as an example:

 

The Nimble lower box and contents are dropping at much higher rates then the upper and supplementary boxes and contents. Currently, the set is all marked as "rare" (gray icon). The drop rates for the sets in this pack very much appear to have abnormally disproportionate drop rates. I get that not all pieces within a set drop exactly the same in terms of % chance, but the disproportion in the current pack is way way worse then any prior packs. And the other sets are working pretty much the same in terms of disproportionate drop rates.

 

[note: what we absolutely DO NOT NEED is more boots and pants dropping at absurdly high rates. The game is literally flooded with them now. So.. if doing disproportionate drop rates.... how about mix it up some.]

 

What you just stated was that everything in the drop rates is working as intended.... but that some tool-tips and icons are incorrect. SO...... you just in effect stated that you will now mix rarities in drops in widely disproportionate drop rates and will simply change the tooltips and rarity icons (which frankly are a poor indicator of rarity to begin with).

 

That sounds to me like you have a huge pothole here and you are trying to fill it with sand. In other words, the problem created here is so bad, there is no easy way to fix it.... so you are just going to double down on the issues and declare them working as intended.

 

IF...IF both the absurd differences in drop rates for a given armor set, and the much higher unlock prices are indeed by intention...... I believe you have done some very nasty things to the player economy here. Time will tell I guess.... but honestly.... this was a bad move on the part of Bioware (intended or not).

 

I get that it is normal and expected to see new "experiments" in content to see how it is received by players. I'm fine with that, for the most part... as we can simply choose to disregard and not participate on that content. BUT.... as community manager, surely you understand that when making changes like this intentionally, and not giving the player base any insight that you did it, what you did and why.... you destroy player trust. Why do we have to open multiple bug report threads to find out you did this intentionally???????

Edited by Andryah
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Wow.

 

Eric, can you please explain the logic that was behind this change? And more importantly, why was the change not communicated to the community prior to implementation?

 

Also, you state that the devs have heard our feedback around both the rarities and the collections pricing and will adjust accordingly in future packs. What is the adjustment? Will it be reversed to its past levels? Or adjusted in other ways? Communicating these changes to your customer is extremely important. I will find it difficult to purchase Cartel Packs in the future if there are questions regarding drop rates, rarities, and Legacy Unlock pricing.

 

I am befuddled as to why Bioware would think this would be the right time to make changes to an established system and not communicate it to the customer. I would think efforts to retain customers would be paramount at this time, given competition and lack of new content within SWTOR. Please don't give the remaining players further reasons to leave.

 

Eric, your input would be much appreciated.

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Our current target is to get those adjusted in Game Update 2.8.1, it should be noted that the Star Cluster pack also becomes embargoed in that same update.

 

Everything is working as we planned. We might be mysteriously removing the pack from the Cartel Market next patch but that's okay!

 

...

 

One of these days, maybe you'll catch onto the fact that no one believes your BS. We put up with this game because it's Star Wars. That's it. Your decisions suck, your management sucks, your bugtest team doesn't even exist, your QA team doesn't even exist, your PvP team is incompetent and you lie on a regular basis about pretty much everything.

 

 

You're lucky this game is Star Wars, or you'd have failed years ago.

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I am very disappointed in this announcement. Especially announced at the same time as an embargo. In my opinion, this has been one of the best packs in quite some time, even with terrible drop rates.

 

It would be good to hear more details from the devs on this matter. It seems like there is something mission from what we are being told. That may very well be false, but the one it is being approached has the air of a coverup.

 

I am by no means expecting the sky to fall or rage cancel my sub, but I am very disappointed and had decided not to buy the cartel coins to get a hypercrate until I heard more about the drop rates. Now that I have heard this, I will certainly not be purchasing one.

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TLDR – Rarities and collection costs are right. Item rarity icons and collections tooltip rarity are not and are targeted to be fixed in 2.8.1.

-eric

 

Just to clarify things you guys are intending to implement different drop rates for different parts of the same armor set? In this case, as mentioned before, this means a hell lot of Nimble Brawler boots and pants and maybe one or two helmet and chest pieces?

 

Could you also please clarify the unlock pricing of the sets in the collection? I do understand that you want to make some things more expensive then others, but could you at least add some sort of indicator to the collection so that one could see the amount of cartel coins needed to unlock the specific set in the collection before you own this set?

 

IMHO this was a very poor design decision to implement this change in a very quiet way. I planned to unlock some of the new armors for all of my characters but with the raised cost I will think twice which armor I plan to unlock, as the raised price is somewhere in the order of five to six times the old price.

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I have been a big supporter of the cartel market since its launch, but the shenanigans here are upsetting. The changes implemented for this pack were folly, and unfortunately Tait's and Eric's efforts to explain/rationalize them have made the matter worse.

 

Others in this thread have expressed the multitude of issues with this pack as well as I could, but I still wanted to add my $0.02 as I actually spend a lot more than that on Cartel coins.

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Everything is working as we planned. We might be mysteriously removing the pack from the Cartel Market next patch but that's okay!.

 

Well something about this shipment has always been weird.

Like the fact that instead of there being 4 packs listed in collections there was only 2.

There was no smaller pack.

 

Honestly I am leaning towards this being the plan originally and this smaller shipment being a bit of an experiment.

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Honestly I am leaning towards this being the plan originally and this smaller shipment being a bit of an experiment.

 

Could very well be. But jumping out from behind a rock with the admission that it is by design, with zero communications until today that it is "working as intended, and how it works" is not acceptable IMO.

 

It is their game, so they can produce it anyway they like.... but there are always consequences to changes...particularly secret changes inside an MMO.

 

For many things.. I get that we are not entitled to the details... but when they make a fundamental shift in their pack content rarity and collections prices........players deserve disclosure in the patch notes.. not after multiple bug reports and threads since 2.8 went live. This is not going to be received well by any players I don't think. Not the end of the world by any means...but still... they stepped in it on this one IMO.

Edited by Andryah
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Could very well be. But jumping out from behind a rock with the admission that it is by design, with zero communications until today that it is "working as intended, and how it works" is not acceptable IMO.

 

This is true and its hard to deny that there wasn't a communication issue.

2 days ago hearing from tait and then today finally hearing from Musco with clarification is a bit weird and I will admit fishy.

 

I think Bioware should experiment with the cartel market and get feedback but I also think that they should be a little more open about it.

The collections issue I think is something that they don't really need to justify but thats just me.

 

However on the note of items like this. I am pretty sure that this has been the same thing since the cartel market came out.

 

The Head piece and chest were always the rarer pieces and the other ones were harder to come by. With some exceptions. Just look at Reven

 

 

Edit:

I think a lot of this boils down to the same thing we have seen several times on the forum.

They mention something (one of the reasons we don't see much on friday anymore) big or potentially very bad and then just go completely silent.

The issue boils up until people on the forum stop looking at facts and assume that something is true when it may very well not be.

Then Bioware comes in a few days later with a response that seems to some to be a knee jerk reaction with BS instead of being true (which it all could very well be).

 

It is a bit of a double edged sword because at least we get feedback from Bioware but I also realize that they can't possibly respond to everything.

Edited by ninjonxb
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Hey folks,

 

~Snip

 

TLDR – Rarities and collection costs are right. Item rarity icons and collections tooltip rarity are not and are targeted to be fixed in 2.8.1.

 

-eric

 

Thank you very much for clearing that up. :cool:

 

I don't mind the fact that there are more rare items at all, I just wish that the GSF items wouldn't count as your "2 items" in a pack. It's utterly soul-crushing to open a pack and find GSF stuff that's worthless (make a vendor for that stuff imo, maybe even rep).

 

For future reference, maybe adding in the Cartel Certificates would be nice (instead of scrap or from Jawas?), so we can get the items from rep vendors (if we want) that we don't have yet. *looks at Pocket Sarlacc*

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This is true and its hard to deny that there wasn't a communication issue.

2 days ago hearing from tait and then today finally hearing from Musco with clarification is a bit weird and I will admit fishy.

 

I think Bioware should experiment with the cartel market and get feedback but I also think that they should be a little more open about it.

The collections issue I think is something that they don't really need to justify but thats just me.

 

However on the note of items like this. I am pretty sure that this has been the same thing since the cartel market came out.

 

The Head piece and chest were always the rarer pieces and the other ones were harder to come by. With some exceptions. Just look at Reven

 

Seriously? Do you ask a lab rat if he minds being experimented upon by any chance?

 

I doubt that.

 

Truth be told, as mentioned over and over again by some people, they were pretty much testing the waters to see if they could get away with these new prices, hoping they would become standard-fare.

 

What I find shocking - or perhaps not - is that even so the usual suspects were either too dense or blind to see that this was their original aim or plan all along, that there wasn't any mistake whatsoever.

 

That somewhere, someone rotated that handle a bit too much and the price was higher that was actually meant to. :rolleyes:

 

In all truth, some of the people who are now apparently shocked deserve what they're getting. In the end, they're as much lab rats as the rest of us.

Edited by Darth_Wicked
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Having had some time extra time to ponder all this. It's their game and they have every right to do what they want with it but the way this was handled was very terrible.

 

If you want to expiriment? That's fine and well but to do so without letting us know is pretty bad.

 

If the next pack that comes out is the same as this one, I honestly think you're going to lose a lot of money.

 

I honestly hope our feedback about this isn't ignored...

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Having had some time extra time to ponder all this. It's their game and they have every right to do what they want with it but the way this was handled was very terrible.

 

If you want to expiriment? That's fine and well but to do so without letting us know is pretty bad.

 

If the next pack that comes out is the same as this one, I honestly think you're going to lose a lot of money.

 

I honestly hope our feedback about this isn't ignored...

 

The surest way to provide feedback to a business and ensure the business pays attention is to deliver that feedback in dollars... or lack thereof.

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since the pack is being embargoes in 2.8.1 making the unlocks via collections super expensive... seems fair and reasonable... since once its embargoed its gone.... just look at the collection price of the Gold Scalene set..... its an event pack its not a standard pack....
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since the pack is being embargoes in 2.8.1 making the unlocks via collections super expensive... seems fair and reasonable... since once its embargoed its gone.... just look at the collection price of the Gold Scalene set..... its an event pack its not a standard pack....

 

Or the TRK-R-Treatment Chamber.

 

If you want to expiriment? That's fine and well but to do so without letting us know is pretty bad.

 

A poll would've been nice.

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
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Having had some time extra time to ponder all this. It's their game and they have every right to do what they want with it but the way this was handled was very terrible.

 

If you want to expiriment? That's fine and well but to do so without letting us know is pretty bad.

 

If the next pack that comes out is the same as this one, I honestly think you're going to lose a lot of money.

 

I honestly hope our feedback about this isn't ignored...

 

As I asked earlier: Do you ask a lab rat if he minds being experimented upon? :p

 

Because at this point, that's how the player base is pretty much perceived by Bioware, given the stunt they just pulled.

Edited by Darth_Wicked
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As I asked earlier: Do you ask a lab rat if he minds being experimented upon? :p

 

Because at this point, that's how the player base is pretty much perceived by Bioware, given the stunt they just pulled.

 

If they are turning me into a hunter killer robot lab rat than experiment away.

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Hey folks,

 

I want to add some clarity around what was wrong, what is intended, and what is being changed. First off, the what is wrong. There was a little confusion around things when we last talked about this issue. It appears that the current rarities in the pack are correct, however, the tooltips and rarity icons for those items are not. Just to reiterate, the rarity of the items that you have been seeing in the packs is correct and is not being changed. What is being changed are the tooltips and rarity icons to make sure that this is accurately represented. Our current target is to get those adjusted in Game Update 2.8.1, it should be noted that the Star Cluster pack also becomes embargoed in that same update.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that for a second.

Are you trying to tell us that the droprates of the Nimble Brawler, Enhanced Assailant, Revered Seeer and Ceremonial Mystics upper, supplementary and lower crates are correct?

You are saying that there should be 3-4x more lower and supplementary crates than upper crates?

Well if that's true then that's a huge step in the wrong direction.

You are completely screwing up the mareketplace right now. People can't sell some of those lower/supplementary crates for 500 credits even. Hell, most people won't even take them for free!

I understand that changing the rarity icon is easier than fixing the problem, but I do not believe for a second that what you are telling us is the truth.

 

Another thing that I know was questioned was the collections unlock prices. Those prices are intended. Collections prices are something that is not completely static from one pack to another and can shift. Similarly, many of you might notice that in the Star Cluster pack there are different amounts of items at different rarities than normal (more rares, less commons, etc). With the Star Cluster pack, we were trying out some new things. I can tell you that the team has heard your feedback around both the rarities and the collections pricing and will adjust accordingly in future packs.

 

I apologize for the confusion around this and I hope this clears things up!

 

So suddenly it's ok to charge 600CC for a dance emote unlock?

And you are increasing the price of the more common armour sets from 90 to 480CC? An increase of over five times the previous price?

That's pretty outrageous! It's comparable to increasing the price of milk by 5 times overnight without there being any milk shortage.

I have to say you are starting to alienate quite a few of us here by this move.

 

I get it, this is an experimental pack to see what you can get away with.

Well, it backfired.

This is only going to sour the community even more than it already have. People have been accusing Bioware of milking the playerbase for money for a long while now and I'm afraid that this move just proves them right.

 

TLDR – Rarities and collection costs are right. Item rarity icons and collections tooltip rarity are not and are targeted to be fixed in 2.8.1.

 

-eric

 

Well, I'm sad to say that it sounds like you made a mistake and instead of fixing it you are just glossing over the issue and pretending like it was planned all along.

 

If it was planned all along, then that's an even bigger issue. You say that the "team has heard our feedback and will adjust accordingly in future packs"?

Well what about this pack? The prices are still outrageous and saying that' you'll "take that into consideration in the future" isn't doing anything to fix the issue.

 

This is a complete and utter PR failure. I doubt anyone has any faith in the future pricing of cartel market items now.

Some of your strongest proponents here have been utterly flabbergasted by this statement. Not for a second did any of us think this could be on purpose.

It just seemed very out of character for the company.

 

I guess we were proven wrong. :(

Edited by OddballEasyEight
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Wow **** your ********. Drop rate of specific items are hay-wired and the prices for the emotes are jacked.

5$ to unlock uno, 'one' in Spanish, virtual emote to legacy.

I was fine with 240cc but with current pricing I have no interest in cartel stuff anymore, and sadly it was one of the few things that kept me going.

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I guess I was proven wrong. :(

 

Fixed.

 

Some of us pointed out from the very beginning that it - was most likely - intentional and we weren't taken seriously, because... After all... Any criticism towards this game is never warranted I assume. :rolleyes:

 

Again, some people around these parts actually deserve this, I take it.

Edited by Darth_Wicked
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since the pack is being embargoes in 2.8.1 making the unlocks via collections super expensive... seems fair and reasonable... since once its embargoed its gone.... just look at the collection price of the Gold Scalene set..... its an event pack its not a standard pack....

 

It might seem "fair" but if you look at it from the view of it being an experiment to see what they can get away with, you can bet your butt that if they got away with this, the norm from now on would be to embargo every pack after it came out and hiking up the unlock prices because "excluxive".

This is a bad move no matter what.

(and I don't belive that they intended on embargoing this pack with 2.8.1. They are just doing it to validate the unlock prices and practically "force" people to use the unlocks by removing the source from the market. It's artificial scarcity. They do the same thing with diamonds in real life.)

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