EricMusco

Hey folks,

First off, as always thank you for the feedback and discourse in the thread. I wanted to pop back in and cover a few different things that I am seeing as I have been following along with the conversation. In order, communication around KOTOR scenes, how we are using them, and your feedback in this thread. Let’s jump in.

Communication

There are a couple of different points related to communication that I have seen in this thread that I wanted to touch on. The first is just a general point around moderation or silencing discussion. This is mostly me relaying from Jackie (but I know I stated this plenty of times in the past as well), the removal of posts in this thread came entirely from one of three places:

1. People being very unconstructive or downright awful towards each other or staff members. Disagreement is fine, personal insults or threats are not.
2. Discussion of moderation – you a...

Hey folks!

Really happy to see the reception to the inspired by The Acolyte items that have dropped with 7.5. Reminder that the series premieres on June 4th! 

As you all saw, there are some customizations, a new Vibroblade, and armor set that are available in the Cartel Market. Included in the armor set are two variations of the hood, one without character hair showing and one with character hair showing. I am sure some of you could be wondering, why offer both options (some of you might already know the answer, let’s talk about why and set some context.

As some of you likely know, typically when we release an armor set with a hood up, we hide your character’s hair. Without getting into a bunch of technical details, quite simply our hair is an “all or nothing” situation. What that means is if your hair is short (or long) and protrudes out, or is long and crosses an area where the hood curves, it will clip out of the hood and there isn’t much w...

Hey folks,

You brought up 3 different Daily Areas so let's talk about each of these as they are all slightly different:

• Rishi - This change has not been made yet and will likely be made in 7.5.
• Ziost - As noted above for this Daily Area is a bit more complicated and will likely remain as is where it requires character story progression to unlock (we'll take a look though).
• Ossus - This is not fully changed to unlock based on the Achievement only. If you have the Achievement you will notice that some of the Daily Area will work but some of the NPCs and Missions will be unavailable right now. That is why we didn't put it in the patch notes, it will be fully available in 7.5.

Thanks all.

-eric

Hey there!

We wanted to make sure to get Kessan's Landing fixed since it was the new Daily Area and was missing those Conquest Objectives, but let me make a note to get a pass on Daily Areas that have these missing as well.

-eric

Hey folks,

I am back to talk about the Conquest changes we are planning for 7.4.1c (stay tuned for a post in the next few days with more details on timing for this patch). Thank you again for the feedback since the original change in 7.4.1. It gave us a lot to chew on internally around our change, our goals for Conquests, and the friction that came out in the feedback you were passing on.

Reminder of what changed and why. In 7.4.1 we reduced the amount of Conquest points earned for the “Advancement: Reputation” objective by a fairly substantial amount. The reason we did this was to reduce the need for more reputation tracks in Galactic Seasons and bring it in parity with other objectives given the relatively low effort required. Since you could (assuming you had rep tokens on hand) simply log in and right click a token for thousands of points. 

Now, coming off of that change we definitely heard some places where this had some knock on conseque...

Hey folks,

Following up on my post from last week around our Conquest/Rep changes in 7.4.1 I wanted to set the stage. As you know 7.4.1b is coming tomorrow but before you open the patch notes you will not see any changes yet around Conquests. We are still actively discussing all of the feedback you have been sending our way but I do want to confirm you should expect to see changes in 7.4.1c I just don't have them confirmed yet. I will...

Hey folks,

Coming off of 7.4.1, there were obviously some changes we made that received some feedback and I wanted to talk through them with you! I think we can put them in three buckets and in each there are some problems from our side that I want to address. Those buckets in order are:

• Removing Reputation tracks from GS / Blueprint Fragment confusion
• Changes to Reputation Conquest Objectives
• Missing patch notes

Where is the Rep Track?!

Simply put, the intended functionality of a Rep track does not pair well with the functionality of Galactic Seasons. For us, we want a rep track to be something that a player can engage with over a long period of time, to work through, earn rewards and titles, etc. Since a GS is only available for a limited time we didn’t want to push into a FOMO feeling or anything like that. We want Rep tracks to be tied to things like Daily Areas.

Hey folks,

I wanted to give you a quick heads up on our plans for the next little bit as we have 3 patches coming to you in pretty short order.

7.4.1a will be coming ASAP, likely tomorrow. This is to address an issue that the Join the Fight mount is not currently working at level 1 as intended. Jackie will be posting details once we have locked down maintenance timing.

7.4.1b is right on the horizon, targeting early/mid next week followed by 7.4.1c in the next 2-3 weeks. We are tracking a variety of emerging issues for these patches such as Ancient Armaments and Conquest/Rep change. I’ll be back later today or early tomorrow with a follow-up post about our internal conversations following your feedback on the Conquest/Rep changes.

I’m gonna lock this thread for now and will respond here later. I will reopen the thread when I do!

Thanks all, talk soon.

-eric
 

5 hours ago, Jdast said:

Forgive me for being blunt...

This is one of the most ill-conceived quests I have ever encountered in any MMORPG. Having thirty people racing to a click a mandatory quest progression item with a lengthy respawn timer is extremely poor game design.

The argument that I should wait until the crowd thins out is inane given how excited many of us were to play the new story, which is now a royal pain in a womp rat's behind. 

Guess I'll wait a week. 😏

Dasty

Edit: Per Otowi's point, I'll give the Empire a go. I should have specified I was playing Republic. 

...

Hey there,

Ok so first, I super appreciate the enthusiasm in the thread. We always love to hear where folks' heads are at for suggestions or ideas on places to improve the game.

Now, with that said, as much as I wish your suggestions were “quite inexpensive” or required “a little more time” that is unfortunately not true. I am hoping though that I can shed some light on exactly why that is the case since very often in software (game) development very few things are fast or inexpensive.

Let me give you an example in each of your categories to be a bit more illustrative.
 

On 9/18/2023 at 11:27 AM, Whykara said:

Quite inexpensive:

• Update old textures - armours, weapons and planets.

 

Perfect, we've actually done this in numerous releases since 7.0 and it's going to continue in a numbe...

Hey folks,

Apologies for the missed message yesterday, I somehow have a cold even though it is 1,000 degrees in Texas. We are confirmed for the Mission items in Collections. One note is that if you have already completed one of the Missions, or are currently on it, the Mission item will be added to your inventory or sent to you in the mail. You may need to move the item around within your inventory or to another character (since they are now Legacy bound) to trigger the Collection unlock.

Stay tuned for comms on maintenance timing and info on any other fixes. Thanks all.

-eric

Hey folks,

Alright, here is my update for today. I can't speak yet in 100% certainty as those mission items are not playing nice in getting in Collections but we are getting close (and that is still our intent). Looking good on that front, but should have a final update there Monday. Some of the other changes you will see are:

• The vendor (you can still get the items from the vendor for GS tokens instead of collections if you choose) will check your GS level instead of Mission progress.
• The Mission items will now be Bind on Legacy, in case you happen to claim them on the wrong character (especially relevant for the second or third Mission items).

More details to follow on Monday, have a good weekend!

-eric

Hey folks,

Getting late in the day but wanted to post an update. I was hoping to be able to give you a breakdown of the exact plan today (as Jackie alluded to yesterday) but unfortunately there is still one last piece in testing on our side. Plan is still the same as noted in Jackie's post, once we get a bit more testing tomorrow I should be able to circle back with details!

Thanks all.

-eric

Hey there,

Ok, so this is an interesting situation, thank you for bringing it up. First, a little history and then what we are talking about on the team to resolve it.

For a long time we never had the PvP Mission terminals inside of Warzones or Arenas. And so there was a pretty logical reason to allow Mission sharing within Warzones and Arenas. However, since that change happened that need has certainly gone down or vanished entirely.

We hadn't heard about players abusing Mission sharing as a form of harassment, so thanks for the report there. In addition to that we are talking about a couple of different changes we can make:

• Stopping Mission sharing in Warzones and Arenas - As mentioned above, since the addition of the terminals we are not sure we need to allow sharing anymore. Especially if it is being abused.
• Tie /ignore to blocking Mission sharing as well.

Let us know your thoughts on both...

As you may have seen in our "Game Update 7.3.1 is Coming Soon" Article, there are a few changes coming to Galactic Seasons starting this next season. With GS5, we are going to try something a little different, there will not be a seasonal Companion. We are doing this for a variety of reasons that we hope will improve the Galactic Season experience (along with creating some separate opportunities as well, more on that later).

For starters, you can still expect a great character driven story within each season, it just won’t need to operate around the limitation of a single companion. That story will unlock based on your Galactic Season Progress.

We obviou...

Hey folks,

Ok, apologies for the slow response on this one as it took quite a bit of digging to work through what exactly happened. I will give the details further down but for the TLDR -- The skirt with the leggings is intended and so that version will stay untouched. However, given the nature of that fix happening we are going to add a version of the skirt without leggings in 7.3.1. So anyone who has acquired the armor set at that point, or who pulls it down from collections (for those who already own it), will receive both versions.

Now for the detailed breakdown for those who are curious. So with some digging it seems that when this armor set was released way back in 2013 it actually launched bugged. The bug was that the leggings weren't showing on the character model but were showing up in almost every other situation (such as the plates and in the gears icon). Unfortunate that the place it was bugged was the most v...

On 6/14/2023 at 10:18 PM, Darh_Hellraiser said:

Any news on when we will be receiving this basilisk war droid we were promised at the end of Ruhnuk? We were told it would be coming and we even got an alliance alert just to hear him talk about his flag. That's cool and all but I'd so much rather have a basilisk war droid than hear him talk about his flag. I'm thinking big like the wampa companion but ranged instead of melee.

Lane's story is not forgotten (and also not done)! It will continue in 7.4, but won't be concluded then. We'll have more details about the mission chain and the ultimate reward in the future!

-eric

Hey folks,

One thing we have seen a little bit of confusion around is what difficulty modes exist on PTS and will be available for Shrine of Silence when 7.3 goes live. Since our naming conventions can be a little confusing sometimes let me reiterate what they are, and what they mean.

• Solo-Story: A solo-only mode where the player is often accompanied by characters relevant to the story and sees cutscenes throughout the Flashpoint. These are usually required parts of the main story in the game.
• Story - Easiest difficulty, meant to be completed solo.
• Veteran - Middle difficulty, meant to be completed with a group of any composition.
• Master - Hardest difficulty, meant to be completed with a coordinated group, built around the trinity (healer, tank, and DPS).

With that in mind, a reminder. Shrine of Silence marks a shift in our philosophy around how and where we will deliver crit path stor...

Hey folks,

Coming off of the stream I wanted to make sure to hit a couple of the questions we didn't get to.

Where is Master Mode R4? 

In short, MM R4 is not on our roadmap.

The priorities for our encounters team right now is focused on making more impactful, engaging bosses in story content, delivering Flashpoints in all modes with modern boss mechanics, and making additional challenging 8-player encounters.

Now, all of that said. I want to express that we very much understand how critical aspirational endgame group content is. Whether that is delivered through MM Flashpoints, World and Lair bosses, or even Ops. It is still something we will prioritize as a part of our roadmap going forward.

Any follow-up from the Shae Vizla PTS?
Again, thank you all for your participation and feedback! We have a lot of data and commentary to chew on before making a decision on what come...

25 minutes ago, go_rogue said:

Eric, a quick question on this. Is it for exiting to it's destination location, e.g. Alderaan stronghold exiting to Alderaan? What about Return to location from stronghold since one technically isn't travelling to a new location? E.g. I'm on Alderaan, I go to my Nar Shaddaa stronghold, then return to Alderaan?

Fair question, let me clarify within your example:

• You are on Alderaan. You go to your Nar SH and then use return to Alderaan. NO COST (you never actually traveled to another planet beyond the SH)
• You are on Alderaan. You go to your Nar SH and then exit area onto Nar Shaddaa. COST (you traveled to another location)

Generally speaking, Exit Area would have a travel cost and Return to Area would not.

-eric