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How it came about: with the new UI, when you click "Unlock", if you have enough of only one type of XP, it will auto-select it to be used and won't give you the option to select the type of XP you don't have enough of. This makes sense, on the face of it. In my specific case, I was working on the last unlock for my Elite tier skills. My mental arithmetic (my unreliable mental arithmetic, as it turns out) suggested that I had earned enough XP on my last match to be able to unlock my last skill. When I went to the skills screen, I saw the "Unlock" button lit up, so YAY! Unlock the skill, proceed to melt face.
Now, I had unlocked skills where I had enough XP but not enough GXP and it had auto selected XP for me. This I found pleasing. It did not (though it probably should have) occur to me that the reverse case would be true. Since my GXP account is rarely so high, it's not something that comes up very often for me. Later, I check whether I had enough GXP to unlock my next Module and a cold, wobbly feeling came over me.
I have contacted Support, just to make sure that this is what happened and not something nefarious or buggy. They don't have access to XP transactions so they couldn't help but the odds are that I've done something dumb rather than that I've discovered a previously unknown bug that just randomly deducts GXP from peoples accounts for no reason.
Here are my 2 options about what to do about it:
Option 1
- Always display both XP and GXP options, even if you don't have enough of one or the other to unlock the skill. Just grey out the option that you can't pay for.
Pro: a visual cue that you're about to spend GXP on some dumb mech skill (does anyone ever really want to spend GXP to unlock "Pinpoint"?)
Con: This puts an extra click into every transaction where you have enough of one but not the other. Personally I'm prepared to deal with this. YMMV.
Option 2
- Allow XP to be auto-selected but not GXP.
Pro: still gives a visual cue when you're about to spend GXP on something most players probably shouldn't be.
Con: for those people who have enough GXP to fully unlock a mech skill tree, there will be a bunch of extra clicks. Well, 12 per mech to be precise. For the number of people that this is going to impact, I think the cost/benefit is pretty good.
I get that this is my fault and I should be checking better. The new UI doesn't make it any easier now that the XP/GXP totals are small and tucked down in the corner. I'm not crying to get someone to give me back my precious GXP (though if anyone from PGI wants to roll back that transaction, I'm not going to say no. I'm 95% sure I unlocked Pinpoint for the BLR-1G with GXP, might be Fast Fire, whichever one it is that costs 6K. Either way it's a pointless skill and I'd be overjoyed to have my 6K GXP back). I just think that a relatively small UI change can make it much harder for people (yes, dumb people, but still people) to do silly things. Especially given the high "value" of GXP in comparison to XP.
If you're still reading this, I apologise.
