I don't think it's fantasy. You know they have people on staff whose sole job is optimizing cartel market revenue. You know they've stepped beyond the "cosmetic" definition they put on the CM multiple times in the past and, when players railed against it, they withdrew. That is testing the waters. This machine clearly, completely, replaces the need to ever run a mission skill again. I'm a "hardcore" crafter. I know this side of the game better than almost anyone else. If this stays like it is, I will never again run a mission for materials. Never. So the machine has replaced that aspect of crafting, totally. That's beyond "cosmetic" in the CM, right? A track record of testing the waters plus this new thing that drives further into a non-cosmetic aspect of the game than any ever has... why would anyone NOT put that together as them continuing to push the CM into other areas of the game? This machine is bad for the game. My worry now is that there won't be an outcry against it. BioWare's "optimize the CM" team will have won a strong foothold into the "not cosmetic" area... either by fooling crafters ("yay! free mats!") or by tricking people who think 125k for an augment is "too much" into liking this. Once they have that foothold, what do you think they'll do next? This thing is bad news. I'm using the heck out of it for now, but it's absolutely bad for the game.

I know.. But COME ON, MAN. I'm on these forums all the time fighting against the "make the game easier" fools. Grouping me with them is doing me dirty, man.

I thought you were smarter than that. Oh well. Live and learn.

Again, the math is wrong. Over my sample size, which is now becoming quite large, I find that: The combined vendor value of reputation items accounts for almost 67% of the purchase price of tokens. If you buy 1,000 tokens, you only effectively paid 165,000. Out of those 1,000 tokens, you will get (only counting things of value) 30 Cartel Market Certificates and 119 Jawa Junk. The Cartel Market Certificates can be traded 1:1 for Personnel - decorations. On my server, I have been selling them all day for 40-65k each. But let's say their value is only 10k. 30 CM certs at 10k each is 300,000 credits minus 6% GTN fee is 282,000 credits. You might remember that above I wrote that after vendoring the reputation items, you only paid 165,000 credits for the tokens. You just covered that, and then some, in the CM Certificates. Those 119 Jawa Junk you got from your 1,000 tokens? They were FREE.

The problem is with the machine. Using a macro (yes against TOS but so is selling credits), dishonest players (think credit sellers) can generate an infinite number of free crafting materials. That's a problem with the machine. The second problem with the machine is that it is a CM item that is not cosmetic. It has a function, and that function replaces a big chunk of crafting.

The simple statement that one person cannot see the folly of an antiquated method of materials acquisition in no way proves that this new method of materials acquisition is so stellarly better than the old way that the old way is irrelevant and undesirable. The simple fact is that the slot machines let you get artifact quality grade 11 materials for free, and at a much swifter pace than running missions ever did. If you choose not to use that, it doesn't make the statement any less true. Denying the truth doesn't change it.

Hyperbole? Please share with me what part you think is exaggerated or rhetorical? If it's not clear to you that Mission skills are effectively dead because of this, you are not a crafter. If it's not clear to you that this is another test of the waters beyond "cosmetic", like they've done several times before, you have not been paying attention to what they've done since CM opened.

So the other issue with this is that it has taken Cartel Market out of the realm of "cosmetic" yet again and now firmly planted it into the Crafting game. This thing has eliminated the need to ever run a Treasure Hunting, Slicing, Diplomacy, Investiation, or Underworld Trade mission again. I know a lot of you will say, "F the crafters! They gouge us!" Well... once the CM is done replacing crafting, what's left? Will it start to replace PvE or PvP next? Will they invent some newfangled decoration that drops statted armorings or mods? Or tokens to get statted armorings or mods? Hmm... Will you care then? Crafters won't be there to lend their voices to yours when that happens. They'll be gone.

The breakdown for Jawa Scrap from the slot machine that was done is WRONG. Based on what I'm seeing, just the vendor value of the rep items reduces your cost of tokens by 60%. Once you put the CM certificates on top of that, the tokens actually become more than paid for. Based on my runs so far, before ever trading in one Jawa Junk for a material, my profit margin on the slots is over 100%. So, yeah, Jawa Junk is effectively free and immediate with the slots. Credit sellers could macro these things all day, sell CM Certificate personnel for very, very cheap - under 10k, and sell Jawa Junk materials for 500 credits per unit and have plenty of credits to sell to their buyers. It doesn't matter that the slicing part costs 3 JJ and Midlithe costs 1. 1 x 0 and 3 x 0 equal the same thing, Infinite profit. Normally I don't mess with broken stuff. You know, stuff that the randomizer or drop rate is off so you can get a bit of an advantage? But this is SO BROKEN that I'm doing nothing but clicking slot machines until BioWare fixes it. And make no mistake: They will fix this as soon as sales of this pack start to falter.

I don't need to use it when I'm logged out. I can count on the credit farmers to do that for me, then I can go to the GTN and buy all the mats I want for a pittance. Crew skills don't come close to trumping the machine, because the cost to acquire goods via missions is significantly higher than the cost to acquire goods via the machines. It's the same reason I stopped running gathering missions. I can buy the materials on GTN less expensively than running the missions, plus the missions take time. Why do all that when I can get what I want, on demand, for less?

You actually can't do that, unless you can find a way to read the screen from your botting program. You have to read the screen to know where to click to take the right mission. You also have to read the screen to know if you have to re-shuffle the missions because the good ones aren't there, and to do that, you have to take missions, travel, and one at a time abandon then re-take missions. Plus you have to figure out where to click to accept the mission returns, when they come back. That would be a heck of a bot program (read: probably doesn't exist) that could do that. Now these slots, THOSE are easy peasy to bot. No thinking, no screen reading, just mouse move, click, mouse move, click, wait, repeat.

Artifact grade mission skill grade 11 crafting materials cost over 2,500 credits per unit using the missions obtained from Slicing. Plus you have to get your skill to 500 first. The missions take over an hour to run and at the end, you get 3 or 5 items. But, yeah, they're guaranteed. Slot machines can give you 3 to 5 of the exact same items for free (when taking into account the value of other things that drop), with ZERO score in the skill, in under 3 minutes. Because of this, Cartel Market has just completely replaced the need for mission skills. Treasure Hunting, Diplomacy, Investigation, and Underworld Trading, and even Slicing might as well be removed from the game now.

I'm saying there was no initial inflation. The prices were high at release because very few players could make the stuff and a lot of people wanted it. They didn't start low and get high. They started high and came down, dramatically. The prices did the same on the 2.0 augments when 2.0 was released. You can't compare the cost of the 3.0 augments at 3.0's release to the cost of 2.0 augments at the end of 2.0. Apples to apples, please.

You start out like you might know something about economics then you prove with certainty you actually don't by the 3rd sentence. Someone who understood economic systems might understand that rarity drove the high prices when 3.0 first launched. Someone who was paying attention would understand that prices on all the things you named off, before the slot machines came out, were down to half or less their "at release" prices. That, mon frere, is DEFLATION.

Look, Mom, HE GOT A DELL!

You cannot collect items obtained only from Mission Skills while out in the field. Before these slot machines, those items cost no less than 2,500 credits each, you had to wait over 30 minutes to see if you even got a few of what you wanted, and you were limited in the number of those 30+ minute missions you could run. Now, those items cost literally nothing (because of the value of the other things the slots drop) and you can gather dozens with certainty in 15 minutes worth of clicking the slot machines. That's... quite a change.

Are you saying FREE + ZERO TIME is a good price for artifact grade 11 mission-only materials?

The impact it will have on credit sellers? Yes. They will macro the heck out of these machines and we'll have CM Certificate items and Jawa Junk items listed all over our GTN's for about 10% higher than cost of acquisition via the machines. They'll have all the credits they could ever sell and their prices will fall. People will still buy from them because the same people who don't want to run dailies or craft now also don't want to stand there clicking the slots for hours on end, nor do they want to figure out how to turn what the slots give them into credits. Is that glorious or what?

When you want to start talking about credit drains, you first need to understand WHY to do credit drains. Why do you want to do credit drains? "Inflation", right? When has inflation (on non-luxury / non-cosmetic) items ever happened in this game? Never in its 3 years of existence, right? Even as the number of credits available to players kept increasing, prices on useful stuff kept dropping. Hmm... Credit Drain. Yeah. No.

Like I said, they can go as low as 20k and the Jawa Junk still makes artifact materials free. Every single one of the CM Certificate personnel are over 40k on my server right now. You can wish and hope all you want that BioWare won't nerf this but it won't change what they will announce as soon as sales of this pack start to decrease. Me, I'm going to spend the weekend playing the slots like an old lady who just won a million bucks on a scratch off lottery ticket.

So here's the real problem with the machines, and why they will be nerfed, and why the nerf won't just be to Jawa Junk returns. Keep in mind this is a small sample size. I will run a sample size hopefully dozens of times larger by the end of the weekend. I bought 4 stacks of tokens for 198,000 and ran them all through until none were left. That resulted in (tracking only things of value): 37 Confiscated Artwork 38 Prohibited Medical Supplies 50 Banned Holovids 11 CM Certificates 45 Jawa Junk Purchase Price of Tokens was 198,000 Vendor Value on Rep Items is 29,500 Twi'Lek Dancers sell for over 40k on my server, so the value of the CM certs after GTN 6% fee is 413,600 ... WOOPS. I just made 245,000 credits before converting any Jawa Junk into any artifact level crafting material. This means that Artifact Level Crafting Materials are now FREE! Then I ran a "what-if" on it and it turns out that as long as you can turn the CM Certificates into ~20,000 each, half their value on my server currently, artifact level crafting materials remain free. That's probably not going to last.

So we're going to try to solve a problem that doesn't exist but might exist someday? Sounds like a recipe for a problem.

You could have always crafted your own stuff without having to "bow to price gouging scumbags". You just apparently chose not to. Y u mad bro?

1) Why does the game need a credit drain? Prices on what (non-luxury / non-cosmetic) items are inflating? 2) It's not a credit drain if it's not often used, and at 2k the cost of acquisition seems to become too high for them to be used much.

Newp. But that's averaging out, I think. Working through 3rd stack now and 4 certs.