With the release of Padmé Amidala’s kit yesterday, a number of players noted the stringent requirements to upgrade her gear level. After digging into those gear requirements, we realized she required more high-end gear than we intended. The following gear is in excess of her spec:

• 100x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Component
• 120x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Salvage
• 50x Mk 3 Czerka Stun Cuffs Salvage
• 50x Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun Prototype Salvage

This was due to an error in the gear creation tool we use to design characters, which has been rectified.

First things first, we want to say thank you to the testers who jumped in to help us test Padmé over the last week. The first test was launched rapidly and the testers started looking at it with very little notice from us. Early on in the process, the play testers were focused on identifying bugs, potentially problematic synergy interactions, etc., and it wasn’t until fairly late in the process that we started looking at more subtle things like “Does this gear feel right commensurate with what you know about how Padmé will play and how she’s expected to perform.” We’ve taken a number of lessons away from this first test, including providing more time for the testers to give qualitative feedback early on in the process. Thankfully they brought this to us prior to the character launch, which has allowed us to come up with a solution that will reconcile our intentions without adding risk to today’s update. In the future, we’ll provide them more time, which will in turn allow us to rectify concerns or issues earlier.

To that end, we will not be changing any of Padmé Amidala’s gear as currently published. She’s tuned the way we’d like (using her current gear and stats), and -- given the closed beta -- we don’t want to lose the value of the work that beta group did on her balance. However, we do not want to “punish” players with what results in overly punitive gear requirements for Padmé. Additionally, changing her gear this close to release could introduce new risks into the build and the gear could potentially upset the release or break her balance.

We’ve decided that the best course of action to remedy this situation is to layer the excessive gear into the reward tiers of the Padmé event. Our thinking here is that we want to reward players who are making dedicated progress on 7-starring her with the gear intended to level her up. As such, the gear will be found in the following event tiers:

• Tier V - 50x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Component
• Tier V - 60x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Salvage
• Tier VI - 50x Mk 3 Czerka Stun Cuffs Salvage
• Tier VII - 50x Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun Prototype Salvage
• Tier VII - 50x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Component
• Tier VII - 60x Mk 8 BioTech Implant Salvage

Special thanks to the players and testers who identified the inconsistency, which revealed the true nature of the issue. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused!

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