Sure, I agree with you here. I hope I'm screaming "us us us!" with this because I feel that this caters to a very small minority, and that minority is determined by an external factor -- money -- rather than an "internal" factor such as "collecting vanity/cosmetic items" or "maxing all faction rep" for example. I would be happy with any form of content that we can participate in if we choose; here I feel it's not a choice for the vast majority of us.

I've already said I support the CM. Everything EA has released indicates they are making money hand over fist with it, more than enough to finance development. If you think this addition is going to finance more development I'm afraid that's also YOUR assumption.

That's not what I said. You're right that my sub pays for "everything in the game". I want access to everything for my sub whether or not I choose to participate in everything. The Cartel Market has been good so far because the things that I can't afford with my stipend I have been able to get off the GTN. With this new vendor I will never be able to afford enough packs to get the rep and certificates needed to get the item. I play as much as I can already and most of it is centered around money-making. So that content is cut off from me (and most people I would bet). I don't see why you're so angry that I am voicing my opinion about this addition and the direction I want BW to take. I'm allowed to want the game to be a certain way, and I'm even allowed to clamor for only the features I like and want more of -- regardless of how strongly you feel that I am not.

But resources given to the Cartel Market are resources that could go to other things. I support the Cartel Market as a means to finance other content, and so far from all indications it is doing fantastically for that. But this rep vendor orders of magnitude more money for the same items. It's giving the impression that development is now focusing more on moneymakers than content, especially since they majority of updates are now Cartel Market updates.

I'm not "deciding", I'm voicing my opinion. As are you. No need to be a hypocrite or pretend that your opinion is the universal truth.

Yep, either this or the items from the vendor being trade-able would be a good solution.

Except that their numbers have shown people buy ~$70 worth of cartel packs each time. Paying another $200 on top of that just to have the POSSIBILITY of buying more items is not getting "something extra", is simply adding much more expensive things to buy with a whole bunch of hoops to jump through on the way.

I know the definition of the word, I was discussing what it SHOULD mean in this game. Stop accusing people of "playing victim" because they feel that they money they've invested in this game should be used to create content that they have access to without paying multiple orders of magnitude more money. In the end, they're going to get less money from me if they continue with this because I don't want to finance this crap. Hopefully that is true in the general case and they decide no to do it. Or at least they decided not to do it because they don't want to be even more known for money-grubbing than they already are.

Can you imagine if an airline offered to sell you a first class seat for 50x the ticket price if you first bought 50 seats in coach? This is seriously boggling my mind. Yes of course it is optional, but that doesn't make it sensible, defensible, or inoffensive. Again, it's about scale. It's the overt greed that's shocking me more than anything else I think.

That's oversimplifying things. A lot of people collect speeders, for example; to do that now, you are going to have to sink hundreds or thousands of extra dollars into the game every year and that's IF you are lucky and get enough certificates. When content is "optional" it should mean there is another reasonable alternative. I can skip PvP and do Flashpoints instead if I want a little help getting XP while levelling. I can buy a Cartel chestpiece for 50k credits on the GTN, which is 20 minutes' worth of dailies. I can skip the Gree PvP missions and just do the PvE ones without affecting my rep gain very much. But I can't buy this Contraband super speeder without either millions of credits (and the associated time to get it) or hundreds of dollars AND luck into getting the certificates on top of that. There's no feasible alternative to wasting tons of money unless you're one of the few who was able to craft 27 gear early on or something and are swimming in credits.

There's a difference in degree here. Having a random chance to be able to afford a cosmetic item after spending hundreds of dollars is not nearly the same as "spend a little more and get X", especially when this is happening every time a pack comes out.

There's a massive difference in degree here though. Extra fleet passes are a nice thankyou for taking a small step to make the game more secure. A gold helmet is not a thankyou for spending hundreds of dollars, it's a massive ripoff! Cartel items are already relatively expensive an this appears to increase the price by multiple orders of magnitude.

Exactly. The ViP speeder can be sold, for example. Titles are the perfect way to recognize PTS testers, founders, etc. and obviously are already used that way. And in fact Cartel Packs already have titles in them. They should have made those BoP or something rather than gone this horrible route.

I'm pretty sure that's a bald-face lie but regardless, it makes no sense. You are offering goods in exchange for money. It's a transaction. When I go to the grocery store and buy an apple they don't tell me that they're going to "thank" me by no longer selling apples unless I buy 300 oranges and hope some of them have golden tickets inside that will give me access to the secret apple store. They just sell me a darned apple or, worst case, apples aren't in season and they simply don't sell them. In this metaphor all you're doing is massively increasing the price of apples and putting a maze in the way in the hopes that no one will notice what you did. This is seriously disgusting. Greed incarnate.

This is the worst thing you have ever done. I am unspeakably disappointed. Unique items that can only be acquired if you (a) pay a ton of money to get rep to access the vendor and (b) pay a ton of money and hope that you RANDOMLY GET a bunch of certificates? And then you repeat this with EVERY PACK? It's worse than Zynga for crying out loud. I have an idea for a minigame. Sell a golden cow suit in the Cartel Market and when wearing it, players who approach augment tables are suddenly restrained and have a milking apparatus attached. This fills up a tank labelled "EA" with dollar bills, and takes all the user's credits! Then a $200 charge appears on their account. Sounds fun right? I will never buy Cartel Coins again.

People still buy the current augment kits like hotcakes, you can rest assured that the Cartel Market will continue to ensure that augment kit crafters will be very busy.

This is wonderful, thank you sir.

All BoE.

Because BW is silly.

OP, as others have mentioned you are relying on the results of a pseudorandom number generator. The problem with pseudorandom number generators is that to approximate randomness, the numbers have to be taken and use in order. You've partitioned your results between different sets of attempts, and that's not to mention the fact that you are almost certainly drawing from a random number pool that is also used by other users. Your results aren't statistically valid for that reason, the number of trials or anything else notwithstanding.

You didn't read anything before commenting, obviously, since nobody said that.

It's not English and it's not supposed to be understood. The quest makes it fairly clear that the Gree think differently and "normal" people don't get it

The "good" schematics are for 400 artifice. Enhancement and Hilt schematics come from REing 61 and 63 gear. Crystal schematics drop from world bosses and, extremely rarely, mobs in the Black Hole.

They do not drop from Ops. They are not sold at vendors. Full details on the schems: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/46378/6066

/signed. Could be useful for some people. Even for tanks to do a quick guard swap. Of course noobs could misuse it but that's true of anything, that shouldn't be a knock against it.