No, he's not helping you; or rather any number of people who are trying to make money on the GTN by selling items for extremely high profit. The fallacy in your asking to "let us play the market." is that you are implying that you're somehow being prevented from doing so, which simply is not the case. At best you're being prevented from playing the market according to the rules you dictate as opposed to the rules someone else dictates, or a free market. The simple matter is that people can sell their merchandise at any price they want to. Normally this price will reflect a desire recover production costs, but not necessarily so. If someone is wealthy enough and has the motivation to flood the market with grossly under priced goods, there is nothing you can do about it. They have not broken any rules, stolen anything, committed any acts which are immoral, etc. This is really no different than in real life markets where wealthy parties flood a market with an abundance of money, or cheap goods. The situation will last so long as the resources of the investor persist and their desire to drive down prices exists. You're upset because now someone else has more control over the market than you do. Either you find a way to swing the market back in a direction that you can exert more control over, you learn to play by current rules, or you get out of the game all together.

My cost estimates are based upon the average cost it will run someone to complete crew missions in order to gather all the basic materials. The only real expense here is the grade 6 slicing materials. Drop rates as they are currently, the approximate average cost to gather 1 advanced neural augmentor is right around 10,000 credits. If you have a companion with a slicing crit bonus, this may go down a little. The other materials are readily available and do not have a significant impact on the overall investment necessary to make the desired augment. What I have not bothered to factor in to my estimate of material costs for making an augment, is the time it takes to gather the materials/run crew missions, nor the process of learning the advanced schematics. I've chosen not to include these items because ultimately, the additional investment here is fairly minimal. ie, crew missions are most normally run while other actives are being done, or while logged out all together. As a crafter, if you choose to purchase your crafting materials from the GTN then you are also accepting the additional financial burden of increased production costs. Understandably these costs will be forward to the people whom you're selling to. At the same time, you have to concede that you cannot be as competitive in price of your goods vs a crafter who may have chosen to invest the time to gather less expensive materials. Crafters with lower material costs can maintain a high profit margin, while still being able to undercut the price of their competitors.

WaldoA, since the material costs of making an augment is around 45,000 credits, you're still making 100% profit even if you have to lower your selling cost to 90k. If this kind of profit margin isn't high enough for you, then your choices are: * Get out of the market all together. * Find another market which has margins that are closer to your liking * Learn to accept the situation as is. The market on augments right now is very saturated, so in all likelihood you can expect the price to continue to drop. This is basic free market economics.

I've recently swapped over to using Shield Augments and I must say, I've been quite happy with the results so far. Decked out in mostly Rakata (only 2 Columi pieces remaining), I still have over 21,000 HP (without a stim), and my shield chance is now over 40%. Along with 38.79% shield absorption and 47.25% damage reduction, I take very little damage overall. My defense chance has suffered (down to 20.83), but I take less damage now than I have in the past since any attacks which do deal damage are reduced by such a large percentage. - Marmic

The problem with graphs like these are that this soon after the release of the game, the data is very misleading. Yes, you want to see a fairly straight line of activity/population, but that is not a realistic goal in any game so soon after release. Population levels are always going to be more erratic early on, and baseline subscription values (which will translate into server population as well) are going to stabilize well under the maximum subscriptions seen. We are still well within the trial days of the game. Not only the free trial, but I also mean the volume of people who either subscribed or paid ahead and are still ultimately deciding if they will stay or go. Realistically, population graphs are not going to provide strong statistically useful data for 3-6 months.

It's way too early to form an educated opinion on the health of the game long term. Plus forums like this are a notoriously bad place to go if you want an honest opinion on an MMO. Are you having fun? That should be the real question. If you are having fun then keep playing, and you need not worry about if the game is "failing" or not, because you can be absolutely positive that it will not be disappearing anytime in the near future. -- edit, spelling.

If you've got Windows 7 try changing your User Account Control Settings. Start > Control Panel > User Accounts > Change User Account Control Settings. The Default is the 3rd highest option on the slide bar... The bottom two should work for you, though I've only ever tested using Never notify. I've had to apply this setting to about 1/2 a dozen computers to get Vent to work correctly when it is not the active window. Running as admin does not always work. This may also work with Vista... never tried... never used Vista; uugh. lol

Has anyone... I'm sure some must have... gone heavily into the Defense tree? How did it work out for you in the long run? Does it work well for PVP as well as PVE? Just looking for opinions on this on as everything I can find talks about Vigilance vs Focus.