The Kestrel Minority

Hey everyone,

We are quite a few weeks away from publishing the next 90 day update for our SWTOR Roadmap. We solidified our content plan and release schedule, so I’ll include all those details in the update. But, as you know, we’re really trying to provide you with more insight than ever before, and I’d like to know what other information you’d want to see in the Roadmap. Obviously, I can’t promise to include everything, but will do my best to address a wide variety of your requests.

Many of you read the SWTOR roadmap (http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20170531), and realize I had left you with an elusive “and more to come…” in the Game Update 5.4 section. I thought this would be a good time to let you know what will be released on August 22nd with the next game update. Here’s a few highlights of what you can expect:

Crisis on Umbara – Our story will continue in a new Flashpoint coming on the planet of Umbara. This Flashpoint will launch with all 3 difficulties, Story, Veteran and Master. For Umbara’s Master Mode we are trying something new, and depending on how well it goes, we may do something similar for all Master Mode Flashpoints. Specifically, a player will need to have an average gear rating of 242 to use Group Finder. We won’t prevent pre-made groups from going in directly, but this will prevent under-geared players from slowing down your group. We’re adding a new average rating identifier on your character window which will be based on the items you have ‘equipped’.
Umbara Stronghold – This is the most unique stronghold yet, as you will be able to decorate your own moving train. You’ll need to complete the flashpoint a few times to gain access to the stronghold. Look for more details about the Stronghold in an upcoming post.
Companion Customization – Senya Tirall can now have her weapons and armor customized. Also, Lana, Koth, and Senya’s hairstyles are available for purchase to customize your character.
Quality of Life – Companions can now be summoned while moving.
A new feature on the in-game Preference screen has been added for higher graphic settings to improve the realism of contrast and shadows.
Class balance – The following Disciplines are receiving changes (details will follow in the next few weeks):
Lethality / Ruffian
Concealment / Scrapper
Medicine / Sawbones
Fury / Concentration
Carnage / Combat
Season 8 will be coming to an end! We will post the full breakdown of rewards with screenshots in the coming weeks but in the meantime… the top rewards include a full weapon set and a new Ember Makrin Mount.
We are making changes to daily and weekly mission rewards for PvP with the intent of substantially improving Unassembled Component gain for players who complete both Ranked and Unranked missions.


Back to the Roadmap update for a moment as I’d like to provide some guidelines about the feedback. Be concise and specific. Think how it will affect other players, fairness, progression, impact, to help us truly understand and weigh your thoughts against the entire plan/direction.

Keep in mind, our goal for this year was to put us on a track of providing new and challenging multi-player content, while addressing all the gameplay systems in SWTOR. It does mean spreading content out over the year, but I still believe having access to content sooner is more desirable than having to wait a year to get it all at once.

Chat with you all soon.

Keith


Source:
http://dulfy.net/2017/07/21/swtor-patch ... t-roadmap/

I think the most exciting news here are the stronghold and the new hairstyles, haha. I'm intrigued about how the story will continue but usually flashpoints don't allow that much of storytelling. I'm hoping they might add Lana's old SOR hairdo, actually... but I suppose we will see.

Heh, well we will see.

What is indeed weird is that they connect the new stronghold with the FP somehow.

Still I am intrigued how they will put the train of Empire vs Reps on track again.

All in all I am looking forward to August and new content for the game.

Given the state it is it can only help.

So far I like the new producers way of keeping contact and addressing the community.

It was sorely missed and the work style is finally something.

It was needed and is badly needed now...

Roadmap Update 5.4 and beyond




Hey folks,

Keith, Charles, and I wanted to apologize for our lack of posting this week. The whole team has been pretty heads down working on a variety of things and so we haven’t paid you forum-goers our usual love. Here are a variety of things we have updates on or seen questions about.

Class Changes in 5.4 – We will make posts around each of the upcoming Class changes, akin to what we did with 5.3. My hope is to start those next week. Either way I will give you a better idea of timing next week.
Season 8 Rewards – The rewards blog is nearly finished and will contain all the deets, including tier breakdowns and reward screenshots. I am pretty confident it will go up next week as well. I will give you a status update next week.
Unassembled Component Changes – As Keith alluded to previously, there are Unassembled Component changes coming to PvP Mission Rewards. The TLDR is that we want you to be able to get more Unassembled Components each week overall while also making Ranked play a bit more appealing. We are in the final stages of locking down these exact numbers and so look for a post on this next week with the specifics.
Follow-up to Master Mode Ops Drops – Based on your feedback from the discussion thread, we are planning to add Unassembled Components to Master Mode boss drops with GU 5.5.
Follow-up on Bolster discussion – It was clear from the discussion thread that most of you would like to see Bolster go as high as possible, while still meeting our teams goal of having gear progression be relevant. We will be increasing Bolsters to 242 in PvP for GU 5.5 as well.
Umbara Stronghold – There were some questions about how this works. In short, you will need to run the Flashpoint to earn currency. That currency can be used to purchase rewards from a vendor, including a key to purchase the Stronghold. Once you have the key, you can then unlock the Stronghold for a reduced amount of Credits/CC. You cannot outright purchase the Stronghold, it has to be earned by running the Flashpoint to get the key.


Thanks everyone.

-eric
Discussion Topic: Game Update 5.4 and the Next Roadmap | 07.28.2017, 05:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthSpuds View Post
So we have to earn in-game currency AND Credits / Cartel Coins.

So you are making us pay with the New In Game Currency, Credits/CC AND Grind Time.

Jeez, how cheap can you guys get?

You really are giving us less and less reasons to stay aren’t you.

All The Best

You’re on a roll today!
The idea here is to reduce the cost of buying a stronghold by using your investment in time to lower the overall acquisition cost versus paying the full pop with either Cartel Coins or credits. We thought, hey, let’s try something new where an activity you’d do anyway, you could benefit from your efforts and obtain a key from a currency you automatically get by running the Flashpoint.

Unless we change it before release, 10x for Story/solo mode, or 6x for Veteran, or 3x for Master Mode will give you enough currency to buy the Key from the vendor. What I don’t know, yet, is the reduction amount for credits or Cartel Coins. Soon as that gets finalized, we’ll post it up.

Keith—


Source:

Dulfy
http://dulfy.net/2017/07/28/swtor-updat ... ap-beyond/