The lady doth protest too much, methinks. I would hardly think your initial reaction (http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7958819&postcount=93) indicates poor handling from the beginning.... "Fantastic!!!! Best addition to the game since the Stronghold QoL change." I can't fault you for that -- I mean there you were, standing at the alter, radiant in white, Andrayah as Maid of Honor at your side, waiting for a patch that would never come.

Best. Thread. Ever. The CSM may have stopped printing money, but memories of its demise still print tears almost two years later.

I go through so many I've actually found it useful to have a second Artificer just to keep the supply lines open. Due to how easy/cheap they were to acquire, I think I have a set of three for all of available grade levels (1-7), and I just swap them out as needed, since I often have to remove/add a deco anyway to reset it. If I'm low, I just cycle all my alts on the server through those levels. Due to the original crafting bonus distributions, my Artificers tend to be Sith Inquisitors with Archaeology and Slicing, so now with 8 comps each, it's pretty easy to do 2x Rich Slicing, 4x Arch (Rich Fragments, Rich Power Crystals, Rich Colour Crystals, Rich White Mat) and have room for 2x5=10 refills of any sold items. Yep, and since they are gathered mats, there are often cheap stacks from people leveling just wanting to cash out (since they didn't pay for a mission). And if the GTN price is super expensive, I often buy 4 or so extra to sell on the GTN as well. Well timed usages of Green Jawa scraps can make bank (like during certain Conquest weeks). I run a lot as well, although back in the day (when dyes used purples) it was worse. Back when the CSM debacle occurred, I actually used a 'PPM' standard -- Price Per Midlithe -- when deciding which Artifice products to make. IIRC (and this was before the 4.0 inflation), at 3.0 launch I was getting upwards of 200-400K PPM, so I never understood why people were whining at GTN prices of 50K each. Now, my I use PPM as Price-Per-[purple]-Mat, but, it is amusing to note that at one point in time, Midlithe, not credits, was my base currency. When guildies wanted things from me (usually augments), I had them pay me in Midlithe -- we almost always placed in the top 10 for conquest, so would get the purple jawa scrap, and I'd charge them about 2 Midlithe per augment (thus, they got 5 augments for 10 midlithe instead of 2 augments for 3.33 Adaptive Circuitry, since it was 1:3). Things aren't that bad now, but illustrates exactly how poorly the devs understood the economy. This is what I have been doing for *all* artifice items since 3.0 -- admittedly, when I was more active, I double-buffered -- I'd keep two copies of each item, one on the GTN, and one in my hold, so that I could easily replace the one on the GTN when it sold and then craft a replacement. And this breadth v, depth strategy is what has always (since 3.0) made Artifice my undisputed champion. I started crafting in early 2.0 (when I got all crafters to 450), and like many others, I focused on augments and kits, but I quickly saw how the little variation in salable high end items cause people to pump and dump, and then undercut in multiples of 5, driving the price down to where you had to crit to profit. That's when I started branching out and keeping only one of any item (in almost any craft) on the GTN at a time -- any given one of my products could (and often was) easily undercut, but since I wasn't dependent upon any particular item or craft, I could afford to relist at my desired selling price and hold out against the undercutters (who tended to move from product to product in a continual undercutting war). Over time (which if you don't want to spend too much time micromanaging is the appropriate metric), Artifice has been #1 with no serious competition since well before 3.0, although the readjusting in 4.0 altered the balance of power between non-artifice crafts and reduced the gap between artifice and the rest of the pack. However, the optimal strategy is (IMO) to keep a small number of copies of a large number of products on the GTN instead of trying to sell lots of copies of a few products, and having the ability to sell all high-end items will give the widest coverage. And I mean regular mat vendor schematics, IMO (profit-wise), the Conquest/Ops stuff isn't worth pursuing. It all depends on how much you want to work and how much you want to make. I'm still seeing higher margins in Artifice, and I cba to sell much of that much less anything else at the moment.

Not too long at all -- you'll need Bonded Attachments, so buy the new schematics whenever you can -- you should [almost] always have one either orange or yellow, and if you set a couple of companions to do sets of five, it actually goes by pretty quickly. Four x 5 when you first get a schematic is usually good enough to get to the next grade level (maybe a few more at lower levels).

I got one char up to 70 and 2 GC (no uprisings, though). I think I'll spend a night Bestia farming to get the rest of my alts to 66, but I'm not playing kotfe/kotet on more than a few chars. Normally, I'd just PVP the alts to max and get a set of PVP gear that would work fine in any SM op if my guild needed me to switch ac/role, but now I'm not going to waste time on PVPing since I only need level 66 to send 8 crafters and my guild left at 4.0 launch. On the plus side, lots of un[der]played games in steam, and winter sale should be coming up right around the time my sub runs out.

My point was that by improving the consistency of Bolster (at least within categories), removing bugs, and BW communicating what each category should receive for Bolster, BW could remove some of the hatred of GC without changing GC itself. By Bolstering all 204+ gear to max Tier 3 equivalent for PVP, BW would let players change stat distributions by changing out gear, so even the oldest 4.x set bonus gear would work. This should almost entirely remove gearing as an issue. Selling 224 set bonus gear for credits (in combination with the Bolster change) should entirely eliminate gearing as an issue. At the same time, this gear would behave "as is" in non-PVP content. Bolstering SM FPs to 224, SM OPs to 228, and other stuff (EC, whatever) similarly would allow players to participate in *entry* level content with essentially little to no effort. Open world and HM/NiM content would require the appropriate grinds. Adding operation token drops to SM/HM/NiM bosses should allow people raiding to get the necessary raid gear for their current progression level as before, but (since PVP would be bolstered to top Tier 3), this would not convey a PVP advantage. People who neither PVP nor raid (above SM) wouldn't particularly benefit, but they didn't before 5.0 either, so they shouldn't really complain that they now have RNG chances to get what they couldn't before.

Be fair, some of it is only two-year-old content. #RegressionRaiding

Better yet, make Bolster bump you the top of Tier 3 -- PVP should be about skill, not gear.

As mentioned, there are no low-level crystals anymore (unless you have old schematics) -- all the new trainer schematics are for +41 stat crystals, and [most] have no level restriction (CM crystals require char level 10). The Artifice Trainer should have Advanced Blue Crystal schematics for sale at Artifice Level 1, Red available at Artifice level 80, Yellow at Artifice level 160, and Green at 240 -- there will be additional colors available as your Artifice level increases. There may be some available from schematic drops, but I believe that RE'ing crystals to learn schematics was a silent nerf as of 4.x.

Better yet, don't destroy the crate when it's opened, just make it a Box-Top token. Players can save up box-Top tokens and in-game mail order items from a catalog vendor. Restore some of the magic of childhood.

Solution for PVP w/out drops: o Make Bolster work (improve Bolster to put everybody in Tier 3 version of what they are wearing) o Sell BiS 224 gear with set bonuses for a low amount of credits (and a *low* valor rank, something that could be obtained in a few matches /dailies/ weekly) There, PVP isn't affected by gear and "PVP gear" is minimally useful to raiders. This would actually be very close to what we had 4.x (but with a cleaner Bolster system).

I suspect that at least a few of the people wanted an *appropriate* challenge where each chapter was thoughtfully balanced for its Veteran mode. Not like what it looks like -- all mobs scaled up assuming level 70 char + level 20 companion regardless of whether or not that chapter allows you to use a companion or, even if it does, if it's a companion that can be used/leveled outside that particular chapter. There should be more to making a challenge than just giving the mobs higher stats.

What's annoying is if you already were at DS/LS V and you used the titles or some of the items that required a high DS/LS and you are suddenly forced to regrind stuff just to get back where you were. Can you imagine the outrage there would be if BW added five to our character level cap, took away some of our abilities, and scaled the mob levels up, forcing us to grind through another few tiers of end game gear just to get back to where we were before the expansion was released? I guess DS/LS could be worse -- instead of knowing how many points you get for activities and having a vendor with clearly labeled prices that would allow us to pick what we wanted, they could have left our previous DS/LS levels alone and just upped the cap to 50 and then give us a drop from the vendor list every time we hit a new DS/LS level (and if they were nice, they'd make it only from the vendor associated with your current DS/LS toggle). Too soon?

Where to draw the line *is* a valid question. But ask yourself, why are you playing a game at all? Hopefully it is because it brings you some benefit (relaxation, pleasure, whatever). *Anything* that brings us benefits could be technically called "addictive", so we do need to be careful when discussing whether or not somebody is trying to exploit our desire of benefits in a "bad" way. As I pointed out, BW sells game time in monthly (or more) increments, so there is no *immediate* pressure to keep playing (or buying time). If your sub is about to run out, maybe you'll blow $15 on another month or $30 on a two-month time card, but then you have one or two months before BW hits you up again, and you have plenty of time to schedule your play time around more important things. "Real" gambling --- aka "casino" gambling (on-line or IRL) tries to exploit you as often as possible -- one more pull at the slot machine, one more hand, one more spin, whatever. "Real" gambling tries to exploit immediate weaknesses in thinking (do you feel lucky, etc.). With swtor, we've seen enough of the odds to know that your chances of getting good gear in a decent amount of time are now *much* lower than before, so you can take your time to decide whether or not you want the 5.0 gear lifestyle. Before, you could figure out what your likely WZ/comm per hour rate (and thus gear acquisition rate) was, and you knew what you had to do to get ops gear. Now, it's [literally] a craps shoot.

You're really stretching things...what you are describing isn't really gambling, it's the "just one more turn" feeling common in many games. I remember ditching class just to play "one more turn" of the original Civ game. You pay more one (or more) monthly blocks at a time, and even if you are desperate enough to buy CXP boosts, they aren't exploiting a gambling addiction. That said, the Civilization "just one more turn" effect was positive (I enjoyed each turn so I wanted to play another one) while GC is decidedly negative (you want to get one more crate because you *didn't like the one you just got). If anything, GC is good (in a not-for-BW way) in that it can lead you into thinking about whether or not you really need something and if it's worth the expected cost.

I remember expecting one person to post something like: "Yesterday, January 21, 2015—a date which will live in infamy—the Contraband Slot Machine was suddenly and deliberately nerfed by Bioware developers. ... It will be recorded that the distance in time from the release of the CSM makes it obvious that the nerf was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Bioware Community Team has deliberately sought to deceive the players by false statements and expressions of hope for continued usability." Still haven't used mine up (although to be fair, I haven't quite finished using all the tokens I had bought at the pre-nerf prices either).

There is nothing particularly wrong with Galactic Command, it's the removal of ops token gear and pvp gear that's the problem. BW could just add ops gear vendors "somewhere" on fleet and restore the token drops on ops bosses. BW could just add pvp vendors and make free (with 0 resale value) 224 w/set bonus gear that bolsters to tier 3 gear, and make sure that tier 1 and tier 2 gear bolsters to tier 3. All of this would be outside of the GC, and nothing about GC would have to change. Or they could skip tokens and vendors entirely -- let each PVP daily offer a a choice of 224 set bonus arnoring (possibly limited to the player's AC) similar to how some of the Yavin quests gave mh/oh and companion legacy gear. And do the same thing for operations weeklies, although I'd add in MH/OH as well as the armorings, and gear would be on tier based on story/vet/master mode.

I know, I'm just a stickler for accuracy...other than thinking Synthweaving was ever better than Artifice, you're usually very correct on things :) Also, as far as the CSM goes, I'm quite aware of how it went down...some of my best ever swtor posts are in that thread (which still gets rezzed occasionally). [At least] two of this game's biggest trools (troll/tool combo intended, not a typo) left because of it. I still go back and re-read that thread because it gives me this sort of feeling;

That possibly one of the most infantile posts I've seen lately, and that's saying a lot. It's unfortunately (for BW) one of the funniest and most accurate ones as well.

We blame the devs b/c it's their fault. Bioware Austin *is* "The Devs". Bioware is a corporation. When we blame the devs, we aren't blaming specific people with specific job titles/descriptions doing specific work, we are blaming the team as a whole. And like most teams, there are leaders, and they are most likely the most blameworthy, but since we don't have access to BW:A's org chart and internal HR info, we can't really get more specific than just blaming the devs as a whole.

I agree with both the OP and Andryah....it's the end of world as we know it (and I feel fine).

More like the feeling I get when I open a Galactic Command crate is equivalent to pulling the ripcord and hoping that a parachute comes out and not an anvil Wile E. Coyote style. I.e., not an experience I'm willing to pay for. Precisely because that's not the kind of RNG I want in my life

It depends on whether or not you are a kid opening xmas presents or somebody skydiving/BASE-jumping...GC feels more like the latter to me.

What's truly sad is that they could have doubled the original value (from 10 -> 20) and given me free CXP boosters for life (so 25 per) and it wouldn't make me any more willing to re-grind stale content.

I'm guessing that "pushback" will start drying up in a few weeks when the subscriptions of "adapting" players end and we can no longer post on these forums...Steam winter sale + my large backlog of unplayed games (as well as lifetime TSW sub) pretty much guarantees that. OTOH, EA/BW's Q3 results should be ready around that time, so maybe there will actually be a reason not to wait until I can get my free week of play time off somebody's referral link after Q4.