Update 5.1 and Skirmish soldier mark refunds

[-Daimon-]

As you know skirmish soldier ranking up has it's mark cost significantly lowered in Update 5.1

Rank 33 soldier rank used to cost 16.1.2012 around 1060 marks. Today 17.1.2012 same rank costs 518 marks. Same with traits/skills etc relative discount was used. So circa 50% cost down all over.

After Turbine applied this change there was no refunds or reset of your soldier(s) however.
Meaning if you had spent 40.000 marks on your soldier, you basically just lost 20.000 marks which is quite a significant lost (and game-time wasted) comparing to those that were lucky and had not spent marks on soldiers or had just bought a scroll from the store and reset their soldiers before the update.

There was no warning this would happen with update 5.1. Surely there was some pre-notes available that there is going to be a change but thinking about the magnitude of the change you would have thought there would be a soldier reset. But there wasn't.

I don't mind nerfing the costs and making it a bit easier to level up your soldier for the new people, but in all fairness - this was not a fair change without the refunds/reset.

So I respectfully hope Turbine will take this issue seriously. It's devastating hit for the whole old player base that have kept you going over the years. Please don't dissappoint us again. And knowing that SWTOR is running strong I can't imagine why would the company want to give another good reason for people to jump ships.

Thank you.


edit:

To OP, You can buy scroll from store now and reset soldier, so you'll get back as many marks as you spent on him pre-update. I have done that today and saved 25k marks.

/confirmed

[Thornglen]

In the last update, it had been confirmed that the pricing was a bug and would be fixed in an upcoming patch. I don't know how widespread the information had been, but when I saw that, I decided to hold off on any upgrades until the correction.

I'm not saying that makes the situation any better for you, but it was a known issue, so this wasn't a "nerf" to the cost as much as it was a bug fix that came in with the currency changes.

[Fralin]

Although not a fun thing, it's not as if marks would be hard to get. 460 meds from foundry... it's not hard to find them

[Ritenn]

To OP, You can buy scroll from store now and reset soldier, so you'll get back as many marks as you spent on him pre-update. I have done that today and saved 25k marks.

[-Daimon-]

Yeah. I guess it's just a matter of principle - for me at least. I have basically no need for marks anymore.

But I'm sure there's a lot of dissappointed players out there.

[Bigtuna00]

Frankly I'm a little shocked at the replies here. This is a HUGE oversight on the part of Turbine. I really can't believe they didn't do a soldier mark refund. We know they already have the ability to do this so I can only assume the rest of us a hosed or have to Pay2Win. Really disappointing.

[Fin.]

There should be automatic free soldier reset.

What if they start to fiddle with LIs (ranks, costs, relics, legacies, etc) and there will be no resets. It is the same thing.

[Lutheran]

There should be automatic free soldier reset.

What if they start to fiddle with LIs (ranks, costs, relics, legacies, etc) and there will be no resets. It is the same thing.

Why?

The last thing I want to do is respend points on my soldier for hours on all my toons. If you aren't happy buy the scroll, but to have an entire community respend is rediculous when the majority leveled them a long time ago. And frankly I hate when they reset LI's, more wasted time, just give everyone a scroll for free and let us decide if we want to respend them.

[nelar]

There should be automatic free soldier reset.

What if they start to fiddle with LIs (ranks, costs, relics, legacies, etc) and there will be no resets. It is the same thing.

With LIs, there's an Icon to warn you that you need to reapply points, and it doesn't take a lot of time to get everything back to normal. With soldiers, there's no warning if they are reset, and that's a terrible thing to discover after you are in a skirmish wondering why your soldier is suddenly dying, or you aren't being healed, or your Protector can't tank any more, etc. Then when you do realize the problem, you have to spend a long time re-raising all the ranks again to where they were. As Lutheran mentioned, players that finished leveling their soldier months ago, aren't going to thank Turbine for forcing them to rank those soldiers all over again, or for causing them to die in a Skirmish because they didn't know they had to.

I do wish they had at least temporarily lowered the cost of the Skirmish Refund in the store, but I can understand why they don't want to force that reset on all players.

[Fin.]

If you consider re-arranging ranks such huge problem there is easy solution for that.

Every player with soldier should get reset skirmish trait scroll, character bound.

[MoreFling]

Why?
just give everyone a scroll for free and let us decide if we want to respend them.

So, by your logic, they should do this too for people willing to spend time to remake their skirmish soldiers right?

[Cebra]

If you aren't happy buy the scroll.

Here's the only answer to most of Turbines purposefully programmed "annoyances".

[Lucanthanas]

I agree with the OP.
There should have been a reset like with the LI points.

[-Daimon-]

To OP, You can buy scroll from store now and reset soldier, so you'll get back as many marks as you spent on him pre-update. I have done that today and saved 25k marks.

Thanks. I tried that and it worked. So everything is fine.

I still find the way this was handled a bit fishy. Even that it's a bit dirty to make us spent TP for this (I don't mind, it's only 295TP, but again it's about the principle) I would have expected at least an official answer that you can get your marks back with the scroll.

But guess they were afraid that if they had added that in the the release notes it would have cause an uproar, as I'm sure it would had.

Anyways. Case closed

[Lucanthanas]

it's only 295TP

That is not cheap for something that should have been done free.
Even for a VIP, that's more than half their monthly stipend.

[-Daimon-]

That is not cheap for something that should have been done free.
Even for a VIP, that's more than half their monthly stipend.

I can only feel for those that have to do this for multiple soldiers/alts

[kermie-lee]

There should be automatic free soldier reset.

What if they start to fiddle with LIs (ranks, costs, relics, legacies, etc) and there will be no resets. It is the same thing.

^ This, absolutely. Whenever they've made changes to legacies on LIs they've given everyone a free reset... I fail to see how this situation is any different. Shoot, they even gave a free soldier reset when RoI went live due to changes to some of the skirmish traits/skills/etc.

Not cool, Turbine.

And for those saying that it would be a huge inconvenience to have to respend marks on your soldiers... if it meant ending up with a surplus of 10k marks for 30 mins of time per soldier, really? That's not worth your time? I'm pulling these numbers outta the air here, but I'm trying to be conservative since Ritenn mentioned ending up with 25k markds. I can't think of any other way to get thousands of marks for such a small amount of time invested. Even if it took you a whole hour to respend marks on your soldier and you only ended up with a 5k mark surplus, it would still be an awesome return.

Someone had the idea of a character-bound reset scroll, which I suppose would pacify folks who are too busy to have to deal with a global soldier reset. I just don't see why the lotro community wouldn't jump at the possibility of massive mark-savings.

[-Daimon-]

yeah +20k marks is a good estimate.

I got 46k marks refunded from fully ranked soldier after using the scroll and when I ranked up to the max again it costed 24k marks

[Bigtuna00]

A character bound reset scroll would be totally acceptable as well. There's no way in hell I'm paying 250 TP's for each one of my characters to get back the points I lost due to this bug.

[aglach]

That is not cheap for something that should have been done free.
Even for a VIP, that's more than half their monthly stipend.

agreed to this.

[Jarnos]

Why should you get a refund of marks?
They changed the cost of something you have allready bought.
So you overpayed you say, I want a refund.

If you buy shoes, and 3 months later they are on a discount, do you go back and ask for refund?

You have been able to use that soldier and the upgrades you bought for a while now.
Do you want them to take away all the rep, and silver you made while playing skirmishes as well?

The game chances, and with that the cost of items.
The Draigoch raid set is more expensive now, you want them to charge you for that as well?
Pay 1000 medallions now, or lose a pice?

Seems people only want the benefits from changes, and fail to see the bigger picture.
Sometimes you gain, sometimes you lose.

And before anyone jumps me and says "you probably weren't effected"
I actually upgraded my healer 2 days before the update.
I spend quite a lot of points.
Am I sad? Yes
Do I riot? No

[kermie-lee]

Why should you get a refund of marks?
They changed the cost of something you have allready bought.
So you overpayed you say, I want a refund.

If you buy shoes, and 3 months later they are on a discount, do you go back and ask for refund?

I hear what you're saying and I wondered the same thing. I took the following statement from the update notes to mean that they were admitting a mistake, not that they were deciding to give a discount:

"Soldier rank traits have had their prices significantly reduced."

If they were offering a discount, wouldn't it be promoted as such? That way everyone would know how awesome they were deciding to be to their loyal customer base. To me it sounds more like them admitting to overcharging us for quite some time now on our soldier-leveling, and are just now able to get costs back down to where they should be. I could be wrong though.

This just reminds me of the times when they've adjusted the level-up costs on certain LI legacies... that adjustment was immediately followed by a LI point reset across the board iirc. That wasn't a "We're giving a discount on leveling up these legacies now"-moment, but rather a "We made a mistake on the level-up cost of these legacies and are fixing it now"-moment.

[-Daimon-]

Hopefully we don't get legendary item resets ever again - if they make changes to the legacies. And I hope they remove the scrolls of renewals and make them store only. It's only fair as that would be similar situation as this is.

When I'm buying clothes irl and see them on discount later on .. I don't see how that has anything to do with absolutly anything here. That's just bad trolling.

And remember. No one lost here, it's all fine - if you're willing to buy the scroll from the store

[Bigtuna00]

Why should you get a refund of marks?
They changed the cost of something you have allready bought.
So you overpayed you say, I want a refund.

If you buy shoes, and 3 months later they are on a discount, do you go back and ask for refund?

Apparently you missed the part where this was a *BUG*. This is not a discount, it's a bug fix. We were OVER CHARGED after U5, not charged a normal amount. There's a post from a blue name explaining this, feel free to search.

[Nickysmom]

Apparently you missed the part where this was a *BUG*. This is not a discount, it's a bug fix. We were OVER CHARGED after U5, not charged a normal amount. There's a post from a blue name explaining this, feel free to search.

Yes, Turbine rep Zombie Columbus admitted this in a post from Dec 13 2011 06:11 PM. It's available via Dev Tracker.

"Upon looking into it, Rank costs are indeed too high. Skirmish Rank traits use different formulas then other item purchases in the Skirmish barter, and the relative adjustments we made when changing from SM to Marks was not fully applied to Ranks."