7.4.1b is the second of three hotfix patches for SWTOR’s 7.4.1 and is rather large for a lettered patch. This article will tell you everything you need to know and features a special guest appearance from Endonangry, Broadsword’s 100% unnoficial anger translator!
Unlike previous minor updates, Broadsword announced that 7.4.1 would be coming with a trio of lettered patches to hotfix issues introduced with the most recent update.
In case you missed it, 7.4.1a was super tiny. It only fixed an issue with the mount from the Join the Fight bundle so that it would give the proper speed boost at level 1, as well as making the GS6 Blueprint Fragments Bind on Pickup (BoP).
I can’t say for certain, but I strongly suspect that this was done because 7.4.1 was already a bit late, almost certainly as a consequence of containing more content than usual for a minor update.
We have been getting major and minor updates for SWTOR in an alternating pattern every 3 months. Here’s a recent timeline of the updates:
- 7.3.0 released on 6/13/23
- 7.3.1 released on 9/5/23
- 7.4.0 released on 12/5/23
- 7.4.1 released on 3/11/24
Even if you exclude the holiday break, 7.4.1 is still three weeks late. Broadsword likely decided to do an accelerated QA process, which introduced more bugs into this patch than usual, resulting in the advance notice on additional hotfixes related to those bugs.
7.4.1b Changes Overview
7.4.1b releases on March 21st, 2024. It quite meaty for a lettered patch and contains fixes primarily related to Fitted Gear, Date Night, and Galactic Season 6 (GS6).
The changes to Fitted Gear will make it Bind to Legacy on Equip (BtLoE) and sellable, both to vendors for 100 credits and, more importantly, on the GTN.
Now, you will be able to list that cosmetic gear or slightly enrich yourself by offloading it to a vendor if you don’t want to bother. This patch will also fix the drop rates of Fitted Gear from the Grade 11 Treasure Hunting lockboxes.
The fixes for Date Night pertain to your special alone time with Koth and Theron. Broadsword fixed the animation transition issues on Koth’s date and made sure that the gal with the pink hairdo is sitting in a real chair now on Theron’s date.
There are a bunch of fixes related to Galactic Season 6 as well, more than you might see for bug fixes in some entire categories in a major or minor update. Some of these fixes pertain to hook and room unlock issues with the Copero Stronghold and the story missions associated with it. Other changes pertain more directly to GS6 with fixes to some of the rewards and objectives.
Broadsword also wanted to highlight that they are deploying a fix for the permanent loading screen at the beginning of the “Chains in the Dark” mission, though they aren’t 100% sure if it will work since they’ve been unable to reproduce the issue on their end. Refer to this thread on the forums for more details.
Endonangry, On the Conquest Reputation Nerf
The devs have been about as emphatic as possible that they have heard players’ complaints surrounding the significant nerf to the CXP granted by the Conquest Objective “Advancement: Reputation”. Eric Musco, SWTOR’s Lead Producer, very politely explained the situation in excruciating detail in a post on the forums.
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.
However, there was a similar expectation of those items being on the track, of those Achievements being earned during the season, etc. And so as a middle ground we replaced the rep items with the Blueprint Fragments which could serve a similar purpose. The problem here is that our messaging and overall user experience for these could use some work. We didn’t communicate this change clearly up front and more importantly, Blueprint Fragments themselves don’t do a great job of communicating what they or what their purpose is.
Going forward, it is our intention to stop doing rep tracks for Galactic Seasons and reserve them for content where it makes more sense (like Daily Areas).
The Conquest Change
This is surely the place we saw the most feedback here in the forums following the patch yesterday. First off, why did we even make this change? Well, this Objective is quite a bit outsized in just how many points you get relative to its effort. Not that we don’t want a range of Objectives, some of which can be completed very easily/quickly. But this Objective was a very large amount of points for what was required of you, and that’s why we ultimately nerfed it.
In connection to the first section is that although we lowered the points from this Conquest, our goal was to add in new objectives so that players who were jumping in for quick sessions and progression through Galactic Seasons, could then also be gaining Conquest points (the new Objectives focus on gaining GS levels).
Now, all of that being said, we definitely hear your feedback. We know that we hit this Objective pretty hard. And although it may have been needed to pull it into balance, we are actively discussing what adjustments we can make and I will let you know once I have those details.
But, Where was the Patch Note
Ok so before I peel back the curtain a little I want to get something out of the way, we didn’t try to hide any of this, it was just missed (I’ll tell you how in a minute). We know that a nerf like this is never fun and you having to discover it on your own adds so much more friction to the situation. But to be clear, any change that is player facing should be communicated to you, whether that is through patch notes, social media, forums, or some combination of all of the above. A change that affects you that is missed is never intentional.
I know ya’ll appreciate some behind the scenes when we can and so this is a good opportunity, so here goes. Let me walk you through how our patch notes are built to illustrate how this was missed. And amusingly a little bit of how Musco of the past and Musco of the present combined for this one. Also usual reminder I am going to be doing a bit of oversimplifying here so don’t take all of this as 100% 1 to 1, but to be illustrative!
Ok so when we pull patch notes we do so mostly in two ways:
- Highlights – These are the big features we know and track across a whole lot of teams, usually have marketing blurbs written, blogs, etc.
- Bugs – The important one for this section, we pull our bug fixes internally based on a query that Musco, Community Manager of the past, helped write. This pulls from our internal tracking of all of the bug fixes we made for a particular release so that Jackie and the Live team can convert those into patch notes!
Now fast forward. As of late we’ve really been trying to squeeze in more stuff when we can and often this stuff is small. So not a whole big feature, but also not us fixing a bug. From a project management standpoint, those things are tasks. This is something Musco, Producer of the Present has been helping to drive internally. You can see this in things like Ancient Armaments or the new Legacy Perk.
Well, when we are building our patch notes as I already described, we are typically looking at our highlight features and bugs (thanks Musco of the past) and in that query we now realize we were missing some tasks. In fact, both of my examples of tasks from above, Ancient Armaments and the new Legacy Perk, were missed on our first internal draft of the patch notes until we caught them on review.
You can probably see where this is going. The changes I’ve been talking about in this thread were all captured in tasks and so when we were writing the patch notes they were just missed and then weren’t caught on internal review. As you already can guess we are updating our process to make sure we are throwing a better net on catching those tasks in the future.
Anyways, this is a long post and I have thrown quite a lot of information at you. Thank you all for the continued feedback and I will pass on any more information as I have it.
-eric
Given the sheer volume of uproar over this perfectly reasonable nerf, I think you guys need to hear from my alter-ego, Endonangry, Broadsword’s completely unofficial and far less well-spoken anger translator.
Yes, nerfing the CXP offered by this CQ objective by over 80% will substantially reduce the amount of toons many are able to complete Conquest on during the week. However, the amount of points offered by said objective was absolutely absurd compared to what you had to do to get those points, to the extent that it is equally absurd that so many clearly thought it was reasonable in the first place.
It’s legit insane that you could get almost half a toon’s weekly conquest requirement from logging in and clicking a single button. All you gotta do to get CQ on that toon is do that two days out of a week, rank up a companion (which can be done with another single click of a button), and plop down a few decos.
You’re not playing the game. You’re not conquering the galaxy. You’re getting an excessive dopamine hit from watching a few numbers go up. You can literally get the same sort of experience for free by simply taking a ride in an elevator, and it’ll probably take just as long as it used to take to complete Conquest too!
Honestly, I don’t know whether I should be more flabbergasted by the number of people who seem to be furious about this nerf or the fact that it took so long for Broadsword to do it. For a whopping two years, the number of points offered by this objective meant that we effectively continued to have the 50k conquest requirement that existed during 6.0.
It makes absolutely no sense for Broadsword to incentivize player behavior in this way and never did. Despite this, we will apparently be getting compensatory changes with 7.4.1c, though they don’t quite have such changes nailed down yet. Don’t get your hopes up that you’ll find them satisfactory.
If getting 42k CQ for clicking a button is your standard, you’ll never be satisfied with anything less than being spoon-fed custom made pastes and purées for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
7.4.1b Full Patch Notes
Highlights
- For players who are unable to get past the “Chains in the Dark” loading screen, please see here for more details around the fix that will be deployed with Game Update 7.4.1b.
- In Game Update 7.4.1, changes to the Reputation Track and Reputation Conquest Objectives connected to Galactic Seasons were changed. We are actively discussing what adjustments can be made regarding these changes. More details can be found here.
Fixes
General
- Reduced the drop rates of new items in the “Grade 11 Treasure Hunting Lockbox” significantly to better align with previous drop rates. This includes world drop rates.
- Fixed an issue preventing server transfers for some characters with previously opened lockboxes.
- The “Crafting Trainers” mission is granted when the player enters the Gathering Skills hub on the Imperial Fleet.
Items
- Fitted Armors and Weapons for World Drops and Ancient Armaments are now Bind to Legacy on Equip and have a Vendor Value of 100 credits to allow sale on the GTN and Vendors.
- Tunings will now display properly when equipped to the Gothic Master’s Dualsaber.
Date Night Missions
- The character with pink hair is no longer sitting on an invisible chair during cutscenes in Theron Shan’s Date.
- Fixed an abrupt player character transition during Koth’s date.
Galactic Seasons 6
- The “Speak to Vagol Oss in Your Copero Villa” cinematic can now only be triggered once, as intended.
- Fixed an issue causing ambient sound from the Copero Stronghold to persist after leaving the stronghold.
- Vagol Oss will no longer change locations after completing the “Return to Vagol Oss in Your Copero Villa” step of the “A Commemorative Introduction” Mission.
- Some Small Wall Hooks in pre-unlocked areas of the Copero Villa stronghold no longer require the purchase of the “Underground Docks” expansion to be used.
- Unlocking a room in the Copero Villa stronghold with Cartel Coins now correctly refers to the unlock in chat as a Copero unlock (previously said Mek-sha)..
- The following vendor-only Galactic Season 6 titles will now be properly unlocked in Collections: “The Builder”, “Edifice Engineer” and “Grand Architect”.
- The datapad found during the “Galactic Season 6: The Observation Room” mission when directed to talk to Yshal can now only be interacted with once.
- The Galactic Seasons: Weekly Objectives tracking no longer states “Missing Details Data”.
- The Planetary Art: Tython Decoration now stacks with itself in the inventory.
- The “Elegant Chest of Loyalty” crate correctly refers to “Conquest Commendations”.
- The cover of “Arrangement: Copero Vehicle Stall” decoration is now aligned with the vehicle platform.
- Corrected an issue where the Piloting Ranks listed in the ability and item descriptions for The S-100 Turbo Boxxer were inconsistent.
- Added a Dye Slot to the Master Builder’s Bracers.
- The Eyto Eyto Creature Mounts no longer clip with character hands while mounted.
from swtor.com
7.4.1b releases on March 21st, 2024. Wanna hear more about what’s new with SWTOR these days? Check out our changes overview patch notes for the most recent major and minor updates, 7.4 “Chains in the Dark” and 7.4.1.
Alternatively, you can help me get on Broadsword’s case about the major problems with battle rezzing, and what they could do to make endgame content more accessible.
