The problem is that it is not like that at all. They have it set up in such a way that the thing you want is jumbled up and packaged with a bunch of things you don't want in a random bag. So just by the way they have it set up, you can't leave the rest. You have to take stuff you don't want just for a chance at the thing you wanted in the first place. And there is a good possibility that the thing you want isn't even in there to begin with. To use your salad bar, it would be like if you paid for your salad bar but instead of picking out the items you want to eat, you are given a plate with a randomized selection of salad bar items. The thing you wanted to eat is not on the plate. The manager tells you to buy another plate and maybe you'll get lucky next time. I'm sure you'd return to eat there every day...

You are kind of missing the point. I don't want to think outside the box. I don't want to jump through hoops. I don't want to buy this to sell that to buy this. I want to just buy the thing that they are advertising that they are selling and be on my way and go back to playing the game the way I enjoy playing it. I don't want to have to become some GTN wallstreet day trader. If I wanted to play the game like that, I would have done so. I don't want to spend my real money selling things in game for credits. Your suggestion... Why would I bother wasting so much time. Why not just buy the credits and be done with it? It's a pretty simple concept that most of the world runs on. If I go to the store for a gallon of milk, I get the milk, give the cashier my money, and go on about my day. Get what I'm saying?

The latest packs were the final straw for me. There was only one cosmetic item that I wanted from the store. So I open the store to buy it and it isn't there. It's in the gambling bag. Not trusting my better judgement I decide what the hell and buy 5500 coins for $40. On top of the 1750 I got for being such a loyal subscriber. After buying some legacy unlocks, I spent the rest on packs. Not only did I not get the only item I was looking for, I also didn't get anything that could be turned around and sold for a mass amount of credits either. And the thing is, when it comes to MMO's, I am a sucker for cosmetics. I spent quite a bit in LOTRO to play digital dress up and make my characters look how I would like. So I am basically saying, here, take my money and give me the item. But nooooo, they can't be bothered to just sell it to me. They have to treat me like a mark rather than a customer and make me go fishing with my wallet. Or sit there and hope someone who doesn't want it will sell it on the GTN. Which they did, for more credits than I had. That was supposed to be the point of the market. So people who don't spend all their time farming credits have a way to buy things. Now posters are telling me I'm dumb for not selling my packs and getting credits that way to buy the item. Really? Why don't I just cut out the middle man and buy the credits directly? The only one who loses out in the end is EA. Sure, they made a quick $40 off me. But the experience left such a sour taste in my mouth that it turned me away from the store for good. The latest pack just shows me that these packs are just the beginning so I'm done with my subscription as well. Funny thing is, in the long run I would have spent much more by being a repeat customer had they just decided to sell me the things and had a satisfied customer instead of this garbage system they have in place now.

Housing would depend largely on how they implemented it. Look at lotro, player housing there is a forgotten relic. The housing neighborhoods are ghost towns. Players have been begging, pleading, threatening, petitioning, anything-ing to get a revamp to the housing set up there and it will never happen because lotro is f2p now and it isn't profitable enough for them to touch it, so it sits and rots. Housing would be nice but it seems to be a vocal few that want it the most and to EA, the cost of implementing a feature like that vs the profits it would bring in, aren't enough to justify the cost. So I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing it any time soon. In fact, that goes for a lot of cool side features this game sorely needs. It's all going to be weighed by costs and potential profits now. Such is the life of a f2p game sadly enough.

Exactly. Of course every MMO has walls. It's how they dress up the zones that make it appear or feel open. That is where swtor did a poor job with the exception of Hoth and a couple of others. When you are on Courscant and running though hallway after hallway, you don't feel like you are on a planet, you feel like you are in a sardine can. The exploration is reduced to, "What hallway did I not run through yet?" Even the open worlds suffer from this. It makes the world feel much smaller than it should.

The problem is that there already is things in the shop that people want but can't get unless they jump through a bunch of hoops to get it. That isn't giving people what they want at all. It isn't a win for anyone but EA and people who play the GTN like the stock market. For the average player, most of the stuff on the GTN is priced out of reach unless they themselves start playing the market. Buy a cartel pack and sell it for credits? Why not cut out the middle man and just buy the credits directly? It's the same thing with one step removed. I'm going to quote myself from another thread because only MMO's can get away with this kind of nonsense. The other poster was correct. It isn't designed to give you what you want. If that was the case then you'd be able to just directly purchase the thing you wanted rather than the roundabout mess other posters suggest to get the thing you want. It is designed to generate revenue and the way people are gobbling up the packs it sure looks like it is working.

The only reason I said greedy is that they would make money either way. If they sold the Throne Speeder for $20 a pop, they would still sell lots of them. But like I said in another thread, why sell it to a guy for $20 when you can get him to spend $100 for the 0.01%, 0.5%, 1%, 10% (Just what are the odds of getting certain items anyway? Curious minds would like to know...) of getting it randomly in a bag? That is the part that is greedy to me.

Speaking from my own experience with my first character, I did the same type of questing you wrote about and hit 50 before I was even half way through Voss. So I'm not sure what you and your wife did differently.

So are you saying you'd rather wait a year at a time for the addition of fully voiced story updates as opposed to unvoiced story updates every month? If voice overs are the thing holding back more story updates, then get rid of them because it isn't doing anything but holding back the game. But I suspect the real reason is that size of the crew working on the game has been slashed a while back and a good number of the ones left are working on the store and store related things that take precedence because it offers them a greater return on investment.

This is my number one problem with the market as well. If they weren't so damn greedy they'd just sell everything for a set price rather than make you gamble for it. It might be making them more money right now but after a while, more and more people are going to get frustrated and are going to just stop buying the packs at all.

So I was wondering, just curious is all... What exactly is TOUGH about this area? Is it TOUGH for you to have to fight through dozens of meaningless trash mobs to get to the quest objectives? I'm far from geared out but these mobs don't really seem that TOUGH to me. There are just lots and lots of them which make finishing the quests time consuming and tedious but not exactly TOUGH. You make it seem like some great mental exercise to complete the dailies here but the area is the same as the black hole but with 10x the meaningless trash in between the quests. So I ask again, what is so TOUGH? Time consuming and tedious =/= difficult or TOUGH. I don't understand why so many people here equate the two. If anything, it is artificial difficulty, lazy design.

I agree that some things in the store are just priced too high. The armor sets for 1200cc's are good example. They really should be priced around 600 or so. At that price point I probably would have picked up a couple of them by now. At 1200 a set? No way. I hope going forward when they add more to the market that they price the new sets more reasonably.

I think the monthly amount is ok, it just doesn't seem like a lot because a lot of things in the cartel market are priced too highly and should have their price adjusted.

It was your use of the word "entitlement" which is the favorite derogatory word thrown at people who dare ask for anything more than what they are given which is more than plenty already, thank you very much! Back in my day when you played a game, you were thankful that there was even a game to play gosh darnit, never mind whether it worked or not!

Unfortunately, this fix or something else in this patch broke the companions unify colors. Logged on this morning and my companions legs, feet, and hand pieces would no longer unify to the chest piece. Tried removing and re-equipping, turning unify off and on, none of it worked. I appreciate the change to the preview window but it's getting a little embarrassing that the last few patches they have broken something every time they fix or change something else.

You said the magic word, take a shot!

To bring the thread back on topic somewhat, I agree with the OP that there needs to be waaaaayyy more side stuff to do in the game. Someone said that this was just fluff and filler and not actual content. But that is the whole point of mini games is to fill the gaps in between content patches. They will never be able to release content fast enough to keep everyone happy so have other stuff to do is a viable alternative. And finally, it adds a nice change of pace for people who just want to do something a little different for a bit. Cast in point: In WoW when I got tired of running dungeons, or battlegrounds, I would fly around and do archaeology or fish or cook food. Now they even added their little pokemon thing and it a great distraction from the main game. I logged in one day and said, I don't feel like running any instances today and spent my play time that day catching battle pets I didn't have. Is it meaningless filler? Yes, of course. Like I said, that is the whole point. It gives you more options of deciding what you want to do with your time when you log in. This game is seriously lacking in that area.

Unless of course the packs you buy contain nothing of value. Example: you open a pack and get an elegant loungewear hood or whatever it's called. On my server there are literally 10 pages of them for sale with the cheapest ones going for only a few thousand credits. Do you even bother listing it? Doesn't seem like a great way to make credits to me.

What's funny about the whole thing to me is that months and months ago I bought my sith the exemplars robe I think its called. (the one that looks like bandages with the red hood and shoulders) In the dressing room, in the character window, and in the character portrait, everything appeared red. However, when I equipped it, the red was washed out and appeared white on my character even still appearing red in all the aforementioned windows. So I bugged it and sent in a ticket about it and never heard a peep about it, though I would occasionally equip the robe from time to time to see if they ever sneaked in a fix. Of course there never was one. Now when a cash shop item is on the line suddenly they are all over the issue. Kinda sad, but totally expected.

That is the sneaky thing about these packs. Though to be fair, swtor is far from the only MMO pulling this scam lately. When you go to an actual casino, you know what the odds are of winning on the games there because they are clearly stated. If you asked someone they could tell you. But these bags...Is it 10%? 1%? 0.5%? 0.01%? No one knows and the people who do know aren't saying. Probably because they know people wouldn't be as quick to buy the packs if they knew how terrible the odds were of getting the thing they wanted out of it.

I found a perfect balance to be doing only the class and planet quest chains for each planet with a number of wz's and fp's sprinkled in along the way and I managed to hit 50 on several characters just as I was finishing up their last class and planet quests on Corella. I skipped everything else. On the flip side, with my first character I did nearly every quest and bonus quest and I hit 50 before I was even half done with Voss.

I think you are confusing content update with expansion. For example, WoW released their expansion last month and already have released a content update with it that added a new area with dailies. (MMO's sure love daily quest areas.) Perhaps I'm spoiled and entitled (the favorite word thrown around here at people. I've started taking a shot every time I see it.) but I feel like swtor hasn't really released all that much in a years time. Even more so when you consider it is their first year. Newer MMO's usually release content fast and furious in their first year to keep the player interest up (like Rift for example) so I've found them a bit lacking here.

Yeah, I saw it. I think we all know which way this is headed.

That is kind of what I was saying in my earlier post. Lots of places would make more money if they sold you a chance at something you wanted, rather than, you know, just directly selling you what you wanted. I think it is a strategy that is working now because it is all new and people are hyped up by it, but I don't think that a year from now people will still be splurging like crazy on cartel packs. At least, I hope not... Anyway, yeah, I'm one of those people who doesn't spend much time earning credits in game and would rather just buy the damn shiny I wanted out of the store rather than gamble for it or do the round about thing you mentioned of buying and selling packs and using that money to buy the thing I wanted. It shouldn't have to be that convoluted. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is ready to throw up their arms and be done with the whole mess which is the opposite of what the store is supposed to accomplish.

Bioware would also make money selling the items from the packs directly in the store as well, no?