A logical fallacy? This isn't like stating that if A shares properties with B, and B shares properties with C, that A shares properties with C. The logical sequence I used in my argument is quite clear. Perhaps your comprehension was not.

A couple of clicks... and the risk that your account is permanently banned, or hacked. As for the end game crafting, I don't disagree with end game crafting, I only disagree with how it was implemented. Crafting should either be skill based, or extremely challenging with BOP mats to the point where it is extremely difficult to craft end game gear. That said, they would need to find other ways to make crafting viable if they did that, perhaps by creating a BOE consumeable unique to each profession that all ops teams or pvp folk would need. That said, I think that crafting should be a viable alternative to running operations or PVE. You should not be required to run operations or PVP in order to be a good crafter in the game. They managed to do that in its current iteration, but forgot about making it skill based or challenging, and instead allowed RNG to rule the crafting world.

Unopened Cartel packs sell for 200-300k credits. Armor sets often have several pieces that will sell for 500k to 1 million credits.

As I've made mention of several times now, the armor bonuses you speak of are available on Tionese, Columi and Rakata gear. The Tionese set is acually given to you as a gift in the form of commendations when you hit level 50. As a crafter and someone who watches the market closely, I notice that certain Cartel Market items sell for a lot of credits, and they sell fast. I routinely see specific expensive items for sale in muliples by the same sellers. It's a simple cash to credits game for them.

Please actually read my post.

When I speak of Progress, I'm speaking of End Game content. Perhaps I should have clarified that, but that's generally the accepted meaning when speaking of Progression in a MMO.

Ahh, I understand where you're coming from. Pay to Win means that you can pay real money in order to gain an advantage in the game that you would normally only be able to gain by playing the game. For example, nothing currently offered in the cash shop would really be considered pay to win if it was all Bind On Pickup. It would be considered Vanity gear. In the case of SWTOR, it is far quicker to gear a new level 50 via credits than via operations, if you have enough credits. The Cartel Market provides that source of credits, thereby making it Pay to Win.

Actually, as a player who plays the game in order to progress in the game, I do take exception to people being able to simply buy their way through the game with real money. I enjoy challenges, and it's nice to know that what I achieve in game is difficult. If there is no longer any difficulty involved, then I am no longer challenged, and I lose interest in the game. So yes, allowing the alternate path of Pay to Win does reduce my satisfaction with the game and "push me away". Just because you do not feel that way does not mean that it is not a valid feeling.

You actually reiterated my post, but seem to think it's a positive thing. The fact that people are selling Cartel Market Items on the GTN is what makes this Pay to Win. You are correct, it's easier than it was before. That does not, however, mean that it is better.

Gold Farmers are not sanctioned by the MMOs in question, and gold farming via bots, hacking etc, even in this game, is a bannable offense. Stating that it's ok because it's Bioware rather than gold farmers is hardly a valid argument. In addition, as stated in my original post, in game currency in most games will not allow you to buy even a third of your gear. In SWTOR, you can purchase all of it.

The OP was an observation on the effects of the Cartel Market in its current iteration. Please refrain from posting in the thread if you are neither willing to read nor able to contribute.

Every currently available dread guard armoring, mod and enhancement, hilt and barrel, can be purchased with in game credits. The set bonus can be had via the free tionese commendations received at level 50. Hence, you can sell Cartel Market items for in game credits, then use those credits to purchase maxed out gear. Pay to Win.

A long time ago in a Galaxy far far away, I had the expectation that SWTOR would not allow players to "pay to win". When Free to Play was announced, I was fine with the idea. Afterall, allowing new players to experience the storyline of SWTOR might very well hook them on the game and increase subscriptions. The Cartel Market never worried me because I had seen similar ideas in other subscription MMOs, and buying from the online cash only store never affected your game play. What I didn't expect was the ability purchase items on the cash only store that could be sold on the GTN. In some games, even that would not have had as big an impact as in SWTOR, because in those other games there's an extremely limited amount of gear that is useful in end game content that can be purchased for in game currency. In SWTOR, PVE content is completed using gear that can be purchased, in its entirety, from crafters selling on the GTN. What about the set bonus? Well, in other games with an armor set bonus, this would be a problem. In SWTOR, you are given commendations enough to purchase a complete set of Tionese gear at level 50, all of which can be upgraded to the latest standard of gear while maintaining the set bonus. Or you could get the same from running a week's worth of flashpoints and operations. To summarize, in game currency is now sufficient to purchase the highest tier of gear for all PVE content. Since you can sell Cartel Market items for outlandish sums on the GTN, it is very easy for someone to turn real money into in game currency and then into in game items that improve their performance. This is, of course, what is meant by Pay to Win. The only thing worse, and less subtle than the route Bioware has chosen to follow, would be to include the highest tier mods in the armor they sell on the Cartel Market. Bioware has chosen the smarter route, which is to allow players to handle the exchange themselves, thus avoiding the immediate ire of everyone who hates pay to win. Bioware understands very well that if they were to make the cash shop items Bind on Pickup, rather than Bind on Equip, their revenue might drop. A significant portion of the purchases made on the Cartel Market go straight to the GTN, and that would no longer be possible. That said, as a counter argument, even more real money purchases might arise, because players in the game wouldn't be able to spend their in game credits to purchase them, and might actually want a lot of what is being offered, and therefore be forced to pay real money for it. The Pay to Win practice pushes away players who play for the love of the game. It is especially disheartening when you see introductions to the GTN like the new speeder with protection against falling off that exceeds speeder piloting III. Only an incredibly small portion of the SWOTR population can receive a mount with a similar ability by playing the game (the NiM Denova Tank Mount), and even that is a matter of luck, since it is a rare drop. As it now stands, you can purchase everything used for space content and PVE content using either directly or indirectly purchased goods. Only PVP gear is sacred at this point in time (other than the expertise crystal), and it would not surprise me to see the introduction of a Cartel Market item that allowed players to get around the valor limitation as well. Furthermore, Cartel Market items tread on the corpse of Legacy, allowing players to purchase Legacy only unlocks using cartel coins instead of credits. I wouldn't mind this particularly if it wasn't for the fact that in doing so they also eliminated the requirement of Legacy Level to use these perks, and have not bothered to introduce any Legacy Level perks over level 25. Nor have they kept any of the Legacy level perks sacrosanct to Legacy. If you have money, rather than time, you can simply purchase them with cash and ignore the effort level normally required to earn such rewards. This wholesale approach to this game via the Cartel Market has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm not ditching my subscription just yet. I've enjoyed previous Bioware games, and respect the quality they normally bring to the table. However, I am becoming more and more certain that the long time players, those who would pay a subscription for 10 years straight in return for quality, are not the players Bioware is currently catering to. I could go on to list bug fixes left undone since launch, UI features that are so basic that they should never have left Beta without them, etc, but in reality, my chief complaint is the Cartel Market. I'm not interested in Pay to Win. The rest of the stuff, even a ready check, I can improvise around. I'm having difficulty coming to terms with a subscription game where you can simply buy your gear with real money. What do you think?

I will be updating this guide for Terror From Beyond level content in the near future, most likely after Patch 1.7 so that I can include any new changes to Cybertech at that time. My update will include the removal of outdated information regarding what sells and doesn't sell on the GTN, as much of what was in this guide no longer sells very well at all.

Legacy Level 50 should grant a title and another perk, neither of which can be obtained ANY other way (including the Cartel Market). Darkside Perk: The GTN no longer charges you a fee for transactions. You know someone, who knows someone else, who runs the GTN. You also know where all their children live. Lightside Perk: The GTN no longer charges you a fee for transactions. You know someone, who knows someone else, who runs the GTN. You also saved all their children from the hideous bugblatter beast of Alderaan. Title Ideas: The Inbred The Well Endowed The Infamous The Inconceivable

IM does a lot more damage than flameburst. It's definitely worth applying to the target, and not just for the dot. Leaving it out of your rotation is a significant loss of damage. My mercenary in full blackhole gear did 1930 dps on my first HM Writhing Horror kill, as there is a lot of trash and it's easy to skyrocket your numbers on the fight via AOE. A better representation of your dps would be HM Dread Guard, since it is pretty much a single target fight and you can spend the vast majority of your time wrecking em. My Merc used to do about 1400 dps on the Dread Guard fight. When I swapped to Pyro Powertech my first kill had me at 1800 dps. These are rough numbers, but I think they speak for themselves.

I don't think the original poster was discussing the Merc (Pyro) spec, but rather the Merc (Arsenal) spec, vs Powertech. Merc/Arsenal is better damage than Merc/Pyro, which is why I don't think your post is really in tune with what the thread is about. Powertech (Pyro) definitely has better damage output than Arsenal. I haven't tried Advanced Prototype, but I've read up on it a fair bit. Apparently, while it doesn't match the dps of Powertech Pyro, it still does better than Merc (either spec). While Advanced Prototype also has some nice utility, it lacks the mobility of Pyro due to the need to remain stationary during flamethrowers, which are a part of its rotation. It is also easier to manage in terms of heat, since it automatically decreases heat at an increased rate.

My Main used to be a Merc (Arsenal). Angelix on The Shadowlands, you can look up logs on TORParse if you wish. I played this toon in a PVE environment (Operations) for the past year, up to and including Hardmode TFB (Working on Kephess) and Nightmare Denova (working on Firebrand/Stormcaller). My Main is now a Powertech (Pyro) named Dragonstyle on The Shadowlands. In equivalent gear I am routinely putting out 300 dps more, despite the fact that I've only been playing my Powertech as dps for about a week and a half, which is when I hit level 50. I only have a couple of logs posted to TORParse, but they definitely show the potential of Powertech dps. That said, I'm still learning how best to manage my Heat, as it is far more touch and go than Mercenary. My dps increase over Merc on Target Dummies (6-8 minute sample) with full buffs was roughly 200 to 300 dps single target. Both specs have about the same AOE damage, though the Powertech is more constrained by heat than the Mercenary. The key to powertech is monitoring heat and procs and maintaining a Dot, whereas with merc the challenge is mobility. My Gear level is about 60% Dread Guard, 40% Campaign. Hopefully that answers your Mercenary vs Powertech question =)

Seriously, as much as I think that the queue problem can be easily solved (see my suggestion above if you like), your entire post screams "look at me! I'm important!". A simple post stating that "There are some more good ideas regarding this topic here "Link", would have been FAR more effective. As it is, I now have zero interest to go back and read your link.

Obviously you missed where I wrote about a notification to the player, telling them that they are at the top of the queue. If they choose to continue pvping instead of waiting for the flashpoint queue at that point in time, that's their problem.

This is, quite frankly, a silly argument. You are proposing that Stacking Queues are bad. They are not, and here's why: Option A - No stacking queue: Players choose either PVP or PVE, but cannot do both. If they choose to PVE, then they will generally have to wait a long time if they are a DPS, and will not experience any PVP. Option B - Stack queues... BUT... The player in the warzone will continue to rise in the queue until they are next in line. They are then skipped by players below them any time a Flashpoint group is able to form until they are done their Warzone, unless all the players below them in the queue are likewise in a warzone, in which case the queue doesn't move at all and the flashpoint group isn't formed until someone not in a Warzone becomes available. Upon reaching the highest spot in the queue they receive a notification that they will remain at the top of the queue. If for some reason they abandon their warzone, they also lose their Flashpoint queue. When they finish the PVP match they are then at the top of the Flashpoint queue, and were never tempted to leave the Warzone in order to participate in a Flashpoint. Now... reverse everything I said and also apply it to players in Flashpoints queueing for warzones. This is the ideal method of stacking queues. Players get to participate in ALL content, and it inconveniences no one. If you don't believe that players should be allowed to queue for both, then you believe in limiting game play options over allowing players to enjoy all content equally. If that's the case, then no reason or logic will persuade you to see differently, and I won't even bother with debate.

I'm sorry, but if the robots are casting just as often on 8 man as on 16 man, then there's an issue. You have twice as many people to interrupt in 16 man and can easily cover off all the interrupts. Reducing the cast timer from 1.5 seconds to 1 second is also BS, as it gives players with any lag at all virtually no chance of interrupting. This change also drastically favours groups with primarily instant cast attacks and short interrupt cooldowns, as they will lose the least amount of damage done, and more easily keep up with interrupts. In an op composed primarily of people with 12 seconds cooldowns on their interrupt, this is a problem. It all adds up to an extremely poor thought process by Bioware. The fact that this change was not announced, but rather showed up out of nowhere, is but another indication that Bioware has made a mistake. There are a number of other bugs that were introduced or re-introduced with 1.4, and it makes no sense whatsoever to post "oh, you can still do it" when there's no reason for the change in the first place. I suspect that this was intended to be a part of NiM EC mechanics, and Bioware screwed up by making it part of HM mechanics. We are posting here so that Bioware will realize that there is an issue and do something to either explain their actions or fix it. It's not so that we can debate whether or not the content is still doable.

This change was unnanounced, meaning that it is either a mistake (bug) or a "feature" that they simply didn't think to mention. If the former... we're really getting tired of the bugs, to the point where people in my guild are starting to seriously reconsider their move to SWTOR. If the latter, then I'm seriously concerned about the design direction being taken by Bioware. My guild is a casual 8 man guild that's managed to down Kephess HM a few times, mainly because we have some very strong players who make up for the otherwise casual playstyle. Those strong players cannot make up for the amount of interrupts and dps required to down the three bots before they become invincible. Three of our dps are mercenaries, some of whom have not had to interrupt anything in an operation/raid setting in over a year (or ever). So, there's definitely a bit of a shock factor to overcome. Even with two players with a 12 second interrupt we're guaranteed to miss every 3rd interrupt because of how often the droids are casting the buff. On top of that, the cast timer was reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1 second, which means that even the slightest big of lag guarantees a missed interrupt. The sheer amount of interrupts required is actually beyond what a best case scenario 8 man operation can succesfully interrupt. For those ops teams who are heavy loaded with 12 second interrupts, like us, it becomes nigh on impossible. Especially when so much of our dps relies on uninterrupted casting, rather than instant attacks. We should not be forced to replace classes because they have a long interrupt cooldown. To completely change the difficulty of a fight in this manner makes no sense to me. HM Kephess was already sufficiently difficult for ops teams that haven't been farming the content for ages. Our own guild would've had HM Kephess on farm a while ago were it not for a rash of players from our guild leaving the game. Even so, we wouldn't have seen any reason to increase the difficulty of HM Kephiss, when there will still be NiM EC and HM TFB to pose a challenge to ops teams seeking one. As much as I hope that this was all just a bug, that almost scares me just as much. Either way, please change it back. I'm honestly shocked that this made it live with 1.4.

Mercenary (Female/Neutral) - Milla Jovovich Powertech (Male/Dark) - Robert Downey Jr. Sorcerer (Female/Neutral) - Christina Hendricks Assassin (Female/Dark) - Summer Glau Operative (Male/Neutral) - Alan Tudyk Commando (Male/Light) - Liam Neeson Sentinal (Female/Neutral) - Kate Beckinsale Juggernaut (Male/Dark) - Micky Rourke I'll be honest... I had a hard time not placing most of the Firefly cast on my list

I absolutely love my Sith Inquisitor Warhero (Corruption) set. It reminds me of the garb worn by Nightsisters on Dantooine(?) in SWG. I'll probably keep that look for as long as I'm playing this game, that's how much I like it. I personally believe that there should be a greater range of gear appearance options, from a more simple cowled look, to the varied crazy looks that many of the Sith Inquisitor outfits have. Much as you suggested. That said, some of the classes seem to have a lot less variance than others. Troopers (while leveling) seem to have a choice in colour rather than style (everything seems to look roughly the same). My Bounty Hunter had a decent amount of selection while leveling, but the Tionese/Columi/Rakata gear looked absolutely attrocious for the most part, and aside from the champion/battlemaster look, which I actually liked, I'm not a big fan of the BH pvp gear either. Knights and Warriors both have some sweet looking gear, though agents suffer from bad PVE armor design. I'm not certain how smugglers fare, but their initial look seems pretty nice, and I love their hats. Fortunately, once our current campaign gear is easily obtainable by the majority of the population, there will be a lot more freedom to choose a specific look, as we'll no longer be tied to using the Tier gear for the set bonuses. Hopefully Bioware will introduce a far greater number of orange schematics in the near future so that players can bring their characters more in line with how they envision them.