Following an announcement of the roadmap for game update 5.4, it’s becoming clear that Star Wars: The Old Republic is moving to a more complex currency system for players. Responding to a question about one of the newer currencies in the game, Game Producer Keith Kanneg disclosed that the team is going to change how currency works so that you’ll be able to save some money between characters and pool resources.
The post in question can be seen below:
We are working to change currencies to be Legacy based. This includes unassembled components, credits, the Umbara currency, and more. I’m not aware of any major obstacles preventing this from happening, and doing so will help with a number of changes we are planning for the future.
I know that doesn’t solve the concern about having to run the Flashpoint multiple times on one character, but once you have the Key to open the Stronghold, you can use the currency for other items on the vendor.
And here’s the initial post that discloses basic details about the 5.4 update, including the Umbara Stronghold and other upgrades that will use the new currency.
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
The reaction to this change has been less than positive to say the least. Players noticed that SWTOR is seemingly falling into the same traps many F2P MMOs do. Namely that the focus on hardcore gameplay and delivering sub-focused content causes the devs to introduce multiple premium or hard-to-unlock currencies to the game. It’s unclear as of yet if this additional level of currency grinding will extend into other aspects of SWTOR post 5.4.
