The big deal is consistency and reason. Currently some classes end up paying more, others end up paying less and I'm simply curious if there is a rhyme or reason for the decision. The simple version would be to make all main hands 18 and offer off hand weapons for dual wield classes that are 8 each. In the great scheme of things it is no big deal...the entire game is no big deal in reality. But it is a question that needed asked if for no other reason than to get an idea of the "why" of a decision.

Why is it that some main hand weapons are 24 tokens while others are 18? Weapons are weapons so I have to wonder why some classes weapons are more expensive than others. All the off-hands that aren't weapons are the same price. About the only people that get the shaft are dual weapon wielding classes that have to pay for two blasters or lightsabers. For example, a Jugg would have to pay 26 tokens for a Gree lightsaber and off-hand but an Assassin would have to pay 32 for a double-bladed lightsaber and offhand. Meanwhile, since there are no specific off-hand weapons anyone that dual wields pays 36 tokens. Shouldn't all main hand weapons be 18 tokens and shouldn't there be specific off-hand weapons that cost 8 tokens like all the other offhands?

That would probably be because the Dev's do read the forums and I've yet to see a Dev team that won't stomp hard on credit grinding areas like this that get publicized. Case in point: There was an area in WoW involved in the leveling quest chain for Cataclysm that held certain mobs that, after taking my Ice Mage Tailor through there, I realized had an exceptional drop rate for the current top tier cloth. Every day I would spend an hour there, using a Treasure Finding potion which gave a chance for boxes with even more cloth and other items in them. Between loot, gold and the cloth which I would sell directly I made a serious amount of gold. When I quit the game a few months before Panda went live I gave my secret to one guildie...who then promptly told others and eventually the word hit the forums and the cloth drops on those mobs was dropped by a good 80% according to said guildie (and RL friend). The moral of the story is, if you find a "money maker"...keep it to yourself.

My only problem with the CM pack items is that someone, somewhere, spent real money on them. I have 16 "full time" toons and 8 "Logan's Run" toons. I bought the Legacy Cargo Hold unlocks so every toon always has 5 Cargo tabs and my Legacy Storage is at the max of 5. With that space I can hold on to massive amounts of CM stuff and resell at a later date at an enormous profit...but cash, at some point, was spent on those items. When discussing the GTN and credit making practices I tend to leave out anything CC related. If you have disposable income and don't mind turning real money into game currency then by all means have at it, you can make a mint that way...but the majority of players won't do that and so I focus GTN PvP discussions on in game practices. If you have the general knowledge of what various CC items are worth you can cruise the GTN and buy up discounted CC items and relist them but there are so many now that it's hit or miss. CC items I know to be rare but which aren't in demand are a waste as I could sit on that item for a long time before a specific collector comes along that wants it which isn't really worth the effort to tie up credits on those items. You can also "speculate" by looking at the CC pack previews and try to discern which items will be in demand and then hit the GTN 36 hours after new packs come out to try to gobble up any of those items listed cheaply for resale when the prices begin to creep up which was something I did successfully with the Sensuous Dress Top. However, I've also had failures as items I thought would be in demand either had higher drop rates than I thought they would or didn't have near the demand I had envisioned. I still made a profit but it tied up a lot of credits and storage space until the supply of those items dried up. Earning credits through the CC market is viable, but outside the scope of what we all try to do with Crew Skills. With Crew Skills, it's all about the time and effort put forth in game...with some luck thrown in...and not either having deep pockets in real life or taking advantage of those that do with our credit stockpiles.

What I'm really afraid of is a horrifically piecemeal release schedule, where one or two things are released every month. Say, month 1 is a new chapter, month 2 is a new flashpoint, month 3 is a new operation, month 4 is a new daily area...that could get really old really quick and result in people only subbing once every 4 months instead of maintaining a monthly sub. Perks for subbing each month will only go so far. Right now there isn't really a reason to sub outside of the announced perks for the FE stuff to subs through launch. No new FP's or Ops since SoR 8 months ago, a really crappy "daily area" that was such a small bit of content that it was released in two parts in order to keep the hype up (when we all know that had it been dropped all at once players would have burned through Ziost in under 2 hours)...this isn't the kind of stuff designed to keep players interested. Add that onto the fact that SoR end game was basically broken for months, the Ops were tuned by "professional raiders" with EA/BW completely forgetting that the majority of players fall in the middle of the bell curve when it comes to content difficulty, and the supposedly easy to balance 3.0 class changes have seemed to be anything but and someone in power has decided to completely change the way certain classes operate... I'm reserving judgement until this drops and I see how FE plays out. I'm waiting for news on operations and flashpoints because story only goes so far for players that have all 22 character slots filled up. I'm curious as to the changes being made to crafting. There is, unfortunately, a lot of information still being "left out" but I understand how the hype train works. They got me to resub for 6 more months, so that's something. I was ready to chuck the game and find something else to do with my time but they managed to drag me back in with possibilities and some shinnies. Time will tell how big a sucker I end up being...

And that is where I think the flexibility of a system like this comes into play. For me, subscription to an MMO is worth it. If you look at the "a la carte" costs of preferred simply spending the 15 a month makes more sense to me. For others, they might only play a few days a month and for them it might not make sense to pay for a sub. But instead of charging a set price for the expansion they tie it in to subscribing. EA/BW doesn't really lose on this. It's almost a reverse of the way F2P is done now. One month of sub gets you content you'd otherwise have to buy. You can buy the sub every time new content is dropped or you could wait for a few content cycles and buy a bunch at one price. I'm interested to see how it works. It reminds me a bit of the GW system where the game is free but you have to buy an expansion every six months or so...but it appears to allow smaller but faster development cycles.

I buy packs until I max the reputation out, then I buy what I want from them that I didn't get from the packs themselves. As far as "letting the cat out of the bag"...no plan ever survives as exclusive for very long. My trick is multiple plans that I rotate through as people "jump on the band wagon". It's like surfing where you try to stay in front of the wave and occasionally I get off the wave and get on the one behind it...over and over again. Slicing was awesome for the first few weeks after the launch of SoR until people realized how much money you could make on Yavin IV...now you rarely find a time of day when Yavin isn't being cruised by a ton of people just grinding out lock boxes. Right now resource prices stay high as Conquest players buy out the low priced stuff quickly but if enough people start posting materials those prices drop. It's all cyclical. There is no one good way to make credits continuously (as far as I'm concerned). There are, instead, many ways that you should cycle through as other people "discover" them in order to maximize your ability to earn credits. And yes, Shadowlands is a challenge. We have a lot of people, we just got an influx in from Pot5, and we have quite a few people who like to "give away" stuff (or as others call it, massive undercutting). It's a challenge all right, but that just makes the Credit PvP game a little more interesting.

I don't know if it's that, really. I mean, look at it objectively. To get the content you have to sub for one month...basically, the expansion will cost you 15 dollars and give you a month of sub time in which to enjoy it without restriction. Then, when the next chapters come out you buy it again for 15 bucks...rinse and repeat. It's really a novel way to do it. It lets people buy the chapters at their convenience and doesn't gimp them if they can't buy them right away aside from the fact that they will be "behind" so to speak. Instead of having to go through the whole rigamarole of purchasing an expac, you just pay for a month's sub whenever you are ready for the next set of chapters.

Conquest has definitely driven materials prices up, simply because a lot of players swoop in and snag any relevant materials when listed at low prices. And SH stuff is making me a mint. Sadly, I keep turning around and buying really expensive CC pack items. Some day I'll stop spending all my credits just to see how many I can have on hand at one time... Maybe.

I could have worded that better. The higher the difficulty, the more they give when they proc. Gotta stop typing when I'm half asleep. As for the reason...I have 6 "Logan's Run" toons, 3 imp and 3 pub, that I use for 10-29 PvP. While I use legacy gear for the things I can I have to craft implants and ear's for every toon when I recycle them. Logan's Run toon's die when they hit 30. I also have some dedicated mid level slots as well but I don't have to recycle them as often because the bracket is so huge.

Unfortunately, I have toons with UT on both sides, none of which are giving grade 3 metal rich missions. Even though I don't need them to proc Artifact mats, they tend to proc more often in my experience. I've been sending out toons on the UT metal missions that do pop, but so far no luck on the Krayt Scales. Just really wondering if something is broke or if I'm having the longest run of bad luck ever.

Archaeology mats sell at higher prices (typically) in part due to the fact that you have to get them from either running missions or farming nodes on the appropriate planets. Most low level Bio and Scav mats can be gotten by grinding mobs in heroic areas and harvesting from the bodies, something you can't do with Arch. By keeping companions busy, you can make pretty good credits selling Arch mats but I've not done the math to see if you make more through mat selling over slicing. Anecdotally, I'd say Arch would beat Slicing right up to the point that you hit Yavin...

So I've been trying without any luck to get a rich UT metal mission for over a week now. I have jumped between my SH and my starship to shuffle up the missions, I have run missions, I have tired everything in order to get these. The best I am getting is Bountiful missions. I get Rich fabric missions but no go on the UT metal missions. I've tried across multiple toons. I have 6 with UT and not one is showing Rich UT metal missions. I'm curious if I am stuck in an extremely unlikely RNG rut or if others are running into the same issue. I'm on Shadowlands though I don't think the server would have anything to do with it. Edit: In case there is misunderstanding, this is simply for Grade 3 missions. I am seeing other tiers.

And you didn't bother to read what was written and instead of discussion you've decided to use insults and personal attacks against anyone that you believe is disagreeing with you. There is no comparison...none, zero, nada...between the upcoming expansion and the NGE. You tried to equate BW's slow release of information to the complete secrecy behind the NGE and it doesn't compute to anyone who lived through the NGE. And the NGE secrecy was such a small part of what made the NGE the worst decision in MMO history that using it in an attempt to troll these forums is like using a Tac-nuke to swat a fly.

There is changing mechanics and replacing mechanics. This game has changed mechanics a few times already but they haven't completely replaced them. The NGE was, for all intents and purposes, an entirely new game. Go back and re-read what has been posted by the developers. Thinking KotFE is going to be the NGE is "sky is falling" thinking combined a bit with conspiracy theory thinking.

The NGE was unique in MMO history and trying to compare changing the story and background of SWTOR to what the NGE did to SWG is like comparing an apple to a T-Rex. The NGE was a change in the fundamental game play of SWG, something not done in an MMO before or since, and not simply a growth of the story of the game world. For SWTOR to experience an "NGE moment" it would require a complete change in the base systems of the game with only two weeks notice AFTER selling everyone an expansion purchased without knowing that such a fundamental change to the game was going to happen immediately after that purchase...all the while completely ignoring the player base and the many issues within the game that had lingered. We don't have that here. We are getting communication...good communication...and we are getting it at a measured pace that is typical in marketing practices. We are seeing a "correction" after the poor implementation of the SoR expansion (even if it seems that end game is being ignored completely at this point in time) and we are starting to see real effort being put into bug fixes and game mechanics (even if some of us feel its not enough effort). Sadly, the NGE occurred because of a sequence of events that started in Beta testing of SWG. LucasArts didn't have any MMO experience but that didn't keep them from keeping a firm hand on the rudder that led to a Star Wars game that launched too early against the objections of the Beta testers who knew there wasn't enough game to go live. Entire skill trees were broken in multiple classes, armor didn't work properly, an entire crafting profession did...well, nothing...and we didn't even have vehicles let alone starships. Content was what you made. Sure, there were a few places like the Imperial Retreat where you could run a few quests and meet the Emperor but mostly you had to make your own content. The game when launched had a horribly unfinished feel to it and it kept that "work in progress" feel through the Jump to Lightspeed expansion. It was only around Rage of the Wookiees that the game started to feel finished but of course the Trials of Obi-wan and the NGE were just around the corner... A quick Google search on SWG and the NGE will give you a few articles and blogs written by some of the design leads and developers that give you a glimpse of the inner workings behind the NGE, but suffice it to say that the NGE will most likely remain a unique event in MMO history that no game company would ever want to repeat. It stands as an object lesson that I'm sure game developers take to heart when contemplating changes to their games.

Yep. There is more to a business than its product. Money has to be spent in many areas: Product, NPI, R & D, Marketing...everyone gets a piece in order to make money for the company as a whole. You can't just dump every dime into the product and expect it to succeed...though with the internet, word of mouth takes on a whole new level...but you have to have marketing to create a buzz for people to talk about and CGI trailers are the go to for games.

If a repeat of the SoR release happens I'll be permanently done with this game instead of simply no longer subscribing. One time of playing a bug filled expansion with zero communication and bug fixes for months is all a game gets.

I think my biggest issue at the moment with SH's isn't how many I'll have. I've got all 4 fully opened now, but only two of them fully decorated with the third in progress. I'd already decided I wasn't decorating Coruscant because I just don't like it. Coruscant is at 100% through the judicious placement of trophies, signs and other garbage just so I get the conquest bonus. Which leads me to my biggest issue. Because of the Conquest bonus requiring the max number of hooks be decorated, I have had to "over-decorate" my DK SH to the point that it looks and feels cluttered. If the hooks required to get 100% for the conquest bonus dropped by 100 or so per SH, or if SH decorations contributed more based on things like size and rarity, it would allow more freedom to decorate without feeling the need to clutter up the smaller SH's. With Tatooine and Nar Shaada, fully utilizing the max deco's is easy but for the two starter SH's it becomes much more difficult. That's why it will be easy for me to dump Coruscant and, in the future, dump DK as well.

Nightmare Mode. ToS is Temple of Sacrifice

A boss kill achievement just means you've done the fight and won. It doesn't mean you didn't stand in stupid or weren't carried but some people think it's the only way to be sure that the player knows the fight. Of course, most of the people wanting you to link your achievement seem to not have it themselves...

Coruscant. Never liked it. Too sterile and boring. Turned DK into a Sith wonderland but it just doesn't feel right. Turned Tatooine into a Republic Fire Base and it looks awesome and I'm turning Nar Shaada into a High Rollers nightclub which seemed to be a no brainer. Not sure what I'll do with Yavin IV. I'm hoping there are a lot of centerpiece hooks considering the number of massive statues I've collected thinking they were smaller...

I think you misunderstood. I don't expect people to buy Tier 6 armor and weapons when tier 11 is available...but who is buying crafted tier 11 armor and weapons? Who buys a +4 crystal when you can use a +41 at level 10? Why would you want an ugly boring crafted speeder when you can get better cheaper? Who buys mods when you get so many comms? In short, as the game has progressed we have seen a decline in what we can craft being desired. So while we still have a great many things we can craft, there isn't a reason to craft them outside of leveling a crafting skill.

I don't like tanking. I got tired of it in WoW when I spent all my time staring at the groin of one boss or another while running my macro'd rotation one handed while eating a sandwich with the other. The tanking in this game is more fun, but I won't do it outside of my guild simply because there are too many d-bags who won't bother rolling a tank who think they know the job better than I. The only reason I still tank is so that my guild mates who mainly tank get a breather every now and then and to provide more opportunities for operations runs. I can't speak for everyone, but the majority of posts I see back up the simple conclusion that the reason tank players don't PuG is because of people like "Bob".

The only QT point I've had issues with so far is the Imperial Gravity Hook Seven QT point. No matter what, you have to click it to discover it.