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The Refer-a-Friend Program


KeithKanneg

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Hey all,

 

On April 27th we will begin sunsetting our current Refer-a-Friend (RAF) program. Starting on that day, you will no longer be able to refer new players into the program via your RAF link--however any current referrals will remain in place.

 

What is the Refer-a-Friend program? The program is meant to incentivize sharing your link with friends, encouraging them to join you in our galaxy far, far away, and granting meaningful rewards to both of you. This helps you (and the community) by increasing the number of players to play with, and it also introduces people who’ve never played SWTOR to one of the biggest Star Wars experiences in an online game.

 

Why are we closing the program down? Those who have been playing our game for years and have used the program understand that right now, RAF is not quite meeting that goal.

 

Although this system is not perfect, we do understand that it has provided benefits which players have enjoyed. The first of those benefits was the ability to acquire Cartel Coins in-game without purchasing them. To account for the fact that this will no longer be possible through new referrals, we are bolstering the amount of Cartel Coins players can earn through Galactic Seasons in Game Update 6.3 from its current value of 2,000 this season to 4,000. This will give you a clear path to acquiring a few thousand Cartel Coins, just by playing SWTOR regularly!

 

Additionally, one of the benefits RAF gave brand-new players was free access to Character Titles and the “Unify Color” feature on armor sets. We are going to add both of those unlocks to all accounts going forward starting in Game Update 6.3. You no longer need to get referred status or pay to have those unlocks as a player, in any status, including free-to-play. Those two unlocks will be disabled for purchase and removed from the Cartel Market starting today since they will be coming for free to everyone soon.

 

We know this doesn’t account for everything that the RAF program had to offer, and we are considering how to replace those benefits going forward. We know players will still want methods to access those rewards, especially the unique mount and pets. Look for more details on that in the future.

 

Lastly, there are no immediate plans to replace the RAF program. We want to really take the time to assess what the old system did right, did wrong, and what will make the most sense to achieve the goals of a RAF program in today’s game.

 

Thank you all for your understanding.

 

--Keith--

 

Edited by JackieKo
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Although I've benefitted from the program, I'm glad to see this version of it going. Giving away CC's for it has caused numerous issues. Maybe with the new version, when ever it's implemented, you could give away decos, pets, mounts, etc , But make them new & original ones, not recoloured.

This is long overdue. However, I think giving away CCs for referrals was completely fine. The issue was being able to refer a current subscriber and get CCs from their subscription. That made absolutely no sense.

Edited by Screaming_Ziva
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Well I think it was predictable that would come. But I'm really interested what will happen with RAF prizes as the mount and some droid pets? Never happened to get all 5 of them but hoped that 1 day I could get 5 friends who don't mind to use my refferel code. Now it will be really sad if ppl never get the chance to get these items after 27th of April... Hope you still let ppl get them in collection though...
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While I'm sad to see the system go like this I do understand considering how widely it was being exploited and I'm glad you guys are finally addressing it, raising the amount of cartel coins we can earn through galactic seasons is also really nice. I applaud that decision! As well as removing the restrictions of unify colors and titles, those two should've never been a thing in my opinion and I'm glad to see F2P/preferred having more freedom to customize their characters! I hope you'll look into removing other restrictions like the "need to be subscriber to use companion customization, hide helmet". I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting but I'm glad you guys are making the game more accessible to the F2P/preferred players:D
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Well I think it was predictable that would come. But I'm really interested what will happen with RAF prizes as the mount and some droid pets? Never happened to get all 5 of them but hoped that 1 day I could get 5 friends who don't mind to use my refferel code. Now it will be really sad if ppl never get the chance to get these items after 27th of April... Hope you still let ppl get them in collection though...

Keith covered that, sort of (and I emphasised the key part):

We know this doesn’t account for everything that the RAF program had to offer, and we are considering how to replace those benefits going forward. We know players will still want methods to access those rewards, especially the unique mount and pets. Look for more details on that in the future.
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Very good change and long overdue! It encouraged scammers and was unfair to every regular sub who wasn't spaming his RAF link 24/7 on fleet.

 

its not only the fleet its also on corresent/ DK and other planets people are doing it.

most on the planets that have a stronghold location you see people shout for it.

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Additionally, one of the benefits RAF gave brand-new players was free access to Character Titles and the “Unify Color” feature on armor sets. We are going to add both of those unlocks to all accounts going forward starting in Game Update 6.3. You no longer need to get referred status or pay to have those unlocks as a player, in any status, including free-to-play. Those two unlocks will be disabled for purchase and removed from the Cartel Market starting today since they will be coming for free to everyone soon.

 

So, a couple concerns I have. Firstly, will people who already receive the Jumpstart Bundle and/or Preferred Friends Bundle continue to receive them? Your post does not make that clear, unless I missed it.

 

The Jumpstart Bundle includes:

  • 1x Quick Travel Pass
  • 5x Minor XP Boost
  • 1x Inventory Module

The Quick Travel Pass is useless now due to a recent change, and realistically the XP boosts have less value than they once did considering the number of free XP boosts that are handed out for playing, but the Inventory Module unlock still holds some value.

 

The Preferred Friends Bundle includes:

  • Unlock: Inventory Module
  • Unlock: Crew Skill Slot
  • Customization Control: Display Titles
  • Customization Control: Unify Colors

Per your statement the Customization Control: Display Titles and Unify Colors unlocks are being deprecated and applied to all accounts beginning the 27th of April, but what about the Crew Skill unlock and Inventory Module?

 

So, will people who currently receive the bundles continue to receive them?

 

With regard to the crew skill unlock, considering that F2P and preferred accounts are already limited in the area of crafting due to only being able to send out three companions at once, and not being able to craft multiple items at once, how about increasing the available crew skills for F2P and preferred by one each. That would give F2P two crew skills and preferred three. This would still incentivize people to upgrade their account to preferred for the third crew skill whilst removing an additional barrier to crafting for preferred players who will not longer have access to this bundle.

 

Wishful thinking, but I would love it if you just increased the default number of inventory modules for everyone from three to five. Better yet, just open up all eight modules to everyone. Too much? Three really is not enough inventory space; especially considering how much stuff we receive now. Having access to those two free inventory module unlocks only saves a few thousand credits, so their loss would not be felt as hard as the loss of the crew skill unlock, but they are still a nice bonus from the bundles. If would gladly accept the loss of those two unlocks if the default inventory was increase to five modules. Even better if you just opened all eight (wink).

 

Also, one of the benefits of using a referral link was that it gave seven days of premium access for preferred players and, perhaps more importantly, during that time it removed the credit limit. This is, perhaps, not the most popular of positions, but in my opinion the credit limit, at least for preferred players, is far too restrictive and should just be removed. Has any consideration been given to that particular aspect of the referral program?

Edited by ceryxp
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sounds like as long as the person stays subbed, you'll get them, but once they stop, so does the coins, and after the *April 27th* you won't be able to start any new ones.

The way it works at the moment is that once someone is on your referral list then when they resub later on your CC payments resume as well. It's a weird decision to block new people from getting the CC rewards while continuing CC payments to the current referrers.

Edited by UlaVii
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The XP items may not have use to subs because of the ability to receive rewards from doing missions but if you are not a sub dont get a lot of the mission rewards that are granted for completing missions. Not sure if they have changed it to where xp consumable buffs are rewarded to those not subbed or not but it was not the last time i was preferred for a short time. and those that not subbed actually get a reduction of xp in general because of not being subbed. there are still players that lvl up like use to happen with planetary, class and explorative missions barely being in lvl range of max lvl for the planet they are on and about lvl 50 when finished with class missions because they do not sub. Not saying that is a problem some players just are not serious about playing through content like the rest of us or stick around like so many do but there is still a use for them.

 

As for the rest of the perks most of them, the rewards/perks literally meant nothing other than maybe the 7 day sub which at times can be handy if you have a guild member who has their sub run out and they are able to use a code to get that playtime if they are unable to currently afford to re-up their subscription.

 

The cartel coins will hit both streamers and scammers hard though which i could not careless. Not unheard of for streamers to hit 100-200k cartel coins just by posting their referral link in their description of the vids. Probably less common to hit that many these days but they were still getting 100 coins per month for their subs remaining subbed. As for the scammers well i do not have to say the issue with them and the cartel coins/in-game currency fake-out.

 

Honestly they could reform the refer a friend program to actually give incentive rewards to those are thinking about joining the game perks take away cartel coins shift the current rewards for those using the referrals to maybe stuff account bound random item drops or something like that where it does not cause even more inflation in the game but still gain some use out of it. or grant free monthly character server transfers for each friend referred something like that would not be a bad option just as long as it does not cause market inflation. There will still be abuse to it but would not contribute to hypercrates, armor sets, weapons and decos being bought up with cc to flood the GTN and control the market prices.

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The XP items may not have use to subs because of the ability to receive rewards from doing missions but if you are not a sub dont get a lot of the mission rewards that are granted for completing missions. Not sure if they have changed it to where xp consumable buffs are rewarded to those not subbed or not but it was not the last time i was preferred for a short time.

 

Preferred players (I can not speak to pure F2P, but I assume they do, as well) do receive the XP boost mission rewards now. It was some time ago that BW removed the mission reward restrictions, so gone are the days of having mission rewards that are greyed out and unavailable to non-subs.

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Ah yeah I see what you mean. I knew I got CC from the same person more than once and they had unsubbed in the middle. I just checked and I see they have two entries in the list. I used to have the referral link on the sidebar of our guild site so I could buy items using the CC to sell on the GTN to put credits in the guild bank for prizes and summons but when the fleet spammers became really prevalent I removed the link as it felt dirty somehow.
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Lastly, there are no immediate plans to replace the RAF program. We want to really take the time to assess what the old system did right, did wrong, and what will make the most sense to achieve the goals of a RAF program in today’s game.

 

Wouldn't it be easier to assess the old system while it is still in place? I'm not sure how to assess something which doesn't exist anymore. (I won't hold my breath that there will actually be an assessment.)

 

I hope you find a fast and fair solution for the pets and the mount. They are in collections, so there will be players who will want to acquire them. (I already have them, but I know how annoying it is to not be able to get items from the collections. Hello, certain cartel coin card pets that never even but mock me in the collections.)

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Wouldn't it be easier to assess the old system while it is still in place? I'm not sure how to assess something which doesn't exist anymore. (I won't hold my breath that there will actually be an assessment.)

 

I hope you find a fast and fair solution for the pets and the mount. They are in collections, so there will be players who will want to acquire them. (I already have them, but I know how annoying it is to not be able to get items from the collections. Hello, certain cartel coin card pets that never even but mock me in the collections.)

 

What will the DEV’s implement instead? I thought it was a nice little bonus to experience some of the benefits for subbing. How will we see more nee amd returning people joining swtor?

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Wouldn't it be easier to assess the old system while it is still in place? I'm not sure how to assess something which doesn't exist anymore. (I won't hold my breath that there will actually be an assessment.)

 

I am quite certain they will look into the matter was as much post and haste as they have done with other matters. The Grand Chance Cube that was erroneously removed from the Intro to Conquests mission. The removal of players being able to utilize chapter specific temporary companions outside of their respective chapter that was an unintended consequence of a solution to another issue. An icon for the Galactic Strongholds sub-forum. I am quite certain a response with be presented forthwith.

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Ok, one thing this does not cover is player(s) who have brought things like Unify Colors of cartel market. Many buy these for possable future accounts or to sell. In effect this make these worthless. Are these going to removed from inventrys and CC given back?

 

On the plus side with luck this will end RAF links in gen chat, cannot say I will miss these.

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On April 27th we will begin sunsetting our current Refer-a-Friend (RAF) program. Starting on that day, you will no longer be able to refer new players into the program via your RAF link--however any current referrals will remain in place.

RIP my magical clicky link however, YAY to more space in my signature to bug people with Quinn/Theron/Rivix content & romance requests! [cue evil laughter :D]

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so in the end we all going to pay the price thanks to the people that abuse yet again a system exploited so that we now all going to pay the price for it again?

 

so in this case you can tell more: that the problem that are selling there refer a friend link in the game to get free cartal coins and not wane pay for it its more thanks to that abuse more there going to chance it?

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