21/10/2016

A Farewell to Commendations

As indicated yesterday, this is going to be the last post for a week. Figured that I'd quite enjoy a break after all the hubbub surrounding Galactic Command.

For today's post, we'll be returning to solid confirmed fact, although this will swiftly segue into nothing more than speculation once again.

As part of the 5.0 update, all Warzone Commendations and Data Crystals will be phased out. Due to the unique nature of these, I sincerely doubt we'll see the same happen to the Fleet Commendations.

This has raised some interesting questions:
  • Will there be any special types of currency in 5.0?
  • What are the Commendations/Crystals being converted into?
  • What happens to all the things that we can currently buy with these currencies?
Some of these answers have been revealed, but for the other questions, we can only guess, and I'd like to offer my speculations here today.

First, though, I have to say that I will miss Commendations and Crystals if they're being removed without a planned replacement, and particularly since 3.3 when Warzone Commendations became so useful. Data Crystals are, potentially, less so for active Raiders outside of purchasing the blue and purple Exotic materials and stacks of Companion Gifts, of course.

Anyway, on to speculation!

~~~

For the first question, whilst there will be a new Currency type, it will only be linked to the Dark vs. Light aspect of Galactic Command which should have no impact on 'significant' in-game items.

For the second question, it has since been confirmed that they're planning to convert every Crystal and Commendation type into Credits. The exact Exchange Rate was revealed on the 28th of October; it's going to be 1:50 for Warzone Commendations, 1:500 for Common Crystals, 1:1,000 for Glowing Crystals, and 1:1,500 for Radiant Crystals.

There will be a limit of 2,000,000 Credits on each character for the conversion, with the respective caps for Crystals and Commendations being 500,000 for 1,000 Common Crystals, 500,000 for 500 Glowing Crystals, 750,000 for 500 Radiant Crystals, and 2,000,000 for 40,000 Warzone Commendations. Basically, it is impossible to hit this limit with Crystals alone, and you'd need 5,000 Warzone Commendations to make up that 250,000 credit deficit.

For the third question, it has also since been confirmed that the answer will simply be "Credits" for the majority of items. I can't see too many PvPers being overly enthusiastic about MedPacs and Adrenals costing Credits, however.

Certainly, for levelling mods, Legacy shells from the Adaptive vendor, and Companion gifts, nothing significant can come from making these cost Credits. I imagine we'll see mods costing between 100 - 500 Credits, the Legacy shells between 5,000 and 10,000 Credits depending on the piece of armour, and Companion gifts costing 5,000, 10,000, and between 30,000 to 50,000 Credits for Blue Rank 5s, Pink Rank 5s, and Purple Rank 6s, respectively.

It's impossible to make everything a solid 1:1,000 conversion for Data Crystals. If you made the gifts cost that amount at a 1:1,000 then the mods would cost 2,000 apiece (initial modding at Level 10 would cost 38,000 Credits if this happened!) so flexibility is absolutely key if they are to convert these items to requiring Credits. 

As for off-set gear, I do not imagine for the slightest that we'll be able to actually buy that gear from vendors ever again, to give greater emphasis towards the crafters as the solitary source of off-set gear. The Fleet may suddenly find itself emptied of a good portion of its vendors in the Combat Training and Supplies areas. 

The only remaining things to touch on are the Exotic materials. Right now you can buy the Blues for 25 Glowing Data Crystals and the Purples for 300 Radiant Data Crystals, but making these purchasable with Credits is going to result in some considerable aftershocks in the economy. Prices would decrease rapidly and nobody would ever worry about the grind if they themselves could simply purchase items needed to craft gear for themselves for even 1,000,000 Credits flat.

~~~

We've never known an expansion to hit without Commendations; for several people, they're the only way they've found to get gear if they can't do Operations. WarZone Commendations being removed in their entirety is going to leave a serious mark after they've become just so beneficial since 3.3. 

All the same, I am interested in seeing what happens in the future with what they do for the former Commendation system. Maybe it won't hurt nearly as much as some people think, but maybe it will hurt just as badly as a lot of people fear?

8 comments:

  1. I don't think they're going to have mats (that aren't already purchasable for credits) on credit vendors, unless they remove them from the drop tables. That would "peg" the prices of those mats, and basically take them off the GTN.
    Likewise, as much as I enjoyed buying high-end companion gifts off the crystal vendors, leaving them on vendors to be bought for crystals would take them off the GTN. (Especially if the vendors sold higher-grade gifts than can be crafted, as is today the case).

    The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking removal of crystals is a Bad Idea, because of the non-gear items that can be currently bought with them. Which makes me think, "what else have they not thought out the side effect sof?"

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  2. I was half expecting a poem when I clicked on the title. /disappointed :P

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    1. I can't write poetry to save my life. :P
      Sorry for the disappointment!

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  3. Hey folks,

    I wanted to give you a heads up on a change included with Game Update 4.7.3 on Tuesday. As we discussed last week, we are making changes to how gearing works in our upcoming expansion, Knights of the Eternal Throne. In support of our new Galactic Command system, we will be removing Warzone Commendations from the game on November 29th when Knights of the Eternal Throne Early Access opens. As a result, any new Warzone Commendation Grants will become bound and will Bind on Pickup starting on Tuesday, with Game Update 4.7.3.

    If you have a desire to move Warzone Commendations around or have a stockpile of Warzone Commendation Grants, please ensure they are on the character you want them to be on before Tuesday’s maintenance. Please note, Customer Service will not be able to assist with any Warzone Commendation grants after Tuesday.

    It is our intent that Warzone Commendations will convert to credits (as will Crystals) with Eternal Throne’s launch. We are still working out the conversion rates and I am hopeful that I will have that information for you later next week. To reiterate, in preparation for Knights of the Eternal Throne all Warzone Commendation Grants will become bind on pickup as of Game Update 4.7.3 on Tuesday.

    Thanks everyone!

    -eric

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    1. Hmm. Okay, so that will be interesting to see the results of, depending on what the exact exchange rate will be...

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    2. Eric's been a busy beaver today in advance of the 4.7.3 patch, and the forum goers are losing their minds.

      Also, he took some feedback regarding their proposed change to buying PvP cosmetics. Both ranked rewards and the empty shells you can get off the vendor by the terminal on fleet - originally they were going to be converted to requiring ranked tokens, but everybody lost their verbal continence on him, and he took the resultant fertilizer into a meeting room and came back with "we're gonna convert the "unranked" vendors to taking credits, with a Valor requirement. What would be an acceptable valor requirement."

      (Dev tracker is worth a rapid refresh or two today)

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    3. I do agree that making the cosmetic shells purchasable with the prior Season's Ranked Tokens is silly. There are some decent models on that vendor (notably the Shrouded Knight's Blade which is Orgus Din's beautiful hilt) which can't be accessed in an orange form anywhere else (although Command Crates may yet yield similar items, of course), so the notion of these becoming inaccessible to all but those who did that last season of Ranked is just ridiculous.

      Plus, as decent as those models are, nobody would willingly use their limited tokens on them instead of actually new and exclusive stuff that they had rightfully earned the right to buy.

      I'm guessing that the Valor requirement will either be 30 or 40, which I would say is acceptable given that this can be reached relatively quickly.

      And, yeah, DevTracker has been fun to watch. I don't often find myself exasperated at BWA, but announcing all this one day before the relevant patch is really quite unprofessional.

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    4. I'm a big old white knight, and I got testy with Eric directly a time or two today. He's trying, but we all know what Yoda had to say about that...

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