Cartel Armor to Cartel Armor mod-swap kiosk?

[Vemtaz]

I love playing dress-up with my characters.

 

The problem I have is that it's too expensive to swap mods, especially on higher level characters in fully aug'd gear.

 

To Wit; It costs nearly a million credits just to move the AUGMENT'S from one full 'set' to another, assuming just the nine slots you can equip cartel gear in. The MK-9 kits run ~70k on my server (it's not cheaper to craft them, at least not in bulk), plus 9225 credits per augment to rip them, plus 36k per augment to insert it into the new item, multiplied times eight or nine slots.. not something you can afford to do very often, especially if you are an alt-aholic like me.

 

Edit: To empasize that this is just for the augments. The cost to rip out Artifact 66 Armoring/Mod/Enhancement is another 30k per slot in addition to the cost of augments/kits.

The total to move a full set of Artifact 66 Armoring/Mod/Enhancement and Augments to a new set of armor is approximately 1.2 million credits

 

I understand the reasons behind charging people to swap armorings, enhancements and mods, and the need for credit sinks. In this case however, you are inhibiting (or discouraging?) people from being creative using cartel armor purchased with real money.

 

Solution:

How about a kiosk or terminal (or even an NPC?) similar to a mod station that you could insert a fully modded cartel market chest item (as an example), and an empty cartel chest item, and it would swap all of the mods and augments (including the augment slot!) into the new piece of gear, and return the old one empty (both would be bound).

 

You could restrict it to only cartel market items, which would still leave all other types of moddable gear, and the augments in the implants, ears, and relics, for the crafters to still be in demand for augments and kits.

 

You could charge a one time fee, either in credits or coins, for the transfer.

 

The Benefits:

People would be more inclined to experiment with different looks, and thus be more likely to 'collect' more cartel armor.

 

The Downsides (I can think of):

Cost to develop, deploy and support, and a small hit that aug kit crafters might take. I doubt there would be a dramatic reduction in demand for kits though, as this would be encouraging people to do something they probably wern't inclinded to do often anyway. Not only that, but no one (on my server) is making any money selling aug kits anyway, as the profit margin is at or near zero on most days.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Vemtaz

[Midgen]

This is bloody brilliant! You sir are a genius!