Year of the KappaChris

any thoughts on synchronizing the time it takes to complete different daily/heroic zones weekly missions similar to how you intend to do with flashpoints? For example, a player doing the Czerka weekly can complete two full sets of the weekly in the time it takes to do one weekly heroic mission on Taris

In 7.0.1, we will not be making all Veteran Flashpoints available at level 15. Instead, we will retain each Flashpoint’s existing level restrictions, and make all Flashpoints available in Ground Finder every week.

"Ground Finder"? I think auto-correct betrayed you. It is devious that way. ^_^

Good afternoon, Mr. Schmidt, TY for posting. I have a few questions , maybe you can answer, maybe you cannot.

1. Why is the cap for currencies so low? Complete a conquest on 4 PC's and you're running straight into the cap for Commendation Medals. While it takes forever to gain Aquatic Resurce Matrixes. How does this make sense to the team? Why are Tech Fragments still capped at all?

2. Do you have any plans at all to incentivize Story Mode content (outside of Operations) at all? I am unable to Physically do OPs. I've tried and I can't. Please consider people with Disabilities and Chronic Health issues in your design philosophy.

3. When can we get our weapons in the Outfit designer?

[*]In 7.0.1, we will make all Weekly Missions for dailies and heroics available all the time.

This is all well and good, and a nice start to fixing 7.0, however, this still doesn't fix the fact that they reset every Tuesday, and are removed from your missions log. For some of us, including myself, it can take several weeks to complete a weekly mission. 7.0 is very anti-Alt. Please, for the love of God, remove the reset of these missions so that a person who plays on multiple toons in a given week has an opportunity to complete them. Especially given the fact that you are going to remove some of the rewards for completing the individual missions, and move them to the weekly. Another move that will punish the multi-Alt player.

So in regards to some of these weeklies, You really need to "fix" how operation weeklies work. The current version makes it all or nothing for a weekly. So lets say we had a group that went and did 3/5 in HM rav. We would HAVE to regroup that original group later in the week if we want to get our weeklies done. As new indiviudals would miss out on their weeklies if they joined a group with a lockout.

I understand the purpose behind the change is to mitigate lockout farms for weeklies, and reward players for doing the entire operation. So I have a suggestion. Make the weeklies have a bonus objective for every boss. Each boss completed gives the currency that is in the weekly, but spread out across all the boss encounters. The final boss finishes the mission and only gives you your gear crate. This way you are rewarding players who do the full operation. It also helps make the earlier fights feel more impactful as you get weekly rewards from each fight. The biggest reward is still tied to doing the full operation, but you aren't punished if you join a lockout to help people finish their lockouts.

This is mainly for hardmode and NiM. I think with daily reset with story mode operations, the current system works better to meet those needs.

• In 7.0.1, we will not be making all Veteran Flashpoints available at level 15. Instead, we will retain each Flashpoint’s existing level restrictions, and make all Flashpoints available in Ground Finder every week.
  
  • We will also adjust some rewards, reducing slightly the number of materials gained by deconstructing gear earned by running any individual Flashpoint, and boosting materials rewarded in the repeatable weekly Ground Finder Missions.
    
  • We are also committed to addressing some long overdue discrepancies in difficulty, length, and time to complete among all of our Flashpoints. That work will not be in 7.0.1, but will be patched into the game over time as we assess each flashpoint individually.
    
    • The first step in this direction can be seen on the latest PTS build that went live today:
      
      • Enemy health in the Spirit of Vengeance Solo-Story Mode has been reduced across the board
        
      • Enemy damage and health have been reduced by 20% in Veteran and Master Modes of Traitor Among the Chiss, Crisis on Umbara, and The Nathema Conspiracy
        
      • Enemy damage and health have been reduced for the Jakir and Selden, and Tau/Malgus encounters in Objective Meridian in Master Mode. Additional adjustments will come in a later patch for other difficulties.
        

This has been needed for a long time. This was the main issue that caused people to run Hammer Station ad nauseum in the 6.0 cycle. Too many flashpoints in the random queue are too long, too hard, and reward exactly the same. That disparity is what needs to be addressed if you want queues to be more random focused.

I'm glad to see you guys actually acknowledge this and start the process. It's a shame the gearing system had to be torn down before you did it, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

• In 7.0.1, we will make all Weekly Missions for dailies and heroics available all the time.
  
  • To compensate for the addition of all the extra weeklies, they will be repeatable 2 times per week as opposed to 3 as they are currently.
    

Another good change. Daily areas and heroics being limited has been tried in the past and it was soundly rejected, and you guys admitted it was a bad idea then and backtracked. Doing it again here was baffling, so I'm glad to see it gone. Limiting the repeatability in exchange is more than fair. Gives me more variety during a week and also prevents the (hopefully unintended) effects of certain reputations and achievements being harder to progress due to weeklies being missing.

I have some cynical observations here, but I'll hold them. This is long overdue in my opinion and was wholly avoidable, but it's a step in the right direction at least and I'm glad to see it. As harsh as I've been on the game lately, I want to love it. There's a lot of stuff to like in this game, and even in 7.0. There's just a lot of bad changes that need to be looked at. Hopefully there'll be more of that coming soon.

 

1. Why is the cap for currencies so low? Complete a conquest on 4 PC's and you're running straight into the cap for Commendation Medals. While it takes forever to gain Aquatic Resurce Matrixes. How does this make sense to the team? Why are Tech Fragments still capped at all?

 

3. When can we get our weapons in the Outfit designer?

Four Toons? With the amount of currency gained from the game itself, coupled with the reward for completing Conquest, I hit 999 after my third alt. So yeah, at least make the cap 11k like you did for Tech Frags, if not remove the cap completely.

And I second the motion on getting weapons into Outfitter. I paid a lot of real life money for the weapons my toons are using. It is tantamount to theft for me not to be able to use them, unless I choose to sacrifice stats in order to do so. Please, can we get a time frame on when we can expect 7.1 to drop? Or perhaps, even better, we could get a separate update that puts the weapons into outfitter.

Holy **** they actually listened and adjusted based on feedback. Amazing. More of this please!

I definitely think having MM Fps and Ops rotate is a good plan. But VM FPs absolutely needed to be more widely available, even if it means bringing back hammer station grinding.

[*]We are also committed to addressing some long overdue discrepancies in difficulty, length, and time to complete among all of our Flashpoints. That work will not be in 7.0.1, but will be patched into the game over time as we assess each flashpoint individually.

 

This is some of the best news I've heard in a long time. I hope you all do go through each flashpoint individually, because this is a solution that admits and deals with the problems in the actual game, as opposed to simply trying to figure out new ways to manipulate player behavior.

Thanks very much for this, it gives me some real hope.

Four Toons? With the amount of currency gained from the game itself, coupled with the reward for completing Conquest, I hit 999 after my third alt. So yeah, at least make the cap 11k like you did for Tech Frags, if not remove the cap completely.

I was trying for a mean average. Drops are random:)

Good first step.

Now give weekly heroics a Conquest goal.

Two suggestions.

One, if someone deselects a flashpoint in Activity Finder, prevent them from getting any rewards from a Flashpoint and from advancing any daily / weekly quests. This would prevent the 'Spammer Station Syndrome' where a few end up forcing the rest of us to run their preferred Flashpoint. I want to run all the Flashpoints, not just one, over and over.

Two, when possible, try to group like level-ranges in Flashpoints. That prevents level-restricted players from causing level 80 players from doing, say, Athiss multiple times in a row. I realize this strongly depends on what characters are queuing, but lets see as many Flashpoints as possible for those of us who enjoy all of them.

Thank you very much for posting and even more importantly listening!

Happy about getting back ALL Daily area/Heroics weeklies, much appreciated

A step in the right direction!

[*]In 7.0.1, we will make all Weekly Missions for dailies and heroics available all the time.

• To compensate for the addition of all the extra weeklies, they will be repeatable 2 times per week as opposed to 3 as they are currently.
  

-Chris

This is excellent news, now if you combine it wit a fix for the heroics that cannot be completed by a group as a group it will ease one of my biggest frustrations at the moment

Hi folks,

 

I wanted to follow up on Keith’s post here with a little more context, background, and most importantly some changes you will see in the 7.0.1 release.

 

First, a little peek behind the scenes in the world of Game Design. When designing changes for a game as large and complex as Star Wars: The Old Republic, there are many things that need to be taken into account. Between the interplay of lots of different systems and features in the game, and understanding how any change to one can affect the experience of all the rest, it’s sometimes difficult to fully simulate on paper how the sum of all the parts fit together into a greater, cohesive whole.

 

So we prototype, test, iterate, and test some more. Some of these may be public test opportunities of a particular piece of the puzzle we’re curious about on the PTS, but internally the test and iteration cycle repeats as often as possible. To understand the mindset of a variety of players, we gather feedback from as many places as possible to measure against the goals of the updates, in order to see if that cohesive whole we’re going for is lining up.

 

For 7.0, we had a vision for how players could experience repeatable content, and how the game would incentivize and reward content around the galaxy, especially to highlight our new shared tagging feature that we’ve been very excited about.

 

One major aspect of this was ensuring that some of our various systems which reward players for being active in the game, such as Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and Weekly Missions, have a bit of interplay between them to ensure if players wanted to target a particular sort of reward (like gear, cosmetic, or guild ship upgrades), there would be other players completing the same content in any given week, regardless of what rewards they were after.

 

This brings us to our Featured Content vision. We intended to reward featured content over non-featured content in a more substantial way for a few reasons:

• To make groups easier to form for similar content, even when reward goals differ
  
• To make it easier to get help from other players via shared tagging in heroics and dailies
  
• To make Operations more accessible to players who've never tapped into Story Mode before, by adding more options each week in Group Finder.
  

 

Many aspects of a design like this are extremely difficult to test at scale outside of a live game environment which houses many players piling into the game, all with different ways that they play, and all with different backgrounds and interests. Using our Public Test Server enables us to gather some early feedback, since it’s the closest thing we have to a live game environment, but it’s not a perfect substitute for the live game when it comes to how systems interact at scale and the data that provides.

 

So this brings us back to our Featured Content vision. The team worked hard to deliver on that vision, but when we saw how it was performing at scale (in a live environment), and especially taking your feedback into account, we decided to work on some changes that we believe will address many of the friction points in that vision.

 

 

• In 7.0.1, we will not be making all Veteran Flashpoints available at level 15. Instead, we will retain each Flashpoint’s existing level restrictions, and make all Flashpoints available in Group Finder every week.
  
  • We will also adjust some rewards, reducing slightly the number of materials gained by deconstructing gear earned by running any individual Flashpoint, and boosting materials rewarded in the repeatable weekly Group Finder Missions.
    
  • We are also committed to addressing some long overdue discrepancies in difficulty, length, and time to complete among all of our Flashpoints. That work will not be in 7.0.1, but will be patched into the game over time as we assess each flashpoint individually.
    
    • The first step in this direction can be seen on the latest PTS build that went live today:
      
      • Enemy health in the Spirit of Vengeance Solo-Story Mode has been reduced across the board
        
      • Enemy damage and health have been reduced by 20% in Veteran and Master Modes of Traitor Among the Chiss, Crisis on Umbara, and The Nathema Conspiracy
        
      • Enemy damage and health have been reduced for the Jakir and Selden, and Tau/Malgus encounters in Objective Meridian in Master Mode. Additional adjustments will come in a later patch for other difficulties.
        

  [*]In 7.0.1, we will make all Weekly Missions for dailies and heroics available all the time.

  • To compensate for the addition of all the extra weeklies, they will be repeatable 2 times per week as opposed to 3 as they are currently.
    

 

Legacy Operations and the new weekly Operation Missions will remain in rotation each week, as well as story modes in Group Finder, primarily due to how they tie into specific Conquest objectives in order to make finding a larger group easier.

 

Once R-4 Anomaly launches, its Weekly Mission will be available every week, to highlight the new content and gear that comes with it. We’re excited about this one, and encourage everyone to take a look and try out the bosses on the PTS!

 

Thanks for your time, care, and passion. We’re excited to get these changes to you and look forward to hearing what you think!

 

-Chris

I think the words you are looking for are, we should of listened to PTS feedback, we got it wrong and sorry.

For me as a solo player who only occasionally queues for flashpoints if next in my story list this is great news.

I think the idea to reward focus to do certain flashpoints each week is still a fine idea, it just needed to be a separate group find entry from the entire list rather than not available at all.

Two suggestions.

 

One, if someone deselects a flashpoint in Activity Finder, prevent them from getting any rewards from a Flashpoint and from advancing any daily / weekly quests. This would prevent the 'Spammer Station Syndrome' where a few end up forcing the rest of us to run their preferred Flashpoint. I want to run all the Flashpoints, not just one, over and over.

Yes please. I want to queue for a random FP, not run HS over and over again, and we already know that's exactly what's going to happen.

Either let us deselect one or two of them without losing GF reward, or make GF totally random: as in remove the option to select flashpoints. PVP and GSF are random, there is no reason to treat PVE differently.

Hi folks,

 

I wanted to follow up on Keith’s post here with a little more context, background, and most importantly some changes you will see in the 7.0.1 release.

 

Thanks for your time, care, and passion. We’re excited to get these changes to you and look forward to hearing what you think!

 

-Chris

First, thank YOU Chris for finally coming back to the FORUMS and posting some very helpful & informative behind-the-code type stuff. I for one really appreciate this type of developer post and i only wish u guys would post transparency like this more often.

Secondly, is it possible for you/Keith to please elaborate on whatever this "vision" for SWTOR in 2022 & beyond is please? Are u guys gonna finally address CRAFTING, for example? Or heck, maybe even give GSF some actual attention?! (it is, after all, still STAR Wars, no? )

Will there be any special Star Wars 'tie-ins' (events or items or content) with upcoming TV Series (like new 'Obi-Wan' show , even though i realize it's not close to our same timeline era ) . And i don't just mean yet another mini-droid umteenth re-skin "reward" .

Because, at least as of now, it just doesn't really feel like *10th Anniversary Celebration* of SWTOR....yet.

p.s. Also check out my suggestions & ideas in my forum sig below when you have time.

One, if someone deselects a flashpoint in Activity Finder, prevent them from getting any rewards from a Flashpoint and from advancing any daily / weekly quests. This would prevent the 'Spammer Station Syndrome' where a few end up forcing the rest of us to run their preferred Flashpoint. I want to run all the Flashpoints, not just one, over and over.

The [weekly] currently requires full-selection of available flashpoints for credit, and the post says they're shifting rewards in favor of the weekly, so I think this has been (somewhat) addressed.

Regardless, I'm thrilled to see the backtrack from the previous proposal of opening all flashpoints to 15+ and keeping the rotation. That was a bloodbath waiting to happen. And I know a lot of people who will be happy about the return of full planetary weekly selection, myself included.

In 7.0.1, we will not be making all Veteran Flashpoints available at level 15. Instead, we will retain each Flashpoint’s existing level restrictions, and make all Flashpoints available in Group Finder every week.

The nature of flashpoints only popping to suit the lowest person in the queue means we will be back to endless low level flashpoints.

Level 15 to level 80 in the queue, we'll need the highly unlikely scenario of only level 80's to see Nul for example.

I've seen flashpoints that popped almost never only because of the limited and level restricted current arrangement.

Legacy Operations and the new weekly Operation Missions will remain in rotation each week, as well as story modes in Group Finder, primarily due to how they tie into specific Conquest objectives in order to make finding a larger group easier.

NO. Bring back every operation mission into the operation terminal with weekly reward. Your current gearing system do not favour playing with pickup as 320 is too low DPS and Boss have higher HP. A group with 320 pick up and no experience make the RDG or Story operation harder then 6.0 / 306 no set. in SWTOR player play in guild with mate they know... pick up are the rare rule exception.

Season should be like a minigame. Not the highway forcing us to drive on it !

You need too reduce conquest at 50k too. Or increase the reward. The current effort to do 100k vs personal / guild reward is not faire.

Make also operation, flashpoint as much as rewarded then GSF and heroic. It is not normal to earn 200k in 2 hours heroic but only 25k in one story/RDG operation.

RDG/Story operation should reward 326 green on every boss. Operation in story/rdg are harder then flashpoint in all point and GSF but are less rewarded.

Bring back too a piece of gear drop on every operation / zl per boss... some are very hard to down... and having no reward face of the effort, is not fun.

As already said, 6.0 was fine about gearing and reward vs play the way we want. You just had to add story, flashpoint, operation and double role and 7.0 were fine.

Sincerely hope for a reboot 7.0.1 to 6.0 but keeping content (story, new flashpoint and double class).

Stop. The more you pretend the more you INSULT us.

It is CLEAR you were not taking feedback in PTS.

It is CLEAR you are are not taking feedback on the forums now, or in the recent past.

And it is looking CLEAR that your "Vision" of the game, is a "vision" that does not include the majority of your playerbase.

This new vision, is fundamentally different from what most of your players have been doing. Most of them do not partake in PvP or in OPS. The majority are split between mostly all solo, or mostly small group content and its CLEAR from the forums here, from the PTS feedback, from reddit posts that most people do NOT WANT TO BE FORCED into doing only specific content in a given week.

Your vision, is a lack of understanding your own games players and your changes for your vision has removed the bulk of the FUN involved for so many of your players and this utter NONSENSE you posted about your vision was geared towards rewarding players for repeat content and basic gameplay is a JOKE because you removed a major system that actually did that, RENOWN, and made another one far harder, CONQUEST, with most of best rewards going towards having to do content MOST DID NOT DO. PvP/GSF and OPS or MASTER content.

Total complete disconnect from the playerbase is all that is being seen now. Hell, we havent even heard anything about how the gearing system is broken and not worth doing because of the scaling being broken outside of PvP and OPS...this ***** is a joke.

Well, congrats. The game shot up with a peak of just over 19k players on Steam when 7 hit. Now its averaging just over 8k with peaks around 11k...in 3 weeks.

So the only question now is, do we have a team in charge of this game that will remain wrapped up on a bubble until its too late and this games population plummets beyond repair...or do we have one that is not wearing blinders and actually wants to keep their jobs for more than perhaps another year and do something to stem the tide of players fed up and leaving.

These are positive changes. I prefer to be able to do whatever content I choose rather than only having some of it available each week.

That being said, the main problem with 7.0 for me is the massive amount of bugs. Please make fixing these your focus for 7.0.1.

And add vendors for the missing planetary leveling gear please.